TV. alice

every year or so the syfy channel has a special movie event where they reimagine an old classic but with a new sci fi twist. last year they gave the update treatment to 'the wizard of oz', it was called 'tin man'. i gave it a try, but after about the first hour i realized that i didnt care for it that much, so i gave up and didnt bother with the other five hours. when the syfy channel started promoting this years offering, i didnt really give it a second thought, but diana saw the ad and thought it looked cool. so, needless to say, we watched it! this reimagining of 'alice in wonderland' takes the original tale and imagines what it would be like 150 years later in wonderland. now, i must admit, i am at a bit of a disadvantage here, i've never read the book and i dont think i've ever seen the old disney movie either. to be honest, i have no idea what 'alice in wonderland' is about. i just know the characters but have no idea what they do in the story. so i guess i am not really the ideal audience for this two part movie. as we were watching it diana had to explain a few things and she kept pointing out how something that was in the movie was a twist on the original story. i'm glad she did, because i would have had no idea at all! even though i didnt know the story at all, i still enjoyed it quite a bit. many of the characters were very well done, especially the white knight, he was my favorite. they did a good job of creating some interesting visuals- especially the city with its high views and grassy walkways between skyscrapers. the fun for me was in recognizing many of the different cast members and placing them with the syfy shows they are usually on!

WEBSITES. exergian tv art

jeffry lee showed me this one, its a graphic artist who uses simple shapes and colors to represent different television shows. he takes a bunch of tv shows and boils them down into the simplest image he can in order to convey the ideas of the show. its very minimalistic, and awesome! as someone who actually took a bunch of graphic design classes and majored in art in college, i've got to admit that these are really impressive! its one thing to try and create art that portrays and idea, but quite another to be able to get that same idea through such simple shapes! some of my favorite are 'stargate: sg1' (of course), 'kojak', 'home improvement', 'monk', 'knight rider', and 'mad men'. the simplicity is what really makes these images so powerful- and accurate! check it out here.

TV. robin hood season 3

looks like i was right last year. in the climactic final episode of last season, robin hood and his men went to the holy land to find the king and let him know how poorly the sherriff has been doing. the episode ended with maid marian dying. at that time i was frustrated (as you can see here) and wondering where they could possibly go from there. it was obvious to me that the show jumped the shark at that moment, and it turns out i was right. all this season has been pure crap. they have really been grasping at straws, as far as story goes. they introduced another love interest, which is not nearly as interesting as maid marian, they killed off the sherriff (which i'm certain is only temporary), and now guy of gisbourne is working along side robin and his merry men? stupid stupid stupid. the writers wrote themselves into a corner last year, probably assuming that they wouldnt get picked up for a third season, and it turns out that they shouldnt have been picked up! every episode this year has been in stark contrast to the two previous seasons. no one is acting like themselves, and the main plot has been long since lost. it really is a shame to see a good show go so horribly wrong. there's only about three or four more episodes this season, lets hope that they finally put this dog out of its misery and dont have a fourth season- please! either way, i'm done watching it, thats for sure!

BOOKS. diary

this book haunts me. ever since i've read it, it haunts me. the book follows the life of a woman who lives on a little touristy island where she works at the local hotel. her husband is living on life support in the hospital and she and she must try to make sense of all the strange things that have been happening and why everyone has been acting so weird. sounds pretty basic, huh? i expected a lot when i read this, it is, after all, written by the same guy who write 'fight club'! as i was reading it, the whole thing just seemed disjointed and not very interesting. i got to the end and was confused by it all. i set it down and a week past. thats when it happened: i kept thinking about the book, the little details and the parts of the story that didn't seem to fit right away. i couldnt stop thinking about it. then it hit me! the whole picture suddenly came into focus, all the odd parts and all the confusing parts, they suddenly melded together and i saw what palahniuk had done! when it hit me i actually had to sit down! the sheer power and brilliance of the tale he wove took me a while to process, but now that i had, i realized the sheer genius of it! i would love to give examples of it, but i would never want to give away anything to someone who might read it- i wouldnt want to steal that moment of revelation from anybody.
still, all these months later, it haunts me...

TV. V

diana and i were really excited for this show. well, we werent excited until we spend a day watching the old V miniseries (as i write about here), but after investing in the old show, we got really pepped up for this new one! turns out we got our hopes up for nothing. after watching the pilot episode i was really disappointed. many of the moments i was excited to see recreated were just quickly glossed over. when the aliens arrive in the old series it was a major event, it had impact. there was speculation of what might come of it and how to deal with that first contact- there was some real drama. on this new version the arrival and contact are whipped through before the first commercial break! so much for drama... the old one was poorly written and poorly acted, but it was riveting. this new one has the same writing and acting, but there is nothing there to draw me in. there is a new twist thrown in: the idea that there have actually been aliens living among us that have been lying in wait. unfortunately it isnt very interesting, or well done. we watched the second episode, but neither of us really cared at all by that point. its too bad knowing that juliet had to die for this. (that was a 'lost' reference). we never bothered with the third or forth episodes, and now with it off the air until march, neither of us will miss it in the slightest. disappointing, really.

TV. the prisoner

i have never seen the original tv series, nor did i know anything about it when i began watching this reimagining of the concept on amc. i just saw the cast, jim caviezel and ian mackellen, and i knew it would be worth the ride.
the story is quite confusing, but i think thats part of its appeal. we are dropped in, along with our hero, named number six, into a desert. he eventually stumbles upon a small town filled with people who have numbers for names. everything seems normal at first, but soon he realized that this town, run by number two, has no way out. as six tries to find ways out, he remembers more and more little bits of memories about life outside the town. over the course of the six hour miniseries, six has many things to distract him. first he spends all his time trying to get out, he is side tracked by a man who claims to be his brother. later he strangely finds himself an agent working for the very man who he is trying to escape from. also, he is continually distracted by a woman who tries to help him (or is that hurt him?).
the story played out very well as six claims he doesnt belong here and does everything he can to get out. it sounds so straight forward, but there are so many strange things that happen along the way. sometimes we are uncertain if a scene is real, or just part of a hallucination, which makes it much harder to put all the pieces together. having finished the miniseries, i'm not sure that i know exactly what was going on, but it was really fun to watch. the story just drags you in and mesmerizes- i didn't understand it, but i really liked it!

TV. V original mini-series

with all the hype and hoopla around right now with the relaunch of 'V', i kind of wanted to watch the original mini-series. low and behold, the syfy channel must have read my mind! the sunday before the relaunched show premiered, syfy was showing both original miniseries' in a row. i tivo'ed them, planning to watch them at some point. sunday afternoon diana took poco out for a walk, so i started watching the first one. when she came back i kept watching. she picked up a magazine to read, but after about ten minutes she put it down and instead was just as hooked on the miniseries as i was!
syfy actually rebroadcast the original miniseries as well as the second miniseries. it ended up being a little over ten hours of 'V', but i was really fun to take it all in at one time! the story is a killer one: aliens come to earth, they promise us peace and try to get us to work with them. as the story unfolds, we begin to see that their motives might not necessarily be as pure as they had let on. the amazing this about the original miniseries is just to see how bad it really was. the acting is stiff, the writing is clunky, and the effects are laughable. but for some reason, it still really good! i think its just such a great concept and starting point, that it succeeded in spite of itself! now, after watching the originals, we are ready for the undated version!

WORDS. the interrobang

i'm not entirely sure how or why i came across this, but i recently found this strange little grammar anomaly. its a punctuation mark that is meant to be an exclamation point and a question mark. strange. in the official rules of grammar it is not allowed to have more than one exclamation point at the end of a sentence. so when ever anyone ends a sentence like this: 'he said what?!?' it is improper grammar. instead, you are supposed to use the interrobang. huh. will the wonders of the english language ever cease?!?

TV. 2009 emmys

the emmys were on last night, hosted by neil patrick harris. i'm always a sucker for award shows (and love nph on 'how i met your mother'), so i tuned in hoping it would be good show and barney would do a good job hosting. i was not disappointed! there were a few changes this year, including the fact that almost no one expected to win won, which always keeps things lively. nph started things off with a little song and dance number about how everyone should make sure they watch and 'put down the remote'. it was a fun intro and played to nph's strengths. they also started with the best categories, in my opinion: the comedy awards. there were quite a few surprises here with not all the awards going to '30 rock', as was expected. unfortunately, my favorite, jim parsons from 'big bang theory' did not win. maybe next time.

one of the best additions of the show was the color commentary from john hodgson, the daily show's resident expert. as the winner walked up to accept the award he would briefly speak about that person making random comments about them that werent necessarily true- very funny! another bit that i really loved was when nph would introduce the presenters he would not reference their most well known role, but rather cite a very random bit role that they had played in, for example when jon cryer came on to present an award, nph referred to him as 'photographer number four in 'my two dads'.' or something equally absurd.

my big question for the night, though, is this: why do they have so many awards for the movie/mini-series category?!? who really cares?!? no one watched those! why must we waste 45 minutes of the telecast to that stuff? oh, and that 'dancing with the stars' tribute was completely worthless. good thing nph did such a great job of keeping it moving that it was easy to overlook such timewasters. in fact, the whole show was only about five minutes over their time- amazing!

anyway, hopefully there were enough people watching this year for cbs to renew its contract with the emmys to show it again next year, because if not, it will most likely be banished to bravo or lifetime i'm sure...

TV. you are what you eat

diana and i recently came across this little british gem. its a show on bbc america, hosted by gillian mckeith, that tries to help overweight people get healthy again. it starts with showing how badly the people have been eating, in fact they make a list of all the foods that person has eaten in the last week and then puts all of it on one table for them to see. usually the person is rather disgusted by it because it always contains much more terrible food then they would have thought- and not much fresh food at all. gillian then gives them an eight week regime of healthy foods and exercise. we peek in on them a couple times over the eight weeks, and at the end of the episode we see the results. almost without fail, the person looses 30-50 pounds!
the show was on twice a day over the summer, so diana and i tivoed all the episodes we could! after watching them for a little while we got motivated to eat healthier foods ourselves and are in the process of loosing weight as well. one little thing about the show that i really loved was the british weight measurement they would use: they measure their weight in stones. apparently a 'stone' equals 14 pounds, and every time they would talk about their weight it would always be in stone. for example if someone weighted 300 pounds, they would say that they weigh 21 stone 6. cool! well, diana happened to look at the back of our scale and found that it had a setting to measure in stone! awesome!!! we have been weighing ourselves in stone ever since!

TV. eureka

ah, a fun summer diversion. this series on the syfy network is loads of fun, it follows a small town sheriff as he tries to deal with the little problems that arise in eureka. the only problem is that eureka is a small town filled with scientific geniuses who are creating crazy futuristic stuff and doing the strangest experiments ever! each week there is a new experiment gone haywire that they have to deal with, everything from a landing space ship, to a haunted piece of ice. the great part of the show is the fact that it doesnt take it self seriously at all, which helps with the unbelievable situations they find themselves in. colin ferguson plays the local sheriff as he tries to deal with all the nut jobs, government conspiracies, and hardest of all: a teenage daughter. colin does a great job of playing it all off like he's seen it before, making wise cracks the whole time. he's kind of like the jack o'neil of eureka. and if you actually understood that reference, then you are probably already watching this fun show...

TV. warehouse 13

the sci-fi channel (sorry, its 'syfy' now...) tries it's hand at another original series. i gave this one a try because i have been impressed with most of their other shows. ranging from 'stargate sg1', to 'battlestar galactica', to 'eureka', i have typically enjoyed the scripted shows on this network.
this one is about a couple of new agents recently assigned to the middle of nowhere. now they have to work in a place called 'warehouse 13'. its a huge storage area for all things strange, weird, and unexplained. the two of them go out and hunt down objects with powers we dont yet understand. they get them and bring back the objects to the warehouse where they are catalogued and stored until they know what to do with them.
the season started slowly (not necessarily a bad thing), but has since picked up. the two main agents are pretty fun, they have a great chemistry together, playing off each other well. the highlight of the show, though, is definitely the guy who runs the warehouse, he tells them where to go and what to look for. the show does a good job of balancing out the sci fi mythology stuff with a lighthearted sense of humor that all the characters share. each week the show gets more interesting, so i think i will keep watching!

