Everybody Loves Kristen Bell

It has been pointed out to me by machine-elves from a higher level of reality that my well-documented and perhaps irrationally strong loathing of NBC's Heroes may be inconsistent with my professed love for Veronica Mars, starring Kristen Bell. Because apparently she's in Heroes too.

Certainly, I would sell my own grandmother for a chance to lick the cheek of Kristen Bell. (My grandmother is dead so I have little use for her. If she were alive I would not sell her.) Wait, that's just creepy. But I was heartbroken when Cy Tolliver bashed her brains in. (Kristen Bell's character in Deadwood, not my grandmother.) But that doesn't mean anything because there are other actors I like in Heroes as well, such as Clea DuVall and that guy from Profit. And Malcolm McDowell remains a favorite of mine, even though probably 98 percent of his filmography is shit.

Plus, as if Bell wasn't firmly enough established as Nerd Princess as it was, she's in Fanboys, the upcoming Star Wars thingie that Darth Weinstein is trying to destroy. And I hate Star Wars almost as much as I hate Heroes.

I don't remember where I was going with this post. But here's the main reason to love Kristen Bell:

[Interviewer:] Are you a typical blonde?
No, because I’m not stupid.

Everybody Hates Heroes

What do all the good and decent people in the world have in common? Aside from being good and decent? They all hate the TV show Heroes. Here's preeminent comics writer Alan Moore in a recent interview in Word Magazine:

I was persuaded to watch it by people who said it nods to Watchmen but God, what a load of rubbish! It's a late-70s X-Men at best and full of terrible ideas and characters who've all been done to death. Beyond death. And the writing shows such contempt for the viewer. The climax, a man who is going to explode is carried off into the air by his brother... did anybody bother to compare the effects of a groundburst with an airburst nuclear explosion?

I'm impressed Moore actually seems to have watched it all the way to the climax. (Maybe he went straight to the finale?) Anyway, here's Tom Spurgeon (commenting on an analysis of the same interview):

Heroes -- an awful TV program made worse but its open mining of "serious" superhero comics 1975-1990 while denying this is being done

Here's my own review of the first four episodes, from last Summer. (And if you thought I was picky, Geoff Klock noticed many more things to hate in the pilot.)

Now, why am I so obsessed with proving that Heroes sucks?

Image: TV Guide cover scan via fan site Watching Heroes.

Silvio: Dapper Dealer of Death

Astute SUPERBLOG!! readers may have noticed something of a blogging slump lately. That's partly because I've been busy working on the script for an NBC pilot called SILVIO: DAPPER DEALER OF DEATH. It's conceived as a joint spin-off of The Sopranos and Heroes (proposed tagline: "From the world of Heroes comes... A new kind of hero!").

SILVIO takes places roughly 30 years in the future, in A.D. 2050, long after everybody in both the Sopranos and Heroes universes are dead. By now the title character Silvio Dante is a cyborg, travelling back and forth through history to prevent evil robots from taking over the world. He's not a very good cyborg, though. His bone marrow has been replaced by very thin aluminum, so his physician tells him to be extra careful. But of course Silvio ignores the doctor's orders and plays fast and loose with death. (In one chilling scene he drives a go-cart.)

As in The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (a major influence on this project), the role of Silvio will be played by several different actors. In the framing sequence, 60-YEAR-OLD SILVIO, played by Sir Ian McKellen, is sitting in a home for senile people, telling stories nobody wants to listen to. In flashbacks we'll see Haley Joel Osment as 30-YEAR-OLD SILVIO. (Steven Van Zandt is in talks to guest-star as 53-YEAR-OLD SILVIO.)

Ravishing Renée Zellweger will play the female lead, described as "a femme fatale with a funny hat". (A projected running joke is that a lot of characters dislike the hat. This causes Sil to angrily mutter "Are you making fun of my girlfriend's hat?" before blowing them away with his cyborg weapons.)

If NBC greenlights this project, I envision it as a huge epic, running at least ten years. As the main character can travel in both time and space, there's literally nowhere the story can't go! (Episode 2 will take place on an underwater planet. Episode 3: Silvio travels to Dallas, 1963, to shoot Kennedy a few extra times. It turns out he was the man on the grassy knoll - a time paradox! Other episodes: "Silvio Helps Build the Pyramids", "Silvio vs Godzilla", etc.)

The illustration above, by professional Internet ad salesperson Mr Moko, visualizes many of the key concepts, making them easy to understand even for people who can't read. Thank you, Mr Moko!

SILVIO: DAPPER DEALER OF DEATH is a co-production of George Lucas, Tom Fontana, and SUPERBLOG!! Please help make SILVIO: DAPPER DEALER OF DEATH a huge success by sending me money.

2007: The Year of Watching DVDs, Part 19: Heroes is Just One Letter Away From Herpes

I dedicate this blog entry to my co-blogger Spammy and my Finnish cousin, who both tricked me into watching this crap.

Heroes, Season 1, Episodes 1-4 (2006)
I went into it with big expectations because my friends hyped it so much. But the story is clumsily told and it feels like I've seen every single detail of it before. I read a review which said, "Heroes" is what you’d get if you crossed the "Spider-Man" flicks and "Lost," but took out the interesting characters, suspenseful plotting, compelling dialogue and imaginative storytelling. Which I thought was pretty accurate. Strictly speaking, I shouldn't call it crap, because it's only mediocre. But there's just so much to dislike, and so little to like. Here's some of the things I hated about the pilot episode:

1. The dialogue. It's clichéd and uninspired and full of exposition. Everything is spelled out for the audience, then spelled out once again to make sure nobody missed the point.
2. The pretentious and boring narration.
3. That the Indian guy - who's supposed to be some kind of scientist - repeats the Ten-Percent Myth (the popular bullshit about how we only use 10 percent of our brains). But I guess he's supposed to be stupid since he takes up residence in a place where he knows he's in danger. Or what?
4. The whiny cheerleader. Poor cheerleader! It must be so hard being a fast healer. I know whenever I get hurt, I always pray I'll stay hurt much longer than last time. And I know that if I were a cheerleader, I would definitely be walking around in my cheerleading outfit all the time.
5. For a show that's so heavily targeted at nerds, there's a surprising lack of attention to the details of nerd culture. For instance, the Japanese office geek claims that Kitty Pryde time-travels in X-Men #143, when it's actually in X-Men #141-142. Besides, any real X-fan would refer to it not by the issue numbers, but as the "Days of Future Past" storyline. (Incidentally, I reread it fairly recently and it's shit.)

Hey, this is fun. Let's go on with some stuff I disliked in the second episode:

6. It's a low-attention-span show. Around 20 percent of this new episode seemed to consist of flashbacks to the last episode. (Which means the show is clearly not meant to be watched on DVD.) And unlike, say, Lost, there's absolutely nothing to be gained by rewatching an episode.
7. As far as I know, "major depressive disorder" is not a death sentence. It's treatable.
8. Again, inattention to nerd culture. The comic book Hiro finds on the newsstand is self-published. Self-published comics don't get newsstand distribution. Fuck, even most comic books published by comparatively big publishing houses don't get newsstand distribution. And Hiro is supposed to be an "honorary" (whatever that means) member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society. Which existed from the mid-60s to the mid-70s.
9. The "portable hard drive" the Indian and the girl finds looks suspiciously like a USB memory stick to me. (But I hate computers so correct me if I'm wrong.)
10. I also hate that the stupid cop acts like a wimp in front of the mean FBI girls. Why is he such a wimp?! (Synchronicity: Clea DuVall had a bit part in Zodiac, which I reviewed last time. And speaking of Lost, Greg Grunberg was of course the pilot in the pilot.)

Blah, I'm not gonna keep doing this. But I will tell you that in the third episode I was irritated that the male nurse still hadn't figured out that he can only fly when his brother is present (which I thought was pretty clear even in episode one), and that the Indian scientist apparently is prone to throwing expensive electronic equipment around when he's tired, and that the guy running for Congress thought he would accomplish something by embarrassing, and lying about, his brother in public (I guess the voters are big on politicians who rat out their family?), and that Hiro thought the American artist would understand him when he spoke Japanese on the phone (Why didn't he ask his English-speaking friend to make the call?), and so on, and so on...

Okay, I'm done.

Heroes: Stupid.