Pop 'n' Fresh

Rollercoaster of Love (for Moonlight)

So here was my plan for the week:

- Write my column

- Collect entries for the Go! and Get Out! listings

- Say a tearful goodbye to staff writer Stephany Schings who is moving on to bigger and better things, though not as fun a thing as life in the Review Times office.

- Watch Moonlight and wonder how the heck I was going to get through three months without my Mick

Then came Monday.

New plan:
- Weeping and gnashing of the teeth

- All out war for Moonlight.

For those who don't know, Moonlight (my favorite TV of all time now) was unceremoniously canceled by CBS. Commence a collective scream from every single crazy Moonlight fan out there. Fans who were about to head to LA to celebrate our crazy obsession (I'm still going, but now I'll be camped out in front of one network or another).

The news has been up and down, back and forth. The new owner of CW's Sunday nights, Media Rights Capital, might take it. Then it wouldn't. Then maybe it would be a midseason replacement. Then it was dead, dead, dead. Then the CW option rose from the grave, and now SciFi and USA might be interested. The sets were going to be torn down Friday, now it's Tuesday. And I'm sitting here refreshing Moonlightline.com and Moonlight-Detective.com constantly, researching Nielsen ratings and market shares, learning how to be a backseat programmer, writing ads for Variety (thanks in advance for helping me, Jason!).

I was spurred on by the season finale, the best episode the series has had to date with the best of MickBeth, Beth and Josef, vampire politics and quality procedural moments. I'm so sure you'll love this episode, drop me an e-mail and I'll buy it for you (first 10 readers only - I'm a journalist - we are passionate but broke people). The episode kicked my behind into gear and reminded me what I'm fighting for. Sure, it's just a TV show, but it's my show and I won't apologize for loving it. I've done my time on political campaigns, volunteering at shelters and saving the world in my own small way. Let me have this one thing, powers that be, please.

It's been a war of despair and hope for me. I prefer hope, but the despair is slowly eating it alive. Frankly, I can't stand the uncertainty for long. I've never been a rollercoaster kind of gal (I spend my Cedar Point days eating Dippin' Dots and riding the swings) and this is killing me softly.

But as long as the hope perseveres, I'm writing letters. Lots and lots of letters, with my chicken scratch, serial killer-esque script begging for help from whatever suit wants to take my money and run.

Want to join me?  Click here for a list of place to write for help.

And listen for a faint wail of despair or explosion of happy from the northwest corner of Ohio during the next few weeks...

- Mariah

They should have stayed lost

People I don't care about won a show I don't care about.

Tommy and Amanda, left, beat out Chris and Cara to win the $250,000 prize Tuesday on Beauty and the Geek. Matt and Leticia were eliminated in an improptu challenge at the beginning of the show.

I'm looking forward to the reunion episode.

I got a preview of it Tuesday when all the eliminated beauties and geeks came back to spend one more night in the mansion. The new looks of Jonathan and Jim wowed a lot of people, but the drama escalated.

Tara and Amanda went off on Kristina for talking about them behind their back and telling Amber that Tara and Tommy had a "thing."

Thank goodness Chris, right, and Cara stayed out of the drama.

But honestly, who cares!?! Amber has made it clear she's only using the guy. She rolled her eyes when he hugged her and even made a point of saying she wanted him to win so he could take her shopping.

There's a word for women like her, but I'll refrain from using it here because, unlike Amber, I have a bit of class.

The last challenge sent the two teams all over Los Angeles to find where their former castmates were. A book of clues helped.

Tommy and Amanda found five people and Chris and Cara only had four.

I'm happy for Amanda. Amber treated her like dirt for the last episode and had Amanda in tears because she didn't want to come between her and Tommy. Thankfully, Tommy stepped up and forgot about nasty Amber to be there for his teammate.

Would someone tell that boy about the things Amber, left, has said????? Never mind. Maybe he'll watch the show and figure it out himself.

Notice how Amber's picture accurately portrays what she looks like on the outside to the person she really is on the inside? Those makeup folk got it right at least.

