Blog Archives
Liz Tells Frank About The eBook of Skip It/Watch It Guides!
Dear Frank,
You want it, baby? You got it.
That’s right, it’s a semi-comprehensive, totally subjective guide to 21 television shows of the past two decades, filled with recommendations as to which episodes to skip and which episodes to watch!
What new shows get covered? Oh, how about Alias, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer AND Angel, Dollhouse, Friday Night Lights, Fringe, How I Met Your Mother, Lost, New Girl, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The West Wing and The X-Files? How about THAT.
Plus, there are a few other surprises — like the Doctor Who guide getting updated through 2013! It’s a good time, especially thanks to Whitney Bishop and Andreanna Ditton’s Star Trek: Voyager and Farscape entries, and a foreword written by Farscape executive producer Richard Manning! Ricky helped make Star Trek, Frank!
The Skip It/Watch It Guides are now available exclusively on Amazon for $3.99. I very much hope you enjoy.
Love,
Liz
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “Larry Crowne”
Dear Frank,
I have a pretty long list of things to tell you these days — like Orphan Black! I hear really good things about Orphan Black, Frank! — but I keep getting distracted by other stuff. You know, life, the universe, bizarre Tom Hanks movies…
I stumbled into Larry Crowne on HBO the other day while procrastinating some tasks, but had no plans to give it a single additional thought ever again until for some reason, I found myself trying to describe it to a friend, and was like, shit, this movie is WEIRD. So now you’re going to learn about it, Frank. Get excited!
Larry Crowne is the story of people rebuilding their lives in an almost completely conflict-free fashion. It is the story of a large cast of charming actors standing around and (for the most part) being pretty nice to each other. It is the story of a man finding freedom by buying a used scooter. It is simultaneously really strange and really boring, which is in its own way vaguely interesting? It’s a weird movie, Frank.
Let’s see if I can sum it up pretty quick.
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “World War Z” (The Movie, Mostly)
Dear Frank,
You and I have been through this already, the whole thing where I don’t love zombie stories as a rule. BUT! That rule has plenty of exceptions, including the times when those zombie stories go post-modern.
Which is to say that yes, Frank, I am one of those people who has read Max “Son of Mel” Brooks’s (wonderful!) World War Z. It’s a really cool book! I mean, I read it years ago, but I have noble intentions of rereading it soon, and appreciating its intelligence in approaching the idea of a zombie outbreak post-facto.
I have also read a draft of J.M. Stracynski’s attempt to turn Brooks’s book into a screenplay that would then become a movie. And I have read so many of the articles about how making this movie was a major kerfuffle.
::SARCASM VOICE:: Oh, you mean attempting an intellectual approach to a classically low-brow genre wasn’t warmly embraced by a major motion picture studio? I AM SHOCKED. ::END OF SARCASM VOICE::
My point is: I saw World War Z with the lowest of expectations… Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” Season 8
Dear Frank,
As you’re a man who enjoys cross-platform approaches to narrative, I think you’ll appreciate this. Buffy Season 8 is different from other Buffy comics that have been released by Dark Horse over the years because of the words “Season 8” — unlike other comics, this is no stand-alone side adventure. This is what Joss Whedon and his team genuinely consider to be the continuation of the Buffy story, following that whole Buffy-shared-the-slayer-power-with-everyone-and-oh-yeah-Sunnydale-collapsed-into-the-earth thing you might remember from the TV show’s series finale.
And freed from budget constraints by the magic of sequential art, let’s just say that some imaginations get a massive fucking workout. Frank, every once in a while I am genuinely concerned that I will not be able to capture the batshit insanity of something I am telling you about. Today is one of those days.
By the way, when I say batshit insanity, I do mean that in a good way. Mostly.
What happens in it, Frank? Oh, my god, so much stuff. But I’ll try and keep things simple. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In the “Sarah Silverman Program” Episode Christopher Eccleston Is In
Dear Frank,
Netflix has been in the news a bit this week, which always leaves me a little nervous because many times (as you might have observed), what we discuss here is directly affected by what’s available on Netflix Instant.
For example, this weekend I saw that almost the entire run of The Sarah Silverman Program was now available, which made me happy because there is this one incredible episode of that show that I’d been wanting to watch again. But weirdly, Frank, when I put out the question on Twitter and Facebook of whether or not I should tell you about this one episode of The Sarah Silverman Program that happens to guest star Christopher Eccleston, there was not even the slightest amount of interest!
Now, if someone else were to ask me if I wanted to hear about this episode, I would say FUCK YES, because it’s incredible — so I can only assume that this is a sign that THE PEOPLE MUST BE TOLD. I cannot let them live in ignorance much longer. Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In the 1996 “Doctor Who” Back Door Pilot
Dear Frank,
As you may be aware, the history of Britain’s classic science fiction series Doctor Who is epic — we’re talking about a show that premiered the day after Kennedy was assassinated and is still on the air. But the show hasn’t been running non-stop since 1963; between the “classic” Who years and the Russell T. Davies relaunch, the franchise experienced a fallow period. A very long fallow period. During which some truly crazy shit happened.
See, in between the show’s initial cancellation in 1989 and the recent reboot, the Fox Broadcasting Company got the idea that maybe Doctor Whowould work for American audiences. This was the year 1996, at which time Fox had established a proud tradition of airing crazy sci-fi shows, including The X-Files, Strange Luck, M.A.N.T.I.S. and VR.5, so the idea of them picking up Who isn’t as bizarre as one might think.
Hedging its bets, Fox pulled a pretty common network move, commissioning a back door pilot to be shot in Canada (another proud ’90s Fox tradition!) and starring a new (younger and presumably hotter) Doctor — if it worked, then Fox would continue the series, and if it didn’t work, all that would happen is an embarrassing memory for all involved. (GUESS WHICH ONE HAPPENED GUESS!!!!) Read the rest of this entry
Liz Tells Frank What Happened In... 