TV – Page 2 – The Evil Eyebrow

Category: TV

Modern Marvels' Marveliscioustasticness

I watch the History Channel. It soothes my occasional need for something interesting to look at while my mind zones on other things. Modern Marvels is a particular favorite because they manage to explore (superficially) a lot of different subjects that we don’t run into on a day to day basis. For example, last night I was watching Railroads* which was cool because I learned about Bailey Yard (Google Maps Link), the largest railroad switching yard in the world. See the wikipedia link for more info, although the acreage and track numbers listed in wikipedia don’t match what was on Modern Marvels last night.

Coincidentally, the Modern Marvels episode prior to this one was about “The Strongest” stuff, including Tugboats, and I slowly draw near to why I’m writing this post. The tugboat in question, made by the Foss Company in Oregon, is powered by two 4000 hp railroad engines.

Now, if you watch Modern Marvels, you are familiar with the little bit of trivia they sling at you just before every commercial break and the deep intonations of massive importance and wondrous awe. Usually, the tidbits are interesting, but sometimes they manage to state something that might be considered…obvious. For example: [paraphrasing, approximately]

The tugboat is powered by two 4000 hp railroad engines, [deep ominous voice] each capable of pulling a fully loaded passenger train.

Duh?

*I think it was called Railroads. I went to the Modern Marvels website and the most recent episode they had in their “archive” was February 9th.

March 1, 2007
Sick as Proverbial Pooch

I have a nasty cold. It started on Friday last and by Saturday I was down for the count. The couch and I became very close friends. I didn’t sleep during the day much, so I watched a lot of movies and TV. Here’s the count, plus my evaluation.
The Guardian. Kevin Costner and Aashton Kutcher. Old-hand Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer teaches values to New Recruit. Entirely predictable and not worth your time, although it had cool rescue scenes.
Flyboys. James Franco. American Cowboy goes to Europe to fly against Germany in WWI. Really REALLY predicatvle and not worth your time.
Accepted. Justin Long. High School graduate who isn’t a slacker somehow is not accepted to any colleges (?) and through a series of unfortunate events, founds his own. Exactly what I expected, so it didn’t disappoint, but my expectations were low. The main character had an annoying tendency to pratfall every third scene or so. Why? I don’t know; it was unnecessary.

Still to be watched: A Scanner Darkly and Little Miss Sunshine.

TV Movies watched this weekend: Under Siege, the only Steven Seagal movie worth watching; Love Actually, a Christmas movie that drove me nuts in the theater, but wasn’t horrible on TV with Tivo at hand; Notting Hill, one of Jenn and My favorite movies; How to lose a guy in 10 Days, which while stupid, wasn’t so stupid I didn’t like it.

I also watched an excellent snake documentary on the Discovery Channel with that Nature Narrator Dude who does all sorts of shows (who’s name I cannot recall). They had snake-cameras and everything. Even a cute baby cobra.

Shark Jumping: Thy Name is Battlestar

I’m disappointed to note that I believe Battlestar Galactica has Jumped the Shark.

Almost the entirety of season 3 has been disjointed and weird. The beginning credits note that the Cylons “Have a Plan” but even they don’t seem to know what it is.

Battlestar has moved away from what made it so good during the mini-series and first season. The strong roles played by each iconic character against the backdrop of the evil human-destroying cylons made it a great series. Now they’re taking valuable time to develop nebulous concepts and explore interactions amongst minor characters. This would normally be great, except the set of Battlestar is way too small to do this.

Alas, I am not a professional critic. I am a professional science fiction appreciator though, in that I pay myself to do it. And my opinion is that if the next couple episodes don’t get better, I’m not going to watch any more.

Dresden Files

I’ve been trying to write a post about the Dresden Files since the second episode. I keep putting it down and then the next week’s episode is broadcast and I have to modify it. Everything below the fold was my draft comments as of last week, take them as they are, I stick by them.

However, I have to say that I don’t like the show anymore. It’s disappointing on a number of levels. What makes the books so good is the mixing of supernatural with the “real” and Harry’s angst in dealing with it all. This is entirely missing from the TV show. I will probably keep watching it, like an incipient car wreck, and I’ll let you know if I think it is getting better. Firefly, this is not. which probably means it will stick around for 6 seasons

(more…)

Useless News Sites

I used to live in Lubbock Texas. You may have heard about it last night on Heroes wherein our chirpy protagonista Claire is supposedly skipping school to visit the aquarium there (Aquarium? Lubbock? Bobby Knight must have brought it with him).

