Lions and tigers and........oh my

So my iTunes store addiction has moved on to TV shows. They make it so easy....to go broke. My latest indiscretions involve Tin Man (the SciFi channel's "adaptation" of the Wizard of Oz) and the pilot of the Terminator TV show.

First things first: Tin Man - awesome idea, excellent character concepts...terrible execution. Now don't get me wrong, it's definitely one of the best things the SciFi channel's ever done...but that's not saying much. This is the channel that brought us Atomic Twister, the movie about a tornado that sucked up a nuclear power plant to become a super radioactive tornado, and this weekend is premiering Anaconda 3, because so many people watched the first two.

Let's start on a positive note and talk about the things that I loved about Tin Man. First of all, they took just about the right amount of guidance from the original story. And by that, I mean not very much. If they had done a faithful retelling, they'd have to deal with a whole bunch of people bitching that they ruined a classic. However, they picked up elements of character design and concepts and made them completely their own, and updated them to be more realistic. The character design for the "Scarecrow" and "Tin Man" especially appealed to me. Also, the wicked witch was FABULOUS. She channeled just the right amount of crazy fierceness, and a certain amount of tranny corsets and makeup.

Now, on to things I didn't like so much. First of all, Zooey Deschanel bugs the crap out of me.
I think it's a combination of her permanently wide-eyed look and her low semi-deadpan voice, but there just seems to be something wrong about her acting. I must say, though, she was a good pick for the role of DG (their version of Dorothy) because her brand of weirdness kind of worked for the role. There's enough wide-eyed innocence and confusion inherent in the way that she acts that fit the characterization. Another thing I couldn't stand was the crappy storyline. I mean, a misfit post-teenage girl gets thrown into another world, where she discovers that she's a magical princess and has to fulfill a prophecy? Come on, every nerdy junior high girl EVER has written the exact same storyline, and I think that it would have been better if they'd stayed a little closer to the original, where she was picked up by complete chance and thrown into a strange world. And the fact that the evil witch was her sister who's actually good but was possessed for years by an ancient spirit? boooring. It would have been much better if she were just crazy, I think. Or at the very least, that she ended up twisted instead of everything turning out beautifully once the evil witch was dispelled (by the magical power of love, no less. barf.)

Also, the world design started really well...but whoa, they tried to do way too much. Somehow it's futuristic, Western, 1920s, and magical all at the same time? Seriously guys, pick a theme or two and work with them. Don't try to cram all your ideas into one thing.

Next, I'll probably talk about the Sarah Connor chronicles, and how poor Summer Glau is going to be typecast forever. Moving from crazy teenage assassin to crazy teenage assassin robot...not exactly the biggest display of acting range. I'm just sayin'.

He's never gonna top Good Omens

So I've recently discovered Neil Gaiman. Well, not so much discovered, as actually gotten around to reading him. Long ago, I read Good Omens, which he co-wrote with Terry Pratchett. At the time, I was a much larger fan of Terry Pratchett, because he's much funnier and concentrates on fantasy writing, while Neil Gaiman is much grittier.

Anyway, I picked up American Gods a few days ago. It's a lot of fun, kind of a semi-literal depiction of religious and cultural myths clashing with the modern world and American attitudes. Unfortunately...it's been done before. Terry Pratchett's Small Gods capitalized on the same idea, except it was much funnier.

Today, I picked up his first big novel, Neverwhere. Now, this was an ADDICTIVE book. I read the majority of it in one sitting. It's kind of a Pan's Labyrinth story, or an Alice in Wonderland, where a completely normal person is thrown into a mythic world where he's completely unequipped to deal with his new reality. Unfortunately, I had the nagging thought stuck in my head that it would make a totally bitchin' movie. And it would. So much that, looking back at it, the entire thing seems kind of like a glorified screenplay. I think that the problem with it is that the visuals are so striking in the book and the plot convolutions are so simple that it does seem much like a Hollywood movie.

In the end, I kind of see Neil Gaiman as the Stephen King of modern-world fantasy. All of his stuff is good and it really draws you in, but at the end of the day, you look back and see how completely formulaic it all is. And I'm sure I'll eventually read more of his stuff, even if he's not quite as clever or original as he seems to think he is.

EDIT: As it turns out, Neverwhere started out as a TV show on BBC. It all makes sense, now...