Yes, there will be a Cars 2.  This from a  friend who attended Fantastic Fest this last week.

Coming to a theater near you in 2011. That's a year earlier than before. And that's what happens when your tie-in merchandise outsells trinkets from TOY STORY, FINDING NEMO and MONSTERS, INC..

Brad Lewis, not Lasseter, will direct the sequel, which will be something of a globetrotting affair. To tide audiences over, there will be a series of "CARS Toons", which will feature Mater (the tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy) telling whoppers about his adventures as, for example, a fire truck or a matador (battling Bull-dozers, of course). We watch the first short, "Rescue Squad Mater", in which he bravely extinguishes a blaze at the Gasoline and Match Factory. Kinda funny.

I hope "globe trotting" means Lighting races Ferraris or has to compete against Grand Prix cars or something.  In fact, I can see the story now, it's years later and Lightning has his own racing company, Radiator Springs Racing that's taken the racing world by storm and he has a protege who is a young upstart Formula One racer.  Along the way, young Dino Berlinetta (a 1968 Ferrari concept car name) has to overcome his shyness and lack of racing desire in order to win the Monaco Grand Prix and use the winnings to help save his family's financial problems.  Lighting, now in a mentor role, tries to coax some bragadocio out of the little F1 car and sends him off to New York to work as a pizza delivery car (do cars eat pizza?)  The experience teaches young Dino how to drive in the heavily trafficked city streets and he uses these techniques to win the race.

Mater gets to ride on a big cargo plane and then parachuttes into Monaco.

I liked Cars a lot.  I know that the movie was hit or miss with a lot of people, especially Pixar fans.  It was the equivallent of musical or opera fans when seeing Cats for the first time.  If you don't think about it being about living cars, it's quite a charming and funny movie.  Even if you DO think about it being about living cars, that's the part I liked the most.

I can't even begin to rate the Pixar movies.  I liked them all equally.  Sure Incredibles was more my taste in genre but that doesn't mean it was any more or less fun to watch than the rest.  Pixar has so far been ok with not doing many sequels (so far Toy Story is the only one) and I'd almost rather they didn't do another sequel.  Sequels from Disney only mean one thing; toy sales.  Cars was a mechandising dream, something the others didn't have.  So I know that's the whole reason for a sequel.  It's a cartoon about talking cars.  The main character gave up the race to become a champion and he got the girl, what's left to tell?  I'm glad Up is still on tap, but I'd given Pixar a lot of credit for being original, now I need to temper that if they're going to reach back into the past to pull up ideas for new movies - even their own new ideas.

Oh well.  Carry on.

Rating A Show

I wanted to write this down before I forgot.

As most of you may know, I've been writing a few reviews for the television podcast and review site Televisions Zombies.  I don't mean to pimp it so often here, but honestly it's the most notable and enjoyable thing I've done for a few years now - hoboes notwithstanding.

Reviewing all the Charlie Jade episodes as well as the first couple Fringe shows, I came to the conclusion that I have no idea how to give something a five star rating.  I've been reaching the end of my reviews (which technically are 80% recap and 20% op-ed piece) frustrated because I have no idea how to grade a show let alone a series of shows.

My brother-in-law (ex brother-in-law?  almost ex...) my friend's come up with a pretty decent system for movies that I thought I'd try but it didn't work for serials.  Here's how it goes.

5 stars - Pay full price to see it again in the theater.

4 stars - Pay matinee price. 

3 stars - Rent it on DVD.

2 stars - Watch it on a premium channel.

1 star - Watch it on network TV.

Pretty good, right?  Especially knowing him, I can now get a fair idea of what a movie will be like if he gives me that rating.  It even allows for 1/2 stars; wait in line for hours before full price to see it again may even give it a glorious 5 1/2 stars.   3 1/2 stars may mean putting it high up on your Netflix queue.  The lowly half star would be to watch it on basic cable with no HD if there was nothing else on.  No stars would mean to never speak of it again.

I tried to adapt this to TV shows, but the first 3 don't really work.  First, it's a serious investment to watch a show you've never seen on DVD.  The sets are expensive and it generally takes weeks if not months to get through a series.  I had to rethink.  What I came up with isn't so much system where a show just falls into a category, but more like gymnastics scores where something starts out at a certain difficulty and is deducted points based off things that may have gone on during the show.  I haven't finalized this list or had an opportunity to try it out, but I came up with the idea because I was getting tired of not wanting to grade shows poorly just because they weren't exciting.  They may have been interesting, may have only had one or two small problems, but no reason to give something what amounts do a D (3 stars.)

So here's some ideas, and feel free to comment or add to it.  Each show starts at 5 stars.  There's no automatic deductions going in as I'm willing to let every show I watch have a chance to just wow the socks off my ass.

-1 if I'm not excited to see next week's episode.  Week to week dramas may suffer in this department, and they should.  If I watch an episode of In Plain Site and then miss a week and I'm not depressed about it, it's not an exciting show.

-1 if the show ends on a cliff hanger that's immediately resolved in the preview for next week.  Yes this is out of the show's control, but you know what?  It's an overall experience and you ruined any reason for me to wait with bated breath until next week's installment.

- 1/2 if I can detect a plot hole while watching.  I'm not terribly bright when it comes to writing conventions, so if I see a major issue in the show WHILE I'm watching, that's a bad sign.

- 1/2 if at any point I roll my eyes at a piece of dialog.  Be it sappy or campy or predictable or completely out of place, if I have a physical knee jerk reaction to something going on then it's at least worth a half - more if I start yelling at the TV.

- 1/2 if I can't follow along.  With this in mind, I'd have constantly down graded The West Wing because I'd have to constantly rewind to see who said what, or ask fellow viewers what happened.  If my big clue that something major happened is a musical cue then I'm having a hard time following along.

- 1 if I don't mind leaving the show while it's playing.  Chances are I'd change the channel anyway, so what does it matter that I'm not paying attention.

- 1 if I don't plan on watching it again later.  This may happen more to new shows, but also changes in shows that have gone on a long time.

- 1 if I get to the end of the show and either immediately forget what happened (because it's forgettable) or I feel like I just wasted a half hour/hour of my time.

It's general, it's vague, it's subjective, but I think it's a good start.  I tend to write recaps while I'm watching the show (which is an interesting task) so I'd be easy to keep notes about any of these events.  It may also mean some shows may seem good at first but end up getting a lower score and some blasé shows rate much higher than they otherwise might have.  But that's the nature of critiques; it's all personal.  I know that while I'd give Fringe a pretty good rating, other people I know very much despise the show and are now only going to watch it to make fun of the "science."  To each his own.

 

I'm also trying to avoid feeling like I'm grading a show based on the series as a whole and not each episode's individual performance.  If a new person comes into a TV show, they need to know if that was a good episode or a bad one based on the strength of that show alone.  Later they can go back and say it wasn't the best of the season.  Reason being, a five star show you see at 2am on cable versus a five star show you see at 8pm on Thursday night is going to show obvious differences.  But to me productions values, while important, shouldn't make or break the show.  This is then done to try and alleviate the comparison to other shows as well.

In the end, it's going to come down to what kind of mood I'm in, what time of day it is, if I have to pause it to go bath or feed kids or if I get a phone call that makes me have to watch the rest of the show on another night.  It can't all be perfect, but I think this is a good start.

Yes I need to spend more time doing something else.

Carry on.

This post brought to you by Kia

Last night the AMC series Mad Men won a few awards, were nominated for quite a few as well.  30 Rock won a couple as well.  As I drove in this morning, a bit on the radio reminded me of something I'd read and discussed a while ago about product integration.

(The discussion was a post I'd written about the Marvel Comic Rush City.  That post died in the Year That Wordpress Forgot, so here's an article to bring you up to speed.)

