Let me preface this by saying… I am not a tv guy. If you’ve followed this blog any, you know that. I can, and routinely do, go months without watching TV. I in fact do not own a tv. But I do own laptops and quite an extensive DVD collection. I keep abreast of what people are saying is hot or good in TV land, and eventually get around to trying the DVDs. And usually all these hyped shows… I’m unimpressed. LOST, 24, PRISON BREAK, HEROES all shows I’ve heard rapturous praise, and finally seen… they’re uneven at best, with some great episodes, but mostly a lot of filler, sub-par episodes. THE WIRE is another show that I heard so much praise for, and finally watched it cannot hold a candle to its predecessor HOMICIDE. Typically it’s the British Television shows that I think are currently knocking it out the park. Shows like HUSTLE and ULTRAVIOLET and JEKYLL and TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH. Because their seasons are tight, they avoid the filler and weak episodes so common to American Television seasons. There are exceptions, a few American shows, that are televison at its finest. DAY BREAK is one of those shows. To say it’s 24 meets Groundhog Day, gives you a crude and unwieldy signpost, and ultimately a lacking one. It is those two things, those two vague and well worn themes, but done right and brilliantly and strong for the whole season. I have things to do, and places to go, and I cannot stop watching the bloody DVDs. It’s BRILLIANT! So of course it was canceled in one season. I mean multi-ethnic cast, strong Black lead character… Oh please cancel me now, and let’s leave on crap like SMALLVILLE, or another CSI or LAW AND ORDER. But while it may have only been one season, at least is was a GREAT FRIGGING SEASON! Try it for yourself. And don’t forget to listen to all the commentaries, pretty great stuff.

TORCHWOOD:CHILDREN OF EARTH- I came into this mini-series having only seen one other episode of TORCHWOOD, the season #2 finale preceeding this series. And that episode by itself was pretty darn bleak and impressive. But CHILDREN OF THE EARTH ratchets it up several notches, with the stakes being nothing less than the world itself. I found it powerful, and wrenching television, with strong performances throughout. It’s the kind of emotional wringer that BABYLON 5 and FARSCAPE were very good at pulling off, primarily due to the tortured and terrific performance of their actors. And while CHILDREN OF EARTH perhaps lacks any single stand-out actor, all the actors turn in strong performances, and CHILDREN boasts a script, that while science fiction, is more grounded in the issues facing us today. That and the sustained storyline aspect, creates a cumulative effect that makes for one of the finer hours of television I’ve seen in a while. It’s not without missteps, what show is, but the few it takes are minor and lost in the numerous strengths of the mini-series. So all in all easily the best BBC TV production I’ve seen. If this series doesn’t touch your heart in places, it’s quite possible you’re in need of a new one. Recommended. A-.

I don’t currently own a TV. I don’t currently have cable. Gotta tell ya… I don’t miss em. I mean I still keep abreast of the latest DVDs, but as far as television and cable… nope. I try and keep the number of monopolies that I am forced to support (because of lack of choice) to a minimum. So anytime I can eliminate or consolidate reoccurring debits, I’m happy to do so. When I want to see something on the big screen, I go to the movies (check my review on LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in 70mm to see why a quality theater is still the best way to watch great films) . Otherwise my leisure time is spent writing, reading, watching DVDs (laptop), self studying, activism, music, dining out and a recent interest in Horticulture (An admittedly odd interest for me, considering I have a thumb of death). I capture RSS feeds of the latest news from around the world, so I tend to stay more informed than the person who just sits slack jawed in front their television and hears the same news, told to him the same way, from annoyingly similar talking heads… 36 times throughout the day. I tend to stay more informed then the person camped out in front of CNN or ABC, waiting to be told, vapidly it seems, what to be outraged about and why. These days Broadcast news has more in common with mesmerism and propaganda than it does the people’s right to know. That said I do, eventually, intend to get a large flat panel TV for DVD watching, a 720p screen. Why? Well contrary to the bs, that’s actually the perfect resolution to both produce content at, and to watch that content at. Especially for passive entertainment like watching DVDs or TV. On anything under a 50 inch screen, anything over a 720 resolution is just asking for eye strain. 1080 is a resolution that really has no use, in the majority of screen choices required for a consumer situation (ie 50″ or less) beyond allowing TV makers to charge you more for it. The purpose and benefit of greater resolutions in the computer world, is not for watching movies, it is for having more real estate to multi-task, and to offer full page views of column heavy documents such as spreadsheets. And since we’re at least a generation if not two, away from viable interactive television sets, any 1080 display today is a medium in search of a market. It is the case of the tail wagging the dog. At 720p, production is cost effective for the little guy, cameras are readily available, and from recording to production of media, to reception, It really is an area that allows some growth. But 1080 allows you to keep the little guy playing catch up. because the cost of those cameras are high, and by the time the cost of those come down, the market will be onto something else. But 720p, is a place where a lot of good things can happen, if we can keep the tail (the people who create change, just so they can sell you more change) from wagging the dog (the consumer). Resolution is just that. It’s about screen real estate. Not about picture quality, but picture conventions. Arguably concerns such as contrast, refresh rates, dot pitch, and media compression algorithms are of FAR more importance to picture quality than the canvas dimensions. And that is all resolution is, is the dimensions of the canvas. A traditional 480 DVD looks great on a 720 screen, presented progressive. And a 720 DVD looks great on a 720 screen. And I’ve seen recent 1080 DVDs on a 1080 display, and they look like 720 but with noise inserted to fill up the additional real estate. I’ve watched a friend’s 300 and TROY in BluRay (I do go over other peoples’ houses and see the behemoth tvs they’ve mortgaged their children to purchase) on his 1080 Bluray Player, and it looks nice, it’s an improvement on regular DVD, but I have to say it is not a vast improvement. In the case of the movie 300, it was barely an improvement at all. Right now Bluray is not exciting me enough to justify its cost. And I think part of this is that the 1080 resolution, on anything under a 50 inch screen, looks like what it is… noise. Why? A 1080i or p screen (1080p being the current holy grail and what Blurays are mastered at) provides to whatever size screen you are using over 2 million pixels of info every 30th of a second. This translates into 60 million pixels of data per second. By comparison 720p provides a little less than a million pixels of data (921,600 to be exact) per 30th of a second, or roughly 30million pixels of data per second. So everything being equal, a 1080p recorded source played on a 1080p native player delivered to a 50″ 1080p tv and a 720p recorded source played on a 720p native player delivered to a 50″ 720p tv; the 1080p setup going by the argument more is better should be twice as good as the 720p setup, right? I mean it delivers twice as many pixels per second. Right? Well yes and no. Yes, it does deliver twice as many pixels per second, but it doesn’t look twice as good. In fact it’s arguably a negligible improvement and in my experience a degradation. Why? Well no one has done any studies on this particular phenomenon (who wants to get on the wrong side of a multi-billion dollar consensus of media conglomerates?) but my unscientific guess would be 1080i or p ( 60million pixels of data) delivered every second… concentrated in a certain amount of space, is not absorbed as fluidly as 30million pixels of data. I think the number is too much. Wait, don’t laugh, I promise you… I will prove the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around. Science already knows there are numbers below and above which range, they are not conducive to the vagaries of human pleasure. Just like there is a frequency of images per second above and below which the illusion of smooth television viewing falls apart, just as we are aware that there is a range of colors when alternated in quick succession, is passively absorbed by most of us, but triggers fits in the more sensitive (typically diagnosed as photosensitive epilepsy), so there is a point beyond which our brain (which is the most important aspect of what we see, it turns the upside down image that hits our eyes right-side up, and grants to these series of still frames the illusion of motion, etc) has to drop info, to keep the illusion. Our brains are very smart, they look at an image and they say, “so much info in so much real estate provides this sort of picture, and it is all useful”, but at some number the additional info becomes at odds with the area it is provided in, and the time it is given to process. 60000000 pixels of data in a space of 50″ or less, presented every second, I think is over the range that our brain determines is necessary or adequate in such a space over such a repetitive period of time. So visual data over the comfortable range our brain has set, is seen as unnecessary or redundant info and is dropped or not processed, and explains why the 1080p setup contrasted against a comparative 720p setup is something underwhelming at best (being not twice the quality of 720p ) and inferior at worst (where the extraneous info is actually seen as noise). Seeing as I’m not a mathematician or an Optometrist, I’ll leave the proving or disproving of my hypothesis above to the glory hounds among you. For myself it suffices to know that a 1080 setup is just asking for eye fatigue. . Your mileage may vary. But for me, currently the best viewing experience is a 720p source, played on a 720p DVD (uncompressed if that is available), on a 720p Screen. David Camoy over at CNET also has an article on comparative HD resolutions. And also puts forth the conclusion that the difference between 720p and 1080p on screens of 50″ or less are negligible. And I would go father than that and say the 1080p picture is actually degraded compared to the 720p picture. Try it for yourself, and decide. So save yourself some bucks and don’t blindly swallow the 1080p hype. Here endeth the, hopefully informative, rant.

