While reading about the new History Channel series Life Without People (brief review: fun, highly derivative of the excellent World Without Us, but the movie-guy narration is ridiculously overblown), I happened upon a reference to the seventies BBC TV post-apocalyptic TV series Survivors. It turns out that they’re in the midst of remaking the series–they’re currently shooting season (which, in BBC terms, probably means six episodes) two.
I really dig post-apocalyptic works of art, so I immediately went looking to watch the remade series. I read on this (Official? Unofficial? Hard to tell) blog that season one was available on iTunes. Great, I thought, I’ve got some travel later in the week, I’ll plunk down my 20 bucks or whatever and download them.
Alas, “Survivors” is not available on iTunes Canada. Nor, as far as I can tell, is it available on the American or Canadian Amazon sites. I’d gladly pay for the show, even with iTunes’s imperfect system, but I can’t. What’s left? Illegally downloading the show using BitTorrent.
The Excellent Yet Distant Online Content Distribution Model
This is, of course, a very common complaint. Over the last decade, as Cory Doctorow likes to say, content producers must be ““dragged kicking and screaming to the money tree”. Farhad Manjoo reflects this ethos, and describes some of the reasons behind it, in his latest Slate article:
In my dreams, here’s what it would look like: a site that offers a huge selection—50,000 or more titles to choose from, with lots of Hollywood new releases, indies, and a smorgasbord of old films and TV shows. (By comparison, Netflix says it offers more than 100,000 titles.)
Things, of course, are even worse up here in the Canadian digital ghetto.
Last night I finally got a chance to watch the Battlestar Galactica finale. Early on in the show, at about the 2:00 mark, the camera pans across a futuristic cityscape. At one point it passes over an inlet or river. There’s a bridge in the foreground and a geodesic dome further back. Here’s a screen capture:
Does that remind anybody else of False Creek, the Cambie Street Bridge and Science World? I couldn’t find a perfectly analogous photo (I suppose I could install Google Earth and see how it looks), but this one gives a lower perspective:
Obviously the show is shot in Vancouver, and I’d imagine that the special effects are done locally, so it’s only natural that we might recognize bits of the city in the finished product. This is the first time, though, that I’ve noticed renderings of Vancouver in a CG-only shot.
Warning, Spoilers Ahead
As for the finale itself, I give it a ‘B’. Some random notes: the final battle was reasonably satisfying, in an SDF-1 Macross sort of way. In retrospect, I’m still unclear on why Hera was so important to everybody, practically speaking.
I’m glad they found Earth, but it was a bit silly when they’d already found an ‘Earth’. It seems highly implausible that, after four years of a brutal struggle for survival, that the humans would send all their remaining assets into the sun. But what do I know?
The bit with Gaius and Caprica 6 each having a kind of Swayze-esque ghost was charming the first time I saw it, but they pushed their luck. That whole present-day New York denouement to the denouement was incredibly cheesy, and really should have been cut.
My unanswered questions:
What was Starbuck in the fourth season? A corporeal angel? I noticed that nobody called her “Starbuck”, which I suppose meant something.
How many cylons are left? Aren’t there a bunch of baseships out there still, roaming the galaxy?
What will future generations of humans do when they find the lyrics to Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” written on some cave wall?
UPDATE: I spoke to a member of the visual effects team who said that since the Caprica City scenes are shot on location in Vancouver, it made sense to base the look of the CG city on Vancouver, but with a few extra “futuristic” buildings thrown in.
Last night I was watching an episode of “True Blood” on my laptop. In one scene, a character puts a CD on, and we hear the familiar strains of the Cowboy Junkies’ moody cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane”. Directors seem to love this song–I’ve heard it in movies and on TV almost as often as that darn cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”.
Being a big geek, I wanted a closer look at the CD cover the character was holding. I took a screenshot–click for the large size:
It doesn’t look like any Junkies cover that I’ve ever seen. Of course, the CD’s owner is the kind of guy who would put the CD back in the wrong case. However, he’s also not the kind of guy who would own “The Trinity Sessions”, where this song originally appears. As you can see, I was troubled. Maybe the director wasn’t sure what song they’d use when they shot the scene?
As for “True Blood”, I’d give it a cautious thumbs up. It’s not brilliant television, but it’s got an offbeat, amusing story set against the creepy backdrop of rural Louisiana, a part of the world we rarely see on television.
You have a lot of time to think when you’re sick. I didn’t actually watch much television, but it occurred to me that if I wanted to, I could watch soap operas all day. With the exception of one misguided summer when I was, like, 11, I’ve never actually watch daytime soaps.
In this frenetic, multifarious media landscape, and with more families where both parents work, I wondered about the longterm prospects for these shows. Who’s watching them? I guess there’s always the young and the old, and TiVo for keeners. Plus, TV has experienced an extraordinary leap in quality (in every respect–storyline, acting, budgets, HD video, and so forth), where-as I gather the soaps have remained the same.
I went looking for an article on the state of the daytime soaps. I found this New York magazine piece, which blames reality TV for the soaps’ decline:
The villain in this piece is the reality show. When veteran soap-opera producer Mary-Ellis Bunim created The Real World for MTV in 1992, soap opera’s exclusive grip on emotionally manipulative programming began to loosen. “They’re closer cousins than most people realize,” says TV historian Ron Simon. “If you look at the Internet chat boards for soaps and reality shows, the audiences are asking the same question, ‘Why is the character doing this?’ They’re both a way to measure your own life.”
How far have soap opera ratings fallen? This Wikipedia article has the answer. In 1998, the top show, “The Young And The Restless”, averaged 7 million viewers viewing households a day. Today, it receives just 3.6 million households. That’s a serious drop. And what’s particularly interesting is that the numbers have been in slow decline from the very beginning. In 1952, “Search For Tomorrow” averaged 16.1 million households, at a time when the US had roughly half the population it has today.
Apparently one way soaps have cut costs is by firing a lot of costly veteran actors. That seems to make sense. If this trend continues, I wonder how many daytime soaps will be around in 2018?
I didn’t watch Saturday Night Live last night, but I did watch the amusing pre-credits sketch today (courtesy of Backseat Cuddler). Here it is, in case you missed it:
If you pay close attention to the background of the bit with Governor Palin and Lorne Michaels, you’ll spot Abraham Lincoln and a llama. Or possibly an alpaca–I can never tell the difference. I captured a screenshot as Ms. Palin and Alec Baldwin move out of the frame (click it for larger version):
Apparently this is just a random llama (and dead president), applied for absurd comic effect. Strong work, SNL.
I just sent this note to a minor television celebrity, concerning her apparently insecure website:
Hi, I randomly visited your site after watching an episode of [your show]. I was clicking around a bit, and discovered that your gallery section permits access to what’s called the ‘admin’ section of your site. Or, at least that’s how it looks to my (only semi-informed) eyes.
That means that a naughty person could upload any photos they want to that section, change the password or otherwise mess with the site. You should send this email to your web designer or administrator who can verify my suspicions, and close this security hole.
Best of luck, and I enjoyed your work on [the former show]. Cheers. DB.
I didn’t actually try to upload a photo, but it sure looks like I can. It also looks like I can change the admin password. But I’m certainly no system administrator, so I could be wrong.
There’s an email address on her site. What are they odds that anybody actually checks it? She’s not a household name, but you might recognize her as that actress with a small role on that popular show.
While in Calgary, Julie visited Knifewear. They’re a knife shop. In fact, they’re a knife shop that only sells Japanese knives. Talk about specialization, eh? She bought this knife:
According to the accompanying documentation, it’s an ‘Ohishi Tsuchime’. That doesn’t return any results in Google, so maybe it’s spelled incorrectly?
In any case, it’s hand-forged in Seki, Japan from VG-10 high carbon stainless teel and laiminated on each side with 15 layers of stainless Damascus steel. The unique Tsuchime style–the dimpling on the back side of the blade–is from it being hand-hammered. Apparently that prevents food from sticking to the blade. The handle is made from rugged mahogany with “a full tang and welded bolster”, whatever that means.
