Category: Opinion

Bri Castellini: In September, I did nothing – @brisownworld

by Bri Castellini

Been a pretty piss-poor month as far as productivity goes. And that includes no blogging! I’m the worst.

This is a housekeeping blog because I haven’t done a cop out housekeeping blog in a while. Here are all the things I have to do that I’m currently avoiding doing: read article

How ‘Myst’ Changed Everything

“It’s all about the script!” is a commonly repeated refrain when we talk about TV and films, but the truth is that the saying applies to video games as well. Here’s how that came to be:

Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
by Benj Edwards

Just a few days ago, as Hurricane Florence approached my home in North Carolina, I popped a disc into my 1990s Atari Jaguar CD gaming console. A familiar animated logo popped onto the screen, and I found myself transported back to a world I knew well decades ago. read article

Broadcast TV Faces Another Fall Ratings Decline, But They’re Not Giving Up Yet

We’ll say one thing for the out-of-touch and even more out-of-tune executives of broadcast TV. At least they aren’t giving up.

Now if they could only translate their eagerness to please into something more tangible like, oh, how about some better goddamn WRITING!?

read article

LB sees the new ‘Magnum, P.I.’

Uh-oh…

by Larry Brody

Sorry, kids, but there’s no other way to put it: CBS’s new version of Magnum, P.I. isn’t your father’s Magnum…and it shouldn’t be yours either.

THE GOOD:

  • Hawaii’s a very good looking place. (At least it was pre the last hurricane to come close to the islands.) Just like in the original.
  • There’s a guy named Thomas Magnum in most of the scenes of the show and he lives on some other guy’s big estate and drives that other guy’s Ferrari. Just like in the original.
  • There’s a character named Higgins running the estate and keeping track of Magnum. Just like in the original.
  • Magnum’s old friends hang out with him and provide the kind of help he needs whenever he needs it. Just like in the original.
  • Lots of repartee. Just like in the original.

THE NOT SO GOOD: read article

John Ostrander: Art vs the Artist

by John Ostrander

Last column I talked about James Gunn and how he was fired by Disney from the third Guardians installment for some really stupid tweets he published about a decade ago. They were appalling, no questions about it, but I wondered if Disney really needed to fire him for it. Gunn himself has renounced them and apologized. I was further aggravated by the fact that it was a right wing troll who engineered the whole reveal basically to punish Gunn for being anti-Trump.

However, lurking beneath that question is a bigger problem – can you separate the art from the artist? SHOULD you?  read article