The Week In Geek: American Horror Story, Joss Whedon,Clash of the Titans & More

American Horror Story Gets Picked Up

In what is seemingly the fastest pick-up for a second season in the FX network’s history, American Horror Story has been renewed for a second season after only airing four episodes. So far, Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s American Horror Story has been FX’s highest rated first season of any of their series ever, and they are wasting no time capitalizing on it by issuing this early renewal. After Glee and Nip/Tuck, AHS is their third hit series for Fox.

I’m gonna admit, I am seriously addicted to this show. It essentially rips off every horror movie ever made mind you. I mean, you get a riff on the creepy dead twins from The Shining, a young girl’s hair going gray from fear like in A Nightmare on Elm Street, and a mentally challenged girl being shoved into the tiny closet by her mother like in Carrie. And really, that’s just for starters. Hell, they even lift iconic pieces of music from Psycho and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I guess all this theft doesn’t bother me too much simply because none of these horror movie tropes have ever been used in an ongoing narrative like this. I guess that makes this kind of original in an odd way.

Having said all that, the show is highly entertaining trash. It’s like Melrose Place, but with ghosts. And MP was a guilty pleasure back in the day, I never missed it. And then there’s the awesome Jessica Lange, who is way too good for this show, but steals every scene she’s in. So this show is the true definition of guilty pleasure for me, even more so than the equally trashy and addictive True Blood, because at least on True Blood they seem to be aware of what they are and don’t take themselves half as serious as the producers behind this show seem to do. You can tell they think they’re making something arty (uh, no) But it is just so trashy and campy and fun I can’t resist it. So I for one am happy this show has given me a new cheesy  supernatural soap to watch, and am thrilled we’re already getting a year two.

Anne Rice Slams Sparkly Twilight Vamps

 When one celebrity says something nice about another in print or in social media, it never makes headlines. But when they say something even mildly considered negative, it seems every news outlet runs with it. This is what happened this past week, when Vampire Chronicles author Anne Rice posted on her Facebook page just what her famous vampire characters Lestat and Louis have to say about the ever popular Twilight vampires:

 “Lestat and Louis feel sorry for vampires that sparkle in the sun. They would never hurt immortals who choose to spend eternity going to high school over and over again in a small town, anymore than they would hurt the physically disabled or the mentally challenged. My vampires possess gravitas. They can afford to be merciful.”

  Oh, Snap. Obviously the post was made in good fun (Rice has gone out of her way since then to say she was only poking fun, and has nothing against Meyer or Twilight) but of course, the media has since turned this into some kind of war. But as a huge lover of Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and a true hater of the whole Twilight phenomenon (on multiple levels) I’ll admit that reading this brought a bit of happiness to my black little heart.

Clash of the Titans 3 Already A Go?

Clash of the Titans 2, AKA Wrath of the Titans, has barely entered the post production phase and Warner Brothers has already announced a Clash of the Titans 3. Way to count your chickens before they hatch there, Warners! The screenwriters behind Wrath, Dan Mazeau and David Leslie Johnson, have been hired to write part three, with the hope that the movie begin filming next year. Sam Worthington is expected to return as well. Hopefully part two is WAY better than part one was, or this might go down is the most unwanted trilogy in the history of cinema. Was anyone really clamoring for this out there? Or like me were they perfectly willing to forget it ever happened?

Joss Whedon’s Secret Movie Announced

Apparently, between the big screen version of The Avengers, overseeing (and occasionally writing) Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 9 from Dark Horse Comics, and mounting a new film version of Much Ado About Nothing, Joss Whedon was simply not busy enough. Nope, he’s now got another project on his slate, a film he’s writing (but not directing) called In Your Eyes. Described as a “metaphysical love story about two seemingly polar opposites who are deeply connected in ways neither could have ever imagined.” Apparently Whedon wrote this years ago and put it on a shelf, but now that he and his wife Kai Cole have started their own mini production company Bellwether Films, a lot of older Whedon ideas might now see the light of day. The director for In Your Eyes is Brin Hill, who already has several award winning short films to his credit.

Head of Universal Studios Gets Real.

In an interview with Movieline magazine this week, Universal Studios president Ron Meyer was pretty open and candid about many of their recent movies being, well…pretty shitty. “Cowboys & Aliens wasn’t good enough. Forget all the smart people involved in it, it wasn’t good enough, all those little creatures bouncing around were crappy. I think it was a mediocre movie, and we all did a mediocre job with it. Land of the Lost was just crap, I mean, there was no excuse for it. The best intentions all went wrong. Scott Pilgrim, I think, was actually kind of a good movie. [Addressing a small section of the audience, cheering.] But none of you guys went! And you didn’t tell your friends to go! But, you know, it happens.”

 “Cowboys & Aliens didn’t deserve better. Land of the Lost didn’t deserve better. Scott Pilgrim did deserve better, but it just didn’t capture enough of the imaginations of people, and it was one of those things where it didn’t cost a lot so it wasn’t a big loss. Cowboys & Aliens was a big loss, and Land of the Lost was a huge loss. We misfired. We were wrong. We did it badly, and I think we’re all guilty of it. I have to take first responsibility because I’m part of it, but we all did a mediocre job and we paid the price for it. It happens. They’re talented people. Certainly you couldn’t have more talented people involved in Cowboys & Aliens, but it took, you know, ten smart and talented people to come up with a mediocre movie. It just happens.”

However, the recent movie that got the most harsh treatment had to be The Wolfman:  “One of the worst movies we ever made was Wolfman. Wolfman and Babe 2 are two of the shittiest movies we put out. The cast was awful. The director was wrong. Benicio [del Toro] stunk. It all stunk.” 

Damn. It is hard to get a CEO to ever be that honest when their product sucks, but while I realize that Meyer is getting a lot of praise for being truthful, at the same time I think he is being kind of tacky here too. Not only that, he’s throwing a lot of good movies under the bus simply because they didn’t make money. Babe 2: Pig in the City was critically liked (a lot of people love it more than the first) and has a fresh Rotten Tomatoes score.  It is hardly the worst movie they’ve ever put out, but it  lost the studio a lot of money. This just shows that to a Meyer, a bad movie is simply one that loses a lot of money. I mean, since Babe 2, Universal has put out crap like Van Helsing and I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry. But since they made more money they are “better?” While it is nice to have someone at the head of a company admit their mistakes, it sucks that the everyone in charge now is someone who cares very little for the creative process and only the bottom line.