Sunday, September 30, 2007
Who in Their Right Mind?
This past Thursday was the season premiere of CSI. The final show of last season had Sara Sidle stuck under an overturned car in the desert. She looked dead. A psychopathic woman put her in this position. The season premiere, of course, picked up where the story left off. (Wouldn't it be killer if they didn't & just left us hanging?)
As I was watching, I started mentally recounting how many of the CSIs have been kidnapped or put into other nasty situations:
Nick Stokes - kidnapped and buried alive in a Plexiglas box
Gil Grissom - hunted by a psychopath
Catherine Willows - slipped a date-rape drug, wakes up in a hotel room with no memory of what happened
Greg Sanders - tries to save a person being attacked, ends up killing someone, gets sued by family
Add to this a lab explosion and other nasty job pressures and you have to start wondering, who on earth would want to go into this line of work?
As I was watching, I started mentally recounting how many of the CSIs have been kidnapped or put into other nasty situations:
Nick Stokes - kidnapped and buried alive in a Plexiglas box
Gil Grissom - hunted by a psychopath
Catherine Willows - slipped a date-rape drug, wakes up in a hotel room with no memory of what happened
Greg Sanders - tries to save a person being attacked, ends up killing someone, gets sued by family
Add to this a lab explosion and other nasty job pressures and you have to start wondering, who on earth would want to go into this line of work?
Labels: bad things happen, csi, tv
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
House
Surely the blogs are all a'twitter about Dave Matthews' appearance on Fox Network's TV show House last night. I have to admit that last night was the first night I watched the show and I was drawn to seeing how Matthews would do as an actor, rather than as a singer. He played a savant with the mental age of a little kid, but had an outstanding musical ability. He did a fine job of being guileless and properly vacant. If I'd had the part, I would have been lucky to affect a vague distractedness, rather than all out blankness. I found I was wishing they'd given Matthews more lines, just to see how he'd deliver, but then realized that it's got to be harder to act through facial action without the veil of words to hide behind. If Matthews continues his acting career, which seems likely, I hope he picks a character that requires a lot, and I mean A LOT, of makeup and prosthetics. The trouble with a person switching from a music career to an acting career is that he is so recognizable that the audience can't help but think, Why, I know everything there is to know about this fellow, and this familiarity makes it difficult to give him a fair shake.
The storyline involving Matthews' character was a backdrop piece to what was going on with the main character, Dr. House, who is played by Hugh Laurie. I'm familiar with Laurie's work on the British comedy Blackadder, which also stars Rowan Atkinson. I especially liked Laurie's character in the Elizabethan episodes of Blackadder. His nickname was "Shorty Greasy Spot-Spot." In House, Laurie plays a complete smart-ass, which I loved. He reminds me of the Dr. Cox character on the TV show Scrubs, only House is darker. Definitely a show worth watching again, just to see what Laurie will do.
Say, does anyone more familiar with the show know whether the cane and limp are part of the House character? This limp is so convincing that it has me thinking Laurie has a long-term injury, but I don't remember him being this way in Blackadder.
The storyline involving Matthews' character was a backdrop piece to what was going on with the main character, Dr. House, who is played by Hugh Laurie. I'm familiar with Laurie's work on the British comedy Blackadder, which also stars Rowan Atkinson. I especially liked Laurie's character in the Elizabethan episodes of Blackadder. His nickname was "Shorty Greasy Spot-Spot." In House, Laurie plays a complete smart-ass, which I loved. He reminds me of the Dr. Cox character on the TV show Scrubs, only House is darker. Definitely a show worth watching again, just to see what Laurie will do.
Say, does anyone more familiar with the show know whether the cane and limp are part of the House character? This limp is so convincing that it has me thinking Laurie has a long-term injury, but I don't remember him being this way in Blackadder.
Labels: acting, blackadder, dave matthews, house, hugh laurie, music, rowan atkinson, story, tv
Monday, November 20, 2006
FtTP - TV + The Internet
I'm still making my way through the latest Wired Magazine and read an article on YouTube last night, plus one on the creation of lonelygirl15.
As the internet grows more and more social, I'm thinking that maybe these little personal screens we sit in front of are not big enough. Here's what happens in my house: "Mom, come here. Look at this video on YouTube." ... "Mom, come see these cute iPod covers online." ... "Mom, check out this game I'm playing. I've wracked up X number of gold pieces. Now I can buy that cloaking device I want." ... "Honey, check out what I wrote for StoryChat. Here's where the thread starts." I've seen as many as five kids huddled around the fifteen-inch screen I'm currently sitting at.
Juxtapose this with the current trend in personal home theaters wherein the homeowner has a screen large enough to be viewed across a football field. And the techie pundits claim television is dying? I think it's on the verge of a rebirth, but its genetics will come from the internet, pulling directly from success stories such as YouTube and lonelygirl15.
My internet provider and cable company are one in the same. How big a leap would it be to broadcast the internet on TV? My brother used to have WebTV, so it's been done before. Why not have a switching device on the TV that allows it to broadcast either cable or the internet? Why not create easy-to-hold controlling devices - cheap enough for everyone in the family to have - so that watching the internet & selecting a variety of sites can become an even bigger social phenomenon? Imagine the group collaborations, or perhaps the shopping parties, people can have if we wed the internet to a bigger screen.
Someone somewhere is surely already working on this . . . .
As the internet grows more and more social, I'm thinking that maybe these little personal screens we sit in front of are not big enough. Here's what happens in my house: "Mom, come here. Look at this video on YouTube." ... "Mom, come see these cute iPod covers online." ... "Mom, check out this game I'm playing. I've wracked up X number of gold pieces. Now I can buy that cloaking device I want." ... "Honey, check out what I wrote for StoryChat. Here's where the thread starts." I've seen as many as five kids huddled around the fifteen-inch screen I'm currently sitting at.
Juxtapose this with the current trend in personal home theaters wherein the homeowner has a screen large enough to be viewed across a football field. And the techie pundits claim television is dying? I think it's on the verge of a rebirth, but its genetics will come from the internet, pulling directly from success stories such as YouTube and lonelygirl15.
My internet provider and cable company are one in the same. How big a leap would it be to broadcast the internet on TV? My brother used to have WebTV, so it's been done before. Why not have a switching device on the TV that allows it to broadcast either cable or the internet? Why not create easy-to-hold controlling devices - cheap enough for everyone in the family to have - so that watching the internet & selecting a variety of sites can become an even bigger social phenomenon? Imagine the group collaborations, or perhaps the shopping parties, people can have if we wed the internet to a bigger screen.
Someone somewhere is surely already working on this . . . .
Labels: FtTP, husband, internet, kids, technology, tv, wired, youtube
