Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Odds and Ends

Hello everyone! For the Americans, hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! For everyone else, hope you had a lovely Wednesday through Tuesday. Personally, I'm just now recovering from having eaten enough pumpkin pie to choke a very chunky horse -- and it was spectacular! And now on to the news at hand:

+ Not to suggest that "House" is formulaic or anything*, but Cracked had a great item on "How to Write Your Own 'House' Episode" and yes, it does include the always-popular furrowed-brow moment.

+ Speaking of formulas that are good in spite of themselves, there's a new preview of "24" out which includes a glimpse of an old friend and also moments of Jack Bauer neither whispering nor shouting but instead making a grammatical error. It's pretty much everything you'd expect from "24." The new season debuts on Jan. 12...and I really, really want to make a cougar joke right now but will show maturity and restrain myself. Or maybe not: Cougar!

+ The DVD of "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" comes out today and features more than three hours of extras including deleted scenes, gag reel, full-length documentary and audio commentary by Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter, which better include a personal apology for disappointing the hell out of me with this movie. A movie which I will nonetheless buy because X-Files owns me and I am a sad, sad person.

+ "Battlestar Galactica" webisodes debut on Dec. 12 and I'm giddy as a school girl! Two episodes will be posted per week for five weeks, leading up to BSG's Jan. 16 season premiere. Even more awesome, the webisodes were written by Jane Espenson and Seamus Kevin Fahey, staffers who penned some of last year's best episodes. And in other way awesome BSG news, "Caprica" has finally been greenlit as a series for Sci-Fi. Now I'm beyond giddy and verging on delirious. I need pie to celebrate!

+ Have I mentioned I love the internets? Today on Twitter I was following the back and forth between Wil Wheaton and Greg Grunberg of "Heroes" as they exchanged compliments and eventually concocted the idea of Wheaton appearing in an upcoming episode of the NBC series. And now io9 has to go and be dicks about the whole thing and semi-mock Wheaton with a poll on what sort of superpower he should have when he joins the superhero league. I don't see how you can run a site like io9 and mock Wil Wheaton. It seems positively unpatriotic. (However, if he were to have a superpower, I would vote for gills. How cool would that be?)

+ Park Bench reader Crone51 sent in this great musical tribute to smart women by singer-songwriter Richard Thompson. "I want a woman from Mensa with a furrowed brow..." It's wonderful. Enjoy:



+ I got an e-mail recently announcing the debut of a new website called Book View Cafe (www.bookviewcafe.com) that offers new and unpublished literature by authors such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Vonda McIntyre and Laura Ann Gilman, all for free. Writers also will be offering extended versions of their work and other goodies for a small fee. Looks like an interesting experiment in publishing....

* But it is.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

However, if he were to have a superpower, I would vote for gills. How cool would that be?

Given that he voiced Aqualad on Teen Titans, I think that would not only be cool, but also quite appropriate.

Anjuli said...

Thanks for the link to the House formula - so hilarious! It was right on, yet that is still one of my favorite shows out there today.

Black Eyed Gurl said...

Did you notice that lately io9 has just become a place where the writers bitch about everything, hate on everything, and then get defensive when anyone calls them out on anything? I am really getting dissapointed with them!

Liz said...

Black eyed gurl, you're absolutely right about i09. I think it's trying to be like its sister sites at Gawker, but the crankiness just doesn't work with the subject matter they cover. It's really aggravating.

crone51 said...

Xfiles used to own me too, but I somehow got out intact. However, I have been enjoying Mr. Duchovny along with Leoben the Cylon on "Californication." It really is a show about despicable humans doing awful things but I enjoy it anyway. And Leoben ( who I believe is called Lew Ashby but who will always be Leoben to me) is lovely and every bit as creepy as he is on BSG ( and his *real* name is , of course, Callum Keith Rennie and it turns out he was born in England so he may qualify for that other post up there.. )

Adri said...

House is totally formulaic, but that allows them to do so much with story arcs and character development while, and this is so key for TV, still interesting the casual watcher. Long-term watchers can practically ignore the 'patient of the week' plot except where it informs the larger story that's being told.

We saw the same pattern in X-files with the 'freak a week' episodes. :)