television

Song of Ice and Fire to be HBO Mini-Series

According to George R.R. Martin’s blog, and according to Variety:

HBO turns ‘Fire’ into fantasy series
HBO has acquired the rights to turn George R.R. Martin’s bestselling fantasy series “A Song of Fire & Ice” into a dramatic series to be written and exec produced by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
“Fire” is the first TV project for Benioff (“Troy”) and Weiss (“Halo”) and will shoot in Europe or New Zealand. Benioff and Weiss will write every episode of each season together save one, which the author (a former TV writer) will script.
The series will begin with the 1996 first book, “A Game of Thrones,” and the intention is for each novel (they average 1,000 pages each) to fuel a season’s worth of episodes. Martin has nearly finished the fifth installment, but won’t complete the seven-book cycle until 2011.
The author will co-exec produce the series along with Management 360’s Guymon Casady and Created By’s Vince Gerardis.
Martin’s series has drawn comparisons to J.R.R. Tolkien, because both are period epics set in imagined lands. But Martin has eschewed Tolkien’s good-vs.-evil theme in favor of flawed characters from seven noble families.
The book has a decidedly adult bent, with sex and violence comparable to series like “Rome” and “Deadwood.”
“They tried for 50 years to make ‘Lord of the Rings’ as one movie before Peter Jackson found success making three,” Martin said. “My books are bigger and more complicated, and would require 18 movies. Otherwise, you’d have to choose one or two characters.”
Aside from writing the most recent draft of “Halo,” Weiss recently adapted the William Gibson novel “Pattern Recognition” for WB and director Peter Weir.

Sweet! I can’t wait to see this. I love these books. I get pretty bored with Fantasy fiction novels because they all seem to be built around the same cliches, but this series breaks away from most all of them, and is complex, well-plotted and interesting. It should make a great series.

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Two things I’ve noticed while watching TV all day

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1. There’s a new production of “Annie” out — why does little orphan Annie always have to have a red curly hair helmet wig? It looks bizarre. Why can’t get a girl with real red curly hair, or at least dye the girl’s hair red? In the original stage production with Andrea McArdle, they used her real hair.
I know way too much about Annie, don’t I?
2. I think “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year” is the most bizarre Holiday special ever, surpassing even the Heat Miser and Freeze Miser in “The Year Without a Santa Claus” which was another Rankin-Bass sequel they put together after the success of Rudolph, but probably shouldn’t have.
I guess the premise of the story makes sense if you read the synopsis on Wikipedia (sort of) but if you’re watching it without the sound on like I am now, seeing Rudolph traipsing around with a caveman, a knight and Ben Franklin and a camel with a clock for a hump – it’s hard to see how that all fits together.

I guess I’m not the only one who thinks it’s bizarre.

Continue ReadingTwo things I’ve noticed while watching TV all day

Bill Maher Outs Ken Mehlman on CNN, and CNN censors on Pacific Broadcast

Bill Maher “outed” GOP party chairman Ken Mehlman as a gay man on Larry King Live last night — as seen on video here.
But on the rebroadcast for the west coast, they edited that bit out of the program, as seen here.
C’mon, guys. YouTube makes this sort of thing ridiculous. I can’t imagine why they’d bother editing that — it’s not like Larry King said it, Maher said it. If it’s not true, it’s not a reflection on CNN. And editing it out just gives it credence, and suggests that it’s something to be hidden.
UPDATES – The above links no longer show the videos of the Larry King show, as YouTube has asked the blog owner to take them down at the request of CNN. However, you can still see the whole video on the Huffington Post.
I think the cat’s out of the proverbial bag on this one, guys.

Continue ReadingBill Maher Outs Ken Mehlman on CNN, and CNN censors on Pacific Broadcast

Veronica Mars & Fall TV Schedule 2006

“Here it is… first day of college. What do you say Veronica? New school, fresh start, how about you try not to piss anyone off this time around.” Heh.

Barely made it home to watch the season premiere after water aerobics last night — which I must repeat, I am really enjoying. We managed to watch an episode of the Amazing Race and the Daily Show before it got too late to stay up.

This plan I have, where I watch all these shows… not working so much. Our DVR is 88% full and we seem to be falling further and further behind, what with the gardening, house repair, house rental, ball room dancing, dressing up like pirates, etc. Curse you, real life, for getting in the way of my television!

NaNoWriMo 2006 Participant
NaNoWriMo 2006 Participant
I have no idea how I’m going to manage National Novel Writing Month, but I did sign up today, and am and official participant. Perhaps I’ll cheat, and make my characters thinly disguised real people. Hmmm, who’s pissed me off lately?

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Fall Television Viewing Season

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Every year I sit down with my Entertainment Weekly and put together the list of fall TV shows that I think might be interesting viewing. I try to watch the first few episodes of each of them, and some inevitably fall off the viewing chart, never to be heard from again, when I pare my list down to a more reasonable schedule. For the last several years I’ve put my chart of potential shows online, and here is this year’s list.

There are 30 shows on my schedule, for a whopping 26 hours of viewing a week. (Yeah, that’s not gonna work. I have to actually do laundry and sleep sometime.) 10 of these are brand new shows, and that’s probably where most the dropping out will occur, unless one of my returning favorites goes way south. This year there are an unprecedented 6 sitcoms on the list, which hasn’t been the case in several years now. But there are several funny, interesting sitcoms on the air now, which proves the genre isn’t dead after all. There is a single reality show — The Amazing Race. After this summer’s horrible Big Brother All Stars, I can’t imagine adding another reality show to my viewing.

