Tag Archive for 'television'

Is Lucas Way Down In The Hole?

Published
by
John Griffin
on March 18, 2008
in TV
. 0 Comments

I was discussing the potential of the Star Wars live action TV show the other day and wondered where George Lucas would be drawing his inspiration for how it should be structured and presented. I’d hoped Battlestar obviously but was pleasantly surprised to see this on Slashfilm this morning,

“Some of the characters from the features find their way in there, so it’s not completely divorced. It’s as if we just went down the street and told a different story. You know, we were doing, I don’t know, 24, and now we’re going to move down the street here and do The Wire. Same thing, it’s just different people doing the same thing in the same city.”

Yes he said THE WIRE, everybody’s favourite Baltimore based drug busting masterpiece. My expectations have significantly increased in the hopes they can pull off a character driven tightly nit story. I’m just glad he is aware of some of the best contemporary TV out there, we don’t need another Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.

iPlayer Downloads Now Firefox Compatible

Published
by
John Griffin
on February 5, 2008
in TV and Tech
. 0 Comments

Slow clap.

Small baby steps.

Change the Aspect Ratio!

Published
by
John Griffin
on January 22, 2008
in TV and Tech
. 3 Comments

Charlie Brooker hits one of my little frustrations right on the head today,

I tend to assume other people share my obsessive need to examine the settings until everything is just so, and get genuinely enraged when I go to someone’s house and discover, say, that they’re watching programmes in the wrong aspect ratio. People over 50 are the worst offenders: they’ll blithely sit through a Dad’s Army repeat that is unnaturally stretched across the screen so that the entire cast look as if they had difficult births that left them with flattened skulls. Faced with this, I get acute back-seat-driver anxiety, and end up hectoring them like an exasperated pilot trying to teach a four-year-old how to fly a helicopter.

It’s not just the aspect ratio, when I go back home shows are being watched in standard def even when they are being broadcast in HD on the next channel and we are paying for the luxury of Sky HD. That’s not as bad as watching a whole nights TV with squashed or stretched heads but still makes me wonder why they pay for it.

The exception to the over 50 rule is my brother who couldn’t care less and is oblivious to picture quality. I’ve caught him watching analogue terrestrial with black bars (put on by the broadcaster for 4:3 correction) stretched across the 16:9 LCD. Ouch.

Best (and Most Disappointing) TV Shows of 2007

Published
by
John Griffin
on January 1, 2008
in TV
. 2 Comments

Best Show: Battlestar Galactica
Runners Up: The Sopranos, Doctor Who, Rome, Entourage, Heroes

BSG does it again! Capped off by an amazing season finale and recent the spin off Razor made BSG the king of TV for another year. The Sopranos, while controversial, did provide an entertaining end to its long run. Summer 2007 was known as the ‘Summer of Entourage’ for HBO having the genius idea of putting two seasons back to back and boy was it great. 2007 also included the second half of Heroes season 1 of and the whole of season 2. That’s why it appears in two categories ;-).

Best Comedy: Flight of the Conchords
Runners Up: South Park, The Office (US), Entourage, Flight of the Conchords, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Screenwipe

I’ve added this section because I knew I could never bring myself to give a comedy a best show award and the quality has been high enough this year to justify it. Flight of the Conchords came out of nowhere and I instantly loved it, some of the songs they come up with are so memorable and its unlike anything else on right now. Tenacious D they are not! South Park had another excellent year with the Imaginationland Trilogy and the Guitar Hero episode. The Office (US) when it moved to an hour long format for the first few episodes of the season really shined, it’s just a shame everyone in the UK refuses to watch it.

Best New Show: Flight of the Conchords
Runners Up: None

Something is wrong when I can’t think of any runners up for this category.

Most Disappointing: 24
Runners Up: Lost, Heroes

Many felt 24 had already jumped the shark in previous years but this year it literally did. No amount of swerves and guest stars could save them from everyone feeling like they had seen it all before. Lost gets a mention because I have a love hate relationship with it. While season 3 was far better then last year (which received my most disappointing TV award) it still felt convoluted and most things that needed explaining remained unexplained. Heroes gets a special mention for the majority of season 2 which sucked.

Shows I switched off half way through: Scrubs, Bionic Woman, Sarah Connor Chronicles

Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe: New Year Special

Published
by
John Griffin
on December 23, 2007
in TV
. 2 Comments

Seeing as the BBC do a horrible job promoting Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, to the extent that regular viewers like me and BBC Four newsletter subscribers don’t know it’s on, I thought I’d do them a favour and plug the repeat on here. Watch it.

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe: New Year Special at LocateTV.com

Heroes Season 2 Is Disappointing

Published
by
John Griffin
on December 11, 2007
in TV
. 1 Comment

The second season of Heroes came to end rather quickly and disappointingly after the huge success of last year. While it certainly turned a corner by the 8th episode it all seemed too little too late. This was incidentally the episode that told the events right after the end of season one and finally ditched Hiro’s wacky adventures in medieval Japan. Why on Earth they couldn’t just do this in the first place is beyond me - it makes far more sense and actually explained what happened to the characters after the big finale. Dumb.

The other thing that has been nagging at me are the logic holes. A man who can manipulate time itself would have no problem handling every situation and saving anybody. Hiro has become too powerful and breaks the show because of this. The guy really needs to be restricted to just pausing time.

Also in the last two episodes it’s established that Peter and Adam can be killed by a bullet through the head. Yet before this Noah is shot in the head, killed and then promptly resurrected via a transfusion of Claire’s blood. The same Claire whose powers Peter absorbed and as such you would assume the same rules apply to her as to any blood transfusion.

I haven’t even started on my outright hatred for Maya and Niki - so pointless. Hopefully the writer’s strike will give them time to reflect on the issues this season has had so they come back with swinging next year. Hopefully.

JVC LT32DX7BJ 32″ HDTV Ordered

Published
by
John Griffin
on December 5, 2006
in Gaming, Life, TV and Tech
. 2 Comments

We popped into John Lewis over the weekend hoping to pick up a new TV (JVC LT32DX7BJ) only to be told it wouldn’t be available till Friday. Why must I wait for my HD goodness!

Seems like a good display and if you go into the store its ¬£200 less than on the website even though it’s probably going to be delivered from the same warehouse. It will be nice to finally get a new TV, we completely skipped getting a regular wide-screen so we are about due.

It’s only recently that they became viable with the reduction in LCD prices and more HD content being available either via Sky HD or the Xbox 360. Not that we are subscribing to Sky HD yet - that’s a whole other investment.

I’ll have some time to play with it over the weekend so I’ll post my thoughts up when I get the chance. Gears on insane difficulty in HD sounds good to me!

UFC PPV Buyrates

Published
by
John Griffin
on July 14, 2006
in TV
. 4 Comments

MMA Weekly have the best article I have seen on the explosion in UFC’s pay per view buy rates over the last year. It’s truely incredible how much it has expanded and it just proves that the national TV exposure was all they needed to hook the masses into such a compelling sport and product.

Battlestar Galactica Mixes It Up

Published
by
John Griffin
on March 12, 2006
in TV
. 1 Comment

The 90 minute season finale of BSG was everything we could have hoped for and more. I have never seen a show jump a year ahead and then continue the story line without batting an eye lid. Many shows such as Star Trek would jump about in the timeline but that was for one off episodes and they’d be right back in the present the next week.

BSG2

It’s a testament to the quality of the writing and the characters that we have seen develop over the past few years that Ron Moore was able to accomplish such a feat successfully. Everything was in place, Baltar’s colonisation plans were doomed to fail and all the character’s relationships were in lined up and holding firm.

It certainly has huge implications for the next season which may or may not wind up on NBC proper in October. It’s going to be a totally different show and I can see it having more of a secret rebelious feel to it rather than the huge space battles we are used to. There’s only a skeleton crew manning the fleet so it will be a while before we see that sort of thing again.

As for the potential move to NBC there are arguements for and against. On the plus side more people are going to see the show and with NBC comes HD, rather than the god awful quality that is being used in the first runs at the moment. On the flip side the season is going to start much later and there will be more ratings pressure making it more likely to fail and get canceled on that network.

Personally I believe it should be moved to NBC as the iTunes downloads and DVD sales can more than make up for any lost revenue from ratings. The gains of HD and an increase in the budget would allow the already epic series to ascend to new heights.

Roll on October.