I’m currently in the “it could be fucking awesome!” portion of my oscillating opinion on the BSG prequel, Blood and Chrome. If it’s a high quality production tackling Billy Adama and the first Cylon War? Goodness gracious, it could be terrific.

Miss out on my earlier article about Blood and Chrome? Here you go:

Blood and Chrome takes place 20 years after Caprica and about 40 years before Battlestar Galactica.

Writer of the script Michael Taylor elaborates:

This is very much an action-adventure, war series. This is definitely dealing with people who are fighting the fight. … As you hope ‘Battlestar’ would do, it kind of comments on that process a little bit… but not in a preachy way, not in an issues-oriented way, not in a hitting-you-over-the-head way.

Hit the jump for some concept art from the upcoming series, which is slated to hit in late 2011 or early 2012.

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Oh boy. It’s been a good amount of time since I got good and lathered up. My balls are greased with my own fanboy rage, and those testicles are tethered to high-voltage. Let me tell you something. The Walking Dead finale was fucking putrid. If a dog could shit, eat its own shit, puke out that shit, then eat the puke, then finally shit out the puke-shit, that’s what we’re talking here. Let’s ignore the fact that the prior two episodes sucked a lot too, and just focus on the finale. Wow. Woah. Wow-woah. A tin can of shitty shit. No wonder the writers were fucking fired, no matter what sort of spin they put on it.

Before I fucking lose my mind, a few things. First off, I’m still excited for this show. Why, Ian? Here’s fucking why! The first two episodes were fucking brilliant television. Frank Darabont is still running the show, and he just fired the entire fucking writing staff. So there’s potential. We’ve already seen how fucking excellent it can be. But Jesus Fucking On The Cross, have we seen how low it can go as well.

Rubicon gets canceled, and this banal, poorly written shit draws 8.1 million viewers.

Good lord.

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I like me some The Walking Dead. I like it despite Sunday’s episode being something resembling ass, and none of the episodes having been as good as the first two. So when it came out today that Frank Darabont has fired the entire fucking writing staff, I was momentarily happy. Darabont wrote the first two episodes, and this (theoretically) means he’ll be even more hands on for season two.

io9:

Deadline is reporting a rumor that director, writer and Walking Dead producer Frank Darabont has let the entire writing staff go. And instead of hiring a new staff for the second season, Darabont is toying with the idea of assigning freelancers to each script. While assigning freelancers to TV scripts isn’t anything new, canning the whole writing staff is pretty unusual, and we’re still weighing out the pros and cons of this executive decision.

Darabont penned the series pilot and the second episode solo, while co-writing and rewriting the remaining four episodes of Walking Dead’s first season. Two of the four episodes that Darabont didn’t write were created by “non-staffers” Glen Mazzara and original comic creator Robert Kirkman. So in reality, Darabont is already carrying the bulk of the writing work on his shoulders, so there may not be any need to blow the second season budget on an in-house writing staff.

That being said, the second season has a total of 13 episodes. That doubles the amount of time the production crew will have to spend under the boiling Atlanta sun filming the new episodes. Plus, whatever writer ends up tackling the new scripts, they’re going to be under a very tight schedule. And if Darabont wants to stay as heavily involved as he has been throughout season one (and it sounds like he does) it’s going to take double the effort to write, re-write, produce, shoot, and edit the new season. The burn out factor seems almost inevitable, even with the original comic book outline.

At this point, I’m more impressed than anything. By what? Just the headline. Dude fires the entire writing staff of the most acclaimed new show of the season. It’s not a particularly large staff, and he was already heavily involved, so it almost feels like more bluster and cost-saving than anything.

I don’t give a fuck who writes the episodes, as long as they’re enjoyable. If Darabont sending out assignments to freelancers and staying heavily involved will keep the quality up, let’s do it! Who knows though. I sure fucking don’t.

Boarding Spaceship Earth during the Reagan administration, my childhood occurred in the early 1990s – an era fortunate enough to be blessed with some wonderful pop culture. Mark-Paul Gosselaar set the standard for high school hipness. Macaulay Culkin was bustin’ our guts with displays of suburban terror. And Metallica was reaching the masses while still saying something worthwhile.

But the best pop culture phenomenon was undoubtedly the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In my day, these anthropomorphic creatures battled the forces of evil in cartoons, movies, comics, and video games – and it all kicked ass! We couldn’t get enough of these guys and their fun-loving ways.

