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.

It’s that time again. Time to start checking out the leaked copies of the new fall season TV series pilots. As always, many of these are original pilot cuts where cast members and scenes will be recast and reshot. These original pilots aren’t always completely accurate representations of the finished product. But, I’ll check ‘em out and offer my opinions on which ones work, which ones don’t, and why. I’ll list this first batch starting with the good ones and work my way down to the bad ones.

FOX: Fringe (9/10) (official site)

Here’s yet another fantastic sci-fi/action/drama series from J.J. Abrams and his team of talented collaborators at Bad Robot. Featuring many Alias/Lost vets like Jeff Pinkner (show runner for Fringe), Robert Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Bryan Burk, it’s hard to not assume that this’ll become something great. While this pilot I saw is slightly rough around the edges, it’s still a wonderfully dynamic and engaging series, and does feature some nice, final-looking on-screen title graphics.

The cast is led by Australian actress Anna Torv and ex-Dawson’s Creek veteran Joshua Jackson. Torv does a very nice job with the strong FBI agent character, easily breathing life into the multiple levels of her character. She definitely feels like an excellent piece of casting. Joshua Jackson does an admirable job channeling the like of Liev Schreiber, and it works. While I’m not much of a Dawson’s Creek fan, I consider most of the cast of that show to be rather talented (well, except for Dawson himself, James Van Der Beek, who couldn’t act himself out of a paper bag). Jackson definitely nails the charming rogue nature of his character, and he plays very well against his co-stars. One of those co-stars is John Noble, who plays his estranged and also brilliant father. The three of them work very well together. The rest of the cast is well rounded, but don’t get all too much time to get a good grasp of who’ll be important in the long run of the series. Mark Cherry, of Boston Legal, is a nice bit of casting.

The story will definitely attract fans of The X-Files, because this show is RIGHT up that alley. It’s got the feel of the show, the hints at big mythologies, the supernatural and experimental sciences, and, well, the FBI. This show has the potential for greatness. Let’s hope FOX can, after all these years, be the one to get The X-Files lightning to strike twice. Many networks tried during the 90’s, and failed. Perhaps the network that made The X-Files work can be the one to do it a second time. We can hope.

TNT: Leverage (9/10) (official site)

While we may have seen this kind of heist story done many ways over the years, I can’t help but love this pilot. It has the potential to be a series I’ll totally love. Executive produced by the notable Dean Devlin (who partnered with Roland Emmerich for years on the likes of Stargate & Independence Day, and went on later to vastly underrated movies like Eight Legged Freaks), who also directed this first episode, this pilot totally works.

Casting of the pilot is fantastic. I’ve long believed Timothy Hutton to be a undervalued actor, and he’s great as the lead character of this series. His dynamic as the leader of the team, and the one of them that used to be “the good guy” tracking down the rest of them, works amazingly well. He brings the tragic past of the character to life, which will surely be a well exploited aspect to the character for the run of the series. And he plays off the more flippant characters who make up the rest of the make-shift team very well. The wonderful Christian Kane (who played the great Lindsey McDonald in Angel) is a hoot as the suave action hero of the group. Beth Riesgraf is hilarious and loads of fun as the nimble cat burglar of the team. Aldis Hodge is also lots of fun as the tech nerd hacker. Gina Bellman brings a nice elegance as the grifter of the team, and perhaps romantic co-lead. And tossed in for good measure in the pilot is Saul Rubinek, an actor who always reminds me of Elliot Gould.

The production of this pilot is excellent. It’s very well paced, has a great sense of comedic timing, and pretty much works all around. Dean Devlin clearly has a fondness for the heist genre, and this series plays off the trapping of the genre very well. Does it reinvent the genre? No, not really. Most of it has been seen before in varying ways. Regardless, it’s still a phenomenally entertaining pilot. I look forward to the series, which has been greenlit by TNT for at least a 13 episode run.

TNT: Raising The Bar (7/10) (official site)

While we’re on the subject of Angel alumnus (not to mention TNT), we have this series which features an ensemble cast including J. August Richards (who played Gunn on Angel). Featuring a pedigree of creator Steven Bochco, one would write it off as just yet another legal drama. And they’d be somewhat right in doing so. Still, it’s a pretty good legal drama, with a bit of a twist. In this one, we have the young characters from both sides as a group of friends, from the DA to the prosecuting attorney to the defending attorney, they all end up sitting at the bar at the end of the day together. It’s an interesting tack on the age-old genre. And I suppose Bochco is a likely as anyone to try it.

