I went to see Spiderman 3 the day it opened. A longtime fan of the comic franchise, I’ve been more or less amused by the film versions to date. What follows is my reactions to the latest installment. Warning thar be (minor) spoilers below:
Overall rating: ** (out of 5)
I was in Barnes and Noble the other day, and from a distance, I saw the cover of Ann Coulter’s newest book, Godless.
I don’t have a lot of love for Coulter, but I know she or the people packaging her, are very good - they sell grandstanding and posturing in a way that they could never sell reasoned or sensible. She says the most egregious, obviously idiotic and unthinkable things and it sells, because she says the unreasonable things a certain segment of the population wishes they could say, and which another (hopefully larger) segment of the population finds compellingly repellent.
So, I ask you, how the hell did she come up with the cover for this book? From a distance, all you see is “Ann Coulter [scribble scribble]” and a photo of Miss Coulter herself leaning on what appears to be a nice big label. Maybe she needs new image management. Maybe it’s intentional - maybe they’re playing up her negative reputation among the thinking masses. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s proof that the media package that is Ann Coulter is sheer parody. Imagine it. Could it be, I wonder, that Ann Coulter is a liberal satirist who has been trapped in the hell of having her lampoon of the worst of the other camp be taken seriously, and worse, turn lucrative? Surely you can sometimes see the glint of sadness in her eyes through the books signings and talk show appearances — a glimmer of repentance, perhaps? Or a plea for escape?
Then again, maybe she just is the worst of that camp and in these day and age, public opinion has given her the bullhorn. Maybe she’s just her own parody.
So, I know a lot of people who may or may not read this may be upset about this, but Alias was finally given the axe (use bugmenot.com if you don’t have an account…)
It was bugging me that ABC will pick up a show like Alias and let it run for 5 seasons, while Fox will option shows like Firefly and Arrested Development and kill them all too prematurely. However, upon reflection, NBC kept West Wing alive through at least seven seasons, and now look at what’s happened to it. It just seems to me that short series are able to pack all their quality in high concentration. This is true almost across the board - in movies, books, TV shows - a good series that’s kept short is a lot less likely to run dry.
Think of the examples:
Harry Potter vs. The Hardy Boys, or Nancy Drew, or The Boxcar Children
Star Wars the real movies vs. Star Wars including the extra lesser trilogy
OTOH, the good Star Trek series did well with their 7-year schedules, but that’s in large part because it typically took them 3 seasons to really hit their stride.
In any case, I’ve stopped feeling upset about the cancelation of Arrested Development, with the knowledge that all good things must come to an end, and I’d rather they stopped while still being good, rather than faded into mediocrity.
By way of postscript, I’d like to end with a choice extract sure to get the goat of my Alias-loving friends:
But, in a nutshell, what they said was:
“We’re devastated to announce the end of the longest running unsuccessful prime-time series on television.”
“Alias” is, let us not forget, the lowest-rated show ever to air after the Super Bowl.
And yet, as “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf so grumpily — and yet so accurately — pointed out at the most recent TV press tour, “Alias” got more hype per rating point than any other show in TV history.