Mike Moody tumbles

Patton Oswalt — one of my favorite comedians working today — delivers an amazing, genuine and heartbreaking performance in Big Fan, the 2009 drama from writer-director Robert D. Siegel.

Big Fan follows Oswalt’s schlubby, unambitious parking garage attendant, Paul, as his life takes an unexpected turn after he meets his hero, New York Giants quarterback Quantrell Bishop (Jonathan Hamm). Paul is obsessed with Bishop and the Giants, and he makes little time for anything else, like finding a girlfriend, building a career or starting a family.

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And here we go again with the gloomy.

Before picking up where last week’s ‘Being Human’ cliffhanger left off, we got an interesting cold open that offered a look at our heroes’ origins. (Hmmm, I guess we probably shouldn’t call them heroes, should we? Antiheroes? No, that seems like a bit of a stretch. How about tortured souls? That sounds good — oh wait! Do vampires have souls? … I’ll have to think about that one.) The quick flashback scenes were sad, intriguing, somewhat intense and visually interesting. I suppose that description could also sum up the show so far. Read the rest @ TV Squad.

I once drove over a few inches of crosswalk space in Austin, Texas. In protest of this heinous act, a snooty pedestrian shook his fist at me and shot me a nasty look — the kind of look someone might give you if you had just slayed a beautiful, defenseless unicorn in front of them — and yelled, “Hell-O! CROSSWALK!”

I’m sure something similar happened to Fred Armisen, probably more than once, in the great city of Portland, Ore. But Armisen’s “crime” probably involved driving too close to an angry urban cyclist’s precious bike lane (“One f***ing speed!”) or snacking on a Quarter Pounder with cheese in view of a vocal vegan café patron. That could explain why the ‘SNL’ vet is devoting most of his free time these days to skewering the Pacific Northwest city’s counterculture in IFC’s ‘Portlandia.’ Read the rest @ TV Squad.

It’s hard not to envy Fred Armisen these days. He’s one of the funniest people on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ he married Peggy from ‘Mad Men’ (for a while, anyway), and now he’s writing and starring in one of the funniest new TV shows of the year, IFC’s ‘Portlandia.’

Here’s another reason to be jealous of the guy: he shares the screen with the awesome Carrie Brownstein, guitarist for the influential Portland indie rock band Sleater-Kinney, in ‘Portlandia,’ a sketch show that targets organic food-obsessed couples and feminist bookstore owners in the “city where young people go to retire,” premiering tonight on IFC. Read the rest @ TV Squad.

‘Deadwood’ alum Timothy Olyphant traded in his Old West dress hat for a Stetson to play a modern lawman in ‘Justified,’ the critically-acclaimed FX drama inspired by an Elmore Leonard short story.

The show, about a U.S. Marshal charged with cleaning up his Kentucky hometown, was a hit for the cable network, earning more than 4 million viewers for its premiere episode, the second highest debut for FX since ‘The Shield.’ Read the rest @ TV Squad.

Syfy’s new spin on ‘Being Human’ isn’t straying too far from the original cult BBC series … yet. The setup — a vampire and a werewolf share an apartment with a ghost — hasn’t changed, and, like the original show, the new version follows the three supernatural twentysomethings as they attempt to live “normal” human lives.

Several scenes of this new pilot played like they were carried over from the the UK version’s first episode, but with new actors taking on the lead roles. But that won’t be the case for future outings; word is that ‘Being Human’ U.S. will start to stray from the events of the original series later this season. Read the rest @ TV Squad.

Sally is the kind of girl who would die to get noticed — if she wasn’t already dead. In ‘Being Human,’ Syfy’s new spin on the hit BBC series, the gorgeous ghost (Meaghan Roth) shares a Boston home with two unlikely bedfellows, a vampire (Sam Witwer) and a werewolf (Sam Huntington).

‘Being Human’ follows the twentysomething trio as they struggle to curb their dark supernatural desires in order to blend in with the human world around them. Read the rest and enter to win @ TV Squad.

tvdeathray:

By Mike Moody

Derivative, simplistic and just plain cheesy, the series premiere of The Cape represented the superhero genre at its worst. Instead of offering a smart and fresh take on the superhero origin storyin its opening two hours, The Cape simply rehashed the tired conventions of other, better comic book-inspired TV shows and movies — and they didn’t even bother to slap a new coat of paint on it.

The dialogue was serviceable at best and hollow and crass at worst. Same goes for the acting. It felt like the show only cast actors who looked good in ridiculous outfits or could make insane facial expressions. Even the usually fun-to-watch Summer Glau seemed bored and miscast as a one-note stock character in her few scenes. The introduction of her character and her relationship with The Cape felt rushed and underdeveloped. Genre vet Keith David got more screen time, but he was clearly struggling to breathe life into his poorly-scripted “wise old sage” character.

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For most of The Doctor’s companions, flying around in the TARDIS and battling Daleks and Cybermen is the most dangerous and exciting time of their lives. But not for Sarah Jane Smith; her life only got crazier after parting ways with The Doctor. Now she’s forging her own strange sci-fi tinged path in the BBC’s ‘Doctor Who’ spinoff ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures.’ Read the rest @ TV Squad.