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Upfronts Three-Point-Two: The CW

  • Uncategorized
  • May 20, 2009

The last of the broadcast nets revealed themselves this
morning, and in a fit of original thought they’re giving us a lot more of the
same.

Angelenos, The Beautiful Life, and The Vampire Diaries are being added. They’re about pretty but dangerous residents of Los Angeles, struggling fashion models, and a family of vampire brothers, respectively. Oh, and they’re bringing Melrose Place back. Holy 90210, Bat-brain!

The Gossip Girl spin-off got spiked, as did the CW’s entire attempt to
program Sundays. The night is being returned to the individual affiliates.

On a personal note, the only sitcom I’ve actually enjoyed
(non-animated) all century, Everybody Loves Chris, played its last, last Friday. Just like the show’s creator Chris Rock, the titular Chris dropped out of school when forced to take the 10th grade over. He may or may not have passed his GED; the show ended with a wonderful send-up of The Sopranos finale. It went out in style.

Smallville will be back. Now that he’s flying, please give him the big red S. C’mon. The movie sucked. Kal-El’s Superman without the cape, and the “red-blue-blur” is just stupid.

Upfronts Day Three-Point-One: CBS

Here’s what CBS is adding:

Mondays: Accidentally
On Purpose (Jenna Elfman sitcom, surrounded by the usual sitcoms)

Tuesdays: NCIS: Los
Angeles, (following NCIS and
starring LL Cool J), The Good Wife.

Wednesdays: Same old stuff – The New Adventures of Old Christine, Gary Unmarried, Criminal Minds and CSI: NY.

Thursdays: More of the same – Survivor, CSI and The
Mentalist.

Fridays: Medium
(picking up what NBC no longer wants) will be between Ghost Whisperer and Numb3rs.

Saturdays: Nothing new here.

Sundays: Three
Rivers (organ transplant donors).

Upfronts Day Three: D.O.A.

  • Uncategorized
  • May 20, 2009

Here’s the list of network shows that will disappear into
the black hole of broadcast oblivion. It’s possible that, like Medium, one or more of these shows might
get picked up by other broadcast or cable nets.

  • According to Jim
  • Cupid
  • Eleventh Hour
  • Everybody Hates Chris
  • Kath & Kim
  • Kings
  • Life
  • Lipstick Jungle
  • My Name Is Earl
  • Privileged
  • Reaper
  • Samantha Who?
  • Sit Down, Shut Up
  • Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
  • The Game
  • The Unit*
  • The Unusuals
  • Without a Trace
  • Worst Week

* UPDATE: The Unit has already been picked up for the broadcast syndication marketplace by Twentieth Television for Fall 2010. The series has already been sold in all top 15 markets and cleared in 56% of the country.  Stations acquiring the program are primarily FOX Television Stations with a smattering of stations from CBS Station Group and some independent players.

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Interview: Chris Claremont on ‘X-Men Forever’, part 1

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This is the first part of a very long interview with Chris Claremont that started on the topic of X-Men Forever and branched into a number of other areas. We start the interview today to tie in with today’s release of X-Men Forever Alpha, and we’ll be running more as we get closer to the release of X-Men Forever #1 next month.

ComicMix: X-Men Forever Alpha is a reprint of the first three issues plus an eight page bridge to the
new series, correct? What do we need to know going in?

Chris Claremont: Essentially
nothing. Those were the issues going in, to establish all the fundamental
parameters: the X-Men are a team of heroes that are based at Xavier school for
gifted youngsters at Salem center, outside of New York City.

CM: So you’re
starting up right from where you left the book in 1991.

CC: Yes.

CM: Is this House Of C, then, as compared to House of M?

CC: No, it’s the
Marvel Universe, there’s no real change to it, other than the fact that in a
very practical sense that the subsequent sixteen, seventeen years of material
following my departure doesn’t exist.

CM: So this is a
new forked off continuity.

CC: Yes. We’re
essentially picking up where I left off and the only acknowledgment we are
making to the passage of time is that if a label needs to be placed on #1, #2,
and #3, they occurred in the opening months, weeks, whatever of 2009.

CM: Then
everything that happens since in mainline Marvel continuity has not happened
and is not going to happen?

CC: Everything
that relates to the X-Men specifically has not happened. The origins of
characters that were established after I left are not necessarily the origins
that we will encounter here. For example, the reality in this book is that
Sabretooth and Wolverine are father and son. Betsy Braddock has not been
transferred into a cloned dead Asian body.

CM: Do you find
it strange that people are looking at this series and referring back to your
original run as the time when X-Men continuity wasn’t convoluted?

(more…)

Preview: Human Target

  • Uncategorized
  • May 20, 2009

From our good friends and ComicMix alumni over at the Flickcast, we find a trailer for the new Human Target series coming soon to Fox, starring Mark Valley as Christopher Chance, with Tricia Helfer, Jackie Earle Haley and Chi McBride.

Looks like fun– although I hope they use the rubber masks once in a while.

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Review: Action Philosophers

  • Uncategorized
  • May 19, 2009

john-stuart-mill-action-philosophers23-2010240

In a popular and academic marketplace where everyone wants and needs to learn better, smarter, faster, we have series upon series of
things that have titles that are playfully self-deprecating in the hopes of our being brave enough to channel our inner superhero and dive in and learn something that might have seemed a bit daunting, such as [[[Philosophy for Dummies]]] and [[[The Idiot’s Guide to Philosophy]]]. We have Sparks Charts and Cliff Notes. And we have the [[[HarperCollins College Outline of Philosophy]]], Ethics, and other subjects. All worthy aids for the harried and hopeful. But something’s missing. It has been proven in multiple studies that we learn in multi-valent ways, using all the senses, so that the more senses that are engaged in learning and the more playful it is, the better we learn and the better we retain things, no matter what our age or inclination.

Now, I’m a Philosophy Geek and I absolutely love this stuff, but I know it’s not for everyone, can be a hard read and a hard sell, and yet it is still foundationally useful – most headhunters and HR people say that they see a background in Philosophy as a plus for new applicants, as it helps them to be better analytical thinkers, better writers, better communicators, better problem solvers (both the NY Times and Wall Street Journal ran articles on this in the past year). Many of our beloved superheroes are very philosophical (look at [[[Watchmen]]]!). I heartily agree, there, and it’s why the term “classical education,” starting since Plato’s time (4th C. BCE), is still looked upon as something good and useful and the model upon which most modern education is built. After all, can 2500 years be totally wrong? But how to engage more of the senses and assimilate this vast quantity of knowledge in a manageable amount of time and even have fun doing it?

Their three volumes cover everything from the most obscure pre-Socratics to 20th C. America. The series, like Philosophy, itself (save for the 20th-21st Cs.) has a dearth of women – two to be exact: Ayn Rand and Mary Wollstonecraft. And only one native-born American, Joseph Campbell (Rand was an émigré and Jung only came here later in life to teach). The rest are Classical, Continental, and Eastern Philosophers of all the major schools of thought and they read totally like a who’s who. It’s not clear to me, from volume to volume, how the various names were picked and why they were grouped together in these omnibus editions, though within each volume they are chronologically presented. Van Lente’s great talent is to be able to distill down, quite accurately and admirably (I had few quibbles with him, mostly on his takes on the various Christian philosophies, in minor details), the main points of some very complex and mind-bending worldviews, from metaphysics to political science, all with quite the sense of humor, albeit sometimes gallows or black humor. And some of the things aren’t even funny ‘til you look at Dunlavey’s illustrations, which remind me of a cross between Hanna-Barbera and [[[Beavis and Butthead]]], if they’d been done in line drawings, and then you just laugh at the conjunctions.

(more…)

Upfronts Day Two: NBC and Some Guy Named “Leno”

  • Uncategorized
  • May 19, 2009

With Jay Leno sucking up the entire 10 PM (Eastern) block on NBC weekdays, one would think the venerable and ever-mutating Law &
Order would be in trouble.

Nope. It dodged the bullet. It’ll be in the family hour on
Fridays. Law & Order: SVU (their sex crimes show, not their tribute to gas guzzlers) will be on Wednesdays at 9 PM, preceded by a new “family drama,” Parenthood. Southland will follow L&O, and Jay Leno follows everything.

The Biggest Loser grabs two hours on Tuesday, followed by Jay Leno. Monday will see Heroes return for a while, followed by a new medical drama, Trauma, which will be followed by Jay Leno. Chuck will bump Heroes after the winter Olympics.

A new comedy called Community will start off following The Office
on Thursdays. Thursday editions of Weekend Update will take the 8 PM slot for about a month or so, at which time 30 Rock will return and take Community’s valued position. At that time, Community will take the
Thursday Weekend Update slot, although Update will return from time
to time. Parks and Recreation will take the in-between slot at 8:30, and everything will be followed by the omnipresent Jay “Mr. Overexposed” Leno.

Dateline gets moved to Saturdays to make room for Sunday
Night Football on – wait for it – Sundays. Jay Leno will probably guest
host both shows.

In NBC’s post-Olympics on-deck circle: the comedy 100 Questions, the reality show The Marriage Ref, and the medical show Mercy.

In a bit of non-network news, HBO has ordered 13 episodes
of an animated series starring Ricky Gervais, based on Gervais’s podcasts.

Good Miracle Monday to you!

What? How could you forget that the third Monday in May is Miracle Monday? Elliot will be very disappointed in you…

If you have no idea what I’m talking about (Ma nishtana ha-laila ha-zeh mi-kol ha-leilot) Miracle Monday is the third Monday in May. It’s from a Superman novel of the same name written by Elliot S! Maggin and published in 1981. I highly recommend reading it, if you haven’t read it before– and luckily, some folks have put it online.

On Miracle Monday the spirit of humanity soared free.  This

Miracle Monday, like the first Miracle Monday, came in the spring of

Metropolis, and for the occasion spring weather was arranged wherever

the dominion of humanity extended.  On Uranus’s satellites where the

natives held an annual fog-gliding rally through the planetary rings,

private contributions even made it possible to position orbiting

fields of gravitation for spectators in free space.  On Titan, oxygen

bubbles were loosed in complicated patterns to burst into flame with

the methane atmosphere and make fireworks that were visible as far as

the surface of saturn.  At Nix Olympica, the eight-kilometer-high

Martian volcano, underground pressures that the Olympica Resort

Corporation had artificially accumulated during the preceding year

were unleashed in a spectacular display of molten fury for tourists

who walked around the erupting crater wearing pressurized energy

shields.  At Armstrong City in the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility there was

a holographic reenactment of the founding of the city in the year

2019, when on the fiftieth anniversary of his giant leap for mankind

the first man on the Moon returned, aged and venerable, to what was

then called Tranquility Base Protectorate, carrying a state charter

signed by the President of the United States.  The prices of ski lift

tickets on Neptune inflated for the holiday.  Teleport routes to

beaches and mountains on Earth crowded up unbelievably. 

Interplanetary wilderness preserves became nearly as crowded with

people as Earth cities.  Aboard the slow-moving orbital ships that

carried ores and fossil materials on slowly decaying loops toward the

sun from the asteroids, teamsters partied until they couldn’t see.  On

worlds without names scattered throughout this corner of the Galaxy,

where Earth’s missionaries, pioneers and speculators carried their own

particular quests, it was a day for friends, family, recreation and –

if it brought happiness—reflection.

Go read the whole thing.

The Point – May 18th, 2009

This is the week where the Final Fate of many TV shows is dealt out – and there’s actually good news – in fact a LOT of it! Plus something green is singing and dancing on Broadway, and it isn’t Shreck and STAR TREK blasts forward for another big BO weekend.

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