Various and Sundry

Clash of the Streaming Titans, Revisited

Just about a year ago, I was musing about the future of streaming TV –which seems to pretty much be “the future of TV”– and well… Things have gotten a lot more complicated. Content to be the Content Gorilla, Disney is poised to unleash its streaming juggernaut this Fall, basically giving us the Vault in on-demand form. All those lovely Disney properties on Netflix, of which there are many, will be gone too soon. Meanwhile,…

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Various and Sundry

The Uncomfortable Value of Networks in Creative Pursuits

Someone posted an article by Casey Lesser on Artsy about one of those things we creative folks already knew. Having a network is important. In this case, some MOMA researchers looked at artists in the 20th century, their personal networks of colleagues, and their work to do analysis on how much “who you know” helped. How to network is worth its own series of posts, but reading some of the observations was interesting… and there’s…

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Acting Producing Various and Sundry

Where I’ll Be: Escape Velocity 2019

Wow, has it really been over a month since I’ve posted anything? Okay, well, I can’t go into everywhere that I’ve been, but I can tell you where I will be this weekend: Escape Velocity! Escape Velocity 2019 Promo from Museum of Science Fiction on Vimeo. I’ll be part of two panels and one performance…. Friday @ 8:20pm: Alien: 40 Years of Fright I get to chat with Charles de Lauzirika all about Alien and…

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Various and Sundry Writing

Isaac Asimov Predicts the Distant Future of 2019

Back in 1983, prolific writer Isaac Asimov was asked to imagine what the world would be like well into the 21st Century: 2019 to be precise. Now, considering that much of his prolific writing was science fiction, it’s well worth reading. Remember, this is the guy who wrote the Foundation series which had the field of “psychohistory” that was able to predict future trends. I found his predictions to be prescient in some aspects and…

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Various and Sundry

Motivation and the Midlife Crisis

This is for all the Gen Xers out there, irretrievably in their 40s and 50s, facing Monday with Garfield-level malaise. Here’s an article by Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic which I missed when it first came out in 2014, but seems to have hit me at just the right moment… and it might be just the right moment for you all as well. In feature story fashion, it goes into the anecdote of 40-somethings seemingly…

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Various and Sundry

The Music of DOOM! er, the Doomsday Machine

One of my favorite episodes of the original Star Trek and, I would argue, one of their best overall episodes, was the action-packed season two entry, “The Doomsday Machine.” A significant factor on why I believe it should be ranked so highly is because of the episode-specific music composed by Sol Kaplan. Viewers may recall the original series re-used a lot of music cues as a cost-cutting technique. The fact that they don’t do so…

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Various and Sundry

That Game of Thrones Theme, Tho

I posted yesterday about Marvel movie music, which I found interesting since –while I’ve collected movie soundtracks since I’ve been little, I haven’t gotten around to getting any of the Marvel soundtracks. (Though I do remember the Avengers “fanfare.”) One recent soundtrack that I have gotten, however, is Game of Thrones, composed by Ramin Djawadi. Spencer Kornhaber writes about Djawadi, his composing, and his fame, in a recent article for The Atlantic.

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