Either way, Amber was one of the people found. So was Randi. They could have stayed lost. It certainly wouldn't have hurt the show at all. I would have much rather seen Matt, right, and Leticia more since they truly have developed a friendship over the course of the show.

There are rumors that it won't come back next year.

We can hope.

~Chandra

Mariah mourns Moonlight’s demise

Moonlight has been canceled by CBS and so far, no network has picked up the second year of the vampire series.

And the RT’s Features Editor Mariah Mercer is in extreme mourning over the news.

Perhaps the biggest fan ever of a made-for-TV series, Mariah is inconsolable.

Once she gets over the initial stages of grief, she’ll return to blog about the injustice of it all.

Until then, stay tuned.

Say it ain't so, CBS...

UPDATE: CBS has not picked up Moonlight for the fall season, so says the divine Miss N, Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily, but there is hope:

The news just came in to me from my sources.... "They're fighting for a back 13, but Moonlight is definitely not on the fall schedule. But it's not dead, either. Insiders tell me the sticking point is money: that CBS wants Warner Bros to "step up" more financially. But WBTV is saying back to CBS that the network has to step up as well, even though CBS doesn't own the show..."

Check out her site for the nitty gritty details...

Those who read my Comic Con adventures know that I'm a Moonlight fan. I'm crazy about this show. It has far surpassed past craziness (Buffy, Farscape, even Lost).  The ratings haven't been great (they never are for shows I love), but the show has a rabid fanbase, busy organizing blood drives and voting it to the top of every poll ever.

I was fine. Cool, calm, collected. But now I think I'm going to throw up. Many a media source are reporting that the little vampire show that won my heart is facing a stake in the heart. Variety, Kristin of E! and Michael Ausiello all say the renewal hopes for "Moonlight" have slipped and that CBS is looking to renew "The Unit" and move it into the "Moonlight" slot.

Everyone together. Pray, will positive energy into the universe, call CBS (1-212-975-3247) and be a crazy person on the phone like I did about 10 minutes ago.

Off to armchair program and figure out how Moonlight could possibly stay on the schedule...

- Mariah

I like my porno green!

You gotta' love experimental film.

The Sundance Channel funded a series of very short films by Isabella Rossellini that were just released on the web this week. In the series of web films, so cleverly titled "Green Porno", Rossellini dresses up and acts out sex. Lots and lots of sex.

Well, insect sex, anyways. Or, more specifically, insect mating.

In each film, Rossellini dresses up as a male bug and acts out the rituals of the birds and the...well...you know...that insects follow to reproduce. So far, she's become an earthworm, a spider, a dragonfly, a bee, a fly, a snail, a firefly and a praying mantis (in which she does get her head bitten off).

Rossellini starts each segment with "If I were a..." and proceeds to use cardboard props and fun, colorful outfits to "do the deed", as it were. Each film is brutally honest and doesn't hold back - if a bug eats it's victims, is a hermaphrodite or has its genitalia on its feet, its in the film. The colorful, fun outfits combined with the filthy subject matter makes these shorts pretty comical.

But each (barely) 2-minute film has a childlike innocence to it. It's like a 4-year-old asking where babies come from and a nervous-yet-honest parent giving the most truthful answer possible. Plus, it's actually pretty informative. I always wondered why a firefly's ass glowed.

But it's also interesting because these are the first independent films made for the internet and, more specifically, small screens like cell phones and iPods. Each movie is short enough and visually simple enough to comfortably accomodate the small screen. Cool!

So sit back, relax and leave your inhibitions at the screen door.

Hmm, I'll file that under things I never thought I'd say about bugs...

- Jason

P.S. Yes, I'm fully aware that earthworms, snails and spiders aren't insects, but for the sake of the post I called them that. Quit your whining!

Nine Inch Nail's Reznor puts the hammer down

You've heard the best things in life are free.

For Nine Inch Nails' one-man bandleader Trent Reznor, that which is free may not be his best, but it is certainly more listenable than a four-disc release of moody, electronic beats, which he unleashed upon the masses earlier this year.

