Works In Progress |
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|  | | Tommy Schlamme Talks The Walk |  | We take the 'Walk & Talk' for granted, but once it was breaking new ground. |  | | | | Sports Night Web Exclusive |  | Get a glimpse of what's in the special features. | | | | | Liberty's Kids Special Web Only Exclusive |  | Get the inside scoop from Mike Maliani. and show creator Kevin O'Donnell. | | | | | | DVD Pick of the Moment |
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 | | | Spaced: The Complete Series | | Before their international successes with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and director Edgar Wright teamed up with Jessica Hynes (nee Stevenson) and the BBC to create this amazing look into the pop culture-saturated world of 20-somethings living Northern London. All 14 hysterical episodes (2 seasons) are finally available in the U.S. in this 3-DVD set, which also includes a feature-length documentary detailing the life of Spaced, a Q&A panel with the cast and crew, deleted scenes, outtakes, previews, original cast and crew audio commentaries and brand new cast and crew commentaries with special guest fans Kevin Smith, Diablo Cody, Patton Oswalt, Quentin Tarantino, Matt Stone and Bill Hader. This set is a MUST-SEE for any fan of film, television, music, comics, relationships, life and laughter! | | |
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I Like to Watch |
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 | | | The World Is A Mess And I Just Need To Rule It. | What to write about…What to write about… It would seem the options are endless.
Let’s see, you have The Dark Knight. Batman beating down The Joker, the film beating down rival Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 at the box office, and then the film’s star, Christian Bale, allegedly beating down his mom and sister only hours after the London premiere. Nah. Too topical.
You have my utter disappointment with American Gladiators’ decision to drop becoming a new Gladiator from their list of grand prizes at the conclusion of each season. After all, upon watching the boring “Jet” and “Rocket”, winners of last season, dominate the only lame contests in which svelte, non-threatening Gladiators could be even remotely useful like The Wall and Vertigo, you really want to see contenders like this season’s 52-year old Yoko Ohigashi as the vicious “Grandma” taking down future contenders in Rocketball. I can see it now… Mmmmm… Oh, I wasn’t thinking of Yoko just then; I was daydreaming about “Crush.” Mmmmm…
You have my fellow Courtland High graduate (class of ’95) Danny McBride’s sudden Hollywood success and the overwhelming angst it gives me to think about how little I’ve accomplished in the exact same industry in the exact same amount of time. But that’s too petty and, frankly, My So-Called Life-ish. Besides, I’ll get over it. At least enough to see Tropic Thunder next week.
You have this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, but unlike previous years, there was so little on which to really report. That is, with the exception of our extremely successful Mystery Science Theater 3000 reunion panel (which will be available on our upcoming 20th Anniversary edition). But Comic-Cons come and go. The new “it” thing is always replaced by next year’s “it” thing at each convention, so nothing I talk about now will be relevant next year.
Instead, I’ll talk about something that will live on forever in the annals of geekdom: Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.
If you already know what that means, you’re already cool. If not, keep reading and by the end of this column, you, too, will be cool. No. Awesome. I promise.
Beginning late last year and leading into 2008, the Writer’s Guild of America (don’t get me started!) decided to go on strike. Anyone not a fan of reality television was devastated, as they saw their favorite series’ seasons ending abruptly and awkwardly. Some series still haven’t come back from their hiatuses, their showrunners instead choosing to bring their shows back in the fall or, worse yet, next year. The result of which is ABC’s new twisted obsession with American incarnations of Japanese game shows. I mean seriously, people. Was Hole In the Wall ever really a good idea?!
Anyway, throughout the strike, writers—who, believe it or not, actually enjoy writing—were getting increasingly frustrated and—even more dangerous—bored. And with boredom, comes idle hands. And with idle hands, comes trouble. Or, in some cases, brilliance. Particularly when said idle hands are attached to Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel/Firefly (I haven’t seen Dollhouse, yet, so I reserve the right to withhold it from the aforementioned “brilliance” descriptor) mastermind Joss Whedon.
Fortunately, when Joss Whedon gets bored, his legion of fans get treated with the three-part musical romantic comedy known as Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, starring none other than Neil Patrick Harris in the title role, Firefly/Buffy alum Nathan Fillion as Horrible’s narcissistic superhero arch-nemesis, Captain Hammer, and Felicia Day as Dr. Horrible’s philanthropic love interest, Penny. The plot centers on Dr. Horrible’s attempt to catch the eye of Bad Horse and the members of the elite Evil League of Evil and its unfortunate overlap with the first real contact he’s had with his dream girl, Penny.
As mentioned above, the project was born out of the strike and was shot in a matter of days just after the strike ended, its “low six-figure” budget financed entirely by Whedon. When you watch the 43-minute trilogy, you see exactly where that money went: costumes, props, special effects, the back lot of a major Hollywood studio. None of that money actually went to cast or crew, something Joss would prefer to remedy with sales of the series on iTunes and the impending DVD release promised “sometime before Christmas” (and will include a new musical commentary with the cast and Whedon!!).
But this leads me to the real topic at hand. Yes, this was meant to be a general review of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and was meant to encourage you to see it either at iTunes or on Hulu or…or…well, however you could get your hands on it. It’s that phenomenal. But it literally is phenomenal, in that, hours after its first act’s release on the internet, the site was shut down, due to an overwhelming amount of traffic. I mean, anything with Joss’ name on it is going to find popularity with the fans, but this was as if he’d created a web-exclusive episode of Buffy or something. What the creators thought would roll out with word-of-mouth became, instead, an instant classic—without the need for marketing.
Try as they might, no one had been able to create web-specific content that appealed to that many people. After all, if Oscar winners Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz couldn’t find success with their web series, Quarter Life, who could? According to many (albeit conflicting) reports, even network television gets comparatively few hits when it goes to the web. No one, it would seem, wants to watch television on the computer. Until now, that is. Whedon, along with his amazingly gifted cast and crew, bypassed the need for those pesky producers and even-more-pesky studio chiefs. No inane notes were given, because there was no one to whom Joss Whedon was required to report. This was his (mostly) brainchild. He and his team wrote the script, the lyrics and music to no fewer than 15 songs, shot it with Whedon’s own money, marketed it on fan forums and sites like Whedonesque.com. and JossWhedon.net. And the viewers came. And they’ve stayed, continuing to watch the same three episodes over and over again. It doesn’t even matter if they normally like or hate musicals. Those that love good writing and storytelling, end up loving and talking about Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. As well they should.
But how will this change the internet? Is it really a place where good content can go and survive? Can talented actors like Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day really be attracted to material that won’t be beamed in via satellite or pumped into homes through a coax cable or even projected on a screen standing 32 by 86 feet? Can studio bosses keep from finding a way to control it all? And when does the government step in with a “new and improved” Federal Communications Commission? When does the obsolete importance of advertisers and ratings weigh in on what stays and what goes? Only time will tell, but for now, there’s a very distinct waft of revolution in the air.
“I’m not trying to bring down the studios,” announced Whedon at the Dr. Horrible panel during July’s Comic-Con. “But things are changing. And it’s really important that we make sure that as they change, they change for the better. And Dr. Horrible is just a little bit about that, about putting power in different hands.” Whedon smiles coyly as he concludes, “The wrong hands.”
By Brian Ward
To view Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog in its entirety, simply click HERE. |
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