It's been a year and a half since Fast Forward ran a cover story on the death of community television. That article mostly focussed on the local side of things, but since then, the situation has only gotten more extreme.

Now, for the first time in eight years, the CRTC is doing a review of its public television policy, and they're taking input from the public at large. The forum has been open since last October, and they'll be accepting opinions until Feb 1 — that's six more days. The Canadian Association of Community Television Users and Stations (CACTUS) has more information on its website, as well as a sample letter that you can send in.

I know public television conjurs images of low-budget sets and awkward hosts that lend themselves to … Read More

That got your attention, didn't it?

You nerd.

While there's been absolutely no indication that Michael Chiklis (the actor famous for playing such grumpy balls of muscle as The Shield's Vick Mackey and the film version of the Fantastic Four's Ben Grimm) will have anything at all to do with the television adaptation of Brian Michael Bendis' beloved comic book series Powers, those of us who are fans of both Mackey and Bendis know that the combination would be a totally fucking awesome one. Do you hear that, FX? This needs to happen.

Anyway, this post comes to you now because Premium Hollywood has posted an interview with FX president John Landgraf which confirms Powers' development as a television series is still going forward and is -- no … Read More

I suppose I should have mentioned this during the week, but I'm going to be live-blogging from the Geminis this evening. Right now, I'm sequestered in the press room (they never let press onto the main floor for this sort of thing), but I do have a man on the inside who will hopefully be sending me updates of anything particularly interesting, and us media folk do get to watch a live feed of the broadcast.

Although, during the Junos two years ago, that live feed went down and we ended up watching the televised broadcast instead. Glamorous.

Keep refreshing this post for all the excitement of the Canadian television industry!

5:48 pm: Soundchecking has begun. More importantly: Red wine has been acquired. Repeating that process may be the key … Read More

Well, fuck. I think this photo of a horrid doll I found using Magic Google aptly illustrates my feelings. Or, at the very least, it illustrates the feelings of my inner fourteen year old goth girl.

It is so very early for thoughts.

As Peter pointed out in the comment thread of that other Dollhouse post, Joss Whedon's latest television project has met with its untimely--if inevitable--demise. Fortunately, it looks as though Whedon will be able to see the second season to completion, which is at least better than what Firefly got. Maybe next time, Joss. We've all got our fingers crossed.

Of course, Firefly set a precedent when the truncated story was eventually concluded with Serenity, so maybe it isn't too much to hope that Dollhouse … Read More

Though I’m not sure  I’m drunk enough to be writing something about the nature of arts criticism, this has been rattling around my cavernous noggin since yesterday, and I’m having trouble thinking about much else. I promise this will not become a manifesto.

Over the weekend, Whedonesque, Joss Whedon’s fan community/personal blog site-thingie linked to my Dollhouse post, causing a veritable torrent of hits (thanks Whedonesque!). As is the wont of dedicated fans, a few of Whedonesque’s posters were unhappy with the fact that Dollhouse—or, indeed, any of Whedon’s shows—didn’t appear on my meaningfully capitalized list of Great Shows. Now, while I appreciate any discussion that I’m able to provoke, this isn’t a response to those commenters … Read More

If you’re the sort of person who cares about things like then, then you probably don’t need me to tell you that Dollhouse has been knocked off of Fox’s November sweeps lineup. If you aren’t the sort of person who cares about things like this, then you’re probably wondering what a dollhouse has to do with a fox while you subconsciously evaluate any of my previous blog entries to determine whether they give off an “anthropomorphic animal fetishist/pedophile vibe.”

If, by some miracle, you a) know that Dollhouse is the newest sci fi/action/drama by Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly, Dr. Horrible), b) haven’t heard of Dollhouse, but are always open for a good show to watch and/or c) aren’t now frantically searching the Internet for a photo of me to put up on … Read More

Gather round, Venture fans. Jackson Publick brings us a teaser trailer for season 4 of the best still-running cartoon on Adult Swim, the Venture Bros. Usually these things don't work in Canada, but somehow I was able to watch it. Hopefully the embed code works:

Thanks to kje for pointing this out!

Season 3 started out pretty slow, but it got awesome towards the end. And if this trailer is any indication... well, Season 4 is going to be awesome!!

High points and other observations, in no particular order:

• Hank has long hair now and, apparently, Dean goes missing at some point.
• Dermott is back and it should be good to see if they continue fleshing out his character .
• "Pay no attention to the handsome and ageless rockstar

Walking Dead, the zombie-shooting-soap-opera comic book series by Robert Kirkman is making the hop from one serialized medium to another. Though the show is still in it's earliest stages of development, Frank Darabont, director of The Green Mile, The Shawshank Redemption, and the surprisingly-good straight to DVD title The Mist is attached to the show as director, though there's no word on writing staff as-of-yet. Full story over at CBR. 

My feelings about this are mixed. On one hand, I think that adapting comic books to television makes infinitely more sense than adapting them to films (I still think Watchmen would have been best as a miniseries), and I'm glad to see that AMC has finally gotten the picture, so to speak. On the other … Read More

Not yet, exactly, but Variety is reporting that talks have broken down between Fox and the voice actors on Futurama. Naturally, the studio's decided that the best solution might be to drop the cast and find sound-alikes. Because the talent of folks like Billy West and John Dimaggio had nothing to do with the show's success, apparently.

So, for all the fans who've stuck around since the show's creation and some sub-par-but-alright straight-to-DVD releases, and who were rejoicing that the show was finally coming back to the air, you've got one more reason to hate Fox.