television

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Close inspection will reveal why there’s so much reason to be excited about this season of Lost…

Less than 48 hours now before Lost returns. Only one other television series in my entire life had had me this excited about a new season. Yeah I’ve never been much of a teevee person at all. It’s the story that compels me to watch something. And they don’t get any more compelling than Lost has become.

Lisa and I have been watching the Season 3 DVD set for the past several days. Tonight we saw “Greatest Hits”, which was this past season’s penultimate episode. Now we can either watch “Through the Looking Glass” from the DVD or the special “enhanced version” that ABC will be broadcasting tomorrow night with Pop-up Video-style “factoids” on-screen. Might be worth DVR-ing that one, in case there’s some new tidbits of info....

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Yesterday I read a story on WorldNetDaily about a new TV show called Flamethrower, on the Faith TV network. The show describes itself as “The View if it was produced by Ann Coulter. Four panelists, all young men and women, all four believe in Judeo-Christian values, all four want political change and none of them are afraid to say what they think.”

For this week’s show, they had scheduled to broadcast a segment where the show’s creator, Molotov Mitchell (already I’ve got a baaaaad feeling about the nature of this series), devours a cookie emblazoned with the frosted visage of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. The whole thing is apparently meant to be a stunt intended to offend Muslims, particularly since according to Islamic tradition images of Muhammad are forbidden… which has always struck me as funny ‘cuz how do we know what Muhammad looked like, anyway?

Here’s ...

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The seventh season of American Idol begins tonight on Fox.

I still haven’t decided whether or not I’m going to watch this time. Last season was so flat, I can’t even remember who it was who won the thing. The two best seasons to me are still 2 (when it came down to Clay Aiken and Ruben Studdard) and 5 (the one that gave us Taylor Hicks and Chris Daughtry, among others).

But I’ll probably check out the audition stage anyway. So much good comedy to be found from the American cult of celebrity and those who’ll do anything to get theirs…

8:58 p.m. EST: Whatever novelty that there’s been to this show, is gone now. I’m not finding this particularly interesting at all. And there are better things that I can be doing with my time.

Somebody let me know if any talent on part with Aiken or Hicks ...

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Lost returns next month. On January 31st to be precise.

By then it will have been eight months since that sense-shattering season finale: the one that still ranks as the most devious and clever tricks that I’ve ever seen on an American television series.

Unfortunately due to the writers’ strike it looks like we’re only going to get eight episodes of Lost this season. I’ve heard that if the strike ends soon, that there might still be time to finish the rest of the stories for this 16-episode season (albeit with an unintended break in-between, since the final three seasons of Lost were supposed to run uninterrupted).

Let’s hope that the strike ends soon (and without saying anything else about it, I do think that what the writers are asking for isn’t unreasonable at all). In the meantime, check out this awesome new trailer for Season 4 of Lost! ...

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Last week NBC started a new show called Clash of the Choirs. Lisa’s been watching it a lot since she’s a music teacher and directs an elementary choir herself. During last night’s show she called out for me to hurry and check this out: Nick Lachey’s Cincinnati-based choir doing an a cappella rendition of “Flight of the Bumblebee”. It’s amazing! Here it is on YouTube (at least until NBC probably yanks it for “copyright infringement”, which would be a sin to not share this kind of performance with the world)…

...

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It’s the one starring George C. Scott as Ebenezer Scrooge. Many regard this as the finest version of A Christmas Carol ever filmed. I watched this the very first time it ran, waaaay back in December of 1984.

Okay, question: everyone, and I mean everyone, knows the story of A Christmas Carol. But how many people have actually read Charles Dickens’s original novel? How many of you reading this can say that you’ve gone through the whole thing?

I did, toward the end of my first semester at Elon. While in the library one night looking for something else I came across it, and was surprised at how tiny it is as a novel: not very thick at all. I checked it out and spent the rest of the night reading it. Amazingly, there are things in the original book that to the best of my knowledge have ...

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ToyFare and Wizard Universe have compiled their list of the 50 greatest weapons throughout all of fiction. Lightsabers make the list twice (the standard design and Darth Maul’s two-bladed terror) and I was glad to see that the BFG9000 from the videogame Doom also made the cut. There are also some things mentioned here that I’d never heard of before, like Hitler’s Handgun (exactly what it sounds like, from Marvel Comics’ Doctor Strange: The Oath miniseries) and some that are surprisingly obscure in this day and age (like the Target Seeking Bullet Gun from the movie Runaway). And the Tall Man’s homicidal Christmas tree balls from Phantasm (left) came in at #24. A great fun read and I’m particularly glad to see what came in at #1 🙂...

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Right now I’m listening to the CD of Steve Jablonsky‘s score for the movie D-War (it was mostly marketed as Dragon Wars when it came out here in the U.S.). It’s the third time that I’m playing it and admittedly it’s very hard to put movie soundtrack music in context without having seen the movie itself yet. But as a standalone album, the D-War score still rocks the house! I’m going to give it a full review as soon as I’ve had a chance to check out the film when it becomes available on Netflix.

As for the real reason I’m posting here (amid what may or may not still be my sabbatical from blogging): if you have a Facebook account and are also a fan of this amazing composer, a few days ago I started up the Steve Jablonsky Appreciation Group. So if you enjoy Steve’s work ...

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Are you a fellow Lost fanatic for whom February 2008 just can’t get here fast enough? Here’s something to help you keep track of how long it will be before our beloved mythology returns: the “Countdown to the Next New Lost Episode”!

Notice that I’ve also embedded it in the left-hand column. If you want this for your own blog, crash down here! Thanks to Adam Feldman for the great find (and congratulations to Adam and his wife on the very-soon arrival of their first baby!)....

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