The cast is an assortment of interesting choices. The lead character is arguably the defending attorney played by none other than Mark-Paul Gosselaar. Yes, Zach Morris from Saved By The Bell. I suppose it’s unfair to still be tying him down to that show, since he’s been in plenty of stuff since, like Commander In Chief. I’m not entirely sure if his performance completely works. It borders a little bit too much on the emotional, but that’s the type of character they’re trying for, so it might be a spot-on performance. It’s just a bit hard to tell at first glance. Melissa Sagemiller is a nice piece of casting, and her character gets to play that balancing act amongst the group of characters the best. J. August Richards is good as the DA, but doesn’t get a whole lot to do in this pilot. Jane Kaczmarek is surprisingly slimy in her holier-than-thou role of a judge. Jonathan Scarfe comes through with a nice performance as her clerk, among other things. The rest of the cast works well enough.

The series definitely has the potential to work well. Or it could fall flat on its face. This one’s hard to peg on just the pilot episode, so we’ll see how further episode shape up.

FOX: Do Not Disturb (3/10) (official site)

This is an unfunny sitcom that falls into nearly every trapping a sitcom could succumb to. It has amateur, lazy writing with either stereotyped or completely unfunny punchlines. It also has cookie-cutter characters, almost none of whom should work if not for a couple good performances. And I’m not sure if they are intentionally trying to poke fun at the two-set sitcom setting by having “the upstairs” and “the downstairs” as a division of the classes of employees or not. If so, perhaps they are a bit clever. If not, it’s yet another sign that this lame sitcom ain’t long for this world. Still, this series is for the most part harmless. It’s not Cavemen. I suppose Cavemen will be an abysmal low for the sitcom genre by which all future sitcoms will be forgiven for not being nearly as bad. At least I hope we’ll never see another sitcom as bad as Cavemen again (I doubt anyone could accurately sum up how much that show sucked, beyond just showing somebody a copy of said series).

In terms of casting, Jerry O’Connell may be a bit typecast as the shallow, misogynistic hotel manager, but it works none-the-less. It’s sad that that O’Connell’s previous sitcom, last season’s Carpoolers on ABC, didn’t survive. It was a lot of fun, and criminally overlooked. Molly Stanton (who was great in the also-overlooked series Twins, a sitcom on the final year of The WB that co-starred Sara Gilbert, Melanie Griffith and Mark Linn-Baker) does another great job of playing the airhead blond. And Jesse Tyler Ferguson (who was fantastic on the also-overlooked sitcom The Class the season before last on CBS) gets in a few good jokes. Well, he makes a few bad jokes work, anyway. Niecy Nash is completely forgettable in her unbelievably stereotyped role. And then there’s the surprise guest casting of Robert Wagner as the hotel owner, which works well enough.

Put simply, this is a totally skipable sitcom. If only the ones I referenced in this review could have survived rather than this one ever existing. Don’t waste your time on it.

FX: Pretty/Handsome (2/10) (IMDB site)

Joseph Fiennes, Carrie-Anne Moss, Blythe Danner, Sarah Paulson and Robert Wagner. A very impressive cast. If not for that cast and their performances, this train wreck of a drama would be nigh unwatchable. FX seems to be striving to become a lame, pathetic HBO wannabe. Why anyone would want to be HBO is beyond me, but they seem to want to do so all the same. Basically speaking, this is the story of a controversial transsexual doctor in an uptight, high class community. It’s “edgy” approach to the subject will surely gain it some press. It’s just that “look at us, we’re pushing the envelope!” nature of the show that makes me completely uninterested in it. From the cliche upper class trappings of the community to the “shocking” transsexual plotline(s), I got bored with this pilot quickly. It’s such a complete waste of a fantastic cast. I did manage to get through the whole pilot, though my mind did start to wander a couple times while watching it.

Oh, and it was strange to see Robert Wagner and Niecy Nash, who were both in Do Not Disturb, together in this pilot as well (very together).

HBO: True Blood (2/10)

In yet another example of how much I despise HBO, there’s this abomination of a great series idea botched in almost every possible way. I couldn’t even manage to finish watching this pilot. Aside from the casting of the excellent Anna Paquin (in a fairly uneven character), and the idea itself that the series is based on, I can’t say anything nice about this show. The production feels amateur (which is at least the one thing HBO could usually be relied upon to do right), the characters are all over the place and a complete mess (if not just downright annoying people that I wouldn’t want anything to do with in real life). The narrative is anybody’s guess. They seem to simply be taking the idea of vampires having revealed themselves to the public, and becoming second class citizens, and have dropped various characters and scenes in around the idea. If they’re planning to go somewhere with this narrative, it sure escaped my viewing of the first 2/3 of the pilot.

