Angry Puppy

Thrill! As we review Alan Ball’s new vampire series True Blood.

Cower! Before our new favorite anime series Death Note.

See! More homicide and mayhem in Asylum, Shrooms and the second season of Dexter on DVD.

Find! Considerably less manslaughter in our inappropriately scheduled reviews of WiiFit and My Scoopbox.

Plus! (wait, that’s not a verb) The Middleman, Primeval and an all new Mystery Geek Challenge.

Let’s go there now.

It was the best of times.

It was the worst of times.

The Watchmen trailer looks great. There are so many ways that this could go wrong (The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, anyone?), but so far, so good. Several of the scenes seem taken straight from the comic’s panels, and they managed to get the cheesy costumes just cheesy enough without offending modern sensibilities too much. And “The End Is the Beginning Is the End” is a nice touch. Take that, Batman & Robin.

I only have a couple of concerns, which is a good thing.

• I do wish that the trailer showed us a more out-of-shape [read: chubby] Nite Owl, but that might be asking too much of Hollywood, even if that aspect is essential to the character and story.
• “From the visionary director of 300“. Maybe they’ll add in some gay Persians for The Comedian to bash just for the hell of it.

The Caprica trailer is not good. It’s not bad. It’s just there. It looks like it would be an interesting movie in and of itself, but I don’t get a BSG-vibe from it, other than the music. In all fairness to the show, think back to some of the old BSG promos that the Sci Fi Channel put out. I love you guys for giving me hours of Saturday morning entertainment (e.g. Rock Monster), but BSG is not a Tom Cruise movie from the 80s.

Just in time to ease you through the summer TV doldrums!

Act One (”Wheee!”) of Joss Whedon’s musical web-series, Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion is now available online. Act Two (”OMG!”) is coming on Thursday and Act Three (”Denouement!”) on Saturday.

Don’t dawdle, since the episodes will only be available for free until Sunday, July 20. Read Whedon’s Master Plan for more details on what to do then and how you can support the Doctor Horrible crew.

[Extremely Mild Spoilers Below.]
[OK, barely spoilers at all, but go watch it first just in case.]

We’ll be talking about this in the vlog, but, for now, I’ll share a few notes I took while watching. (Yes, I do have conversations with myself in my notes.)

• The first scene, straight from Doctor Horrible’s personal vlog, reminds me of the opening scene of The Guild. Or is that just because both star Felicia Day? Both scenes share a certain quirkiness, but Harris’s Horrible doesn’t have the same punch as Day’s Codex. Whatever I mean by that.
• Laundromat. Bored now. It’s only the first song, but I have “Once More with Feeling”-sized expectations! OK, that’s totally unfair. You can’t compare your emotional attachment to characters from the sixth season of your favorite show to the characters in Act One of a 45-minute web series.
• Hey! They got to re-use some of the old Firefly costumes. Nice reaction from Doctor Horrible after the threat “or he’ll make you his mare”.
• Wonderflonium! Ha!
• OK, I like that little song of Penny’s. Is that really Felicia Day singing?
• Doctor Horrible has a Horrible Van Remote iPhone app! I was hoping I’d find it in the iTunes store as part of a viral marketing scheme or something, but no such luck.
• The dialogue between Penny and Horrible is a lot more fun than Horrible’s monologue in the first scene. Maybe that’s what I meant by “punch”.
• And starring Nathan Fillion as Zapp Brannigan as Captain Hammer. I like it.
• Balls.

Nutshell: weak start, wonderflonium, Horrible Van Remote, Zapp Brannigan, balls.

If you haven’t seen it yet, head over to Dark Horse Presents on MySpace to read “Captain Hammer: Be Like Me”, a mini-comic preview for Joss Whedon’s Doctor Horrible’s Sing Along-Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day.

Now the trailer we saw a couple of weeks ago is starting to make more sense!

[Via Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Blog and Mary (Thanks, Mary!)]

If you haven’t seen the trailer for the re-make of The Day the Earth Stood Still, have a look here:

Yes, you did just see Keanu Reeves as Klaatu and Jennifer Connelly as Helen Benson, though she’s a microbiologist this time around.

It’s interesting to see how trailers have changed in the last half-century. Here’s the 1951 original:

What do you all think? Will Keanu Reeves as Klaatu be just another entry in our list of worst cast roles, or is casting him as a monotone humanoid a stroke of genius?

Angry Puppy Fact of the Day: The Day the Earth Stood Still was based on “Farewell to the Master”, a short story by Harry Bates. I haven’t read it, but the synopsis makes it seem a lot more interesting than the original movie. If any of you have read it, join our new group at LibraryThing and give it a review.