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The world may be on fire, but there’s still plenty of good things left to cheer us up. Namely, Chris Evans and very good puppers. The human golden retriever himself narrates an upcoming IMAX documentary film about heroic dogs, titled Superpower Dogs. The film’s synopsis reads, “Discover the life-saving superpowers and extraordinary bravery of some of the world’s most remarkable dogs.”

The trailer follows the adventures of Halo, a puppy who is trained to be a search and rescue dog. The documentary also portrays other real-life safety doggos. There’s dogs on boats, dogs in planes, dogs climbing the highest mountains, even riding a ski lift. There’s literally nothing not to like about this. We love Chris Evans. We love dogs. We love Chris Evans talking about superhero dogs.

The film is set to hit IMAX theaters in March, and you should probably go unless you hate wonderful things. Now if only we could get Benedict Cumberbatch to narrate a nature doc on the wonderful world of otters…

(via AVClub, image: screencap)

• RIP to Top Chef‘s fan-favorite chef Fatima Ali, who passed away from cancer at 29. (via People)
• In a bittersweet move, season three of Daredevil has been awarded the Golden Tomato Awards Fans’ Choice winner for Favorite TV Show of 2018. (via SyfyWire)
• Hold onto your Poké balls: A sequel to Detective Pikachu is already in the works. (via Kotaku)
• Whether we want it or not, Jared Leto’s Morbius movie is coming to theaters in 2020. (via CBR)

What are you watching this weekend, Mary Suevians?

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*TNT provided the entire series for review. This review contains mild spoilers for the overall story.

TNT’s new limited series, I Am The Night, oscillates between genuine noir thrills and potboiler excess, with touches of the Gothic thrown in for good measure. It’s an intriguing premise, but unfortunately, it doesn’t come together as a cohesive whole.

As one of the titles on each episode states, the story is “Inspired by the life of Fauna Hodel,” a careful turn of phrase. Rather than dramatize Fauna’s sordid and sorrowful true story, writer/creator Sam Sheridan, working with producers Patty Jenkins (who directs the first two episodes) and Chris Pine (who stars as Jay Singletary, a disgraced reporter suffering PTSD from his time in the Korean War), uses it as a springboard to explore a famous unsolved murder.

Themes of family secrets, identity, racism, and police corruption hang in the atmosphere, each worthy of its own exploration, yet each obliterated by the story’s focus, not on Fauna’s identity crisis, but the possibility that her maternal grandfather, George Hodel (played by a perfectly creepy Jefferson Mays), is the Black Dahlia killer.

When we first meet Fauna (a luminous India Eisley), she’s growing up impoverished in Sparks, Nevada, a mixed-race teenager whose alcoholic mother, Jimmie Lee (Golden Brooks) is struggling to raise her. Jimmie Lee also struggles with everything she gave up, including a promising singing career, to raise Fauna, who is not her own child. Fauna’s discovery that she is adopted sends her on an odyssey to Los Angeles to meet her grandfather and find her biological mother. It’s there that she uncovers more family secrets, one of which could possibly get her killed.

Meanwhile, Pine’s Singletary, an invented character helping propel the narrative outside Fauna’s search, is hell-bent on proving Hodel murdered Elizabeth Short (the infamous “Black Dahlia”) and possibly other women in gruesome fashion. Having been humiliated years earlier while covering Hodel’s trial for abuse of his daughter, Tamar (Jamie Anne Allman), Singletary is reduced to photographing starlets in compromising positions and writing other sleazy stories. Eventually, while covering a murder in which another woman was cut into pieces, he latches on to the theory that Hodel is the Black Dahlia murderer, which eventually sets him on a path that intersects with Fauna’s.

All of this would make for a corking thriller if it meshed together, but it does not. The first two episodes set a mannered, formal noir tone, a bit distancing but also well-done. By the third episode, though, the series becomes increasingly pulpy, veering into Gothic territory in later eps and culminating in a reach for profundity that ultimately rings hollow.

It’s not for lack of talent behind the camera, as each director (Jenkins, Victoria Mahoney, and Carl Franklin each directed two) bring a steady hand to the material. Sheridan wrote five of the six episodes as well. It seems, though that each director’s approach was very different, resulting in a tone that is not consistent.

The actors are all uniformly good, from Eisley’s determined and pre-possessed Fauna, to Pine’s violence-prone Singletary. Connie Nielsen also turns in a wicked performance as Corinna, one of Hodel’s ex-wives and a canny artist in her own right.

Mostly, though, I was bothered by what I saw as unnecessary inventions and diversions in bringing Fauna’s story to life. Growing up thinking you are a poor, mixed-race child and finding out your birth family is rich is no picnic, but everything else she learns about the Hodels (which I won’t reveal because it’s better to see it in the show, though you can find online if you like) is fascinating enough that focusing even part of the story on a person who didn’t exist seems a waste (again, not Pine’s fault—he’s great in the role). Also, while I can see the parallels they’re trying to draw between Pine’s war-inflicted psychic wounds leading to violence and Hodel’s own childhood traumas and penchant for murder, they never worked for me. Fauna herself was involved in the production, though, so it’s fair to assume she was okay with the liberties taken.

