Screenhead

You know, I really hate TV.  I hate it about the same way I hate, say, Hitler, but more often.  But even I’ve got to admit that there are some good shows on every so often, and when they show up I should talk about them.  So today, you get a TV recap–huzzah!  And today, I’m going to talk about a little show on Discovery Channel (where most of the good shows on TV seem to be migrating these days) called The Colony.

It’s about to have its season finale within the next couple days, so if you get an opportunity to reacquaint yourself (or possibly acquaint for the first time) this really awesome show, take the chance.  See, it’s a really nifty idea for a reality show (and I know reality TV is about eighty percent crap but this qualifies as non-crap) in which about a dozen people from all walks of life are brought together to live in a dilapidated warehouse somewhere in L.A.  Why are they living in a warehouse?  Because it’s the end of the world.

The Colony assumes that the civilized world has finally gone the way of the dodo, whether by nuclear devastation or superflu or whatever (they really don’t say nor do they need to; dystopia comes in many flavors even if they all taste vaguely similar), and left only a handful of people alive.  From there, a group of survivors band together and try to recreate civilization, if only in pocket fashion.  But after some tense encounters with marauders and other hazards, the survivors start to look outside L.A. for places to go.

The great thing about The Colony isn’t so much that it’s accurate (I mean, come on–they’re living in a warehouse and some of these marauders have guns.  But no one ever uses them.) but that it’s a possibility.  There are some really novel ideas in here; I had no idea that wood gave off flammable vapor when heated–I just knew that wood burned.  You will learn a lot while watching this, make no mistake, and even if you don’t learn everything you could, there’ll still be something new and interesting here.  The fact that I can use the words “new and interesting” in connection with a TV show is as unsettling as it is exciting, and that’s a good way to describe The Colony.  Get in touch with this one while you still can–season finale is next week.

Popularity: 1% [?]

You loved him in Star Trek, you probably barely noticed him in Doom, but Karl Urban is definitely sticking like glue to the whole science fiction / fantasy thing these days.  In fact, he’s just been tapped for a whole new role in this same bent, of sorts–he’ll be playing Black Hat, the lead vampire role in the upcoming film Priest.

Priest takes the whole post-Apocalyptia concept to new and interesting extremes by placing the world at war between men and vampires, like Karl Urban’s upcoming Black Hat.

It’s not a terrible idea, this; he’s definitely got the chops to handle post-apocalypse vampires.  I mean, he went blasting demons on Mars not so long ago, so why not?  And considering that he’ll be joined by Paul Bettany as the title character, he’s in such good company that I can’t help but think this will turn out well, when it finally gets released in the good long future.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Admittedly, Vin Diesel is definitely one of the first actor’s names that comes to mind when you’re thinking “Sci-fi action” role.  But just because Vin Diesel’s got the background to handle sci-fi action roles, does that necessarily mean that the movie around him is any good?  That’s what we’ll be checking into today with Babylon A.D.

This time, Vin’s going to be playing a guy with the unlikely name of Toorop, a mercenary sent by a crime figure in Russia to retrieve a young lady from a convent and escort her to America.  But of course it’s never so easy, and Toorop’s going to have to deal with a series of doublecrosses and various factions scrapping amongst each other to get their hands on his rather mysterious package.  Can he get the girl where she needs to be?  Or will he even bother once he finds out the incredible secret she’s carrying with her?

Under normal circumstances, I love dystopian fare.  I love the post-apocalyptic, the study of the differences between the normal everyday that we all know so well  and the survival of the fittest lifestyle that we see in the dystopia.  But Babylon A.D. isn’t really all that post-apocalyptic.  In fact, for an apocalypse the world is surprisingly unscathed.  Aside from the fact that Russia looks like a crater-pocked wonderland of irradiation, Canada and the United States both look like brilliantly lit megalopoli with lots of shiny new, well, everything.  Some apocalypse, says I.

Anyway, this movie shows the converse of the low-budget movie beautifully: the effects and such are just fantastic, but the movie itself suffers under a muddled script and really, REALLY confusing plot elements.  Watching the last half hour or so made me wonder if my disc skipped or something, because it feels like a MASSIVE chunk of the narrative just vanished or something.  Seriously–we go from one point to another seemingly years later without any kind of connecting thread in the narrative.

Sure, on a visual level, Babylon A.D. looks just amazing.  There’s this fantastic sequence in which a car flies through the air, dangling from a helicopter with a magnet for support.  It looks amazing.  It looks so amazing that it’s featured in the box art.  The cityscapes are amazing and laden with neon.  Everything in here is just BEAUTIFUL.  Even the Russian slum districts are exemplars of their gritty condition.

The problem, of course, is that this movie is well on its way to full-bore incomprehensibility and has about as much regard for a decent narrative storyline as a fish has for a newspaper.  Which is to say, of course, none at all.

This is one of those movies that it’s hard to trash because, frankly, it was fun to watch.  There were plenty of explosions and lots of gunplay and some absolutely beautiful scenery.  On a visual level this thing is AMAZING.  It’s only too bad that they couldn’t be bothered to actually make this wreck make sense.

Babylon A.D. proves unquestionably that beauty will only get you so far–in fact, all it’ll get you around here is a four out of ten.

Popularity: unranked [?]