What I’m reading:

I’m making my way through the last few issus of Don Lomax’s VIETNAM JOURNAL series. A really strong series, with expressive, detailed art by Lomax, that completely complements his passionate, and seemingly authentic tales of men at war.

I just finished rereading WATCHMEN in preparation for the movie. Avoid the horrible motion comic, the voice actor ruins it. Making trite sounding what should be momentous. Stick to the graphic novel, if you want to prep yourself for the movie. I’ve been a fan of Snyder’s previous two movies so looking forward to his take on WATCHMEN.

I’m reading the massive SCUD THE DISPOSABLE ASSASSIN THE WHOLE SHEBANG. True to the title it collects and completes the whole 14 years in the making series. I was there when the first issue hit the stands, was impressed then, am impressed now. It’s an impressive trade (something like 700 pages I believe) and IMAGE COMICS should be complimented on its quality. I’m on issue #4 so have a long way to go.

I’m really enjoying the heck out of Sam Stall’s DRACULA’S HEIR, an interactive book by the fun folks of Quirk Books. I like the detailed art in this one much better than Lapham’s art for WAYNE MANOR, but both books sport fine writing.

I’m on the third book of the eight book BLACK SAMURAI series by Marc Olden. Love this series, but have been stalled on this particular book a while. Keep letting it get bumped for other reads. Which is funny, because all my Lawrence Block and Warren Murphy books, got bumped so I could finish this series. I’ll buckle down and finish book 3 this weekend, as I want to get to book 4 in the series.

What am I watching:

Archive.org. Thanks to this fine resource have watched some fun cinema, that I otherwise may not have made time to see. Among the highlights are:

TALES OF TOMORROW- early 50s live sci-fi tv show. Creaky but fun

WAY OUT- Another early TV show. Late 50s probably, only two or so episodes are available, and the quality is what it is, but I was quite impressed by both of the episodes I saw.

DAUGHTER OF HORROR- Fun experimental flick, early 60s I’d guess, also called Dementia. Some people don’t care for the voice-over version, I quite liked it. It gives it a fun radio drama feel.

What am I listening to:

Speaking of Radio Dramas, that’s primarily what I’ve been listening to these days. Currently listening to episodes of BOX 13 starring Alan Ladd. Also a short lived series called CREEPS BY NIGHT starring Boris Karloff.

That’s it for this update.

GOD TV sucks.

As you know if you follow this blog I watch TV rarely. And generally I stick to TCM, or sporting events. But every couple years or so I’ll peak my head out and sample what people are going on about. In the last couple of days I’ve tried BIONIC WOMAN, DR. WHO, and SMALLVILLE.

First we’ll start with Smallville. A show I was completely on board with the first couple of seasons. But pretty much when they dissed the Pete Ross character, played by Sam Jones III (who I admit was an odd casting choice to begin with), the show’s star… began to dim for me.

And while an odd casting choice, the 5′8″ Sam Jones was a good actor. And his departure from the show at the end of the third season, seemed to signal a downward spiral in the quality of the shows, a loss of the tight knit family essence that made the first three seasons work. And beyond that the thing is, when you side with a man you stick with him, and if you can’t do that you’re like some kind of animal. To quote THE WILD BUNCH.

A great movie by the way.

Anyhow, I can’t stand for people to use Black characters just to disrespect and denigrate them (keep that in mind for when I get to DR. WHO). And beyond the poor treatment of Sam Jones, the Smallville stories really got fing crappy, with the kungfu witch Lana, and the absolutely annoying Lois character.

And the latest season premiere shows me the show is solidly still taking on water. I mean while special effects are always fun, the fing stupid dialog and plot… is seriously mind numbing.

First… evil clark?? Again with fucking evil clark?!! That crap was old in the first season!!

But fine you have an evil clark, who fries people alive and punches holes in people, but when Lois slaps him in response to his ass squeezing advances, this evil clark does what? He says…. “uh… later” or something to that effect, and walks away. WTF????

