The other day Julie was rewatching one of the pairs performances from this year’s Canadian figure skating championships. She was watching it on TSN.ca, which has recently started serving a lot of highlights and live events via their website.
Over the past three months, it seems to me that most television channels and networks have started providing simultaneous (or shortly thereafter) shows via the Web. It’s only natural, but I’ve been impressed by the explosion of interest and the speed of their implementation.
And I’m also impressed by TSN’s quality. It’s way better than YouTube. It’s obviously not HDTV or anything, but I could stand watching a hockey game or TV show at this resolution and clarity.
Check out this free skate by Dube and Davison (requires Windows Media Player, I think, but on the upside, I can actually link to individual items), as an example. It’s a lovely program, and features a pretty great instrumental version of Damien Rice’s gorgeous “The Blower’s Daughter” (I’d be remiss not to link to Julie’s skating blog discussing this performance).
This is encouraging, as it’s likely I’ll be in Malta during the Stanley Cup playoffs. In the unlikely event that the Canucks–dare I say it–make the playoffs, I’ll be able to watch the games. I’m pretty sure I can count the Maltese hockey fans on one hand.
Okay, it’s tinfoil hat time. Check out this video (I forget where I first saw it):
How bizarre, eh? If the network and McDonald’s are forced to respond, I’m guessing they’re going to go with “ah, that’s just some freakish accident–we had no idea the Golden Archs were flashing for a single frame during our shows!” Good luck to them.
You know, I’m always pleased when I’m channel surfing and see that The Passionate Eye is on CBC Newsworld. It’s a program that airs documentaries, and not necessarily those produced by the CBC. Tonight I watched a good chunk of Dogtown and Z-Boys, a doc about the history of skateboarding and is, presumably, the basis for Lords of Dogtown.
I liked the fictional movie, but the documentary is great. It’s clearly made with a lot of love, and there’s apparently a lot of source material to draw upon (apparently skateboarders were as obsessed about photographing and filming each other back then as they are today). Sean Penn narrates, which is neither here nor there, but it’s well worth watching if you get a chance.
Thanks to the miracle of DVD-rentals-by-mail I have watched the first six episodes of season 1 of Lost. I gotta say…I’m a little underwhelmed. On the upside, the show clearly has a big budget, the acting is generally pretty good (though Matthew Fox is pretty one-dimensional) and the cast and scenery are nice to look at.
On the downside, after the initial intensity of the first episode, the plot development has gotten positively turgid. The six episodes I’ve seen have been rife with flashbacks, which doesn’t help matters.
The dialogue is okay, but what the characters choose to talk about puzzles me. I’d expect more discussion of the two most pressing issues: the crazy shit on the island and the pressing need for food, water and shelter. In particular, I found it odd that, in the subsequent four episodes, nobody even mentions the polar bear that gets shot in episode two. You’d think a polar bear on a tropical island might arouse more conversation, but apparently not.
At the moment I feel like I could take or leave the show. It’s not awful, but nor is it particularly gripping.
Without revealing any spoilers, do you think the show gets better? Does the plot speed up?
If not, what other show should I watch from the past three to five years? Assume I haven’t been watching anything but The West Wing and (again on DVD) Veronica Mars.
UPDATE: I was kicking around IMDB looking at the Lost cast, and discovered that Lost star Evangeline Lilly hails from the metropolis of Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta. This town of just under 15,000 has also produced four NHL regulars–Mike Commodore, Ray Whitney, Richard Matvichuk and Joffrey Lupul. They must have a pretty good hockey program at Fort Saskatchewan Senior High School.
I was channel surfing, and happened upon an advertising review show. They featured a British ad for Orange (a mobile phone company) that really caught my attention:
It’s pretty rare that I find a TV commercial beautiful, but this definitely qualifies.
Bob Barker, 82, is finally giving up the mantle of host of “The Price is Right”. Heck, it’s only been 35 years:
“One of the reasons for my retirement is it is really a demanding schedule for me at my age,” Barker told Reuters, adding that he wanted to devote more time to charitable work.
The tall, lanky entertainer, who grew up on a South Dakota Indian reservation where his mother taught school, got his start in radio and also emceed the Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants for 21 years.
