Lego Mulder. More in this set.
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The sort of myth, the romance of his story and persona, is sort of undermined by the banality of his politics. If you listen to what he’s saying, it’s usually not all that interesting. It’s definitely a contrast, and if you saw his press conference today it was pretty dull. I wouldn’t be that surprised to see that develops as a pattern with him.
—Jason Ross on Obama at a panel discussion of Daily Show writers
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According to Feig, geeks are people who are unabashedly enthusiastic about uncool things. Things that don’t get you status points. Things that get you beaten up at school. Things that — well, let’s just say that in his wedding picture, which hangs proudly in his home, Feig and his wife both wear kilts.
—NYTimes Mag feature on Paul Feig
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Cyberpunk author William Gibson has a cameo appearance as himself. When the author of Neuromancer is introduced as the man who invented the term “Cyberspace”, he remarks, “and they’ve never let me forget it.”
—Wild Palms Wikipedia page.
Small Screen Potatoes
Stephanie Zacharek’s X Files 2 review for Salon about sums up my feelings on the movie.
I was impressed at how understated it was, feeling much more like a familiar small screen affair than the explosion filled blockbuster attempt of Fight the Future. Obviously there’s a much smaller budget (and audience) for the X Files in 2008, but Carter and Spotnitz play it to their advantage, creating a dark, intimate world for their main characters to explore. I also appreciate that these characters haven’t been frozen on a shelf since the series finale– they have changed, and we aren’t privy to what has occurred in that gap. It becomes another mystery for the audience to unravel.
Unfortunately, I doubt this is the type of film that will be a box office (or critical) success. The multitude of in-jokes and weighty history might not detract from the plot for the uninitiated, but without them, Mulder and Scully’s motivations could appear impenetrable. The quiet, snowy dread (welcome back Vancouver) has nothing on the billion dollar visual spectacle of The Dark Night. Ultimately, The X Files 2 begs for an outlet that doesn’t have to compete for theater goers with FX-laden billion dollar blockbusters, or require watering down to capture a weekly television audience of new viewers. Perhaps Chris Carter should take a page from Joss Whedon’s book.
The Problem With Webisodes
I noticed several mentions of the lack of residuals and credits in television “webisodes” while reading about the current Writer’s Guild strike. Some of the most popular series to do these original web-only shows were The Office and Battlestar Galactica. In the former’s case, according to the writers and actors from the show, they weren’t paid. In fact they mention that NBC didn’t even foot the bill to buy them the actual daytime Emmy award they won for one of their webisodes (the clip of them discussing this is available on Youtube).
The crew behind Battlestar Galactica, which had an internet-only miniseries entitled The Resistance, had a similar story. IGN has a brief interview with Ron Moore, the creator and exectuive producer of the show, wherein he discusses the problems surrounding the webisodes:
“I had a situation last year on Battlestar Galactica where we were asked by Universal to do webisodes [Note: Moore is referring to The Resistance webisodes which ran before Season 3 premiered], which at that point were very new and ‘Oooh, webisodes! What does that mean?’ It was all very new stuff. And it was very eye opening, because the studio’s position was ‘Oh, we’re not going to pay anybody to do this. You have to do this, because you work on the show. And we’re not going to pay you to write it. We’re not going to pay the director, and we’re not going to pay the actors.’ At which point we said ‘No thanks, we won’t do it.’”
“We got in this long, protracted thing and eventually they agreed to pay everybody involved. But then, as we got deeper into it, they said ‘But we’re not going to put any credits on it. You’re not going to be credited for this work. And we can use it later, in any fashion that we want.’ At which point I said ‘Well, then we’re done and I’m not going to deliver the webisodes to you.’ And they came and they took them out of the editing room anyway – which they have every right to do. They own the material – But it was that experience that really showed me that that’s what this is all about. If there’s not an agreement with the studios about the internet, that specifically says ‘This is covered material, you have to pay us a formula - whatever that formula turns out to be - for use of the material and how it’s all done,’ the studios will simply rape and pillage.”
There’s more in the article from Moore on the strike.
I had heard about Off the Grid, but somehow didn’t realize it was already produced and available in syndication on the internet. MMM is a huge Survivorman fan, and I had read an interview with the man behind the show, Les Stroud, awhile back talking about plans for a couple of television specials that explained his family’s search quest for feasible off-the-grid living (not “hippy communal back-to-the-landers” as he mentions in the first 2 minutes).
didn’t watch this when it was first posted and now it’s no longer available.
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Viacom might also run afoul of the Federal Communication Commission’s equal time rule. By law, radio and television stations must treat political candidates equally when it comes to selling or giving away airtime. There’s some debate as to whether this provision applies to all television networks, or just broadcast television. Nevertheless, cable channels generally abide by the equal-opportunity guideline to avoid a precedent-setting legal case. Each of the 16 presidential hopefuls could therefore demand as much time on Comedy Central as Colbert gets—about 20 minutes a night, four days a week. Faced with a similar situation earlier this year, NBC decided to stop airing Law & Order reruns featuring Fred Thompson. The cable network TNT, on the other hand, is risking the FCC’s ire by keeping its Thompson-heavy rerun schedule in tact.
uhhhh…how does Fox deal with this? I mean that as a serious question.
“The cable network TNT, on the other hand, is risking the FCC’s ire by keeping its Thompson-heavy rerun schedule in tact.”
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“The television set is roughly equivalent to a campfire in the days as the wagon trains were making their way westward and there was a catastrophe on the trail. Some people pulled the wagons around, and sat down and discussed what was going on, and tried to understand it, and then went on the next day. And we do that in front of our television sets now in large measure today.”
—Peter Jennings on 9/11. Reminded of by the callers on NPR talking about the subway being down.