In this Morning Edition story by Neda Ulaby, the idea of product placement became overshadowed by a more cunning and dastardly paradigm; product integration.  No longer will the host of the variety show pause to announce that this last half hour of plate twirling and susaphone playing was brought to you by Palmolive.  Instead, the stories are now written ABOUT Palmolive...and Heinekin and Ford and Verizon.  Writer's now have to create a story that centers around their characters, their worlds, their events and ideals and now the products the producers want placed.  Mad Men has it easy because their world is in advertising, but I don't see how most shows will cope without compromising the plots.  Think about some of the shows you watch (major network or cable fictions, no reality or game shows) and try and cram a story idea in that features a product.  Think about Law & Order and if you could just write in a character that only ate at Subway and have it be a part of the story.  Sure, maybe someone was killed in a Subway, it's a good parody of New York life (not a subway but a Subway) and could work.

The trick, however, is to advertise that product - to integrate it.  It's not enough just to mention the name, TV shows have been doing that for years.  Shows where the cast is outside almost can't help but see cars, gas stations, restaurants, foods that exist in real life.  I do remember as a kid how funny it was to see all the knock off brands in TV shows because either the production team wasn't savvy enough to allow a Pepsi to be consumed on air or it just cost to much to do.  (I'm fairly sure that's how Shasta got started.)  But this isn't about just showing Joey or Chandler drinking a brand named soda, this is about Joey or Chandler talking about the brand named soda and having it be part of the story - and not in a comedic way but in a way that extols the virtues of said product.

Joey - Hey, man.  You ready to go?

Chandler - Almost, let me finish eating.

Joey - Hey, is that the new Coke Ultra?

Chandler - Yeah and it's really good.  Plus with no sugar and just that touch of ginsing, I don't have to worry about that debilitating sugar crash later.

Joey - Right because when you have that job interview later, you don't want to be twitchy or groggy.

And thus you have product integration.

Yes, it can be more sophisticated than that, but at its very heart, product integration needs to be something that shows you something about the product, not just the face of it.  You need the characters to talk about what the product does and have it impact the story, otherwise writers could just be having people watching TV and commenting on the commercial they just watched.

But think about it for a minute and ask yourself, do you talk about products with your friends?  Sure you do.  You discuss the quality of frozen foods, the signal strength of your cell phone, the options your cable company gives you, the gas mileage your car maintains and a plethora of other qualitative discussions.  But you don't talk about those things during childbirth, a robbery, cross examination, escaping from a brain eating villain, shooting island inhabitants or wiring your brain into a comatose FBI agent.  When you aren't doing those things, you're talking about those things, that's how these shows work.  Let's say you and I were just a couple ordinary people (likely) and we were hanging out at a bar.  Not TV worthy (sorry Bochco, it isn't.)  But, had we just come in from supressing an alien invasion and needed a beer, that's our down time.  Are we going to talk about the beer?  Outside of ordering it, no.  We're going to talk about how much alien ass we just kicked.  As soon as I say, "This Woodchuck amber cider is amazing.  You know, I wonder if we can convince these aliens to stop attacking our city based purely on the strength of this fine product alone?" the audience knows they're being handled.  And that's the danger.

Individual consumers are smart.  They know when they're being sold, but for some reason, the masses react differently.  (Which always fascinates me, it means there are a lot of weak minded lemmings out there.)  To that end you have to be careful how you push your product or how your ask the creators to push a product.  It can't seem hackneyed or ham fisted.  It has to be smooth and honestly, if you're going to place a service or good in your show, you should take out a block of commercials as a trade off.  Don't give me 20 minutes of ads per hours and then 40 minutes of story about the new HP Camera and Printer combo.  If I wanted to watch a solid hour of commercials I'd turn to QVC.

The Marvel comic was called Rush City and it was a promotional experiment.  The book only ran in a limited series and it featured a super hero who was tied very much to his Pontiac Rush in the same way James Bond is tied to Aston Martin.  Comic book fans were mixed on the idea.  A lot of people were pissed at Marvel trying to panhandle the fans via a major auto industry while others felt that as long as the story was ok and you didn't cram the book with more pages of ads, it wouldn't be so bad.  (Sadly, the book wasn't that well done which made it even more transparent what a money grab it was.)  Which brings us again to the heart of the topic.

People don't like being advertised to.  Sure we like the entertainment value of some commercials but you have to know that given the choice we'd surely like there to be no commercials at all.  Other entertainment venues are no less immune to this game where to bring the audience a worth while product, the production needs money.  In order for the production to get money, it needs to sell advertising.  Theater can get by with putting ads in their programs as their allotment comes in the form of ticket sales and donations.  Public radio and TV run pledge drives.  Even streaming audio/video online either has short ads in between segments or is on a site with ads on them.  Product integration will only work if you reduce advertising and you don't oversell the product.  The shows have their own little worlds and the stories are about them, not the product you try to sell.  If Lost ever became ABOUT airline travel rather than the spookiness of that island, you can bet I'll turn it off.

Carry on.

KXAN Goes At It Again

Man do I feel sorry for metro Austinites. At the beginning of 2008, I wrote about how Suddenlink Cable was going at it with KXAN's owner LIN TV and KXAN went dark on New Year's Eve. It started with my writing to them asking when they planned on getting NBC in High Def, it ended with Suddenlink airing an NBC affiliate out of Waco (which is about 90 minutes away.) Eventually Suddenlink and KXAN were reunited.

I'm not saying I was integral to what happened - I am but a small voice in a small city. I enjoyed a few emails from both parties but so would any customer who took the time to complain. I haven't read back on the posts I'd written, so let's just assume they were filled with golden and flakey civility.

Which made me laugh just a little bit when I saw a public service announcement saying that Time Warner and KXAN were having the same issue. Far be it from humble little consumer to point fingers or call names or throw flaming hot rocks in my sugar-glass house but reading the ins and outs of the situation was like going back in time. Here it is in a nutshell. KXAN thinks it's worth more, its parent company LIN TV goes to Time Warner and says, "Pay us cash for fair market value." Time Warner says, "We'll keep paying you what we're paying plus we'll increase some ad placement." (If they went that far at all, doesn't look like they came back with much.) LIN TV says they'll play hardball and KXAN is pulled from Time Warner. If all goes according to history, that will last a couple days until Time Warner picks up either a close affiliate or the two sides agree.

So it got me thinking, does KXAN really think it's not getting its value in the Austin market? Is it just the Austin market? I read originally that Suddenlink and LIN were also having a problem with a CBS station in New Mexico, so it's not just NBC stations. I honestly haven't read a lot of cable/broadcast TV business news, but having the only two instances I've seen in my city include the same owners, I'm wondering if there's something with LIN TV - something like...I don't know, delusional greed?

I'm sure that's not the case, but I'd like to reiterate that putting out ads for your customers saying the stations owners and the cable owners can't agree and you as the customer should call and complain is like your divorced parents telling you they don't like the settlement the court gave them and if you don't want your allowance cut you should contact the other parent. Getting customers in the way of a money/power struggle between broadcast companies is a shitty way of doing business. You want our input? You want our help? Bring in a la carte packages.

Carry on.

Fringe Reviews

Reviews for episodes 1 & 2 are up at TVZ.  Please check 'em out, listen to the podcast, read some of the news and stuff.  Vote for them at the podcast awards.

Avast! There be reviews ahead!

Yarr, me harties!  It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day!  There be much ta do around ye old intARRnet today.

First!  Cap'n Scruffbeard Coulter has fangled a rich man's contraption out of his wits, a bit of fluff and a lot of rum.  If you scrawl your handle and thoughts on Twitter, than stop over to http://tweetlikeapirate.com/ and play along.  The squeezebox waits for no man to dance.

Second!  I've spent too much time in front of the land lubber contraption known as the "television."  It's siren call is nigh impossible to resist.  But some nice folk have offered me rum and the love of a buxom woman were I to put pen to parchment and relay my thoughts on these "programs."

To that end, there are a few reviews of Charlie Jade up, please stop by and read them.  I'm also doing reviews on the first couple Fringe episodes, make sure to stay tuned.

Yarr!

Vote for Television Zombies

(originally posted by Chris Piers on TVZ)

The nominations are now open for the Podcast Awards. These are annual awards for the best podcasts, and we need the help of all of our readers and listeners to try for an award. Even if we don’t win, it can be great publicity, getting the TVZ name out there.

The nominations are here: http://podcastawards.com/index.php?option=index

The rules are very clear and enforced, so while we appreciate anyone taking the few seconds to vote for us, please don’t try to vote more than once. Spreading the word is appreciated, but we don’t want votes thrown out because someone tried to cheat on our behalf.

You can only nominate a podcast in ONE category, as well as either the “Peoples Choice” or “Best Produced” categories. We would appreciate the votes in “Peoples Choice” and “Cultural/Arts.”

All you need to do is:

1. Follow this link to the Podcast Awards (same as the link above)
2. Enter the podcast name (Television Zombies) and podcast url (http://www.televisionzombies.com)

Nominations are only eligible through midnight the night of September 30th. Thanks!

Tidbits

Greetings intrepid readers. You know, if you've read more than a year's worth of posts at LIA or have this blog on your RSS reader, I'd like to commend and thank you for your patronage. I often get the most random of comments from posts I'd forgotten about and it's nice to know that some people actually read the site...people I'm not related to that is.

That said, Deb, I'll also have to look at the Morning Star packaging. I generally don't eat the products with the exception of the veggie crumblies we put in spaghetti sauce or for burritos and I have no known food allergies so checking those boxes isn't terribly important to me. I will check it out though, but I'm sure Ms. A probably wouldn't eat so many of the breakfast sausages if there was stuff in there that she couldn't handle.

Moving on. Hurricane Ike has come and gone from Texas. It's now being a pain in the ass for the midwest in the form of rain and possible tornados. The hurricane itself never made it to Austin. Original models had it glancing off the hill country before traveling north, but the closer it came the impact became smaller until finally it was looking as though we'd not see any problems. Which we didn't. As the storm saturated everything along I-35 from Galveston to Hunstville, we enjoyed partly cloudy skies and some gusty breezes, but not a drop of rain. By Sunday morning we had bright blue skies and at present a cold front has moved through Central Texas bringing highs in the low 80's through the rest of the week. Not bad.

Ms. A's dad and step mom came out yesterday to leave the powerless Conroe. They tried leaving ahead of the storm, but decided not to and so they rode out the storm instead of riding a twelve hour car trip to Austin. Can't say as I'd blame them. Twelve hours to go 150 miles, I'd rather get punched in the nuts...but just once.

Moving on yet again, my LEGO addiction has taken full hold. All my old sets are built and I'm now debating on whether or not to go buy more older sets as well as new Star Wars sets or to dismantle what I have and start building on my own. It's the collector versus creator fight and sadly I've abandoned most of my drawing. Odd considering how many times on this blog I've bitched about not having enough time or motivation to draw. Amazing what one good weekend with an old familiar plaything can do for your morale. LEGO is a happy place for me. I could lose hours building with it, organizing it, coming up with ideas for new things. At one point in my life I'd even sent a letter to LEGO asking how to become a builder/designer. Turns out, at the time, you needed something crazy like an engineering degree or an architecture background. Later I became aware that you could get a Toy Design degree (which most major universities don't offer, but you can get them at art institutes.) Even later it became apparent that these accredited individuals were not sallying forth with the same creative spark as average LEGO fans so LEGO started Master Builder and Amabassador programs. These are hobbyists that are involved in the LEGO community but are recognized by LEGO (though not official employees) and as such have certain responsiblities and receive certain perquisites for being community role models.

How you get to be one I'm not sure, but from looking into it, I believe owning millions of bricks for more than 30 years is the only way. So I've got some work to do.

Talk about dream job. Long before I wanted to be a voice actor or comic book artist or cartoonist or comedian I wanted to build LEGO for a living. Wouldn't it be funny after 20 years of doing nothing but drawing I end up doing what I wanted to do from when I was 8? Don't get me wrong, I will likely still draw and doodle and illustrate when given the right motivation (good idea, money, familial request) but without daily practice that muscle will likely wither. I don't have 10 hours a day to draw and hone that craft, but I do have a few hours a night to build and building doesn't take as much practice, just a love of the bricks.

