MarkKawakami.com

Some illusions suck. This one doesn't.

Categories: Just Plain Cool

A very cool optical illusion

It's Showtime, Showtime

Categories: Television

[UPDATE: The petition is online here.

Here's a petition I'm going to start, because we all know how well online petitions work*, right?

To the Programming Executives at Showtime:

I have a problem: My favorite show just got axed. You have a problem: Showtime doesn't have all the subscribers it could have. So we both have problems, but I think there's a way that both of us can come out ahead by working together, and Showtime will be a hero to the whole industry.

I, like millions of people around the world, am a fan of the brilliant television show "Arrested Development". As a matter of fact, the term "fan" probably doesn't begin to describe my devotion to this show. I imagine that many at Showtime feel the same way. As you already know, the future of "Arrested Development" has never been worse. The Fox network has reduced this season's order to 13 episodes and taken it off the shedule during the critical sweeps period. At the moment, "Arrested Development" is not cancelled, but it's clear that's where Fox is heading. Despite winning universal critical praise, astonishing fan loyalty and numerous awards (including six Emmys), Fox apparently believes that their poor marketing and unfriendly scheduling was the most they could do to support the best and most inventive television comedy in years.

They've made a huge mistake.

For loyal fans, the news is grim, but there's one tiny ray of hope: Rumors persist that you at Showtime are considering picking up the show. For instance, an entry at http://www.tvsquad.com/2005/11/14/is-there-hope-for-arrested-development-after-all and a San Francisco Gate article at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/14/DDG4NFMUAI1.DTL both indicate that you may see Fox's bad decision as a golden opporunity for your network. Fox is cancelling "Arrested Development" because they are incompetent at selling comedy. You can do it better -- much better. With this one acquisition, you'll gain the best cast, the best writing and the best show anywhere on television.

But you'll gain so much more: You'll gain me. You see, I'm not currently a subscriber to Showtime, though I may be a subscriber to other premium networks. I certainly wouldn't mind getting Showtime but for one reason or another, I haven't yet. But if you pick up "Arrested Development", I'll become a Showtime subscriber.

Let me state that again for the record: I pledge that if you pick up "Arrested Development", I will subscribe to Showtime. I will call my cable or satellite provider and I will become a paying customer. Adding "Arrested Development" to the rest of your fine line-up of award-winning shows is the magic ingredient that changes Showtime from a channel I don't need to one I can't do without.

Please, Showtime, this is an opportunity that won't last very long. Some other network may pick "Arrested Development" up. Failing that, the cast, crew and writing staff will start getting very tempting offers and they have their futures to think of. But if you act quickly to give us back "Arrested Development", you'll gain me and every other signer of this petition as loyal and grateful customers, as well as everyone else who was waiting for Showtime to get that one extra show, that one extra 25 minutes of quality, before finally subscribing.

It's up to you, Showtime, be the good guys. You'll have me at "Annyong".

Whaddya think? Worth trying?

* Usually the answer is "not very", but sometimes it's "surprisingly well"

They've made a huge mistake

Categories: Television

Fox sucks.

I've said it many times before: You can't trust Fox with a good show. Specifically, you can't trust them with "Arrested Development".

According to this hopefully horribly mistaken Variety article, the jig is up for "Arrested Development". Their order for this season has apparently been cut from 22 to 13 episodes, and apparently it's off the schedule effective immediately. That's right: After a month off the air for baseball, they bring it back for one week and then cancel it. In it's place? Re-runs of "Prison Break".

I'm praying that this is just a misunderstanding. But Variety tends to get this stuff right, so it ain't looking good.

Fox is a bunch of assholes.

Yes/No on Prop 80?

Categories: Political

My mom called last night saying that she's going to vote "No" on all the propositions, which runs counter to what I was planning to do. Specifically I was planning on voting yes on Prop. 80, de-deregulation of California's energy market.

I've somewhat changed my mind about 80. Not that I'm definitely going to vote "No" on it. In fact, I'm probably still going to vote for it. I mean, I started my "vote no on everything" policy in the last election and managed to break it at least twice then (stem cells and some other proposition that I've already forgotten) so why not break it again this time? Actually, the real reason is that I think it is a genuinely helpful proposition.

