Category Archives: TV

TV

Fringe – the finale and final thoughts

A couple of weeks ago the two hour finale of the J. J. Abrams produced TV series Fringe aired.  It has taken a little while for me to get to it, but I finally had some free time to give the show’s conclusion a whirl.

Going into the show’s concluding two hours, my expectations were modest.  This season of Fringe, already reduced to a mere 13 episodes and touted before it aired as the final one, offered the hope of a good wrap up.  However, the final season’s overarching story line hadn’t grabbed me as much as I hoped.

But allow me to backtrack just a little.  I’ve enjoyed the series through most of its five year run, even though there were things about it that bothered me.  Fringe’s first season, for example, made note that the Fringe division’s overall focus was on checking up on and stopping instances of high tech “terrorism”.  Yet the show quickly became a thin variation (those less charitable might call it a rip-off) of The X-Files.

By the start of the second season, the show morphed.  Future seasons presented more than a little comic book influenced story lines, including alternate universes and strange Observers, as well as added mythology around Peter and Walter Bishop and the later’s relationship with/to Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv), the show’s protagonist.  As entertaining as it often was, it quickly dawned on me that the writers had no real overall plan for this show and the shifts in themes and tone suggested very strongly they were making things up as they went along.  How else to explain our protagonist Olivia Dunham having a sister with a daughter and a dangerous/abusive ex-husband…a plot point that was dropped on us as something we would see more of and then promptly forgotten and never mentioned again after a while?  If memory serves, we never saw the dangerous ex-husband and I believe there might have been some dialogue at one point saying she and her daughter had moved away and that was that.

And what about Nina Sharp’s (Blair Brown) robotic arm, something also presented early on in the series and then, essentially, not dealt with again?  When this revelation was first made, I wondered if the show’s writers would ultimately reveal that the character was ALL robot, some kind of strange experiment Walter might (or might not) have been privy to.  Alas, it amounted to nothing.

Still, despite all this, I hung around and watched.  Why?  Because the show’s five main characters, Olivia Dunham, Peter and Walter Bishop (Joshua Jackson and John Noble), Astrid (Jasika Nicole) and Agent Broyles (Lance Reddick) formed a fascinating dynamic.  They were compelling characters that smoothed over whatever doubts I had about the stories and their inconsistencies.

Besides, can you really complain about a show that features, perhaps, the last acting work of Leonard Nimoy (following his work on the show, he stated he was retiring from acting)?

Unfortunately, when the fifth and final season arrived and the episodes began airing, the show had once again shifted into a new, more radical direction.  We were in a near future Earth where the Observers were in control and humanity was being subjugated.  The Fringe division was history and our heroes (now down to essentially Olivia, Peter and Walter Bishop, and Astrid) embarked on a search for mysterious items that would end the Observer’s reign.

While there was certainly potential in this, I found the season surprisingly lifeless.  Early on we’re introduced to a young adult Henrietta Bishop (Georgina Haig), the daughter of Olivia Dunham and Peter Bishop, but her character is dispatched so quickly that I had no chance to form any sort of relationship with her as a viewer and therefore felt no terrible sadness when she was gone.

Even worse, the character of Olivia Dunham, THE main character of the show, was presented throughout the season in a surprisingly muted way.  For the most part she seemed to be on the (ahem) fringes of the main stories, often contributing very little in terms of dialogue and action, following the crowd but never really leading them.

But…would all those sins be wiped away with the show’s two hour finale?  Would we get a good resolution?

Unfortunately, to me it was a little more of the same.

Yes, Olivia Dunham did get to do more this time around.  However, the story as presented didn’t really get my blood pumping.  As I suspected months ago, the show would ultimately “reset” time in some way and render everything we’ve witnessed in this season moot.  Don’t believe me?  This is what I wrote back in October 31st, 2012 after the fourth episode of the season aired, the one featuring Henrietta Bishop’s death (you can read the full post here):

Worse, I suspect her (Henrietta Bishop’s) death will only be temporary and lead to the show’s ultimate conclusion/happy ending:  Somehow, Walter Bishop will undo the damage wrought by the Observers and “reset” time.  Thus, that day in the park that Peter, Olivia, and the infant Henrietta will play out once again in the closing minutes of the show’s final episode, only without the Observers’ invasion.

And we’ll see Henrietta grown once again, thinking back to that childhood, perhaps along with the older Peter and Olivia as they bury Walter and think back to the beautiful life they had together.

