As one who is very cynical of television networks, I’m inclined to believe this is a BRILLIANT idea.

Dollhouse Fans Campaign To Save Show — Before 2009 Airdate | The Underwire from Wired.com

Die-hard Whedonites are rallying to save Dollhouse, the sci-fi drama about a group of high-tech killer assassins — eight months before the show even hits the airwaves.

Fearing Dollhouse will get booted off the air, just like the Joss Whedon-helmed show Firefly, fans are plotting and organizing their efforts in online forums. […]

DollhouseForums’ trailblazing leader Nathan posted the following as a call to arms: “After seeing some of my favorite television shows get canceled in the past — as well as the ’save this show’ campaigns that followed — I had the idea that a fan campaign BEFORE the show begins may be the best thing to do.”

Can’t say as I blame him.  If the show stinks, though, he might look silly.

I don’t usually get concerned or upset with Hollywood’s habit of remaking classic movies into modern crap.  The original movie is still there, and nothing can take away from that.

Still, I have to angst at this news:

Additional films seeing cash from this deal include a biographical look at Virgin mogul Richard Branson, as well as a remake of John Woo’s classic action flick Hard Boiled.

No, you do not mess with Hard Boiled.  You do not.  There’s no need.  They got that one perfect the first time out. It’s pure magic.  I don’t want to see the modern day CGI version of it with bullet time and video game editing. Ick.  Kids today should be forced to watch the original, instead.

There’s also news in that story that they’re making a Pac-Man movie.  That doesn’t disturb me as much as a remake of Hard Boiled.

Activision Unveils Guitar Hero World Tour, First Screens | Game | Life from Wired.com

The latest title in Activision’s Guitar Hero series has been officially announced via official press release, and to the surprise of no one, it sounds like Activision is blatantly copying Rock Band’s style.

Shame, but I suppose it’s necessary.  That said, I’d be more than willing to give it a try if Activision wants to pass along a copy. ;-)

In the end, really, it’s all about song selection.  Just like IDOL.

I’ve picked up two WiiWare games in the last week.  Both are interesting. Neither are worth the money in the end.

The first game is Pop.  It’s a simple game.  The screen fills up with four different colored bubbles, and you have to point and shoot them down.  Stick to one color, string ‘em along, don’t miss, and your score climbs.  Special bubbles cost you points or pop nearby bubbles.  The last trick is that you have a time limit.  Each bubble you pop adds on to the time, so there is a certain speed element.

It’s fun for the first minute.  As the game stretches on five and six minutes and my eyes start to burn from staring at the TV screen without looking away for so long, I get itchy.  Then, I get bored.  The game has a couple different variations including one in which you just pop bubbles for the heck of it. No points, no time limits, no rewards.  I guess it’s the Wii version of bubble wrap.

It’s nice to look at for thirty seconds, but will lose its luster in less than 15 minutes.  Not a good way to blow $7.

Star Soldier R, on the other hand, lasts longer than 15 minutes.  You might get a good solid 30 minutes out of this one.  It’s part Galaga, part — well, it’s like Galaga.  The screen scrolls.  You’re a ship.  Blast everything up efficiently.  There are two levels — one is a two minute game.  The other lasts five minutes.  You compete for the high score, and can compare your score on-line with other people in your neck of the woods.

It’s a very pretty game, but pretty redundant, too. It’s the same level over and over and over again.  You can fine-tune your strategies to get better at that level, but that’s about it.  And this one is $8.

I have $5 worth of Wii points left.  I think I’ll buy a classic NES game via the on-line store and get a lot more gameplay for my dollars.

First:

“Idol” Singer Diagnosed With Cancer, Luke Menard Hopeful About Battle With Hodgkin Lymphoma

Handsome “American Idol” finalist Luke Menard has been diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, a representative for the singer’s a capella group Chapter 6 confirmed.

Also:

Daughter of Steven Curtis Chapman Accidentally Killed By Son

The five-year-old daughter of American Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman has been struck and killed by a sport-utility vehicle driven by her brother. […]

McPherson says several members of the Chapman family witnessed the accident.

I think I just want to hide in a hole for the rest of the day now.

So, that ends that.

Here’s my funny story: The Mrs. and I are in the midst of buying a house. Tonight, we had an appointment with our mortgage guy to complete all the paperwork. We also had some paperwork to settle regarding the sale of Home A and purchase of Home B.  And we had to eat dinner.  And then we needed to research something else related to the mortgage.  And then there was some internal debate about how to handle certain things.

At 10:15, we turned on the DVR and started watching AMERICAN IDOL.  Five minutes in, my wife was falling asleep, so we fast forwarded straight to the last five minutes to see who won.  (Long-time blog readers probably already know what’s coming up next.)

There’s Ryan on stage with the two Davids.  There’s Simon apologizing to Cook for being a mean rotten bastiche last night.  There’s a guy handing Ryan the golden envelope with the results, taking up screen time for no good reason.

Then Ryan delivers the news: “The winner of American Idol.  2008.  Is…”

Click.  10:00 p.m.  End of recording.

I saw it coming a mile away. I’m not mad at IDOL.  This happens EVERY week. It’s happened on every finale.  I just forgot to program the DVR to record over by five minutes this year.

So I went to FoxNews.com and read the news that Cook won.  As it turns out, the momentum of Archie didn’t matter.  People had already made up their minds for who they planned to vote for BEFORE Tuesday night’s episode.

Tomorrow night, I’ll watch the rest of the two hours and pick on the least talented group of dancers in IDOL history.

But, wow, 97 million votes, was it?  That’s lunacy.  And a 56/44 split ain’t bad.
As for those lost last five minutes of video: Not a problem.  The world has BitTorrent.  I’m surprised the episode isn’t available yet as I type this at 10:51.  Those two hours are taking someone’s computer forever to digitize. . .
Ooh, but SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE begins tomorrow night, too!  Maybe I’ll catch IDOL over the weekend.  Was that really George Michael in the Prince Surprise Guest Slot in the show?  Fascinating.  If and when I watch the rest, I’ll try to post some comments here.  In the meantime, thanks for joining me again on this wild ride this year.

And so now we conclude this week’s look at the past week’s Twitters:

• Bought the Pop game from WiiWare last night. Might have been a waste of money. I’ll give it another couple of chances, though, so we’ll see. (Yeah, I think this game is a dud.  Might try that new space shooter game tonight, though.)

• @hotdogsladies - Thanks for the ComicBookResources mention on MBW. Also, best thing about ComicBookLover: Turn your MacBook on its side!

• Hunh, so it appears the horsies raced again today. Did not know that. No horses were killed in the making of THIS spectacle, at least.

• @eliopoulos - I love the new iFanboy graphic you did. Very cute! Nice job.

• Wishing there was a lighter weight way to scan things than loading up friggin’ Photoshop. I need Elements, maybe. . . 

• Is it wrong that I’m looking forward to the premiere of So You Think You Can Dance this Thursday? I might be burnt out on Idol just a tad.

• Ohmigod, Danny Noriega has a Stickam profile and, one presumes, occasional live feed. I’m scared.

• Danny’s solo on last season’s So You Think You Can Dance finale is the most ridiculously insanely good bit of leaping and spinning ever. Wow

• Am thinking about dropping Google Ad Words from the blog. Nobody clicks on them. It takes a year and a half to earn enough to get a check.

• Score! Tonight’s laundry yielded $6. Of course, that $6 probably came out of one of MY pockets . . .

• Thinking about our impending move this summer — just how many bookcases do I need to properly display and store all these graphic novels???

• How in the world can we have two Chris Eliopouli in comics? That’s insane! 

Well, it’s all over now but the voting, eh?

Going in to tonight, I really thought Cook was going to win it.  Then tonight happened.  Archuleta stole all the momentum, made Cook look small, and ran away with it.  I think Cook is toast, but will go on to be the biggest second place finisher in IDOL history, even above and beyond Clay Aiken.

Archuleta played the IDOL song book.  He knew the notes he had to hit, the types of songs he had to sing, and what his part was in the overall storyline. Clive picked “Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me,” which has been sung countless times on the show, including by Clay Aiken.  And Randy has been so unflinchingly in Archuleta’s corner that Archie could have gone back in time, slit Ghandi’s throat, shot Mother Teresa between the eyes, and pushed Stephen Hawking down a flight of stairs and Randy would have congratulated Archie on his invention of time travel.

