Bits for the Day

- The Twin Peaks: Definitive Gold Box Edition specs are here! (shame about that title) And they're better than we could have reasonably hoped for. Not only do we have a feature-length doco and 4 deleted scenes, but the Georgia Coffee commercials, the Saturday Night Live skits with Kyle MacLachlan as Cooper, a map of the town featuring video of the locations as they exist today, and more. Some will complain about the Lynch-standard lack of commentaries and the horrible cover art (which is allegedly official now), but who cares - this is more than we ever expected in the limbo years waiting for season 2. Good for you, Paramount.



- Charles de Lauzirika gives a great interview about the work undertaken on Blade Runner: The Final Cut and its massive DVD set. I can see why Warner Bros. has the number one reputation with DVD fans - they even paid to license the temp music used back in 1981 for the workprint. That's keen.



- Frank Miller has cast the quite young Gabriel Macht as Will Eisner's The Spirit for his film adaptation. Conforming to a well-worn pattern, Macht has a supporting role in a filmed yet still upcoming movie (Whiteout) and has been snapped up as a lead in this project. I know The Spirit only by reputation. I've read a few strips but they didn't wow me. I think that engrained classics like Eisner's early work need to be read quite thoroughly before they begin to be appreciated.



- the premier yet strangely unnamed fansite for The Wire has scored three on-set cast interviews. Wendell Pierce (Bunk) gives some great insight about the show's dichotomous reception within the industry; Clarke Peters (Lester) offers some rare thoughts (probably rare though because these actors barely ever get asked for interviews, sadly); and Dominic West (McNulty) is highly amusing in an unusually Wire-centric discussion. Observe:

JK: "300" certainly should have changed how you're viewed by Hollywood. That was a big hit.
DW: Yes it was. I suppose that marked my transition from sort of "drunk boy friend" to "evil rapist," which is a natural transition, I suppose.

And on a more serious note:

DW: I thought season 4 was really in a different league, even for The Wire. It really elevated it. It really has taken television to a deeper level, [even though] that may be a bit pretentious to say.

ARGH!!! Release the DVD, HBO!! I'm dying here!



- in that interview, West implies that Zack Snyder has asked him to take a role in Watchmen following their 300 collaboration, and that West is going to get back to him about it. Since the interview was conducted on July 26, he likely wasn't up for one of the roles recently announced. I'm racking my brain trying to think of what West might be considered for....
Woah, just realised - Captain Metropolis! A dozier West would be ideal for the hapless leader of the original Minutemen, who receives a demoralising reality check from the Comedian. Google- Image-Search-him and tell me he's not suitable for it, Watchmen fans. You heard it here first! (well, only sorta. Technicality!)



- Michelle Rodriguez (Lost) and Stephen Lang have joined the cast of James Cameron's Avatar. With this role Rodriguez just about justifies her movie-star insistence to only work on Lost for one season; appearing in Uwe Boll's Bloodrayne certainly didn't do the job. By the way, if Beowulf fails to meet expectations this November (and I pray that it does meet and surpass them), I hereby wager that fanboy critics will immediately shift their gaze to Avatar as the proof of the performance-capture pudding. No doubt.



- Michael Imperioli (Chris-ta-PHUH from The Sopranos) has joined the cast of Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones as the detective investigating the murder that kicks off the story. Jackson's assembling an astonishing cast here, indicating that his artistic reputation in Hollywood is undiminished.

Incidentially, I love how, going back to the Lord of the Rings, Jackson has not only brought in obvious, stellar names, but real out-of-the-box people as well. For every Ian McKellen and Cate Blanchett, there was a Sean Astin and a Brad Dourif. You had Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody in King Kong, and then there was Jack Black and Kyle Chandler. And now we have awards darlings Rachel Weisz and Ryan Gosling... and Stanley Tucci and Michael Imperioli. Love it.

BTW, don't be surprised if his role as the killer utterly revitalises Tucci's career following a spate of bland, disposable roles, Forest Whitaker-style. Once again, you heard it here first. :D



- Tim Minear, AKA The Unluckiest Showrunner in TV, gives a very insightful interview looking back on his work on Angel. It's been a while since I've seen any of the show, and now I think back to it, it strikes me as strangely out-of-phase with the years in which it was made, along with Buffy. Those shows were genuinely ahead of their time, and that feels more justified as time passes.

The indisputable proof of this is Heroes, a mainstream success that happens to tell stories in precisely the same fashion as Buffy and Angel, intermingling plot and character in a grand, serialised story. Heroes really does feel like the child of those show, except its parents did the job far better. Lost owes a lot to Whedon's shows as well, but it's more stately and has found its own voice. Heroes, to my mind, is a sugarcoated, mainstream approximation of a prior cult phenomenon. Even the cinematography looks the same.

I do enjoy the show, and I'm not accusing them of plagiarism (except with regard to Watchmen). I'm rather voicing my realisation about the massive influence that the Buffyverse has had not just on cult properties, but on the zeitgeist. People have been saying so for a long time but I think the proof is really here now. Thoughts, folks?



- Jeez, the flood of bankable supporting and indie actors landing TV series gigs has hit a new high. Not content with snagging Holly Hunter for Saving Grace, basic cable network TNT have now signed William H. Macy for a comedy-drama pilot about a pillar of the community who moonlights as a criminal (that concept will be decided in the execution, I tell ya what). As strong an advocate as I am of TV's potential, movie actors seem almost too quick to jump ship - Macy was in Wild Hogs, for goodness's sake, which was a massive hit, and he's a go-to low-budget and supporting player. The paradigm continues to shift....



[PS: The above image was the first Google Image Search result for 'Twin Peaks'. Talk about awesome luck. It was too good not to use. Apologies for its freakiness. Frank Silva is officially the scariest man ever.]