Pretty prescient, eh?  Well, other than that little bit at the very end about seeing the grown Henrietta again.  Naturally, I prefer my prediction to what actually aired, ie the picture of the orchid.

I guess if anything my observation/guesswork revealed that the show’s eventual conclusion had become something obvious to me and, therefore, I was just waiting for everything to wrap up.  Thirteen episodes, thus, were perhaps seven to nine too many.

Looking back, perhaps Fringe’s final season should have been a mini-series consisting of four or five hours worth of material.  Instead of an adult Henrietta, we could have witnessed the death of the young Henrietta in the park, and the subsequent reactions of the protagonists to this tragic loss and their determination to defeat the Observers.  A streamlined plot and a sharper story might have made for a better conclusion, especially with those closing scenes as presented.

Ah well, despite its flaws, there was fun to be had along the way.  While I’m bothered by its flaws, I don’t regret the time spent following Fringe from start to end.  It may not have been my favorite sci-fi show, but it was far, far from the worse.

Movies, TV

Batmobile sells for $4.6 million…

…and the price doesn’t surprise me all that much:

http://theclicker.today.com/_news/2013/01/20/16605895-batmobile-sells-for-46-million-at-auction?lite

Just thinking about the most famous (and recognizable) movie and TV automobiles ever created, is it possible that the 1960’s Batmobile lies atop that list?  To my mind, it most certainly does…

What others might be “up there” in terms of fame?  Off the top of my head, I can think of only one vehicle that approaches the level of recognition of the Batmobile:  James Bond’s Aston Martin from Goldfinger and, more recently, Skyfall…

For "Skyfall," Daniel Craig's Bond dusts off the DB5 once again. "We've used different cars from time to time but we always do come back to the Aston Martin," producer Michael G. Wilson says.

…and after those two cars, what else do we have?  Doing a simple Google search of “famous movie cars images” reveals a plethora of other cars.  Here are some of my favorites:

The 1968 Ford Mustang from Bullitt.  In my humble opinion Bullitt is actor Steve McQueen’s all time best film and the car chase he has against a pair of hitmen remains one of the best car chases ever committed to film.  Love, love, love his Mustang…

The 1977 Trans Am from Smokey and the Bandit.  Always loved this 70’s era muscle car.

Back to the Future’s time traveling Delorean.  Another really cool vehicle!

I loved the Mad Max “Interceptor”, a 1973 Ford XB Falcon Coupe, from both Mad Max and The Road Warrior (aka Mad Max 2)…

Finally, a bit of whimsy.  Who isn’t familiar with Scooby Doo and the Mystery Machine?

Of course, there are a ton of other vehicles out there that people could mention, from the General Lee to the Ghostbuster’s ambulance to the Herbie bug to you name it.  I still maintain, however, that the Batmobile from the 1960’s TV show is the most famous of the lot.  Your opinions, of course, may vary.

Now, a personal anecdote…Years ago, most likely in the late 1980’s or very early 1990’s and while driving along a highway, I happened to notice a very beautiful black Trans Am in front of and on the lane to the right of me.  The car, from the rear, looked like an exact duplicate of what appeared to be the K.I.T.T. vehicle from the recently (at that time) defunct TV show The Knight Rider.

Something about seeing the car from the rear raised my curiosity and I sped up a little and was soon alongside it.  There was only one person in the car and he (not David Hasselhoff) was a fairly young guy, perhaps in his thirties, who sported shockingly white spiked bleached blond hair.  Astonishingly, he lay very, very relaxed in the driver’s chair with both arms behind his head!

Yes, the man was making it look like the car alone was doing the driving!

Needless to say, I was stunned by this and simply had to see what lay in the front of the car.  So I sped up a little more and, once in front of the Trans Am, gazed into the rear view mirror and, lo and behold, the Trans Am had the same red scanner lights rigged up on its front as the K.I.T.T. car had in the TV show.

I drove on, never figuring out what exactly that was about, but guessed that perhaps the owner of the car was either leaving from or going to a car show (again, The Knight Rider had been cancelled a few years before so even if this vehicle was one of the originals from it they most certainly weren’t doing any filming) and had rigged the vehicle to operate solely with the use of his feet/legs.

Regardless, it was a weird, weird experience!

TV

No more Yuuuuup!