It wasn’t cheap, but apparently it’ll last the rest of our lives. How many purchases can you say that about?
I know I’ve been on a bit of a West Wing kick, but I can’t mention fancy knives without citing another of my favourite episodes: ‘Shibboleth‘:
I grabbed a couple of West Wing DVDs to watch on my way to and from Toronto. On my way back, I watched the excellent episode from season two, “Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail”. It’s the second time the show’s creators deploy the Big Block of Cheese Day dramatic device, in which White House senior staff meet with fringe groups that otherwise wouldn’t get their attention. In this scene, C.J. and Josh learn about alternative map projections:
Both the comedic writing and acting are so tight and underplayed–it’s terrific work all around.
I’m not sure how I decided to watch Generation Kill. Maybe I was looking for something to download while Julie was away (and thus something she’d be uninterested in watching). In any case, I’m glad I did.
“Generation Kill” is a riveting 7-part HBO mini-series about a Marine platoon engaged in the early days of the invasion of Iraq. It’s written by the creators of “The Wire”, a show I continue to not watch, and based on a book by Evan Wright. Having seen a couple episodes of “The Wire”, I believe that “Generation Kill” is made in a very similar, naturalistic style. Alessandra Stanley agrees:
The script is faithful to Mr. Wright’s account, respectful of the soldiers he befriended and as opaque and ascetic as “The Wire,” an opus that forced viewers to parse multiple plots and a huge cast of characters without directions or subtitles.
The dialogue is remarkable–it’s all either military jargon or epithets. But it’s also remarkably real. The characters sound like young men in difficult circumstances, compensating for fears and anxieties with their training and a lot of gay jokes.
The show strikes me as quite Shakespearean. There’s a massive, entirely male cast, plenty of ribald humour and plots which are sometimes hard to track or make sense of. The show feels particularly Henry V when senior officers gather to listen to a raspy monologue by Lieutenant Colonel Stephen ‘Godfather’ Ferrando.
Like the best war movies, the battle scenes are rare but intense. Tom Shales calls it the Platoon of the Iraq War:
At the very least, “Generation Kill” — as written mostly by executive producers David Simon and Ed Burns of “The Wire” fame (Wright co-wrote some episodes) — qualifies as the “Platoon” of the Iraq war: an often poignant, sometimes shattering and occasionally criminally funny account of men trapped on a battlefield of confusion, uncertainty and cross-purposes. Wright and the filmmakers know it is not enough to say that war is hell or that war is evil. The point here also seems to be that war is stupid, this one more so than many others, and that the higher one goes in the hierarchy of command, the stupider the commanders tend to be.
That’s not entirely accurate, because Platoon relies on the conventional plot structure of the Hollywood movie. “Generation Kill” trades standard plotting for remarkable verisimilitude. The Marines drive, sit around and wait, drive some more, grouse and, on occasion, shoot at people. It all feels tremendously accurate.
I’m not sure I could watch 22 episodes of “Generation Kill”–the monotony would get a little trying–but I’ve been riveted by the mini-series thus far.
Via Reddit, I read this Variety article (written in a peculiar style) discussing a study released by Magna Global. It reveals that, for the first time, the average age of a TV viewer has reached fifty:
Fueling the graying of the networks: the rapid aging of ABC, NBC and Fox. The three nets continue to grow older, while CBS — the oldest-skewing network — has remained fairly steady…
For the just-completed 2007-08 TV season, CBS was oldest in live viewing with a median age of 54. ABC clocked in at 50, followed by NBC (49), Fox (44), CW (34) and Univision (34). When live-plus-7 DVR viewing is factored in, the nets (except CW and Univision) drop by a year — which still reps the oldest median age ever for the nets.
Don’t confuse Fox with the Fox News Channel like I did. At 65 years old, the latter’s daytime and primetime programming has the oldest average viewer among the cable networks. I’d expect that for the Hallmark Network, but that seems pretty old for Fox News (and I have no way of appraising the legitimacy of the study).
The writing seems to be on the wall for live television. As producers and advertisers react to this, expect some creative and hyper-irritating new advertising strategies.