Then there’s the foul-mouthed, explicit nature of the show, which is a completely tired and annoying aspect of nearly everything HBO puts their name on. Just once, I want to see HBO make something that could even remotely have a chance at airing on a broadcast network. Or even stand a chance at a PG-13 in theaters. I became sick of their one-note reason for existing long, long ago. Look at us! We can swear! We can show nutidy! We can have bloody violence!

• OK, the big news of the Oscar nominations for today got a bit eclipsed by the surprising death of Heath Ledger. Sad to hear of that, of course. It’ll be a bit weird watching The Dark Knight. Anyway, as far as the Oscars go, I was pretty happy with the results. Frankly, I think I’m happier with this list than I have been in years. I’m finally gonna have the motivation to getting out and seeing Atonement and There Will Be Blood (both of which I have wanted to see but haven’t gotten around to). I’m absolutely giddy that Juno got 4 of the major nomination categories. And honestly, it’s the 4 categories that it most deserves to have gotten - Original Screenplay (Diablo Cody), Director (Jason Reitman), Actress (Ellen Page) and most awesome of all, Best Picture. In fact, 2 of the Best Picture nominees are in my personal top 5 list from my recently finished 2007 Film Retrospective list (Juno & Michael Clayton). I definitely liked No Country For Old Men, but think it could have been a bit better (then again, perhaps I’d have a different opinion on a second viewing). The film score category, which has sucked beyond the telling of it the last couple years, has 2 great nominees in the list: Michael Giacchino’s Ratatouille and Marco Beltrami’s fantastic 3:10 To Yuma (which amusingly I actually have playing, by coincidence, as I type this). This is the first nomination for both of them. And as two of the greatest composers currently in the game, they both deserve it. I’d be thrilled for either of them to win. I haven’t yet heard the score to Atonement, but Dario Marianelli is a talented composer, so I imagine it’s good. I haven’t heard The Kite Runner’s score yet either, but I’d have doubts about it since I was anything but impressed with Alberto Iglesias’ 2006 Oscar nominated score to The Constant Gardner. And James Newton Howard did a good job with his score to Michael Clayton (not sure that it stands out quite to the level of Oscar nomination, but it’s certainly better than nearly all the nominees in the last couple years). Speaking of Michael Clayton, it’s great to see it pick up a number of nominations, including the biggest set of acting nominations for the year, deservedly so. I had it in a number of the categories in my list as well. And it’s fantastic to see Philip Seymour Hoffman get the supporting actor nomination for Charlie Wilson’s War (he was beyond fantastic in that film). Oh, and nice to see Tommy Lee Jones get some long-overdue attention for his excellent performance in In The Valley Of Elah. Anyway, I’ll get a spreadsheet of my predictions/choices posted in the near future, as usual.
• BTW, speaking of Juno, I hadn’t been paying close attention to the box office performance of the film. I’m happy that it’s doing phenomenal. It looks like it’s amazingly going to cross the $100 million line. It’s officially Fox Searchlight’s biggest money-maker to date, by a comfortable margin, which is only going to continue to increase. The staying power of the film is impressive, and great to see.
• The teaser for JJ Abrams’ new Star Trek film has gone live on the official site. I belive Abrams may be able to pull it off. It’ll be worth it just for Michael Giacchino’s score.
• A picture is indeed worth 1000 words. Most of them amusing words.
• Cool. The real camera behind Cloverfield.
• Oh, and speaking of Cloverfield, I’ll want one of these. I’m not much of an action figure type person, but this one would be very cool. I’m sure I’ll want one even more when they post some pics. The price will keep me from picking one up, though…
• Some neato job ads from the 30’s & 40’s.
• In memory of Heath Ledger, I think I’ll pop on A Knight’s Tale (my favorite film of his) while I do some work on other stuff…

Loved it. Absolutely loved it. As the first 2008 movie release I’ve seen so far, I can’t just say it’s the best movie of the year so far, cause it is by default. But it will remain near the top of my list throughout the rest of 2008, no doubt. Will everybody love this movie as much as me? Who knows. Probably not. I haven’t read ANY other reviews yet (I kinda put myself on a blackout for media exposure of the movie given the cryptic and great advertising campaign Paramount was running and the fact that I knew I was gonna see the movie no matter what).

Writing: Nothing but praise to give to the writing. As a former writer for both Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel, Drew Goddard was quickly snapped up by JJ Abrams to work on Alias when Angel was canceled. Goddard worked on the last season of Buffy, then it ended. After that he went to Angel, and it happened to be the last season of that show. Then he started work on Alias. You know what happened then? Yep, it ended up being the last season of that show. So, he moved from Alias over to Lost. And what do you know, he finally ended up on a show that didn’t end the year he started writing for it. Well, his association with Abrams finally launched into a film career with the writing of this script. Like James Cameron’s script for Titanic, Goddard’s script manages to setup characters and situations that perfectly work to get the main character to enough different places to experience the disaster from the needed perspectives. And the script sets things up with apparent ease and cleverness. It uses everything to its advantage, from the gimmick of using found camera footage and having it been recorded over a previous recording that we see little glimpses of from time to time between cuts, making for a wonderful counterpoint of our main characters. The characters are well written, and perfectly tapped into as average folks in the middle of this chaos. It’s brilliant. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meetings for this movie. I have to imagine the pitch line was something like “Godzilla meets 9/11.” Or if they’re trying to be slightly more tactful, “Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project.” Still, given the stylistic approach, it conjures up the visual ideas of camcorder footage from Manhattan on 9/11. And amidst all this, Goddard weaves in a nice bit of a love story as the glue that keeps things moving.

Production: Matching the fantastic writing is the spot-on perfect production. I’m not normally a fan of “shaky cam” hand held footage. However, this is a situation that absolutely warrants it, and it’s very well done. While remaining believably shot by an average dude, it does a good job at capturing just enough of what’s going on to both tell the story and glimpse the awesome visual effects and production work happening around our main characters. And what a visual effects process this film must have been. It’s spectacularly visualized, all in the frame of a never-still shot. The roto-scoping and match-moving involved must have been grueling. JJ Abrams’ long-time visual effect supervisor Kevin Blank and his teams at Double Negative and Tippet Studios did a phenomenal job. Truly fantastic work. Add to that some glorious sound design and mixing and you’ve got a great experience. They have to fudge things ever so slightly in visual quality and sound quality as to what a camcorder would actually record, but it’s carefully done to not lose that feel. Also, it’s kinda cool to see Matt Reeves as the director of this, as he used to be JJ Abrams right hand person while working back in the day on Felicity, so it’s cool to see them rejoin forces.

Cast: Populated by a cast of basically unknown actors, the cast makes it all work. With pretty much the entire cast hailing from television roles, this is certainly a bigger production than they’d likely been used to, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Lizzy Caplan was the funniest part of the overlooked CBS series The Class from last season. Jessica Lucas had a small recurring role on CSI last year and did a good job. T.J. Miller is hilarious on the very funny, current ABC series Carpoolers (as a character named Marmaduke). Michael Stahl-David hails from the NBC series The Black Donnelly’s from last season (a show I didn’t particularly like, but he was good in it). While Mike Vogel has a more mixed resume of movies like Poseidon and shows like Grounded For Life. With pretty much no recognizable actors to the average viewer, this movie puts all of the budget into the production qualities, which is cool. Not only that, but not having well known actors in the roles helps lend believability to the “average person” reality of the approach (in the same way that The Blair Witch Project would have been hurt by some well known actors in the roles).

Music: The score to this movie is literally an end credit suite and nothing else. As the end titles credit it, the score suite in said credits is simply titled “Roar!” and is composed by JJ Abrams’ exclusively used composer Michael Giacchino. And in line with Giacchino’s fantastic talent, this end credit suite is huge and fantastic. Despite only writing a cue for the end credits, Giacchino swung for the fences. It’s a wonderful suite. It’s all the more impressive in an era where end credits are either covered with a lame song or an assembly of existing score cues from in the movie. Few composers get to write a genuine score suite for the end credits anymore, let alone ONLY writing one. And to get to do a 12 minute suite with an 87-piece orchestra is quite the luxury. Giacchino is one of the best new generation film composers in the game, and his Roar piece is classic monster/action scoring at its best. I’ve gotta get my hands on a copy of Roar! Hopefully it’s show up on iTunes or something. It obviously won’t get its own CD release or such (this is one of the few advantages for me when it comes to online music sales, where they can easily release something small like this that couldn’t warrant its own CD release).

