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January 2009 Archives

January 17, 2009

Welcome to Earth

I haven't been so excited by a week of television in a while, and it is kind of sad. But to welcome Battlestar Galactica back for its final episodes, well, it's exciting because the writers, producers, cast and crew have done a wonderful job in creating a show that isn't afraid to challenge its viewers. Or to fail. And while it is a show that has its bad episodes, the good stuff is powerful.

But Galactica is also a show that's inspired great commentary, criticism and community. And while I probably won't blog much about the episodes, I will be reading the commentaries online.

Alan Sepinwall has a usually thorough review along with a critical mass of smart and engaged commenters. Battlestar Galactica, "Sometimes a Great Notion": I can't fight this feeling anymore

Todd VanDerWeff's reviews at The House Next Door are generally very insightful. This one is no exception, BSG Saturdays: Season 4, Episode 11, "Sometimes a Great Notion": "Battlestar Galactica gets a reputation for being a dark show, and some of that is well-deserved. It's a show that examines some of the worst things human beings can do to each other, and it's often unflinching in its gaze."

VanDerWeff also interviewed BSG director Michael Nankin.

Time's James Poniewozik tunes in with BSG Watch: Pleased to Meet Me.

But the winner of this week's online criticism is the Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan, who interviewed Moore, Nankin, and writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle. 'Battlestar Galactica's' Ron Moore addresses the shocking developments of 'Sometimes a Great Notion'

And here's Moore's commentary:

January 21, 2009

This year's surprise: It's a peninsula, not an island

Lost comes back for its penultimate season tomorrow today. And I'm excited.

The New York Times profiled the show's script supervisor, who is responsible for maintaining the continuity of the show. , Television - Gregg Nations’s Job - Keeping ‘Lost’ on Track: "With 34 episodes to go in its two final seasons, the stories of nearly 100 characters to wrap up, several Dharma stations to keep track of and a whole lot of time traveling going on, the writers of ‘Lost’ are doing anything but winding down. Yet their task — untangling the seemingly impenetrable mass of plotlines that have become addictive to some viewers of the show and alienating to others — is relatively simple compared with that of Gregg Nations."

Alan Sepinwall interviewed producer Damon Lindelof, What's Alan Watching?: 'Lost' goes time traveling for season five: "We spoke at length last week about last season, this season, and how the worst episode in 'Lost' history may also have been the most important episode in 'Lost' history (from a production standpoint, anyway)."

Sepinwall also has a cheat sheet of where all of the characters are at the beginning of season 5

And A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago's Isaac Spaceman (no relation to 30 Rock's Dr. Spaceman?) offers the single best summary of Lost to date. Previously on Lost, "JACK: Well, we lived on the beach, mostly, except for the time we lived in the cave with the skeletons and the time we lived in the secret underground bunker with the lending library and the time we lived in the village built by the scientists that the people who don’t age gassed to death with the help of their leader, my third nemesis, the nebbishy con man with spine cancer, which we took over when the freighter people came to kill everybody."

January 23, 2009

Will Milli Vanilli play at the next Presidential Inauguration?

After remembering the problems from playing in similarly cold weather during high school marching band, I wondered how the quartet featuring Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill and Gabriela Montero managed to play with such precise intonation during the cold weather at the inauguration. Simple-- the broadcast and webcast audio was recorded in advance in a temperate recording studio.

The New York Times reports, At the Inauguration - The Famous Fingers Were Live, but Their Sound Was Recorded: "The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during Tuesday’s ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before the president’s swearing in (which had problems of its own)."

And for other clarinet nerds, that snazzy clarinet McGill played is a LeBlanc by Backun Legacy. The Times profiled McGill, who is a principal clarinetist for the Met opera earlier in the week, Another Eloquent Chicagoan at Center Stage.

January 29, 2009

Sly and the Family Stone

Having seen this on VH1 years ago, I've been looking for this video on the internets ever since I've been able to watch video online.

Here's the completely bad-ass 7 minute performance of "I Want to Take You Higher"

And the high-larious interview with Sly Stone:

About January 2009

This page contains all entries posted to Buzz Rant & Rave in January 2009. They are listed from oldest to newest.

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