Friday, October 13, 2006

Secret's Out! (And I Do Mean Secret...)

I have no idea exactly when it happened but something called "The Reelz Channel" recently snuck its way into my TV channel lineup. I have DirecTV, which runs it on Channel 225 and it's supposed to also be on Channel 299 over at The Dish Network. It may even be on your local cable feed. The Reelz Channel website is urging everyone to "contact your cable or satellite provider and demand that they connect you to the ultimate movie information resource" and usually, the word "demand" would suggest they haven't made a load of progress in that area. But I found one online article that says they've made deals with Time-Warner Cable and Comcast Cable so it may be on your set before you know it. In my case, it was.

So far, The Reelz Channel doesn't look like the ultimate movie information resource but hey, it's early. The network only started a little more than two weeks ago...on September 27. It consists of a lot of shows about movies and they seem to repeat endlessly throughout the week.

This is good because it means you'll have hundreds of thousands of chances in the next seven days to catch the first episode of Secret's Out, a half-hour program hosted by my pal — and a man who is the ultimate movie information resource — Leonard Maltin. Someone has been wise enough not only to give him a show but to allow him to cover something other than what's opening this weekend. The premise, as the title suggests, is to cover great undiscovered and forgotten films. A great idea. When was the last time you saw a program that covered movies and ran a segment on the version of David Copperfield that starred Freddie Bartholemew and W.C. Fields? Heck, when was the last time you saw a program that covered movies that predated Rob Schneider?

A new Secret's Out debuts each Friday and then repeats over and over and over until the following Friday. Those of you who TiVo your television should be aware that it is not humanly possible to get a Season Pass that will record each episode once. I just tried it and it wanted to record the show twenty times this week. Set up a manual recording to snag one specific broadcast per week. You'll enjoy it.

I'm posting this because if I didn't, it might be a long time before you learned of this new channel and this fine new show. I'd never heard a peep about either until yesterday when Leonard told me about both of them. I can't believe this is the extent of their publicity campaign. They must have at least a couple of viewers who didn't find out that the channel was on their sets because Leonard Maltin told them.

• Posted at 6:46 PM · LINK

Today's Political Comment

Congressguy Christopher Shay says that he studied photos of what was done to prisoners at Abu Ghraib and "It was outrageous...they took pictures of soldiers who were naked and they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture." He later added, "I saw probably 600 pictures of really gross, perverted stuff...the bottom line was it was sex. It wasn't primarily about torture."

If that's his idea of sex, things must get pretty kinky in the Shay household. Especially since his definition doesn't seem to require any form of mutual consent.

• Posted at 3:07 PM · LINK

EssEnEll on DeeVeeDee

Here's an announcement about the complete first season of Saturday Night Live coming out on DVD. The release date is December 5 and the set allegedly contains every single sketch and musical performance for a whopping running time of more than 26 hours. I'll post an Amazon link for ordering as soon as they add it to their catalog.

I suspect this will sell very well but I wonder how subsequent volumes will do. How many people will be in a hurry to order Season 4 and Season 5 when they've never found the time to watch all of the first three seasons they already purchased? That's a helluva lot of catch phrases, repeated gags, Conehead bits, Tom Snyder impressions, etc.

I also wonder if some folks won't be disappointed in the show as viewed in that format. The reruns have played well for years in syndication and elsewhere...but those reruns are usually chopped down to eliminate the weakest third of each show. Some episodes, that third was pretty weak. I spoke once to one of the folks involved in the chopping-down of 90 minute shows to 60 and asked if Lorne Michaels had personally decided what to keep and what to lop. She said yes, he had...but that the decisions were usually pretty obvious. Someone else would make the preliminary choices and it was rare that Michaels — or whoever supervised the non-Michaels episodes — had to overrule that. It was especially simple in some cases because Michaels (or other guys in charge when the shows first aired) would routine the shows by sticking the pieces they liked least near the end. She said, "We rarely kept a sketch that aired in the last half hour."

Well now, if you buy these DVDs, you're paying for the sketches that aired in the last half hour. And while it might be a treat to see some of them again after so long, some of them were there for a reason.

I also wonder, if they're going to go ahead and do other seasons, if they won't run into problems trying to be "complete." There are a couple of segments that had to be yanked from reruns for legal reasons...like the one in which Jay Mohr plagiarized another comedian's routine and made it into a sketch. I believe that when the lawsuit was settled, it was agreed the sketch would never run again, and it was omitted when the otherwise-unedited full episode reran. There are also a number of cases where music was changed for reruns or when a version of a song or sketch from Dress Rehearsal was substituted in all reruns for the live performance...the time Sinead O'Connor tore up a photo of the Pope, for example. I guess they'd still advertise the shows as complete but they wouldn't be complete as they originally aired.

Here's something I've been thinking about for around twenty seconds now. The folks selling the SNL material on DVD have found numerous ways to repackage it for sale...theme compilations, "Best of Certain Performer" collections, etc. I wonder how long it's going to be before they begin compiling DVDs of the "lost" Saturday Night Live material, meaning performances taped at Dress Rehearsals. There are a couple of performers who had so many of their sketches cut after those preliminary tapings that they used to joke that their "Best of..." specials would be The Best of Dress Rehearsal. Well, maybe that'll happen. Some of that footage has been used for bonus material on DVD releases but I think it's all been sketches that were later performed on the air shows, and they include both versions on the DVD as a kind of comparison. I'll bet one of these days, they'll try issuing sets of not only that stuff but also the sketches that were taped at Dress and then dropped...kind of a "Worst of Saturday Night Live" compilation. There might be legal or union complications that will prevent it but I can't believe someone won't at least try to make it happen.

And if they really want to sell something "lost," they oughta dig out the disastrous live episode that was done in prime time for the New Orleans Mardi Gras in 1977. If you never heard about that one, here's what happened.

• Posted at 2:21 PM · LINK

A Public Service

For those of you who live in Los Angeles and who are puzzling over the weather forecast for today and tomorrow morning, I will attempt to translate what the National Weather Service is saying...

We don't have a friggin' clue what's gonna happen.

This has been a public service of news from me, your full service weblog. Thank you.

• Posted at 9:11 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

This runs something like 14 minutes but if you haven't seen it, it's probably worth the time. In 1995, Universal Studios was acquired by the Seagram's Company, the largest distiller of alcoholic beverages in the world. This placed it under the control of Seagram's CEO, Edgar Bronfman, Jr..

For reasons that now seem elusive, Bronfman or some part of the new ownership decided it would be a good idea to create an employee training film that would sell the idea that Universal was and would continue to be an "artist friendly" environment. If that was a good idea, it may not have been wise to hand the assignment to Matt Stone and Trey Parker who, of course, are best known for South Park. The two men put together an amusing film loaded with celebrity cameos but the folks at Universal didn't know what to do with the finished product. It made the rounds — everyone in Hollywood seemed to have a copy of a copy of a copy — and now it's on the Internet...but as I understand it, it was never really used for any kind of orientation. As you watch it, you might try to imagine the reaction of the Universal execs when they first saw it and wondered aloud why they ever thought this would be a useful tool...

• Posted at 1:21 AM · LINK

October 14, 2006 • Current • October 12, 2006