Katie Couric Has ABC Talk Show

Posted Jun 6, 2011 by Walt Belcher

Updated Jun 6, 2011 at 12:50 PM

No big surprise here. It’s official. ABC announced today that Katie Couric is joining the network in a $20 million deal in which she will have an afternoon talk show and will be featured on ABC News programs.

Couric will be host and producer.  Former “Today” show producer Jeff Zucker, an ex-NBC programming chief, will be executive producer.

Couric’s show might be in the 3 p.m. slot.

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Bay News 9 Gets New General Manager

Posted Jun 6, 2011 by Walt Belcher

Updated Jun 6, 2011 at 09:49 AM

Rod Gramer, a news director from Portland, Oregon, has been named Vice President and General Manager of Bay News 9, according to a news release from Bright House Networks.

He joins the 24-hour cable news operation on July 11.

Bright House reports that Gramer has been Executive News Director at KGW-TV in Portland, Oregon for more than a decade and the station is a perennial number one in the news ratings and has earned dozens of awards for its news reporting.

“Rod runs one of the best local news shops in the country,” said Elliott Wiser, Bright House Network Vice President of Local Programming, “He is highly regarded in the business and we are excited to have him join our team.”

Prior to working in Portland, Gramer had a 10-year run as Executive News Director of KTVB-TV in Boise, Idaho.  He began his career in the newspaper business working for the Idaho Statesman in Boise. Gramer is co-author of the book, Fighting the Odds, the Life of Senator Frank Church, which won the Evans Prize in Biography.

“I have followed Bay News 9 since it started and know it has an outstanding reputation for its commitment to journalism excellence,” said Gramer.

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New Releases for Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Posted Jun 4, 2011 by John Allman

Updated Jun 4, 2011 at 01:44 PM

What’s new in stores and on video shelves this week:

Drive Angry
Genre: Action/Horror
Directed by: Patrick Lussier
Run time: 104 minutes
Rating: R
Format: Blu-Ray

The Lowdown: There are two awesome characters in Patrick Lussier and Todd Farmer’s insane B-movie mash-up “Drive Angry,” the tale of a satanic biker gang literally inviting Hell on Earth, but sadly neither of them is Nicolas Cage.

His John Milton (get it?) has exactly one GREAT scene, which involves a whole lot of stuff that ain’t appropriate for a blog published by a family newspaper, but let’s just say he gets to killing some crazy biker assassins while never breaking his, um, stride or losing his, um, rhythm, which in turn creates a wholly original quandary for the trashy-hot, roadside dive waitress who happens to be stuck underneath him during the entire length of the five-minute fight.

The truly awesome characters are Amber Heard’s Piper and William Fichtner’s The Accountant, who is basically Satan’s right hand man, dispatched to retrieve Milton who has busted out of Hell’s prison to prevent the crazy cult leader Jonah King (a really good Billy Burke) from sacrificing his granddaughter in a secret ceremony to open a portal to Hell.

Heard’s Piper is one hot butt-kicking trailer park babe, full of spunk and fire, able to beat down men twice her size and take some hellacious punches. You wish that she was the focal character because she’s just that good.

And The Accountant, woo ha, he gets all the best lines, which Fichtner delivers with just the right knowing wink in his eye.

The problem with “Drive Angry” is its tone. Is it a campy send-up of drive-in splatterpieces? Is it a full-throttle action film? Or does it want to be some weird blended combination of “Vanishing Point” and “The Devil’s Rain”?

Where Lussier and Farmer hit all the right notes with their 2009 remake of “My Bloody Valentine,” including an equally gratuitous nude fight scene in a cheap, roadside motel with an equally bodacious blonde, they can’t seem to pinpoint what they’re going for here.

Cage is a liability, for sure. He loses that awesome Castor Troy swagger from “Face/Off” and dives too deep into his wildly uneven ghost-riding Johnny Blaze. And his hair, good God almighty. It’s time to impose a moratorium on A-list actors intent on appearing like they have a flowing mane of salon-teased hair.