Eventually, however, the TMNT love faded away. And this would have been fine. There’s nothing wrong with taking a backseat and being fawned upon by nostalgic nerds from time to time. But the problem is that the turtles were forced (no doubt against their will) to return to the spotlight in some straight-up bobo renditions.

The most offensive of all the later-day TMNT cash-grabs is Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation. Long story short, this late 90s (*shudder*) live action series hoped to revitalize the franchise by introducing a female turtle. Ugh. Check out the press video below:

The worst part of the video comes as Dan Clark, executive creative consultant, attempts to justify the inclusion of Venus:

She brings balance to the boys’ lives — she brings a feminine influence into the house.

Wait, what the fugg is this guy talking about? Doesn’t he understand a damn thing about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? My generation didn’t love the heroes in a half-shell because they used the martial arts as a means of attaining spiritual enlightenment or holistic balance. No, we loved the turtles because they didn’t embark upon such bogus journeys. Instead, they used karate to beat the shit out of bad guys and impress hot newscasters.

And what did they do when they weren’t beating ass? They ate pizza, went clubbing, and skateboarded. In other words, it was a total bro-fest.

And it was glorious.

Get out of my face with that Venus de Milo shit.

What a fucking confluence of awesome is coming together in Hollywood. As we speak. Or maybe, it happened a couple of hours ago. But somehow, something out of a nerd wet dream has occurred. Motherfucking Guillermo Del Toro of Hellboy and Pan’s Labryninth and of course fucking Blade 2 fame is teaming up with David Eick, the executive producer of my eternal television orgasm Battlestar Galactica to create a new live-action television show based on the Hulk.

Fuck yes to the fuck yes! It was rumored a couple of months ago, and now this son of a bitch is confirmed.

Deadline:

Details of the premise are sketchy but I hear that the series will follow an origin story. In it, physicist Bruce Banner, whose alter ego is the green and raging Hulk, will be in his mid-twenties, less reactive and more energized as the world is still his oyster. Unlike the two Hulk movies, in which the monster was a pure CGI creation, the series will employ a mixture of prosthetics, puppetry and CGI. Del Toro and Eick will break the story for the pilot script together, sharing story and created by credit. Eick will write the script, with del Toro attached to direct subject to his availability. Del Toro will also oversee the designing of the Hulk character, which is expected to draw on previous comic book incarnations, as well as the original 1978-82 Incredible Hulk TV series, with a few wild tweaks on the old look.

I find this wildly arousing. Del Toro is a straight-up panic attack excitement guru in my world, and Eick has guided one of my favorite franchises ever. It’s particularly exciting, given the fact that they’re going to take a prosthetic approach to some of the Hulk, and if there’s one thing Del Toro can imagine, it’s fucking monsters. I’ve always secretly jerked off to the notion that his eye for creatures could be directed towards some sort of Star Wars flick, but fuck it, I’ll settle for this.

Thoughts? Impressions? Hit the comments box with your take.

I have to hand it to the writers. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve found the past two episodes in a fucking row! to be engrossing like woah. Ignore the fact that the side stories continue to underwhelm aside from Robocop trying to bring down Dexter and Lumen. The Dexter/Lumen/Jordan chase story has grabbed me by my impressively miniscule genitalia and refused to let go. A certain sadness pangs around my empty gut as I realize that nothing gold can stay, especially a cute relationship between a serial killer vigilante and the woman he saved from a trip to a swamp.

Catharsis. Underpinning this entire episode, and perhaps the remainder of this season’s arc is Dexter’s chase of the impossible. Relief from the murder of his mother. Relief from the murder of his wife. The double-smash of the two female figures he’s cared for the most. As we’ve watched our boy throughout the seasons, he’s struggled with an inability to cope with what’s been done to him. His murder serves, at best, as a mitigation. He never feels completely fulfillment, or complete release from his demons. His dark passenger. His demonic b-boy. Whateevr.

If anything, the show has underlined his hobby’s his continuing fading effectiveness. As seasons have marched, each kill seemed to bring him less and less satisfaction. Cut to this season, and they’re empty loads being blown. No gratification. A rote behavior done with the hope for gratification, only to be filled with Jordan Chase’s accurately diagnosed hole. His killing relief has flat lined.

