Archive for the ‘ TV ’ Category

Poirot on Fish Paste

This will be one of those posts in which only I have any inter­est what­so­ever. Sorry. I adore David Suchet’s por­tray­als of Agatha Christie’s Bel­gian detec­tive for British satel­lite tele­vi­sion. Suchet has filmed nearly every Poirot story and hopes to fin­ish them out before retir­ing. Most of the short sto­ries were filmed in an hour-​​​​long episodic for­mat in the early and mid nin­ties. The longer sto­ries are shot as TV movies. One of the longer sto­ries, Sad Cypress, first aired in late 2003. If you do not know the story and don’t want it spoiled, you should go away now. In Sad [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

De Minimis Establishment Clause Violations?

I just saw this ad on telly: The U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices, in con­junc­tion with the Ad Coun­cil (both orga­ni­za­tions about which I have noth­ing pos­i­tive to say), has funded and pro­duced an adver­tise­ment fea­tur­ing reli­gious fig­ures endors­ing and pro­mot­ing gov­ern­ment pro­grams. No men­tion of the fea­tured anthro­po­mor­phic veg­eta­bles’ reli­gious affil­i­a­tion is men­tioned. Some­thing about using explic­itly reli­gious char­ac­ters to encour­age chil­dren to fol­low gov­ern­ment health advice strikes me as some­thing less than neu­tral to reli­gion, despite the sec­u­lar pur­pose. But because pro­mot­ing the health of chil­dren is a “legit­i­mate sec­u­lar pur­pose”, this kind of thing doesn’t vio­late the [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

Oh, Alex IV

This one isn’t a faux pas. Atlas Shrugged was fea­tured as the ques­tion to the $200 answer in this evening’s “Lit­er­ary Titles” cat­e­gory (Jeop­ardy Round). It was the first answer of the game. I don’t think the Jeop­ardy! peo­ple like hav­ing clips from the show up on the YouTube, so I can’t post a video. The clue was cute. Alex gave a spo­ken clue (“1957 novel about a strong female exec­u­tive”) while a video clip ran. The clip depicted a mem­ber of the “Clue Crew” with a giant inflat­able globe on his shoul­ders, which he set down and “shrugged” in an exag­ger­ated fash­ion. The other clues in the cat­e­gory [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

Kathy & Andy

Kathy Grif­fin co-​​​​hosted New Year’s Eve at Times Square with Ander­son Cooper on CNN last night. And she claims to be D-​​​​List. That’s a squarely C-​​​​List activ­ity. Kathy tried her hard­est to get Ander­son fired, at one point ask­ing him who, in the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion, he would most enjoy water­board­ing. Of course we all know Anderson’s posi­tion on water­board­ing (even though he never really comes out and says it), so he was quite per­turbed, refused to answer, and accused Kathy of “cross­ing the line.” To which Ms Grif­fin responded by look­ing at the cam­era and say­ing, “That’s what I’m here for!” [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

It’s Like Sophie’s Choice!

Warn­ing: Project Run­way spoil­ers ensue! Augh! For some rea­son, I’ve been watch­ing Sea­son 4 of Project Run­way. I blame Flib­bert, but it’s not really his fault. Last week, Chris March left. I dis­agreed with that choice, purely on quality-​​​​of-​​​​product grounds. I think the judges booted him because of his poor per­for­mance as leader, rather than the qual­ity of his own work. Leader in a group chal­lenge. A group chal­lenge really early in the show. The sec­ond group chal­lenge in the show. On the fourth episode. In my une­d­u­cated and inex­pe­ri­enced opin­ion, group chal­lenges this early in the game are putting too much empha­sis on inter­per­sonal dynam­ics and not [ . . . ]

Read the Rest...

Oh, Alex III

Mr Tre­bek had a minor heart attack at his home yes­ter­day. He is recov­er­ing in hos­pi­tal, and intends to con­tinue host­ing Jeop­ardy! when it resumes tap­ing in Jan­u­ary. I wish him well, and look for­ward to many more awk­ward con­tes­tant inter­views in the future.

Happy Christmas, Brenda Lee

*Snif­fle* Once again, The Closer proves itself to be the best damn show on TV.