Angry Puppy

A tip from reader Rob:

Hey Marc and Lee,

Just thought I’d send you the YouTube trailer for a show that’s started in the UK this week called No Heroics. Superheroes in a pub, what could be better?!

Rob

It looks pretty good (based solely on the trailer and Rob’s recommendation), but now I have to figure out a (legal) way to see it. I feel like our international readers must when I post something from Hulu (i.e., geo-blocked!)

But the best news is that, unlike Heroes, there’s actually a gay character, played by James Lance. Timebomb, who has that great scene in the limo in the clip above, can see 60 seconds into the future. They make fun of it, but I’d take that power over no powers at all!

If you’re watching the show, let us stateside folks know how it’s going.

“Hey what’s up with this Dune business? I mean, I know it’s one of the all-time best-selling sci fi novels and is widely considered to be the greatest sci fi novel written, but what’s up with the books, the prequels, the pre-prequels, the postquels and the midquels? And what are Patrick Stewart, Kyle MacLachlan, and Linda Hunt doing in a movie that has Sting levitating in leather underwear?”

How many times have you asked yourself this very question and not known how to find out or even where to start looking?

Exactly.

Thus, we present Angry Puppy’s handy review guide to discovering the Duniverse.

So, Dune. Is It All That?

Yes indeedy. Dune, at least the original novel, does live up to the hype. Don’t try to figure out whether it’s more Star Trek or more Star Wars, because there’s no point comparing it to any other franchise; there isn’t anything remotely like it.

Frank Herbert was staggeringly imaginative in creating this complex society and characters and in so fully developing this fascinating tale of politics, religion, economics, mysticism, ecology, and ultimately an insightful exploration into what makes humans human. At the heart of the story is a highly sophisticated and incredibly well-thought-out question about not only what happens when a society crosses the technological singularity, but also what impact that event might have on the subsequent millenia. It’s Battlestar Galactica on a much grander scale.

“Aaah! No Spoilers, No Spoilers, LA LA LA LA LA…”

Don’t worry. I won’t give any spoilers here. But I will give you a word of caution: generally speaking, if you read anything about the Dune universe, you’re likely to encounter massive spoilers because of the way the series unfolds over vast periods of time and out of sequence. For this reason, we suggest you stay away from anything that talks about the Dune universe in broad strokes. Everything written here is safe, though.

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No, it’s not any sort of gay pun. We’re really just cleaning out the closet to make room for some new stuff we’ll be reviewing in the next few weeks. [Angry Puppy Episode 35]

In between the hilarious cleaning scenes, we talk about:

• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
• Spore
• Murder Party
• Iron Man DVD features
• The Making of Me: John Barrowman
• Fringe “Pilot” and “The Same Old Story”
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles “Samson and Delilah” and “Automatic for the People”
• Sandworms of Dune
• Hellblazer “The Laughing Magician”
• Plus, the answer to last week’s Mystery Geek Challenge!

The new season of Heroes premieres this Monday in the US and Canada and October 1 in the UK. It’s made up of two volumes (”Villains” and “Fugitives”), and while Season 2 left a lot of us underwhelmed, I’m excited to see some of the new villains we’ve been hearing about this past year.

Bonus content is generally a good thing, but this summer’s series of webisodes, “Going Postal”, left me scratching my head. I’m trying to think of something good to say about this three-parter, but all I can come up with is that Angela Petrelli (Christine Rose) makes an appearance in the last installment.

There were a lot of awkward aspects (the writing, the editing, the acting), but the pointlessness is what struck me most. This is not a rhetorical question, and I’d love to hear your thoughts: was there any reason to watch other than Heroes-fandom? And did anyone read the graphic novel of the same name?

You can see the whole thing in about ten minutes, and Hulu was nice enough to make them embeddable:

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Marc is sulking because we just watched the last available DVD of the Death Note series. [Netflix]

Ryuk has finally returned after missing several episodes, but even more exciting is the new opening sequence, featuring the song “What’s up, people?!” by Maximum the Hormone.

Best parts:

• The song!
• Ryuk chasing (and later dancing with?) that apple
• L (who reminds me more and more of Eric Cartman) spinning in his chair for chocolates
• Записка Ангела Смерти (but why not just Тетрадь Смерти?)

To appreciate how good this new intro is, check out the old one: