Category: Television & Movies

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Music Television & Movies

ZOMG hold me back.

Star Trek II Complete Score from Film Score MonthlyAfter 27 years, finally, the complete score, every note, of the soundtrack from Star Trek II – talk about a magic bullet that hits me right between my inner Trekkie and my inner soundtrack geek.

I’d try to get everyone to pitch in for a belated birthday gift, but nah…I gotta be sure I get this. If it’s only 3,000 copies like most of Film Score Monthly’s releases, it’ll be sold out tomorrow. ORDER PLACED. DELIVERY IN T MINUS 5.*

* very weak joke that you won’t get unless you’ve played as much Dune 2000 as I have, which is highly improbable at best.… Read more

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Gadgetology Home Base Television & Movies

Cut the wire

You are watching 7-Zark-7 on PAY-PER-VIEW!Is it possible that my son may not have the experience of channel-surfing at home? That might sound like a crazy idea, but at the very least, we’re giving it a try. After a great deal of deliberation, we’ve decided to have our cable subscription reduced to internet only. No cable TV service at all. Our television “diet” is already pretty slim – what we want to watch, we either get on DVD or we download. Evan’s got a surprisingly hefty DVD collection already, so very little channel-surfing is done on his behalf at the moment.

It’s an entirely reversible decision, of course, and the funny thing is that the customer service rep at Cox lied like a dog until I pointed out that I knew other customers of theirs who had done the same thing (and had also reported that Cox would lie through their teeth about whether or not such a tier of service existed). Such a tier of service does exist – and at $45/month, it’s still plenty profitable for them – but it doesn’t help Cox report that they have X million cable TV subscribers when they negotiate with entities like Viacom, Time Warner or the corporate entities that own local TV stations (who try to put the screws to Cox when negotiating a contract for how much they’ll be paid for the privelege of having those stations carried on the cable). Since the internet-only tier doesn’t benefit Cox much aside from a bit of income, they actively deny its existence.

And then when a nice guy like me adamantly but politely calls them on their BS, they roll out a few lame reasons why you shouldn’t go to that tier: you’ll lose your local stations! It’ll cost you to reinstate TV service! No more breaking news on CNN! And, my personal favorite: you’ll be depriving the world of income accrued by the taxes paid on cable TV service! Holy crap, I’m not doing my economic duty to the state! Off to Room 101 with me.

As long as it has an internet connection, that’s okay. The only real major misgiving I had about dropping cable TV was severe weather coverage…but even there, I’ve got a weather alert radio, and access to the National Weather Service (including warnings and radar) via the ‘net. If the power goes out, there’s plain old radio – in other words, we’re no worse off than before, other than missing out on excited live TV chatter about rotation…which still brings me back to “no worse off than before,” frankly. (Besides which, nearly every local TV station has deals in place to have their live severe weather reports rebroadcast on specific radio stations, if I really need my rotation fix.) And as for local news…well, if you’re not north of the Bobby Hopper Tunnel, you practically already have to turn to the web for that; the TV stations have collectively all but abandoned all points south because of the perception that northwest Arkansas is where the money is.

Never mind not doing my economic duty to the state – I’m not doing what everyone’s expected to do: I’m not propping up the dry, frail skeleton of the pre-broadcast information economy. I’m failing to give a crap about the DTV transition. I’m putting myself in a position to be, more or less, completely bypassed by advertising.

Enough stuff streams, or is freely available, that I don’t think we’ll succumb to the “cut off from the world” effect.

I can think of worse things to give my son than a home where being a couch potato really isn’t a frequent-flyer option.… Read more

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Television & Movies

RTD USA?!?

Russell T. DaviesNow here’s a piece of news I’m not quite sure how to digest: Doctor Who/Torchwood/SJA showrunner Russell T. Davies is coming to America (…TODAY!). According to this article, he’s not even doing it on the strength of a deal or contract or a project that’s waiting for him – he’s just going to move over here and “start writing.”

Um…you and everyone else, Russell. See also: “I’m just going to move to Hollywood and start acting.”

Granted, we’re talking about a guy whose name occasionally gets a mention in Daily Variety as if he needs no introduction beyond being the showrunner of Doctor Who; he may actually find that being the creator of the original Queer As Folk gives him more cachet professionally and creatively. Much as I’d like to think otherwise, Who and Torchwood are very much “niche” programming here. Biggest shows on BBC America? Maybe, sure – but what percentage of eyeballs-on-TVs in this country does that represent? It’s rare for a TV writer to get to be a household name in this country; even then, how often do Rod Serling or David E. Kelley get a mention in everyday conversation? Davies is going from a country where he can just about write his own ticket, and documentaries are made about him, to a country where he might wind up being mentioned in the same breath as J. Michael Straczynski or Ronald D. Moore – not exactly everyday watercooler conversation fodder.

Perhaps the key to all this is in this sentence of the article:

Budget cuts are forcing cancellations across the channels.

It might just be that Davies’ ambitions are just too big for a certain small island nation’s showbiz economy. I can grasp that, but perhaps he should’ve looked closely, again, at how things are going over here.

Still, best of luck to him. For all of his past quotes about how every planet in the Stargate universe looks like the woods outside of Vancouver, I think he’d better get used to his universe looking that way too. Either way, there are worse things that could wind up on the air (more reality schlock, for example) than more TV on the air that happens to wear Davies’ heart on its sleeve.… Read more

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Television & Movies

Tune in, turn on, or drop out?

Sci-Fi ChannelToday is the day that we officially declare the Sci-Fi Channel dead. The question is…do we say long live “SyFy”?

Let’s see…um…no. Just not feeling it. Being the card-carrying sci-fi geek that I have been since about the age of four or so, you’d think I’m a shoo-in for just about anything that airs on this channel, regardless of what they call it, but the more I think about their rebranding as “SyFy” – supposedly so they can “own their brand” (okay, I do understand that’s important) without alienating their core audience – the more a voice in the back of my head is saying “Guys? You’re doin’ it wrong.” … Read more

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Funny Stuff Television & Movies

Asteroids: The Movie

AsteroidsThis is gonna rock. Ha! Get it? And no, I’m not joking – check out this item from the Hollywood Reporter…

As opposed to today’s games, there is no story line or fancy world-building mythology, so the studio would be creating a plot from scratch. Universal, however, is used to that development process, as it’s in the middle of doing just that for several of the Hasbro board game properties it is translating to the big screen, such as “Battleship” and “Candyland.”

So, as long as there are asteroids in Asteroids, and someone is shooting at them, we’re golden. … Read more

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Television & Movies

Best line I’ve heard on TV tonight

From the second episode of this season of Law & Order UK, in a scene in which two police officers (a middle-aged officer and a younger one played by Jamie Bamber) are questioning two just-into-their-teens kids while moving a trampoline across one of the kids’ yard:

Older Cop (looking over his shoulder as he’s backing up): Is there anything behind me?

Kid: Yeah, your youth.

😆… Read more

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...And Little E Makes 3 Television & Movies

Snotty, I need those engines working

Scene cut from the new Star Trek movie: Spock doing jazz fingersI dragged little E to the pediatrician today, where we learned he’s got a garden-variety cold that’s being made that much more miserable by an ear infection. So no Trekking for me this weekend, barring some unusual incident where I’m able to step into an alternate timeline where the boy’s healthy enough to leave with his grandparents so we can go to a movie. 😛

While I’m waiting though, I wanted to give a hearty recommendation to a blog called My Star Trek Scrapbook, run by a fellow named Frederick who I’d swear is kind of like my slightly older self from an alternate timeline – think of him as Earl Prime, maybe: works in the media, has a love for Star Trek, and has occasionally-mentioned step-parent-from-hell issues. Anyone else a little bit spooked out by this yet? Anyway, his blog concentrates on news clippings, merchandise and other minutiae from the “lost years” between the original Star Trek’s syndicated success and the release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture. And even though there hasn’t quite been the ten-year wait between the last Trek to hit our screens and the latest movie, there are some definite similarities at play. His captions and mini-articles are a joy to read, and really recapture what it was like to be excited about Trek’s return in 1979, as well as what it was like to be a Trek fan during that strange period during which the show had never been more popular or more ingrained in pop culture, and yet wasn’t being currently produced. The merchandise is curiously barely-related to Trek – i.e. disc guns with a picture of Kirk and Spock on the box, and other curiosities from the age when reprints of the old Gold Key comics were manna from heaven. The current spate of Burger King ads with “the Kling” cheerfully put me in mind of this period of Trek history – the studio wasn’t being so precious about whether or not it was pissing off the entrenched fan base, and maybe that was a good thing. Frederick is one of the few random folks I’ve stumbled across on the ‘net where I think, after reading his blog for a bit, “Man, I’d like to meet this guy, because he sounds just like me.” If you have even the slightest interest in Star Trek, check his blog out. Be prepared to spend hours there gawking and stuff and going “Oh. My. God. I remember that!”

I also wanted to give a shout-out to my friend Anthony, with whom I worked for many years in the teevee nooz trenches, and now has his own blog where he can be as opinionated as he likes without worrying about it violating some vaguely-worded clause in the employee handbook (like me, Anthony is also a refugee from the teevee nooz wars, and I think he’s discovering, as I’ve done over the past two years, that it’s nicer on the outside). His observations are funny as hell, and yet he can be pretty topical too, and doesn’t hew to either extreme of the political spectrum. It’s refreshing, funny, and makes you think too. Not bad reading at all.

Okay, that’s all the plugging-other-people’s-blogs I’ll do for now – I’m just gonna sit here and cry in my Dr. Pepper, which is swirling slowly in a plastic Star Trek cup from Burger King which, for the record, I plan to display next to my vintage 1979 Star Trek: The Motion Picture happy meals.

In the meantime, I’m preparing for a gap of – in all likelihood – weeks before I get to see the movie, because I’m also developing a runny nose and a scratchy throat since little E is wallowing all over me – he wants me to hold him, or hold his hand, or let him sit in my lap. I’m sure I’m getting quite an exposure to what he’s got, and I have a feeling that all the Zicam I’m talking isn’t going to make a dent in that. Maybe we need to page Dr. McCoy…… Read more

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Funny Stuff Television & Movies ToyBox

The Hedgerow Of Fear

I hang out over on doctorwhoforum.com quite a bit, and a good deal of that time is spent not gleaning spoilers and vague hints about upcoming episodes, but instead in the toy collecting & customizing subforum (aka the Celestial Toyroom). I don’t have nearly the budget that I used to for the ol’ action figure shelf (and yet I realize that I have more of a budget than some folks do), but I love hanging around there and seeing other people’s vast collections, and marveling at the custom jobs that others cook up either from scratch, or by sanding down, resculpting and repainting existing figures (hey, all those action figures from “Primeval” have to be good for something!). The amount of talent and manual dexterity on display by the customizers floors me. I wish I could do that sort of stuff. But by golly, I can at least offer a laugh to the ones who do. Forum member “morethanatimelord” posted some color and B&W photos of his new, made-from-scratch model TARDIS, scaled to match the 12″ figures (think old-school ’70s G.I. Joe sized) – this thing is just beautiful. A few folks joked about it being photographed rather obviously in his yard and suggested a 1960s-style “Next episode” title…which I then obligingly added to one of his photos, along with some effects to suggest the scratchy “taken off the TV screen” photos that were so common back in the day.

Next time on Doctor Who...

Fortunately, “morethanatimelord” has a sense of humor and we’re already plotting future joint ventures to knock the sheen of seriousness off of the forums. Suits me fine – there can never be too many photos of that beautifully-crafted model. Good times!… Read more