That being said, the primary reason I had for planning to vote in favor of Prop. 80 was that I was under the impression it needed to be a proposition in order to happen on the basis that the original energy de-regulation back in 1997 or whenever came from a ballot initiative as well. But several hours (or minutes) of Googling later, I'm pretty sure I was totally 100% mistaken about that. It appears that energy deregulation was a good old-fashioned legislative action, meaning it can be rescinded with traditional legislation as well.

In fact, voting in favor of this bill puts us in exactly the opposite situation we're in now: Energy re-deregulation (or other possible changes to California's energy policies) would require further ballot initiatives rather than going through traditional legislation. Which sucks.

So then, given that voting in favor of Prop. 80 causes exactly the sort of problem that I was hoping to fix, why on earth would I still be considering voting for it?

I don't know... Maybe I'm not. It's entirely possible that owing to a peculiar defect of character, I am incapable of admitting I was wrong twice in one post.

A Modest Proposal or Eight

Categories: Political

This may not matter to anyone who doesn't live in California, but we've got an election coming up. It's a "special" election where California voters will vote on Governor Schwarzeneggar's many propositions. I still can't say (or type) "Governor Schwarzeneggar" with a straight face.

So here's my thoughts on the propositions: Screw 'em all. Well, screw seven of the eight, one of them is actually pretty important. Of the remaining seven, six of them I disagree with enough not to vote for them under any circumstances, though five of those six I'd vote against regardless of my opinions on them.

I promise, this will all make sense in a moment.

You see, I believe there's two main problems with California politics: The Proposition system and the budget system. This election is primarily about propositions, but the two issues are fundamentally interrelated so they need to be discussed together.

The problem with ballot initiatives (which come in the form of propositions) is that they are, for all intents and purposes, amendments to the state constitution. (Before I get too far, I should mention that my opinion on this matter is largely formed from a post by Kevin Drum, the California-based blogger for Washington Monthly). They were originally created to solve a thorny political problem: There are certain potential laws that may have broad public support but a state legislature won't tend to pass, principally laws that make life harder for the legislators themselves. So how do you get those laws passed? By taking it to the voters, by passing the traditional legislation process. And of course, once passed, they can only be modified or rescinded via another election (or judicial intervention), not by the legislature.

That's all well and good except that ballot initiatives have become the primary method of legislation in this state. Most of these initiatives cost money, which ends up tying up our state budget to the point where there is little left over for actual governance. And even worse, the original voter-driven, grassroots principles behind the ballot initiative system no longer exists thanks to the enormous cost of getting one of them on the budget. Propositions are the way special interests from all sides get what they want. Adding three or four more costly amendments to the state constitution every election entirely defeats the purpose of even having a constitution, and ends up wasting billions of dollars.

In other words, if a given proposition turns out to be a very bad idea, we're more or less stuck with it. Sacramento needs to be able to fix laws that suck. So, out of principle, my opinion is to assume I'm voting "no" on any Proposition unless it not only is an issue I support with a clear benefit to the state, but that it's an issue that is worthy of amending the state constitution over. So in my opinion, only one of the proposed amendments meets that criteria.

Before I mention which one that is, let me gloss over the rest:

• Prop. 73: Abortion notification — I just don't support the issue. The right to privacy extends to teenagers. Of course, parents should be involved in their children's medical decisions, but to me, that's an issue of parenting, not legislation.
• Prop. 74: Teacher probationary period — This does nothing to help get more (and better) teachers in our schools. And this isn't an issue deserving of a ballot initiative.
• Prop 75: Public Worker union dues restrictions: I don't like it because it stacks the deck in favor of private industry at the expense of public unions. It's political and economic payback for teachers and firefighters criticizing the Governator.
• Prop 76: State Budget Reform — Allows the Governor to slash and burn the budget more or less at will, even for budgets that have been approved. The California government, like the United States itself, can only exist with a strict adherence to checks and balances, and this bill removes that. I think the issue of whether this should even be a ballot initiative is moot because it violates the principle of separation of powers, which to me is politically repugnant in a representative democracy.
• Prop 77: State Redisticting — This one actually should be a ballot initiative (or more accurately, should be an full-blown amendment), and I agree with the issue itself, but the implementation is really lacking. Ostensibly this prevents gerrymandering, which is an increasingly vital threat. The notion is good, but this proposition has a lot of built-in potential for abuse (even worse than the current system), subverts representational oversight and virtually ensures that voters will be flooded with shrill ads for and against each proposed redistricting whenever it rolls around. The subject is too big to really get into here, but that's the ten-cent version.
• Prop 78: Prescription Drug Bill #1 — Largely pharmaceutical-industry favorable bill doesn't help anyone but drug company shareholders. Plus it doesn't pass the "worthy" test.
• Prop 79: Prescription Drug Bill #2 — A much better prescription drug bill. In fact I tend to agree with it on principle and (so far as I understand how it works) in practice as well. But I'm drawing a line in the sand here: I can't objectively say that this deserves to be a ballot initiative. But it's a pretty good bill in all other respects, so, you know, feel free to vote for it yourself.

