The Dog Days Aren't Over

Two weeks until early Fall starts.
It used to be that Sacramento residents had the perfect bridge from summer to Labor Day. It was called Cal Expo, but it hasn't been the same since they moved the State Fair up a month. Now, all we have as a bridge to the fall is the NFL pre-season.

We also have movies, but not as big as the blockbusters between Memorial Day and late July. You know things are winding down when instead of looking forward to Captain America, you have three 3-D movies that are barely 1.5-D in entertainment value.
We got the message when The Help cleaned the clocks of Conan, Spy Kids 4 and Fright Night because its 3-D was in the script. I saw Fright Night, but only in 2-D. I didn't miss much, really. Colin Farrell and David Tennant are the reasons why you should see this movie. Farrell was the most bad-ass vampire this side of Angelus. Buffy would nail this guy, but it would take some time. Tennant was great as Peter Vincent II, this time as a Criss Angel type. Despite the fact it didn't take the movies by storm, even it was a cut above Conan and Spy Kids 4, I'd like to see a follow-up with Peter actually being part of a vampire-hunting group.

I also saw Deadly Sibling Rivalry with Charisma Carpenter doing the "twintrigue" thing. She was scary as the bad twin, hoping to take over the good twin's life. Despite the Good Twin's Daughter figuring out what's going on, Bad twin gets some help from dumb police who never thinks to use DNA to figure out who is who. The story even added a reason why Bad Twin hated her sister. An even nicer twist was how Good Twin came out on top, but only because it was necessary.

Despite that, it got me thinking: how will Ringer keep up its "twintrigue" for longer than 13 episodes? Sure, we'll see a bunch of flashbacks with Sarah Michelle Gellar as Rich (and possibly bad) twin Siobhan and Poor Twin Bridget interacting. However, if FBI agent Nestor Carbolelli doesn't figure out Bridget has a twin sister, and is being forced to impersonate her, then he's too dumb to be an FBI agent. This might drive people away, or remind people of a show in the 1990s where an evil twin frames his good twin for a string of murders, and the cops never figure it out. I think it was actually a plot in In Plain Sight, only the cops did figure it out, and had to deal with it. I figure if Bridget is cleared, but not-dead-after-all Siobhan tries to take over Bridget's life to hide from her enemies, and then Bridget returns the double-cross a couple of times, then we could have something for two seasons. I don't think it can last long after that. Then again, with the option of buying DVDs of shows that even last one season or two (coughFireflycoughDollhouse) maybe you can get away with that. Well, we'll see.

Then there's Doomsday Prophecy, which used to be Doomsday Scrolls except they forgot to make some scrolls. Jewel Staite is great as an archaeologist helping a book editor avert the end of the world, thanks to a videotape from some crackpot author who got his prophecies by holding an ancient rod. Add the fact the government is after the rod, and frames the author and archaeologist for the author's murder as part of a coverup/capture,and it really gets weird. What's more, the book editor used the rod twice to figure out who to trust, and that's cheating. What disappointed me is the ending, where the general behind the search turns out to be nuts, and his insanity is even more disappointing. They also added one twist about the book editor which was unnecessary. The idea that SyFy can make an interesting TV-movie may be more far fetched than having a big mega-shark jump six miles to bite an airplane in flight.

So, at least there is September, where we have a moon landing we never knew about, an epidemic, and a movie about how the Oakland A's got good with little money.