FINISHING SCHOOL: Eureka - Season One

In which I muse on a wide variety of DVDs from my absurd personal backlog as I complete them.

I think I wanted to try Eureka because it looked so damn pleasant, like a genre-tinged Northern Exposure. Although the scant reviews were hardly laudatory, I had a sense that it could be a sly and witty dramedy that others were writing off because of its light tone. I don't seek out shows that allow me to turn my brain off (at risk of sounding up myself), but I still sometimes crave a show that's just nice. And if it's a genre show, then all the better. There's also something enticing about discovering a show that critics are wrongly ignoring

Despite some clunky episodes midway through that made me nearly give up on the show, Eureka ended up fitting that bill nicely. The premise is twee, but ultimately not a deal breaker. A US marshall (Colin Ferguson) stumbles on a secret town of geniuses in Oregon dedicated to scientific research. Ferguson then spends each week investigating a scientific mishap that puts individuals or the entire town at risk, while a mythology gradually brews in the mysterious Section 5 of research powerhouse Global Dynamics.

If that was all there was to the show, it would be pretty forgettable. The cock-up of the week is usually the least interesting part of an episode. Fortunately, the writers realise later in the season that using the calamities to get the characters bouncing off each other is far more entertaining than trying to get us to care about yet another stuff-up by a guest star at Global Dynamics.

The character interplay is the pleasant surprise of Eureka, because genre shows often fail at genuinely witty banter that doesn't feel staged. Key to this is Colin Ferguson, who is immensely appealing as Sheriff Carter. He nails every aspect of the character, from loving but often-angry father to rebellious Zoe (Jordan Hinson) to average joe trying to keep up with the geniuses. He juggles a will-they-won't they with Salli Richardson-Whitfield's DoD agent Allison Blake with slapstick farce, often in the same episode. Ferguson has charisma to spare and is the best thing about Eureka, so it was a pleasure to hear he's moving to the big leagues with a Bill Lawrence sitcom pilot for Fox this year.

See, Eureka has ended, with only the fifth season yet to air. I persisted with the show wanting it to become the sweet and snappy diversion I'd hoped for, but midway through season one I put that down to wishful thinking and put off watching the rest.

Then the final episodes focused more on the character dynamics rather than trying to get us to keep caring about random guest stars, and it blossomed into the show I'd hoped it could be. Even the mythology is kinda cool. It's not in the same league as Pushing Daisies - perhaps the finest and sharpest TV bonbon of recent years - but I don't feel stupid for watching Eureka anymore. I just hope later seasons keep up the good work, because I want to enjoy four more seasons of this not particularly nutritious but deliciously satisfying treat.

Watching Star Trek: The Next Generation on Blu-ray at last

About a week ago I watched The Next Level, the Blu-ray sampler disc containing three episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation in HD. The level of my anticipation for this release cannot be underestimated, which is a little odd because I'm well aware that TNG is hardly the finest television show ever made. The technical and experiential leap forward that the disc offered was the true drawcard, the chance to see the cobwebs and dust blown off a cherished show to reveal what was always underneath but never before seen.

What's remarkable about this release--and the complete series Blu-ray release it heralds--is that CBS had to essentially re-edit the episodes from scratch in order to create a high-definition presentation. The Next Generation was shot on 35mm film (which inherently has an even higher resolution than the 1080p offered on Blu-ray), but then transferred to videotape to be edited to save time and money. Visual effects were also often created on film but then composited with the live-action film on videotape.

John Carter of Mars fans create the trailer Disney should have

I was clearly not alone in certain sentiments about Disney's marketing of John Carter. I stressed that they should be promoting both director Andrew Stanton's previous hits and, most importantly, the enormous influence Burroughs's stories have had on subsequent blockbusters.

Now, some savvy Barsoom fans have edited a new trailer from the official trailers and clips released so far, and it is a significant improvement over everything Disney has released to date.

How is that fans have created a more coherent, engaging, and promotionally competent trailer than Disney's own marketing department?!

And Disney has access to the entire movie and a hell of a lot more resources. These guys have just used the scraps of footage Disney have released. Disney marketing seriously needs to have a meeting to discuss how they can't achieve this kind of simple work.

The trailer is actually quite similar in some ways to what's been released, but most importantly it presents a straightforward narrative that audiences can grasp. It doesn't even do anything radical: this is just the basic trailer Disney should have been able to devise a hundred variants of.

The major distinctions are not being afraid of 1) naming Finding Nemo and Wall-E and 2) the age of the John Carter property. As fans have been screaming since it became clear Disney had little idea how to market this film, this trailer turns that age into a benefit with the line "the epic tale that inspired one hundred years of filmmaking". After all, it looks like a modern production in every other way, so why not tell us that we're now seeing the original - the straight dope. What if it's better than the diluted stuff that came after, we might wonder...

To deliberately encourage audiences to think a film is generic and bland for the trade-off that it will at least be recognisably generic and bland is symptomatic of the dismaying conservatism that dominates the Hollywood development process. Kudos to the John Carter Files for rejecting that and helping out a movie that needs all it can get.

