Though its recent success in college basketball might lead one to believe that Syracuse, N.Y. – where I watch the Saint Joseph’s Hawks begin their season with a twenty-point win over Fairleigh Dickinson Monday night – is a nice college town. And while the campus proper there is nice, and the support for the basketball team extends through the community, the town itself leaves a lot to be desired. There seem to be plenty of restaurants to go around (go to Cosmo’s pizza shop for breakfast and get a toasted honey bun), but the architecture outside of campus is bland and the weather, from what I understand, is rarely anything to write home about. Not to mention the fact that the Carrier Dome – for all intents and purposes one of basketball’s new Meccas after the Orangemen won the title – is a bland, aging, basketball-focused version of Veteran’s Stadium. Give me Philadelphia and the Palestra any day.

Note: I spent the last few days in Syracuse, N.Y., with only a little access to Internet. These are the posts that were meant to run on the days in the timestamps.

The more I think about it, the more I realize the likelihood that my recent absence from blogging is due in part to the negative feedback one can expect when writing for the Web. Of course, I speak not of the readers of Movie Hawk; with the exception of a few tiffs here and there, my nose is relatively clean, and my readers are overwhelmingly supportive. I think instead of the war between fanboy factions: Mac vs. Windows, Marvel vs. D.C., Studio 60 vs. …itself. Too often, especially on blogs, people go out of their way to write inappropriately negative propaganda against an opponent with little recourse. Yes, I understand that I’m not breaking new ground here, but I feel the need to point it out. If you don’t like blog posts about Apple products (certain Gizmodo readers), don’t read them. If Veronica Mars isn’t your cup of tea (some AICN folks), don’t waste your time trashing it in the talkback. Leave those spaces to those of us who want to use it to spread more information. Believe me, if you pull back for a second instead of throwing your negative hat into the ring, it’ll save us all a lot of money in future blood pressure medication.

Note: I spent the last few days in Syracuse, N.Y., with only a little access to Internet. These are the posts that were meant to run on the days in the timestamps.

Since the disappearance of Seinfeld from the network airwaves, fresh, funny, simply silly material has been in short supply (though a few shows have wisely stockpiled the precious jokes). That childish sense of humor has been largely taken over by movies; specifically, the semiannual offerings of Pixar and Dreamworks. Bee Movie, the latest offering by the latter, fully embraces the impish ethos. Not surprisingly, it comes from Seinfeld himself. And while it can’t soar to Pixar’s heights, Bee Movie hovers along rather nicely.

Continue Reading »

As I continue to consider what new blogs to add to my blogroll, I bid a fond adieu to a few former favorites; namely, “It Moves Me!” Bill is a good friend of mine, and he’s a hell of a writer, but he hasn’t posted in more than a year. If Avington one day goes back to writing online, I’ll be one of the first to welcome him back with open arms.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blogroll, and while I consider what to remove, I offer up one new addition: Tack Sharp, the new blog from uber-photographer and Movie Hawk sibling Kelly Anne. As TS grows, it will no doubt be a useful photography resource, something that will be extremely useful as I try to become a better casual photographer. Not to mention a good place to see some neat photos.

Welcome to the first real weekend of NaBloPoMo, after my enthusiasm for the project has started to wane. Today’s post is a quickie: a video of what Fox’s 24 would be like in 1994. Courtesy College Humor.

Listen, I know you’re important. Clearly, the fact that you arrive at work after all the good spots are gone in your oversized SUV signifies that you’re far more important than the rest of us. But that doesn’t give you the right to park on the sidewalk four days in a row. Drive around until you find a spot. Don’t inconvenience everyone - pedestrians, other drivers in the lot - by blocking half of the sidewalk. And don’t leave a message for security to not ticket you because there’s no available parking. If you’re so important that you can’t look harder for a spot, you’re important enough to pay the ticket when you can’t find one.

While it’s hard to look at successful people in New York and Los Angeles refusing to do their jobs while I write online for free in the time I’m not working at a non-profit, there is a legitimate backbone to the ongoing Hollywood writer’s strike. Isn’t it the rich getting richer, you ask? In some cases, yes. Some members of the WGA are well off, but that doesn’t mean that some of the brightest minds in Hollywood shouldn’t be compensated for their work appearing in new media. It’s the perfect time for a strike, too, because TV is only just beginning to make its strongest legal steps into the Internet. And though we won’t feel the full force of the strike until January if it continues, action needs to be taken now, so history (the 1988 strike that cost the entertainment industry $500 million) won’t repeat itself, and so that an actor’s strike next year can be avoided.

[United Hollywood]

Though my preference in television has long evolved away from the traditional sitcoms of my youth to hour-long dramas and half-hour comedies with high concepts and no laugh tracks, one throwback show has managed to be one of the few new series this year to keep its grasp on me: The Big Bang Theory. Yes, I know, it follows a lot of the predictable setups and punch lines — hot waitress moves in across the hall from twenty-something physicists, laughs ensue — that dozens of other cookie-cutter sitcoms rely on, but the writers and actors provide interesting variables to the typical equation.

Continue Reading »

It’s hard, really, to feel bad for Aaron Sorkin. After the runaway success of The West Wing and the critical embrace of the pilot episode of Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, the series’ failure could easily be shrugged off. But for so many fans of Studio 60, its departure from the airwaves marked a significant downturn in the amount of quality television available. If only Sorkin hadn’t felt it so necessary to continue telling us so.

Continue Reading »