Author: Will Harris (Page 1 of 41)

Movie Review: “Chappie”

Starring
Sharlto Copley, Dev Patel, Hugh Jackman, Sigourney Weaver, Ninja, Yo-Landi Visser, Jose Pablo Cantillo
Director
Neill Blomkamp

There’s still reason to be hopeful about 20th Century Fox’s decision to hand the reigns of the next “Alien” movie to Neill Blomkamp, but the bloom is likely to be off the rose for a lot of sci-fi fans after they take a gander at “Chappie,” which continues Blomkamp’s series of declining returns after the disappointing “Elysium.”

It is in no way surprising that among the first words uttered by an audience member upon the conclusion of the advance screening of “Chappie” involved the phrase “if ‘Robocop’ and ‘Short Circuit’ had a baby.” After all, the film – co-written by Blomkamp and his wife, Terri Tachell – takes place in the not-too-distant future and revolves around the decision by the city of Johannesburg, South Africa to adopt a partially robotic police force. These aren’t cyborgs, a la the officer formerly known as Alex Murphy: they’re 100% robot, designed by programmer extraordinaire Deon Wilson (Dev Patel). Despite what he’s already achieved in his field, Wilson continues to strive for a greater breakthrough, focusing his sights on the goal of cracking the consciousness code, as it were, and creating the first sentient robot.

As you might expect, Wilson achieves this goal in short order, but his boss (played by Sigourney Weaver) isn’t wooed by his pitch to experiment with his consciousness program on a damaged robot marked for destruction and denies his request. Now, in fairness, his pitch is really, really terrible. Who goes to the head of a company that makes police robots and starts off by mentioning that one of the benefits of sentience is that a robot can judge the merits of art and write its own poetry? But as you might also expect, her denial in no way stops him from deciding to swipe the deactivated robot and do his experiment anyway.

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The Light from the TV Shows: Dean Stockwell discusses leaping into ‘NCIS: New Orleans”

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How did Dean Stockwell come to reunite with his former Quantum Leap co-star, Scott Bakula, on tonight’s episode of NCIS: New Orleans? The answer is about as simple as they come: “They called my agent and I was available, so I said I’d do it.”

This time around, though, Bakula and Stockwell aren’t playing partners…or even close: Stockwell’s character, Tom Hamilton, is a fella who’s suspected of having been involved in a murder 40 years earlier. Plus, if you’ve been watching the series at all, then you’ve already met Tom’s son: Councilman Douglas Hamilton, played by Steven Weber.

“It’s not a big part,” acknowledged Stockwell. “But it’s a key part, and it was great to be able to work with Scott, to go in and feel that comfortable with someone.”

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The Light from the TV Shows: A Chat with Dick Cavett

Dick Cavett steps out of the elevator, hangs a right, and strolls into the lobby of the Beverly Hilton, a man on a mission: to participate in the promotion of a PBS documentary which premieres on August 8 at 9 PM EST/PST: Dick Cavett’s Watergate, an examination of the Watergate scandal and its effects on Richard Nixon’s presidency that’s structured around archival clips from Cavett’s late night talk show.

DickCavettWatergate

After introducing himself, Cavett can’t resist making an observation about the familiarity of his surroundings: “You know, this is the same lobby where I stood when I was out here for two weeks auditioning to be a writer on The Jack Paar Show.” As has been the case for Cavett on more than few occasions during the course of his half-century (and then some) in the TV business, this observation proves to be only the first sentence of an anecdote.

“I came into the hotel one night and I heard singing,” continued Cavett, glancing and vaguely gesturing at the entrance to a nearby ballroom. “I opened a big door, and Judy Garland was onstage. The lights came on, and there were George Burns, Jack Benny, Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyck, Kirk Douglas, and about a hundred more. It was a huge charity thing. You couldn’t see any face that you didn’t know!”

With this brief recollection, Cavett immediately confirms that at least one of his lines during his memorable appearance on The Simpsons was absolutely spot-on: he really does have some wonderful stories about famous people that involve him in some way.

Who came up with the idea of viewing the Watergate scandal through the prism of your show?

You know, I think (executive producer Robert S.) Bader did. I’m almost certain he did. Yeah, he’s the one who’s most up on tapes that I had and stuff like that, so I don’t think it could’ve been anyone else. He just went through the stuff. I think initially he looked at 350 Cavett shows to make the (Shout Factory) DVDs, and then he just finally had to stop looking at them and start making them! But I was stunned to find how much stuff we have. It’s going to be a strain to make it only an hour. There’s so much good stuff. That’s a luxury, because there are so many shows that are a strain to make even an hour.

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The Light from the TV Shows: A Chat with Sinbad

IF you grew up in the ’90s, then your first frame of reference to “Sinbad” is almost certainly not that of a sailor. Between his work on the small screen with A Different World, his feature film work in Houseguest and Jingle All the Way, and his stand-up comedy, the man born as David Adkins is surely the first and foremost Sinbad in your mind. As such, you’ll no doubt be thrilled to learn that he’s back with a new stand-up special, Make Me Wanna Holla, which premieres tonight on Comedy Central. We had a chance to chat with Sinbad recently about his new comedy effort, his back catalog of films and TV series, and how our next look at him is likely to be on YouTube.

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Bullz-Eye: Being that pop culture has such a short-term memory problem, it’s got to drive you crazy that you’ve never really gone away, and yet this new special is causing people to say, “Sinbad’s back?”

Sinbad: You know, it’s funny, man. This is the thing with pop culture: I guess you’d say the difference is… Well, there’s always been old school and new school, but when I was coming up, you knew who the old cats were, and it wasn’t like they had less value. I look at Quincy Jones and cats like that, and to me they just got better and better, and you wanted to be like them. Now, if you’re not in the public eye on a daily basis, you’re just gone. I mean, like, gone gone. Like, “I think he’s dead!” [Laughs.]

BE: Have you had to endure any false death claims on social media?

S: Oh, I was one of the first ones the internet killed. [Laughs.] They killed me twice! But I keep coming back!

BE: For those who haven’t been following your stand-up, you’re still following the same general format, as far as the type of material you do, right?

S: Well, the material always changes. I don’t know what the format is, though. To me, the only format is that it’s got to be funny.

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The Light from the TV Shows: Chatting with the Cast of WGN’s ‘Salem’

For years, WGN has been a network that’s gotten precious little notice from most cable subscribers outside of Chicago, but in recent years, they’ve been trying to expand their viewership through moves like, for instance, serving as the exclusive U.S. home of the long-running Canadian comedy, Corner Gas. Unfortunately, that didn’t turn out to be the ratings-grabber that they’d hoped it might be, but things are on the upswing now that the network has branched out and begun their own original programming, kicking off their new roster with the supernatural period-piece drama Salem.

Bullz-Eye was invited to visit the set a few weeks back, and we were amazed at how well they’ve captured the look and feel of the era, but we were a little bit thrown when we discovered that our interview ops with the cast members were to be done on camera…even if we weren’t going to be using the footage! Still, we had four very nice chats during the course of the day, each featuring two cast members, and we got a bit of insight into how each of them came to join the series, who their characters are, and what we can expect from Salem as the series rolls through its first season.

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