Crap Tv like X factor and big brothers

One thing I don’t miss about sharing a house is the TV being used by room mates to watch crap TV.  A large portion of what I class as crap TV are shows which are based around 50% ridiculing people and 50% making poor to mediocre talents think they have more ability than they do for a while before ridiculing them along with all the other sad souls before them.  X factor, Americas got talent and so on.

In that respect this older brother is a hero of modern times, taking it upon himself to teach little sis and her friend the ways of hurtful critiques at an early age.

Playtime, is over.

Brother are assholes

The True Blood Fox

Like I often do I’ve ended up watching a TV show long after its debuted on regular TV, in this case the TV show is True Blood, I’ve now watched the first 2 seasons and the thing that sticks out to me the most is the rotting fox in the opening credits.

I hate that fox.

Is it just me or is the rotting corpse of a fox, complete with maggots a little too much?

Is there some kind of bizarre in joke that the show is having about the Fox TV channel?

I don’t think I have ever been so weirded out by opening titles before!

Starting to build a home cinema setup

I plan on buying a Bluray player in the not so distant future.  I’ve been eyeing up surround sound systems and Bluray players for a while, mainly because the house I bought has surround sound wired in already just no system and I have a HD TV but no Bluray player.

So it’s a tale of 2 purchases, I think I will opt for the surround sound first, the logic being;

• I have bare wires hanging out my walls were the last guy had his system and they are crying out for some speakers
• I had a very cheap and basic ‘home cinema in a box’ style surround sound system a few years ago and even a cheap one added a lot to movies
• I don’t have a stereo in the room it’ s going into so hey presto 2 birds with one stone (courtesy of an iPod input)

I have set myself a budget of $1000 and think that should be plenty, looking at reviews there seem to be loads of good gear just of over that price range so I’ll start the bargain hunt and purchase when I see one pop into range.

The second purchase, the Bluray player is likely to be a PS3.  I’ve never bothered with one till now as I have an Xbox, but Microsoft’s decision to back the wrong horse in the format wars no leaves me thinking I will be jumping ship. Ok it could be said that I will be hedging my bets as I will still own an Xbox, well I will once I get it back from being sent away to be fixed.  Again.  But I’m not going to be buying games for both, so if PS3 is better that the Xbox may start gathering dust.

I have looked at other Bluray players but I don’t see a point in buying one when for a relatively small amount more I can buy a PS3.  The only down side I have found at the moment is that the PS3 doesn’t upscale DVDs where other players do.  Seems a small price to pay being that purchases from now on will be in the Blu ray format.

Lots of decisions and reading to go….

Boredom, negativity and Fox News

Yesterdays post about the movie Salt was a bit negative, that’s not really the point of my blog.  There are plenty of negative people out there moaning and whining about stuff that I don’t really want to join in.  

I’ll put it down to the frustration of spending too much time away from home and working too many hours.  I’m currently stuck a few thousand miles from home, waiting to do a very specific piece of work in the middle of the sea. As such, I’m bobbing about killing time, watching movies, and generally being very bored.  Normally I have a bunch of pet projects I can be working on but my laptop hard drive crapped out and I’m currently on a rebuilt version with none of my personal stuff on it.

I do have a whooping 6 channels of TV to watch

1. National Geographic
2. TLC
3. Fox News
4. Some movie channel
5. 24hr infomercials 1
6. 24hr infomercials 2

 The selection gets old fast.  I have to say though I am surprised how bad Fox News is.  I don’t normally watch it but channel surfing 6 channels means I get there regularly at the moment, and I shudder to think that some people may accept their crap as actual news.  I actually feel sorry for any of  the reporters on there that studied journalism and ended up there, every news outlet may have some bias but the agenda driven bile the spew is an insult to the idea of free press. 

Wait am I getting negative again?

Damn it. 

I’ll put the laptop down and go back to channel surfing.  The infomercials can continue to give be an insight into how I can make $100k a month working 2 hours a week even in this economy.   What? Its more realistic than Fox News…..

Luger death makes prime time viewing

Yesterday lunch time I was at he deli counter at the local supermarket when the server mentioned that one of the Olympic athletes competing in the luge had died during a practice run.  Its a pretty small town, although currently on the world radar, its still a small town at heart.  To hear the news in a shop on a lunch break is not really that surprising, but I was a bit surprised ta the media coverage that followed.

Not that the death garnered so much coverage, more the fact that they optioned to show his death on  the news.

Repeatedly.

The guy wasnt even cold yet.   Doesnt sit right with me, I didn’t know the guy but I think that if it had been a friend of mine I would have been livid.  At a later date in reflection I could see the justification, but as it stands it seems TV networks rushed to bring ‘the shocking footage’ to viewers.

Not cool.

Another look at X files season 3; War of the Coprophages

When I’m not watching too many movies, i’m normally watching too many TV shows.  I cant stand watching them on TV with ad breaks so normally pick up box sets at a later date or record and watch them later. To be honest I’ve only just bothered to get cable again for the first time since I moved back in April.  On the whole TV sucks because of too may commercial breaks.

Gripe over, back to X files.

I’ve just started watching X files again and I’m onto season 3, I’ve not watched it since it was ‘new’ so my memory of the episdoes is hazy which makes for good re runs.

Tonight I watched “War of the Coprophages” which sounds very grand and threatening but really it was probably the funniest episode of X files I’ve ever seen. Whilst the series as a whole can be quite dark the banter between Mulder and Scully is light hearted, the jokes simple and funny but with hidden quirks thrown in there too. For example in a episode centred around killer cockroaches one is made to look like its running across your TV set, the sign of a show thats looking to entertain rather than just take itself too seriously.

Throw in a over the top hot looking entomologist called “Bambi” wearing little shorts to show a bit of leg and it almost feels like you’re watching Bond.

3rd season syndrome

So due to mainly to snowfall and high winds my time spent watching TV has risen over and above my normal levels this last week, and the more I watch the more disappointed I seem to become.  Shows I watch that have been running past their initial 2 seasons seem to have my interest waning and there suck levels rising. 

 Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant (who created the Office) refused to go past 2 seasons and moved on to creating a new show (Extras) and one of the most loved shows ever to come out of the UK was Fawlty Towers (only 12 episodes ever).  Both maintain high esteem in the armchair critics eyes and yet their brevity is one of the key elements in those nods of appreciation.  I’m not saying that’s why they are loved but they never gave the audience a chance to utter the phrase “it’s not what it used to be” instead anything else that comes along on TV has the task of being compared to these now ‘classics’.

Watching Lost this week, I’m at a loss as to why I still bother.  So you’re on the island, you hate it; you leave; now you want to go back again.  That in itself might make for an interesting story but the level of writing to go with it has just bombed.  In a recent episode the writers saw fit to dismiss a character (he’d obviously become an inconvenience to the story line) by way of an actress emotionally saying that she never wanted to talk about it.  Fair enough, maybe the other characters on the show don’t need to know but as someone who has lost (dum dum tish) so many hours watching the show maybe I deserve to know? Don’t I have any viewer’s rights?

Maybe it’s time I went old school and spent more time some of the books I have on my shelf rather than staring at something I no longer enjoy, I guess my point is can someone tell the writers guild of America that now their strike is over can they tell their members go back to basics and as a form of entertainment leave the public wanting more?