So for those that have been following Scream Queens tonight is the finale. Lindsay, Tanedra, and Michelle go through a Scream Queen gauntlent to find out who the Scream Queen will be. So far this season there has been some interesting acting challenges that has brought out a lot of emotions for the girls and a lot of director’s challenges that has brought out some of the best (and worst) in the ladies. James Gunn has been a shining light through the series as I love watching him work and interact with the contestants. So if you’re wondering who is going to win tune in tonight (or one of the other half a dozen airings in the next few days) on VH1.
So the first episode premiered on VH1 this week. The idea is that a bunch of hopeful horror actresses compete to win a break out role in next year’s SAW VI. The judges on the show are SAW alum Shawnee Smith, SLITHER director James Gunn (whom I love so you all can bite me), and acting coach John Homa. They will be competing in horror themed challenges every week that concentrate on the actresses acting skills.
This week the girls were thrown right into a challenge by convincing a masked killer not kill them. Tanedra, the one actress with no acting experience, won and was safe from elimination this week. Next John Homa taught the girls how to be seductive without being slutty in their acting exercises. And finally James Gunn directed them in a directing challenge in a scene from his movie SLITHER. Some of the girls had a problem with the nudity involved but they powered through. In the end the saucey Brit. Jo-Anne got the axe as she just couldn’t get comfortable in front of the camera.
All in all the show is like mental candy. It’s sweet but not really that good for you. While it’s cool to see challenges done in the horror style the show is another clone of the rest of the VH1 reality shows. It plays out like a horror version of Rock Of Love. The challenges are cool though so that may keep me interested in watching for further weeks. And Shawnee Smith talking smack about anyone’s acting skills is laughable. But if you’re curious be sure to check out Scream Queens on VH1 Monday nights.
With the opening episode out of the way we get to get right into the show this week. It starts with a man and a woman in a hotel room having just had Mommy/Daddy time. As the man goes to the bathroom to mysteriously get some strange fluid into a needle the woman suddenly doubles over in pain and we see her stomach begin to contort. The man throws her into a car and dumps her off at a hospital. She now looks like she is 9 months pregnant and begins to give birth. The woman dies but the doctors save the baby. To their dismay the baby then continues to grow right in front of them. After 4 hours the baby has now grown full size and died of old age. This brings in our group as they are tasked to inviestigate what has happened.
Dr. Bishop recognizes immediately that the fast grown human was something him and another scientist had worked on after Vietnam. Meanwhile Olivia and Peter go to investigate the hotel room to discover a bit of the strange fluid on the bathroom sink. Olivia immediately is able to tie this to an old unsolved case her and her partner investigated before of a serial killer that would cut open woman’s faces and extract their pituitary gland. Olivia and Dr. Bishop start to work to see how the cases are connected and find the killer before he kills again.
So like I said at the beginning it is good to sort of get past estasblishing all the characters and be able to just jump right into a case. Olivia is still shook up over the death of her partner and his implicated involvement in something they are calling The Pattern. But my real enjoyment of this episode was seeing more of the relationship between Peter and his father Walter. There is just something that they are doing to show you that there is some substance to their relationship. They play well off each other and this episode really showed the result of Walter spending so much time in the psychiatric hospital. His mind is still slightly shattered as he seems to forget events and people. And at the end of the episode we get a nice hint that Peter has an interesting medical background. But of course with JJ Abrams we could be waiting for seasons to find out what that is.
Some small problems with the episode were that some problems were solved so easily by just explaining stuff away. For instance when the crew find a recent victim of the killer Walter determines that since she was injected with a paralyising drug that the last image that she saw might still be in the optic passagway of her eye. It might be something that can help the team identify the killer. But of course Peter points out that they would have no way to channel that image into anything they could interperret. Right? Well it just so happens that the mega corporation established from last episode Massive Dynamic happens to have a camera that can in fact see it. Of course it does. And in the beginning of the episode we notice that Nina Sharp (who is sort of in charge of MD) is on some sort of Illuminati group consisting of Broyles (Olivia’s boss).
But all that said I enjoyed the episode. It was entertaining and had me going along for a fun ride throughout. I myself enjoy serial killer type of stories and now coupling that with this horror/sci fi side of really intrigues me. Now hopefully they won’t take the show into pitfalls that I can already spot a mile away. Dr. Bishop’s greatest experiment is in fact Peter? Let’s hope not. Peter and Olivia hook up? Please. If it didn’t work for Sculey and Mulder then why would it work here? Just keep the horror/sci fi coming and get some good writers to do some great stories. Let’s hope they listen.
One show I have been excited for is JJ Abrams FRINGE. It basically is Abrams version of The X-Files. We start out meeting two FBI Agents (one male and one female. sound familer?) who get called into a peculiar case of a plane that just landed where all the people on board have sort of melted. They follow up a lead to someone connected with the incident and discover a weird lab in a stoarge unit. The suspect finds them and of course they give chase. Dunham (female) and Scott (male) almost have the suspect caught when he blows up the storage units. Scott is caught in the blast and Dunham is sent flying. She wakes up to find that Scott has survived but is now in a coma and suffering from the same affliction as the people on the plane. His skin is now translucent and will soon melt. Dunham starts to try and figure out how to save Scott. She finds that a professor named Walter Bishop had been working on just such cases. She looks him up and finds he’s in a psychicatric hospital. The only people allowed to visit him is family and his only son wants nothing to do with him. After some quick work Dunham gets Bishop’s son (played by Joshua Jackson) to agree to help her get him out of the hospital. From there the three begin to work on finding the suspect from before and finding a way to save agent Scott.
So that’s a somewhat spoiler free run down of the events in the film. Some other small aspects are that Dunham works for Phillip Broyles with whom she has a shaky past after an incident when they were in the marines, Bishop used to work with a man that now runs a huge company that works in technology and science for all sorts of purposes, and that there is something called FRINGE SCIENCES that are like telepathy, reanimation, and psychics. Hence the name of the show.
So far I enjoyed the show. From what I have heard from the Abrams camp it will be less mythological like LOST and more Episodic and easier to jump into. But it being Abrams you can tell some mysteries will be popping up. So far before each break symbols have popped up like the hand print up above, a leaf, a frog, and an apple. They didn’t seem that significant but at the end of the show we see the leaf on one of the doors in a labratory. So be looking for some of the same fun puzzles we see on LOST. While the show very much feels like an X-Files clone hopefully in the future it will do something to set it apart. While the show didn’t blow me away like it was almost promised in the hype. But it has made me curious enough to keep tuning in every week. If you missed the pilot Fox will be showing it again on Sunday Sept. 14th. So I highly recommend at least checking it out to see if it sparks an interest for you.
What’s Better then a tragic tale of a sympathetic Super-Villian, a Musical tale of a tragic supervillian written by Joss Whedon starring Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion!
Originating during the writers strike Joss Whedon was trying to come up with Internet content and thus Dr. Horrible was born
we realized the best way to make something was going to be to make it ourselves,” Whedon says. “It turns out that this was the thing that if you had asked me, ‘What in the world would you like to do the most?’ I would have said, ‘A musical with a supervillain.’”
Prestnted via streaming video in three acts the event started yeaterday with act two posting on Thursday July 17th, and Act Three on Saturday July 19th . Dr. Horrible will be free through midnight July 20th, when they will switch to a pay-per-download service. In the near future fans can expect to see it on DVD, chocked full of Extras (including a rumored Musical commentary) Those of you lucky enough to be attending Comicon have the oportunity to see the in its entirety during the Dr. Horrible panel, with the film’s cast in attendance.
If successful a sequel will be considered; Dr. Horrible’s nemesis, Captain Hammer (Nathin Fillion’s Character), can be found in comic form at the Dark Horse Presents MySpace Page , written by Zack Whedon.
Reality television is everywhere, so why shouldn’t it infect the horror genre? VH1, producers of such quality shows as flavor of love and best week ever, bring you the next big reality show, Scream Queens.
Officially green lit last month, along with Lionsgate entertainment VH1 will be gathering 10 actresses to compete for a role in an upcoming movie. contestants will compete in a series of “zanny” challenges, be trained by acting coach John Homa and finely judged by a Lionsgate director who has yet to be named
though the first open casting call has passed (it was in Hollywood on June 21st) but if they don’t find enough bat-shit crazy, I mean qualified actresses then more open casting dated will be made. but that shouldn’t stop you from entering because VH1 is also accepting tape submissions (details here). once you have taped your submission you should also send a copy to drunken zombie; while it won’t help you with the reality show we might feature it in an upcoming video-cast. (submissions of Crazy Uncle Randy in a wig will not be accepted)
The series, consisting of eight hour long episodes, is set to premiere in the fall.
Drunken Zombie On The Web