Lose the laugh tracks, forever
Two original shows I really enjoyed recently retooled or rebooted, not sure what the proper term is. That ’70s Show and Night Court are back as That ’90s Show and Night Court (again). I get the appeal and motivation of retooling old favorites, and bringing back original cast members...
Loving “The Last of Us”
I have a healthy amount of skepticism about movies and shows adapted from games. Clue was a rare exception, but it’s hard to go wrong with a cast that includes Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd, Michael McKean, and the amazing Madeline Kahn. The list of bad or aggressively mediocre media spun...
The Looney Tunes purge, and the difficulty of collecting them all
Slate has a post about HBO Max pulling Looney Tunes cartoons from the service unexpectedly. Specifically they cut more than 250 cartoons from the service, from 1950 to 2004, including the classic “What’s Opera, Doc?” The thread on Hacker News led me down the rabbit hole (heh) to a...
Goodbye to Schoolhouse Rock! creator George Newall
Ars has a nice post about one of the creators of Schoolhouse Rock!, George Newall, who passed away at 88. Most Gen X’ers I know can recite at least a few of the Schoolhouse Rock! shorts, and have fond memories of the cartoons meant to teach kids math, grammar,...
“No Sudden Move” is all surface and no substance
My first thought after finishing No Sudden Move last night was “what the hell went wrong?” (Spoilers below, so beware.) No Sudden Move is a heist film, though you really pick this up only in dribs and drabs. Oh, and it’s also a big deal because the heist isn’t...
Not with a bang, but a whimper: The Stand collapses
Stephen King, and all of us, keep coming back to The Stand trying to get it right. First published in 1978, The Stand has been re-issued with an additional 500 or so pages in 1990, adapted as a miniseries in the early 90s, a comic series by Marvel from...
Weekend Reading: “They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?” and “No Country for Old Men”
Knocked down a couple of fiction books this weekend while traveling to and from Southeast LinuxFest. They Eat Puppies, Don’t They? by Christopher Buckley, and No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. I’ve been a fan of Christopher Buckley since I picked up Little Green Men years ago, but he’s probably...
Things that don’t happen in Star Trek
I’m pacing myself… 🙂 This list is obviously pre-Enterprise. (How many folks in the audience watch “Enterprise” faithfully?) 1. The Enterprise runs into a mysterious energy field of a type it has encountered several times before. 2. The Enterprise goes to visit a remote outpost of scientists, who are...