Downton Abbey

 Pop Culture, Reviews  2 Responses »
Jul 232011
 

This is a master’s class in passive aggressive behaviour.

Maggie Smith playing a terrible old British woman? Fantastic. The wardrobes and the hats and the men in their hunting clothes? Awesome. The passive aggression? Rampant. That lady who played Harriet Jones in Doctor Who as Maggie Smith’s frenemy? Hilarious. Everyone constantly asking the eldest daughter why she doesn’t want to marry cousin Matthew? Gross. Thomas and O’Brian? Deliciously evil.

Downton Abbey is one of the most expensive television programs ever created and the reason for that is because it’s absolutely gorgeous. I’m also guessing that Maggie Smith doesn’t work cheap. Whatever they pay her, it’s worth every penny. These people are terrible to each other in the politest way possible. I love the entire staff, the evil ones are fantastically evil and terrible. And Anna! Once you put her in modern clothing, she’s a total knockout.

So who’s going to like this show? Well, I’d say Jane Austen fans, but we all remember my attempts to read one of her books, which was a total disaster. People who like Harry Potter or other British stuff probably would enjoy it. I’m not sure who reads this blog, or else I’d name each and every one of you and then tell you how confident I am that you would enjoy it. If you want my opinion on if you should watch this show or not, please let me know. Maybe I can facilitate you by lending you my copy.

Overall, who doesn’t want to watch entitled British people being terrible to each other in awesome hats?

 Posted by Shannon Patterson at 1:11 pm

Parks And Recreation

 Pop Culture, Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 172011
 

I’ve never really been aware of Amy Poehler’s work. I wasn’t a big SNL fan, and most of the things I’ve seen her in also starred Tina Fey. Since I have a giant girl crush on Tina Fey, I never really took much notice of Poehler. It wasn’t until I started digging through the archives of the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, coupled with a recent episode of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast that I decided that Parks and Rec was worth checking out. The PCHH team spent large amounts of many episodes talking about how excellent this show was, and comparing it to other things that I already knew I like.

There’s currently three seasons. The first season of six episodes sets up the characters and some of the major story lines. It was a bit shaky, but I instantly fell in love with the Andy character, played by Chris Pratt who was on Everwood. Aziz Ansari’s character Tom steals almost all the scenes he’s in. The whole cast is absolutely fabulous. It took a while for the show to figure out the right balance between earnestness and silliness with Amy Poehler’s character, Leslie Knope. She is a fantastic actress, and I now have a bit of a girl crush on Amy Poehler in addition to Tina Fey, Summer Glau, that chick who played Olivia on Fringe, and lots of other people.


Also, I now hate it when people use the word literally.

But despite the show’s silliness here’s the reason why I like it so much: The show makes you care about these characters. It’s got real heart. I’m not usually one to want to hook all of the TV show’s characters up with each other, as I think it’s often terrible and rarely improves the show. In Parks And Rec, I was happy when they hooked up Andy and another one of the characters, because I generally want these people to be happy. I love how committed Leslie’s character is to her job and how positive she is.

Parks and Recreation is a fantastic show starring very very funny people. It’s on NBC, and I don’t actually know what day or time it’s on, because I just discovered it all in one huge chunk on demand. You gotta watch it. I would suggest starting with season two. It’s great. It makes me laugh so hard.

 Posted by Shannon Patterson at 10:58 pm

Podcast Recommendations

 Life, Pop Culture, Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 142011
 

It took me a long time to get into them, but now I must admit that I’m quite a fan of podcasts. I find them good to listen to at work in the mornings as it wakes up my brain a bit more than music. It was when I found that most of my favourite CBC programs were available as podcasts that I started listening to them fairly regularly. I know it’s not for everyone, but I thought I should share some of my favourites with those of you who are podcasting-inclined.

Pop Culture Happy Hour
From NPR’s Monkey See blog. Most of the movies and TV that I have found within the last six months [Downton Abbey, Parks & Rec, Bridesmaids, etc.] that I love is because of the Pop Culture Happy Hour crew. Four NPR editors get together on a mostly weekly basis and talk about books, music, TV, and movies. There are usually three segments per show and each podcast lasts about forty to forty five minutes. At the end of each podcast, they have a segment of things that are making them happy this week. There’s a fun jingle, it’s a very cheerful podcast, and overall, I love it.

Q
Q is a CBC radio program that features long-form interviews. It gained a lot of internet exposure after Billy Bob Thornton sorta imploded. Jian Ghomeshi interviews authors, actors, musicians and all sorts of other cultural figures in a one-hour daily program. A lot of the new music I have found is because of interviews and performances featured on Q [Adele, The Secret Sisters, Janelle Monae, etc.]. Q is awesome and Jian is a great interviewer.