• Oooooh, finally a definitive soundtrack release for Blade Runner. Boy, all the stops are being pulled out for us Blade Runner fanatics. This 25th anniversary is becoming THE time to be a Blade Runner obsessed fan like myself. After years and years of us fans wanting high quality releases of the film, soundtrack and other extras, we are finally getting it all, and more.
• 100 Movies, 100 Quotes, 100 Numbers. AWESOME video. Too cool.
• Then there are these wicked fun videos of the random ramblings of spam messages put to animation. Spamland 1, 2 & 3.
• And if that’s not fun enough, how about watching the Eiffel Tower (the one in Vegas, anyway) get hit by lightning?
• Another cool casting move by JJ Abrams for the new Trek film - Jennifer Morrison.
• Dinner In The Sky. You gotta be kidding me.
• For anyone doubting just how stupid the major studios are, or how bad sequels can be, look no further - Crank 2! I can’t image it possibly being worse than the first (which I continue to seriously consider naming as my all-time least favorite movie), but I’m sure they’ll find a way to do so.
• The idea of Tim Burton doing a 3D version of Alice In Wonderland is a bit of a scary proposition.
• One last tidbit. For any of you wondering how insane fans of Joss Whedon are, here’s a forum thread discussing the upcoming planned writers strike day that will reassemble the Mutant Enemy writing team (Mutant Enemy was the production company of Joss’ 3 shows of Buffy, Angel & Firefly). Guess they are planning on having the strike last a while.

• I spent a couple evenings this week digging through all the commentaries and extras on the new DVD set of My So-Called Life. Such a nice set. They did an admirable job getting interview material from nearly all the cast and primary crew. Some nicely off-the-cuff, reminiscent stuff. It’s truly scary to watch the pilot episode of the series and keep in mind that Claire Danes was only 13 years old when it was shot. It took a while for the show to get picked up, so by the time it was in episodic production, Danes was nearly the 15 years she was portraying. How strange is it to have a child actor on TV playing ABOVE their age? And Danes is just amazing in the show. Truly. Another thing I feel the need to point out is just how amazing the pilot of the show was shot (the rest of the show is no slouch either). It’s one of the most gorgeously filmed pilots I’ve seen. I’ve watched it quite a few times over the years and it never fails to amaze in how beautiful it is. I also never tire of the great main title sequence.
• Oooooh. Joss Whedon & Tim Minear join forces again. And with Eliza Dushku, no less. Woo hoo! I just can’t believe it’ll be with Fox.
• Michael Giacchino is to use the Trek theme in scoring the new JJ Abrams film. Great news. And I’m sure his arrangement will be fantastic. He did such a marvelous job with the theme in Mission Impossible III.
• The X-Files 2 has picked out a release date, and it’s sooner than I would have expected. I’m totally looking forward to being able to see it.
• Warehouse 13, huh? Hey, if Jane Espenson is involved, I’m already a loyal viewer.
• 10 reasons to hate cellphone carriers - no kidding. This article is SO right.
• I’m anxiously awaiting the release of a version of AnyDVD HD that can get around BD+, as SlySoft has recently claimed to have cracked. I tell ya, as a customer trying to play back legally bought movies on Blu-Ray, they sure do go out of their way to make it so I can’t.
• Speaking of which, looks like Warner might be considering going single HD format like Paramount recently did. The format war continues to get bloodier and bloodier. Christmas sales sure will make things interesting, particularly given HD-DVD’s recent moves of utter desperation (uh, $99 players?).
• NBC ain’t pulling any punches badmouthing Apple’s online media business. Can’t say I blame them.
• Looks like my decision to use Microsoft’s HD Photo format for my new family photo scanning project wasn’t poorly founded. The format has been chosen to be the successor to the ubiquitous JPG format. HD Photo is a very nice format, and I’m anxious to see it get better adoption.
• The man who wants to control the internet. An interesting read (well, for us techies, anyway)

• Today was my 32nd birthday. Didn’t do a whole lot other than lounging about and taking it easy. Saw Michael Clayton, which was excellent (review for that and a couple other movies coming within the next day or so). Also, connectivity to this blog and some other sites related to me and people I know have been experiencing some issues (due to a couple unrelated problems). I’m working at moving everything to a new solution, so hang tight while that’s all squared away…
• The most insane and impressive stuff I’ve seen in a while. Check out these talented basejumping windsuit lunatics
• Another of Douglas Adams’ books gets radio serialization - his Dirk Gently series. Very cool.
• And here’s the awesome news of Simon Pegg being cast as Scotty in JJ Abrams new Star Trek film. He’s not the first person I would have thought of for the role, but he’s great in anything, so I’m happy to hear it. Also, John Cho is well cast as Sulu.
• Oooh, Dan Waters doing a sci-fi dramedy? I’m there.
• The hits just keep on coming. Madonna has jumped ship from the recording industry. Her move is a bit different than other recent ones, but any move against the recording industry is a good move. Particularly by a performer as notable as Madonna.
• How about the world’s worst attempt at a prison escape?
• Here’s the cover art & menu screen for the Galactica 1980 DVD release
• Check out this timeline analysis of wars and casualties in US history, attributed to partisan administrations and leaders. It’s a really well put together presentation.