Here’s the 2nd promo for AMC’s upcoming Fear the Walking Dead! This promo still doesn’t feature any walkers and that’s probably for the best. After all, we already know that this is a show about zombies. Instead, in this promo, we actually get to listen to people talk. On the characters claims that there have been reported outbreaks “in five different states!”
(He may be making the mistake of thinking that Vermont is a state. It happens.)
Personally, I like the enigmatic approach that AMC is taking with the Fear The Walking Dead promos. If nothing else, both this and the previous promo capture the atmosphere of impending doom that one would associate with a zombie apocalypse.
This promo for AMC’s upcoming Fear The Walking Dead is entitled Nick’s Escape. It really doesn’t tell us anything about the show, beyond the fact that there’s a guy named Nick who can run. It’s too early to say whether or not Nick is hot, largely because he’s running here and he’s too scared to do any hot guy facial expressions.
So, as you probably heard, AMC is doing a spin-off of The Walking Dead. It’s going to be called Fear the Walking Dead, which is not exactly the greatest title that I’ve ever heard.
(Seriously, Fear the Walking Dead sounds like it should be the title of a low-budget, Asylum-produced mockbuster version of The Walking Dead...)
But, despite that imperfect title, Fear the Walking Dead is still highly anticipated by Walking Dead fans. (Is Chris Hardwick going to host Talking Fear?) Apparently, it’s going to be a prequel, dealing with the early days of the zombie outbreak and maybe it will even offer up some clues as to why it all happened in the first place. Even better, it’s going to take place in Los Angeles so we won’t have to deal with any dodgy accents.
Here’s the first promo for Fear the Walking Dead. It aired last night during the Walking Dead‘s season finale. It really doesn’t tell us much about the show itself but, at the same time, it does have a nicely ominous feel.
The cast of The Neighbors. Yes, that is Tommy Wiseau in a blonde wig…
Earlier tonight, I went onto Hulu and I watched the first episode of The Neighbors, which is the latest project from cult movie icon Tommy Wiseau.
Before I even start watching, I knew that The Neighbors would be bad. That’s really the only reason that anyone would choose to watch The Neighbors, just to see how bad it could possibly be. After all, Tommy Wiseau is best known as the director of The Room, a film that has become famous for being one of the worst ever made. And, as I’ve made clear on this site in the past, I absolutely love The Room. I own a copy. My boyfriend and I have attended countless midnight showings of The Room, where we’ve shouted out all the lines and we’ve thrown plastic spoons at the screen with joyous abandon. When Clint Jun Gamboa showed up on American Idol, I wanted him to win just because he composed three of the songs that appear on The Room soundtrack. I consider The Disaster Artist to be one of the best film books ever written. I’ve even been lucky enough to interact with Room co-star Greg Sestero on twitter. The Room is a bad film that you can’t help but love and I think that a lot of people — like me — assumed that The Neighbors would be a bad sitcom that you could not help but love.
Uhmm yeah … about that.
Having now watched the first episode of The Neighbors (entitled “Meet the Neighbors”), I can definitely say that sitting through it was perhaps the most unpleasant 31 minutes of my life so far.
The Neighbors is about an apartment complex. (Every few minutes, we see the exact same establishing shot of the building while some rudimentary but catchy EDM plays in the background.) The tenants are an eccentric bunch but, fortunately, they’re all watched over by property managers Charlie (Tommy Wiseau) and Bebe (Gretel Roenfeldt). Remember how, in The Room, everyone was always asking Johnny for his advice? Well, the same seems to apply for Charlie here. For the most part, the first episode of The Neighbors consisted of characters stepping into Charlie’s office and telling him about their problems. Charlie gives advice that is, of course, delivered in that famously impenetrable Wiseau accent. Characters leave the office. “What a day!” Charlie says.
(It’s interesting that, in both The Neighbors and The Room, Wiseau played a wise man who keeps his childish friends from making terrible mistakes. Based on his performances and the portrait of him that emerges in Greg Sestero’s book, The Disaster Artist, I imagine that’s the way that Wiseau prefers to view himself in real life.)
The other main storyline deals with CiCi (Pamela Bailey), a woman who owns a chicken. When she can’t find her chicken, she wanders around the apartment complex, screaming at people and demanding that they return her chicken. Eventually, she finds her chicken.
Yay.
There are other things going on, of course. There’s a guy who is thinking about hanging himself but then he’s paid a visit by Philadelphia (Karly Kim), who has big plastic boobs, looks straight at the camera whenever she has to deliver her lines, and who spends the entire episode wearing a pink bikini. And then there’s Troy (Andrew Buckley) who smokes weed and sells gun and yells a lot. When we first meet Troy, he’s angry because he’s found a big note on his door that reads, “BRING $850 TODAY OR BE EVICTED.” And then there’s Tim (Raul Phoenix) who always has a basketball with him and who is always borrowing money from Tommy so that he can pay back Bebe or from Bebe so that he can pay back Tommy. There’s a handyman named Ed (Jonathan Freed) and a pizza boy named Joe (Brian Kong) who rents an apartment of his own. Joe is Asian but his last name is Spielberg because that’s what passes for the height of hilarity in The Neighbors. Both Joe and Ed also wear Tommy Wiseau-brand underwear.
There was one character that I did like. Lula (Cheyenne Van Zutphen) is the girlfriend of drug dealer Ricky Rick (played, in a blonde wig, by Tommy Wiseau). Lula has the power to literally hypnotize people with her charm. That’s a great power to have and, at one point, she uses it to get a free gun from Troy. When Troy comes out of his charmed state, he yells and yells while the camera zooms in on his sweaty face.
There’s also a tenant who is upset because his pregnant wife has figured out that he’s gay. His name is Don and when he first steps into the office, Charlie says, “Oh hai, Don,” and you’re briefly reminded of how much more fun The Room was compared to this. Don and his wife have a huge fight in the manager’s office while Charlie and Bebe try to maintain the peace. It all adds up to a lot of yelling.
And that, to be honest, is why The Neighbors was such an unpleasant viewing experience. Everyone in this show yells nonstop. They yell when they argue. They yell when they say hello. They yell when they tell jokes. They yell when they say goodbye. After spending just a few minutes of listening to them, I had a massive headache. Imagine if the “WHERE’S MY FUCKING MONEY!?” scene from The Room had gone on for 32 minutes and you have a pretty good idea of what it was like to watch The Neighbors.
One reason why The Room is so beloved is because, as bad as it is, it’s also a legitimate movie. The Room is blessed with such a mix of sincerity and ineptness that the film becomes both terrible and endearing. You marvel at how bad the film is while also respecting Wiseau for staying true to his own eccentric vision. The Neighbors, on the other hand, has all of the ineptness of The Room but none of the sincerity. The Room is fascinating because it’s so clearly the product of Wiseau’s own eccentric world view. The Neighbors, meanwhile, is the product of Wiseau’s newfound fame. The Room was made by a director who wanted to make a statement. The Neighbors, on the other hand, was made by a director who knows that people will watch anything that has his name slapped onto it, regardess of what it may be.
The Room is a guilty pleasure. The Neighbors is just guilty. (One side effect of thinking about Tommy Wiseau is that you soon find yourself writing like him as well.)
That said, I’m still probably going to watch the other three episodes of The Neighbors. The first episode was so bad that the show itself has nowhere to go but up.
Pictured above, you’ll find Liv Moore (played by Rose McIver), the character who is at the center of the new CW show, iZombie.
Just a few months before the start of iZombie, Liv was a friendly and optimistic medical student who was engaged to marry the handsome and rich Major Lillywhite (Robert Buckley), whose personality can pretty much be summed up by the fact that his name is Major Lillywhite.
However, then Liv happened to attend a party where things went dramatically wrong. How wrong? Liv was offered a mysterious drug by a mysterious man. Liv turned the man down. Everyone else at the party took the drug and soon, it was zombie apocalypse time! Liv was one of the few “survivors,” practically bursting out of a body bag that she had been placed into and discovering that her arms were covered with zombie scratches. That would traumatize anyone, right?
Now, several months later, Liv is no longer in medical school and she’s broken things up with Major. She works as a coroner’s assistant, spending her time surrounded by the dead. Her skin is deathly pale. Her hair is nearly white. She no longer smiles and instead, she reacts to almost every situation with a sarcastic comment. Her family and former friends assume that she’s just going through a phase and that eventually, she’ll get over it and end up back with Major.
What her family and friends don’t know is that, at work, Liv eats the brains of cadavers. Eating brains is the only thing that keeps her own mind alert. Much like the lead character in Warm Bodies, eating a brain allows her to access both the memories and the skills of the brain’s previous owner.
As you probably guessed from the show’s title, Liv is now a zombie. She’s a walking, talking, and thinking zombie and she’s not particularly happy about it. Apparently, the only way that she can keep from turning fully into a mindless flesh eater is by eating brains.
She’s also a zombie who solves crimes! (And I’m just going to say right now that I’ve been waiting my entire life to have an excuse to write that sentence.) She does so with the help of her boss, Dr. Ravi Chakrabarti (Rahul Kohli) and Detective Clive Babinaux (Malcolm Goodwin). Ravi knows that Liv is a zombie and is overjoyed to have the chance to study her existence. Detective Babinaux, meanwhile, thinks that Liv is a psychic.
Ever since I first saw the teaser trailer in January, I’ve been looking forward to seeing iZombie. Not only did I think that the concept was a promising one, but I was excited to hear that iZombie was the latest from Rob Thomas, who previously gave the world Veronica Mars.
As well, and with all due respect to The Walking Dead, it was hard not to feel that it was time for a zombie show that was actually fun to watch. (The Walking Dead is a great show but, whenever I watch it, I’m always thankful for the knowledge that each somber and grisly episode will be followed the always funny and adorable Chris Hardwick. We need Hardwick there to keep the Walking Dead experience from becoming too oppressively depressing.) From the minute I first heard about iZombie, I thought it seemed like it would be a fun show.
And you know what?
Judging from the pilot, it is.
The first episode of iZombie aired on Tuesday night and it was pretty good. The procedural aspects of the pilot’s mystery didn’t really interest me but then again, the pilot really wasn’t about the mystery. The pilot was all about establishing Liv and her existence and it succeeded quite well in accomplishing just that. Rose McIver brought a lot of life to the role of the undead Liv and the pilot made good use of the show’s moody Seattle setting.
Add to that, the pilot features a great throw-away line in which Liv dealt with an annoying hipster by calling him, “Karl Marx.” Seriously, you can’t set a show in Seattle unless you’re willing to make fun of hipsters…
So, I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where iZombie goes. Hopefully, the show will continue to mix comedy with drama and it won’t allow itself to get bogged down in the whole procedural format. Am I saying that I’m hoping that future episodes will continue to follow the lead of the pilot and turn out to be Zombie Veronica Mars? Yes, I am.
I’ve read some comments on the imdb from people who are angry that Liv is not a “real” zombie because she can think and talk and all the rest. Those people need to relax and stop taking their CW shows so seriously. Obviously it’s too early to say whether or not iZombie is going to live up to its full potential but the pilot was definitely a step in the right direction.
And finally, here’s one final Super Bowl preview to share with all of you. Now, I have to be honest. I never watched Heroes. That guy who was always screaming in the commercials got on my nerves. I did however enjoy bugging Dazzling Erin by continually saying, “Save the cheerleader, save the world” during the entirety of the show’s run.
Awwwww …. good memories.
Anyway, in the form of a 13-episode miniseries, Heroes is making a comeback on NBC and a lot of people online are excited about it. Me, I’m still trying to get caught up on Agents of SHIELD…
Here’s a preview for the latest TV show about zombies! iZombie is set to premiere on March 17th on the CW. To be honest, I’m not so sure that Rose McIver looks like a zombie as much as she just looks like me during my senior year of high school. Seriously, I used to really go overboard with the mascara.
