The M To Z Of Fantastic Escape Routes

Sydney Morning Herald

Monday January 19, 2009

David Dale

AS REALITY darkens we are drawn to the light of fantasy, and this tough year offers almost too many soft options. Last week this column began a cut-out-and-keep guide to the best escapism of 2009. Here is part two.

Monsters v Aliens, the next amazing animation from DreamWorks, which might just surpass the spectacle of Pixar's Wall-E (out this week on DVD).

Neurotic geniuses are the problem-solvers of prime time television. After House, Monk, Bones and The Mentalist comes Tim Roth as an English eccentric who can read body language in Channel Ten's Lie To Me.

Our sexiest export is what we'll be calling Melissa George as she moves from playing the sex-addicted patient of In Treatment to playing a sex-addicted doctor in Grey's Anatomy.

Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones is on a smaller scale than King Kong, but it has a twist: a girl watches from heaven as her family tries to find her murdered corpse.

Queer As Folk, the pioneering series about gay men, was created by Russell T. Davies. He became head writer for Doctor Who, which is why some viewers see a homo-erotic subtext in The Next Doctor, the Christmas special on the ABC this Sunday, and will expect it in the other specials Davies writes this year before he leaves the series, along with David Tennant.

Revolutionary Road and The Reader each won Golden Globes for Kate Winslet, who plays a yummy mummy stultified by suburbia in the first, and a former concentration camp guard who has an affair with a 15-year-old boy in the second.

Sandra Bullock soared in Speed, peaked in Miss Congeniality, then slumped into sentimentality. In The Proposal she plays a calculating bitch, and a star is reborn.

Tina Fey is legendary for impersonating Sarah Palin, but that won't convince Channel Seven to give her satirical sitcom 30 Rock a better timeslot. We'll have to resort to "W" (below).

Underbelly Two will convince the nation that criminals in Sydney are as interesting as those in Melbourne.

Vampires are cool again, thanks to Twilight, and they'll sharpen their fangs in True Blood, a series for which Anna Paquin won a Golden Globe.

Watching TV programs on your computer will be the theme of next week's column.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine lets Hugh Jackman show his dark side, and introduces new shapeshifters Gambit, Sabretooth, Deadpool, Beak and The Blob.

Year of the Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles moves to Fox 8, and Christian (Batman) Bale will play John Connor in the fourth movie, Terminator Salvation.

Zachary Quinto was the brain-sucking Sylar in Heroes but will redeem himself as young Spock in a sexy reimagining of Star Trek by the Lost creator J. J. Abrams.

Live long and prosper.

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© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

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