Two-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a researcher in the year 2019, in which an unknown plague has transformed the world’s population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race. – Lionsgate
60 out of 100
The immediate gut-reaction for a film like Daybreakers is, “Oh, great… yet another vampire film because that genre hasn’t been exploited enough over the past five years,” and to be honest, that was our reaction when we first saw trailers for this in late 2009. The problem for Daybreakers and most likely the reason for its miserable box-office numbers ($51 million gross, foreign and domestic) is that’s also exactly how the producers marketed the film in some misguided attempt to hop on the bandwagon of the sucesses of the other popular vampire franchises such as Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries. That was a very bad marketing decision.
Daybreakers is a very original and unique twist on the vampire genre in that it’s not really a horror film at all. It’s a classic Science Fiction story that not only deals with science as a backdrop, it also deals with the many “what if” and “how would you react” scenarios about the questions of exploitation of others for your own immortality. How does a society preserve its humanity when mortality has been taken away? As far as vampire films go, there is surprisingly little graphic violence until the very end of the film because, frankly, it’s really not necessary to progress the story.
Where the film ultimately suffers is that it is very short coming in at 1 hour 37 minutes. For a science fiction story with such an original concept there is far too little exposition. It not only leaves a lot of questions unanswered but it’s so quick that the audience doesn’t really have an opportunity to become emotionally attached to the characters or the plot. The performances from DaFoe and Hawke and the rest of the cast are fine but you really don’t have any sense of a vested interest in any of these characters, and of course if the audience can’t relate to the characters they have no reason to really care about the story. Interestingly enough, this promotional clip (that was not shown in the film) gives more of a back story for the plot than the entire film does.
Daybreakers, albeit not the best film, is an enjoyable film and worth your time if you like a unique Sci Fi story. Netflix subscribers can watch it as part of their subscription through the Netflix streaming service.
Here’s the official Lionsgate trailer for Daybreakers. This is not the thirty-second TV spot that leads you to believe that it’s just a another vampire/horror film.
Raising Hope is a new single-camera family comedy from Emmy Award winner Greg Garcia that follows the Chance family as they find themselves adding an unexpected new member into their household. At 23 years old, JIMMY CHANCE (Lucas Neff) is going nowhere in life. He skims pools for a living, parties every night and still lives at home with his family, including his MAW MAW (Cloris Leachman); his mother, VIRGINIA (Martha Plimpton) and his father, BURT (Garret Dillahunt). Jimmy’s life takes a drastic turn when a chance romantic encounter with LUCY (guest star Bijou Phillips) goes awry once he discovers she is a wanted felon. Months later, when Jimmy pays a visit to the local prison, he learns Lucy is pregnant with their baby, and after she gives birth, he is charged with raising their daughter. – FOX
Shawn: I didn’t think it was possible but Rasing Hope has given me whole new reason to hate sitcoms. You see, what’s pissed me off thoroughly is the lie perpetuated on show’s Official Page that I posted above. It’s leaving out a crucial detail and the omission is by design. The little baby’s mother, isn’t just a wanted felon, she’s a serial killer and her big joke in the trailer is that they would never execute a mother of a seven month-old baby. Then, they cut to a scene with Jimmy sitting on the other side of the glass with the baby on his lap watching her get electrocuted and about halfway through the process he covers the baby’s eyes. I’m sorry, and you can call me old-fashioned, but a baby being separated from its mother and then forced to watch her get executed in an electric chair is not exactly what I would call charming or endearing. FOX has been doing a very good job of hiding that little piece of information on their website and their regular TV spots for this show. Gee, I wonder why? What I saw is not nearly as bad as the fact that they are trying to hide it.
Well, like Detroit 1-8-7, we have another case of I was exactly right yet I was dead wrong at the same time.
First, the mea culpa: the scene that I was most concerned about in the trailer with the mother being executed in the electric chair wasn’t nearly as bad as it seemed in the trailer. When taken in context with the ridiculous tone of this show and although I would have preferred that it not be in the episode, it flows pretty well in a cartoonish sort of way. In fact when I think about it, cartoonish is the perfect way to describe that scene. It was like something on Family Guy and South Park where, yes, under normal circumstances it would be processed by your brain as being horrific, but in context it’s pretty tame, because it’s really just slapstick. I’m guessing that the reason that FOX decided not to air that spot on TV was because it screened as poorly with their test audiences as it did it with your friendly neighborhood test-critic.
Now, on to where I was right and what I hate about this show. Raising Hope is exactly what I thought it would be: a typical Greg Garcia show about a family of really dumb, loser P.W.T. (that’s po’ white trash for the unenlightened) who are completely ridiculous and just like the aforementioned scene, absolutely cartoonish. It’s style and tone is very much like My Name is Earl and it goes to show that Greg Garcia is really kind of a one-trick pony which is something I suspected all along.
That being said, the show is pretty funny and despite its flaws is very charming. The characters, although cut from the ‘Earl’ cloth, are endearing and all very well-cast. There’s a lot of good humor here and even though they’re resorting to the same Bundy-style adversarial family that has been used a hundred times before, they all seem believable in their caring for each other.
What has really sucked me into Raising Hope show is Hope herself. That cute little baby is irresistible especially for anyone who has kids and honestly, you forget about the flaws of this show when you see that precious little face. She reminds me of my own daughter at that age and I seriously just melt when she’s on-screen just being cute. You will too.
ABC: No Ordinary Family – September 28, 2010 (NEW SERIES!)(Full Review Here!)
ABC Studios brings to life “The Incredibles”, the story of the Powells, an every day american family, who are too busy to spend time together. So they decide to take a trip as family as a way to reconnect, but on the way, their plane crashes. Now there’re back to their normal lives, but something seems to be happening to each one of them… they have superpowers. – ABC
Shawn: First, let’s give credit to ABC for not only acknowledging right off-the-bat the most obvious criticism of this show – that being that it looks like Disney-Pixar’s The Incredibles – but outright OWNING it. That’s the way to beat them at their own game! And why wouldn’t Disney try to capitalize on their property in a prime time, live-action drama (for those of you that are unaware, Disney owns ABC)? Screw the nay-sayers, this show looks like a lot of fun and is my choice for sleeper hit of the season. The concept is great and it’s not just a show for the family but it’s a show focused on the family as much as it is on their super powers. Casting always tells me a lot about a show and No Ordinary Family is no different. You’ve got Michael Chiklis as the dad (The Shield), Julie Benz as the mom (Dexter), Romany Malco (The 40 Year-Old Virgin) as the best friend and sidekick and lo and behold, Stephen Collins (7th Heaven) who appears to be our Lex Luthor-type. I don’t care if I sound like a 10 year-old fanboy, I can’t wait to watch No Ordinary Family and apparently based on the amount of merchandising I saw over at the official site, ABC is pretty confident that they have a hit on their hands as well.
CBS: NCIS – September 21, 2010
Shawn: NCIS enters its eighth season and is still one of the most watched shows on television and the highest rated drama. I’ve been there from the beginning since it was a spinoff of J.A.G. and the show has gotten increasingly better each season and I don’t see any signs of it jumping the shark any time soon. At first glance, NCIS would appear to be your standard fare, formulaic cop show that I regularly rail against and during the first couple of seasons, that’s exactly what it was. But, the cast and the characters were compelling enough to keep me around until season 4 when it really came into its own with multi-episode, cloak and dagger story arcs and complex character development. You simply can’t go wrong with NCIS.
(Sorry, but no video on this one. I was completely unable to find any trailers for season 8 on YouTube or anywhere else)
FOX: Glee – September 21, 2010
Shawn: Glee is great. Everyone should be watching this. It is funnier than any other sitcom on TV with the exception of Modern Family, has wonderfully heartwarming drama and the musical numbers are creative and fantastic. I challenge you not become moved during the musical numbers on Glee.
