Book of Beasts - next on SyFy Sat. July 18th @ 3 PM

[august]

(I added the new spelling of the channel's name which kicks in July 1st.)

This was a made-for-Sci-Fi Original that was shot in Langley and Maple Ridge, British Columbia, and premiered this past Saturday night. it starred James Callis, aka Baltar from BSG.

There's a trailer for it here. The trailer accuratley depicts the film, and I'd say 95% of the SFX we see on screen are in the trailer. This is a distinction we're beginning to see: the made-in-Bulgaria films emphasize action and SFX, but theyoften look cartoonish due to the limited budgets. The made-in-Canada ones use far fewer fx shots, mainly talking about the creatures, or having them seen only in passing, or we just see a wing or a tail here and there, or the creature looks like a normal human most of the time; as a result, sometimes the sfx look slightly more believable, but they tend to move slower and be very talky. Which might be OK if it were Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson talking some David Mamet or Alan Ayckbourn dialogue... but instead it's unknown British Columbia actors who couldn't get a regular gig on any of the dozens of series shot there, doing dialogue written by writers who can't regular writing gigs on those shows.

It's certainly adequate for what it is, and honestly, if the exact same script were shot by Michael Bay with a $100 million budget, and Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley in the leads, it would be a big hit, although critics would note that it was pretty silly and shallow.

Basically, Merlin has been asleep and/or in hiding for many years, but growing younger, while post-Arthur Camelot has fallen to a sorcerer called the Arkadian, who has no explanation for his title, but is really

To view, use your mouse to select the text:

Mordred

- like you didn't see that coming. The only living knight is a middle-aged Galahad, who has raised Arthur and Guinevere's blonde babe daughter Avlynn as his own, along with his own son Lysanor and Tristan, son of Tristand and Isolde. These four set out to find Merlin, and rescue the land. See? An excuse for a teeny cast.

Callis's performance is quite eccentric - since he's from the UK, we have to assume he understands accents, and wouldn't just make one up. So we must guess that his Merlin speaks with an authentic Welsh accent... but half the time it sounds Jamiacan.

More details on it here.

It's up next month at 3 PM on Sat. 7/18.

[kszonew]

Perhaps they aired it a few weeks before the BBC's Merlin series American TV debut to try and rake in Merlin fans who think this is some sort of tie-in and will now watch the series. Since Scifi and NBC are both owned by same company it wouldn't surprise me. Wouldn't be such a bad idea, but I also wouldn't be surprised if the Merlin series get pulled after a few weeks because ratings "aren't where they should be". Sad if that happens, as I've seen it on dvd and thought it was pretty good and not the teeny bobber angst fest I was dreading.

[august]

Possibly...but they didn't bother to advertise the Merlin series during this, which would have been a natural, and they actually dropped the name "Merlin" out of the title (at one point it was called "Merlin and the Book of Beasts," which is still the title in the trailer.) This was given the greenlight a two and a half years ago, long before NBC ever purchased the rights to the BBC series, and probably before they even knew such a thing was in development...

[Zagor]

I saw this over Christmas (still called Merlin and the Book of Beasts over here). I liked Merlin though the other characters were pretty blah. It was fairly entertaining up until the end where the climax seemed to be devoid of any urgency whatsoever. Not a bad watch if there's nothing else on.