by Diane Wild | Dec 13, 2008 | Canadian TV, TV
Here’s the TV tidbits that interested me in the last few days:
- I was wondering what happened to Matt Roush at TV Guide. Not good news for the (doomed?) website. Or me.
- I interviewed Erin Karpluk of CBC and Soapnet’s Being Erica way too early this morning but it went fine. Will post an article closer to the Jan. 5 CBC premiere.
- Golden Globes nominees announced. Hugh Laurie and House, Michael C. Hall and Dexter, and Slumdog Millionaire make me particularly happy.
- Bad news: Pushing Daisies still cancelled. Good news: It won’t end on a cliffhanger anymore.
- They’re messing with my beloved Anne of Green Gables. I can’t bear to watch this weekend’s TV movie.
- Jon Stewart mocks biggest Canadian political mess since controversial decision to reshape bacon: (in Canada) (in US)
- CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes YouTube videos are geoblocked in Canada. CBC’s Rick Mercer Report videos are geoblocked elsewhere. CBC is weird.
Want to follow me on Twitter and get all this excitement in real time? I’m here.
by Diane Wild | Dec 8, 2008 | TV
There was actual news floating around Twitter today, so here’s the latest collection of what’s on my TV mind lately:
One bit of information I was on the receiving end of was the news that the Tribune Company has filed for bankruptcy protection. Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune is not only one of my favourite voices in TV criticism, she’s an active blogger and Twitter user. So her announcement of the news brought on an outpouring of support. (She says “I’m still reeling, but from what I understand, nobody is fired or laid off now.”) Tribune also owns the LA Times among other media outlets. Besides the obvious general badnewsiness of this whole thing, fingers crossed that it doesn’t result in even more losses in the shrinking world of professional TV criticism.
- Writers Guild of America TV award nominations announced. Includes House for episodic (Doris Egan and Leonard Dick, “Don’t Ever Change”) and other good stuff.
[The other good stuff includes The Wire, Dexter, Mad Men, 30 Rock, The Office, etc., though the other episodic choices are somewhat odd, including few from the nominated shows.]
- Love Lisa de Moraes, used to love David E. Kelley, so this cracks me up – she says he’s known as “a kind of brainy tsetse fly.”
- Lee Goldberg hates Canadian TV, blames lack of showrunners.
- I love Love, Actually so I’m with this guy. More reruns of that, fewer It’s a Wonderful Life takeoffs for me.
- Suspect reporter who emailed my “TV, eh?” account to ask who I am was expecting a more exciting answer. I’m secretly Kiefer Sutherland?
Want to follow me on Twitter? Here.
by Diane Wild | Dec 5, 2008 | Canadian TV, TV
The Great Twitter Experiment has already given me a little brainstorm. I’m going to gather any appropriate “tweets” every so often and include here too, for painless posts between my now very occasional “real” posts. (All together now: duh. In my defense … uh, it didn’t occur to me before.)
It’ll end up being a collection of TV-related links that interest me and short thoughts on what I’m watching. I’ll try to post any videos I link to there in same-day posts here, too (this time they’re just included below as links). And I won’t be able to resist fleshing out those 140 character posts a little, at least fixing syntax. Drives me nuts to write in text speak.
- Wired and the LA Times have nearly the same article today: science fact in TV fiction, like House, Breaking Bad, Big Bang Theory, etc.
- Trailer Park Boys series finale sneak peek. I’m no fan, but with 7 seasons, they’ve done just fine without me.
- Dollhouse’s Eliza Dushku on the Friday night death slot: “Dude, we’re in the age of DVR. People watch what they want to watch.” Dude, ask Tim Kring how much DVR ratings count.
- If only Ned could bring Pushing Daisies back to life. I’ll really miss that show.
- Rick Mercer‘s rant on Stephen Harper. (If you don’t know Mercer or Harper, you’re not Canadian and won’t care.)
- Slowly rewatching old Cupid. Both anticipating and dreading new Cupid. Please don’t suck, new Cupid. I want to love you.
- Tivo guilt? Not me. I’m ruthless with the deleting.
- Love Dexter. Love Jimmy Smits. Not sure I love Jimmy Smits on Dexter.
- The LA Times is really reaching for good news: “A SAG strike won’t cripple TV.” Sure, not if all you watch is Til Death, 90210, or Canadian TV.
- Watching Cock’d Gunns screeners in preparation for an interview. It’s a cross between Spinal Tap and Trailer Park Boys. I think. I never saw Spinal Tap.