Are we paying someone to write this crap?!! And then this evil clark/phantom guy, talks the whole show about how he wants to kill Clark, so what does he do when he knocks Clark down and has him vulnerable… HE WALKS AWAY! WTF?!!! Just a stupid fucking show. Seriously how do you fuck up SMALLVILLE this badly? And don’t get me started on the fing music montages. So in a nutshell, SMALLVILLE… great argument for radio.

Now BIONIC WOMAN.

Fuck I hate this trend of Hollywood and the Networks mining the gems of the 70s and 80s, to produce their inferior modern take.

And now BIONIC WOMAN?! Fine if you’re going to do it, do it well.

Don’t do this utter maudlin, navel gazing crap!

What kind of moron do you have to be to try and replace Lindsey Wagner with this girl power crap?

You know what Lindsey Wagner had going for her, she had a face and a presence that captivated. She had and has, something not unlike grace. This new show? Actors in the first episode have no presence, no core to them. Whatever that quality is, that comes out of the eyes, and makes you interested and enamored, that star quality… I didn’t get from any of the cast.

These characters are whiny and irritating. “Dad left us, and I have to take care of you, and I’m pregnant” All in like the first 15 minutes, Damn!

Is this BIONIC WOMAN or Peyton’s Place? Retarded reality tv generation crap! Show is Abysmal. And the fact that starving, bombed countries could be rebuilt and stabilized for a fraction of the cost networks are paying to produce this garbage… is not lost on me.

This is why I stay away from TV, because I get irritated when I see nonsense like this. And life is far too short to wade in other peoples garbage.

And don’t get me started on the CW network as a whole. When I was growing up we had great shows like SANFORD AND SON, now we have denigrating crap like EVERYBODY HATES CHRIS. Am I the only person who sees that TV has grown more bigoted and detrimental to people of color, not less.

And That brings me to DR. WHO. If you’re white you probably didn’t see the same first episode I saw.

With the black boyfriend playing a, as the british say… cunt, of legendary proportions. Dude might as well be fucking step and fetchit. Spending the whole episode on his knees, cowering behind his white girlfriends legs. Seriously, it might as well be 1920 and this dude might as well be rolling his eyes and going “yessir boss. Me been a bad negro.” . Seriously, talk to me! How much do they have to fucking pay you to castrate yourself like that? And Noel Coward, the young actor in question is a 2003 Lawrence Olivier Award Winning actor. Seriously, fucking sad… that this is the kind of role such a promising actor takes/can get.

Without that absolutely unnecessary punking, I would have dug the show. But to introduce a character of color just to misuse them/abuse them… I tune out. Game over man! Game over!

And you who have lived with lies so long, that you can see nothing beyond those lies… may not understand why a couple isolated incidents of defamation to Black characters is a big deal… I’ll try and explain briefly and give it up.

First it’s not isolated incidents. It’s a pervasive pattern of defamation. A lot of it can be put into context with the Dave Chappell REAL WORLD sketch, where using comedy he kind of flips the script and shows you the detrimental nature of the media portraying you as always THE Minority. You get one slot on virtually any mainsteam movie or television show that is not a comedy. Take the casting annoucement for the new JLA movie. “Casting for Caucasian actors take precedence with a role available for one Black actor. But please concentrate on casting the Caucasian actors.” Translation: “We want a majority of white actors and we want them to be great, good looking actors. As far as the Black actor just get us anybody who’ll roll their eyes when we tell them too.”

That’s not acceptable. Particularly when you have no strong leading man images in television or movies or music, to counteract the image of the buffoon or criminal or deviant.

It carries a disproportionate amount of weight when you introduce image after image of Black males simply to set them up for a fall or or castigation or comedy relief, ala BUFFY (build up the love interest only to punk him out in a fight against Spike)

The 6′3″ D.B. Woodside like most Black actors in Hollywood is criminally underused. The 38 year old, Yale educated actor’s star is on the rise with talk of him being considered for several leading man roles, including talk of an upcoming Green Lantern movie.

or ANDROMEDA or ENTERPRISE (all of them with the exception of DEEP SPACE NINE) or SMALLVILLE or BLADE (tv series not the first two movies) or PULP FICTION (why the Black guy got be the one to be sodomized, what the fuck is that Quentin Tarantino?) or fucking DR. WHO. (Or the fucking REAPER! Which I actually kinda dug the first episode, but what the fuck is up with the networks trying to pair up every fat, slacker white dude with the hot black chick. Let’s come back to earth people. I call a miscegenation foul! And of course who is the first victim on the show, the ethnic dude! I swear I’m going to find a clocktower!!)

