kottke.org posts about TV
Alec Baldwin must relish the opportunity to channel his rage through Jack Donaghy, the beloved heartless media executive he plays on 30 Rock, a rage in evidence at The Huffington Post in his open-skewering of the suits who own and run his show’s network.
On the problem of the studios in the ongoing WGA negotiations:
They are owned by huge, creativity-deadening corporations and operated by lawyers and marketing executives who lord over the worst creative decline I have witnessed in a long time, particularly in films. In television, companies like GE view properties like NBC the way realtors view square footage. GE does not care what is on NBC. So long as the programming is relatively inoffensive, they want to earn as much per square foot as they can.
I missed this at the time, but 30 Rock snuck in a last-minute subversive writers’ strike joke for its last pre-strike show.
For some defictionalized 30 Rock goods, t-shirts for the parent company of 30 Rock’s NBC, Sheinhardt Wig Company, can be had here.
(via glass shallot)
You may have heard that NBC has revived the American Gladiators franchise for primetime. I had tickets reserved for tonight’s taping that definitely would have been used if if I’d been able to reconcile my preteen nostalgia with the potentially many hours of sitting in a studio and cheering on cue.
Instead, I set out to learn the Gladiator names of other American Gladiators around the world.
If you were to pit Gladiator teams from around the world against each other in one arena, make it part of the penal system and introduce a fat, homicidal tenor named Dynamo to the fray, now that’s a taping I would go to.
New episodes of The Wire, available now! Well, sort of. The Amazon page for the season 4 DVDs contains three mini prequels to the series: one with a grade school-aged Prop Joe, a teenaged Omar, and McNulty’s first day with the homicide unit.
Found while browsing HBO OnDemand last night: the first 4 episodes of The Sopranos and the entire season 3 of The Wire. Go nuts.
Don’t know how I missed this, but there’s a TiVo that records in HD that doesn’t cost four bazillion dollars. TiVo HD records 20 hours of HD programming, you can view/record two shows at once, and differs very little from the more expensive Series 3 TiVo. Amazon’s got it for $262 (retail is $299). But whoa, the Series 3, which can record 32 hours of HD programming and retails for $599, is only $399 at Amazon after rebate (note: “usually ships within 3 to 5 weeks”).
Big Screen Little Screen has some info of the upcoming season of The Wire. It begins Jan 6th and the episodes will appear OnDemand a week early (they did this last year, yes?). The post also contains 5 promos for season 5. Almost here!
Video of Twitter on CSI. They even stayed within the 140 character limit. (via waxy)
An Apple Lisa commercial featuring Kevin Costner. While you digest the awesomeness of that, it’s interesting to note how consistent Apple has been under Steve Jobs in their message and approach…the emphasis on non-traditional business uses of computers in the Lisa ad and the whole iLife philosophy go together quite well. (via the house next door)
On his NYTimes blog, Dick Cavett remembers having Norman Mailer on his show along with Gore Vidal and Janet Flanner. It was a notorious episode; a perhaps more than slightly drunk Mailer lashed out first at Vidal and then everyone else in the room but couldn’t keep up with the jeers and witticisms flying at him from all angles.
Mailer: I said that the need of the magazine reader for a remark he could repeat at dinner was best satisfied by writers with names like Gore Vidal.
Flanner: All those writers called Gore Vidal.
Vidal: I know. There are thousands of them, yeah.
Mailer: There are two or three.
Cavett: Who are some of the others?
Mailer [with a dark look]: I don’t know.
Cavett: Who wants to host the rest of this show?
Mailer, years later, told me that it was at this point that “in the face of the Cavett wit and Flanner’s deft interruption” — adored by the audience — and in consideration of his alcohol content, he realized that he was not being skillful at mounting a sustained argument.
In an interview a number of years ago with Cavett, Charlie Rose showed a clip of the incident:
[Dead Flash embed of http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=-8150850263045831787]
The video should cue up at the clip in question, but if not, skip to 29:00 in. Highly entertaining reading and viewing.
Title sequences from Doctor Who, 1963-2006. Unfortunately all the videos are in Real format, which in the age of YouTube is just silly. Not unfortunately, most of the opening titles videos are available on YT: first Doctor, second Doctor, third Doctor, fourth Doctor, fifth Doctor, sixth Doctor, and seventh Doctor, as well as other variants. (via quipsologies)
Opening credits for Down to Earth, a show on TBS in the early 80s (it was their first original series). The opening jingle was so catchy that I can still sing most of it even though I haven’t heard it in 20 years.
Season 1 of The Wire is currently showing on HBO OnDemand. I presume seasons 2-4 will follow as the January premiere of season 5 approaches. (thx, michael)
Speaking of, here’s a short teaser promo for season 5. (thx, gary)
Update: The post originally said that season 2 was OnDemand…I corrected it to read “season 1”.
Nick Park and Aardman Animations are doing a new Wallace & Gromit film called Trouble At’ Mill (pronounced Trouble At The Mill). Unlike Chicken Run or Were-Rabbit, it’ll be a 30-minute film made for TV, like A Close Shave or The Wrong Trousers.
Wallace and Gromit have a brand new business. The conversion of 62 West Wallaby Street is complete and impressive, the whole house is now a granary with ovens and robotic kneading arms. Huge mixing bowls are all over the place and everything is covered with a layer of flour. On the roof is a ‘Wallace patent-pending’ old-fashioned windmill.
We’re running a bit behind in watching The War; we stopped the other night right before D-Day. The series is quite good so far, even with all its flaws. The last section we watched dealt with the Battle of Monte Cassino and the related Battle of Anzio in Italy. With the Germans holding the high ground, these battles were some of toughest of the war for the Allies. During one particularly difficult moment, an American soldier yelled out a prayer (I’m paraphrasing slightly): “Oh God, where are you? We really could use your help down here. And don’t send Jesus, come down here yourself. This ain’t no place for children.”
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