Want to follow me on Twitter? Here.
by Diane Wild | Dec 1, 2008 | Canadian TV, Pseudo-Techie, TV
I have to admit, I’ve long thought Twitter sounds incredibly stupid. (Don’t know what Twitter is? It’s like Facebook if it were only the status updates. Don’t know what Facebook is? Meet my friend Google.) How can we find the time to do anything with all the time spent telling people what we’re doing, and reading about what they’re doing? I barely care what I’m up to any given minute of the day, never mind what anyone else is.
But like any tool of expression, of course what we get out of it is more about what we choose to express and ingest rather than the tool itself (I’m ignoring “the medium is the message” for now). Twitter’s being used for all sorts of purposes, from “this is what I’m up to” missives, to group chat between friends (it can even be private), to promoting businesses and blogs.
Which is where I come in now, semi-reluctantly, as someone whose job and hobbies involve web technology. It could be an opportunity to promote TV, eh? in a simple and different way and to keep up with a new web toy that doesn’t seem to be fading.
So what will my Twitter look like? I’m sure it’ll evolve as I figure it out, but I’ll focus on TV thoughts, and not just Canadian TV. One of my (ironic? hypocritical?) pet peeves about TV coverage in this country is that Canadian TV is relegated to its own ghetto. It’s rare to read an article that mentions a Canadian show unless it’s exclusively about Canadian TV.
Of course, what’s TV, eh? if not a well-intentioned ghetto, but it’s what I can manage. Twitter will let me do manageable microblogging where Canadian TV is just part of my TV thoughts, and if people follow then they’ll hear a little more about Canadian shows in the process. And it’ll alleviate my current issue with blogging time. With only 140 characters, I won’t feel like I have to write more of a “review” than: “Love Dexter. Love Jimmy Smits. Not sure I love Jimmy Smits on Dexter.” Hmm, maybe I’ll post that one.
Twitter’s a community, not a soapbox, so there’s bound to be some off-topic tweets (yeah, they call them tweets). The big benefit of experimenting with Twitter is that unlike the great podcast experiment, it’s low effort. I won’t post the link on TV, eh? until I feel more comfortable with how it’ll all shake out, so consider this a beta release for those of you who have forgotten to delete this blog’s RSS feed.
If you’re not into it, I don’t blame you. If you are, follow me here: http://twitter.com/deekayw
by Diane Wild | Oct 17, 2008 | TV
These are too awesome for words. So here’s a picture of one of Glark’s truthful TV Title Cards :
Check them all out here.
by Diane Wild | Sep 28, 2008 | TV
Sadly, it looks like this fall season is going to be a total wash for me. Except maybe The Mentalist, which I’ll still sample not because it’s a great show, but because it’s just good enough, and Simon Baker is so dreamy. Don’t judge me.
Fringe I wanted to give more of a chance than I did, wanting to scratch the X-Files/4400 itch, but after the boring pilot and the excruciating writing of the second episode, I sat down to watch the third episode and found my finger had hit delete after 5 minutes. Deletion of the series recording soon followed. Life’s too short to hope a crappy, dour TV show gets exponentially better with time.
I loved the pilot of Privileged but the second and third episodes had me fidgeting. It was always a long shot, since I’ve never been into The OC/Gossip Girl/90210 territory, but I was enjoying the heart this one displayed. However, the well-assembled story of the pilot was by far the most engaging of the plots, and I’d been there, done that, grown out of it long ago with the other storylines. I feel downright mean saying this, but the series is handicapped by a couple of very, very bad actors (the sister and the friend Charlie) and while I still find lead actress JoAnna Garcia charming, that wide-eyed, head-bobbing charm wore off a little with repetition.
Gary Unmarried wasn’t as horrible as I was expecting (I know, go crazy with the praise there, Diane) but Jay Mohr’s descent into According to Jim Belushiness makes me sad, and I need more than a few laughs to make me put a show in regular rotation.
I recorded Worst Week and deleted without even watching. With some series, you just know it’s not going to be for you, and I hated this one when it was a movie called Meet the Parents.
I might still check out Life on Mars and The Ex List (though the acrimonious departure of creator Diane Ruggiero makes me hesitate on that one), but I’m not holding out hope that any new shows will be added to my PVR this fall.
I’ll write my thoughts on my favourite returning series when enough of them have come back – Pushing Daisies this week! A sneak peek: so far, House is breaking my heart. And not in the good, killing Wilson’s girlfriend kind of way.
