Second-by-second breakdown of the new LOST season five trailer. Via who else? Holzer! Visit site »
Game on, bitches. (Thanks, Morgan!) Visit site »
You sort of expected Tiny Fey would look exactly like Sarah Palin, but wow did she ever nail the voice and mannerisms. Hilarious. Visit site »
LOST producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have put together a collection of audiobooks that somehow relate to LOST. Fun. Visit site »
I watched Secrect Diary a few months ago, before it came on SHO, and rather enjoyed it. It’s very well done and has really portrays London in a beautiful, real kind of way (London being my favorite city I’ve been to so far). Here, Salon talks to real upper-class call girls about the show, asking them what’s realistic, what’s not, and so forth. A fun read. Visit site »
In the past four days, I’ve watched two and a half seasons of Weeds, and I’m really enjoying the show. In particular, I love the theme song (Malvina Reynold’s “Little Boxes“) which, in seasons two and three, is performed by a different artist for each episode. But here, Romany Malco (who plays Conrad on the show) drops his own entertaining version. Thanks to Bret, who pointed me to this on a comment on this site. Visit site »
An extensive, comprehensive theory on what’s going on in LOST. I think there’s a lot of elements here that are probably accurate — so it’s a good read. However, it ignores the fact that Damon and Carlton have recently (in the past two weeks) made it very clear (in both their podcast and the EW interview) that they are paradox-adverse (to be fair, this theory was likely written before the said so). The idea of “beating fate” or changing the predestined future via time travel isn’t part of the show, according to its producers. Still, a lot of good stuff, here. Visit site »
Really nice interview with a lot of good answers about season four from Damon and Carlton. Visit site »
Here’s the scoop: LOST will have 13 episodes total in season four (down from a planned 16). Eight episodes were finished pre-writer’s strike; five will be penned now that the strike is over. There will be a four-week hiatus after episode eight before the final (new) five. The writers will complete the planned story arc of season four (i.e., the season will end in the same place they’d planned for it two) — they’ll just do it in five episodes instead of eight. The three lost episodes will be “made up” in seasons five and six, so we’ll ultimately end up with the same number of total episodes for the show.
Overall, this is good news. Obviously, we’d love to have all eight episodes of season four and we’d love to not have a month hiatus — but, given the circumstances, I think this is a better result for fans than most of us thought we’d get. Here’s hoping the three lost episodes means season four will finish up at breakneck pace. I’ve really enjoyed the first two episodes of season four — it’s nice to have that, “is it Thursday yet” feeling back every week (of course, it used to that “Is it Wednesday yet?” feeling…but, whatever). Visit site »
If you are frustrated that your shows have no new episodes this season thanks to the writer’s strike and you’re thinking you might jump on the LOST bandwagon (because it does have new episodes), here’s one very quick way to do it. Granted, you’re missing out on all the fun if you take the eight minute route rather than buying the DVDs — but, it’s an option. Visit site »
PTI is possibly my favorite show on TV, so when I saw this, I was incredibly amused. I love Wikipedia. Visit site »
Vedder and Legend will team up to work on music for a documentary miniseries adapted from Howard Zinn’s two People’s History of the United States books. “The People Speak” seems a likely candidate for HBO. Nice. Visit site »
Twitter was featured on CSI. Weird. And yet, cool. Kinda. Visit site »
This guide notes that HDTVs have much higher resolution, which allows you to get a good, immersive experience at a much closer viewing range than on SDTVs. In other words, you can probably get a bigger HDTV in your room than you’d want an SDTV. This is true. However, Michelle and I learned the hard way when we moved to Seattle that this little rule of thumb totally ignores one key point: most of us HDTV owners still watch a lot of standard-definition TV, too. And standard definition TV, quite frankly, looks like complete hell on a nice, high-res HDTV. The only way to make that experience more tolerable is to back away from the TV. We rearranged our living room to sit farther away and found that our SD channels magically didn’t look like shit anymore. Visit site »
FSJ has it right (again). At this point, TV networks are almost completely useless. They used to serve the purpose of acting as a distribution network for content. Today, their distribution network (airwaves) is fading fast, with no possibility of survival. Today, the distribution network people care about is the Internet. Soon, there will be only two ways for a content producer to get their entertainment to consumers:
Today’s current iTunes model is pretty ludicrous. It looks like this: Content producers make video entertainment (tv shows, movies, etc.). They sell it to networks (NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, etc.), who add no value at all, but take a slice of the margins. Apple makes arrangements with the networks to sell the content in iTunes. So the content producers bring the goods, and Apple brings the distribution network and the discovery process. What do the networks bring? Nothing at all, that’s what. Visit site »
This is great news! It means I’ll save the $100+ I spent on episodes of “The Office” and “Heroes” last year — since I’ll be getting the episodes for free off BitTorrent, instead.
Thanks, NBC! You’re the best! Visit site »
Wine expert Gary Vaynerchuk teaches Conan that wine tastes just like grass, rocks, dirt, and socks. Funny bit. Visit site »
Hmm. I think Drew Carey will do a fine job replacing Bob Barker (I like Carey, in general), but I would have never thought of him as a potential replacement myself. Interesting choice. Visit site »