Television

[Zgirl]

lucky. I don't watch TeenTitans anymore sadly. I've been watching to much MTV. Snoop-Dogg is stuck in my head. It's a pretty good song if you ignore the words. *snorts*

[Agent M]

NOT MTV!!! MTV is soooo stupid! ARGH!!!! sorry, a guy came to my school and told us more then I needed to now about eploitation *is grossed OUT*

[talkingbeast]

Eh? Pope who?

[alla]

There is a CSI: New York??? *wants to watch*

ohk, so its not quite TV, but i have been watching the first and second seasons of Starsky and Hutch on DVD and i am addicted to them. *goes to watch them again*

YAYAYAYAY mum managed to get a copy of the little mermaid tv series (or one of the tapes) from a garage sale and its the ones with my favourite eps on it yayayay!

[Kathy Li]

Yes, alla, there is a CSI:NY.

I think it's fair to talk about DVDs of tv shows. The topic isn't "Current Television," after all. Most of the DVDs I buy these days are for television series, and not movies.

Man. Starsky and Hutch. I remember watching those when they were NEW...

I really need to get my hands on the Animated Batman dvd set.

[Kathy Li]

Ok, that's it. I've had it. I'm not watching Bobby and Jack any more. The characters are waaaay too stupid.

I'm enjoying Desperate Housewives in that what-happens-next way (has anybody else noticed that all the episode titles are song titles?). Similiarly Lost is a good soap opera, although I take Lost a little more seriously, which is hilarious, as it's a far sillier show.

I've also started watching House (Kai the DVR and VCRs!) and I quite like it, even if they're making Hugh Laurie use an American accent. Good characters, fun narrative drive with working out the diagnosis. Sadly, it's on Fox and it's good, which means it's gonna be toast in a month or so (sigh).

Veronica Mars continues to be great. I really love that it's shot in my hometown, too. I'm also having a very good time watching Joan of Arcadia, which got crowded off my viewing schedule last season.

And reality wise--Amazing Race 6!!! [not to mention Long Way Round on Bravo].

Is anybody else looking forward to mid-season? Monk, Dead Zone, Carnivale, Alias, Tru Calling... etc. are all set to come back in January.

[alla]

Originally posted by kli6:
Man. _Starsky and Hutch_. I remember watching those when they were NEW...

Serious? wow! so does my mum and dad. The movie (that was released this year got me hooked ) I saw it twice in two days and loved it and then I wanted to see what had inspired it and loved the series' even more . What's your fav. ep. from the first two seasons? Or don't you remember?

Man, CSI: New York! How many spinoffs can one series have? And how many times have they re-run the same story line.

*Loves the Simpsons* Anyone else?

*Hides* channel ten here is doing a marathon of Seinfield... i've gotten so sick of that show *hides again...

Alla

[Birdhead]

So... who saw Angels in America when it screened over there? We've just had the third episode over here. What did you all think? I'm... in two minds about it, I guess. Some moments I was really impressed with, sometimes I just wonder what kind of crack the director was on. That's all I'm really watching right now, sadly... also watching Tru Calling but that finishes next week. *mutters* we're so behind over here, it's annoying.

[Zgirl]

Seinfield=funny. Simpsons=funny


So far this year I've been hooked on
-veronica mars
-america's next top model (sad I know...but I like it.)
-gilmore girls (another sad choice)
-viva la bam (*Cracks up laughing* so funny.)

[Kathy Li]

Tui, I saw Angels in America when it aired on HBO over two nights. It's a slightly different experience if you watch it all in a heap. I actually think that Mike Nichols has done a pretty good job of bringing Kushner's play to the screen, but that ultimately, the experience of the play can't be repeated. This disappoints me, as I never saw either part on stage.

There are a few reasons the television version doesn't work as well. 1) It was a very different time regarding AIDS and homosexuality, in the '80s. 2) the film has to make things more literal than they could be in the play, such as all the role doubling-up (while Streep is good at playing four roles, the actress who originated Hannah on stage actually played six major roles, iirc).

I also miss like hell Prior's line: "Very Steven Spielberg!" when the angel first appears. And over half of Harper's story is missing, so that her decision to leave Joe is kind of senseless, now.

The parts I like best are, naturally, all the scenes with Beliz, because that's the one actor who is playing the role he played in the stage version. Everybody else has been recast (sigh).

I'm just hoping that it doesn't take 20 years for Kushner's Homebody Kabul to get made (sigh).

BTW, if you like Angels, and don't mind really sad stories, you might also want to try and find the dvd for Wit--same director, Mike Nichols, directing Emma Thompson, again for HBO, in a play about an English professor with cancer. [And you probably won't believe this, but Mike Nicholas is also the guy who directed The Birdcage and is most famous for being half of the improvisational comedy duo "Nichols & May"].

[Kathy Li]

alla, much as I loved the Simpsons, I still think Futurama kicks its butt. :-) I do love, though, that Brad Bird's long stint on The Simpsons shows in The Incredibles.

Z--I've never thought of Gilmore Girls as sad. I think it's kinda everything: funny and sad and moving all at the same time. I especially like a lot of the weird pop-culture references Lorelai (actually Amy Sherman-Palladino) throws out.

And yes. Totally hooked on Veronica Mars. When someone asks me what it's like, I generally say that it's doing for noir detective what Buffy did for horror. Kinda.

And is anybody else planning on watching the Earthsea mini on Sci-Fi just to see what kind of mess they've made of it?

[Birdhead]

Yeah, it would be... Hopefully it'll be out on DVD eventually and I can re-watch it then. That would be very cool.

My mother actually saw it on stage- not sure which part- a long long time ago, when Circa (one of the Wellington theatres, very well-known by now, something of an institution) was just opening. She said it was brilliant... maybe it'll be re-performed?

I guess that's true... thing is, really I find that sometimes the production itself I faintly ridiculous. Sometimes, on the other hand, it's really good- Ethel is fantastic (along with meryl, I agree.), but some of the scenes with the angel are just... daft. The need to be literal kind of leaves it a little bit surreal- a lot of prior's "hallucinations" bug me for that reason.

I may go looking for the screenplay... *wanders through wcl* Oh. They do, but it's on loan. One copy only?!

[meteorite]

Out of morbid curiosity, I will probably watch the Earthsea miniseries. I still remember the botch that was made of A Wrinkle in Time when they tried to transcribe it to TV, and shudder. Of the previews I've seen so far, I can't readily connect them with any of the events in the books, so I wonder how much license is being taken. It has the potential of being really good, but also really bad.

[Kathy Li]

Still haven't watched the Earthsea thingie, but was mildly amused at LeGuin's comments on same.

Added later: ah. More on same.

[Peter Murray]

And this webpage has similar comments by LeGuin... I get the impression that she may not have liked it much. It emphasises why DD says she'll have the right to do the first draft of any film/series of her book, though. (Does that also include final approval of the script?)

Oh, and a surgeon comments on the House series you mentioned. He didn't like the main character much.

Plus one very late reaction:

Kli6 said:
(Kai the DVR and VCRs!)

Augh! She's a Klingon! The kli stands for Klingon, not Kathy Li!