Terminator

• So, did those of you who actually care about Valentines Day have a good one today?
• Looks like the Friday night Death Slot is going to claim two more genre victims. Dollhouse did worse than even the low expectations the slot had warranted. And looks like the move for The Sarah Connor Chronicles was a mistake as well. Thanks very much, Fox. Perhaps it sounded like a good idea, but if this doesn't prove that The X-Files was a fluke hit on Friday nights, I think the network will never learn. What's even more sad is that I didn't love the Dollhouse pilot episode. Granted, this is after much rumored behind-the-scenes difficulties between Whedon and the network (when are these shows going to learn to stay away from the Fox network?). It was a decent pilot, with some interesting ideas and a slick enough production, but this is not Whedon's best work. Still, it's just a pilot, and one can rarely dismiss a show on just the pilot. It's certainly worth hanging in there to see where it goes. Since it is Whedon (And Dushku, and Acker, and Penikett, etc), I'll be watching every episode, no matter what.
• The Witches Of Eastwick pilot has signed on the great David Nutter to direct, basically guaranteeing that it gets picked up to series. Nutter is on a 14-for-14 streak of directing/developing series pilot episodes that get picked up by the networks to go to series. So, we'll see if Witches will make it a 15-for-15 track record. While not every one of them may have lasted all too long (Traveler, Dr. Vegas & Tarzan), they've all been very well done. I've certainly been loving his latest success, The Mentalist (my favorite new show of the season, followed by Fringe).
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars has been picked up for a second season. The show has been more enjoyable than I would have initially anticipated.
• Dang it. Looks like Germany will get to see the final 3 episodes of Pushing Daisies long before the rest of us.
• These boots were made for Walken? Indeed. Yikes.
• And on the subject of Rifftrax, I've been enjoying some of the former MST3K gang's "trax" over the last week or two. Great stuff. And if you haven't been following Mike Nelson's month of eating nothing but bacon, you're missing some great coverage.
• Lots of cool news for the TV on Blu-Ray front from a recent Rumor Mill post over at The Digital Bits. Coming to the format is Chuck: Season 2, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Season 2, Torchwood: Season 3 and Fringe: Season 1. Not only that, but there's cover art and news about all three of the Star Trek original series seasons HD remaster sets. But of course the coolest news in that post is that Disney is, indeed, working on a Blu-Ray release of Tron, in anticipation of the upcoming sequel. I imagine it's going to take a whole lotta work to get Tron up-to-snuff for a great quality high def master. The amount of laborious effort that went into the myriad elements and layers of the film resulted in some rough-around-the-edges end results.
• After nearly a year of deafening silence, it looks like things are still moving forward with JPEG XR (formerly Microsoft's HD Photo format). I began a film/slide scanning project (which I will NEVER finish) about a year and a half ago, and committed to the format in it's VERY early infancy. Still to this day, one of the very few apps to support the format is Photoshop, via a plug-in (which is how I'm doing the work with the project). Good to hear that the finalization of the format is now done and that it is imminent for popular use. It'll be nice to have some real support for the format.
• Conan did a funny rant against the NY Times about their boron mistake.
• And Joaquin Phoenix made a dazed, half-hilarious, half-scary appearance on Letterman.
• And you thought your fingernails were long? Ouch.
• Beverly Eckert is somebody who did not have any manner of good fortune with airplane disasters. Definitely a sad set of circumstances.
• If you've never checked out the ultra-cool, Tesla-coil-weilding music group ArcAttack, you should hunt around their site and all the videos of their performances up on YouTube. Awesome stuff.
• I don't care if this is staged/planted or not (I vote not), this is hilarious. Here's a camcorder recording from the audience of the jumbotron. Great stuff.
• Coolness - The Pong Museum. Happy 40th anniversary, Pong.
• And on the topic of video games (and my previous post about Tron coming to Blu-Ray), and of no particular surprise, Disney is supposedly working on a new Tron video game to tie in with the upcoming sequel.
• And I'll transition from Tron to other modern remakes of fun retro-franchises of my childhood. The first is the very cool trailer for GI Joe: The Rise Of Cobra. Helmed by a perfectly chosen Stephen Sommers directing, and featuring Christopher Eccleston (The ninth Doctor), I have high hopes for the fun looking movie. If nothing else, it will surely result in a great new score from Alan Silvestri (who has worked with Sommers before on the second Mummy film and on Van Helsing). The second is Land Of The Lost. It is also helmed by a talented director, Brad Silberling, and the great cast includes none-other-than Pushing Daisies' own Anna Friel. The third almost defies belief, The A-Team. I'm a fan of the series, and had been interested in the number of rumored attempts to do a new film based on the show. The newest incarnation of that idea has Joe Carnahan directing (hopefully not as crappy a choice as my instincts would tell me), but most interesting is that Ridley Scott will be producing with his brother Tony exec producing.

• I post this entry from down in comfortable Phoenix, AZ (technically speaking, I'm in Laveen, which is just outside of Phoenix). It was roughly the same temp inside and out tonight. A bit wamer than the 17 degrees of Chicago, from whence I came.
• Great to have Medium back with a new season this week. It's one of those shows where I don't realize how much I missed it until it's back. It's also a show I don't mention enough, because it really does deserve it. It's one of the most consistently great shows on the air. It's extremely rare for there to be a less-than-solid episode of the series, and it's always striving to be creative and try something risky and interesting. And it's one of those TV shows that really understands how to visually tell a story. The show's not just about visual style (which it certainly does have), but about using the visuals to help convey the plot and characters. Hopefully, the show will survive a good while longer.
• Here's a fun new official promo from FOX for their upcoming Friday pairing of Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles and Dollhouse, done Grindhouse style. It's a fun and cool promo (particularly for being an official promo from the network), and I really do hope these two shows can help each other survive in their crazy Friday "death slot" schedule. It all kicks off on 2/13, and I can't wait. The Whedon geek in me loves seeing Summer Glau and Eliza Dushku joining forces in different shows together.
• Speaking of sci-fi on Friday nights, did y'all enjoy last Friday's Battlestar episode, "The Oath?" After two fantastic and gritty character episodes, this one launched things forward at a breakneck speed. Awesome episode. I cheered out loud when Starbuck, uh, made an appearance in the landing bay...
• Speaking of Battlestar, Universal is doing an interesting move releasing the pilot for Caprica on DVD this April, LONG before it airs on Sci-Fi in 2010 along with the episodes that will follow it.
• And just to prove that after praising the above shows so much there's the other side to the coin, here's another low for reality TV.
• The Obama administration has made their first move that annoys me.
• Doctor Who will be making the big jump to being fully produced for HD starting with the upcoming 2009 Specials.
• And you thought you've stayed at some strange hotels...
• Here's an amusing bit of subterfuge pulled off by Anna Torv and Mark Valley, stars of the series Fringe, having gotten married over the holidays without the press noticing.
• Speaking of subterfuge, looks like you'll wanna pay close attention to those M&M's you are buying.
• And if you wanna see something equally strange and cool, check out these hit songs reworked through Microsoft's rather interesting and impressive Songsmith platform. There's numerous other ones you can find on Youtube if you go looking, a number of which are quite interesting.

• Welcome to 2009. Everybody have a fun New Years Day?
• I guess Blu-Ray has become commodified enough to start marketing in budget 2 packs. I picked up the Patriot Games & Sum Of All Fears 2 pack for $23 at Best Buy. Curiously, I think the transfer on Patriot Games might just be slightly better, though both discs look nice. I bring up the topic primarily to state that I miss Jerry Goldsmith. I'm watching Sum Of All Fears at the moment, and it has such a fantastic Goldsmith score. His scores are uniquely specific, and sadly it was one of his last few scores before dying in 2004. I'm a film score nerd, and Jerry is my all-time favorite composer (or music artist of any kind, really). I'll also state that Sum Of All Fears is a better movie than most think. Other than the score (and Morgan Freeman, of course), I think my next favorite thing about the movie is Liev Schreiber. His performance as the perfectly downplayed agent is pitch perfect. Frankly, I think the thing I most wanna see in the new Wolverine movie is Scheiber's performance.
• You know what movie I was just thinking would be great to see released on Blu-Ray? Pleasantville.
• The 30gb model Zune players all had a great day yesterday
• Congratulations to The Terminator, which has been added to the National Film Registry (among 25 films).
• Rumors are flying about Steve Jobs' health
• I will be posting my list of personal favorite movie awards list for 2008 within the next couple weeks. Still have at least a half dozen 2008 movies on my list to see. I'm headed out of the house for the rest of the evening, so short post for this first day of the year.

• Here's an interesting article on the recent, surprising full season pickups for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Knight Rider. The points the article makes would certainly seem plausible. I'm sure there were some other factors involved, but I doubt the claimed reasons weren't at least part of the reasoning. On the subject of the two shows, I have wildly differing opinions. I actually just finished watching today's new Sarah Connor episode. The show has really found some solid ground in this second season. It was a good series during the first season (which was quite brief, thanks to the writers strike), but it's really hit the mark this second year. Naturally, it struggles in the ratings, as most great shows do. Particularly sci-fi genre shows. The two episodes that preceded this week's episode were utterly fantastic. One thing's for sure, I won't look a gift horse in the mouth. If economic reasons helped keep Sarah Connor on the air, then so be it, at least it's on the air. And when was the last time that budgetary reasons were actually cited as a reason to keep a sci-fi series ON the air? Then again, there's Knight Rider. For starters, let me say that I'm a fan of the original show. Second, I'm not one of those fanboys who hates remakes or needs adaptations to be totally faithful to the original. I've always been a huge Battlestar fan, but was open to the new series from the beginning, and have loved it since I first saw the mini-series. When I heard they were doing a TV movie follow-up to Knight Rider a year ago or so, I was intrigued. I watched that TV movie, and was, for the most part, happy with the results. It wasn't fantastic, but I liked it. So, when it got picked up as a series for this season, I was looking forward to see where they go with it. Well, they couldn't leave well enough alone, and they completely lobotomized the thing. Granted, this is Knight Rider we're talking about, so I'm not expecting the world's most intelligent and character driven show (though the TV movie was actually quite character driven). But they revamped this thing heavily, and not in a good way. The first episode of the series was staggeringly awful. The second episode was poor, but not as completely terrible as the first. The third was so-so. In other words, it is improving, but it's got a long way to go. I haven't watched the most recent few episodes, but I'll continue to give the show a shot, out of some sense of loyaly or something. That, and it's got a pretty good cast. One thing's for sure, most of the effects on the show suck. All things being equal, the short-lived Bionic Woman (which this show unofficially kinda replaced) was definitely superior.
• Speaking of struggling genre shows, the producers of Heroes have just been shown the door.
• Here's a cool collection of some nice high-speed photography
• Ladies and gents, the Oasis Of The Seas...
• Talk about an odd party game
• Welp, tomorrow's the big election day. At least all the media hype will be over. The highlight of the day will, of course, be the Daily Show/Colbert Report live coverage special.

• Hurray! Fox has picked up Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles for the full season. This is one of those shows that started off pretty decent, but suffered a bit from the short first season due to the writers strike. As the second season rolls alone, it's clear that this is a show that is getting better and better as it goes. It's been a bit low in the ratings, so I'm happy to see Fox, of all networks, give it the benefit of the doubt.
• Looks like Get Smart will be getting a sequel. As a major fan of the original series, I was actually quite happy with the new movie, and look forward to another film.
• For you fellow Buffy fans, here's a truly freaky real-life example of the early first season episode of the series, The Witch. Yikes.
• So it looks like original creator Kenneth Johnson's attempts at getting the classic mini-series/series of V revived have failed, but a different new series version is now in the works.
• So, it turns out Katie Holmes hasn't lost her acting skills after all. She was fantastic on this week's episode of Eli Stone (a great show). While I may question her sanity in real life, like most people do, she can still come through with some fine performances when she wants to.
• Eh, short post for today. I'm already becoming distracted by a couple little projects I'm working on as I type this. Back again soon. Perhaps with few movie reviews. Yeah, I know, I'm ***WAY*** behind on them.

Rather than trying to do any kind of structured TV reviews, I'm just gonna do the occasional post of random TV review thoughts for whatever points in time, regarding whatever random shows (in random order)...

Star Wars - The Clone Wars (Through 1.02): I thought the theatrically distributed debut film for this series of animated episodes was passably entertaining. It was certainly not without its flaws, but I liked it well enough. Then again, I'm not the average fanboy who loathes the prequel trilogy. In fact, I quite like Episode 3. So shoot me. I mildly liked the previous set of Cartoon Network's Clone Wars animated shorts, but haven't really watched them since they first ran. However, I must admit that I really liked the first Cartoon Network episode of this series, and the second one wasn't half bad, either. If there's one complaint I need to make, it's that I hate the battle droids. They were bad in the prequel films, but they weren't in it all that much, frankly. With the amount of time they are getting in these Clone Wars episodes, I think they are a bigger blemish on the franchise than Jar-Jar Binks was. Still, Yoda was great in the first episode, and the clone troopers work quite well. The animation seemed more impressive in these TV episodes than the theatrical debut film, as crazy as that sounds. Overall, I'll continue watching if they can keep up the production quality.

Knight Rider (Through 1.02): I rather liked the backdoor pilot film that NBC made, and had hopes of liking the TV series that was green lit after the pilot film did well. I'm a fan of the original series, and thought the pilot film did a pretty good job staying true to the original while still finding a new approach. Then along came writer/producer Gary Scott Thompson to overhaul the production when it got picked up for series. I can only assume he's to blame, because in this new series form, this show sucks. The moderate amount of intelligence from that pilot film has been completely lobotomized. This might as well be WWE Wrestling for all it's worth. If it weren't for the holdover cast from the pilot film, this would be complete garbage. The first episode was abysmal. The second was an improvement, but not particularly good either. I'll give it one or two more episodes to improve, just for my loyalty to the original, but I'm not expecting a wild turnaround.

Fringe (Through 1.04): Looks like JJ Abrams and his gang have the breakaway best new show of the year on their hands. This is definitely my favorite new show so far this season. I'm totally loving it. From the fantastic cast to the creepy stories and plot arcs to the great production quality, I'm very thankful to have a successful X-Files styled show back on the air. There's also the fantastic gimmick of their "floating in mid air" title cards for location names, reminding me of stuff like David Fincher's opening titles for Panic Room. It's surely a gimmick, but it works wonderfully. The network must like what they're getting, too, since they just picked it up for the full season.

Do Not Disturb (Through 1.02): Since I just talked about a great new show that just got a full pickup, I'll follow it with this lame sitcom that just got a quick cancellation. I was hoping it would be good, since it starred Jerry O'Connell, but it just wasn't meant to be. After his great Carpoolers comedy series from last year didn't succeed, it's only fitting that a truly lame sitcom would fail even worse. Never mind the fact that the original pilot episode (which I saw a leaked copy of over the summer) was as bad or worse than what actually aired. This was a bad sitcom, plain and simple. In fact, it looks like this will be the first year I can remember there not being a new multi-camera sitcom that I like, unless there's another new one I haven't seen yet. I imagine this will be the last I write about this show.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Through 2.04): This surprisingly good TV series entry to the venerable Terminator franchise continues to be impressive. From the typically excellent production quality to the great cast, it fights against the odds and just plain works. After the wonderful final act of last seasons' final episode, I was hopeful for a good continuation. Though the John Connor character has been a little bit weak and annoying during the first couple of episodes this second season, the show has otherwise been very good. Brian Austin Green continues his nice performance and has been added to the main cast. This second season has done another bit of odd and interesting casting with the addition of rocker Shirley Manson to the main cast, in an intriguing role. While this show continues to stray into the Battlestar Galactica world of machines rising against their creators and questioning their possible humanity, it remains a uniquely Terminator take on the idea. I look forward to further episodes. And speaking of Battlestar connections, composer Bear McCreary continually hits his episodic scores out of the park on this series. Perhaps not quite to the amazing level of quality that Battlestar has gotten from him over the years, but he's doing some darned impressive thematic and texture scoring for Terminator.

Anyway, more to come soon. Or later. Or whenever.