While I enjoyed I Am The Night for what it was, I can’t help thinking there’s a missed opportunity to delve more deeply into what all those secrets can do to a person, especially given the parallels in our current climate and especially when it comes to racial identity.  By overstuffing the plot, the creators wind up with a lot of filling, but no real sustenance.

I Am The Night premieres January 28, 2019 on TNT.

The post TNT’s I Am The Night Mistakes Atmosphere for Substance appeared first on The Nerd Element.

In 1990, Star Trek: The Next Generation broke from its pattern of non-serialized stories with a four-episode arc centering on the Enterprise’s Klingon security officer Lt. Worf (Michael Dorn). The saga followed Worf’s effort to clear his family name of misplaced dishonor, kicking off with season three’s “Sins of the Father,” and continuing on into season four’s “Reunion” and two-part finale “Redemption.” Looking back at the arc, many of its themes and specific beats now seem weirdly prescient of another popular genre show that would come decades later: Game of Thrones.

George R.R. Martin famously grew up a Trek fan, and even applied to be a staff writer for The Next Generation when it began in 1987, but was ultimately rejected for the job. On top of that, the first A Song of Ice and Fire novel came out just five years after TNG first broadcast this storyline. Granted, this doesn’t prove that his stories were directly influenced by this notable Worf arc—real life history is more of Martin’s muse, by all accounts—but there are a few interesting similarities we think are worth looking at.

Noble Houses at War

If one were to explain Game of Thrones in a nutshell, one would probably say: It’s about rival noble houses vying to take over a fictional Empire. The Klingon civil war arc of Star Trek: The Next Generation is very much that as well, with the honorable House of Mogh, home to Worf and his brother Kurn, seeking to block the dishonorable and power-hungry House of Duras from ruling the Empire. Like the Lannisters in George R.R. Martin’s world, the Duras are well-known to be scheming and conniving, and willing to lie and murder to achieve their end goal of sitting on the throne, with the House of Mogh very similar to the eternally honor-bound House Stark.

Worf = Tyrion Lannister?

In the episode “Sins of the Father,” which kicks off this storyline, Worf is informed by his long lost brother Kurn (Tony Todd), that their long dead father Mogh has been accused of betraying his people to the Romulans decades prior, when they destroyed the Klingon outpost where his family was living (a young Worf was the only known survivor). As Klingon tradition decrees that a child bears the dishonor of their parents, Worf goes home to the Klingon homeworld to clear his family name.

He discovers that a rival house, the House of Duras, was actually behind the betrayal, and has conspired to cover it up and let Worf and his family take the fall. Worf is then forced to essentially stand trial, with Picard at his side; it is ultimately revealed that the Klingon High Chancellor knew that Worf’s father was innocent, and allowed the phony “trial” to proceed anyway, as a way of preserving their fragile empire.

All of this reminds us of when Tyrion Lannister was accused of killing King Joffrey in season four of Game of Thrones, and was tried and convicted for it by his father Tywin, who knew full well he didn’t do it, but allowed the sham to continue in order to preserve their family’s power. Maybe Tyrion isn’t a secret Targaryen as some theories suggest, but a secret Klingon?

Scheming Mother Figures

After Duras himself is killed by Worf in the episode “Reunion,” his two sisters, Lursa and B’Etor, scheme to seize the High Council of the Empire for themselves. Although women are not allowed to serve in the Klingon High Council in the time of The Next Generation (something that was not always so, as Star Trek VI showed us), the Duras sisters discover that their deceased brother had a son, a young petulant boy named Toral, who was born illegitimately, and with a dubious claim to power.

Their hope is to place Toral on the throne, so he can be their puppet dictator, and they can rule vicariously through him. This sounds almost exactly like Cersei and her son Joffrey, an illegitimate ruler, who is merely a puppet for her and his grandfather Tywin. Granted, Duras’ son is more of an arrogant twerp, whereas Joffrey was truly malevolent, but the similarities are definitely there.

Blood Enemies Forever (or Until It’s Convenient)

In Star Trek lore, the Klingons and the Romulans were once allies, to the point where they once traded ship designs in the original series. But something went sour between the two powers, leading them to becoming blood enemies for 75 years. During The Next Generation’s Klingon-centric storyline, we find out that the Romulans have been secretly supporting the Duras family in their bid to lead the High Council, despite their hatred of one another. This isn’t too different from how the Boltons and the Freys stabbed the Starks in the back and allied themselves with Lannisters, whom they have no love for, just for politically expedient reasons.

Of course, both series drew upon real Medieval history when crafting these storylines, so maybe nothing inspires great fiction more than simply cracking open a history book.

Images: CBS / HBO