I saw a commercial for the forthcoming Muppets series (which I'm dreading for its reality format), and had a thought about the rise of so-called reality TV. Is it a result of an increasingly jaded television audience? Specifically, is it because television viewers can no longer watch the story, the characters portrayed, without thinking about the ( Read more... )

Short Circuit is on in the background. It's been a long time since I've seen this movie, and I'm stunned by the parallels to The Big Bang Theory. From the Indian character who has trouble fitting in to American society, to the genius who has no understanding of girls, to the cute average girl who drags the geniuses to reality... Wow! And I was ( Read more... )

I saw the two-part introduction to the revamped Two and a Half Men tonight, and it just didn't do it for me. Was I too stuck in the mind-set of what the show had been? Or was the show so set that it just can't lose one of the main characters?

Two years ago, I talked about stupid comedians, and comedians playing stupid people. Watching the show ( Read more... )

I'm not sure what made me think of it, but I recently realized I'd never seen the first episode of Pushing Daisies. To remedy this lack, I borrowed the DVD from the library, and watched it last night. It was sweet and sad, wonderful and melancholy all at the same time. I watched every other episode of the short-lived (22 episodes) series when it ( Read more... )

I've usually got the television on in the background while I'm working, and if it's not the tv, it's the radio. Today was the television, and I found on the History Channel, an entire series on the US Presidents (they covered all the Presidents in a 20-30 years span in each hour), so that was great. The series ran from Washington to FDRoosevelt. ( Read more... )

I usually have the television droning on in the background while I'm working, paying scant if any attention to it. But there's a commercial running now which I've heard before, and I just have to comment on ( Read more... )

Are we now reveling more in stupid comedians, or comedians playing stupid people? I saw Tracy Morgan on Letterman last night, and had to turn it off after two minutes, because his public persona is a very stupid person and I just don't find it funny. And while I turned it off, I started thinking that the current crop of new big comedians (at least ( Read more... )

In a victory solely for procedure, but a case that is increasingly becoming a joke, the Supreme Court upheld the Federal Communications Commission's "crackdown on profanity on television, a policy that subjects broadcasters to fines for airing a single expletive blurted out on a live show," (see this articleThe Court ruled that the FCC is ( Read more... )

I was just taking a break, and saw the last two minutes of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which I haven't seen in a long time (the original; haven't seen the Keanu Reeves version). Basically, I heard the last half of Klaatu's final speech, when he says "…we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from ( Read more... )

I've been feeling guilty for ignoring this lj so long. Unfortunately, the guilt is going to have to grow. I've been keeping SFScope running, and though it feels like I'm working in a vacuum over there, occasionally I'll check the usage logs, and the numbers keep going up (slowly, but in the correct direction), so I feel better about it. I'm also ( Read more... )