Month: January 2015

Robin Reed Sees American Horror Story: Freak Show

Not Horror, Not That Freaky
by Robin Reed

Don’t read this if you don’t want to know details of “American Horror Story: Freak Show,” which recently ended its run.freakshow-a-creepy-poster-collection

I am usually right there and ready to be scared when any horror film, book, or TV show comes out. When the word horror is in the title, you know I have to check it out. So when “American Horror Story” started a few years ago, I watched it. For a while. I liked it at first, but then it just got dumb. It was set in the current day (as of several years ago) so the internet existed. How hard is it to enter the address of a house you are looking at into a search engine and find out that it is internationally famous as “The Murder House” and a tour passes by every day with people who want to see it? There were some shivers and cool stuff near the beginning, but I lost all interest after a few episodes.

So I skipped the next two seasons. The only reason I decided to watch “American Horror Story: Freak Show” is that I find the circus/carnie culture interesting, and I have been treated like a freak often enough to feel some kinship to the people in such shows. read article

TVWriter™ Top Posts for the Week Ending 1/30/15

PSY-thumbs-up

Here they are, the most viewed TVWriter™ posts during the past week:

2014 SPEC SCRIPTACULAR Finalists! read article

Cargo 3120: The Making of a Sci-Fi Franchise #15

CARGO3120Entry 15 – Juggling Life and Passion Part II

by Daymond C. Roman

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The Story So Far starts HERE)

So, last week I said that I would delve a bit deeper into the tasks we all face while making our dreams come true. And, I can’t think of a better way to do that than to start from the beginning.

You see, for this New Year, I decided to reprioritize my life by figuring out what’s important to me and shredding away anything that wasn’t. And, that process lead me to four areas of major importance: health, family, work, and passion. Now, it’s worth mentioning that I am a man of faith and believe that these four areas alone could never provide personal fulfillment. However, I believe that through God’s grace I can be successful in all of these areas to a degree that I will be personally fulfilled. read article

JOHN OSTRANDER: WALKING TALL ON THE SMALL SCREEN

by John Ostrander

theriflemanI was not always a big fan of Westerns. My knowledge/memory of them were largely drawn from TV shows of my childhood – and not always the best ones. They were dominated by The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry (although I was never a big Autry fan) and shows like them. Westerns dominated TV in those days in ways that I don’t think any genre dominates any more.

It was my late wife, Kimberly Yale, who really schooled me in movie Westerns and the difference between a John Ford Western, ones by Howard Hawks, and Budd Boetticher’s Westerns. I finally learned and grasped what powerful movies they were, Just a few years ago, I got to see John Ford’s masterpiece The Searchers on the big screen and it was only then that I really understood how powerful it was and why its star, John Wayne, was such an icon. In the close-ups, where Wayne’s face is two stories high, he seems like a figure off Mount Rushmore. And the famous final shot, where his character is framed by a closing door, is haunting. It’s also interesting to note that both here and in Howard Hawks’ Red River he plays something of a bastard.

It’s only been in recent years that I’ve returned to some of the Western TV shows and rediscovered them. What I discovered was some very good writing and acting, especially in the half hour shows.Have Gun, Will Travel, starring Richard Boone, featured him as a traveling gunslinger, Paladin, and a memorable and haunting title song. Wanted: Dead or Alive starred a young Steve McQueen right around the time that he broke out in films in The Magnificent Seven. read article

Cartoons: “Lost Ideas”

So this is why we can never seem to write them!

lostideasbygrantsnidercapture

See more of Grand Snider’s cartoon brilliance at Incidental Comics!