-
Posts
7,494 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Events
Blurbs
Posts posted by Dr_Evil_Mouse
-
-
Note to self: must be at this show.
-
Must be belated now, Schwa, but have had yourself a fantastic bday weekend.
-
Or cross into Gatineau; get into Gatineau Park (Blvd. Alexandre-Tache west from downtown), and pick any range of roads you'd like; the one to the Champlain lookout is worth seeing - the signs are hard to miss. Then come back, and it's all good, I'd wager.
-
-
Interesting. Where was this when I was an impressionable young teen?
-
Got it engraved on the calendar.
-
-
I just saw this ten minutes ago - nice!
-
it's easy to watch watch watch and not want to stop.
It can also be painful to watch - but in a good way.
-
I'm not saying they're actually alive or anything.
-
For the record, i'm on chapter 2! Thanks for ruining the book everyone!Five years of full-time work is 10,000 hours. Would Gladwell argue that everyone in a job for five years becomes a superstar at their tasks?
I think the point about 10,000 hours is FOCUSED practice and rehearsal. People working at most jobs get really good a procrastinating so it still holds water.
I'd buy that. It's one thing to do 10k hours at something half-assed, but another to do it out of an deep sense of passion and commitment. As for "success", especially in the arts, that's bound to be determined by other, much more capricious factors (how much time and energy does the average consumer put into paying critical attention to what they endorse/support?).
Gladwell's a good conversation-starter, if nothing else, like the Freakonomics guys.
-
Happy bday to you!
-
Decidedly awesome.
-
Two chapters left to go in two...3's on deck and will most likely get started today!
Now 150 pp. into book three. Currently rooting for Bran, Jon, and Tyrion (maybe safe bets, but who knows).
-
I'd have to say that all things considered, this is the best that TV has to offer.
-
Right out of Game of Thrones, I tell ya.
-
I'm now about 50 pages into book 3. Man, I can't stop this obsession. What a mindfuck.
-
Big congrats, Jay ! I've nothing to recommend, on top of what you've no doubt already come up with; I assume you're already on top of the music, which would have been my prime concern. I'm sure it'll be an occasion to remember. I'm very happy for you both.
-
Very cool . Keep us apprised.
-
Gotta go hear Charon's new tenor guitar - gonna be sweet .
-
This show got me absolutely hooked with the first episode. The list of characters got me confused enough to have to start reading the books, too, and they are addictive in their own right (presently halfway through the second one). The story manages very well to stay well ahead of any predictability; you can't let yourself get attached to any of the characters, that's for sure (though I can't help but root for Tyrion).
-
Too long to fully quote here. From The Economist.
-
If anyone's drifting around, in, or through North Grenville tonight, Saturday, and Sunday, come check out the Dandelion Festival, along Prescott St. downtown. I'll be on main stage at 1 tomorrow, but there's a full day and night of great music and events.
-
This should be tasteful.
Mark Burnett's The Bible could test our faith in reality TV
JOHN DOYLEFrom Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, May. 25, 2011 12:00AM EDT
When I was a young lad in Ireland, we knew nothing about the Bible.
Oh, to be sure, we were drenched in religion. When we weren’t on our knees half the night saying the rosary we were getting up at an unholy hour to go to mass and listen to some old fella work himself into a lather describing hell to us. Those were the days, my friends.
The Bible, though, that was for Protestants. As priest-ridden peasants we were more inclined to read the Penny Catechism. The Catechism had answers. The Bible would only confuse you. Or so the nuns and Christian Brothers gave us to understand, anyway. Suppose you had a question, like, “What must you do to save your soul?†The answer was in the Catechism: “To save my soul I must worship God by Faith, Hope and Charity; that is, I must believe in him, I must hope in him, and I must love him with my whole heart.†There you go.
Thus it is with pleasure than I anticipate The Bible as it will be brought to television by Mark Burnett, the man who has brought the world such shows as Survivor, The Apprentice, Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? and Sarah Palin’s Alaska. The master of reality TV is doing a docudrama, pithily titled The Bible, for the History Channel, the broadcaster announced Tuesday. (Here in Canada we don’t get the channel, but I’d bet my bottom dollar that our version, History Television, will deliver it to us.)
According to the History Channel, the five-part, 10-hour series will dramatize key events in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation “using CGI to recreate famous stories including Noah's Ark and the Resurrection of Jesus.â€
It’s possible that Burnett has spotted the key element in new trends for TV escapism. After all, the most talked-about new shows of the coming season are taking viewers back into the past – The Playboy Club and Pan Am are both set in the 1960s, and the Steven Spielberg-produced Terra Nova has a group of colonists going back 85 million years, where they'll tangle with dinosaurs and rebuild civilization, or something.
Burnett is probably thinking it would be shrewd to go into a past that so many American viewers are familiar with but rarely see dramatized in the style of today’s TV.
Also there is Charlie’s Angels, which will deliver some kind of nostalgia for the 1970s, a period that is so distant to many young people today that they probably think Noah built his ark around 1972. And then there’s the salacious, gossipy Good Christian Bellescoming in mid-season, whose name at least suggests a widespread interest in things Christian.
Seriously, though, given Burnett’s track record, the mind must boggle at the prospect of his Bible series. Burnett is partly responsible for a new genre of television with his competition shows featuring ordinary people with outsize personalities. These shows are also notorious for being edited to create narrative arcs, tensions and climaxes that conform to the tropes of fiction.
What sort of biblical stories will emerge under Burnett’s influence? Will the people and critters on Noah’s Ark be engaged in ludicrous competition in order to avoid being thrown overboard? Is this Adam and Eve couple a mere alliance to save the Tribe? See what I mean about a boggled mind?
Not that I know a vast amount about the Bible, as I’ve explained. But I do know this – Burnett is an immensely clever huckster, usually correct in his judgment of viewers’ tastes and needs. If he’s doing the Bible, then maybe the Bible is the future of TV storytelling. Take that, Playboy Bunnies and Pan Am flight attendants in tight skirts. Me, I’ll be glued to it, not being brought up a Prod and all.
Richard Thompson in Ottawa Sept. 7
in Soundboard
Posted
Thanks for the heads-up - will really have to get to this.