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Posts tagged as “Dollhouse”

One Year of TV Calling

One Year of TV Calling

One year ago to this day (plus a day at the stroke of midnight), A TV Calling was created.
And here we are now.


Great blog or Greatest blog?

Your hopes are up, time to dash them.
I’ll go straight to the bullet points for maximum effect (remember: less is more).

A few stats to accompany the blog for its birthday:
There were not One Hundred, nor Two Hundred, nor Three Hundred, but 312 posts in total.
That’s 312 posts for 365 days, meaning a great average of 0.85 posts a day.
As said on Wednesday, my most popular post, besides a few Script of the Week (such as SOTW13 and SOTW23) is, or rather was, Four Reasons why Dollhouse might be Renewed.

This blog was visited by 3,195 cities in 109 different countries.
It was also visited at least 5 times by all 50 states of the U.S.A.
California is at the top of the list with almost 2,000 unique visitors.

Throughout the year a few changes to the blog itself were made, such as a domain of its own being added and a wider central column.

How weird is it to now look back at the four June 2008 posts?

It’s even more weird to look back at the first sentence ever written on this blog: “Yes I’m lazy.“
Yeah, I’m still pretty lazy.

Like I said last year regarding the purpose of this blog:

But why am I rumbling on about all this now?
Well it is merely intended to point out what purpose this blog will hopefully achieve. That is to help other struggling (international) writers out there in their daily, and not-so-daily problems. Additionally, I hope my trial and [errors,] will help show that nothing is impossible when you pour your heart and soul into it.

I think that sums it up pretty nicely.

And if this blog helped at least one person somewhere at some time, then the mission is just beginning.
Please don’t get all teary-eyed.

What have we learned in the past year?
Bears can dance, television as we know it won’t exist in five years, the networks are desperate, movies get made but are released two years later, great writing still exists, and last but not least, the future is now.

Let’s wrap this party up.
Regarding what is to come:
More breakdowns, more writing tips and tricks, more reviews, more shows, more scripts, more news, more you name it.

All in all: more craziness, more pointlessness, and more epicness.

Welcome to Year Two.

One Year of Featured Posts

One Year of Featured Posts

Wednesday, Featured Post day.
The best of the best, or rather the longest of the longest.
I would say it’s the pièce de resistance.

But Tarantino would put it as:

A bunch of those Featured Posts have mainly been personal opinions on various subjects. For instance my first real one was about French TV, which I have said pretty much early on I hate.

When I disagree with someone/something though, I might go overboard and write a long post.
Case in point with Heroes.
I don’t particularly care anymore about the show, but I still strongly disagreed with an article from the THR Feed saying setting an end date for the show would save it.
I wrote one of my longest post ever replying to James Hibberd on why I thought Heroes should not set an end date.
I also used this post to talk a bit about what I thought of Lost and Battlestar Galactica and their end dates for those interested.

Moving on to another show, Dollhouse, which was very recently renewed for a surprising second season.
Incidentally, my most popular Featured Post is actually one I wrote back in February where I listed Four Reasons why Dollhouse might be Renewed. (I then wrote Four Reasons why Dollhouse will get Canceled, but don’t tell anyone)

Continuing on that, I gave a few ideas regarding television and how to save it.
One of my most talked-about post was one I wrote back in September.
Yes, I still think it’s relevant (now more than ever).
I was back then giving nine ideas to kind of “help” the main networks in a way, or nine.

Part One is here (Ideas 1 through 4) and Part Two is here (5 through 9), though it can be summed up as:

1. Shows all year long
2. VOD
3. Fewer ads
4. Shorter seasons
5. Cost efficiency
6. Webisodes
7. Re-develop ideas and pilots
8. Big names for big shows
9. Take chances

Like we saw again on Monday, we’ve had a lot of NBC talk this year, thanks in part to some stunning moves from Dumb and Dumber as I like to call them, with mainly Jay Leno being moved to 10PM.
TV drama, who doesn’t love it?
I wrote back in December two posts where I dabbled around two ideas:

Is NBC killing television?

Or rather: Are Dumb and Dumber slowly destroying original content?

The merge-move and Leno in primetime makes perfect sense business-wise.
After all, it cuts cost, and the show will most likely do better than what is currently on at 10PM.
But is it a good entertainment-move?
Me think not.

or
Is NBC saving Television?

Or rather: Are Dumb and Dumber indirectly boosting creative content?

As I pointed out yesterday, the 10PM slot is begging to be changed.
Well, not really “begging”.
CBS’ Les Moonves himself declared the other day that “Taking a third [broadcast] competitor out of the marketplace will make us even stronger”, though he said that for different reasons (“‘CSI: Miami’ on Monday at 10 o’clock will beat Jay by a lot. Remember that. By a lot.”).
The Leno-move should not be without consequences for the 10PM slot on the other nets.
I am not talking about drastic schedule changes here (even if I’m guessing it’ll unfortunately come to that — affiliates anyone?).
I am talking here more about quality changes.
We have in one corner C.S.I., and in the other Jay Leno.
Bring on the alternative!

Extremely interesting stuff.
And by that I just mean me babbling about the Industry and what-not.
There’s no answer at the end of the day to neither question.
I still think the NBC execs are bringing upon themselves the future of TV, whether they want it or not.

Movie-wise we’ve seen some nice posts I’d like to think.
There were a whopping total of 5 movie reviews in the last year.
In chronological order, they are
The Box (October 2008) – Released on October 30, 2009
Watchmen (March 2009) – Released on March 6, 2009
The Cabin in the Woods (March 2009) – Released on February 5, 2010
Star Trek (April 2009) – Released on May 8, 2009
Inglourious Basterds (June 2009) – Released on August 21, 2009

For those interest, I wrote down above the U.S. release dates for the aforementioned movies.
Interesting to note that two of the reviews are only based on the scripts of the movies (The Box and The Cabin in the Woods) and none of the two have yet come out in theatres.
This is especially surprising regarding The Box, given that the review dates back to last October, and the picture used is from February…2008.

Going back to Star Trek for a second, I posted before the movie officially came out an article on ways to prepare for the new movie.
Even though it’s highly likely you’ve already seen it, I would still advise re-watching some old Trek episodes that are not as obsolete as one might think.
Also, you should definitely try to get your hands on the Star Trek prequel comic before seeing it (again).

Very briefly, I’ll also just point out for the sake of it that there were also a bunch of Breakdowns about the ’08 Fall and ’09 Mid–Season arrivals as well as an Upfront Guessing Game
They are kind of obsolete now that the Upfronts are done and ’09 Fall season is upon us though.

I think we’ve seen the most important posts, save for a few.
But we’ll talk about them in the next post.

One Year of (various) Posts

One Year of (various) Posts

First post of the birthday week.
This might feel to some like one of those sitcom epis with clip shows of the best moments because writers have become lazy.
Don’t worry though, this is just a blog taking a look back at a year’s worth of random posts, because I’m lazy.

Like J.D. said:


“I know I’d love to forget all the [things] that have happened to me. But unfortunately I keep replaying them in my head like some clip show from a bad sitcom too lazy to come up with a fresh story.“

So much incredible stuff happened in the past year…

Let’s get started with TV.
This year has been marked by crazy actions on this side of the biz.
From CBS to FOX or HBO, we’ve seen some pretty incredible stuff.
Most of all, there was some serious NBC talk thanks to Dumb and Dumber‘s stupid moves, especially moving Leno to the 10PM slot, Mondays thru Fridays.
You can bet I’ll be talking about this more in Wednesday’s post.

Equally as mind-boggling was SciFi‘s atrocious name-change planned for July (SyFy? Really?):

Let me get this straight.
You want to change everything from your logo to your slogan, and from the brand to your core audience (you know, the one that made you what you are now). And do all that for absolutely no reason at all (given the channel’s top-10 network status)?

Syfyllis is still a serious condition and just plain dumb.
One very recent Twitter justification was equally as spastic (is that what the cool kids are calling it these days?):

If it’s such a good time for sci fi, why change your network name to SyFy?
To differentiate our brand in an increasingly competitive category where we’re competing in more countries and on a growing number of platforms. For instance, type “scifi” into Hulu search and you won’t get any results from our shows on the first page. Just one example of many.

Continuing on the TV side of things, we’ve seen our fair share of TV Shows throughout the year, including an interview I did with Lost‘s Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.
Some shows were unfortunately cancelled, like The Middleman (my favorite from last summer), others surprisingly not, like Dollhouse. Others meanwhile were fortunately renewed, such as Leverage.
There was also an introduction to this new little ABC show called Flash Forward (now renamed FlashForward, following the author’s original wish).

We talked a bit as well about the Arrested Development movie that shouldn’t come out for another year or two.
In the meantime, you should check out the awesome Arrested Developement documentary (yes there is one) when it comes out (2009?).

Perfect segue to the movie front of the year, which had a lot of…interesting happenings (besides Cannes).
Watchmen was probably the most talked-about film here, followed closely by Star Trek.
Speaking of, Warner Bros. just loved my posting of the epic Watchmen opening sequence and asked Blogger to delete my post with no warning.
Like I said at the time:

I’m not going to post the sequence again for the sake of it, but suffice to say that I’m quite disappointed by the behind-my-back actions taken.
I also find quite ridiculous that said actions were done in the name of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, let alone the crusade against people posting the opening Watchmen sequence.
Are they afraid people will find it is so awesome they decide not to go watch the rest of the movie?
Even yU+Co was forced to take it down, even though it’s their own company that made the titles.
Quite ridiculous indeed.

Another Watchmen scandal was with its ending.
Squid or no Squid? I asked back in November.
You should know by now the answer (spoiler alert: it’s not like in the graphic novel).
Let’s not forget as well the FOX versus WB case regarding the movie’s rights.
Ultimately, and unsurprisingly, they settled.
No harm done.

What is however a harm (to my brain) are phenomenons such as that Twilight thing.
Remakes of remakes were as well discussed.
And I almost forgot to talk about all the game adaptations, like Monopoly, and Clue.
Where is the originality?
Here it is:
The big talk of upcoming 2009 films must be James Cameron’s Avatar.
You know, the movie I’m saying will revolutionize 3-D.
This is like my own personal TOLDJA! moment regarding 3-D (and Avatar):

Sound was introduced in 1927.
Color was introduced in 1938.
3-D will be introduced in 2009.

I think I called it.

Continuing on the entertainment industry…
We’ve seen our fair share of (not-that-funny) award shows this year, from the Golden Globes to the Oscars.
This year might prove different with either Neil Patrick Harris or Craig Ferguson hosting the Emmys.
That’s epicness right here.

Moving on, there was a lot of talk about technology.
From the floppy disk to Twitter (who had even heard of Twitter a year ago?).
Some talk around the future of entertainment, especially television, has as well been present throughout the year.
Whether it is via Strike.TV in last August, or more re
cently Hulu, with its financial investments.
Yet again, we’ll talk more about this on Friday’s post thanks to a couple of new articles regarding rebranding (SyFy) and broadcast future (NBC and CBS specifically).

Finally, there were changes in the political landscape this year, with the arrival of a new President and the departure of another.
Shifts in the economy as well were felt. Both in the TV industry and elsewhere.
And to finish us off, we shall mention this Lego man, who didn’t after all go on I’m a “Celebrity” (sarcasm quotes not included in original title).

Incredible postings aside, this year was riveting.
More to come tomorrow.