Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Two New Fantasy Series: Game of Thrones Vs. Camelot


Game of Thrones (HBO 2011)

I gave this one a couple of weeks just to make sure the first episode wasn't a fluke. It's wasn't! (although episode four was much weaker than the first three)

This is certainly the best fantasy series to hit the small screen in a long, long time. A warning however, it contains nudity and. . . more.

Much as I did when I discovered The Legend of the Seeker, I have begun to read along with the show from the source material. Unlike that series, this one seems to follow the book pretty faithfully. What they have changed has been for the better.

It will be interesting to see what they do next year, since I hear the written series really goes down hill after the first book.

Camelot (STARZ 2011)

With a rat faced, scrawny King Arthur (Jaime Campbell Bower) and a breathy, forced vocal performance from Eva Green this show is far from perfect. I stopped following this series when Bower did his best impression of Miss Piggy amorously attacking poor Guinevere (Tamsin Egerton).

Ultimately, there is nothing that elevates this show above soft-core porn.


Winner = Game of Thrones!

Movie Round-up


It's time for a round up! Here's what I've been watching these past few months:

Gulliver's Travels (2010)

Not bad. And I don't mean that in a bland way. It could have been so much better if the editor had handled the 'passage of time' gaps more fluently.

A shout out to Roy (Chris O'Dowd) from The IT Crowd! Great job! Too bad they gave you so many crap lines.

***/5

Gamer (2009)

Jittery, intentionally glitchy camera work leads to hard to follow action. But, surprisingly, this movie is smarter than expected. I felt that the premise was similar to Joss Whedon's Dollhouse, only done better.

I should warn you at this point that Gamer has more nudity, gore, and perversion than any R rated movie should have.

Somehow the casting director managed to round up a very eclectic cast, including some strange cameos. You've got Dexter (Michael C. Hall) in a very prominent role. There's also Kevin Bacon's wife, the Closer (Kyra Sedgwick). And then there's the perpetual teenager (Alison Lohman). Of course, no movie would be complete without John Leguizamo, no matter how brief the appearance. Peter Petrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) even shows up doing his best to convince us that he really is a psychopathic rapist. It's Ludacris, they even have Chris Bridges!

The most surreal moment for me was when Sean (James Roday) and Juliet (Maggie Lawson) from Psych popped up as hosts on some news show.

**/5


Stylistic BS. Give it a pass.

*/5

Skyline (2010)

Vapid L.A. partiers during an alien invasion. Pure fantasy, no science. It's not intellectually engaging.

0/5