September 23, 2007

Tuesday

Preview Review - The Bionic Woman
Tomorrow night is the premiere of one of the few new fall shows with a female lead. I'm a big fan of David Eick, Executive Producer of Battlestar Galactica, who is brains behind this show too. The premise is the pretty much the same as the original Bionic Woman, Jamie Sommers here played by English actress Michelle Ryan is injured in a devastating car crash and several of her body parts are replaced with bionics. Mind you these are not 1970s bionics, but 2007 bionics -- so the action scenes are quicker and way cooler than the version with Lindsay Wagner.

The show is great from an action perspective especially all the scenes with Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck from Battlestar), as rebel bionic woman Sarah Corvus in them, but the biggest problem (and I don't know how they are going to solve it) is with Michelle Ryan. She is just terrible and stiff. Hopefully, she will relax as the season progresses. I was also pissed off that the first major action sequence is a fight between the two Bionic women. I guess a Bionic girlfight will make the guys happy.

News

The Madcat Women's International Festival is happening this week in SF. We is an interview with curator Ariella Ben-Dov. Madcat

I love and respect Dr. Martha Lauzen, the professor at San Diego State University who tracks women working in the film and TV industries. Here is a profile of her. Love the first paragraph.

"Martha Lauzen won't divulge her age, her marital or familial status, even her history on the faculty at San Diego State University. They are inquiries, she says, on which women for too long have been judged."
Full article from the Bend Weekly: Lauzen is Keeping an Eye on Hollywood

Jessica Biel is in talks to play Wonder Woman in the new Justice League movie.

Sally Field has supposedly signed to play Mary Todd Lincoln opposite Liam Neeson in Steven Spielbery's adaptation
of Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln


TV Tonight

Series Premiere
Cane about a Cuban American family in South Florida starring Jimmy Smits and a predominantly Latino cast including Hector Elizondo and Rita Moreno. It was created by Cynthia Cidre the screenwriter of the Mambo Kings. Jimmy Smits said this about the show and its creator: "Cynthia is somebody I respect, whose voice is authentic." (EW)


Season Premieres

Bones
Law & Order SVU- Cynthia Nixon guest stars as a woman suspected of abandoning her child.

DVD Releases
Black Book- Paul Verhoeven goes back to his native Netherlands to tell the story of a jewish singer in hiding from the Nazis who fall in love with a Nazi officer. Very good movie. (subtitled)
Evening- read my earlier review on the Huffington Post: Evening

Anti-woman confirmation of the week
Diet confessions of the stars from US Magazine

"I basically stuck with fruit, vegetables and fish [to slim down doe The Devil Wears Prada]. I wouldn't reccomed that. Emily Blunt and I would clutch at each other and cry because we were so hungry." Anne Hathaway

"I have often felt there was a lot of pressure on me to look good...It's like they pay me not to eat. It's living hell." Marcia Cross