The overall story also seems half-baked. For one, you never get to see Milton escape from Hell, which would have made for an excellent opening or middle segment. And the rules are never established properly, ie Milton can’t die by normal means, but it’s never made clear why. Sure, he’s already dead, but he’s also packing a hell gun that can send demons screaming right back to the fiery pits. Why doesn’t anyone think to use it on him?

For every misstep, though, there’s a great scene, such as the police blockade led by none other than the incomparable B-movie icon Tom Atkins, or the aforementioned motel room bloodbath coitus interruptus.

And the ending, which seems to take forever, dissolves into a silly, aw shucks, let’s go back to Hell, road trip movie that seems completely out of place.

Yes, they set it up for a sequel – what movie doesn’t these days? – but it’s unlikely we’ll see John Milton breaking bad on the big screen again anytime soon.

The Stuff You Care About:
Hot chicks – Extremely – Amber Heard, butt-kicking hot.
Nudity – Yes.
Gore – Yes.
Drug use – No.
Bad Guys/Killers – Satanic bikers, those bastards!
Buy/Rent – Rent it.
Blu-Ray Bonus Features – “Access: Drive Angry” multi-feature behind-the-scenes, audio commentary, deleted scenes.

Prey (IFC, 79 minutes, Unrated, DVD): This nasty French import, which on the surface might seem to be about a rampaging, mutated giant boar, is whip smart, eco-conscious revenge thriller that proves blood is thicker than love, and a whole lot more dangerous.

“Prey” is a hell of a good movie. It quickly establishes an ominous tone and never wavers. The characters are believable. The family dynamics are clearly established. And the carnage is brutal and shocking.

Director/co-writer Antoine Blossier exhibits a deft touch, creating a pervasive sense of doom that follows a farm family, who just happen to have ties to the local conglomerate corporation that might be knowingly poisoning the local water system, thereby creating an unnatural predator that is eerily reminiscent, and entirely superior, to the environmental thrillers of the late 1970s. You know the films I’m talking about – “Food of the Gods,” “Prophecy,” even the camptastic “Empire of the Ants.”

But where those films got bogged down with a bunch of hooey-phooey jargon and an over-inflated message of social activism, “Prey” is, at its core, the story of a man who wants to have a baby with his pregnant fiancé, who just happens to be the lead scientist at the corporation run by her father. And her father just signed his daughter up for a long stint in the lab, and basically demands that she take care of her little, ahem, problem.

Suffice to say, over the course of one long, bloody night, nobody will emerge unscathed, least of all the idealistic beau who finds himself capable of sinking to incredibly dark depths to protect that which is most important to him, even as he and his soon-to-be in-laws are pursued through a thick forest by an evil, enraged, improbably large creature.

Kaboom (IFC, 86 minutes, Unrated, DVD): Gregg Araki returns with a vengeance to the nihilistic post-punk, sex as dangerous sport landscape where he began his career with such cult classics as “The Doom Generation.” Only now, he’s much more seasoned as a filmmaker, having helmed the incredibly dark tour-de-force “Mysterious Skin,” which launched Joseph Gordon-Levitt onto the indie A-list. Araki has fashioned a madcap, apocalyptic comic book filled with gender-bending, unsafe sex, end of days premonitions and a stoner Nostradamus. The film is a hoot, a big, colorful calamity of genre-defying twists and turns disguised as a coming of age tale. It’s definitely worth a rental, especially for Araki’s longtime fans.

True Blood: The Complete Third Season (HBO, 730 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray): There’s so much goodness in HBO’s third season of its runaway vampire/werewolf/softcore soap opera that it’s hard to pick a favorite storyline or scene. The stakes (no pun intended) get raised right from the get-go as kidnapped Bill awakes to find himself in Mississippi, a captive guest of vampire king Russell Edgington (the amazing Denis O’Hare) and his lover Talbot, who want Bill to become Sheriff of Mississippi and help them kill Sophie-Anne Leclerq, the vampire queen of Louisiana. Sookie Stackhouse goes on a quest to find Bill, which puts her under the protective arm of werewolf Alcide Herveaux. Louisiana sheriff Eric Northman (Alexander Skarsgård, elevating quiet cool to an art form) recruits Lafayette to deal V (vampire blood). Tara acquires a dangerous vampire stalker. Sam locates his blood family and takes his brother home to live with him and work at Merlotte’s. Lafayette gets a boyfriend who just might be a witch. Eric kills Talbot following an insane guy vamp on vamp sex session. Russell kills a human on live TV, igniting national fear of the bloodsuckers. Bill shuns Sookie and declares he no longer wants to marry her and Sookie discovers that she’s a fairy and that Bill and the other vampires want to drain her life essence to finally be able to walk in the sun. Whew. And that’s not even all. The third season of “True Blood” is packed – packed! – with jaw-dropping moments, torrid sex, cool creatures and all kinds of weird goings-on. It’s the best season yet of the show, and the fourth season, which teases witches and warlocks, fairies and more werewolves might just top it. 

Savage County (MPI, 79 minutes, Unrated, DVD): Poor Texas. Ever since Tobe Hooper decided to place his chainsaw massacre within your dusty, desolate confines, you have gotten a bad rap. It’s bad enough that you had to endure “Urban Cowboy.” But the endless stream of horror movies set in the Lone Star State must make people not from the United States think you’re a lawless, wicked land full of deranged, deformed madmen waiting to stalk and slash nubile teens at every corner. To prove this point, comes “Savage County,” the umpteenth variation on the TCM formula, only this time it’s told through the ADD-addled, webcam-obsessed teen generation. There’s nary a lick of originality to be found in this MTV-produced, less-than-average tale of high school students who fall prey following a prank gone wrong. All the stereotypes are present and accounted for, from the dashing star athlete, his homecoming queen-primed girlfriend, the caddish class president, his bookworm beautiful girlfriend, the alternative girl with facial piercings, her drug dealing brother, the town tramp and the over-eager geek with the uber-rich dad who’s so desparate for friends that he’s willing to pay for the athlete’s limo to prom. You could recite this one in your sleep, horror fans. The motley clan of fringe-living sadists has a volatile elderly dad, his toothless, long-haired brother and their two sons, one of whom is mentally challenged and the other, a man mountain with a scarred face and a penchant for wearing a human mask to hide his deformity. Sound familiar? It should. Now I’ve got nothing against copycats, but at least try to spice things up with something, anything, fresh. The kills are so indiscriminate and some happen so fast that you barely have time to register what’s just happened before another body is being drug off to the big vat of acid (cuz all serial killing clans need one of those!) and dumped overboard to sizzle and dissolve. What passes for commentary on today’s teens comes in the form of webcam dispatches from the running back’s girlfriend, and in a barely developed subplot about the bookworm girl being pregnant and conflicted about whether to leave her dusty town in the rearview and pursue her college dreams in New York City. Here’s hoping MTV does a better job with its remake of “Teen Wolf,” because this chainsaw-wannabe leaves a lot to be desired.

Also Available:

The Cat ‘O Nine Tails – Blue Underground continues its one-studio assault on the horror faithful with yet another excellent Dario Argento classic upgraded to high-def.

Biutiful – Javier Bardem throws himself into one hell of a downward spiral for Mexico’s answer to Christopher Nolan, the twisty, narrative loving Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Hijos del Carnival: Seasons 1 and 2 – It’s HBO Latin’s answer to “The Sopranos” – a Brazilian crime saga with samba!

Rio Lobo – The Duke goes Blu and millions of fans rejoice.

Big Jake – I was never one for John Wayne. Maybe it’s a generational thing. But I always loved this tale of a grizzled gunman going after a kidnapped child.

A Man Called Horse – Richard Harris electrifies in this spot-on recreation of Native American life.

Rookie Blue: The Complete First Season – Oh look, another cop procedural from ABC.

American Graffiti: Special Edition – Before he was Han Solo or Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford oozed cool behind the wheel in this George Lucas ode to drive-in diners, hot rod cars and radio that didn’t suck.

Passion Play – Megan Fox as an angel. No, really. And it co-stars Bill Murray. “Zombieland,” this ain’t.

Not to be Overlooked:

The Dorm That Dripped Blood (Synapse Films, 88 minutes, Unrated, Blu-Ray): This low-budget slasher, also known as “Death Dorm” and “Pranks,” hit theaters two years after “Friday the 13th” kickstarted the whole ah-ah-ah-ch-ch-ch-kill-kill-kill movement. It’s an overlooked oddity in the stalk-and-slash cannon, a film that at times is so laugh-out-loud ridiculous that you can’t help but want to pat its head and say, ‘There there, it’s OK. We’re not really laughing at you!’ But how can you not chortle when the lead actress who is playing a college student looks like she’s in her 30s, acts like a hand-wringing mother hen of 45 and has a giant rainbow stencil above her bed. Seriously, someone give her a beer, get her drunk, make her loosen up just a little. She’s supposed to be in college! 

The basic premise is that five students get picked to stay behind after the semester ends to help clean up an abandoned dormitory. One of the students, a very young Daphne Zuniga, has to leave early due to a family obligation, but she and her folks never make it off campus alive. The remaining four kids, and I use the term loosely, find themselves being stalked by an unseen assailant with a fondness for deep frying oil and a knack for staying just far back enough in the shadows to not reveal his or her identity.

Slowly, very slowly, the students get picked off but the majority of kills happen off-camera or are so quick that there’s very little gore. Even the deep fryer kill is filmed in a way that you get very little of the flesh-searing carnage so readily apparent in, say, “My Bloody Valentine.”

Of course, there’s a red herring, a misfit loner student who refuses to vacate his room, and of course, he ain’t the one killing off his classmates.

For all its flaws, “Dorm” is a fairly enjoyable early 80s horror film with more than its share of low-budget awfulsomeness. For instance, there’s a scene where Zuniga’s mom is sitting in a car and from the left edge of the frame, a hand slowly snakes in the car window and unlocks the back door. That’s all you see – the hand and a little stretch of arm. It’s guaranteed to make you howl.

Fans of gritty, harder-edged horror from that era, I’m thinking “The Prowler” or “Maniac,” may find themselves shifting in their seat at the plodding pace and longing for some hardcore gore, but this isn’t the film for them. This one falls squarely in that puckish pack of school-themed slashers like “Prom Night,” “Final Exam” and “The House on Sorority Row.” It’s not great, but the wave of nostalgia it elicits is warm and comforting.

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NBC Gives “The Voice” a Post Super Bowl Slot

Posted Jun 1, 2011 by Walt Belcher

Updated Jun 1, 2011 at 07:30 AM

The Super Bowl is months away but NBC is planning ahead.

The network has picked the singing competition “The Voice” to air after the Super Bowl XLVI on on Feb. 5, 2012.

“The Voice,” NBC’s answer to “American Idol,” will be airing on Monday nights in 2012.

Of course, the playing of the 2011 NFL season and the Super Bowl is contingent upon the adoption of a new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between the league owners and the players.

 

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NBC Gives “The Voice” a Post Super Bowl Slot

Posted Jun 1, 2011 by Walt Belcher

Updated Jun 1, 2011 at 07:27 AM

The Super Bowl is months away but NBC is planning ahead.

The network has picked the singing competition “The Voice” to air after the Super Bowl XLVI on on Feb. 5, 2012.

 

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