According to TMZ, David Hester, one of the main bidders involved in the hit “reality” show Storage Wars, is out…and he’s filed a lawsuit against the company making the show claiming that it’s rigged:

http://www.tmz.com/2012/12/11/storage-wars-rigged-david-hester-lawsuit/

I happen to like Storage Wars, though there wasn’t always a sense that things we saw on the show were always on the “up and up”.  For example, if you watched some of the earlier first season episodes, you found that the protagonists weren’t always prone to having hardball rivalries between themselves.  Indeed, I recall one episode where one of the bidders, Darrell I believe, actually tried to help out Jarrod with a locker’s value.  But as the episodes/seasons drew on, the participants became more characters than people.  They were more and more presented as trying to either outbid or screw their rivals and there was a feeling -at least to me- there was a real attempt to mold their behaviors for the purpose of being more entertaining. Backstabbing, after all, can be hugely entertaining!

With that in mind, it doesn’t surprise me too much to hear that there was, at least according to Mr. Hester in his lawsuit, “planting” of items in the storage lockers being bid on.  Again, if the show’s makers are happy to create personalities rather than people, why stop there?  Why not also show “incredible” discoveries in the lockers…discoveries that may well have been planted?

In the end, viewers must always beware.  It should be no big revelation to say that “reality” shows are often as “real” as all the other fictional shows presented on TV.

Books/Literature, Movies, Music, TV

Bored of the Rings…and Creative Self-Control

The first part of the above headline happens to be one of the more obvious take downs one can expect an unimpressed critic might use for the review of the new Peter Jackson directed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first of his three part (!) cinematic adaptation of the J. R. R. Tolkien “prologue” to his famous Lord of the Rings trilogy series of a few years past.  Certainly its the headline used by Dana Stevens of Slate Magazine for the review of this film (check it out here), but its hardly an original insult, seeing as how this was the title of a parody book published way back in 1969.

I haven’t seen the first part of this new trilogy, but given some of the early writings regarding the movie, I suspect I’ll pass.  Not that I dislike the whole Lord of the Rings thing, be it novel or cartoon or movie.  On the contrary I was very impressed with the first two Lord of the Rings movie adaptations.  They were incredibly ambitious in scope and scale and presented some great cinematic fun.  The only complaints I heard were from Lord of the Rings purists who felt the movies at times did not follow the spirit of the books as well as they should have.  Regardless, I really liked those first two Lord of the Rings films.

Unfortunately, the last of that original film trilogy, The Return of the King, really, really tried my patience.  Indeed, even many of those who liked and/or loved this trilogy were bothered by the way this concluding film had something like twenty climaxes/conclusions before finally…FINALLY!…reaching its actual end.  It was at that moment, when I realized I loved The Fellowship of the Rings and The Two Towers but didn’t like The Return of the King, that I feared director Peter Jackson may have become a little too enamored of his work.  So enamored that he might have developed a hard time “stepping back” and shifting what should remain in the final cut of his film and what didn’t need to be there.  Or, to put it another way, he lost the ability to edit down his movies.

Mr. Jackson followed the original Rings trilogy with a remake of King Kong, and my fears were further confirmed:  King Kong clocked in at an eye-popping 3 hours and 7 minutes in length versus the original, which ran a little over an hour and a half.  When I heard he was taking over the direction of The Hobbit, I was curious but worried.  Would this film be more like the first two Ring films rather than the third?

When I heard it would be two films, then three, I feared Mr. Jackson was once again going to deliver a bloated, too long production.

Given the words of some critics, this may well be the case.  And we’re only into the first of three Hobbit films!

But before it feels like this blog entry is nothing more than a slam piece directed against Mr. Jackson, let it be noted that he would be far from the first -and certainly far from the last- creative person who may have fallen under this spell.  Criterion, the gold standard in home video releases, just put out Michael Cimino’s notorious studio-killer Heaven’s Gate, a film that many feel is the very definition of creative hubris.  Despite the fact that it was a mega-flop when it was released, the movie does have its admirers, but there is no doubt that this two and a half hour film tried many people’s patience.  In the realm of books, I’ve also seen writers -too numerous to name- who have disappointed with either undernourished or overly bloated works.  And in music, I’m sure just about anyone can name a few albums featuring normally very creative individuals who created a bloated train wreck of a work, at least in your opinion.

If there’s any sort of conclusion to made regarding this topic it is this:  Creative folks are as fallible as the next person.  They’re as capable of making mistakes as everyone else and they’re certainly as capable of getting too fond of their work, to their own detriment, as anyone else.

Somewhere along the line when I first started writing I too realized that there was a danger of falling into this trap.  One of my earliest novels took an inordinately long time to create, then it sat in the disk drive for a few years.  When I came back to it, I realized the first third of the book was waaaay too long and I chopped it down to a minimal size.  Originally I was incapable of seeing the bloat, but the passage of time allowed me to move away from the work, to become less tied into it and to see it from a fresh perspective.

Hopefully, I learned my lesson and my subsequent works have been crisp and to the point…something I feel any good novel should be.  But let there be no doubt:  The most difficult thing in the world to do with your creative works is to examine them with a cold and clinical eye and not be afraid of taking a chain saw to your “babies” and cutting down whatever should be cut down and expanding where it may be needed.

In the end, it is work well worth doing.

TV

Torchwood: Miracle Day (2011) a (mildly) belated review

Let’s start with this:  I’m a BIG fan of Torchwood.  In fact, for a while there I thought this spin off of the new Doctor Who was actually better than the already pretty damn good series it emerged from.

Torchwood retained the oddball energy present in the modern Doctor Who episodes but added a wild adult kinkiness to the mix.  In our protagonist, the immortal Captain Jack Harkness (John Borrowman), you had a very liberated bi-sexual being who was willing (most willing) to sleep with anything with a pulse.  Jack Harkness presides over the Torchwood organization, a super secret group whose function it was to find and deal with the extraordinary.  His motley crew of agents in the first few seasons of the show would change, though principle among his group was Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles), a woman who was, essentially, the viewer’s proxy.

Though there were a couple of clunkers here and there, the first two seasons of the show were -again in my opinion- delightful.  The show was episodic yet there were stories within the stories that continued throughout the seasons.  Then, for the third season, the makers of the show did something different.  Instead of presenting several episodes, they offered a five part, one main story mini-series entitled Children of Earth.  The general reaction to the series was very positive, but unlike Doctor Who, it appeared that getting further Torchwood episodes off the ground was a more difficult prospect.

However, in 2011 the U.S. cable channel Starz decided to fund a new Torchwood series.  Like Children of Earth, this would be one single story presented in a mini-series format.  Unlike Children of Earth, this one would be presented in not five episodes, but in ten.  The series was titled Miracle Day and, after waiting far longer than I intended (being such a big fan of the series, after all), I finally got a chance to see it.

Going into the series, however, I was worried.  The fact of the matter is that those who saw the series when it originally aired on Starz were, to put it bluntly, not all that impressed.  In fact, for the most part the reviews appeared mostly negative and, a year after the show aired, I find it fascinating how little anyone -even Torchwood fans- is talking about this series.  But, as I said before, being a fan of the series meant I’d give this one a try.  Even if Miracle Day wasn’t as good as some of the other Torchwood seasons, there had to be some enjoyment to be found within it.

Right?

…right…?

Alas…

Miracle Day, if nothing else, is an ambitious work.  It attempts to present some very big story ideas/concepts in the context of a science fictional setting, from media manipulation to the potential evils/abuses of big pharmaceutical companies to an exploration of how modern society could devolve into one not unlike 1930’s Nazi Germany.  And while I certainly can appreciate the ambition the writers had in creating this work, the fact of the matter is that once its all done, you can’t help but feel that this is a misfire.

To begin with, the two characters we most want to see in Torchwood are the two principles, Captain Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper.  Unfortunately, for large portions of the series we’re forced to follow the other (new) characters presented, and I’ll be brutally blunt here:  They were a chore to watch.

The two most important of these new characters are CIA agent Rex Matheson (Mekhi Phifer) and CIA computer specialist Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins).  They’re meant to fill up the Torchwood group and provide us with American heroes to follow, but Rex Matheson is presented for the most part as an arrogant jerk while Esther Drummond is more often than portrayed as an exasperated/melancholy/confused/scared person who always a few steps behind everyone else.  The other two main characters we’re following are wild cards:  Child molester/murderer Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman) who “miraculously” survives his scheduled execution and Jilly Kitzinger (Lauren Ambrose), a P.R. rep who wants to make Danes a (in)famous celebrity.

Yeah, that’s just the motley bunch I as a viewer want to spend time with.  Especially the child molester/murderer.

The plot of Miracle Day is as follows:  One day, everyone on Earth stops dying.  The population of our planet, therefore, rises exponentially.  Worse, those who were/are about to die or suffer some kind of accident(s) (life threatening or not) continue living…in pain or crippled or what have you.  Thus, the “Miracle” of Miracle Day is ironic.  Resources (food, water, medicine) are in threat of being quickly used up.  And, added to all that, the immortal Captain Jack Harkness realizes that while everyone else has become immortal he has become…mortal.