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Listen, purveyors of cool. If you’re not watching The Walking Dead, you’re fucking up. Done fucking up well. The first two episodes have been ass-clenching awesome. The good news for those of us who are watching it? Well, not only have we made it the best debut for a show ever on AMC, but we’ve earned ourselves a reward.

The show has been picked up for a full second season.

AMC via Slashfilm:

(New York, NY — November 8, 2010) AMC announced today the renewal of “The Walking Dead” for a 13-episode second season. Since debuting Sunday, October 31, “The Walking Dead” has broken ratings records, with the series reaching more Adults 18-49 than any other show in the history of cable television.

“I wish all programming decisions were no brainers like this one,” said Sharon Tal Yguado, SVP Scripted Programming. “‘The Walking Dead’ is a TV masterpiece on so many levels. We want at least 10 seasons, if not more. Kudos to AMC!”

AMC’s “The Walking Dead” is based on the comic book series written by Robert Kirkman and published by Image Comics.   Kirkman serves as an executive producer on the project and three-time Academy Award-nominee Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) serves as writer, director and executive producer. Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator, Aliens, Armageddon, The Incredible Hulk), chairman of Valhalla Motion Pictures, serves as Executive Producer. David Alpert from Circle of Confusion and Charles “Chic” Eglee (Dexter, The Shield, Dark Angel) serve as Executive Producers.

Fucking awesome. The best part is that it’s an entire season. Right now, this little ditty we’re being treated to is a six-episode cock tease. Good lord, it’s going to be over before we know it. At least we have something to look forward to! Right on.

I need to stop hating on Zack Snyder. For, you know, destroying Pepsibones’ most beloved graphic novel of all time. Why? ‘Cause after seeing the newest trailer for Sucker Punch, something has become apparent. Zack Snyder and I both share the same mindset. Apparently we are both over-sexed permanent thirteen year-olds. We like hot chicks, mechs, karate swords, and slow motion. A lot. The trailer is so fucking base, so retarded, so generic, so fucking amazing. Somehow I can watch it while knowing that it’s mindless, dick-stroking babe objectification and cheeseball pandering, and not just like it. But sweat it. Sweat it with a bulge in my pants that commands thunder and perhaps pity. It is a thunderously small portion of little boy meat.

I want to hang out with Zack Snyder, Rob Liefeld, and Dude Huge at the same time so badly. We’ll all snort viagra and run around an arcade wearing Gears of War armor and pointing and screaming at every set of tits we see. Then Liefeld will try and draw the boobs we see, and they’ll all have broken backs, enormous jugs, and cloven feet. To dream. To dream.

Hit the jump to be fucking x-treme and check out the trailer.

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Just read about this and wanted to share.

Apparently in 1987, someone wearing a Max Headroom mask pirated a Chicago-area TV signal and interrupted the regularly scheduled broadcast. The chaos that ensued can be found below. I can’t articulate why, but I love it.

Double frak. SyFy, not content enough to let Caprica shit all over my beloved Battlestar Galactica mythos is prepping a new prequel series that’ll detail the run of Willy “Husker” Adama. SyFy is kicking shit off with Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome in either late 2011, or early 2012. Motherfuckers. They will then parlay this shit into a new series.

io9:

The script, by Michael Taylor, was originally planned as an online series, but the network liked it so much that they decided to turn it into a possible new series on the network. Blood and Chrome takes place 20 years after Caprica and about 40 years before Battlestar Galactica.

Well, it could be worse, guys. It could be written by Jane Espenson, who fucking sucks. Not only were her episodes in latter BSG awful – hint, look for the shitty episodes, you’ll see her name attached – but she ripped fat narrative craps all over Caprica.

Michael Taylor, on the other hand, is legit. Dude wrote BSG season three’s Unfinished Business, and Crossroads Part I. Legit, ball-tingling episodes. So who knows. Maybe it’ll rock. Maybe it won’t. Whatever it is, it’s guaranteed to have more action, and shiz.

This is very much an action-adventure, war series. This is definitely dealing with people who are fighting the fight. … As you hope ‘Battlestar’ would do, it kind of comments on that process a little bit… but not in a preachy way, not in an issues-oriented way, not in a hitting-you-over-the-head way.

So we’ll see. More Viper piloting awesomeness? It could happen. I’m all over the place when thinking about this shit. Just remember, it could be worse. It could be Jane Espenson. Or fucking Bryan Singer.

Hit me with your thoughts in the box. Comments box.