Speaking of The West Wing, I recently watched Isaac and Ishmael, an episode written in response to the September 11 tragedy. It’s a “very special episode” in that it’s nearly a play in format, and sits outside the continuity of The West Wing plot. Whenever I hear “very special episode” I think of that classic, weird episode of Family Ties.
In this episode, the senior staff talk with each other and a group of high school students while in ‘lock down’ at the White House. It’s kind of a pretentious, didactic device, but I have to credit writer Aaron Sorkin with some fairly prescient observations. Here are two of my favourites:
TOBY What about illegal searches? What about profiling? Do you know what Benjamin Franklin said?
C.J. He said, “Hey, look, I’ve invented the stove.”
BILLY He said, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
And C.J. makes a number of salient points on the nature of combating terrorists and the impact of ‘homeland security’:
Look, I talk civil liberties as seriously as anybody, okay? I’ve been to the dinners and we haven’t even talked about free speech yet and somebody getting lynched by the patriotism police for voicing a minority opinion. That said, Tobus, we’re going to have to do some stuff. We’re going to have to tap some phones and we’re going to have to partner with some people who are the lesser of evils. I’m sorry but terrorists don’t have armies and navies. They don’t have capitals. Some of these guys we’re going to have to walk up to them and shoot them. Yeah, we can root terrorist nests but some of these guys aren’t going to be taken by the 105thn armored tank division. Some of these guys are going to be taken by a busboy with a silencer.
It’s still the smartest show no longer on television. You can read the entire script online, should you want to.
The first time I saw the trailer for Aaron Sorkin’s new show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, I had misgivings. A TV drama about the behind-the-scenes world of a Saturday Night Live-type variety show? That’s a change of pace from The West Wing.
Except it’s not. In predicting the show’s demise, The Globe and Mail’s Andrew Ryan puts it better than I can:
But it’s too much Sorkin. Everyone on the show talks in great sweeping passages and the exchanges are peppered with cultural references steered toward the hipster demographic. Hey, that guy just said the Drudge Report! And exactly who is Sorkin trying to impress with mentions of Alger Hiss and Pericles?
Studio 60 has double the dialogue of any other network drama, and most of the speechifying takes place while two characters walk briskly through the soundstages of the faux TV show.
The overblown approach worked on The West Wing because Sorkin’s earnest characters really were trying to change the world. You could almost admire these people if they weren’t so fictional. What’s the worst-case scenario awaiting people on Studio 60? Someone flubs a line during the live broadcast? Life would go on.
I’ve enjoyed the show, but I know what he’s talking about. Aaron Sorkin is one of TV’s best writers, but the show’s tone doesn’t match the show’s stakes. It’s a Big Ideas show set at a television studio, and it’s not working.
Which is too bad, because I think Matthew Perry’s doing the best work of his career. I’ve also enjoyed seeing lots of Sarah Paulson and Amanda Peet (I mean to compliment their acting and not just their hotness).
It’ll be a bummer if it gets cancelled, if only because it’s hard to find smart stuff on television.
Children of the Eighties may recall a particularly dark day in 1986 when they watched Optimus Prime (another absurdly long Wikipedia entry), head o’ the Transformers, bite the big one. I know it was a depressing day for my 12-year-old self.
I have a soft spot for musicals. I know, I know, and yet I’m heterosexual, but there it is. I dig ‘em.
Lately I’ve been listening to Wicked, based on the best-selling book of the same name (which is inspired by the movie based on the book). As it turns out, Kristin Chenoweth is in one of the leading roles. I know Ms. Chenoweth from The West Wing, where she played a chippy, pint-sized media handler in later seasons. I had no idea she had the musical theatre chops.
Here’s a very campy number from the show. The song is called ‘Popular’, and is the ‘transformational number’ familiar to watchers of recent Disney movies:
In truth, most of the actors I know are good singers (and dancers). They tend to have trained in all three at one point or another–the more skills, the more auditions they can go to. In related news, Scarlett Johansson is releasing an album of Tom Waits songs. I can only assume that Tom needs the money.
Interestingly, Wicked’s composer-lyricist Stephen Schwartz has been writing for 35 years. In 1971, he wrote that perennial church favourite Godspell. I learned that in this discussion of whether there will be a Wicked movie.