TV: virtuality

its too bad that fox dumped this one, because this is a really good story. fox aired this two hour 'movie' recently, but its not really a movie, it was a pilot for a new television series by the creator of the 'battlestar galactica' reboot on sci-fi. fox must have paid for the pilot to be made but then canned the show, figuring they wanted to get something for the money they spent, they aired the pilot even though there is no show coming. the story is that of a crew on a deep space mission that has recently left earth, it is filled with many different types of people and each of them has an interesting story to tell. the crew is, apart from being on a mission to find a new inhabitable planet, also on a reality show. the company behind the mission used that as a way to pay for the trek. so we get to see these crew members going about their ship activities, and we also get to have interviews with them explaining what they are thinking, like a reality show. also, in order to allow the crew members some r and r, each of them has a virtual reality helmet that they can wear which takes them to a holodeck type fantasy. as they crew gets closer and closer to the point of no return, bad things keep happening. the vr helmets start to have mysterious visions, the doctor is diagnosed with an incurable disease, and the captain is mysteriously killed. with no way to turn back, the remaining crew must do the best they can. all this makes for a really interesting premise for a continuing show, but unfortunately, instead we get a great start with no chance of ever seeing where their stories will lead. way to go fox, you totally ruined another great sci-fi show that could have been.

TV. hollywood's best directors

i recently came across this show on the reelz channel. after watching a half dozen episodes, i must say that i really enjoy it! the format is pretty standard, a well known director talks about his films. but here's the part that makes it so special: its only the director talking about his films. there is no reporter or journalist trying to look smart by playing off of them, its just the director reminiscing about his work on the films during his career. the only form of structure that is placed on the show is a few themed headings such as 'first film', or 'pre production', and at the end 'last thoughts'. it allows the director to talk about whatever part of the process, or whatever part of their careers they choose to. watching such directors as chris columbus, jan van bont, rob reiner, george lucas, and others, one of the interesting aspects of these guys it how they honestly talk about their hits and misses. for the most part, they are honest about their work and acknowledge where there may have been missteps. the only drawback to the show is the obvious lack of production money, which doesnt have any baring on the interviews themselves, but is apparent when they try to show the movies the directors are talking about. reelz channel obviously doesnt have enough money to pay for the rights to show clips of the films, choosing instead to just show still photos from the movies being discussed. other than that, though, the in depth exploration of the directors about their own career and craft is really very interesting!

DVD. true blood

diana suckered me into seeing this. i had no interest in it, but she got a copy from her friend, so we gave it a try. on a friday night we watched one, figured we had some extra time, so we watched another. by sunday evening we had finished the whole season! the story follows a southern town as they deal with the fact that vampires are real. sookie, a local waitress, becomes entangled with a vampire who is traveling through. over the course of the season we follow their relationship as they try to make sense of their differences as well as everyone elses opinion of what's going on. also, there happens to be a slew of murders going on in this town and some people are pretty curious about the vampire's involvement.over all the series is pretty good, there is a strong southern dirty style to the show and an interesting premise at its base: if vampires no longer need to feed on humans, could they be accepted and live among us? this question is just one of many different layers that the show deals with, this question in particular is used as a metaphor for the plight of gays in america. there are other deep issues as well, but the show rarely takes time to linger on the issues, the depth does not bog down the action. i enjoyed the twists and turns, the murder mystery, and the relationships between many of the different characters. with that said, this show falls into the same problem that so many other shows succumb to: the characters are not even remotely believable. they act one way during one episode, and then change completely to suit the story told in the next episode. and worst of all- almost all the problems they face could be solved with just a little clear thinking and a good honest discussion. i always think that its a bad sign of writing to contrive a conflict instead of dealing with any real issues. sookie, the main character is one of the worst culprits of them all. she's about as clear headed as a bowl of mud. most of the time i didn't really feel very sorry for her, she brought it on herself! oh, but even worse then her is her brother jason! what a complete idiot! he life is terrible and falling apart because he just does whatever others tell him to do- grow a pair already! but back to the good: the quality of the show is very high, it looks great. another aspect that i really enjoyed, which is easily noticeable when you watch the episodes back to back, is that each episode starts off immediately after the last one like its one big giant movie with no wasted time to slow down between episodes.