Category Archives: Television

Books, Film, Media & Marketing, Personal, Television

Busy like a monkey on amphetamines

Gosh its been a busy week or two. One of the busiest weeks at work since I started – and have had busy weeks before, I promise – parents imminent arrival, plotting a summer break, looking after Mousecapades for Gem and getting over the remnants of last week’s flu – a two day weekend is just completely inadequate!!

But beginning to feel in the driving seat again, which is good – and will mean I do a little more blogging and Linklogging too – so apologies for temporary radio silence.

Interesting things that I’ve done/seen thoug: reading the Jonathan Stroud books, seeing Good night and good luck, both of which are awesome. Have also watched a lot of Transformers Cybertron, which is a world improved on the recent Japanese dubs, ‘Robots in Disguise’ and ‘Armada’, and has some of those appealing story arcs that keep you hooked…

Anyway, more to come. Good night, and good luck!

Media & Marketing, Television

It ain’t got Jack

Lamenting the loss of “Jack O’Neill” from cult-favourite sci-fi “Stargate SG-1”. This Cameron Mitchell character is fully sub-par.

Wonder if I’ll finally stop watching a series because its gotten too bad, or if I’m adequately hooked by 8 preceding series…? I suspect I’m hooked, and will watch in the hope that Richard Dean Anderson will make a return…

< / geek>

Media & Marketing, Television

West Wing

The new series of “The West Wing” has just started showing, and is missing Aaron Sorkin. Arvind thinks its lost all its pace, and I think I’m getting to the point of agreeing with him. There are still some great stories, deeply emotive, and good character development, but all of the punch that characterized the interplay between the characters in the earlier series is completely gone. Even Joshua Malina’s character, who was so promising, seems to have lost the ability to bounce off Toby.

Nuts.

Still, the show is well researched. Leard the meaning of the Korean word “Han” today. I feel that.

[Listening to: Closet Full of Fear – Hootie & the Blowfish – Musical Chairs (03:18)]
Media & Marketing, Personal, Television

Scrubs (a lot of spoilers, both about television and my psyche, below)

I’ve been suffering a little lately from thinking too much and writing too little. And obviously a complete inability to express any of my feelings or frustrations to real people (well, this isn’t usually a problem, but I only really like doing it when I’m in a good mood). So its time for a vent, and, well, a return to the good old form, so I’m going talk about me for a while.

At least part of the result of my recent pent-upness was my nearly breaking down while watching the finale of Scrubs tonight. I always joke when I talk about my reactions to watching films; saying that the last time I was genuinely moved [to tears] while watching a film was when I was six and Optimus Prime died in Transformers: the Movie. Not wanting to denigrate the poignancy of that moment (I’ll never forget the passing of the Matrix to Ultra Magnus), but truth be told, particularly recently, a number of books and films and television programs have had a disproportionate effect on me. Or maybe I’m just getting soft in my middle-middle-age.

But (and most of these I’ve blogged about recently), the MASH finale, the Friends finale (least of these), Kavalier and Clay, and tonight, the season finale of Scrubs, all drove me far further into emotional exposition than I’ve gone in a while.

I don’t really know what the specific causes of my sudden empathy is; there are specific aspects of each that struck a very powerful chord with me; with the MASH finale it was Hawkeye’s breakdown; with Friends it was the fantastical closing of the Ross/Rachel deal (tired, but I was touched), and with Scrubs it was the much more real and much more tragic failure of JD and Elliot to normalise their friendship after the love yous/love you nots came out uneven. With Kavalier and Clay it was the travesty that Sammy Clay’s life became (at least as I read it).

The common thread, and it may sound tenuous, but I guess that’s why this is about me, is the sense of alienation that surrounds each of the narrators (other than Friends, which I just don’t rate highly enough to attribute depth of character to any of the six. Except maybe Chandler). Hawkeye, JD, Sam Clay; despite the friends, teams and family that surround each of them, the stories are theirs: they are at the centre, their struggles are our struggles and ultimately they are alone.

I guess this mirrors a sense of isolation I’ve been feeling lately. It’s kind of hard to explain; despite living with my brother and having a (large) set of generally incredibly supportive friends and a job which provides both intellectual and social stimulation and continuing sense of affirmation, I’ve been feeling increasingly… well, just, separate. Distinct.

It’s a bizarre sensation. I am getting a lot more mileage out of my fiction, but it’s damn tiring. Methinks a thought-free vacation is called for.

[Listening to: Perfect Love Song – Blak Twang & Lynden David Hall – (04:40)]
Media & Marketing, Miscellany, Personal, Television

The one with the tribute

(or, the one where Armand avails himself of the ire of every female reader of the inter-web through an act of extremely childish and superficial and purposeless misogyny, poorly masked as aestheticism)

Friends came to a close. It saddened me, despite how average I thought the series had become by the 10th season. I have limited hopes for the spin-off, Joey, but I do hope it surprises me pleasantly.

Inspired, though, by a wonderful and silly anecdote from one of its episodes, and by a game I was encouraged into playing at a particularly embarrassing party for me, I have a compiled a list of my top 5 actresses.

So; not in any particular order, and selected for a plethora of, often random, and only slightly superficial criteria, here they are:

Kate Beckinsale
Sarah Chalke
Jennifer Connelly
Kirsten Dunst
Jennifer Aniston

I should point out at this point that their IMDB photos don’t do them the greatest justice, but they are nonetheless all very beautiful.

[Listening to: Already There – Goo Goo Dolls – Superstar Car Wash (02:46)]
Film, Media & Marketing, Television

The good, the bad…

The good: the M*A*S*H finale. For those who didn’t know, M*A*S*H was a TV series that ran from 1972-1983, spun off a 1970 movie of the same name. It stands for “Mobile Army Surgical Hospital”, and the series (and the film) is a satirical take on the Vietnam war, set, appropriately enough, during the Korean war.

Struggling through a mediocre first few series, the characters and storylines matured into genuinely profound reflections on war, wartime morality, and how individual characters struggled with the lunacy of their situation. As with all good things, though, it came to an end in 1983 with a two and a half hour special, outlining the end of the war, the main character (Alan Alda, playing Captain ‘Hawkeye’ Piers) having a nervous breakdown, and each of the other major members of the cast dealing with their own drama.

I started watching M*A*S*H on my Dad’s inspiration a couple of years ago, the repeats obligingly running on Paramount Comedy twice daily and Tivo carefully picking them up for me, and have been moved by various episodes. It’s truly well written at times, and absolutely brilliant in general. The finale was no exception; watched on its original screening in 1983 by 106 million people, no sitcom has, in the intervening time, got close to those numbers, not even the up-and-coming Friends finale. I think they’re starting to release MASH on DVD now; if you haven’t seen it, you should really try to get hold of some.

Oddly, I hadn’t seen the finale at the time I had my dream about it. Peculiar.

The bad: Secret Window, Johnny Depp and Stephen King’s new film. Utterly mediocre, despite a decent performance from Mr Depp as a heartbroken novelist, the twist was genuinely completely predictable (and I normally don’t get these at all), and not really entertaining in any real way. Unless you want to see Mr Depp put on a Mississipi accent and wear a funny hat….

[Listening to: Miami – Will Smith – Big Willie Style [UK] (03:18)]
Media & Marketing, Miscellany, Personal, Television

Weird dreams #3

I know there’s been a slightly overload of techie/geeky posts lately, so here’s one that’s just plain eccentric. I’ve had odd dreams before, but last night’s was a two-parter, full on Captain Weird of dreams (well, three parts, but part three was too disturbing to be spoken of. Ever. Again.)

Part the first: I was a kind of Radar O’Reilly/Captain Piers hybrid figure from M*A*S*H, and the 4077th had been substantially disbanded as everyone’s tours of duty had come to an end. Only BJ, me and (oddly enough) Colonel Henry Blake remained. So I helped them get home, somehow, by persuading Icore that the 4077th was useless when not a team, and that team had gone. They were happy to go home, and grateful to me for my manipulative scheming.

Part the second: My brother decided to have a party themed on Imperial Russia (don’t ask me how that works, I’m not quite sure, but it involved caviar and vodka – and funny hats) – and I was meant to be leaving the house but couldn’t quite manage it. The flat was much bigger than the one we actually live in, but structurally similar, and during my failure to leave, I kept wandering past a section that had been modelled like a McDonald’s and inhabited entirely by Koreans eating cheeseburgers.

It’s possible that my latter dream was a subconscious commentary on the state of globalisation, the death of ideology and the resurrection of the bizarre themed party, and the former simply my desire to be the hero acting out. Then again, its possible that I just like to dance the dream of the surreal.

[Listening to: The Remedy – Jason Mraz – Waiting For My Rocket To Come (04:17)]