Category Archives: TV

Game Of Thrones Season 4 Long Preview

I have had some excitement for season 4 of Game Of Thrones for awhile already but this 15 minute trailer/behind the scenes videos has certainly made even more eager for the show to return. The footage in the first minute or so looks great and certainly seems like they will keep up the pace for season 4. In the interviews in the rest of the piece we get some good insight into what is to come and what we already have seen.  If you have not watched this enjoy seeing it for the first time.

I think it should go without saying but if you have not finished watching season 3 yet, don’t watch it since it certainly has spoilers in it for the end of season 3.

New Promo for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

ku-xlargeThe new promo for Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey certainly makes me excited to see this show.  With it hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson, who I have enjoyed for a while when I have seen him on TV, it should hopefully be a good adventure. The FOX network is certainly not the kind of network I would have expected to air this type of TV show, but from the previews, I have seen it seems likes they might be on the right track so far.

Great ‘The Americans’ Season 2 promo

originalThis is a great promo for the second season of the FX show The Americans. If you are not familiar with the show it is about two Soviet spies posing as a married American couple in the 1980’s. The first season of the The Americans provided enough good episodes to make me want to keep watching the show. It will be interesting to see how they do with season 2 of the The Americans.

The music they picked for the promo is very fitting, with it being Sting’s 1980’s song “Russians”. What I also like about the promo is that it is different because they have the two main actors from the show, Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, contorting into positions that eventually form the symbol of the Soviet Union hammer and sickle. Overall, with the music and the actors, it is just a different style of promo for a new TV season that certainly made me more interested for season 2.

Here are the lyrics they use from his song “Russians”:

In Europe and America, there’s a growing feeling of hysteria

Mr. Reagan says we will protect you I don’t subscribe to this point of view

Believe me when I say to you I hope the Russians love their children too

If you are curious to hear the whole Sting song “Russians” here is a link to a YouTube video of the song.

Marvel’s ‘Agent Carter’ Books Hayley Atwell & Writers

PeggyCarter2I am quite glad to see that ABC & Marvel continue working on the possibility of an Agent Carter TV show. Beyond the movement on the series I am very glad that they have Hayley Atwell coming back for it. I quite enjoyed her in the first Captain America movie and the Marvel one-shot of Agent Carter that came out on the Iron Man 3 DVD/Blu-Ray. The potential TV series just would not be the same without her, since she played the part so well.

ABC’s “Captain America” spinoff “Agent Carter” is gaining momentum, landing commitments from Hayley Atwell, who played the World War II government agent in the movie, and showrunners Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas.

via ABC’s ‘Agent Carter’ Books Hayley Atwell, and ‘Resurrection’ Duo as Showrunners – TheWrap.

Below is a short clip for  Marvel one-shot of Agent Carter

Game Of Thrones Season 4 Trailer

It is always great to see the first trailers for the new Game Of Throne TV season. In this case season 4 of the show.  I will be glad/excited to have this show back.  It will be interesting to see how they handle the end of book 3 A Storm of Swords that they did not get to in season 3 and what parts of book 4 Feast For Crows they get to this season. What the trailer shows for season 4 looks promising. As I said above, excited for it to be back.

AMC’s ‘Turn’ Spy Drama TV trailer.

AMC’s new TV show Turn based during the American Revolutionary period interests me mainly because I have always enjoyed that period of history.  The American Revolution era period of roughly 1760-1800 has been an era of history that I love to study and learn more about.  The TV show is about the Culper Spy ring that came about during the war and was very helpful to George Washington as he fought the British.

The TV show premieres Sunday, April 6th.

Kevin Spacey On The Future Of TV

Kevin Spacey delivers the 2013 MacTaggart lecture in EdinburghKevin Spacey gave a speech at Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival recently and he made some great points on the future of not just TV but filmed entertainment in general be it TV, Film or web/computer based of some form.

“Clearly the success of the Netflix model, releasing the entire season of House of Cards at once, proved one thing: The audience wants the control. They want the freedom. If they want to binge as they’ve been doing on House of Cards and lots of other shows, we should let them binge. I can’t tell you how many people have stopped me on the street and said, ‘Thank you, you sucked three days out of my life.”

This shift of the audience having now at least some control over their viewerships of TV has certainly been growing since the advent of the VCR.  It has really taken off in the last decade with the invention of the DVR/Tivo and the prevalence of websites and digital stores like Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, and Amazon Instant. Count me among the people that is grateful to have this control over our media and when we watch it. Another quote from Spacey that follows along from the quote above.

“And through this new form of distribution, we have demonstrated that we have learned the lesson that the music industry didn’t learn: Give people what they want, when they want it, in the form they want it in, at a reasonable price, and they’ll more likely pay for it rather than steal it. Well, some will still steal it, but I think we can take a bite out of piracy.”

While I would say TV has certainly made some good strides in this area, they still have areas to improve on making content reasonable priced and easy to access all the time and if they can make it better it I think it could be even more successful. If you remove more of the restrictions on media on where people can play it or when they can see by enforcing viewing videos say of not posting a new episode on Hulu until 8 days have passed, those are the type of things I think can improve viewership and likely at least to a degree decrease piracy.

Here is a trimmed down video of Spacey’s speech that has some of the highlights.  Below the cut is the full longer speech.