So those are the losers. The one I'm backing is:

Prop 80: Un-De-Regulating Energy — This one, I believe, does fit the criteria for ballot initiatives. The original deregulation was (as I recall) created largely via ballot initiative so repealing it requires one. More importantly, energy deregulation was a disaster that allowed companies like Enron to manipulate California's energy market for their own profit by creating totally artificial energy crises which cost us an assload of money and forced us into rolling blackouts which eventually led to the recall of Gray Davis and the election of Kindergarten Cop to the highest office in the state. So, yeah, I think I'm giving this one a thumbs up.

It's pretty hard to get all worked up over an initiative-driven off-year special election held during sweeps, especially only a year out from the last election. But, uh... civic duty and something about not complaining if you didn't vote and yadda yadda yadda. Ah, screw it, I'm going back to blogging about television.

One little woman can change the world

Categories: Political

Rosa Parks: 1913 - 2005

It was just one little act of defiance, but the entire civil rights movement in America would have run a different course without Rosa Parks. She lived in a world where not giving up her seat to a white man was grounds for arrest. I can't imagine what that's like. Because of her, I don't have to.

From the CNN obituary:

At the time of her arrest, Parks was 42 and on her way home from work as a seamstress.

She took a seat in the front of the black section of a city bus in Montgomery. The bus filled up and the bus driver demanded that she move so a white male passenger could have her seat.

"The driver wanted us to stand up, the four of us. We didn't move at the beginning, but he says, 'Let me have these seats.' And the other three people moved, but I didn't," she once said.

When Parks refused to give up her seat, a police officer arrested her.

As the officer took her away, she recalled that she asked, "Why do you push us around?"

The officer's response: "I don't know, but the law's the law, and you're under arrest."

She added, "I only knew that, as I was being arrested, that it was the very last time that I would ever ride in humiliation of this kind."

Four days later, Parks was convicted of disorderly conduct and fined $14.

That same day, a group of blacks founded the Montgomery Improvement Association and named King, the young pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, as its leader, and the bus boycott began.

For the next 381 days, blacks -- who according to Time magazine had comprised two-thirds of Montgomery bus riders -- boycotted public transportation to protest Parks' arrest and in turn the city's Jim Crow segregation laws.

Black people walked, rode taxis and used carpools in an effort that severely damaged the transit company's finances.

The mass movement marked one of the largest and most successful challenges of segregation and helped catapult King to the forefront of the civil rights movement.

The boycott ended on November 13, 1956, after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that Montgomery's segregated bus service was unconstitutional.

"We may experience some slight turbulence, and then explode"

Categories: Movies, Television

"I don't wanna explode!"

I've been looking forward to "Serenity" since I heard that it would be made. The excitement grew significantly about three or four episodes into the "Firefly" DVDs, and only continued growing as I watched the rest of the fourteen episodes of the short-lived series.

For those of you that don't know what "Firefly" is, you can read my earlier post about the show and the movie.

So, obviously I saw it on Friday. If I sounded pretty excited about it last April, that's nothing compared to how I felt in the couple weeks before it was finally released. The last couple of days before Friday, I had the theme song running through my head almost non-stop.*

So, finally, what did I think of it? Well, I thought it was great, really great... but just a bit imperfect. Let me be clear, I'm in no way disappointed (except for one minor totally irrelevant detail), but the film critic in me wanted certain things just a bit different.

