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Sep. 6th, 2011 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatJust finished watching Megamind on HBO, which was cute and sort of funny. Not at all what I expected. Best line?
Megamind: you're the good guy, I'm the villain.
Titan: No, I want to be a villain. We can be villains together, it's a lot more fun.
Megamind: But if you're the villain, who will I fight? Who will protect the world? This is NOT how it is supposed to be! There can't be two villains!
LOL! After killing Metro (the superhero), Megamind discovered he was bored and needed to create a new superhero to fight. OOps. It felt like a spoof of Superman, to be honest, which I can appreciate.
Rainy, nasty day. And I still have this annoying fly buzzing about my apartment which I can't seem to get rid of. Right now it keeps buzzing around my ears and face. I keep slapping at it, but all I'm hitting is myself. May have to buy a fly swatter. Work day was spent rescheduling things and listening to an oral presentation/ Q&A on signal and track design. Yes, to add to the insane amount of weird data in my brain, I now know how to design a pocket track and the difference between an categorical environmental assessment and an environmental analysis study, as well as what is involved in mapping wetlands. I really should get around to indexing all this information - would make life less confusing. Or just delete the files I no longer use...thinking probably all that Buffy and X-men knowledge can go.
EW Mag got delivered, somewhat mangled since the mailman had it sitting out in the rain in his mailbag for about an hour (I know because I passed him on the street and was sorely tempted to ask for my mail right there and then, instead of waiting for the delivery - they walk down the street with a little mail cart - not a mail truck. Life in the city... but as luck would have it, it is still readable and apparently the ads protected it for the most part.). The mag is basically wall to wall info on all the new tv series, along with ads and a fold out map of start dates. Wicked cool. But I can't help but feel sorry for the professional television critics who have to watch all these shows and review them. I suppose I should follow their advice, but the truth is - I seldom agree with their taste. I don't know if I would agree with it more - if I watched all the shows like they did. Most likely not. People's taste varies. Even the critics tastes vary. There is no such thing as consensus when it comes to choosing tv shows, movies, books and art.
Ken Tucker for example thinks the five best picks of the new season are: 1) Person of Interest (which sounds like a crime procedural rip-off of Philip K. Dick's short story Minority Report, with a bit of George Orwell's 1984 thrown in. I'd be interested, but I don't like Jim Cavielle, who is the action hero/lead and that's a problem.) 2) Homeland (it's on Showtime, so I can't watch it. It's about a US prisoner of War who returns home from Iraq and is lauded by everyone except Claire Danes, a military analyst who thinks he might be a traitor. The twist or problem is that Claire Danes may be mentally unstable, paranoid, and wrong, and she's breaking the law by having him surveilled. The cast includes Damian Lewis, Claire Danes, and Mandy Pantikin.) 3) Up All Night ( a sitcom starring Christina Applegate, Will Arnett, and Maya Randolph. It's about two new parents struggling with a newborn, while the wife goes back to work for a Oprah-like diva talk show host who drives her nuts. Has potential, but sitcoms about raising kids I find headache inducing and cliche, more workplace, less kid, maybe.) 4) 2 Broke Girls (basically Sex in the City without any money. Two twenty-something broke waitresses who become roomates living in Brooklyn. Living in Brooklyn myself, I have a feeling this one may annoy me.) 5) American Horror Story (we've already discussed this one. According to this review...It's about a troubled married couple who are recovering from his recent adultry and her loss of a pregnancy, and move into a haunted house in La with their cranky teenage daughter. Jessica Lange plays a passive-aggressive nutso Southern Belle next-door neighbor. The jolts and musty-room surprises in the pilot never stop, and rapid-fire editing is a dizzying wonder to behold (I don't know, this sounds like Nip/Tuck with no brakes..which is scary all by itself.) He's also interested in Terra Nova, Pan Am, and The Secret Circle (which sounds like Vamp Diaries but with teen witches). (Sometimes I wonder if these critics are paid to say this stuff by broadcast networks?)
Opening the EW magazing...I felt overwhelmed by how many tv shows there are. Makes me almost nostalgic for the good old days when we just had six networks. You remember? Fox, WB, UPN, ABC, NBC, and CBS. With occasional programming popping up on Masterpiece Theater on PBS, and on HBO, but that was it? [ETC: back in the 1990s...not back in ancient times like you know the 1970s!]Now? It's just nutty. Who can keep up? Plus we have the webseries..I've seen trailers for a new series appearing on Macy.com called Wendy. I kid you not.
Megamind: you're the good guy, I'm the villain.
Titan: No, I want to be a villain. We can be villains together, it's a lot more fun.
Megamind: But if you're the villain, who will I fight? Who will protect the world? This is NOT how it is supposed to be! There can't be two villains!
LOL! After killing Metro (the superhero), Megamind discovered he was bored and needed to create a new superhero to fight. OOps. It felt like a spoof of Superman, to be honest, which I can appreciate.
Rainy, nasty day. And I still have this annoying fly buzzing about my apartment which I can't seem to get rid of. Right now it keeps buzzing around my ears and face. I keep slapping at it, but all I'm hitting is myself. May have to buy a fly swatter. Work day was spent rescheduling things and listening to an oral presentation/ Q&A on signal and track design. Yes, to add to the insane amount of weird data in my brain, I now know how to design a pocket track and the difference between an categorical environmental assessment and an environmental analysis study, as well as what is involved in mapping wetlands. I really should get around to indexing all this information - would make life less confusing. Or just delete the files I no longer use...thinking probably all that Buffy and X-men knowledge can go.
EW Mag got delivered, somewhat mangled since the mailman had it sitting out in the rain in his mailbag for about an hour (I know because I passed him on the street and was sorely tempted to ask for my mail right there and then, instead of waiting for the delivery - they walk down the street with a little mail cart - not a mail truck. Life in the city... but as luck would have it, it is still readable and apparently the ads protected it for the most part.). The mag is basically wall to wall info on all the new tv series, along with ads and a fold out map of start dates. Wicked cool. But I can't help but feel sorry for the professional television critics who have to watch all these shows and review them. I suppose I should follow their advice, but the truth is - I seldom agree with their taste. I don't know if I would agree with it more - if I watched all the shows like they did. Most likely not. People's taste varies. Even the critics tastes vary. There is no such thing as consensus when it comes to choosing tv shows, movies, books and art.
Ken Tucker for example thinks the five best picks of the new season are: 1) Person of Interest (which sounds like a crime procedural rip-off of Philip K. Dick's short story Minority Report, with a bit of George Orwell's 1984 thrown in. I'd be interested, but I don't like Jim Cavielle, who is the action hero/lead and that's a problem.) 2) Homeland (it's on Showtime, so I can't watch it. It's about a US prisoner of War who returns home from Iraq and is lauded by everyone except Claire Danes, a military analyst who thinks he might be a traitor. The twist or problem is that Claire Danes may be mentally unstable, paranoid, and wrong, and she's breaking the law by having him surveilled. The cast includes Damian Lewis, Claire Danes, and Mandy Pantikin.) 3) Up All Night ( a sitcom starring Christina Applegate, Will Arnett, and Maya Randolph. It's about two new parents struggling with a newborn, while the wife goes back to work for a Oprah-like diva talk show host who drives her nuts. Has potential, but sitcoms about raising kids I find headache inducing and cliche, more workplace, less kid, maybe.) 4) 2 Broke Girls (basically Sex in the City without any money. Two twenty-something broke waitresses who become roomates living in Brooklyn. Living in Brooklyn myself, I have a feeling this one may annoy me.) 5) American Horror Story (we've already discussed this one. According to this review...It's about a troubled married couple who are recovering from his recent adultry and her loss of a pregnancy, and move into a haunted house in La with their cranky teenage daughter. Jessica Lange plays a passive-aggressive nutso Southern Belle next-door neighbor. The jolts and musty-room surprises in the pilot never stop, and rapid-fire editing is a dizzying wonder to behold (I don't know, this sounds like Nip/Tuck with no brakes..which is scary all by itself.) He's also interested in Terra Nova, Pan Am, and The Secret Circle (which sounds like Vamp Diaries but with teen witches). (Sometimes I wonder if these critics are paid to say this stuff by broadcast networks?)
Opening the EW magazing...I felt overwhelmed by how many tv shows there are. Makes me almost nostalgic for the good old days when we just had six networks. You remember? Fox, WB, UPN, ABC, NBC, and CBS. With occasional programming popping up on Masterpiece Theater on PBS, and on HBO, but that was it? [ETC: back in the 1990s...not back in ancient times like you know the 1970s!]Now? It's just nutty. Who can keep up? Plus we have the webseries..I've seen trailers for a new series appearing on Macy.com called Wendy. I kid you not.
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Date: 2011-09-07 11:27 am (UTC)this sounds like Nip/Tuck with no brakes
And indeed, the guy behind it is Ryan Murphy who made Nip/Tuck and Glee. A pity, it sounds like a good idea on paper, but if he's going to give it his usual treatment...
Pan Am sounds like a shameless ripoff of Mad Men.
Makes me almost nostalgic for the good old days when we just had six networks.
Hey, I grew up on two (2) TV channels. Which mostly showed Czech puppet theatre and children's programmes entitled "Pelle's Grandfather Dies." We got American cartoons once a year. Now, you tell that to the kids today, and they won't believe you. :)
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Date: 2011-09-07 02:43 pm (UTC)Cable didn't come to small-town rural U.S. until I was in middle school.
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Date: 2011-09-07 04:00 pm (UTC)We didn't get color television until I was about 6 or 7 - I vaguely remember it, to watch Walt Disney World in color. And at one point we had five...NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS...and WHV or whatever they called it - which often came in fuzzy, and was basically local programming - it would have movie marathons. Lots of 1950s and 1960s B movies.
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Date: 2011-09-07 04:18 pm (UTC)He's playing Dane's mentor/handler, according to the review. I like him too, but it depends on the role.
And indeed, the guy behind it is Ryan Murphy who made Nip/Tuck and Glee. A pity, it sounds like a good idea on paper, but if he's going to give it his usual treatment..
Sigh, yes, exactly. The problem with Murphy is his tv shows start out pretty good. The first seasons of Glee and Nip/Tuck were interesting and innovative, then he seems to want to do nothing but SHOCK! the audience. How crazy, gross, and shocking can I make it? How far can I go? How much can I get away with on tv? Story, characters, plot get tossed out the window for shock value.
Pan Am sounds like a shameless ripoff of Mad Men.
Buzz over here is that it is a Disneyified ripoff of Mad Men. Or Mad Men as envisioned by Disney. Apparently Diseny is behind it.
There's two shameless ripoffs, Pan Am and The Playboy Club (also The Hour - although the Hour seems to be its own animal and the most innovative of the bunch.) Apparently the networks got tired of AMC hogging all the limelight regarding critically acclaimed series and are trying to get their own foot in the door. PAn Am is supposed to be the better of the two, Playboy Club has been universally panned.
Hee, by good old days...I meant ten years ago.
Not the dark ages of my youth. ;-)