Cook either missed a memo or has never watched IDOL before.  He could have won the whole thing with a strong third song, but instead went for a relatively monotonous slow tempo song.  If he had picked something that swelled up or rocked out or brought the crowd to its feet voluntarily in the middle of the song, he could have won.  “Billy Jean” would have done that.  That Aerosmith song would have worked.  He took the risk that doing a new song over a previously-performed song would work better.  It didn’t.  And now he’ll pay the price for it.

I didn’t hate his “Idol Song,” if we’re still calling them that.  The problem is, that very concept favors heavily the kind of singer Archie is, not Cook.  I can’t imagine Cook singing a song like “A Moment Like This” without looking fake. Archie can pull it off. He’s just a kid. He’ll be a huge Disney Radio hit for the next year or two.  His father will get drunk on power and probably try to re-negotiate his IDOL contract before heading to sleep tonight.  Poor Archie.

Still, the thing that really made me laugh this week was word from FOX that they’ve decided to retune the show for next season to take advantage of the personalities of the singers.  Funny, they said the same thing last year.  Didn’t quite work out that way, did it?

On the other hand, the worst ratings for a season of Idol ever means that, well, that Idol will still be the #1 show of the season by a mile and a half.

Hopefully, they’ll drop the lame and protracted boxing metaphor tomorrow and just give us two and a half hours of stretched out musical entertainment. (Are they still doing the half hour red carpet thing at 7:30?)  Crap, we’re going to see Jason Castro perform again tomorrow, aren’t we?  What duet will the Davids sing?  What mentors will the Top Ten sing with? Which awful contestants from the early try-out rounds will return to remind us of how bad they were?
And am I just getting too cynical for all of this now?

De Blieck Out!

P.S. Ruben still bores me to tears.

P.P.S. Ryan Seacrest’s watch got a credit in the closing credits.  I’m likely the only one to notice, but I was just ticked that HELL’S KITCHEN was getting a late start.

P.P.S. Thankfully, Danny Noriega was not invited to the finale tomorrow night.

More random postings compiled from my Twitterisms. . .This is in chronological order, starting last Sunday night:
I’ve got a mountain of work ahead of me tonight. It’s already 10:00 p.m. I’m screwed. (Updates to the original posting come afterwards in italics.)

• Finished Pipeline (late, but done), posted three more reviews to CBR Reviews, folded laundry, ironed for tomorrow, and ate a snack. I AM MAN

• A day without Twitter is like — well, yesterday for me, actually. (Seriously, I was really that busy.  Never had the chance to check messages last Tuesday.)

• Well, that was annoying: I ran out of Skype credit in the middle of recording a podcast. That’s also a first. (And now, five days later, the podcast is still not showing up on iTunes.  I’m getting annoyed.)

• Oh, man, did the Bachelor ever pick the wrong girl. . . Idiot.

• @gordontheintern - There’s no reasoning on this one. He did pick the fakest woman in the group. Her every move was an act from a script.

• @henchman21 - You may be the first to ever accuse me of having a life. Or this is the first time it’s true. One or the other.

• Yay, my Amazon Associates points for the month are back above $0! Special thanks to whoever just bought the Indiana Jones DVDs. Enjoy them! (The new movie is out this weekend.  I must see that in the theaters. It would be the only Indy movie I saw in the theaters, I believe.)

• Real estate is a very tiring game.   (And the further along in the game you get, the more headaches it can cause. It’s always fun when your lawyer and your realtor don’t agree on much.)

• I am so behind on e-mail now that I don’t even know where to start. Or where I left off.

• Am determined to play Wii tonight. Maybe even WiiWare.

• I had an iFanboy moment this week — my #1 pick of the week, despite being on the release list, didn’t actually ship. Whoopsie. Thanks all! (Darn your, Starman Omnibus!)

More to come tomorrow. . .

Relatively slow week, but a few interesting things are coming to stores:

• National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets

This time, I mean it.  They’re not just taking pre-orders.  This week, the Nicolas Cage sequel is really coming out. From left to right, above, that’s the single disc edition, the double disc edition, and the Blu Ray version.

• 24 Season One - Special Edition

Back when the first season originally came out to DVD, they weren’t doing as much of the bonus material stuff as they started to do with the second season.  Now, they’re going back and redoing the first with lots more stuff.  They’re also including the “Rookie” webisodes.

• The Muppet Show - Season Three

The classics continue. These are must-owns for those over the age of 30 and those under the age of 10.