This week marked yet another step in the trend of musicians releasing material on their own terms, minus the overhead, interference and overall control that comes with a major record label deal. The artists win, because they can release whatever they want, whenever they want. The listeners win, because we can either name our price for a download of the album as Radiohead did last fall with In Rainbows, or, in the case of Reznor's latest, The Slip, it's given away for free to all who want it. We also win because it's legal.

The fact that it's pretty darn good music is icing on the cake. As I said before, it may not  be NIN's best, as that honor would probably have to go to his 1989 (yes, this album is already nearing its second complete decade in existence) debut album, Pretty Hate Machine. It doesn't have the catchy, crossover appeal of his 1994 industrial opus The Downward Spiral, which contained the song with one of the more memorable choruses in history, "Closer."  But The Slip does have plenty of aggressive, caustic tunes we've come to expect from Reznor (in addition to a couple wandering instrumental interludes, of course).

Though I have to admit I've been less than thorough with many of his most recent releases, this one seems to be a much more focused attempt. If you don't want to actually fork over -- well, nothing -- to download The Spill from www.nin.com, you can sample a handful of Trent's new offerings from his MySpace page. 

As he says on the band's Web site, the free download of The Slip is for the fans.

"Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one's on me," he says.

I don't know that my support of the Nails has been all that continuous or loyal over the past 18-plus years, but at this price, I'm buying. 

-Joel

Beauty and the Geek goes down the drain

I know I didn't write about the show last week, but it's becoming agonizing.

Last week, the group went to Big Bear, left, and had a sled building competition where the object was to build it, use it and cross a finish line first. Tommy and Amanda won and Mike told the other four couples that they each got one vote on who to send home. If there was a tie, Tommy and Amanda would break it.

Properly dramatic, each couple voted for another and it became a four-way tie. Tommy and Amanda chose to send Jason and Kristina home. Everyone cried. Boo hoo.

Kristina cried a lot and kept saying she was happy. There might be some psychiatric visits in her future.

On to this week where the geeks had to makeover a geeky girl and the ladies had to work on some plumbing issues.

The geeks all did a good job with the makeovers. Tommy and Chris, right, did amazing jobs with theirs and I was torn as to which one was better. Matt did alright, but I think he went too conservative. Joe sucked big time. He flirted the whole time with the girl and someone explain to me why that boy can NOT open his eyes when he talks. It's annoying.

Chris won and Cara felt better about going into her challenge while Leticia comforted Matt on his loss.

The girls had to unclog a tub, stop a toilet from running and save a ring from a sink so they could wash it off and display it as the winner. I'm not recapping this in detail. Basically all the beauties were still on the tub when Leticia won.

Elimination was Tara and Joe and Tommy and Amanda. It was close, but Joe and Tara went home. I'm sorry to see her go, but I'm so grateful he's gone. I didn't see a huge improvement with him and if he's that stubborn I'm not sure why he signed up for the show. And I think Tara was always a sweet natured girl so I'm not sure if she changed either.

Next week is the season (series?) finale. I can barely contain my excitement. The show's ending! The show's ending!

Don't get me wrong. I used to be a fan. If they bring back the old style with real people, I'm all for it, but this season was awful and needs to be buried in memories sooner rather than later.

They're bringing back the eliminated contestants for one night. I wonder what's going to happen when Tommy, right, and Amber see each other again, but why hasn't someone told him about what she said behind his back? Claws, people! Pull them out so I can at least be slightly entertained by the stupidity.

~Chandra

"Iron Man" a lot more than just rock 'em sock 'em robots

The comic book movie genre can be hit and miss at times. For every Spider-Man you get an Elektra. For every Batman Begins you get a Mystery Men. So which side of the superhero fence does Iron Man find itself on? After a stellar opening weekend ($100 million +), I really have to agree with the masses: Iron Man isn't just a good comic book movie - it's just a good movie overall.

In it, billionaire playboy, technological genius and weapons developer Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) gets kidnapped by terrorist militants who have hoarded stolen weaponry that his company has developed. Under the guise of building a weapon for the bad guys, he instead creates a super suit of armor that he uses to escape and get back to his company and the people he cares about, including his personal assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), Lt. Colonel James "Rodey" Rhodes (Terrance Howard) and business partner Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges).