Time Show Network Premiere Date
Sunday
7:00 Everybody Hates Chris CW 10/1
8:00 The Amazing Race CBS 9/17
9:00 Desperate Housewives ABC 9/24
9:00 Cold Case CBS 9/24
10:00 Brothers and Sisters ABC 9/24
Monday
8:00 The Class CBS

9/18
8:30 How I Met Your Mother CBS 9/18
9:00 Heroes NBC 9/25
9:00 Runaway CW 9/25
10:00 Studio 60 NBC 9/18
Tuesday
8:00 Gilmore Girls CW 9/26
8:00 Friday Night Lights NBC 10/3
9:00 Veronica Mars CW 10/3
9:00 House FOX 9/5
Wednesday
8:00 Bones FOX 9/6
8:30 30 Rock NBC 10/11
8:00 Jericho CBS 9/20
9:00 Lost ABC 10/4
10:00 The Nine ABC 10/4
Thursday
8:00 My Name is Earl NBC 9/21
8:30 The Office NBC 9/21
8:00 Ugly Betty ABC 9/28
9:00 Grey’s Anatomy ABC 9/21
10:00 Six Degrees ABC 9/21
Friday
8:00 Degrassi: TNG the N 9/29
8:00 Ghost Whisperer CBS 9/22
9:00 Battlestar Galactica Sci-Fi 10/6
9:00 Close to Home CBS 9/22
9:00 Men in Trees ABC 9/15
10:00 Numb3rs CBS 9/22
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ABC’s false “Docudrama”

The ABC television network unleashed a promotional blitz in the last week for a new “docudrama” called “The Path to 9/11”. ABC has thrown its corporate might behind the two-night production, and bills it as a public service: a TV event, to quote the ABC tagline, “based on the 9/11 Commission Report”.
That’s false. “The Path to 9/11” is actually a bald-faced attempt to slander Democrats and revise history right before Americans vote in a major election.
The miniseries, which was put together by right-wing conservative writers, relies on the old GOP playbook of using terrorism to scare Americans. “The Path to 9/11” mocks the truth and dishonors the memory of 9/11 victims to serve a cheap, callous political agenda. It irresponsibly misrepresents the facts and completely distorts the truth.
Join me in telling Walt Disney CEO Robert Iger to keep this propaganda off the air.
Read a great deal more about the controversy here.

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Back Home Again

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We got home yesterday mid-day from Chicago, and we’ve been hanging out and relaxing. We ended up not going to Ikea on Thursday — we sat in traffic for 3 hours, and finally ended up giving up and going directly to the rink so Stephanie could prepare for her show. We went on Friday instead — and again due to traffic, it took a long time and we skipped coming back Friday night and came back Saturday instead so we could at least make one trip where we weren’t both ready to fall asleep.
We met some of our neighbors at a garage sale down the street, which was neat. And we took a tour of our neighbor’s gigantic house. Pretty cool. We went to MacNiven’s on Massachusetts Avenue for dinner — that was nice. We both had big salads and wings. I’d like to go back there; it was fun. Lots of Scottish foods, big vintage golf advert posters on the walls.
We went to our friend Mike’s last night to see his band play — the same band that played at my house two years ago. They were great; much more polished. Today we’ve puttered around, put together some of our furniture from Ikea and unpacked, got caught up on our e-mail and blog reading and watched a ton of TV.
I still haven’t uploaded my pictures; I’ll try to do that tomorrow.
I forgot to shut off the recordings of Degrassi: The Next Generation, so we maxed out our DVR space while we were gone. Oops. Here’s what I’ve been watching lately —
Degrassi: The Next Generation — I never heard of the show until I read about the current version on AfterEllen.com, where they reviewed the positive treatment of gay characters on the show. Stephanie was familiar with the original series from back in the 1980’s, but I was a bit too old for that version and never saw it. We’re now addicted to this version and have been watching the re-runs this summer on The N. For those who aren’t familiar; the original was set in Degrassi Junior High, then Degrassi High School. The current series is about the kids of the original characters, set in the same school, which is now a combined junior and senior high. The show tackles some edgy subjects in a very educated and non-preachy manner, which they can do because it’s a Canadian show, set in a Canada, where people don’t freak out about showing realistic issues on television. In fact some of the episodes were censored when they originally aired here. There are six seasons of DTNG, so we’ve been doing a lot of catch-up on the storylines, and they’ve aired shows from all the seasons in re-run. We’ve seen a lot of the episodes where Dylan and Marco (the boy gay couple) have a relationship, but we’re still waiting for the episodes where Paige and Alex (the girl gay couple) get together.
Deadwood
Entourage
Lucky Louie
Rescue Me
Saved
The Closer
Big Brother
Windfall (although we’re way behind on this series)
I seem to have an overly testosterone-driven viewing schedule. I wish Sex and the City was still around to balance it out.
Obviously, there’s a lot going on in the news, but I’m not sure how to even comment on it. Bush’s behavior at the G-8 summit makes it pretty clear that American foreign policy is pretty much fucked, and our ability to influence events in the middle east or with Korea is pretty much meaningless at this point. I’m praying that we can make it through the next few years without World War III spiraling into the end of civilization. Although there are quite a few people who are cheering for that to happen, and there’s some question about whether Bush is one of those people.

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Vonnegut High School

I’m watching the latest episode of Close to Home, and in the storyline, the kids who are suspects of a murder investigation speed away from the scene of the crime in a car with a bumpersticker of “Vonnegut High School.” That’s pretty funny. I wonder if they’ll show exterior shots of Shortridge High School, where Vonnegut actually attended. They do an interesting job of creating “fake but reasonable” local venues and attractions as plot points. I kinda wish I’d made a list of them over the course of the season, because it would be kinda funny to do a google map of the television version of Indianapolis.

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