[In fact, looking at their site they've got quite the grassroots campaign going. And Andrew Stanton tweeted his love for this trailer! Check out the John Carter Files.]

John Carter (formerly of Mars) may face a battle at the box office

Deadline is reporting that just-released figures tracking awareness of Disney's science fiction epic John Carter are 'shockingly soft', with one rival exec speculating that it could be the 'biggest write-off of all time'.

The release date is still three weeks away, and a marketing blitzkrieg could turn this around, assuming the prognosis is accurate. But the way Disney have marketed the film is clearly flawed, and speaks to the difficulties of adapting a classic property for a modern audience.

Trailer Watch

A look at an assortment of recent trailers with some musing about whether or not we should give a monkey's, including The Bourne Legacy, The Avengers, and The Amazing Spider-Man.

You'll find YouTube embeds below, and links to Apple Trailers if you want to download better quality versions.

FINISHING SCHOOL: The Larry Sanders Show - Season One

In which I muse on a wide variety of DVDs from my absurd personal backlog as I complete them.

OK, I'm cheating a little here because I still have five seasons of Shout Factory's tremendous Complete Series DVD box set to get through, but progress is progress...

The Larry Sanders Show was one of the most influential comedies of the 1990s, but has since become more of a cult favourite after being a critical sensation during its run. This is no doubt because the series was largely unavailable on DVD  until this set was released in 2010. Rights or legal issues that remain unclear prevented a release, but somehow Shout was able to overcome them.

Now that we have the chance to revisit the series (or in my case, revisit the first two seasons before heading into new territory), we can notice the striking similarities to many contemporary comedies from America, Britain, Australia, and beyond. Larry Sanders helped define a new kind of television comedy that owed more to the documentary than the sitcom, and showed us a skewed, unvarnished, but utterly plausible view of celebrity culture in Hollywood.

Reviewing Un-Go and some thoughts on anime overall

Siren Visual have re-positioned themselves over the last couple of years as an impressive second voice in Australian anime licensing. A few years ago their anime focus was hentai and the occasional mainstream title, but they've since identified a valuable niche: off-beat anime that isn't easily categorisable, in contrast to Madman's preference for more established genres and styles.

That's an overly reductive assessment of both companies, but Siren's approach clearly leans toward bringing less conventional anime to the Australian market. Some titles like Casshern Sins and Tiger and Bunny are more 'mainstream', but Siren have gone as far as releasing titles completely unavailable in English-speaking countries as subtitle-only editions. They brought the highly acclaimed Kaiba to Australia last year after most territories no doubt saw its hallucinogenic fusion of Tezuka-style character design and SF spirituality as too uncommercial a prospect. Likewise, the younger-skewing but thematically rich augmented-reality SF series Dennou Coil was released here late last year. Siren is no doubt prompting anime fans in the UK and US to now start looking to Australia for anime imports.

I admire Siren for taking a chance on material that bigger companies have rejected, and without having any financial figures to hand it certainly seems to be paying off for them, with a steady stream of quality titles hitting the shelves.

Siren have also teamed up with Anime News Network to stream anime series within a day of their broadcast in Japan in advance of an eventual DVD release. Thanks to websites like Crunchyroll and the big US licensors like Funimation, instant streaming is becoming a fixture in order to combat piracy. Madman have streamed certain series for Australian fans for a couple of years now.

One of these shows from Siren/ANN is Un-Go, part of the Noitamina line-up of shows on Japan's Fuji Television network. Noitamina is intended to showcase more experimental and unconventional anime, so Siren has naturally licenced several of its shows. Un-Go is one of the most traditional Noitamina shows I've seen, but it fits with the block's ethos by cramming in a bewildering array of concepts.

DC's Watchmen prequels: I'm not angry, I'm disappointed

The announcement that DC Comics will be publishing the first Watchmen material since the original series didn't provoke quite the reaction I would have expected. At risk of patronising many distinguished creators and comics professionals, I felt like a parent who discovers their teenager has done something bad after they had a calm and rational conversation about why this wasn't a good idea.

You just feel deep disappointment. You expect better from them because they are smart and have such potential, and because you thought you'd gotten through to them.

Of course, they haven't made a fatal mistake and reached a point of no return. But they've done something they're going to regret, and you feel sad for them. That's how I feel about this decision. I actually feel sympathy for DC Comics that they felt this was necessary.

Ahem...

... and we're back.

I won't dilly-dally with too much in the way of preamble and explanation. Let's just power on.

Remote Wanderings will continue to be a melting pot of screen and print pop culture commentary, particularly film, TV, comics, and books. I can't predict what each day's post will be, and I hope that'll be as fun for you as it will be for me... after I've actually thought of each day's post...

'Basic Training' and 'Finishing School' will continue (or, more accurately, begin in earnest), particularly because it gives me added impetus to get through my DVD backlog and plug shameful gaps in my experience of cinema.

As for other features, we'll have to see what develops...

So let's go!