Where "epic re-imagining" equals "directionless pastiche"

[bovil]

So about Tin Man...

It's not 6 hours of my life I'll never get back, thanks to the magic of DVR. More like 5.5 or so. It didn't totally suck, but it sure wasn't good.

Look up "contrived" in the dictionary and you'll find the script for this miniseries.

Soundtrack reminds me of a porn flick with extra orchestration.

Alan Cumming is charming. Neal McDonough is hot (but don't look up his pictures on IMDB, his smile in many of them looks like Bender's). Kathleeen Robertson shook monkeys out of her boobs. Zoe Deschanel is, well, kind of wishy-washy, Trillian without the spark. The rest of the cast? It's not as big a waste of acting talent as the current incarnation of Flash Gordon.

If you haven't seen it, don't go out of your way to. Pretty much don't bother.

Comments

[sfbootdog.livejournal.com]

I didn't get to see the first installment (worked late on Sunday and Monday, so I even missed the replay), but the roommate was watching and I dipped in and out.

I think there were some really interesting set pieces. For some reason the "fortuneteller" struck a "that was cool" chord with me, but it seems like they really shoehorned in some of the Oz references (cf. "Oh, crap, this is supposed to be a Wizard of Oz pastiche. Quick, put in some variation on the pointing-two-directions-at-once bit!")

Also, one of the things that I noticed, even while sitting in the other room, is that it kind of came to a screeching halt at the end, without wrapping up a bunch of plotlines (Cain's son, Glitch's brain, etc.)

I don't think I'll be settling myself in for a six-hour marathon on Sunday, but there might be a DVD rental (if they release a DVD) or a ::whisper:: download ::normal voice:: in my future.

[johno.livejournal.com]

We were doing a bit of the "which movie ripoff" is this scene.

Lots of "what about xyz plot point?" "Shhhhhh. Don't look to closely."


But we found it to be a fun ride.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Well, Azkadelia's tower was totally Isengard, particularly with the industrial mud surrounding it, but once you got inside it was City of Lost Children.

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

It was fun. I got all the mail that has come to the family po box in the last two weeks sorted out while watching the last four hours tonight.
As someone who has read Way Too Much Oz (if there is such a thing), they did an interesting job. It actually felt like it could have been one of the later books when Dorothy Gale of the original book was no longer to be found - there would be a character with that name in the book, but it wasn't really the same little girl.
So I'm not complaining about the story.
Music was annoying though.

Yeah, I know

[hilarypoet.livejournal.com]

but I couldn't stop watching. The boob-monkeys alone...
M wouldn't believe that the ending could be so telegraphed. Believe.
And that riding habit...

[artvixn.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[howeird]

Agreemsg. Yeah, I caught most of an episode last night channel surfing, and my first thought was "sci fi does it again - Flash Gordon Does Kansas"

With the resources they had to do Flash and Tin Man, they could have come up with a couple of completely original series which did not destroy themselves by stapling the characters to horridly wrong modernizations of a couple of classics.

[laragoth.livejournal.com]

Boob Monkeys?

*slaps forehead*

Ow. That just hurts.

[jsciv.livejournal.com]

I dunno, the ability to keep flying spy monkeys right on your boobs seems like a pretty handy talent to have when you're bent on ruling the world, don't you think?

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Flying boob monkeys, natch...

[yourbob.livejournal.com]

I went in thinking I was going to watch 15 minutes at most (like Monkey King and other SciFi productions). But I did find myself caught up in it. Not quite like a six hour train wreck, but more like "there isn't anything better on" that I haven't seen a dozen times, which was mostly true.

And yeah, Neal McDonough is fun to watch but he does have a funny smile.

[lokiz-mom.livejournal.com]

well foo!!!! i was going to ask someone if they had recorded it so i could borrow it 'cos i dont have sci-fi in my room. i am cable-box-less in the dungeon. **sigh**

[bovil.livejournal.com]

We cleared it off the DVR as soon as we finished each episode. No sense in wasting space.

Boob Monkeys just about sums it up.

[maurinestarkey.livejournal.com]

But Neal McDonough is gorgeous. His character and costume in this movie reminded me of all those classic 30s and 40s magazine illustrations. First thing I thought of was Frank Schoonover painted this guy.

What a shame. It was so pretty and the CGI was handled better than I've seen with SciFi Channel productions. But the whole...Wiz as dark and edgy is so dumb. Yep, I watched it. I'm feeling robbed too.

I've gotten hooked on an animated series, AVATAR. It has all the richness of a star wars, story telling of Babylon 5 and goofy characters of a Wizard of Oz and it's all animated. I'd rather waste my time watching that.