PSYCH

I've been watching the USA show Psych for a couple years. Each episode is a happy potluck of inventively geeky plots, low-stakes drama, fake psychicry and real cowardice, Easter Egg pineapples, rapidfire wiseassery, Final Jeopardy-level eighties references, third-tier celebrity appearances, and, dependably, yet more fodder for my crush on Secret-Latino James "Roday" Rodríguez. (Oh, James, talk Tejano to me!)


Best (and most surprising) of all is the occasional emergence of really savvy horror-homage elements. I'd credited the writers alone for these secret-handshake gestures (such as the name of the final episode of the second season: "Shawn [and Gus] of the Dead") until I watched February's documentary on the SciFi channel (back before it was Siphy), His Name Was Jason: 30 Years of Friday the 13th, wherein Rodríguez Roday gushed his commentary and memories in the company of innumerable Hollywood power players. Yes, the varied cast of grateful creators and thinkers illustrates the far and wide influence of Friday the 13th. Indeed, there are many commentators whose names I almost recognized!

His gushing proved it: James Roday appears to be the genuine article, a dyed-in-the-dollar-cinema horror geek. (He was also the biggest name attached to the Freddy Tribute Special even if you DO count the next-highest contenders--and you most certainly shouldn't, as they were all involved in the original project, namely Cunningham, Manfredini, and Savini.)

Learning that Roday was a genre nerd sealed the deal on my infatuation, naturalmente. Apparently the lead actors on Psych have a pretty considerable hand in shaping the show's content. They even did a group panel--actors and writers--at this year's San Diego ComicCon. Unusual? Mmmmmyyyeeeeeesssss.

The most blatantly and thoroughly genriffic episode was, of course, "Tuesday the 17th", the penultimate episode of last season. This season has so far brought us an Exorcist-inspired episode ("The Devil Is in the Details... And the Upstairs Bedroom", August 28) and last week's episode, "Let's Get Hairy", a werewolf-themed episode featuring none other than David Naughton. (Okay, it featured one other than David Naughton; Biff from Back to the Future played, as well. Hey, I said third-tier and I meant it.) It bears mentioning that there is no genuine supernatural element to the show. Rather, as straight mysteries go, nothing is what it seems, and the culprit never turns out to be reeeeaaal ghoooosts wooooo. It's a little like Scooby-Doo that way. Also, the protagonists are a duo of constantly-in-over-their-heads goofballs who bug eyes and turn tail almost as often as they munch branded snacks. Make of that what you will.


Alas, I lack basic cable, so I've not yet caught tonight's episode, the fall finale. However, USA Network graciously places the full episodes on their website one week after they air. I can't link to a specific video but the navigation is easy-peasy.

Full (recent) Episodes of PSYCH at USANetwork.com

¡Llámame, Jaime! ¡Te quiero!

Review: Zombieland

It's gotten harder and harder to knock my socks off with a movie. Lately the honor seems reserved for sparsely set dramas that lay on the abject, self-destructive, human-condition themes fairly thick.

The trailer for Zombieland, however, had me over the moon with juvenile excitement--RJ and me both, actually. It was our favorite movie ever that we hadn't actually seen. The snappy physical comedy, unaffected cinematography, dorky lead, witty third-person omniscient observations, slow motion attacks, Van fucking Halen--what wasn't exciting? I declared it "the perfect zomedy", a sentence which physically pained me to construct, since I've said time and again that I'm no fan of neologisms, and, further, that neologistic portmanteaus are outright offensive. But in this case there was no other way to say it.

The actual movie keeps the trailer's promise by delivering all these fun features, distributed quite adequately, and more. I won't even give it away, because the second act has a prize so timeless and perfect that Harrison Ford himself would get off his Hoveround just to catch a glimpse of it.

None of this will come as any surprise to those who've been following Zombieland at all (of course, those people will have already seen it by now). It's holding steady as a B+ at Rotten Tomatoes and handily earned back its budget in the first weekend (domestic).

The weaknesses are brought by the comedy element alone, and are fine examples to illustrate why I don't care for comedies in general: Dialog is dedicated to larfs rather than nuanced exposition of well-thought-out characters, so it's hard to care when disaster (or even love) befalls them.

Secondly, similarly, and tragically (I say "tragically" because it cropped up at the very end, leaving a sour taste in my mouth about the film overall), the comedy actually irreparably undercut the climax. I'm giving away little (and even less worth preserving) when I say the movie's last act takes place in an amusement park that a couple of characters had been trekking to, thinking it a safe haven. Obviously, this Shangri-La gives the film its name, and would have done so from the concept stage of production, when, perhaps, the characters were more fluid and the tone of the film, like a flan in the oven, was not yet set. It's a crime that the first sixty minutes of the movie grew to be something downright remarkable but, due to the locked-in title, (if my projections are correct) that stupid finale in the stupid theme park had to stay. Nevermind that it makes no logical sense on any scale, that savvy characters become as hapless children when they set foot in Pacific Playland. Nevermind even that the very goal of getting these streetwise characters to the park necessitates a precipitate string of out-of-character decisions.

BAH. Nevermind. I'm going back to thinking about the great parts, and there are many.

Does this flick knock Shaun of the Dead off the throne? That's subjective, a matter of taste. There would be no Zombieland without Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, I'm sure, but the quality of the former is undeniable. It's close enough, though, that there will be a hearty debate in horror-geek circles on the topic for years to come. And that's refreshing.

The Ultimate Zombie Survival Guide

A 10-minute faux-vintage informational video. Check it out at YouTube.

Simon Pegg & Nick Frost Fight Zombies

I have no idea what this comes from or how old it is. All told it's about a half hour, slow, and not exactly brilliant, but still thirty minutes better spent this way than watching TWO AND A HALF MEN or something. Cute.

28 Days Later

...in One Minute, in One Take:



I guess I post enough stuff that's creepy and/or depressing. Here's something full of British charm and cheer!