Search Engine
Search Engine is a Canadian podcast that talks about digital culture. Jesse Brown talks a lot about digital rights, usually related with the hijinks of the Canadian government or the CRTC. Each episode is about ten to fifteen minutes. I haven’t found any new TV shows to watch because of this podcast, but I do feel more informed.

This American Life
Ira Glass has an awesome radio voice. Every week, This American Life delivers long-form stories about stuff. Last week, it was about natural gas extraction and it made me mad. Two weeks ago it featured a segment about actors in jail performing act V of Hamlet. The stories are hard to pin down, but they’re always poignant and usually informative.

WTF with Marc Maron
This one isn’t for my Mom. Marc Maron has on mostly comedians and they have a conversation. About once every few weeks, this starts with Marc and the interviewee talking about why Marc didn’t like them in the 90s, then moves on to other things. Rarely is the interview extremely funny, and this is a great thing. Maron’s interview with Amy Poehler, coupled with hearing about it for a year on Pop Culture Happy Hour is led me to try Parks and Rec (which I will tell you all about later — spoilers: it’s great!).

RadioLab
Nerds talk about nerdy things. Awesomely.

So there you are! Podcasts I like. Do any of you listen to good podcasts?

 Posted by Shannon Patterson at 1:59 pm

You Are Not a Gadget

 Bookstravaganza, Internet Discoveries & Bandwagons, Pop Culture, Reviews  No Responses »
Jul 122011
 

You Are Not a Gadget - Jaron Lanier

You Are Not a Gadget
Jaron Lanier
2010, 224 pages

Mr. Lanier wants the kids to get off his lawn. And his lawn is the internet. And from what I could tell, he misses the good old days, where people were creative on the internet. Because nobody is creative on the internet anymore. Mashups aren’t creative, and people are only making mashups now.

The author really enjoys coining new phrases as well. He used the term ‘digital technomarxism’ more than once. I believe he also said something about digital socialism, and probably digital capitalism.

So here’s his argument about why people aren’t creative on the internet any more: people use Facebook, and people can’t be creative on Facebook because they’re too busy playing Farmville, which is dumb. Facebook users are dumb. Facebook users don’t engage in meaningful ways. Facebook has made online interactions shallow and pointless, rendering humanity into a hollow shell of its former self. Memes are dumb. The internet is full of dumb.

Ugh. Does he not remember how dumb the internet was in 1997? The Internet was always dumb. It was just like it is now, except it was full of terrible animated gifs, personal websites with “under construction” signs, and it was way slower. Now, there’s more people to spread the dumb around.

So back to the book. I was expecting something different than the guy who came up with virtual reality whining about how the internet is shallow. It was written in really lofty prose that led me to believe the guy thought he was significantly smarter than he was. I didn’t find the book put together a cohesive argument about whatever this guy was trying to tell me. I’m not sure what he was trying to tell me. It feels like there were six or seven different things going on that never really fit together, and I wouldn’t like you to read it.

Now, back to the Internet being full of dumb: everything is full of dumb. Newspapers are full of dumb. The radio is full of dumb. Television is full of dumb. I don’t know much about telegraphs, but I’m betting it was full of dumb, too. This isn’t new. Most content, in any medium, isn’t brilliant. Most of it is mediocre, some is awful, and some is brilliant. I think it’s all about finding those little niches where you can engage in the stuff you love and find brilliant.

That’s why I won’t be passing this book along to any of my brilliant and wonderful friends. I don’t want them turning dumb.

 Posted by Shannon Patterson at 9:14 pm

Player One: What Is to Become of Us

 Bookstravaganza, Pop Culture, Reviews  No Responses »
Mar 092011
 

Player One: What Is To Become Of Us - Douglas Coupland

Player One: What Is to Become of Us
Douglas Coupland
2010, 256 pages

This book actually comes from the CBC Massey Lecture series. It was delivered in five evenings over five hours, and all in all, it feels rushed because of it. Like most of the later Coupland books, a group of disaffected people end up in a room, interacting with each other in monologue format, while the world collapses around them. This time they’re in an airport bar. A couple meeting for a first-time hookup, a bartender, a rogue preacher, and a semi-autistic young woman. Peak oil hits, there’s snipers on the roof, and everyone is going ape-shit. And these people sit in bar and hide out.

Coupland seems to be repeating a lot of his “greatest hits” in this book.  It is as if he took one part Girlfriend in a Coma, mixed it with one part Generation A, and added some stuff about peak oil, just to be modern.  Which isn’t to say the book is not enjoyable, it is. It’s just to say that there’s nothing new here. Douglas Coupland only seems capable of writing in one “voice”. He’s very good at it, and his books are excellent, I just wish I could come across a new Douglas Coupland novel not already know what’s in it.

This was a Bookstravaganza book. It tied with Emma by Jane Austen, so I’m reading it now. I will post a new list probably in the next week.

 Posted by Shannon Patterson at 11:16 am
 Older Entries  Newer Entries
© 2011 Mostly Harmless Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha