Showing posts with label Television. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Television. Show all posts
August 18, 2008
July 25, 2008
Mad Men
That tale of 1960s decadence and "ad men" starts back up this weekend.
If only we knew what Don Draper/Dick Whitman would be up to next.
July 21, 2008
I won't feel a thing
Well, as of last night, Dr. Horrible is now completely off the net, save for iTunes. Until the DVD and soundtrack anyways.
The ending was a little cliched (for Joss anyways), but it was truly the start of a tragic villain. Not unlike the start Brandin's reign of terror over Tigana.
For me the most tragic part is, if you pay attention, you can tell that if Dr. Horrible had just stayed "Billy-Buddy" he could've gotten the girl. But that raises the question: who is Billy if not Dr. Horrible? We don't really see enough of his non-horrible activities to get much of an idea. Does he have a day job? If not, does he fund himself entirely through horrible schemes?
The world may never know. Or the commentary may reveal all. Just tell us when, oh great Whedon!
July 20, 2008
Spirit-Bending
In the time before the avatar, we bent nothing but the energy within ourselves.So, barring any extreme returns, Avatar is over.
- Lion-Turtle, Avatar: The Last Airbender
That was a pretty good last 2 hours of animation. It leaves so many questions but manages to give us closure on the big points. The world can start to rebuild itself after 100 years of war.
Also, Azula really snapped there. Completely bat-$#!% insane. Read More......
July 15, 2008
You Have to Have a Memorable Laugh
Random Topic: During the Writer's Strike earlier this year, Joss Whedon got some of his friends together and decided to go indy for a three-part series.
I haven't had to time to watch it, but if you don't catch it this week, you'll probably be paying for it on DVD.
July 9, 2008
Burn Notice
Spies don't get fired, they get burned.
Tomorrow night Burn Notice returns for its second season. I have no idea where their going to be when the show starts back up, because the end of the first season was a bit out there. Michael drove his car into a trailer and that was that.
July 8, 2008
Freaks and Geeks
Oh, wonderful short-lived Judd Apatow-produced 1999-2000 TV series.
I may not have been born yet in 1980, but I totally get Sam's crowd (the character, I'm not talking about myself in the third person). In ways, I was even worse off even without getting beat up: I was a band geek.
'Nuff said.
June 28, 2008
Inter-Dimensional Love-a-thon
For those who don't know (and who doesn't know?), the second of the direct-to-DVD Futurama movies, The Beast With A Billion Backs, came out Tuesday.
I watched it earlier today and am sitting through the commentary right now. It's great, though I'm still not sure if they live up to the record of show's run on FOX back in the day. Like Bender's Big Score, it's a cavalcade of characters from earlier episodes and a few new ones, but this feels more like Futurama than Big Score did.
I'm always surprised at how funny the commentors are, but I guess that kind of makes sense given that they're the people who write, voice, and animate the show.
June 23, 2008
Time is a face upon the water
Non-linear storytelling is not something new (The Odyssey begins in media res). It's was, I believe, rare to see being largely used until recent times though. It's been used to both dramatic and comedic effect, and is sometimes used because the story is non-linear (rare, but it does happen) or because it lends a story extra punch.
I've never seen Memento, but supposedly it's the standard piece for film non-linearity. Although, having not seen it, it could just reverse linearity (looking at the article I just linked, it appears not). Christopher Nolan also makes use of non-linear narrative in movie of The Prestige, through the use of journals. The novel is similar in its non-linearity, but it's narrative structure has longer bouts of linear narrative.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine posed the idea that even if our bodies exist linearly our minds don't, they constantly flit back to key moments in our lives. This point is illustrated by the "prophets" insisting the Sisko exists both at the point in time that he's speaking with them inside the wormhole and during the Battle of Wolf 359, when his wife died (which is to say, he still hasn't gotten past her death).
The Gunslinger, at least the original version, begins with Roland's pursuit through the desert but then unwinds to several earlier events. Even after it catches back up to the "present" we're still treated to flashbacks as Roland tells some of his story to Jake.
There was even an episode of Seinfeld that was effectively played in reverse order by scene.
But that's not why I'm here. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm past the half-way mark and feel I have to recommend The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It's a love story told with a backdrop of inadvertant time travel to shake things up. I would put it only loosely in the category of Science Fiction, and that's only because of the time travel, mostly it's a work about life in extraordinary circumstances and could, therefore, also be standard dramatic fiction (it almost has a certain day-in-the-life quality). I'll post some other time about why I'm recommending this, but it's in this post because it is non-linear in the extreme (although you always know when you are).
June 14, 2008
You Blew It Up!
Well according to last night's Battlestar Galactica, one or more of Al Gore, Charlton Heston, and M. Night Shyamalan is right.
WARNING: Spoilers for the episode below the fold!
I half expected the camera to pan to a half-buried or at least partially demolished Statue of Liberty at the end. They made it to Earth, and assuming that the little thing they were holding next to the soil is the BSG equivalent of a Geiger Counter, I'm think we'll have to go with Charlton Heston - Apes.
"This has all happened before, and it will all happen again." Maybe not this time. It's not completely my own thought - I got the idea from someone in a spoiler thread - but what if this is the time they break the cycle?
June 7, 2008
Big Badda Boom
So I'm a little later than normal posting. The culprit: Boom Blox. It's not the only thing either, as right now I'm about half-way through The Wastelands, and the nap I had this afternoon threw off my sense of time.
Also, last night's Battlestar Galactica showed that the promo team at Sci-Fi has figured out at least one trick of the trade: a quote used out of context.
May 25, 2008
Urban Fantasy
Another genre of storytelling that I'm interested in is that of "Urban Fantasy." I don't want to go into a lot of depth on some of this, because I think I can milk it for more material later on.
