Fear Itself on NBC

Yeah, I thought it was pretty damn good. FYI, this is basically season 3 of MASTERS OF HORROR; Showtime and Anchor Bay dropped it, so NBC and Lionsgate picked it up and retitled it. Obviously a lot of people are bitching about the fact that it's NBC, but given that nearly every episode of MEDIUM opens with some kind of dismemberment I think the standards for violence on network television have loosened enough for this to work...

What makes me love that this show is on is that Mary Harron (American Psycho) is finally getting a chnace to direct one of these things. Katt Shea may also be iven a shot.

What makes me nervous is that Mick Garris, who started Master of Horror, is out. Why? not sure.

I have to be honest - I loved the concept of Masters of Horror, but actually only thought one or two episodes were actually "good". This may prove to be the same way.

I couldn't agree more about MASTERS...there were a few good ones (I thought both the Dantes were amazing, as was Carpenter's CIGARETTE BURNS), but for the most part it was totally mediocre. Hopefully FEAR ITSELF will be a little more consistent...and yeah, Harron is amazing, so I can't wait to see what she does.

The official story is that Garris left when NBC decided to move forward with the series during the WGA strike by using Canadian writers. Whether or not there's more to it than that, I have no idea...

In a totally different direction...

I noticed that in the trailer, there were a lot of counter-productive shots, shots where they were going for the "wow!" factor but come across as more of a "look at us, we're so clever 'cause we're auteurs!" camera work.

One of the things I really liked about the original Twilight Zone is how simply they shot the series - there were never any shots that called attention to themselves - you were always focused on the actors and the story. And it wasn't because they didn't have good DPs for the series, Clemens (the main DP) won an Emmy and was nominated for 3 more, and Pittack (who shot 20 eps) was nominated for 3 Emmys.

Jessica

That's just the way the promos are cut. Remember the eleventh commandment: Thou Shalt Not Judge a Film by its Trailer

i thought the 11th commandment was "Thou Shalt Not Enjoy a Mick Garris Film". Crap! I have had it wrong all this time?

On the few Masters of Horror I've seen I've noticed that they tend to trip over themselves on the cinematography - could it be that I've just seen bad eps?

Jessica

No - I noticed that too.

I genuinely felt that some of the FX were not so hot either. Dear God I love Greg Nictoero, but some of the FX were just embarassing. Also, the scripts never seemed to come together except in 2 or so episodes each season.

Watched the first episode, The Sacrifice. Thought it was pretty good, actually. I'm ok that the episode wasn't splattered with grue. In fact, it felt like an honest attempt at storytelling was being made.

Looking forward to future episodes.

I've never had Showtime so it being on NBC is workin out for me.

And I don't think they tried to get tooo fancy in the pants with the camera shots. About the only really interesting shot was coming back from commercial with Lemon hanging but they showed his face rightside up and then they did a big flip to show he was hanging, but I mean it was obvious.

This show is surprisingly pretty good. I think the first one and the wedding/serial killer one were slightly dud-ish, but the latest episode was good, and the next one, the zombie one, looks like it will be good.

Does anyone know who sings the theme song? It sounds a LOT like Serj Tankien!

SNAP. broseph really is just a fanboy with good connections. he interviews a panel comprised of landis, carpenter and cronenberg on the criterion videodrome and it really looks like he might just spooj on all their faces the moment someone says "cut".

i made an effort to be near a tv when larry fessenden's episode was on and it was half decent, but it's larry fucking fessenden. i haven't seen any other episodes.

Rachael, did you enjoy The Last Winter? I wasn't impressed. I thought it was really well acted and that it looked great, but the storyline was not my cup of tea. I kept waiting for something scary to happen, and I never felt like it did.

i felt the same way you did, and i am telling myself that it's not my boy's fault because it's the first film that he has written with someone else in quite a while. he's a slow-burn kind of writer/director, but the burn never quite happened with that one.

What the Hell happened to the show? The Olympics came and it went and i've not heard or seen anything else about it

First the olympics, and then the election - it's like they're trying to keep me from thinking straight. Good question, Amy!

Yeah they were suppsoed to make, what, 13 episodes? We've only seen like 7, right?

I don't think you will be seeing the rest of these episodes, they might put them out on a dvd but there wasn't a big enough audience and they pulled the episodes that didn't air. I guess we'll have to see what they will do with them now because I know they were all filmed. I was really looking forward to seeing the one that Mary Harron did, the director of Bale's American Psycho.

I thought the show was pretty good, for low budget network TV. Some of the episodes fell way flat, but the last one they showed, the cannibal/wendigo one, was awesome.

They really didn't advertise it, they stuck it on a Thursday night at 10pm, what did they expect? I thought they were really good for regular Joe schmo TV.

It's a shame really, somehow, horror fans have become the forgotten to network executives since Rod Serling left the scene! Even when they do come up with something horror/sci-fi genre related, they never put any muscle behind their meat nor do they invest much money. Somehow, horror fans have been the red headed step children (not Stepford) for network t.v. *sniff*

Networks, like movie studios, operate under the "four tentpole" theory: they want projects that appeal to over 30s, under 30s, men and women. Horror, they probably think, only appeals to under 30s and to men more than women.

Jessica