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Ponderings For 2009-02-03

Submitted by GuyGG on Wed, 02/04/2009 - 2:59am
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  • I was behind a bit on How I Met Your Mother episodes, so I caught up on the last half dozen episodes, including the newest one from yesterday. Naturally, the show continues to introduce fun new concepts to everyday life, such as Neil Patrick Harris' character of Barney creating an official "Not A Fathers Day" holiday. This series is notorious for establishing games ("slap bet"), catch phrases ("have you met Ted?", "wait for it...")  and of course holidays. And if it's not brilliantly made Robin Sparkles music videos, it's some other great breaking of sitcom tradition. But for tonight's episode, they deserve a medal. How would a normal TV series handle one of its stars being pregnant? Well, they'd see it as two choices - shoot around it, or work in a pregnancy for the character. Not this show. Their answer to Alyson Hannigan's pregnancy? Make her a hot dog eating champion, knowingly and ridiculously passing off her pregnant belly as fat from all the hot dogs.
  • Great to hear that TNT has renewed Leverage for a second season. On a fun side note, somebody on the production team for Leverage must be a Doctor Who fan. In more than one episode now, characters have used the names of actors from Doctor Who, like Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy. Very cool.
  • Speaking of Doctor Who, David Tennant's first video diary upon his final return to the role has been posted online. As always, it's some fun behind the scenes stuff.
  • Here's a note to the studios: stop calling DVD & Blu-Ray releases "2 Disc Special Editions" when the second disc is nothing but the retarded digital copy.
  • OK, only a brief post for today. I've been losing a battle with some video conversion stuff I've been messing with, which has eaten away all my time. Much more to come, hopefully tomorrow. I'm winging my way to Phoenix on Thursday, and I'm not sure if I'll get much posted before I leave, or while I'm down there.

Ponderings For 2008-12-10

Submitted by GuyGG on Thu, 12/11/2008 - 2:59am
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  • Forgot to mention the last couple movies in my ongoing Christmas movie viewings. Last Friday, I did one of the required entries, A Christmas Story, on HD-DVD. On Sunday I did the Blu-Ray of The Polar Express (though I went for the standard 2D version this time, not the 3D). On Monday, I did a TV Christmas episode triple feature. First was Buffy's third season episode, Amends. Second was Roswell's second season episode, A Roswell Christmas Carol. Third was My So-Called Life's episode So-Called Angels. And tonight I did Black Christmas (the remake). It isn't a particularly great movie, and is more of a horror movie, but it's a good counterpoint to the normal ones for how twisted it is. And I also picked up the HD-DVD at Fry's yesterday for $3. I think Fry's has pretty much accumulated the left over HD-DVD supply of North America, and will continue selling them until the supply finally runs out. Having seen the boxes and boxes and boxes full of Heroes Season 1 HD-DVD sets underneath their shelves, it's gonna be some time before they get rid of those dozens and dozens (if not hundreds and hundreds) of copies.
  • Hurray! The Dark Knight score has been re-instated for eligibility for the Academy Awards. It was a completely stupid thing they did a while back disqualifying the score. It's one of the best scores of the year, so I'm happy to hear that they grew a brain and allowed it back in. I was only so-so on the score for Batman Begins, but for The Dark Knight, Hans Zimmer & James Newton Howard really perfected what they were going for, and the incredibly well done nervous tension they gave to The Joker is brilliant. The more times I watch the movie, the more I realize how darn well the score works.
  • Google has added (back) the capability to do SMS texting from inside GMail's chat interface.
  • Sad to hear the news that David Tennant has had to drop out of his Hamlet run with the RSC due to a back injury. Hope he has a good recovery, and is able to start filming Doctor Who again in January.
  • Here's some great work at adapting major corporate logos for their current financial state...
  • Endeavour is finally winging its way back to Florida
  • Ah, the delicious irony
  • Need to catch up on Battlestar before it comes back in January for its final run? Here's a fantastic, funny recap they put together. Naturally, if you haven't seen the episodes aired up to this point before, and ever plan to, do NOT watch this video. It's, uh, just a tad spoilery.

Ponderings For 2008-11-30

Submitted by GuyGG on Mon, 12/01/2008 - 2:59am
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  • Since I cut myself short on my Doctor Who anniversary post recently, I wanted to add a couple thoughts. First, I meant to include congratulations to Doctor Who Magazine (DWM), who reached their landmark 400th issue during Who's 45th anniversary (though they've since put out another issue that I picked up today). DWM is, without a doubt, the greatest fan magazine ever produced for a TV series. Not only has it been around since 1979, but it has gotten better over time as it has evolved. And even more impressive, it survived and got even better during the years where the series was off the air (considering that it was a 15-or-so year gap, that's darned impressive). DWM has massive ties into the production of the show, right down to the Doctor himself, David Tennant, who purchased the weekly comic/mag as a kid right from issue #1. DWM is the standard by which all other fan publications are judged. Second, I wanted to pay special praise to composer Murray Gold, and his orchestrator/partner-in-crime Ben Foster (not to be mistaken for the actor of the same name), for the cotinually amazing scoring work he does for the show. Along with Bear McCreary's work on Battlestar Galactica, Murray Gold is turning in the finest TV scoring work in quite some time.
  • Speaking of Doctor Who and David Tennant, check out this curious little piece of trivial news about Tennant's performance of Hamlet with the RSC.
  • You may have noticed that I added an image/link over to the right of this blog to support DefectiveByDesign.org's 35 Days Against DRM campaign.
  • Contratulations to the crew of the shuttle Endeavour, for their safe landing today and their work on the International Space Station.
  • And just how big is the International Space Station? Here's a handy comparison.
  • Now here's a VERY cool classic gaming case mod - a Blu-Ray equipped PC in a Dreamcast. And for other game casing mod kicks, check out this Atari 2600 in a GameGear.
  • Congrats also go out to brilliant composer Michael Giacchino for being chosen as music director for the 81st Academy Awards. Though it is kinda sad that Bill Conti stopped just one short for doing the job for 20 years.
  • Uhhhhh, OK...
  • Google continues to leave Microsoft, Yahoo and the other smaller players in the search engine industry in the dust.
  • For those who don't believe in the death penalty. Then again, perhaps that's too easy a way out for him.
  • And if that article didn't depress you enough, try this INSANELY sobering pie chart of the bailout.
  • Some of the many reasons to hate MySpace
  • OK, if that set of unusually depressing items for this blog got you down, check out this hilarious and well done fan video. You'll need to be a Battlestar fan to enjoy it properly. And yes, while I may not like the music used under normal circumstances, it works amusingly well for this video.

Ponderings For 2008-11-02

Submitted by GuyGG on Mon, 11/03/2008 - 2:59am
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  • So, did you have a fun Halloween? This might be the nicest weather Halloween I can remember. The number of trick & treaters to visit my house tripled this year, with a total of 9 (yes, there were only 3 last year).
  • Coming as a surprise to almost nobody, Circuit City has announced the closure of 155 of their locations, which is just short of 25% of their total locations. Most of the ones in my area are remaining open. One thing is for sure, the company is clearly not doing well pulling out of the tailspin they've been in for a while. This new move is surely just to pull themselves out of their current crisis of being warned of their stock being de-listed because it's been below the requisite $1 level for more than a month. My sympathies go out to the many Circuit City employees who are getting caught in this crossfire, particularly the ones who have suffered through the previous layoff spree the company did a little while back.
  • Another recent bit of news that isn't too surprising is the announcement by David Tennant that he is leaving his Doctor Who role after 2009's set of TV specials. While my initial reaction is to be sad to see him leave (he's my favorite actor in the role for the entire 10 actor, 45 year history of the show), I'll be interested to see who the next actor will be. The rumors have started flying like crazy, of course, but given the reliability of the UK tabloid press on stuff like this, surely nobody has yet to accurately guess anything.
  • The newly-transmitting Hubble has sent back this pretty cool shot. You know, when you stop and think about the 400 million light year distance involved in this, it kinda blows your mind (or at least it should).
  • This is equally funny and disturbing. One thing's for sure, I know what will be in your nightmares tonight.
  • Check out this collection of photos from Paris during the 1900 Paris Exposition.
  • Congrats to The Pirate Bay for crossing yet another crazy milestone, 20 million unique clients.
  • So Fox has canceled King Of The Hill. Heh, to be honest I didn't realize it was still in production.
  • Oh, and The Ex List is another new series for the season to buy the farm. I hadn't even gotten around to watching any of them yet (though I did intend to give the show a shot, and do have the episodes saved to check out).
  • On the subject of new series for this season, Joss Whedon's upcoming mid-season replacement series, Dollhouse, has picked up one of my single favorite TV writers/producers, Jane Espenson. This should come as no huge shock, as Jane has worked on all of Joss' previous shows.
  • And speaking of TV, looks like AT&T is adding a new slate of HD channels to the U-Verse line-up. Nothing much that I care about, though.
  • The Terrance Howard situation with Iron Man 2 continues to get interesting. I also wanna know how he ended up the highest paid cast member of the first (if that's indeed true).
  • You know, for all the complaints that Microsoft gets for their monopolizing, they don't hold a candel to Apple's continuous propriatorization. It's one of the reasons I will have nothing to do with their technology (probably the primary reason).
  • Speaking of the all-powerful Apple, how in the WORLD is it that The Beatles have yet to end up on the annoyingly impiracle iTunes yet?
  • With the campaign process in the final stretch this weekend, it was fun to see the SNL skit from yesterday featuring McCain himself, and of course the great Tina Fey as Palin again.
  • Speaking of political situations, looks like one of the places you don't wanna be right now is Congo (or anywhere surrounding it for that matter).
  • Here's an interesting Google Maps mash-up, providing local movie listings.
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