I’ve seen a number of franchises come and go since I started playing video games some 25 years ago. Regardless of genre, there’s no shortage of franchises that have been stellar over the years with many living on even to this day through a myriad of sequels and reboots. … … Read More
Analyst: Netflix would be most-watched "cable network"
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings noted on Facebook that his company served up some four billion hours of streaming video in 2013 — and we're not even done with April. He also plugged an upcoming Netflix original series named Hemlock Grove, a horror-genre show directed by Eli Roth. … Read More
North Korea’s Attack Plan: Apocalypse Never Mind
It didn’t take long for TV coverage of North Korea to enter the “Retired General Sketches Out War Games on a Big Map” phase. But a recent example of the genre on CNN demonstrated only the alarmism seems to be the order of the day. … Read More
Books aren’t dead yet
Without a doubt, book publishing is an industry in a state of flux, but even the nature of the flux is up for grabs. Take a recent example of the traditional tech-journalism take on the situation, an article by Evan Hughes for Wired magazine, titled “Book Publishers Scramble to Rewrite Their Future.” The facts in the story are indisputable, but the interpretation? Not so much.The news peg is the success of a self-published series of post-apocalyptic science fiction novels, “Wool,” by Hugh Howie. Available as e-books and print books from Amazon, the series became a hit, and Howie recently sold print-only rights to a New York publisher, Simon & Schuster. Print-only because Howie and his agent determined that they were making plenty of money selling the e-books on their own.Wired characterizes this as a “huge concession” on the part of Simon & Schuster, and in one sense it is: The publisher won’t receive any e-book revenue, and it is in e-book format that “Wool” has seen its success so far. On the other hand, “Wool” is not only already very popular among the genre fans who made it an e-book bestseller, it’s also an object of curiosity for the many otherwise-uninterested people captivated by Howie’s rags-to-riches story in the Wall Street Journal. (By far the best-selling e-book by self-publishing exemplar John Locke is not one of his thrillers, but “How I Sold One Million E-Books.”)Continue Reading… … Read More
‘The Scared Is Scared’: 5 Pearls Of Wisdom From A 6-Year-Old Storyteller (VIDEO)
When an inventive young filmmaker turns to a 6-year-old for inspiration, the result is likely to be a masterpiece. And “The Scared is Scared,” made by Bianca Giaever, based on 6-year-old Asa Baker-Rouse’s improv storytelling, certainly stands up to the hype and fanfare around the web. The only barrier to soaking up Asa’s genius? At just under eight minutes, the video is practically an epic in the genre of viral content. For this reason, we’ve chosen five of our favorite bits and laid them out for you below.
1. When in doubt, repeat the same word several times for emphasis. Also, just be honest if you’re not sure about what’s going on.
What was the fateful change that forever ruined a TV series?
Last night’s “Community,” the first of the series’ fourth season, was also the first made without creator Dan Harmon, the difficult perfectionist who had made it the most ambitious, genre-goofing comedy on TV. Since Harmon got fired last spring, it’s been very hard to imagine “Community” staying “Community” without him. The new episode, despite being a good-faith, fittingly meta-effort, only solidified this: The new iteration of “Community” feels like a zombified one. This got us thinking: What are some other changes, be they a behind the scenes personnel switch, a plot point, or a casting decision, that forever ruined a popular TV show? We took to Twitter to the ask the TV critics who participated in our year-end Blue Glow Awards their opinions (and sparked a great debate about “Moonlighting” in the process.) Here’s what they had to say.
