The Bastard Executioner

I loved Kurt Sutter's "Sons of Anarchy." Sure, it wasn't perfect - I wish I'd skipped the Ireland season, and of course the show went on one season too long - but I really dug it. The series was at the top of its game in storytelling and characterization, truly a pinnacle in epic television. So when I heard Sutter was doing a medieval series next, naturally my curiosity was piqued.

I have to be honest, I nearly turned the first episode of "The Bastard Executioner" off in the first minute. Before anything happens, before we see scenery or set, before a character takes action or utters a word, we get a history lesson. Enough to make me want to give up and turn off the television.

I have never seen so much history crammed into the first minute captions of a show before. I paused the episode and spent ten minutes on Google. Did I really need to know all this? Would there be a test? I was especially irritated because much of this could have been organically explained in the unfolding of the story, or in the mouth of a character should the writer be feeling particularly lazy.

I kept watching, and I'm glad I did. "The Bastard Executioner" is vibrant, vivid, and visceral. Had I turned it off I would have completely missed the nudity and extreme bloody violence that followed in the second minute. If you ask me, screw the history, you should have started with that. You definitely had my attention now - but you could have lost it much too easily.

The premise follows several storylines and characters as cultures and classes clash between wars in Middle Ages Wales. That said, much like Sutter's "Sons of Anarchy," it's a big soap opera writ large in new circumstances with an epic scale. Rather than California motorcycle clubs, it's 14th century Welsh rebellions. That said, it might be a bit much for the usual historical romance crowd.

"The Bastard Executioner" is bloody and violent, yes, sometimes ranging from the horrific hide your eyes type to the silly Monty Python and the Holy Grail's Black Knight type, but either way, it's graphic. It is however also engaging and surprising, with just a little bit of that I don't want to know "Rome" and "Spartacus" realism thrown in for good measure. I'm not sure I can recommend it for everyone, but it's definitely worth a look.

The Following

I was wary of this one. Usually when Fox gives a lot of hype to a new TV series, it's either a big hit, or a big disaster. Excuse me while I wash the taste of "Touch" and "Alcatraz" out of my mouth. But then again, there was also "24." Fox has been pushing "The Following" very hard, but because I like Kevin Bacon (well, bacon in general), and I'm just sheeple like that, I gave it a shot.

Bacon is former FBI agent Ryan Hardy, reactivated because a violent serial killer he put away has escaped prison. The charismatic James Purefoy is the killer Joe Carroll. Purefoy is a favorite of mine. You might know him from HBO's "Rome," and you should also know him from the excellent John Carter and the even lesser known Solomon Kane. The dude is awesome.

The catch here in "The Following" is that all the time Carroll has been in prison, he's been online building a very particular social network. They're not just followers, mind you, they're also copycats and wannabes. Yeah, a serial killer social network, hanging on his every word.

Now the star power is not all in front of the camera, there's some behind it as well. The pilot is written by creator and showrunner Kevin Williamson. You probably know his work, new spins in the worlds of horror and drama like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, "Dawson's Creek" and "The Vampire Diaries." However, like Fox, he's had his share of dogs as well. Anyone remember "Hidden Palms"?

Also in the cast, but too far in the background for my tastes, are Shawn Ashmore and Billy Brown, both terrific actors. I also like relative newcomer Li Jun Li. It's a great cast, but vastly overshadowed and overwhelmed by Bacon and Purefoy, not that there's anything wrong with that.

What is wrong however is a little thing and a big thing. The little thing is Williamson needs to brush up on his knowledge of pacemakers. The big thing is this premise is more miniseries than series. Viewers will only be able to take so much of this, before they start asking, "Is it time for the good guys to win yet?" The monotony can only be saved by new twists, and I wonder if Kevin Williamson has enough of them.

For another opinion on "The Following," check out Amanda Reynolds' terrific review at Biff Bam Pop! here.

John Carter Is Awesome

John Carter ~ In the year of The Avengers , there are only a few movies that I have been anticipating with the same tension and excitement as that of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. There is Battleship, which is more a curiosity than anything else, as in how can a flick based on a kids game have such an awesome trailer? There's also The Dark Knight Rises, which falls more into the morbid curiosity category. Regular readers know how much I absolutely hated The Dark Knight, so I am curious to see how much of a train wreck this one will be. And then there's John Carter. In some ways, I have been more excited about this one than The Avengers.

