SyFy Channel Original Movies Make the "NY Times"

The past Sunday the New York Times had a longish article about those original movies that SyFy Channel churns out for their Saturday nights. The productions aren't going to get critical acclaim, but they do serve a purpose even if I wish they were better. I love monster movies, and disaster movies, and 2nd tier actors and actresses battling CGI creatures, but there's usually always something missing in these movies. They usually take a potentially intriguing concept -- by cheapie monster movie standards -- and somehow suck the life and fun out of it. I'm always a little disappointed with those SyFy original movies.

I have liked a few, though, including S.S. Doomtrooper, a WW II actioner with a band of soldiers battling a huge metallic monster right out of a videogame; Manticore, with Robert

Beltran and Heather O'Donahue as U.S. soldiers in the Middle East battling a huge scaly monster from antiquity, and Monster Ark, with the White Collar's Tim DeKay (he's always great) and Renee O'Connor (Zena's sidekick) in some kind of ancient Biblical adventure, I can't even recall the specifics. There are others that are at sort of fun (Buffy's Nicholas Brendon has appeared in at least one), and that should be key goal of these movies, but they often miss the mark. Plus, the actors are often just plain bad. They need to put at least one real actor in the cast to give the rest of them something to aspire to -- but they often don't.

But SyFy got a good article in Sunday's New York Times, so there.

If you're a SyFy viewer or a television aficionado you'll enjoy the information. Being a former TV Programming person myself, at the very least I respect SyFy for producing movies that aim to entertain an audience, as opposed to the myriad of made-fors that were made at TNT during the '90s that were neither entertaining nor praiseworthy, but hey, at least they were ridiculously expensive. And pretty much completely forgettable, nearly all of them. That's a worse crime than making silly junk that amuses people, I reckon.

Definitely check out the article -- "The Thing That Ate Saturday Night" by Brooks Barnes.

Tim DeKay -- Another Good Reason to Watch "The New Adventures of Old Christine"

As if tuning in to support Wanda Sykes weren't enough, there's another terrific reason to watch tonight's The New Adventures of Old Christine on CBS. Actor Tim DeKay, a Flaming Nose favorite, is in the middle of a three-episode run as Christine's new boyfriend. DeKay, who was featured in last year's HBO adult drama Tell Me You Love Me (as the frustrated suburban husband and father), and earlier garnered many fans for his charismatic role as Jonesy in HBO's ambitious and sensational period drama Carnivale, is a welcome addition to TNAoOC, even for a short while.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Christine) and DeKay have done screen time together before, in two segments of Seinfeld -- DeKay played Elaine's boyfriend aka "Bizarro Jerry" in the episode of the same title. Tim DeKay is also on deck to star in a pilot for USA called White Collar about an FBI agent who teams up with a con man (Matthew Bomer). They call it a drama, but in light of jocular adventure dramas on USA like Burn Notice, we'll assume it's also got some lighter moments.

DeKay has an agreeable regular-guy personality and looks that bely his dramatic prowess, and we especially remember the harrowing, horrifying and unforgettable moment in Carnivale where Jonesy was captured and tarred. In terms of sheer agony, the scene of Jonesy's tarring far exceeded even the shock of a similar event in HBO's John Adams miniseries, when the British tax agent got the same treatment, plus feathering.

So please give The New Adventures of Old Christine a look tonight, at 8pm on CBS! How many more reasons do we have to give you? How about just one more -- it's hilarious!


P.S.: On a more serious note, Tim DeKay is also a spokesperson for Artists United for Freedom, an organization which fights modern day slavery in all its manifestations. Here's a short message from him on the subject:

Tell Me You Love Me

A few days ago Jane wrote a little about HBO's new series Tell Me You Love Me which premiered last Sunday night. It's about several couples and their problematic sex lives, and touts itself as being probably the most explicit TV so far (with mainstream actors). After watching the preem and then catching parts of the first episode a couple more times throughout the week, I've seen lots of whining, many tits and Luke Kirby's balls, and I'd say that show is not without interest. It's midway between your standard TV drama and really soft soft-core porn, but also uncomfortably like seeing your parents fuck. You might know and like some of these actors from previous roles, and sorta feel bad for them for having to cavort around in their birthday suits.

On the other hand, I'm all for America getting a little more adult about sex. I especially liked (thought that may be the wrong word) the scene at the end of the first show where actress Sonya Walger, as the high-strung wife trying to get pregnant, gives her husband a depressing hand job as he watches TV. Now, it looked pretty real, and they did show some ejaculate, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I've since read around a bit and the consensus seems to be that the penis was prosthetic (ergo fake cum, too), as were Luke Kirby's balls, mentioned in the previous paragraph. I have to say that I'm a tad disappointed (again, that might not be quite the right word) to learn that basically everything except the breasts on the women are faked. But hey, these are actors, not porn stars, and I will admit that the cast members (and their members, real or not) of TMYLM are, on the whole, quite a bit more talented than your average pornsters. And have considerably fewer tattoos. (If there's one thing that kinda gives away the rough edges around porn, it's gotta be those ink-stained bodies. There are tattoos everywhere on those folks.)

I think I've gotten spoiled from watching Canadian pay TV, where quite hardcore material frequently airs in the overnight hours and no big deal is made over it. The only thing that TMYLM has that the latenight movies don't is, ironically, the ejaculation shot. Aficionados may prefer to refer to it as "the money shot" but never was it as joyless as in the HBO show.

I do think a shout out to several of the actors on TMYLM is in order. Ally Walker, whom you probably remember from her starring role as The Profiler a few years back, is superb as the bereft wife in a near-platonic suburban marriage. Walker, an intelligent actress--she's a physics major and worked in a genetics lab before devoting herself to acting--is perfectly paired with the likeable Tim DeKay who was so marvelous in HBO's sadly-cancelled Carnivale from a couple seasons ago. Luke Kirby is attractive as a young newlywed who can't quite get his head around the idea of lifelong fidelity, and of course, as Jane mentioned before, Jane Alexander is also a serene and wise presence as the therapist. Everybody in the cast is good; you might end up having a favorite couple, if you can stick with the possibly overwrought navel-gazing long enough. Truly, you need a little skin to help you get through the whines.

At least it's a little more brazen than the usual ho-hum stuff, as is Showtime's David Duchovny sex-filled comedy/drama Californication which has been on a few weeks. I haven't quite warmed to it yet but Duchovny is always watchable, though I am creeped out a bit by the actress playing his teenage daughter. It's like she escaped from the brunette version of Children of the Damned. Very strange face and I think I really believe in alien/human hybrids now.

Such is the state of people having sex in mainstream U.S. media.