So let me get into what made it work. First and foremost: it's a ton of fun. At the same time it manages to be exciting, emotional, compelling and First of all, lots of that brand-name Joss Whedon dialogue: funny, smart, original and a real pleasure to listen to, without being "over-written", which is a trap many other talented writers of a similar style can fall into. Whedon's dialogue is the hook that draws people into his shows, but it's his characters and storylines that ultimately keep them coming back. "Serenity" makes good on that as well, though it's the characters that I think will probably end up creating the largest difference of opinion between fans of the series and the rest of the audience that has never seen an episode of it.

The storyline for the movie is a tight, compelling arc that compresses what would have been the entire second season into about two hours. Happily, Whedon has a philosophy about television that states that each season of a show should be a self-contained storyline that resolves itself by the season finale. I keep meaning to do a post about this, because I think this is a much better way to tell a story, but I have to save that for later. My lazy posting aside, this ends up benefiting the movie because its not trapped into having to start off resolving some cheap cliffhanger. The storyline has roots in the show's one season, but exists separately enough to be crafted into a movie that must assume most audience members won't have seen the show.

And then, finally, what makes the movie work is that it does know its a movie. In other words, the relationship between the characters and the world they inhabit undergoes a fundamental change between the beginning and the end of the movie. That cryptic pseudo-scholar-speak is as specific I can get without discussing important events in the film, but suffice it to say, the storyline doesn't feel like an oversized episode of the show, it feels like a movie.

However, that's the beginning of some of the film's problems as well. Even though the storyline itself is properly movie-scaled, other elements don't make the transition so well. Sacrificed first are some of the characters. Firefly's nine cast members became well-fleshed out, compelling characters over the course of the show. For an ensemble show, nine cast members is a perfectly comfortable size, but in a two-hour action oriented movie with several important plot points, nine characters can't all be given their due. Jewel Staite's adorable Kaylee gets the biggest shaft, I can only remember one line she had (she had many more, of course, but only one is memorable). And that sucks, because I totally heart her. Wash (Alan Tudyk) also doesn't get enough of a role, and that sucks because Tudyk is hilarious, although his role is definitely larger and has more significant developments. Shepard Book (Ron Glass) has a larger presence than Kaylee as well, however his character on the show is so layered that anyone who hasn't watched the show will have a hard time understanding why he has any relevance to the storyline. So this overly-large cast becomes a problem for both fans and non-fans alike. Fans won't get enough of certain characters and newbies will be wondering why the film sometimes breaks focus from the primary characters. However, the decisions regarding which characters to focus on (Mal, River, Simon, Jayne and Zoe) are definitely the right ones.

The next problem comes from Whedon's directing. Now, he's actually a very talented director, having honed his craft on many pivotal episodes of "Buffy", "Angel" and "Firefly". However, I have to concede that his transition from TV director to movie director is almost done, but there's a bit of the TV director still left there. By "director", I'm talking specifically about the cinematic side of directing — shot selection, framing, kinetic pacing, etc. — and not the dramatic side, which principally involves coordinating and shaping the performances of the actors. This is a difficult thing to explain without having clips of the movie to show, but it really comes down to not creating meaningful shots. Practically speaking, TV directing is so fast paced that there simply isn't time to find the shot that expresses a personal visual interpretation of that moment in the story. In other words, as long as the action is captured in a comprehensible and hopefully compelling way, the demands of TV are met. However film requires a more sophisticated visual language in order to create meaning beyond what the script and actors provide. Whedon definitely understands this, but he reverts to his TV roots out of habit (and the pressures of a very tight shooting schedule).

And the final problem, which is actually the least important as well, is the necessity to provide a great deal of exposition to the uninitiated audience that the show's fans already know without boring or overwhelming either party. It's a nearly impossible assignment which Whedon manages elegantly for the most part, but the pacing of the first 20-30 minutes is a bit uneven in order to accommodate the front-loaded info required by the story. The reason this issue ends up being so minor is that once the movie gets into its groove, the momentum of good old-fashioned storytelling takes over in ways I haven't seen in years.

I know that by examining these problems in such detail I may be giving the impression that this is a deeply flawed movie. It isn't. "Serenity" is a fun, well-crafted and thoroughly enjoyable entertainment because it's built from what most other recent summer fare has abandoned: Character, story, wit and heart.