• You've gotta check out this hilarious (and very impressive) editing work to create Robocop vs The Terminator...  Here's episode 1, then episode 2, then the trailer for episode 3.
• Looks like my new AT&T U-Verse service will be making a jump from 2 to 3 simultaneous HD streams.
• An interesting collection of WWII security posters
• Great. Crank 2 is described by Statham himself as "Most Offensive." If it truly is Crank 1 times 1000, as he says, this sequel will be the worst piece of narrative ever made, of any kind. Surely no worst book, song, movie, painting or sand castles built by a 2 year old could be combined together to be even 1/10 as bad as "Crank 1 times 1000."
• Another collection of excellent HDR photos
• "Kitten Of War" - great photo
• Here's a very cool panoramic shot wrapping all the way around from the top of Everest
• Here's a cool photo of the shuttle breaking the sound barrier
• And speaking of cool shuttle pictures, I took a high res version of Atlantis & Endeavour on their neighboring launch pads, amazingly accompanied by a rainbow, and made a 1920x1200 resolution widescreen wallpaper from it:

• Wow. Did you all enjoy this weekend's bright, shiny, happy episode of Battlestar Galactica? Fantastic episode, but man the network must have hated this one. High praise goes out to four aspects of this one. First, Nicki Clyne. I won't say why, cause many people probably haven't watched the episode yet. You'll know when you see it. Second, Gary Hutzel and his VFX team. Not only have they continued to refine their exterior ship effects, but they finally nailed the new centurion effects. This is the first episode where the Cylon centurions really felt like they were really in the room (though there were some nice shots down on Caprica when they were chasing Boomer and Helo in the first season). Third, Bear McCreary's bleary, out-of-body music score. Which brings me to the fourth in the list, the combined and brilliantly odd cinematography and editing of the episode (particularly Cally's material), which also plays perfectly into McCreary's score. Overall, another great episode. One can feel the series hurtling through its final act at this point.
• Here's a hilarious example of what happens when big corporations start throwing law suits out there for the heck of it, without thinking things through.
• Here's another prime example of why DRM systems completely suck. It's just one of a great many reasons why I don't EVER touch any DRM protected media. Never. Ever.
• The Sarah Connor Chronicles has been picked up for a second season
• I ran into this exact same retarded captcha approach on the same site trying to download a shared file the other day. I tried a half dozen times to verify what they wanted, and just couldn't get it right. I had to give up. It really is the worst captcha variety I've ever witnessed, so I'm in total agreement with that post.
• Here's an amusing list of some of the dumbest business decisions in history
• Some more insane spam statistics
• Western Digital has launched the VelociRaptor
• Check out the unpacking of a second recreation of Babbage's differene engine
• What happens when a goat is challenged by a golden eagle?
• This is just plain wrong
• Need some "professional" help installing that XBox game?
• And oh yeah, Dilbert.com has gotten a major overhaul
• Lastly, here's a very cool shot of the ISS from above. I've also done a cropped version of that picture for use on 1920x1200 widescreen monitors, linked below.

• Check out a rundown of some of the biggest new years eve fireworks spectaculars from a couple weeks ago. I've always been a fan of Sydney's fireworks display each year (a copy of it has floated on the net for the last half dozen years or so which I've hunted down and watched year after year), and this year's was OK. Not their best, but still cool. However, London's was phenomenal. That's the most impressive, insane fireworks display I've ever seen. And that YouTube video doesn't do it justice. Not by a long shot. I hunted down an HD copy of the BBC-HD broadcast, which is FAR more impressive. However, somebody needed to gag that raving idiot they gave a mic to that nearly ruins the broadcast of the event. I may mess with the audio track on the HD copy and see if I can drop the center channel to take him off it. Seriously, it should be illegal to give an open mic to any of these moronic announcers during fireworks displays.
• Looks like Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has launched with style. I haven't watched the aired version yet, but I'd seen the rough cut pilot way back when. I'm anxious to check out the final cut, if for no other reason than to check out Bear McCreary's music score.
• The Japanese are insane: a 33 megapixel "Super Hi-Vision" standard in the works? I may believe they could pull it off eventually, but to be broadcasting by 2015? No way. I'll believe that when I see it.
• The sequel for Superman Returns has been pushed from 2009 to 2010 due to the strike. Given the other confusions of late as to who will be involved (as opposed to differences in the JLA film).
• Britney just isn't missing a step on the road to being the lead notorious celeb
• CNet posts an article revealing more stupidity and non-it-getting from the uber-evil RIAA