Based on that link, here's what I've got that might qualify as "urban fantasy":
- The Dresden Files (TV and Book Series), by Jim Butcher
- Neverwhere, American Gods, Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
- Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel created by Joss Whedon
- Everything in the "World of Darkness" (new or old) by White Wolf Game Studio, even though they're meant as horror games can be played as urban fantasy
May 19, 2008
A Man Falls Into a Hole
So apparently that crappy post from this morning was my 100th post. Hooray?
This guy's walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out.I think I'm going to the doctor tomorrow to try and rule out anything physical. Maybe get some recommendations on who to go see, though I've got those coming out my ears now. Read More......
A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, "Hey you. Can you help me out?" The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on.
Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, "Father, I'm down in this hole can you help me out?" The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on.
Then a friend walks by, "Hey, Joe, it's me can you help me out?" And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, "Are you stupid? Now we're both down here." The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out."
-- Leo McGarry, "Noël", The West Wing
May 17, 2008
News of the....oh, who cares?
Firefox 3 is out in Release Candidate 1. For those of you not familiar with this aspect of software development (ha, that's maybe 1 of 3-4 people who read this), this means that they now think it's probably ready to be put out, but they want to iron out any last minute issues.
Something I'm looking forward to next TV season is Dollhouse, a joint effort between Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku's production company, will be airing on FOX. The concept is interesting: this place has "blank slate" people that they can program according to their customers desires and then wipe clean afterwards. Of course Echo (one of the Dolls, played by Eliza Dushku), is starting to remember things from her personality imprints. Aint It Cool News has a promo picture of the cast.
In a related announcement, The Hollywood Reporter is, well, reporting that FOX is going to air Dollhouse and Fringe with only 5 minutes of commercials. It's an interesting idea, and is possibly the least of amount of commercial time that television has ever aired with. I say this because the DVDs of classic Star Trek that I have run at 50 uninterrupted minutes an episode.
May 15, 2008
It's Not a Review!
Not much to say, but if you have any thoughts you'd like to add or comments to make on the four part review that's been posted over the last three days, please comment!
In other news, I'm about to finish my run through of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. I'm working through the last two discs as I type this. It's interesting to see a Star Trek series with real continuity.
May 5, 2008
May 4, 2008
This is Serious Business
So, when I was writing my bit on Avatar the other day, a I had a thought I hadn't had in a while. It annoys me to no end that people can't see animation as a valid and serious art form. In a way, the same problem plagues the Science Fiction and Fantasy genres regardless of medium, but part of that concern is a topic for another post.
As I understand it, the argument goes something like this: "It was only used for kid's programming in the past, it can only be used for kid's stuff now." That's just a silly point though. It's the same kind of problem that actors run into when they have one major defining role: they get typecast.
Anyway, it's something that gets under my skin. Perfectly serious stories can be told in any medium, the same goes for funny/sad/exciting/etc. stories.
May 2, 2008
Water, Earth, Fire, Air
No, not Captain Planet. I referring to the four nations of the world in the series Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Don't get fooled by the fact that it's a "Nicktoon" - this series may be focused on children, but it's written on many levels. I think that may be the reashttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifon that Nickelodeon hasn't aired it recently, actually - I think it draws the wrong demographic, which is to say: older teens and adults. Despite that, it's the finest specimen of dramatic writing in animation on American TV, in my opinion.
It follow the journey of Aang, last remaining member of Air nation (the Air Nomads), who is also the Avatar: the umpteenth reincarnation of the bridge between the material world and the spirit world. Destined to return balance to world, he and his friends journey across world so that he can learn each of the "bending" techniques - elemental manipulation crossed with martial arts - and try to bring peace to a world that's been at war for over one hundred years.
One of the coolest aspects is that each of the martial arts styles - one per nation/"bending" technique - used in the series is based on a different, real world style. And the major techniques used on the show are based on recorded footage, but not motion capture, of Sifu Kisu of the Harmonious Fist Chinese Athletic Association.
April 30, 2008
TV Pregnancy
TV Pregnancies are an interesting beast. Sometimes they're just that, a fake pregnancy. Other times, like what I've just watched of Deep Space Nine, they're used as cover for an actor's real pregnancy.
In the case I'm observing now, though, they're really stretching believability: O'Brien's wife Keiko was involved in an accident aboard a runabout, and in order to save both her and her baby, Bashir had to "transplant" the baby into Major Kira, a Bajoran. Admittedly, Farscape did this in the "Peacekeeper Wars" miniseries even more implausibly (in that case, the child accidentally winds up in Rygel - a male Hynerian, who's also a puppet), but I chalk that up to them being weird.
In the case of the DS9 pregnancy switch, like I mentioned above, was a cover-up of an actors pregnancy. Nana Visitor was pregnant with Siddig El Fadil's child (named Django El Tahir El Siddig). They got married a year later, but divorced in 2001.
On a side note, I never liked Siddig's decision to change his credited name to "Alexander Siddig" after the third season of DS9.
April 29, 2008
Engineering Heads
What is it about the head of engineering on space shows/TV in general that makes them well liked? Hell, even just gadget guys are pretty well liked. For example:
- Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, Head of Engineering, USS Enterprise 1701 ("No bloody 'A', 'B', 'C', or 'D'")
- Geordie La Forge, Head of Engineering, USS Enterprise 1701-D
- Miles O'Brien, Chief of Operations, Deep Space 9
- Galen Tyrol, (not gonna guess this one), Battlestar Galactica - though I guess he's not the "Chief" anymore
- Q, Gadget Guy?, MI6 (James Bond movies)
- Professor Albert Wickwire, Not-Quite-Mad Genius, Wild West (The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.)
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