9:00 p.m.
CBS: NCIS Los Angeles* – September 21, 2010
Shawn: The only reason I’m putting NCIS Los Angeles (now in its second season) in this preview is to clarify why I recommend NCIS but not its spinoff. Simply put: I just don’t like it. I was very excited last year about the possibility of an NCIS spinoff but I only lasted six episodes into the first season. The show makes no sense at all. The premise is unbelieveable, the plotlines are boring and formulaic, and the characters are clichéd and have absolutely zero chemistry. I like Chris O’Donnell a lot. He’s very talented and I appreciate the fact that he dropped out of the business to raise a family and be a father to his 103 children. There’s nothing more noble than being a father and a husband. Unfortunately, his talents are being wasted on this safe, simplistic and dry show. On principle, I don’t recommend this show, but I may watch the season premiere just to see if they’ve fixed any of the mess that is NCIS Los Angeles. I’m always willing to give a show a season to work out the bugs and if they do, I’ll report back with the good news.
(Again, no trailer for this show either… blame CBS)
FOX: Raising Hope – September 21, 2010 (NEW SERIES!)
Raising Hope is a new single-camera family comedy from Emmy Award winner Greg Garcia that follows the Chance family as they find themselves adding an unexpected new member into their household. At 23 years old, JIMMY CHANCE (Lucas Neff) is going nowhere in life. He skims pools for a living, parties every night and still lives at home with his family, including his MAW MAW (Cloris Leachman); his mother, VIRGINIA (Martha Plimpton) and his father, BURT (Garret Dillahunt). Jimmy’s life takes a drastic turn when a chance romantic encounter with LUCY (guest star Bijou Phillips) goes awry once he discovers she is a wanted felon. Months later, when Jimmy pays a visit to the local prison, he learns Lucy is pregnant with their baby, and after she gives birth, he is charged with raising their daughter. – FOX
Shawn: I didn’t think it was possible but Rasing Hope has given me whole new reason to hate sitcoms. You see, what’s pissed me off thoroughly is the lie perpetuated on show’s Official Page that I posted above. It’s leaving out a crucial detail and the omission is by design. The little baby’s mother, isn’t just a wanted felon, she’s a serial killer and her big joke in the trailer is that they would never execute a mother of a seven month-old baby. Then, they cut to a scene with Jimmy sitting on the other side of the glass with the baby on his lap watching her get electrocuted and about halfway through the process he covers the baby’s eyes. I’m sorry, and you can call me old-fashioned, but a baby being separated from its mother and then forced to watch her get executed in an electric chair is not exactly what I would call charming or endearing. FOX has been doing a very good job of hiding that little piece of information on their website and their regular TV spots for this show. Gee, I wonder why? What I saw is not nearly as bad as the fact that they are trying to hide it.
The latest series for the Stargate franchise has Dr. Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle) as part of a group that is transported to Destiny, a self-guided spaceship used to place stargates around the universe.
Shawn: SGU starts its second season and I am loathed to admit it, but I like this show and I really shouldn’t. It is a complete rip-off of Star Trek: Voyager and Battlestar Galactica with the quest to get home and the incessant, holy-crap-we’re all-going-to-die-by-the-end-of-the-episode-but-somehow-we-are-miraculously-saved-at-the-last-minute crisis of the week, but still, somehow, it manages to work. The characters are OK and are becoming more developed every episode and the special effects and action do work well. SGU also succeeds because you don’t get the feeling that you have to know the entire Stargate Anthology in order to get the show. If you like space-based Sci-Fi, this show is definitely for you, if it’s not your thing, you can pass on this and your life won’t be any less fulfilled.
9:30
FOX: Running Wilde – September 21, 2010 (NEW SERIES!)
Will Arnett stars as a Beverly Hills jackass who ends up falling in love with Emmy Kadubic (played by Keri Russell), a charitable tree hugger, who hates his lifestyle and moral code.