The mystery is thus set up:  How is Jack’s status related to this sudden immortality on Earth?  And, further, how can we get back to the status quo?  And should we?

As I said before, the series was most certainly ambitious in its scope, imagining this new society of immortals and presenting all the potential problems inherent in a world of immortal beings.  But, as I said before, too much time is spent with the “new” characters that, frankly, I found little reason to root for or care about.  There were times, in fact, that Captain Jack and Gwen seemed to be guest stars in their own series.  And as the show progressed, it also felt like ten episodes were simply way, waaaaay too many to spend on this story.

Once we got to the resolution, most of my initial euphoria of seeing a new Torchwood series was gone, and rather than enjoying a rip-roaring conclusion I just wanted the series to end.  The final twist involving the character of Rex Matheson made me cringe.  Did I want to see more Torchwood episodes featuring that character?

Nope.

Given the muted reaction by the masses to Miracle Day and the fact that I’ve heard nothing about more Torchwood series coming in the future, I suspect this might well have been the series’ last hurrah.

If so, its a shame.  I can’t say every minute of the entire ten hours of Miracle Day were terrible.  The mini-series certainly had its moments here and there (I really, REALLY liked the way Captain Jack appeared before Gwen Cooper toward the end of episode one).  But, ultimately, Miracle Day was a series that could –should– have been much more.

So, unless you’re already a big fan of Torchwood and, like me, have to see Miracle Day to complete your Torchwood viewing, you’d be better off catching any of the first three series and ignoring this one.

Movies, TV

Stars who turned down TV roles

One of the more fascinating things, at least to me, is finding out that a famous or even iconic movie/TV roles might have gone to another actor or actress who was first pursued for that role.

In the following link, you have a group of TV roles that were originally considered for other actors/actresses:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/stars-who-turned-down-tv-roles-_n_1677019.html

Perhaps the one that intrigues me the most of those mentioned in this article is Matthew Broderick, Mr. Ferris Beuller himself, was originally considered for the title role that went to Bryan Cranston on Breaking Bad.  But, thinking about it a little…I can kinda see where the producers of the show were going.  After all, the character of Walter White, as originally presented in the show, was originally presented as a meek, innocent man who decided to take a very dark path.  I suppose Mr. Broderick could have pulled that off, but what a different show it probably would have been!

By the way, a couple of my favorite movie role “what ifs”:

Clint Eastwood’s iconic turn as Dirty Harry was originally targeted for…Frank Sinatra?!

Harrison Ford’s iconic turn as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark was originally meant for…Tom Selleck!?  In fact, the only reason that Mr. Selleck wound up not getting the role was because the producers of Magnum P.I., the TV show he was doing at the time, wouldn’t allow him the time off to make the Steven Spielberg film!

Of course, sometimes an actor takes on a role for tragic reasons.  I’ve always wondered, for instance, what type of career Paul Newman would have had if James Dean hadn’t died back in 1955.  The next two movies Mr. Dean was supposed to act in before his untimely death were Somebody Up There Likes Me and The Left Handed Gun.  Both movies were made, with Mr. Newman in the title role.  In the case of Somebody Up There Likes Me more than The Left Handed Gun, that role proved a great success for Mr. Newman, and may well have given his then very early career a much needed boost.  Mr. Newman’s only previous feature film, indeed, his film debut, was 1954’s The Silver Chalice.  This film was a huge flop, and when the film was aired years later on TV an embarrassed Paul Newman famously paid for and published a full page apology and request for people not to see the film in a trade magazine!

Comic Books/Graphic Novels, Movies, TV

Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Batman…

…according to Time magazine:

http://entertainment.time.com/2012/07/13/holy-bat-trivia-top-10-things-you-probably-didnt-know-about-batman/#a-shoe-salesman-made-batman-who-he-is-today

Not to sound too terribly geeky, but much of the material presented was familiar -the one big exception being all those numerical items.  I may be a fan of the character, but to have all that data at my fingertips would have been…scary.

Of all the items presented, this is the one I found the most surprising and had never heard of before:

Fifteen years (after the 1949 Batman series) came Batman Dracula, a little-seen avant-garde oddity written and directed (without the approval of the comic publisher) by a rising young artist named Andy Warhol.

As it turns out, some of that (very bizarre) material can be found on YouTube:

And some more:

TV

Alcatraz R.I.P.

It didn’t come as too big a surprise to learn the Fox/J. J. Abrams’ produced sci-fi/suspense series Alcatraz was not renewed after its maiden season.

