Month: April 2016

John Ostrander: Radical TV Surgery

Castle-TVby John Ostrander

It was announced this week that Stana Katic, who plays Detective Kate Beckett on the ABC seriesCastle, was not going to be asked back IF the series is renewed for a ninth season. The reason cited was cost cutting which also accounts for the shortened 13 episode season planned IF the show comes back.

The premise of the show is that mystery writer Richard Castle, played by Nathan Fillion, worms his way onto the NYPD and helps the detectives solve actual murder mysteries rather than the fictional ones he creates. Central to the series has also been his relationship with Beckett; he started by annoying her but, after as many complications and delays that the writers could conceive, they fell in love with each other, acknowledged they were in love, and finally married.

Which makes the loss of Katic/Beckett difficult to understand for me. The show may have been titled Castle, but its core was that relationship between the two leads. Yes, I originally tuned in the show because I had really enjoyed Fillion on Firefly (and the movie that concluded that series, Serenity) but it wasn’t the sometimes predictable mysteries or the often interminable story arcs that made me a big fan of the show. It was the relationships between the characters and central to it all was that relationship between Castle and Beckett. That WAS the show so far as I was concerned and has been since the first episode. read article

We are the Writers of our own Lives

…Which behooves us to put at least as much thought into our very real choices as we do into the fictional choices of our characters. Think about it, as you watch this:

Another well-crafted Ted Talk read article

A Few Words About Salesmen

Time now for an important public service message…hehe.

Ever wonder why the world seems so, erm, shitty these days? Politics? Entertainment? The arts? Mike Gold, editor-in-chief of one of our favorite sites, Comic Mix has been pondering. And when Mike Gold ponders….

hoverboardThe Future is Behind Us
by Mike Gold

A well-timed survey indicates two out of every three people do not trust self-driving cars. Amusingly, this survey was released just as a Google self-driving car in California became the first of its ilk to cause an accident in traffic. It hit a bus; thankfully, nobody was injured. read article

Care of the Writer’s Instrument

thepinchy
Xena going straight for the instrument!

by Kathryn Graham

What’s a writer’s most important instrument? Is it a pen? A notebook? How about a laptop? Or is it your butt, the proverbial ‘butt in seat’ thing?

Bottom line, yourl butt is you, and you happen to be a physical body on a physical plane.  I know my body is my most cherished instrument because right now I have a crick in my neck that’s making this article tough to write. It’s like Xena cut off the flow of blood to my brain except that instead of Xena, it was a shitty mattress, a flattened pillow, and a 40 hour a week desk job.

Many people, myself included, don’t treat their bodies right. Writers are more susceptible to this because of the nature of writing. If you’re sitting for long hours pounding away at a keyboard, you’re likely hurting your spine, potentially not eating or depriving yourself of sleep, and any other number of vices in the name of the written word. read article

JJ Abrams Tells Us About His Mystery Box

In other words – some outstanding writing/directing tips here!

Another Ted Talk read article