First things first, all you critics and naysayers and underage idiots who think it rips off Star Wars can all just go to hell. John Carter is awesome. The books, by Edgar Rice Burroughs about John Carter of Mars are now over a hundred years old. A century, idiots, so if anything, George Lucas was mining Burroughs, not the other way around. And that goes for everything else under a hundred years old the uneducated are saying John Carter rips off. This is the original, literally the great granddaddy of pulp adventure science fiction. Everything from Flash Gordon to Superman to Adam Strange to Avatar owes a huge debt to this property.

And the other thing, yeah, that thing, I don't want to hear any crap about box office. Yes, it was an expensive movie, and yes, it did not do well at the box office. The box office folks are talking about is domestic, John Carter did quite well overseas, where also apparently folks knew who the character was, despite the "of Mars" being removed from the title, but I'll get to that in a minute. The fact is not that the movie did do well financially, it just did not do the numbers it was expected to do, that's all. Let's look at the facts - John Carter has made more money than The Artist and Hugo combined. Does that sound like a bomb to you?

There were other problems. The project got orphaned at Disney/Pixar, as nearly everyone involved in marketing was no longer with the company when it came out. So Disney only gave it the minimum promotion a motion picture of its size, budget and content should have gotten. Disney had written the film off before it even came out, and in recent weeks has even admitted it. Feeling saturated by the PR blitz of The Avengers and Brave? Well, enjoy, that's John Carter's marketing money at work.

And then there's the title. Disney had a real bomb last year called Mars Needs Moms, and decided that the word "Mars" was bad publicity, and so removed it. These are also the geniuses who wouldn't call it A Princess of Mars (the book on which this movie is mostly based) because it would confuse the little girls (and probably the parents as well) in the audience. Not only is that just plain stupid reasoning, it's also ripping the heart out of the character. John Carter is John Carter of Mars, period. It's like calling a movie about Superman just "Man." And also if they had kept the "Mars" in the title, at least some of the folks who weren't aware of the character wouldn't have at least known it was scifi of some sort.

Despite all that that, despite all of this crap that has been piled on top of the movie - I loved it. I've seen it three times. John Carter is the best movie I've seen this year. Now don't get me wrong, it's not a great movie, and there's nothing original you haven't already seen somewhere else (it has had a hundred years to be ripped off, mind you), but it is a fun movie, and I really enjoyed the two hours plus I spent in the theater each time. There hasn't been an adventure like this is some time.

Based on the first novel A Princess of Mars, yet borrowing from later novels as well, John Carter stars newcomer Taylor Kitsch ("Friday Night Lights") in the title role, genre actress Lynn Collins as the Princess, and Willem Dafoe brilliantly voice acting Carter's Thark friend Tars Tarkas. Rounding out the cast are two veteran actors from one of my favorite HBO series "Rome," Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, as well as Dominic West and Bryan Cranston who rule the screen while they're on it.

I loved this pulp adventure of a Civil War vet transported to the otherworldly Mars to fight for and against its various peoples. I read these books as a ten year old at the Camden County Library when it was part of the long gone Echelon Mall, thanks to my reading enabling big sister. They were great then, and great now, as I read the first book again before seeing the movie. A friend of mine called it adventure porn for ten year old boys. I don't find that all that offensive, I think it's right on target actually.

John Carter is a fun adventure flick - don't believe anything the naysayers tell you, go see it, go see it now.

Bunraku

Bunraku ~ I saw this a few days back and I'm still not sure what I thought of it. It's hard to describe. The word that is the title is Japanese and refers to a 400 year old type of theater that makes use of puppets, shadows and origami. It does in fact describe the way this movie is filmed. If I had to give it a shot, I would call Bunraku a samurai gangster western musical morality play. It is shot mostly on a soundstage and many of the sets and miniatures are paper. If nothing else, it's impressive.

The story of a cowboy without a gun and a samurai without a sword who face off against an evil warlord and his gang of assassins takes place in a future where there are no guns, and the world has returned to the way of the sword. Josh Hartnett does his best Tim Olyphant impression from "Deadwood" as the cowboy, with Demi Moore making brief appearances as a madam, and Woody Harrelson plays a wounded hero turned bartender with a penchant for making pop-up books with forgotten (or perhaps stolen) comic book themes. Ron Perlman is the evil warlord, and Kevin McKidd (from two of my favorite shows that never should have been canceled - "Rome" and "Journeyman") deftly dances through and steals the entire movie from the rest of the cast as the lead assassin, Killer Number Two.

In closing, Bunraku is at its core a morality play, and a samurai film in the old tradition. It's also very stylish and has to be seen to be believed. I recommend it with a precaution. Be prepared to be weirded out, and blown away.