Moving on thrice fold, the 100 Artists Project is still going on. There was a snafu with the sketchbook so I had it sent back to me for corrections. So I got to see a year and a half worth of input and it was kind of neat. The book has traveled all over the US and to see it still in one piece was joyous - I almost teared up, honestly. I've received five short stories and one piece of artwork for the new project and so far about 50 people have signed up for the various charities. It's obvious this is going to be a long term project and I hope it gets its due at some point. It doesn't require a lot of work and I hope we can raise some good amounts of money for these groups. That's really all I want. If I wanted fame I wouldn't be doing a charity project.

Moving on completely and finally, the new season of shows are out and so far I've only caught a couple. I saw Fringe the other night and liked it. It didn't blow my mind but it didn't make me blow chunks either. I thought it was well rounded and it did admirably well for a pilot. I also caught The Sarah Conner Chronicles and was really impressed with that. I'm glad that show is back. I'm still watching Charlie Jade for the remainder of its sad little 2am run. It's not a bad show, honestly more well written and plotted than a lot of shows. Television Zombies has a current review and I've got more to come. Plus, keep an eye out for a Clone Wars commentary I recorded (yay voice!) that they'll hopefully play on the show or link on the site.

No more moving on today. I hope you all had a good summer and let's see if I can start posting more.

More Charlie Jade

I'm still reviewing Charlie Jade over at Television Zombies. The season is a little more than half over and when it's done, it's done. It's a summer filler but so far it's more entertaining than the rest of the junk on Sci-Fi.

You can read the all the reviews here.

I'll also be picking up Dollhouse when it hits FOX in January. In the mean time, the fall television season is upon us. Make sure to stop by TVZ every week for their news and discussion and reviews of all things science fiction and television.

My Brother at the DNC

My little brother was able to secure tickets to the Democratic National Convention last week.  Specifically, tickets to the Obama speech night at Invesco Field/Mile High Stadium.  He wasn't picked or vetted, he was just a lucky caller - one of 20,000 out of some 80-100,000 people that called.

He said he'd try to get video of the event, but I thought I'd share his thoughts and reactions from the evening.

The convention was an experience I will never forget. And to be honest I feel guilty that I got to go. I felt really small while I was there. I kept wondering how a kid from Broomfield ended up at the DNC. I know that sounds weird but there where so many people and famous people too.  So many cameras and journalists and radio talk show hosts and well..me.

   Put that all aside and WOW! It was alot of fun. When we arrived the line to get in stretched from Invesco (Mile high) to the Auraria Campus. Given my agraphobia I wanted to go home right then and there but I calmed myself and decide to maintain. To be honest getting in was a breeze. I really like seeing Al Gore. Stevie Wonder was really cool and sings like he's still 20.  Obama's speech was somethin. I don't think I've seen a better speaker in my short life. I (as cheesey as this sounds) wondered at that moment if that's how people watching Kennedy speak, or Lincoln for that matter, felt.  Man when he was done the place just exploded in both fireworks and some sort of combustible human fuel.  The roar was deafening.

    Leaving was another story. What demon of the ninth gate dreamt up that exit plan I'll never know. Half the police were not informed of the closure of the closest light rail station. The other half were not informed of street closures around the exits. Combined these two events resulted in 80,000 people being marched around Mile high for about two hours. Grown men in business suits reverted to their primal selves and started yelling at cops. Yelling boiled over into aggression and frustration which was vented on nearby fences, which collapsed under the weight of the tired and angry mob. People were seen to be scrambling up the side of the freeway given they had nowhere else to go. I saw old ladys waiting in wheelchairs alone with nobody to help while a gang of police stood above us on the freeway bridge pointing and laughing. We left the stadium at about 9:15 and got to the train station at Auraria at about 11:45. I was ashamed to be a Denver resident after that and to be honest I had to try real hard not to let it ruin the whole experience. 

        But It didn't. He has my vote. He had it when he picked Joe

I was only able to watch on TV, and yes I watched both conventions.  I'm jealous of his experience.  I doubt I'd ever be able to go to one of these unless they come to Austin and then it'd like be the RNC which isn't something I'd want to attend.

At any rate, we've got less than 60 days to sort it all out and I'm not really looking forward to having all the new fall shows being peppered with political ads.