The 6′4″ Keith Hamilton Cobb gave effective performances in ANDROMEDA even though being horrendously written, to the point where he had to quit the show. A phenomenal actor, who should be a major big screen heroic actor. However there is discussion of him for several upcoming feature films.

I mean I’m not saying every Black character has to be a great, strong, Avery Brooks HAWK character, but what I am saying is to make virtually every single Black male character introduced in movies or tv or comics, a shoe waiting to drop, a victim waiting to happen… is bullshit.

It is racist mass media. And more than that… it’s predictable, boring mass media.

I would rather these shows not introduce Black characters, rather than introduce them and fuck them over. It really is a very, very obvious case of 21st century media, being used to revamp early 20th century minstrel shows. Black actors but very much white messages.

This has to be recognized, called out, and opposed. Much the same way the proliferation by media conglomerates (not owned by Black people, BET is not Black owned) of hateful, genocidal gangsta music, and mentalities and mores have to be recognized and opposed.

Maybe the Sony exec paying you to shake your ass or roll your eyes or say bitch and ho, is no different then the italian or the irish or the columbian drug czar paying you to sell crack to your own. Maybe both have your denigration and your defilement as their ultimate goal.

TV’s just another drug, man. And a drug can either heal you or hurt you. And today it’s definitely being used to portray the Black man as villian and fool, and the Black woman as hor.

Like fucking SIN CITY. Most racist piece of garbage I’ve ever seen.

And Michael Vick fucking dominating the news! There are people fighting for independence, all over the globe, countries getting overthrown, people getting assassinated, and what is the number one news in America for months?? Michael Vick and alleged dogfighting, And now OJ being back in the news.

FUCK!!!!

Does no one see any of this being a little bit sleight of hand? You bring up bullshit to discuss, to ignore the fact that a lot of the positive, doing the right thing young men, many of them Black young men (the ones you’re supposedly waving those flags to support), are coming home missing limbs, and in fucking body bags, fighting a rich man’s war.

But no let’s not talk about that. Let’s spend weeks trying to give a black eye to some fucking football player. Did he arrange dog fights? Did he not? WHO FUCKING CARES?!! People are dying! People are fucking dying, and this is what you’re wasting tv time covering?!!

Seriously every newscaster should be dragged behind a truck till they fing fall apart, maybe it’ll give em a perspective on what’s news and what’s not.

Dog fighting. Yeah we’re fighting covert and not so covert wars in 29 countries, an endless war; but don’t discuss that, instead let’s spend weeks pontficating about how evil this Black man is for running a dog fighting ring. Seriously fucked up sense of priorities.

WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!

How fucking stupid do you have to be to listen to fox news, and think you’re getting news. You’re getting propaganda, you’re getting a world view, you’re getting programming.

You’re getting lies, that they (they media, they advertisers, they sponsors, they enron, and they Shell, and they Sony and they Time Warner, and they Disney, and they who get rich, selling you the terror of war… THEY) want you to lie down for.

Fuck the media, and fuck their lies.

Remember that with every show you watch, it’s part of a world view… and it may not be the best world view for you.

Just look with better eyes at what they are selling you.

I’m watching ROBIN OF SHERWOOD, hands down one of my favorite television series, I’m reading QUANTUM AND WOODY by Christopher Priest one of my favorite writers, and I’m listening to ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT one of my fave bands.

Life is good.

Outside it’s snowing, first snow of the year. I mailed off a submission yesterday, so we’ll see what kind of response that gets, so I’m slacking off today. I’ll get back on the work treadmill tomorrow. Some minor issues with hearth and home to deal with tomorrow, but for today catching up on a pile of books, comics, and magazines; that have been waiting patiently for me to read them.

One of those being QUANTUM AND WOODY, and another being O’Neil’s THE QUESTION. I have both series complete, and have read enough to tell you… they are really, really good.

I’ll bring you more specifics as I work my way through both runs.

And finally recommended movie of the day is CAPPUCCINO. Very hard to find, but well worth the hunting down. One of my favorite Newage Noirs. Sexy and Suspenseful!