Bonus question: If you had to recast ‘24′ using Muppet characters, who would play Jack Bauer?  Kermit?  Maybe a Fraggle?

This is one you really need to click through on to see at a bigger size. It’s much more impressive that way. Sadly, this blog isn’t wide enough to accomodate the large version.

On the way back out to the car from the local church carnival on Saturday, I spotted the God Rays shining above the church. How do you NOT take that picture?

In watching bits and pieces of last season’s SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE on MTV, I stumbled across this piece of genius.

That’s Danny Tidwell’s solo in the finale.  I lost track of the number of spins in the middle of it after 20.  I’m sure it hit at least two dozen.

New season starts Thursday.

Some miscellaneous thoughts on TV news and shows of the week:

• One of the great things about FOX is that they only program two hours a night before throwing it back to their local stations at 10:00.  This always means their shows end promptly at 10:00, with one or two special exceptions.  (Didn’t an X-FILES episode bleed into that hour once?)  But AMERICAN IDOL rules uber alles, and their overtime airings have meant that HELL’S KITCHEN just barely squeeks to an end for the 10:00 time slot.  The show’s only scheduled for 58 minutes as it is, but my DVR still winds up grabbing the last minute of IDOL and cutting off the last minute of HELL’S KITCHEN, which is Chef Ramsey’s final monologue and the coming attractions piece.

I have a better idea, FOX.  When your show runs long, start the next reality show already in progress. I don’t NEED to see the two minute prologue that tells me what happened in last week’s episode.  It’s not that important to a reality show.  Cut that out and let me hear the Chef’s reasons for why he evicted the wannabe he tossed.

• That said, they’re all a pack of losers again this year.  Christina has a chance, I think.  The rest are complete idiots, including that Matt.

• I don’t know who’s to blame, but it was really lousy when the last 20 minutes of the season finale of AMERICA’S NEXT TOP MODEL recorded without sound. Thanks, CW and Cablevision, whoever is to blame.  Idiots.  Now I’ll have to go BitTorrent the show, because you’re not getting any more of my time or money.

• I can’t get enough of that Fantasia performance Wednesday night. I’m still playing it back from YouTube. I hope FOX never shuts that clip down.

• BOSTON LEGAL is a show I lost time for about a year ago, maybe a little more.  It’s probably still a very good show.  It does feature The Shat, after all.  In my perfect world, I’ll catch up to it on DVDs someday after I win the lottery.  In the meantime, it’s been renewed for one last 13 episode season.  David E. Kelley will likely write them all.

It’s just another Kelley show with a short lifespan.  They flame out spectacularly and early, don’t they?  I think BOSTON PUBLIC is the best example of it.  (After the Hook Lady season, it became unwatchable.) On the other hand, I’d gladly take a creative and well written show that only lasts a few short seasons than a mediocre cliched show that lasts 7 plus.

• And I know this is setting the bar very low, but was this season’s BACHELOR the dumbest ever?  Look, I’m married.  I see these shows.  I admit it.  Sometimes, it’s cheesy fun.  The other 55 minutes of each episode is painful.  But how did the little blonde actress fake him out into thinking she was the one for him? She’s clearly the fakest of the lot!  But her Daddy is Lorenzo Lamas, so she has that going for her.  My favorite part of the series was when she referred to her father as having had a TV show once.  You know, RENEGADE?  In the 90s?  What, is FALCON CREST really too old a reference now?  Or was she just too young to have ever stayed up late enough to watch it?  It was on after DALLAS, after all, and that’s pretty late for a 5 year old.

• My mother used to let us watch DALLAS with her at night.  And we were in the room when she watched those trashy soap operas, too.  Sure, I was playing with my GI JOE toys, but still — is that suitable material for a kid?  Is my impending fatherhood weighing on my mind to this degree now, too? Wow.

• The major networks all released their new schedules this last week, and I didn’t care much about any of them.  Is this a sign of maturity?  Or poor programming? Or a healthy track record of disappointment from the networks?

CMT : News : Shania Twain, Mutt Lange Separating After 14 Years

Shania Twain and Robert John “Mutt” Lange are separating, according to a spokesman from her record label. Twain and Lange were married on Dec. 28, 1993, and worked together extensively throughout her career.

I haven’t seen her on TV in awhile, but she’s not an unattractive woman.

(Thanks for the pointer, Tim!)