Dresden Files Nears End of Season

SCI FI Wire | The News Service of the SCI FI Channel | SCIFI.COM

The Dresden Files, based on Jim Butcher's series of novels, follows the adventures of Chicago detective and wizard Harry Dresden. So far this season, Harry's relationship with the High Council, a powerful group that oversees the magical community, has been tenuous since they suspect he used dark magic to kill his uncle.

The final episode of the season will be "Second City," which will air April 15. Simkins promised that it will not be a cliffhanger. "While that does work for a lot of shows, we just kind of wanted to, I don't know, be a little friendly towards Dresden and the audience," he added. The Dresden Files moves to its new timeslot at 10 p.m. ET/PT, beginning April 8.

My husband David and I really like The Dresden Files, and we're pretty picky fans when it comes to SF/Fantasy genre shows on TV. Dresden Files is well crafted, the scripts and plots scan well, and it's clever about how it turns things around and plays with the audience's expectations of how "magic" works. 

And the news that the first season is almost over already is not good – because it's a great little show and well worth watching, and we'll miss it and be impatient for its (assumed) return. We're still waiting for the return of Eureka, which won't be back until July,  and in the meantime, the two Stargate shows return soon. But all too quickly, the final episode of Stargate: SG1 will air, and that will be really, really hard. At least it's going out while it's good, although you'd think after 10 seasons it would be out of gas thematically, even with the cast changes in the last 2 seasons. They've handled those changes well, and we've come to care about the newer characters (although I still miss Hammond of Texas). 

The nice thing is that sometimes there's cross-pollination. On last week's Dresden Files, Claudia Black had a guest star spot playing a hard-nosed private detective from Chicago, and it was fun watching her in a role completely different from either Atlantis' Vala or Farscape's Aeryn. It was a good episode, as all the episodes have been, with a nice little coda at the end between Dresden and her character.  

Samurai, Ninja, and Wannabe Immortals In The News

 

I've noticed several news stories lately with a similar theme… as a Highlander fan of long standing, these kinds of things always catch my eye. Once upon a time, we fans used to groan and say "Oh, no, not again, brace yourselves for the backlash," but the media never made the connection we did between "samurai sword wielding man wreaks mayhem" and an obscure cult action movie/syndicated TV series. Featuring a samurai sword man wreaking mayhem, but for good, not evil.

Charges expected in samurai sword slaying

Man arrested after Highway 4 car chase 

Police shootings usually ruled OK
In other words, "OK to shoot the guy reaching for a sword strapped to his back."

New York man convicted in bar siege 

Sword-wielding neighbor mistakes porn for rape
Ooops! From "hero" to "not Zorro" in one swell foop!

Suspect behavior
(this one features a "katana vs. meat cleaver" match-up!)

Police hunting mystery swordsman
(my current favorite – man wielding sword aids police, then disappears. Who was that masked ninja man?)

[tags]Samurai Sword, Katana, Highlander[/tags] 

 

 

Norman Lovett – RIP or something like it

Norman Lovett – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This "obit" from the Wikipedia section dealing with the long-running British sci-fi sitcom "Red Dwarf" deserves to be left "up," in spite of one or two minor factual errors. Also, it's triffic. I hope no pretentious accuracy-obsessed smeghead volunteer editors mess with it: 

Sadly, Norman was killed during the 2006 Dimension Jump. During a question and answer session, he had spent three hours giving reasons why having three more lines in 'Back in the Red' would have made the entire season better. Enraged at how bitter and annoying he was, the audience stormed the stage and smashed his head in with a replica starbug model. Traumatised fans responded with 'He deserved it', 'that was an exciting end to a boring presentation' and 'that model was in mint condition!!' Lovett was unavailable for comment, as nobody wrote a hologram personality for him before his death.

Norman Lovett was the original "Holly the shipboard computer" in the first couple of series. Most memorable line: "Everybody's dead, Dave."

[tags]Red Dwarf[/tags] 

Fan Mashups: You Can’t Take The Gate From Me

GCBME.COM Where You put the ME in MEdia

I dropped by my Flickr page and noticed someone had put a comment on my photo of a juvenile Goa'uld caught in my homemade snakehead trap (it's cleverly disguised as a lava lamp):

Goa'uld Trap 

The comment was:

KeepGateOpen_01

 

WATCH IT HERE

Please vote for my video HERE
The contest COULD HELP to bring back SG1 for another season!

Thanks,

Angie Moriconi

It's actually a pretty cute video, with a talking cat grumbling about how his obsessed "Tauri" has been spending all her time mailing boxes of Kleenex (inside joke) to the powers that be, and he's begging for the gate to be left open so she'll leave him alone. She's quite scary, actually, but pretty and obviously very dedicated. Good luck to her in her endeavor. Also, very smart cat she has there. 

His name appears to be "Furling," which is a pretty funny name for a Stargate fan's cat.

I didn't watch any of the other contest-entry videos; I consider myself a loyal fan of Stargate, but I can't get myself worked up to fever pitch over a science fiction show anymore – been there, did that with Earth2. Ah, the old days; I participated in a similar last-ditch campaign and volunteered to call sponsors to beg for the show's life. I actually spoke to two guys at Chrysler on a speakerphone, I wonder what the hell they made of it all. So when other shows I liked got cancelled, I couldn't muster the intensity, not even when Firefly bit it, although I did read some sites and have a login for the Browncoats site.  

Speaking of which… my husband David sent me a link: the Multiverse is about to become a reality, or as much of a reality as a MMORPG based on Firefly can be, being designed from the dirt up to the sky (which they cannot take from me). 

Shiny. Now, that could be some fun. 

What We Watch

We own a TiVo. We watch pretty much what we want to watch, when we want to watch it. I knew we were concentrating on just one of the "Big Three," with the rest of our time watching various cable networks, but I had no idea how cut and dried it was until I saved some links in my "Friends" plugin for WordPress. 

ABC.com
No shows watched.

NBC.com
No shows watched.

CBS.com
7 shows watched

Amazing Race (David leaves the room)
CSI:Vegas
CSI:Miami
CSI:NY
Criminal Minds
NCIS
Numb3rs

FOX: (meh on their news division)
2 shows watched

House
Bones

SpikeTV:
CSI:Vegas reruns, if nothing else is on

Food Network
Good Eats
Iron Chef America (ICE CREAM MACHIIIIIIIIIINE!)

Discovery Channel
Mythbusters

SciFi.com
Doctor Who
Stargate: Atlantis
Stargate SG1
eurEka (on hiatus)

My husband David watches Battlestar Galactica and Smallville as well.  

Currently on hiatus:

TNT (they know drama)
The Closer

Library Thing: The Unsuggester and the Anti-Tolkien

Via Pazzo Blog » Blog Archive » Books you’ll never read:

Instead of suggesting books you might like to buy, based on what you've bought before, Library Thing has the Unsuggester – plug in a book you've read or you own, and it comes back with a list of books you probably would not want to read.


The Lord of the Rings (Collector's Edition)

So I plugged in one of my all-time favorite books…and found that apparently, Mary Higgins Clark is the Anti-Tolkien.

 

If You Thought Seven Dwarves Were Tough To Remember

((deep, raspy Movie Guy voice))

In a world where evil trolls lie in wait, thirsting for blood, and cruel goblins lurk deep under the middle-Earth, a great treasure lies at the end of an arduous journey…guarded by… a dragon.

They are not heroes… they are not mighty warriors. They are refugees on a quest to reclaim their golden birthright. But they've got a problem…  thirteen of them. Bad luck. 

They're about to change their luck… by taking on one more traveler, who has no idea what fate awaits him… right after a wild, crazy, and quite unexpected party. Underground.

Tom Cruise, in the role he was born to play… on a mission more impossible, a riskier business, than ever. He's the maverick, swashbuckling, barrel-riding thief who's out to grab for the golden Ring. Tom Cruise… isBilbo Baggins.

 

Thirteen Dwarves

[tags]The Hobbit, Peter Jackson, Hollywood, Dreck[/tags]

My Current Obsessions

David Hewlett: almost as surprisingly sexy as Mitch Pileggi.

Also, strangely hot. Yes, I'm obsessed with David Hewlett, who plays McKay. Apparently, he's making an indie film with some of the other cast and crew of both shows, called "A Dog's Breakfast." He's been making films since he was a kid, so it may be worth a look if/when it ever gets a distribution deal. Still, I'm not that much of a freak for Hewlett: at least I didn't create a fanlisting for his hands, although I totally concur with the one for Joe Flanigan's hair, "Intergalactic Bedhead."

Actually, Atlantis is really kicking ass and taking names from Stargate this season. I like both shows, but I *lurve* Atlantis currently because they're still on the backside of the story curve – they're developing new plots and gaining momentum and in the sweet spot of having a lot of possibilities open to them.

Stargate is not exactly declining in its tenth year, but it suffers from the absence of O'Neill, although Mitchell is starting to come on a little stronger and they're getting new plots spun out of his character's experiences. It'll be better when Vala comes back, though.

We rewatched the episode today where she was introduced, which includes my favorite Stargate line ever: "…OW?" I can watch that scene where Daniel gets smacked around and then smooched over and over again. It's a fangirl's dream come true. Yeah, I'm a bit of a Daniel freak, too.

On the musical front, somehow months after first seeing it mentioned online (I think it was on Boing Boing), I've become somewhat beguiled by the Numa Numa guy. There's just something so loveably happy about Gary's little chair dance. He looks like a doughy kid who might not get a lot of notice from "the ladies." Or "the dudes," if he's that way inclined. He starts out being sort of self-conscious, but then the chorus kicks in and you can see he's just completely into the song and the weirdly happy feeling you get from it.

He's apparently mortified at all the attention he got over it (it made a fairly big media splash a while back) and refused an interview with the New York Times, which didn't "get" him, but the community on the Internets did. He's trying to get over the accident of his fame, but I hope he realizes that he completely wins over people with that video. They may start out laughing at him, but by the third repeat of the chorus, they're waving their arms above their heads and trying to sing along, and wishing they had the words down cold like he does.

So many other people have fully embraced their joy. Gary led the way.

Like Cumberland-Perry Vocational Technical School. You guys rock!

So do the kids in this computer lab.

Gary's on to something there… all the girls are totally into his moves, and not a few of the guys. The song itself is the Avian Flu of mind virii. Called "Dragostea Din Tei," it's incredibly catchy. And it makes you feel… just damn happy to be alive. There's two competing versions, and there's confusion on the Net as to who originally wrote it. The Romanian band O-Zone does the version on Gary's "Numa Numa" video, but the Italian band Haiducci does the version on this bizarre Japanese animated video. Apparently the dancing shrimp and squid and what-not are visual puns on sound-alike words in the lyrics.

Later, after Gary did his version, other people cut pictures of themselves into it, and added puns of their own. Such as a shot of "feta cheese," since the lyric has the word "ferucia (fair-oo-chee-ya)" at that point. It's all incomprehensible good fun. To assist you in making your own version, many sites have the lyrics cut in to the video, so you can sing the actual words. It's especially incomprehensible when it gets cut into a Spanish-language trailer for Walt Disney's "Chicken Little." That won't stay up for long. And yet, it's still funny. And of course, that song.

You can actually see the real dance in this video, which features the O-zone boys doing a kind of disco folk dance. Other obsessions are on hold – TAR will premiere Season 9 late in February – and thank GOD they're going back to the regular format. I've been listening to iTunes a lot… not quite obsession level yet, but still tinkering around with playlists. At some point I'll probably start blogging that, too. Inevitably. I'm pretty obsessed with my Flickr page still – this ebbs and flows depending on whether we're just back from a trip and have a buttload of photos to upload. And of course, there's my continuing obsession with Maui. More on that later. 😉

[tags]David Hewlett, Numa Numa, viral video[/tags]