Capone Pops his Comic-Con Cherry at JJ Abrams "Fringe" Premiere!!
MikeM
Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here, except it's really Capone in San
Diego this week, attending my first Comic-Con. The event's Preview
Night has just ended, and there are already things to discuss. The
highlight on Wednesday was the first-ever legal, non-leaked-on-the-
evil-internet (paraphrasing co-showrunner J.J. Abrams' video
introduction) screening of the pilot for the new Fox series "Fringe,"
set to premiere September 9 and run Tuesdays at 9pm (EST).
Not surprisingly, the pilot is a real attention grabber, with Abrams &
Co. (including Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, the team behind Abrams'
Star Trek movie) giving us yet another series opener that begins with
a fated airliner. Unlike "Lost," nobody survives this flight from
Germany, which lands on autopilot in Boston. In fact, the way the
passengers and crew die is pretty fucking gruesome, especially a
certain co-pilot. FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham (Australian lovely
Anna Torv) is brought in to investigate by her overbearing, often
cruel boss (played by "The Wire's" Lance Reddick, who also appeared in
a couple "Lost" episodes this last season). The evidence leads Dunham
and fellow agent John Scott (Mark Valley of "Boston Legal"), who also
happens to be Dunham's secret lover, to a storage facility where they
find a strange lab and a familiar-looking man operating it. The
ensuing chase results leads to near-fatal results for Scott when an
unknown mixture of chemical causes his skin to crystalize and actually
become see through. The effect is unbelievably cool.
Dunham search becomes two fold: find the possible terrorist who killed
a plane load of people and find a cure for her dying boyfriend. Both
searches lead her to Walter Bishop (John Noble), a former Harvard
researcher who has been locked up for crazy for the last 20 years. The
only way Dunham can interview him is to get the permission of a family
member, so she finds Bishop's son, Peter (Josh Jackson), an
intelligent wheeler-dealer who sometimes seems more con artist than
actual genius. The rest of the show is a wild ride toward a scientific
cure that takes this group of investigators and researchers from
trying to cure one man to uncovering what may be a global conspiracy
to turn portions of the world's population into human lab rats--a
phenomenon known as "The Pattern" in certain whispering circles. I
love that the Abrams bunch has pretty much taken the documentary THE
CORPORATION and turned it into the basis for this promising show. The
idea that apparently random events in recent history (such as massive
tsunamis) may have been the result of testing on a giant scale. I'm
guessing it's no coincidence that our Dr. Bishop shard a lab at
Harvard back in the day with a man who now runs one of the largest
industrial science-based complexes in the world.
The cast is across-the-board strong as a rock. Torv is a great new
face who seems pretty game as a skeptical investigator whose work on
this case opens up a new career for her--to look into criminal or
dangerous abuses of "fringe science," such as teleportation,
invisibility, and reanimation. Yes, I said it! Re-fucking-animation!
Also very good in the cast is Blair Brown as the ice-cold corporate
mouth piece for the big corporation. She's only in a couple of scenes,
but they are two of the most revealing sequences in the film, and
she's just masterful. Noble's portrayal of Dr. Bishop might be in need
of a little toning down. This incarnation of Bishop might be too
"nutty professor," which I realize is exactly what he is. But it just
felt a little forced. That being said, he delivers some of the show's
best lines, especially when he sets out to cook up a batch of homemade
LSD.
In many ways, "Fringe" is a more reality-based version of "The X-
Files." I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, nor will I be
the last. But that's because the tone of the show and the potential
cases that Dunham and the Bishop men will look into seem right out of
a more believable, science-based version of "The X-Files." Whether the
series can keep up the immediacy of the first episode is unknown, but
I'm thinking yes. The pilot is a slam dunk, and at the very least,
check that out in September and prepare to be immensely entertained.
I've got more interviews and panel write-up over the next few days
than I care to admit. But myself, Quint, and Mr. Beaks will do our
damnedest to bring it all to you. For myself on Thursday, I'll be
bringing you material from CITY OF EMBER, TWILIGHT, PUSH, and
(hopefully) HBO's "True Blood." Plus a few surprises. The updates are
going to come at you fast and furious this year. Try to keep up.
-Capone
cap...@aintitcool.com
Rob Jensen
<Michae...@vzw.blackberry.net> wrote:
>In many ways, "Fringe" is a more reality-based version of "The X-
>Files." I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, nor will I be
>the last. But that's because the tone of the show and the potential
>cases that Dunham and the Bishop men will look into seem right out of
>a more believable, science-based version of "The X-Files."
Not. It's just the X-Files with a small slice of Numb3rs.
>Whether the
>series can keep up the immediacy of the first episode is unknown, but
>I'm thinking yes. The pilot is a slam dunk, and at the very least,
>check that out in September and prepare to be immensely entertained.
I checked it out in July and was moderately amused by John Noble &
Joshua Jackson. I yawned at the show's feeble attempt to use Dharma
Initiative-esque symbols inside the Massive Dynamics HQ.
I think Moriarty was paid to shill for the show.
-- Rob
--
LORELAI: I am so done with plans. I am never, ever making one again.
It never works. I spend the day obsessing over why it didn't work
and what I could've done differently. I'm analyzing all my shortcomings
when all I really need to be doing is vowing to never, ever make a plan
ever again, which I'm doing now, having once again been the innocent
victim of my own stupid plans. God, I need some coffee.