Shawn: “What… the… fudge… was that?” You see, those are the words that came to mine when I watched the extended trailer for this show, except for the fact that just like Ralphie from a Christmas Story I didn’t use the word fudge. Unlike Ralphie, however, I didn’t have a bar of Palmolive handy to cleanse my soul from what I had just seen. Obviously, the geniuses at television development at FOX are the same people in charge of player development for the New York Mets. I have it on good authority that the roundtable discussion for filling the 9:30 hole on FOX went something like this:
Writer 1: OK, we want to go with something recycled along the lines of The Nanny and Dharma & Greg and every couple-based sitcom from the last twenty years that involves two people from extremely different worlds.
Writer 2: Well, I brought a hat full of a bunch of paper slips with different subjects on them. Let’s shake it up and pull out the first ten and apply it to your lame-o premise.
Writer 3: Um… I brought pot.
OK, so I completely made that up, but seriously, after watching the trailer below, does it not seem like that’s exactly how they came up with this show? It’s typical FOX suckitude for sit-coms. Running Wilde is a perfect bookend to Raising Hope. Both these shows look awful individually but together they qualify for “making-me-puke-in-my-mouth” status. But, fear not. TV-Tastic predicts that both of these shows will be cancelled before Thanksgiving replaced with re-runs of Bones or House.
10:00 p.m.
ABC: Detroit 1-8-7 – September 21, 2010 (NEW SERIES!)
In this ABC crime drama project, a fictional documentary filmmaking crew goes inside Detroit’s homicide division. – ABC
Shawn: “Once in a generation, a cop show comes along that re-writes the rules.”
That is seriously said in the voice-over at the beginning of this trailer. It may be true, but that show was The Shield, not Detroit 1-8-7 (which sounds more like a the title of an N.W.A. album than it does a dramatic television series). Sorry, but this show re-writes nothing. It’s the epitome of why I don’t watch formulaic cop shows anymore. It’s all the same thing but this one is trying to be clever by combining the rawness and the grittiness of The Wire and to an extent Homicide: Life on the Street and the pseudo-documentary style of… The Office. That’s right, The Office. The difference is that The Office actually is consistently shot like a documentary. The style of this show is all over the place. I’m sorry, but if you want to convince us that the show is being shot by a documentary camera crew, your shots cannot include shots only possible if filmed while a cameraman is sitting on the hood of a moving car (that’s in the trailer).
Beyond, that, though Detroit 1-8-7 doesn’t look awful, it just looks ordinary and typical. I’ve seen this cop show before, and I can tell I’m not alone in thinking this way.
“The detectives are well-developed and easy to follow… There are relationships worth investing in.”
– Mekeisha Madden Toby, Detroit News
“…promises to be a mighty fine ride…smartly cast urban crime drama’s gutsy, gritty allure.”
– Matt Roush, TV Guide
First, notice the ellipses that permeate both quotes like bullet-holes, indicating that ABC cut a lot out. Second, knowing that, this is really the best ABC could come up with to promote critical acclaim for the show? Seriously, that Matt Roush quote is just embarrassing, but honestly, I really don’t expect much from him anymore. I think he just has too much on his plate so unless he really likes something a lot, he just whips out the TV reviewer’s thesaurus and gives us “mighty fine ride,” “smartly cast (which is kind of like sensible shoes),” “gutsy” and “gritty.” As far as Makeisha Madden Toby is concerned, I think she got the memo that if you write for a Detroit Newspaper and live in L.A., it’s in your better interest to be pleasant when discussing a drama set in the city you don’t live in but is responsible for your paychecks. I’m sorry, but, “The detectives are well-developed and easy to follow…” and “There are relationships worth investing in,” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement.
I’m sorry but there’s just too much good TV this Fall for me to waste my time with this. I may catch the pilot or an occasional episode, but this isn’t appointment television by an 8-mile.
