Point & Click

Burble.

  • Screenwriter J D Shapiro apologises for Battlefield Earth.

    (Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)

  • This. Is. SHATNER!

    (Fedora-tip: Alex Epstein.)

  • Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire scribe and producer, David Mills died suddenly last week. I didn’t know – I should’ve, really, but I didn’t know – that he was the one who penned the Homicide “Bop Gun” ep (the one with Robin Williams and a teenage Jake Gyllenhaal). This forty-plus minutes of free-to-air television truly opened my eyes to just how much more you could put into a police procedural.

    His and David Simon‘s latest television series Treme opens in a few days. I can’t wait to introduce The Goddess to teevee a la Simon et al.

Peace out.

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Box Watch Postscript

Despite the promise of The Street‘s pilot, subsequent eps have disappointed. I thought their About Schmidt-ep with Jim Broadbent was a blip but when it was followed by The Crucible-ep with Neil Dudgeon, and Timothy Spall’s Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?-ep, we cried uncle. Four episodes into the season might be overly generous and forgiving of us but I think it shows how much the acting talent elevated the scripts. Tch.

Last man standing is Burn Notice which, though light and disposable like a LAW, remains breezy and entertaining with no soapy aftertaste. Man cannot get by on one show alone – sure, I’ve a backlog of DVDs to watch study but I need my fix of regular programming and the current free-to-air schedule is, in a word, desolate.

And thanks to the very connected Motorbike Steve, The Goddess and I’ve enjoyed the pilots for Bionic Woman and Dirty Sexy Money, and look forward to more. Arriving soon is the much anticipated Pushing Daisies and the rather intriguing Dexter.

Also – miracle of miracles – we’ve just embarked on a seven season retrospective of Homicide: Life on the Street. That series nails everything so well, it’s only things like the ubiquitous smoking and the box-shaped cars that date it. Damn, it’s good.

Summer’s not looking so shabby after all.

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