Speaking of TV shows: did anybody else understand what the hell was going on with this week’s “Battlestar Galactica?” (Called “Sine Qua Non.”) It felt to me like what would happen if you took all the components of a BSG episode, fed them into a computer:

Stand-off at gun-point
Apollo makes speech about making tough choices to [...]

Okay, the “Lost” people are totally making this stuff up as they go along.
At least, I hope they are, because if the season finale of season 4 really is what they’ve had planned since the end of season 3, then they’ve been yanking our chains for a year.
It’s not that it was bad; it’s just [...]

Over three years ago, I wrote on here about a slick app for the Mac called Delicious Library. It’s a database for your books, movies, CDs, and videogames that presents everything by letting you scan through shelves of the covers.
The first version got a ton of coverage on the internet, mostly because of its extremely [...]

Memorial Day weekend seemed like as good a time as any to make some progress on the Netflix queue, in the form of a style-over-substance double feature.
In one of the special features for The Orphanage, executive producer Guillermo del Toro describes a couple of scenes as “pure cinema.” He’s talking about the scenes without dialogue [...]

Previously on Spectre Collie, I made the claim that storytelling in “passive” media like books and movies isn’t as passive as people like to think. A well-told story demands that the audience stay actively engaged in the telling, processing what’s come so far and anticipating what happens next.
The interesting thing is: this is so integral [...]

My on-again, off-again mind-meld with Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com seems to be back on again, with her review of Indiana Jones 4. The part she describes best is the first scene where (possible spoiler?) Indy runs into Marion:

When he sees her, his face shows what can only be described as pure delight, and it’s little [...]

Watching the new Indiana Jones movie gave me severe diarrhea. Actually, the two events are most likely unrelated, but I wanted to take a cue from the pharmaceutical business and warn of any potential side effects: a small but not insignificant group of viewers reported spending the 15 hours following the movie being frequently and [...]

As much as I liked working for Disney, I definitely don’t miss having to go down to Los Angeles so often. Southern California and I just don’t get along, and the past few weeks have been filled with pleasant reminders of how estranged we’ve become. United and Hilton both sent me cards revoking my Premier [...]