 

Continue reading Kevin Spacey On The Future Of TV

The Promise of Netflix’s House Of Cards

Given my background in politics, I am naturally excited about a new TV drama that is set in Washington D.C. like Netflix’s House of Cards is.  Add in that Kevin Spacey is the lead actor in it and famed director David Fincher involved it seems like it has potential to be a great show.  The show is a remake of the original UK  version of the same name. I watched the UK version a few years ago on Netflix and will be neat to see how they adapt it to the U.S. setting.

Likely touch on this more in a future post, but it is interesting to see Netflix get into the original content business with House of Cards and the relaunch of Arrested Development.  Instead of Netflix just licensing tv shows and movies made by other companies.  Will be interesting to see how it works out for them here in the long run.

Impatience with ‘How I Met Your Mother’

imagesOne of the creators of the TV show ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Carter Bays in a recent interview talks about fans impatience at not yet meeting the mother referenced in the title. In the question before this Bays talks about the last girl Ted dates before meeting the mother.

Is she actually the last girlfriend? We’ve seen him try to do that before and it doesn’t go anywhere.
Bays:
 I know, but this will be the one that tops all of those. … I know people are impatient and we appreciated the impatience. I would contend that most people who watch the show watch it this way. We’re not trying to jerk anyone around, but if the series has a point, it’s not about the destination, but the journey. It’s about these five friends. We’re not making ‘Mad About You’. It’s not ‘How I Romanced Your Mother’, which would be a great show and there have been great iterations of that, but that’s not the show we’re doing. I appreciate people’s frustrations and would maybe ask them to forget the show’s title. If we had called it ‘Ted and His Buddies’ or something, maybe there’d be fewer complaints.

via How I Met Your Mother Boss on Show’s Fate, Barney’s Proposal and More – Today’s News: Our Take | TVGuide.com.

For me I have been impatient with the show really in the last two years. I have felt like they simply have not given fans enough clues or hints towards the mother to help tide us over until they finally decide to reveal her.

Also some of the reason I have had less patience with the show is that simply I have not enjoyed the journey as Bays referenced above as much as in earlier seasons.  Maybe not a surprise since when I have felt this it has been during seasons 7 and  the current season 8. It is an older show which is not a surprise that it gets harder to continue having good story lines after so many seasons.  Maybe if I was still enjoying the journey I would not be as impatient as I am now about who the mother is.

The follow-up question to what I posted above touches on the connecting issue I have with the show:

Does that imply that we won’t see the courtship of the mother?
Bays: I still can’t say. [Laughs] But we’re going to start, I’m sure, frustrating a large segment of the viewership by answering a couple of small questions this season here and there before getting to the big shebang. We will get a couple more glimpses of her this year.

Personally I don’t to really want to for the first time meet the mother in the series finale and then have the show end.  I can accept Bays saying that it is the journey to meeting the mother, but at some point I want to met her and get to know her for more than one episode.  I feel like they could give new life to the show if they introduce the mother as a new full-time cast member and stop stalling.

As the show now stands I am really only continuing to watch because I have been a fan from the start.  For me the show has fallen from a must see show or one that I want to catch up on if I miss an episode to not really caring if I miss a new episode now.

Edit: Of course tonight’s (12/17) two new episodes were good after I wrote this post in which I pored cold water on the quality of the show.  Will see if they can keep it up, which I hope they can.

A great look at Aaron Sorkin and his new HBO show Newsroom

Cast of HBO’s Newsroom

Vanity Fair has up a great piece on Aaron Sorkin and his new HBO show Newsroom that will be premiering Sunday, June 24, 2012.  The piece is on the longer side, but I enjoy that when it is on a subject I enjoy.  The article gives you a great sense both in terms of the way Sorkin works and what the new show Newsroom will be like.  Here is one quote on one reason Sorkin creates TV shows:

Sorkin, who has been criticized for credit hogging—most often, the television writing process is highly collaborative—defended his method. “I create these shows so that I can write them,” he said flatly. “I’m not an empire builder. I’m not interested in just producing. All I want to do is write. I came up as a playwright—writing is something you do by yourself in a room.

“That said, I couldn’t possibly write the show without that room full of people. I go in there, and we kick around ideas. I’m writing about all kinds of things I don’t know anything about. So they do research for me.” Argument ensues. And, for Sorkin, happiness. “I come from a family of lawyers, all smarter than I am,” he said. “I grew up really enjoying the sound of intelligence and the sound of a great argument, and wanting to imitate that sound.”

This next quote is a bit obvious sense can tell from the shows he has created but still gives some insight into why he creates the shows he does:

“I really like workplace shows,” he continued. “I like creating workplace families, and writing about people who are very good at what they do, and less good at everything else.”

Finally a quote about the way Sorkin writes the way he does, which as he as says himself, he is wordy:

“I’m pretty wordy when I write,” Sorkin said, putting it pretty mildly. In an era when images have largely muscled out words, and much film and television dialogue feels like a succession of one- (or half-) liners, Sorkin’s scripts hark back to the passionately idealistic, speech-rich screenplays Robert Riskin wrote for Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town and Meet John Doe. Actors love him for it—it gives them more screen time, after all, and a chance to really strut their stuff. In return, there’s a price to pay.

via Aaron Sorkin’s Newsroom: Sneak Peek at the New HBO Show | Hollywood | Vanity Fair.

There is many more interesting things in the article so make sure to check it out.  In the end the article certainly helps keep my enthusiasm for Sorkin’s new show high.