The New Mickey Mouse Club Celebrates 25 Years  By Amber Topping

Former Mouseketeer, Jennifer McGill, Reveals All By Amber Topping

The Ultimate Screenwriting Tips from Ink Tip Founder By Eric Weintraub

Production Designer: Martin Whist By Nathan Edmondson

Movie In A Box By Mende Smith

Jon Lindstrom: How We Got Away With It By Nathan Edmondson

The Face of Film Music: Marcelo Zarvos  By Mary Carreon

Venice Alley Art: Found Abstractions - Photography  By Susan Rennie

The Advent of New Expression By Alfredo Madrid

Tanna Frederick Proves Hollywood Dreams Can Come True By Shirley Craig

Visionary: City of Lost Children - Phnom Pehn's Phymean Noun  By Mende Smith

Magical Black Magic Cameras By Nathan Edmondson

Indie Filmmaker: Dominique Schilling's Reasons  By Mary Carreon

Inspiration: Animal Defender - Tim Phillips  By Amber Topping

What It Takes To Become A Producer By Alexandra Ostroff

Design: All Work & All Play For Jake Busey By Shirley Craig

The Day The Stars Aligned By Bridget Brady

Tara Ellison Talks Her Debut Novel  By Autumn Topping

Is Film Dead? An Interview with Steve Cossman  By Tara D. Kelley

Vocal Point: Darlene Love - No Longer 20 Feet From Stardom By Bridget Brady

The About Last Night Editors Talk The Art of Editing  By Shirley Craig

Spotlight on Talent: Costume Designer - Louise Frogley By Bridget Brady

Chemical Cut: Marjorie Conrad & Barret Michael Hacia By Karen Meglar

Design: HGTV's Star Meg Caswell By Shirley Craig  

More Happy Days for Marion Ross  By Mary Carreon 

Renaissance Woman: Rachele Brooke Smith By Shirley Craig

Victoria Platt & Terrell Tilford: Husband & Wife Actors  By Shirley Wright

Flagship Fumble: HTC vs Samsung vs Sony  By Kia Dargahi

Meet the Lenova Z2 Pro Smart Phone By Kia Dargahi

Hot In Tech! Wearable Is Officially In  By Kia Dargahi

K-12 + The Arts Equals The Future Of Innovation  By Alexander Ostroff

Rachele's Fitness Blog By Rachele Brooke Smith

DWTS's Sharna Burgess By Brittany Lombardi

The Days Of Our Lives: A Paradox By Ralphael Prepettit

Tortured Heroes By Ralphael Prepettit

Monsanto By Ralphael Prepettit

Countdown to iPhone 6 By Kia Dargahi

Silicon Valley: Minimal Viable Producton  By Andy Greene

A + B = Artistic Brillance  By Brittany Lombardi

Shep Gordon - Supermensch  By Stanley Dyrector

Alfonso Cuaron & Robon Concoction Is Hard To Believe  By Andy Greene

ABC's Ressurection  By Andy Greene

Performance Anxiety Isn't What You Think! By Christine Brondyke

Alfonso Cuaron & Bad Robot Concoction
Is Hard To Believe

By Andy Greene

When news hit last year that Alfonso Cuaron, the visionary mastermind behind GRAVITY and CHILDREN OF MEN, was teaming up with J.J. Abrams and his production company Bad Robot on a high-concept show involving superpowers, it was hard not for the nerd inside me to do somersaults. But after delays, an underwhelming cast (on the surface) and a story seemingly jam-packed with every sci-fi/superhero cliché, my enthusiasm decidedly lagged. While Cuaron has never disappointed, it’s time to wonder if perhaps Bad Robot’s TV reputation is overstated. I loved ALIAS, LOST, FRINGE and PERSON OF INTEREST and along with J.J.’s big budget franchises like MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and STAR TREK, it seemed like the company could do no wrong. Then UNDERCOVERS (cancelled, mediocre, forgotten), ALCATRAZ (samesies), REVOLUTION (mediocre at best, on thin ice) and ALMOST HUMAN (mediocre is a nice way to put this show, also likely to be cut) happened. A TV show with the Bad Robot stamp on it is no longer a guarantee of quality or ratings. NBC always seems starved for a hit, and pairing Alfonso Cuaron and Abrams together on a show about a young girl named Bo (Johnny Sequoyah) with extraordinary gifts seemed like a no brainer. After the first two episodes of the show, however, and I’ve already mostly lost interest.

Bo is a powerful ten year old girl with telekinetic abilities, but also with other mystical, supernatural talents she and we have yet to discover. She’s an empath, capable of sensing people’s emotions, while also having a knack with the future, and an affinity for pigeons. Because of these talents, she’s the most wanted asset in the country, with several different groups going after her. Who can we trust? Anyone? Do we care?

Bo has never met her real parents, and has been rifling through foster parents, none of them lasting, before she’s tracked down by the shadowy, sinister bad guys. They seem to be led by Roman Skouras, played by Kyle MacLachlan (TWIN PEAKS, HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER). The show wants us to be confused by his nature, since he appears to care for Bo and wants her to be safe. But anyone sending killers and mercenaries after a child isn’t a nice guy. The show has created a Charles Xavier and Magneto dynamic between Skouras and Milton Winter (played by GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS’ Delroy Lindo), while hoping to keep it unclear as to which one is which. Skouras, after all, is the one with a group of gifted children. While Skouras has a stronghold full of kids with telekinesis, including a dude who builds a lion out of bricks, something that blows away anything we’ve seen from Bo to this point, but of course Bo is the strongest and the reason this show exists, so Skouras must have her back. Milton Winter appears to have Bo’s best interests at heart. He genuinely loves her (they have an adorable handshake), he met her while at the CIA, and rescued her from suspect experimentation, and he’s gathered a team of fellow mutinous CIA agents, like Channing (Jamie Chung of ONCE UPON A TIME), to help keep the girl safe. But after Bo’s latest set of foster parents don’t even last two weeks before their necks get snapped, he boosts a man from death row to take care of Bo. Meet Tate (WARRIOR’s Jack McLaughlin), who may or may not be a murderer/criminal (he claims he’s innocent of course), but definitely isn’t much of a fighter, tactician or father figure. He’s not much of anything, and there’s seemingly no good reason why Winter has tabbed him as Bo’s caretaker. Thankfully, we learn that Tate actually IS Bo’s real father, giving us an answer that sort of makes sense. This also makes it funny (?) when Tate yells at a stranger on a bus: “She’s not my daughter!” Now he’s just a creeper.

Over the first two episodes, it’s clear that BELIEVE will be another case-of-the-week show, as Tate and Bo bounce from safe house to safe house to avoid detection, and in each new location, Bo will use her gifts and overwhelmingly kind nature to help random strangers in need. She keeps a talented Doctor from quitting his job in the pilot, and gives a boatload of cash to a single mother to pay for her kid’s leukemia treatment (after the obligatory moneymaking casino scene). It’s melodramatic, schmaltzy stuff, but fairly effective. This show is about believing in yourself, and believing in others, after all. I think that’s why it’s called BELIEVE.

Speaking of, BELIEVE is filled with moments that require you to take a leap of faith, but not because of its high-concept. Because it’s dumb. Bo and Tate hide from police attention at a bus station bathroom, and presumably do so for hours. Not one single person knocks on the door (does no one in Atlantic City need to pee?), and somehow, Tate has also secured a razor to shave his head without leaving the facilities.

Later, Bo orders a milkshake from the casino waitress Bonnie, and immediately stuns her by knowing Bonnie’s kid’s name (Jesse), his age and that he’s sick. Instead of running away terrified, Bonnie randomly picks Bo and Tate up after her shift and take them home to meet Jesse, her son. Clearly Bo has this special magnetism or quality about her, but it’s all too convenient (the show picks and chooses when Bo is powerful arbitrarily). Especially since you’d think Bonnie would’ve seen all of the news coverage on Bo and Tate’s arrest warrants.

Bo wants to stay and live with Winter, and we never get a satisfying reason why this can’t happen. While Winter clearly has a big target on his back…his choice to protect Bo is based only on DNA/”faith”/TV show logic, and it involves a man who doesn’t know Bo or like children, and he’s a federal fugitive who was formerly on death row, so it’s not like he’s under the radar. Plus, he’s clearly far less capable (for now). I get that BELIEVE will be about his journey from dick to hero/father, but aside from “plot” reasons, there’s no reason why they should separate from Winter and his team. It’s easier to track a larger group, sure, but not when they have more money, technology and intelligence, and know what they’re fighting against. Instead they just throw Tate, knowing nothing, into the blender, and wonder why he can’t take care of Bo. If they’re just going to be monitoring them to save their ass repeatedly anyways, it’s stupid.

To make matters more difficult, the FBI has made finding Tate a top priority, and have put out an amber alert on Bo Adams. Elizabeth Farrell (Trieste Kelly Dunn) leads the task force. She’s debriefed about the peculiars of the case by Roman Skouras, who apparently works with the FBI as a private citizen, despite the bureau possessing little, if any trust for the man. So it’s a messy cluster$%@#, especially when you factor in the practically nameless, vaguely threatening mercenaries that Skouras hires each episode.

It’s all a bit of a mess, and while THE FUGITIVE/ENEMY OF THE STATE meets X-MEN concept has promise, there’s nothing that makes it stand out over the first two episodes. At the end of the pilot, Bo tells Tate that “it’s going to be okay,” and that essentially sums up the quality level of the show thus far.

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Resurrection

By Andy Greene

Thanks to cryptic advertising revolving around various people coming back from the dead, ABC put Ressurection in a position of being loved or hated early on, thanks to its high-concept. The pilot, entitled “The Returned,” is compelling and offers promise, though its continued success depends on how fresh and intriguing the premise turns out to be, and how often we get answers to our questions. Ressurection is not to be confused with the critically acclaimed French zombie series The Returned (Les revenants). Instead, it’s based on the book The Returned by Jason Mott.

Ressurection opens on an 8 year old in tall grass, soaked, still. Then, GASP, he wakes up with a start, finding himself staring at a Yak on a farm in China. He wanders through the street vendors, before collapsing in front of a couple Chinese locals. Before he passes out, he asks if he’s dead, or was.

Marty (HOUSE’s Omar Epps) is so bored and brazen, that he’s throwing a racquetball off his office window repeatedly, shattering a photo of him and his (clearly) ex-girlfriend/wife in the process. Subtle. A call has come into Immigration about a kid, who needs to be chauffeured home, or to a foster home. Marty’s on the case, which is supposed to be a simple job. Ha.

The kid, Jacob (Landon Gimenez), hasn’t said a word since being found. They figure he’s been traumatized, speculating about child trafficking, or worse. Marty knows how to ingratiate himself with a kid: he gets him a burger and fries. We learn the kid’s from Arcadia, Missouri, or says he is. Marty calls in, asking if a kid named Jacob’s missing, and the sheriff gruffly hangs up, not in the mood. When Jacob intimates that he could direct him to his house when they get to Arcadia, Marty drives him there.

At his wonderfully suburban home we find a late middle age couple, played by Kurtwood Smith of THAT 70’s SHOW fame and UNFORGIVEN and TITANIC’s Frances Fisher (as Henry and Lucille, respectively). The two are quizzing each other on SAT verbal words, presumably never getting the chance to study them with their son. But they might have that chance in the future as Jacob arrives and hugs his father, merely 32 years after he drowned in a river, not having aged a day. The LOST music thankfully doesn’t play as we cut to commercial.

We soon learn that 32 years ago, the Sheriff’s wife (and Jacob’s aunt) Barbara also drowned in the river, attempting to save Jacob while out for a walk with her baby daughter Maggie. Of course, Jacob has a different version of the events: he was trying to save Barbara, not the other way around, and there was a mysterious man also there. We meet Maggie (Devin Kelley) all grown up, now a Doctor, and Sheriff Fred (Matt Craven), who’s clearly still not over his wife’s premature death all those years ago. Jacob’s best friend Tom Hale (Mark Hildreth) has grown up to be a Pastor, unable to come to terms with a miracle when he finally sees one with his own eyes.

This family isn’t the only one that dealt with death in their past: Elaine (THE O.C.’s Samaire Armstrong) and her brother Ray (Travis Young) lost their father years ago, forced to grow up without him. Let’s just say Jacob isn’t the only one coming back from the dead in Arcadia (is this another Chester’s Mill situation or are the resurrections more than localized?), and this episode primarily deals with Lucille, Henry, Fred, Tom and Maggie coming to various degrees of acceptance about Jacob’s return. What will be interesting is how their attitudes and the time change affect Jacob and other members of the Returned in the coming weeks.

The problem with a show like Ressurection, is that unless the cast is mind-blowingly talented and interesting (and after one episode, I doubt they’re that), that it won’t matter: the show’s quality depends on the greater mystery and how soon we uncover it, and whether we like the answers we find. So far, it appears like everything is too good to be true: people are coming back, exactly as they are, with the same memories, ready to live their life as they were supposed to before it was tragically cut short. But are they truly the same people? Are they clones? Aliens? Intelligent zombies? Is this an UNDER THE DOME crossover? Spirits? Or does their revival require a sacrifice? Does their arrival foretell certain doom? Because if ONCE UPON A TIME has taught me anything, magic comes with a price, and there’s some serious witchcraft going on.

At the very least, Ressurection has earned some rope with a strong and intriguing pilot, but we’ll see how long that leash lasts.

You can watch Ressurection on ABC, every Sunday at 9/8 pm.