Syfy’s all-new one-hour drama series Haven, starring Emily Rose (Jericho, Brothers and Sisters) is based on the novella The Colorado Kid from renowned author Stephen King. The series follows the shrewd and confident FBI agent Audrey Parker (Rose) who has a lost past, and arrives in the small town of Haven, Maine on a routine case. Before long, her natural curiosity lands her in the epicenter of activity in this curious enclave, which turns out to be a longtime refuge for people that are affected by a range of supernatural afflictions. As the townspeople’s dormant abilities begin to express themselves, Audrey helps keep these forces at bay while discovering the many secrets of Haven — including one surrounding her own surprising connections to this extraordinary place. – SyFy
3 out of 10
As noted in the show description, SyFy’s new show Haven is based on a Steven King 184 page novel titled TheColorado Kid. From what I read at iMDB before I saw the pilot, the title is one of the few things the show and the book actually share in common. The Colorado Kid was a departure from Stephen King’s normal fare of the supernatural and just a straight-up mystery/crime novel. Haven is exactly the opposite and apparently it was this way at the direction of King himself who wanted this television version of his story to have a science fiction premise to it. That’s really all the interesting information I can provide about this show because there really is nothing more interesting about it except for the fact that for some reason, out of all of the Stephen King stories, SyFy chose to make a series out of the one that was universally panned by the critics.
Haven is what I like to call a poor-man’s attempt at The X-Files except for instead of the cases taking place all over the country, all of these cases take place in small, mythical town of Haven, Maine, which I guess is just one big X-File. Unlike other attempts to capture the spirit of The X-Files while still remaining unique (such as FOX’s Fringe or even SyFy’s Warehouse 13) Haven makes absolutely no attempt to be original whatsoever. I’ve now watched 1.75 episodes (I was so annoyed by the second episode I turned it off early ) and all I’ve seen is poorly recycled and predictable plots from old X-Files episodes, a bunch of supporting characters that don’t do a thing for me and a “who’s-who” of Canadian character actor casting (which is the only reason occasionally one of them sounds like they might actually be from Maine).
Our leads are Agent Audrey Parker (Emily Rose) and Officer (Detective?) Nathan Wournos (Lucas Bryant) and let’s just put it this way: they’re no Scully and Mulder. They have absolutely no on-screen chemistry and neither one of their parts is very well-written. By the time I got halfway through the second episode, Butterfly, I wanted to punch Supercop (and I mean that literally… the character doesn’t feel pain) Nathan right in the face. I think it’s safe to say that one of the benchmarks for good TV is that you shouldn’t want to punch the protagonist in the face by the second episode, so you can kind of see where all of this is headed. The only redeeming factor of Butterfly was the absolutely stellar performance by one of my favorite character actors of all-time, Stephen McHattie, who is better known to Star Trek fans as Senator Vreenak from arguably the best Trek episode ever made, Deep Space Nine‘s In the Pale Moonlight. But even McHattie’s brilliant performance is not enough to save this dud of a series. Yes, this series is so bad that I have to throw in a Star Trek reference just to bring some level of excitement to an otherwise awful review experience.
I am very disappointed in Haven. When I watched the pilot, I wasn’t very impressed but I wanted to give it another chance because there was so much buzz about it and it was so eagerly anticipated by SyFy (and Sci Fi) fans. Unfortunately, though, it didn’t just not improve from the pilot to the second episode, it actually got much worse. The writing is lackluster and flat and the audience simply cannot empathize with any of the characters and I have to say that even by SyFy’s standards, these are some of the worst CGI effects I’ve ever seen. The only reason I even gave it a 3 is because of McHattie. I’m sorry, but I simply have no time for bad TV.
That being said, if you don’t trust me and want to watch this mess for yourself to decide, SyFy has all of the episodes available to view online for free here.
Two-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke plays Edward Dalton, a researcher in the year 2019, in which an unknown plague has transformed the world’s population into vampires. As the human population nears extinction, vampires must capture and farm every remaining human, or find a blood substitute before time runs out. However, a covert group of vampires makes a remarkable discovery, one which has the power to save the human race. – Lionsgate
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