I’ve been a fan of Mr. Abrams’ work since stumbling into the delightful Alias a while ago. Lost followed soon after and since then I’ve kept my eyes open for his TV and movie works.  However, with the passage of time and the volume of new releases, disappointments were bound to come.

Alias, for example, reached an incredible peak, story wise, with the second season episode Phase One.  Unfortunately, the episode proved to be a double edged sword.  As good as it was, the episode effectively completed almost every one of the myriad story lines developed in the show.  What followed, for three more seasons, was, to me, a series without a focus, trying desperately to find some new ground to break but, for the most part, not succeeding.  The same may well be said of Lost, but at least that show held my interest to the very end, even if it admittedly didn’t come close to answering all the many intriguing mysteries it presented.

Getting back to Alcatraz, the show in some ways reminded me of Fringe, yet another J. J. Abrams produced show.  With both series I had the impression early on the show was begun hastily, with an initial concept but no clear direction to pursue it.  But while Fringe had good characters and, let’s face it, the framework of The X-Files to fall back on and sustain itself during that early rough going, Alcatraz had little to fall back on other than a “capturing the suspect of the week” concept of found in too many police procedurals.

That would have been fine if Alcatraz were a police procedural, but the show’s initial premise was grounded in science fiction.  The initial premise was actually quite good:  Just before the island prison Alcatraz was officially closed down in the early 1960’s, the staff and prisoners mysteriously disappeared.  Now, in the present, staff and prisoners are reappearing.  The prisoners return to the present as young.  They continue their criminal ways, but there seems to be a method to their madness.  Thus, the viewer is presented with some intriguing questions.  What happened to the prisoners and staff of Alcatraz?  What happened to them when they disappeared?  And now, as they are reappearing, why do they show no signs of aging?  Finally, and most intriguing:  What were they up to?

As good as all those questions were, they weren’t good enough, and the show started presenting us one criminal after the other for our heroine, Detective Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones) to hunt down.  Unfortunately, Sarah Jones’ role proved woefully underwritten and the actress, at least to me, had difficulty both projecting the charisma necessary to draw me in to her plight or the toughness to make me believe she was a tough cop worthy of taking on the hardened criminals of the past.

Even worse, unfortunately, was Jorge Garcia as Dr. Diego Soto, Alcatraz expert and her “unorthodox” partner.  As written, his character seemed nothing more than mild variant of his character Hurley from Lost.  But the biggest problem was that the only reason for his continued involvement in these stories was because he was an “expert” regarding all things Alcatraz.  In this day and age, however, with computers and instant access to just about every bit of information you could possibly need, keeping an overweight partner around on action forays was dubious, at best.

Luckily for the show’s protagonists, the missing Alcatraz crooks were polite enough to appear one at a time, allow their story to play out, and get themselves captured before the next missing crook made his appearance.  In between, we got hints of a bigger story, but it just wasn’t enough, at least for me.

After ignoring the series for a few weeks, I gave it one more try and caught the series’ final episode.  I was treated to an episode that showed little life, even in its almost scene for scene recreation of the famous Bullitt car chase.

So, goodbye Alcatraz.  You certainly had potential and could have been a good show.  I just wish that a little more thought, and time, we’re devoted to creating a more focused story line.

Music, TV

Middle finger malfunction…

While thIs year’s Super Bowl was an entertaining affair, once again we have a “controversy” regarding the halftime performance.  Specifically, it appears singer M.I.A., facing a camera during a medley of songs with Madonna, not only gave viewers the “middle finger”, but also said “I don’t give a s***”.

 

Maybe the advancing years have made me a cynic, but it’s getting hard to count the number of times I’ve heard of/witnessed a musician doing some “shocking” spontaneous act on a stage (large or small) that a) lands them into hot water while b) helping raise people’s awareness of said artist which results in c) more sales of their product.

General, TV

Lincoln assassination witness…

1 Comment

I couldn’t find the actual post, but as I was thinking about posts from my old blog that I wanted to re-post to this new one, there was one that simply had to appear again.  The video below is from the Feb. 9, 1956 episode of I’ve Got A Secret, a game show involving celebrities figuring out, natch, what “secret” the person appearing before them has.

In the case of one Samuel J. Seymour, it turned out his secret was something both unique and quite incredible:  As a very young child, he was present in the Ford Theater the night that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated.

The fact that he could still remember some of the details all those years later is incredible.  I think it’s fair to say on the night of the taping of this program Mr. Seymour was the very last living person to have been present at the Ford Theater that tragic night.