* Actually, my only genuine disappointment with the movie is that they never played the theme song, not even during the closing credits. This surprised the hell out of me, especially since there's a point late in the movie that is literally begging for at least the melody. I bet it's some rights thing (it always is), but I don't see how, since Joss Whedon not only composed it, but wrote the lyrics as well.

Yeah, Wednesday too

Categories: Television

The season premiere of "Lost" was really good. I won't say much more about it because I know someone has it TiVO'd, but a tiny part of me, possibly my appendix, was worried that the cliffhanger final shot of the last season wouldn't be resolved satisfyingly. I mean, if you spend thee months speculating about something, there's a reasonable possibility that it won't live up to the excitement you've built up. It doesn't help that several finales in the past have disappointed.

Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed. And the cool thing is, this episode focused on only one of the two cliffhangers setup in the last finale. Normally this would piss me off, but trying to work both plot-lines in wouldn't have been good for either one.

Did any of you catch it? What'd you think? I know that some people were disappointed in the finale (an opinion that baffles me), and I'm curious how those people felt about this episode.

Monday and Tuesday were great, now let's see about tonight

Categories: Television

While accepting the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series, "Arrested Development" creator Mitchell Hurwitz said "I'd be remiss in not pointing out that the Academy has now twice rewarded us for a show you refuse to watch," and then begged people to tune in the next night for the season premiere.

So despite literally begging on national television the night before, people still couldn't be bothered to watch the funniest sitcom since "Seinfeld" was at its best. "Arrested Development" came in fifth place for the night, behind even the WB's God-awful "7th Heaven". For two years now, critics and fans have been raving about this show, you'd think people would check it out, but they didn't. Well, too bad for them, because the season premiere was "Arrested Development" at the top of its game. This season's premiere was even better than last year's. Here's hoping the ratings improve, but unfortunately that means people would have to somehow manage to tear themselves away from "The King of Queens". Anyhow, if you didn't watch it, don't go thinking it's too late to start. For my part, I'm gonna stop worrying about the ratings and just enjoy it.

There is some justice though, "My Name is Earl", which premiered Tuesday night, did really well in the ratings and happily, it deserved to. Usually the show NBC hypes to death is some piece of crap that doesn't even make it to midseason. And "Earl" had hype — I heard a radio ad for it that even made fun of the magazine ad NBC ran in Entertainment Weekly last week. When you have the advertising budget to run commercials for a show that diss other ads for the very same show, you might be yelling a bit too loudly. But "Earl" was great, very funny and very original. I've always liked Jason Lee a lot, and even though he's nearly totally unrecognizable in his white-trash moustache, he's still a ton of fun to watch.

Somehow the ratings for "Earl" didn't manage completely transfer to "The Office" which was on right after. That's a shame, it compares really well with the original British version. It's a different show but it does maintain the rhythm of the original as well as the ability to make awkward silences hilarious. I thought that after "The 40-Year Old Virgin" was such a hit, the show would pick up viewers, but it doesn't seem to have helped, though they still earned twice the viewers "Arrested" got.*

So, at the moment, this season has delivered in quality, if not success, on show's I've been looking forward to. Of course, the show that I'm most excited to see return is "Lost", which is starting in about 45 minutes. They won the Emmy for Best Drama the other night and no one expected it to go any other way. Since it ended last season, all the networks except for UPN have, in one form or another, created their own "Lost" ripoff. Most of them look like they miss the point of what made the show work, but as long as J.J Abrams and Damon Lindeloff haven't forgotten (and there's no reason to believe they have), tonight should be great. Plus, "Lost" is one of those water-cooler shows, and I've missed getting to rehash it the next day at work.

* Well, probably not twice as much. The report I read combined "Arrested Development" with "Kitchen Confidential" and averaged out the ratings for the hour. Presumably "Arrested" got more than "Kitchen", although the two shows were probably reasonably close to each other or it wouldn't have been combined.

Avast and Ahoy!

Cap'n Black Skippy here wishin' yeh landlubbers a happy and joyous International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

O'course, if yeh be wishin' teh talk like a pirate on other days, no armada can stop yeh. But t'day is the day when no poxy bilge rat can dare to look down on yeh' for usin' the term "bung hole" while drinkin' yer grog.