On the plus side, this show was developed by Rob Thomas, of Veronica Mars fame.
So, normally, this where I’d make a few disparaging remarks about the nature of celebrity in American society and also a few jokes about how my boobs are the real golden globes. But I’m not going to do that. (Or, at the very least, I’m not going to do that right now.) At this moment, as I think back on the Golden Globes, I am too excited to be snarky.
This was a historic night.
For perhaps the first time in Golden Globe history, both of the winnings films — The Grand Budapest Hotel for comedy and Boyhood for drama — were directed by native Texans. Richard Linklater grew up around Houston and lives in Austin. Meanwhile, Wes Anderson was raised in Dallas and, along with Owen and Luke Wilson, attended St. Mark’s!
That’s right, America.
Two great films won tonight and you have my homestate to thank for both of them.
(Because, God forbid, there should ever be a moment when anyone dares joke about a state north of West Virginia.)
(Love you, mean it.)
It was a good night. Not only were my fellow Texans honored but so were my fellow redheads. Amy Adams won Best Actress (Comedy) for Big Eyes. Julianne Moore won Best Actress (Drama) for Still Alice. I have yet to see either one of those films so I can’t really say much about either performance but, for me, it doesn’t matter. After spending years of having to deal with the rampant anti-redhead prejudice that runs through this society, it was good to finally to see some of my flame-haired sisters getting some recognition.
In other news, Michael Keaton won for Best Actor (Comedy) for Birdman and he gave a speech that nearly made me cry. Patricia Arquette won Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood and gave a speech that did make me cry. And then Amy Adams gave her acceptance speech and it was so heartfelt and eloquent that it should be the speech by which all future speeches are judged. Before any of those three won, J.K. Simmons picked up Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Whiplash and he gave an acceptance speech that left me amazed that such an intimidating actor could also be such a nice guy.
In many ways, it was a great night.
And then, in some other ways, it most definitely was not a great night.
For the most part, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler seemed to just be going through the motions, secure in the knowledge that people would laugh and applaud regardless of what they actually said because, at this point, people feel obligated to do so. However, good for them for calling out Bill Cosby on his bullshit and saying what everyone knows is true.
I was not a fan of Margaret Cho’s North Korean observer. Not only was it offensive but it was a bit hypocritical as well. This is an industry that, up until three weeks ago, was terrified of North Korea, to the extent that they were even willing to shut down movies to avoid offending a dictator who is a legitimate contender for the title of Worst Living Human Being. However, the Alamo Drafthouse — a Texas theater, I might add — had the guts to show The Interview, the world did not end, and now suddenly Hollywood wants credit for standing up to North Korea.
Of course, the main reason that the film industry is willing to make fun of North Korea is because there’s no money to be made there. The people who are patting themselves on the back for “standing up” to North Korea are probably the same people who rationalize doing business with equally oppressive but far more financially lucrative regimes across the world.
Finally, I guess my main problem with the Golden Globes this year is that it just wasn’t the type of train wreck that we’ve come to expect from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. All of the presenters (except for Ricky Gervais) appeared to be sober. Only one winner had to have his speech censored. (A lot of people on twitter loved Kevin Spacey’s acceptance speech. I thought it came across as being calculating and manipulative — which, I guess, is one reason why Spacey makes for such a convincing Frank Underwood.) Everyone was on their best behavior.
And I can understand that. With the murders in Paris and the worldwide attacks on free speech, this was perhaps the time for everyone to be serious. But, still, I wanted to see just one thoroughly incoherent speech. That’s what we watch the Golden Globes for, isn’t it?
So, ultimately, a mixed review for the Golden Globes. Ultimately, though, it was a good night for Texas filmmakers so I’m happy.
Add to that, it gave me my annual excuse to arch my back and declare, “I’ll show you a pair of golden globes!”
Through the Shattered Lens 