Instead of going back to business as usual, though, Tony has seen what his creations can do and vows to stop developing weapons, turning his attention to helping the people his inventions have hurt. Creating an updated version of his super suit, he continues to fight the world's villains until the biggest threat he's ever faced rises up within his own company which leads to the much anticipated robot suit-on-robot suit action (and I just now realize how bad that sounds...).

The casting for this film is dead on. The chemistry between all the characters, especially Downey Jr. and Paltrow, is evident and this alone makes the movie not only fun, but makes you empathize for our main players. Robert Downey Jr. is perfect as Tony Stark, a smart ass billionaire who, despite being torn about his former path in life, still keeps the sarcasm flowing. Paltrow plays Tony's foil to a T, a prospective love interest and the only person on the face of the planet that he'll actually listen to. Howard's character of James Rhodes isn't fleshed out as well as these two - he never gets a real chance to get his hands dirty, but what he does do he does very well. There's also a bit of foreshadowing on Rhodes' role in Iron Man 2 (more on that below). Even director Jon Favreau gets his licks in, portraying Stark's faithful chauffer "Happy" Hogan.

The biggest surprise for me, though I'm not sure why, came with Jeff Bridges' turn as a villain. You can tell Bridges is having a blast with the role which in turn just turns him into more and more of an S.O.B. in this film. I have the habit of typecasting Jeff Bridges in his Big Lebowski role sometimes and the role as Obadiah Stane goes to show the wide range of skill Bridges actually possesses. He was a good actor to begin with and hopefully this role opens a door to more mainstream flicks like Iron Man.

Even with the great character acting, a lot of attention was spent on the little things, too. The special effects are very good, though in one scene you can tell Iron Man himself is just a special effect. But then again he's shooting fire from his arms in that scene and it may have been uncomfortable for the poor stunt double in the suit to truly deal with that. The suit and story is very faithful to the comic and, much to my delight, the Iron Man armor actually hissed, beeped, crunched, gurgled and grinded everytime the character moved - a nice attention to detail that many directors may have missed.

Overall, Iron Man is an entertaining summer film that's a little more than your typical "blow-em-up" fare that you see this time of year. It comes recommended and, yeah, it'll make lots of money. In fact, Marvel Studios was so pleased with it's opening that it announced 5 future projects today - Iron Man 2 & Thor in 2010, Captain America & The Avengers in 2011 and Ant Man (which as of yet has no set release date).

So how do you set all these films up? Here's a hint: stick around after the credits of Iron Man. You'll be pleasantly surprised...

- Jason

Summer Flicks with Jason

I know that the summer movie season can be confusing. It seems like each week every studio is releasing some $120 million dollar super special effects-filled film and it can be a daunting task to keep track of them all or even decide which one to see that week.

But that's where I come in.

As a public service to you and as part of my court-ordered community sanctions (/sarcasm), I'll be compiling a list each week of what movies are being released...uh...that week. If you'll take a look to your right, I've listed all the wide release films being released today along with a short synopsis, who stars in it, what it's rated and why.

Hopefully this will help you decide whether or not to go see that big budget bonanza or save your undoubtedly well-earned dollars. Maybe it'll help you decide if it's safe for the kiddies. Hey, this may even help you catch a few good flicks you would have missed otherwise.

In any case just visit here once a week to find out what's being released that coming Wednesday or Friday and, if by some freak of nature I forget to add a film, just leave a comment and I'll get to it. Happy movie watching!

- Jason

Twilight sneak peek

It's going to be a bloody good summer. The blockbuster movie season kicks off this weekend with "Iron Man" and there are so many more good ones to come (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Sex and the City movie, Prince Caspian).

But one of the movies that gets my heart racing is "Twilight" due out in December and based on the New York Times bestselling novel. Slash Film has already caught onto the craze, theorizing that Twilight might be the next Harry Potter.

Even Time magazine (and Orson Scott Card) thinks author Stephenie Meyer is something special. She was selected as one of the 100 most influential people of 2008. Her latest book and the first outside the Twilight series, "The Host" comes out May 6 and we'll see if the magic continues.

Until then, check out this preview of the movie:

- Mariah