After viewing the premiere back in June, it seemed like MTV’s Teen Wolf had plenty of bark but lacked bite, but after seeing the season finale, I have a feeling that statement was made under a personal bias against the supernatural beings genre as a whole, because frankly, the finale was down right awesome. Part of my problem with media of this type – the CW, teen friendly, I-love-you-even-though-you’re-a-monstrous-killing-machine media – is that often times it lacks substance (I know, this coming from the dude with a hard on for Michael Bay). Usually it’s a cheesy, skin deep love story that revolves around a black hole of emotionless nothingness. There’s simply no reason to care about what happens to anyone. And in the first episode, Teen Wolf did have that problem. The very quickly forming romance between Scott and Allison was everything I can’t stand, and it just left a bad taste. But what made Teen Wolf eventually work is that the show grew beyond that romance. It offered more relationships that didn’t even revolve around its main character.

Since last summer MTV has been slowly moving their way back into scripted television, something they stepped out of right around 2000. Their first attempt came in the form of the absolutely terrible The Hard Times of RJ Berger, this was followed by a remake of the hit British series Skins. Unfortunately, while a solid (but ultimately failed) attempt at a remake, the series was met with harsh backlash against its content. The backlash combined with the show’s poor ratings ultimately led to its cancellation this past week. Now here we are, saddled with the network’s latest attempt at scripted drama, Teen Wolf. This may be a re-imagining of the Michael J. Fox film from ’85, but the differences are major. MTV’s version is more of an adaptation in name only, and while the series is fraught with problems (many, many problems), it does show, much like Skins, that MTV is willing to grow on a creative level because this is the network’s best scripted series to date.

Months back it was announced that MTV was putting a series into production that would serve as a remake/reboot of the Teen Wolf franchise of the eighties. Well today we get our first glimpse of the series in a three minute trailer courtesy of MTV themselves. So the first two minutes of this trailer suck. Really bad. I would actually put SyFy’s Being Human (which I do not like) above this. This trailer looks like a bad cross between Being Human, Skins and any generic sports film. That said, the final thirty seconds do contain some promise. It looks like the story picks up, and some action goes down with the main character and some badass looking hunters. So maybe it’s just a matter of getting past all the character and story introductions. This will be MTV’s third recent attempt at a scripted series following the atrocious Hard Times of R.J. Berger and their remake of SKINS. Like I’ve said before, at least MTV is trying to get more creative and I appreciate that. We will know more when the series premiers June 5th on MTV after the MTV Movie Awards.

It’s a big week in Blu-ray releases. Perhaps that has something to do with why this week’s column is a day late. For once, it’s an intense amount of writing and not my inherent laziness that has us talking Blu-ray on Wednesday morning rather than Tuesday. Almost 3,000 words died horrific deaths to make this week’s column come to life, and only a handful of them weren’t written by yours truly. The others were written by Rob Hunter, who stops by to give us a look inside a 14-film set of Sherlock Holmes films, none of which include Robert Downey Jr. For my part, I review my favorite film of 2010, a great and fitting pair of Criterion releases, an epic from DeMille, a season of Don Draper, the latest greatest thing from The Wire‘s David Simon, a fun Disney animated adventure and the story of a high school boy who finds out he’s a werewolf. And that’s not even the half of it. This and more in This Week in Blu-ray. Black Swan This week saw some major competition for Pick of the Week. Between the value of Mad Men and Tremé, it could have very easily been a TV season that took it. And Disney unleashed Tangled, which might just have been the best animated film of last year. And Teen Wolf hit Blu — need I say more. But I can’t help but stick with the film I named as number one on my list of the [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

MTV, bane of all things music-related, is set to make its name that much more bafflingly obsolete by ordering up yet another series with no connection to what made the network unique to begin with.

The legacy of Michael J. Fox and Jason Bateman are about to be tarnished a bit by the Twilight movement. Or at least, that’s how the history books will remember it — if in fact, it makes it into the history books.

This week, on a very special Reject Radio, we discuss the finer points of Bea Arthur’s genius while attempting futilely to discuss Year One and the world of remakes taking over theaters like something that really effectively takes over something. Like Genghis Khan.

Is it just me or should they try to hire Michael J. Fox for the remake and turn it into Middle-Aged Wolf? Just me? Awesome.