Welcome to ScreenTime! Just because I find it rather hilarious, I'm going to steal the Valley Peaks website description of Brady. You know that guy in every 80s comedy who is a total dick to everyone? Meet the next generation of vain asshole, Brady. Another VP lifer – Brady is the male Juliette – scheming and double-teaming. Brady is the kind of sexy alpha male … [Read more...]
A television interview gives us to understand that executive producer/star Reese Witherspoon believes that Legally Blonde 2 has a positive message of some sort. A message that is especially for/aimed at/targeting, young/er/ish women. I think then, I may have my most powerful piece of evidence that it’s just as I’ve been saying all along. The problem isn’t really how celebrities may or may … [Read more...]
It would be absolutely impossible, if you knew me, to guess that I would like this quirky CBC show, and the fact that it was picked up by SOAPNET certainly wouldn't help matters. A girl with a life in shambles, who is just dripping with "issues," goes to a very odd "therapist" who sends her back in time for a shot at doing over key moments of her past, is not the kind of show you're going … [Read more...]
Movies Planet is a little bit different option when it comes to watching movies and TV shows online. The site is built solidly around a social structure, and incorporates a lot of possiblities beyond simply watching free movies. The site offers a variety of ways to browse, user recommendations, your own ratings, and the whole thing integrates their forum, with private … [Read more...]
Welcome to ScreenTime! I had the opportunity to chat with Craig Horner recently, and regular readers are going to notice a ScreenTime difference right there. I actually prefer ScreenTime to be an exchange of emails. Much as I love talking to all the people involved, I like the idea that ScreenTime participants get to stare at the questions for a while and ramble on as much or as little as … [Read more...]
Glue is Adaptive Blue's Firefox Add-on that builds social networking into the internet at large, rather than into one particular stop. Connecting through products, Glue is a bar that will appear whenever you browse to product pages (movies, books, restaurants, albums, etc.) on a wide variety of websites (Amazon, Netflix, Best Buy, Zagat, and on and on). Once the bar appears, … [Read more...]
Legend of the Seeker is a syndicated fantasy, and that is going to immediately give you an unfortunate impression of the show. Based on the Sword of Truth series of novels by Terry Goodkind, Legend of the Seeker is somewhere in the general realm of shows like Hercules and Xena, but it pushes things up several notches in a variety of ways. Though there are light moments, and overall … [Read more...]
For a variety of reasons, I've been thinking a lot lately about what Twitter is. How do you explain it to people, and just what the hell do people do with it anyway? Whatever it is, is there any value to it, or is it just the next goofy thing to do online? Not that long ago, I wrote an article entitled Why Twitter is Doomed to Failure, and the general idea there was that … [Read more...]
Welcome to ScreenTime! This go around on ScreenTime I've got Kayvon Esmali who plays Dillon on Valley Peaks. Check the Valley Peaks review here. Let's just jump right in. 1. The show is definitely taking aim at a certain genre of television... are there any shows you watch regularly that might be surprising given the no holds barred approach of … [Read more...]
There is a growing movement in recent times, which, since to my knowledge it hasn’t been especially analyzed, I’m going to now dub post-post-noir. Post-noir has actually been rather analyzed, and is generally regarded as the movies which ‘approximated’ film noir and were released in the 60's and 70's. Since the film noir era itself would be before that (I worked that out myself), that … [Read more...]
Despite the half-hearted efforts of Dr. Phil, child pageants live on, and given that truly psychotic behavior isn't stopping a great many people from cashing in on life-by-proxy, WeTV figures they might as well jump into the ring. Little Miss Perfect is a documentary series that follows two pageant families in each episode as they make their way to an upcoming event. The girl … [Read more...]
It turns out that describing spoof television in any relevant way is rather difficult. Valley Peaks is a webshow that takes as its subject of attack just about anything on television with actors in their twenties. One Tree Hill, The OC, 90210, and daytime soaps all spring to mind while viewing Valley Peaks (and to be honest so does a lot of other garbage I've never watched). But beyond … [Read more...]
Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, despite the possible confusion this may raise in its main target demographic, is more a yarn than anything else. Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, frankly, are largely yarn players. It may sound odd initially, but to miss the idea is to lose the film altogether. Nick & Norah is the story of two misfitish characters, and their … [Read more...]
Mistresses premieres this Friday at 9pm on BBCAmerica, and it might just what the night's lineup was looking for. A smart, sophisticated drama full of quirks and rich characters, Mistresses is odd enough to hook you and well-written enough to keep you coming back for more. The story centers around four friends with one glaring commonality, infidelity. The plot develops as a play … [Read more...]
NBC recently launched iCue, an educational reference center and study website designed completely around widgets called CueCards. The results, so far, are pretty amazing, and if the site catches on it could become a very exciting asset to classrooms everywhere. The functionality of the site is built around video widgets which can be "snagged" so that they show up in your … [Read more...]
I was very skeptical about TNT's new effort, Leverage, despite the fact that TNT believes something to do with Oscar is part of Timothy Hutton's name. I'm something of a Timothy Hutton fan actually, but he's very hit or miss for me. Moreover, the theory of the show has, more or less, been tried before without wonderful results. The show has really grown on me though, and now that it has … [Read more...]