Apparently, there’s been some excitement recently. Enough hit the AP wires at least. A man has been setting traps on the bike trails around town to deter bicyclists from riding in environmentally sensitive areas. As one of my friends might say, “Freaking Hippies!” Not that I don’t applaud this man’s goal, but his methods seem a bit…ummmm, felonius.

If you click on the previous link, you’ll notice that it is a google search page. As of 6 Feb 07, there were tons and tons of hits to this story, most from news organizations. But if you search within the local Lubbock Avalanche Journal’s website you get…nothing.

It’s good to see that the citizens of West Texas are being well served by their news companies. “If you don’t know about it, ask a neighbor,” while true in Lubbock, doesn’t help anyone who wants to research the archives.

The Dresden Files

I’m a big fan of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series of books. I had the privilege of seeing Mr. Butcher at this year’s Dragon*Con. Now, the Sci-Fi channel has turned the series into a television serial, with mixed-positive, results, in my opinion.

As a caveat, I must note that this television series has always been intended as a parallel universe to the books. It will go off in new directions, with new stories, and I acknowledge that.

I do have a few gripes. One, Lt. Karin Murphy is a brunette, and Susan Gonzales is a blonde. Blah. How difficult is it to procure people with correct hair colors, especially given that Susan’s hair is obviously dyed? Two, Bob’s sarcasm is part of his schtick, and I miss it in the TV show. Three, why is Justin DuMorne alive? That’s just confusing. Four? Well, we’ll wait for next week’s episode.

Now that I’ve ragged on the show, I should say that I liked it! I thought Paul Blackthorne did an excellent job portraying Harry, and although it looks like they’ve dropped the poorer-than-dirt aspects of the character, I still like his earthiness.

Of course, once again there’s a tv show involving a HUGE urban apartment that no one outside of stock broker or lawyer or real estate developer could afford. Why can’t poor people live in small apartments?

Here are some comments by Jim Butcher himself in a news article out of Toronto

Excellent Website

Cleaning out the “to be posted” file…

I’ve spent the past week or so perusing the pages on this website. Most are strangely amusing. My favorite quote, found on the page of Astronomically Unlikely is:

…if all-natural organic free-range babies are the perfect ingredient for tentacle lotion…

Originally, I was punted over by way of SFSignal and I ended up on the SF Chronophysics page which details exhaustively the types of time travel you run into whilst reading Science Fiction and watching Star Trek (Bleha! on Star Trek’s time travel!).

A good time sink. I approve.

Lost? How Lost are you?

I suspect that the number of comments I received on this post about Lost was due to the juxtaposition of “Lost” and “Shit” in the same googleable sentence. Somebody even popped up just last week to drop a comment. I’m quite proud of my most popular post. [sniff]

But, I digress. If anyone pops over to this post who still watches Lost, I’m curious what you think about the show now that it is in the third season. Some people I work with swear that it jumped the shark last season and that it’s not worth the air to blow it out the lock. Rumor has it that there’s a second island now, and that frightens me.

So, what do you think? Does it suck? Does it rock? Does it sock?

I’m now under the strange compulsion to watch Bones and Heroes, and I do not miss an episode of Battlestar Galactica, practically the only good show on the SciFi channel. Rumor has it that the new SciFi show based on the Dresden Files will be good, so I’m looking forward to that.

Update: 28 Nov 2006
I should have waited to post this. Then I could comment about the Lost action figures!

Logical Conclusion to Heroes

Warning: Spoilers, if you haven’t watched this week’s Heroes yet…

We know that Claire can survive all sorts of devastating physical trauma. She can be smashed, burned, sliced, diced, and julienned without long-lasting consequences. We have observed her to be dead with a sharp stick in her brain. She can apparently recover from any wound as long as she is physically together in one place, e.g. when the stick was removed, she came back to life on the autopsy table.

Using various story arcs, and the stupidest tagline in history (“Save the Cheerleader; save the world” ARRRGH!), they have been leading us toward this climactic battle between brain-stealer Sylar and everyone else.

So, here’s my predicted conclusion: