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I don’t know if it was a premonition or something, but the other day I sat and done some thinking about the Blade franchise. There were some rumors about a spin-off starring the Nightstalkers (featuring Jessical Biel and Ryan Reynolds) that were introduced in the third chapter of the Blade trilogy, Blade Trinity. It’s by finding an article on GateWorld.net that I found out that Spike TV would be airing this brand new flick: Blade: The Series. Now all things considered that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, thinking about shows starring vampires have been successful by the past (Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but this new series is bad news. I found the trailer (~27MB) after some research and I was actually laughing at the end of it. Short after I was sad to realize it was not a SNL spoof video. Spike TV is not a high budget channel and what I tough is that they got the rights for Blade at some real cheap price. I usually don’t judge a book by it’s cover, nor a series by it’s trailer; but this looked real bad! It looked like a cheap set and camera effects taken from 24. Besides the fact that Blade is not played by Wesley Snipes but by Kirk Jones is a disappointment for any sort of fans. Up to now the series recap is summed up like this:

• Blade teams with a woman named Christa, whose brother was murdered by vampires.
• Blade, the half-human, half vampire slayer tackles another case of vampires and demons running wild on the streets. Further details will follow. (and goes on for all other episodes)

Hoping that series will give a decent job to actors and cameraman tune-in on June 28th to see what that series has to offer. Don’t have Spike? That’s not the show that will make me get them on cable!

It pretty much started with iTunes making TV episodes available for download the next day after the TV broadcast. It was offered as a paid program $1.99 each. Then came Google Video adding paid programming to it’s vast selection of videos… let’s not forget about AOL and showing old TV shows with advertisement. In the recent weeks we had ABC and Disney promoting new TV shows to be broadcasted over the Internet. Those shows would include un-skippable ads and would be available just a few hours after the original broadcast.

Now there I see a huge problem. Currently, after a showed is presented on TV, just a few hours need to pass by before it’s available on Torrent networks where files are shared securely, rapidly and the shows are free of any advertisement. This has been going on for months, and you can literally get a DVD quality copy of a TV show you like. Now what’s the process behind that? What people really want is flexibility, they want to watch a show whenever and where ever they want to. We’re in a digital era, why should I be in front of my TV, in the living room at 8PM every Monday on FOX? Of course if it a great show you’ll be watching it anyway because you can’t wait. But what about watching it back?
VCR are a gold mine! You record the show, rewind the tape and play (you can even fast play the advertisement)… Now that’s an other extreme, we don’t want to rollback to an obsolete format, technically expensive if you are planning to keep all the tapes. Then again you’d have DVD recorders that cast aside some inconveniences of VHS but still it involves having one, recording the show, skipping manually the ads and stuff (I think auto-skip exists). What about simpler? Someone somewhere identifiable by a few letters only (EZTV, LOL) or sometimes a website address that stands as signature is doing all the work that needs to be done. Being the key strength of both piracy and digital media is that once someone worked out something the entire Internet can benefit from it.

Now that everything practical is out of the way, why would it be the end of TV torrents?

1. The broadcast could be made available as soon as the show ends, meaning those without TVs or in countries that don’t have that particular channel can go and view the show right away. No more waiting for someone to encode in high definition, nor wait the required time before the torrent is really fast.
2. During live broadcast there is advertisement, you can’t skip it while it’s live. So it would be like watching a re-run on that same channel.
3. Freeloaders will enjoy streaming/downloading DRMed TV shows at high speeds
4. Anyone who believes he should respect copyright of these shows will be happy to watch an ad enabled one that gives him most of the advantages wanted while stay legit

Now I believe the TV broadcaster are reacting much faster than the music industry took to react against music sharing. I also believe they are a lot smarted than Hollywood studios that sell copies of their movies on a pretty hefty price. What I dare predict is that there will be a decrease in traffic for TV related torrents, but that also depends on how invasive the ads will be. I believe TV viewers like the fact that it’s free, they’re already paying for their Cable. Now the same is transposed to the Internet. I pay my broadband Internet access and I can finally enjoy shows from around the world. I will not attack anyone by saying we’re greedy when we use torrents. But come to think of it advertisement is the only thing that people find to make money, in order to make some stuff free.

I doubt it’ll be the end of BitTorrent TV downloads, music and movies for that matter as well. The problem is innovation. Studios are so concerned on profit they miss the hole point of technology, making life easier. And advertisement, will always have it’s opponent; ad blockers & pop-up blockers. Seriously, FOX being added to the list of “Internet Friendly” broadcaster will mark a similar thread that iTunes started, getting back part of the revenues they lost to new Internet technology. Let’s just hope they don’t expect to get everything back.

That show has been driving me crazy! Prison Break is the first TV drama I’ve really hyped about. I simply can’t remember any show that was that good. The series started last fall and featured Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller as leading actors. Since then the show has been getting incredible ratings and it quickly became my all time favorite. I have a few good news for everyone, first of all even if the show was focused on Michael’s escape plan the plot got a lot thicker and mesmerizing (conspiracy, murder, intelligent). The key elements to it’s success is intelligence and thrill, and I guess all the success was enough to convince FOX to renew the show for a second season! At first it was hard to anticipate more then 13 episodes, but hopefully the writers keep doing this amazing job every week. That’s magnificent! If it weren’t enough the series has already been bought by a French Canadian network and they will start airing the show tomorrow at 8PM (GMT -5). I’m mentioning this because I’ve got many readers that use French as their usual language and that the very fact that the show has already been ported to a regional broadcaster such as TVA means they recognize the immense success of the series.

If you’re not already hooked I’d suggest you get a good grip from next week episode. Long live Prison Break!

I had to add a comment: “It’s frickin’ finger lickin’ good, yeah baby, yeah” (Get Austin’s Power accent for the last part)

Sometimes it’s hard to believe how much I fall in the general category of boys that start off with reading Dragonball mangas just for the thrill of it to then become a skilled analyst of anime. I don’t have a master degree and visual conception of art (does a master degree like that even exist?) but I want to tell you about my favorite anime of the hour.

I’ll put my cards on the table right away, from what I remember, I used to watch Sailor Moon and Dragonball Z all the time and really liked anime over other animation, still I loved the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mummies Alive! and X-Men. High school and college is pretty much a big black-out from anime culture, I still had my roots with my all time favorite character Piccolo.

Shaman King: The story is about a young boy named Yoh Asakura who wishes to become a great shaman. The shaman merges with his gardian ghost who then enables him to use the ghost powers in the physical realm. Yoh teams up with the ghost of Amidamaru, an ancient samurai and throught their fusion they must battle ennemies and enter the Shaman Fight. The winner of the tournament will be crowned Shaman King and will receive the Great Spirit. By accomplishing this the Great Spirit grants his owner all the knowdledge of any spirit of Earth, thus gaining all-knowingness. The plot eventually thickens as the opponents become more powerful and the techniques required to fight them off more elaborate (Oversould, Giant Spirit). None the less the story eventually an evil twin brother who wants to destroy the world and reshape it to his own twisted vision. In the end the objectives change and Yoh and his friends have to go against an unbelievable new foe that is to put it simply overwhelming.

It’s a 64 episodes show of about 24 minutes each. Very fun to watch, oriented towards friendship and how to live with one an other and that you have to stick with your friends to the end. Even if there are ghosts all over the place the theme of death is crushing you since you have multiple parties with weird visions of what human life is worth competing to be shaman king.

Just like many other anime you sometimes get the impression the show got cancelled towards the end and they had to wrap up the show so towards the end you get crazy gear shifts, those actually add to the excitement of a great show. I have a short video sample from a previous post you can see what kind of content you can have in Shaman King.

You can read more on Shaman King on Wikipedia. Part two of Anime Love will present RahXephon and Vision of Escaflowne. Stay tuned with RSS feeds!

This post follows Dead Series Society (Part 1).
I’d like to take some time to talk about an other show that was lost. It starred Domic Purcell as John Doe, a guy that has complete amnesia about who he is but knows everything else there is to know, litteraly everything you could study in school he
knows. The show was based on police investigation of different crimes and
John Doe was the lead expert on everything. But that was only half of the story, the show introduced clues on how could Mr. Doe know everything and the supernatural quickly came in order (or at least science-fiction). The show never was able to find it’s right place on Fox and was not renewed leaving all the viewers with a cliff hanger to kill all cliff hangers. As referred in the previous article, some shows like Firefly got the opportunity to rise from their ashes and come to the big screen. Some other show have the opportunity to make a mini-series to close up the show in an orderly fashion (not the case of John Doe). So by talking about those two “dead” shows I’ve realized that they are not really wasted. You have to consider that Scifi channel has/is airing those shows and they have decent ratings for re-runs.
The Internet is a beautiful medium that started to change our lives a decade ago, but the changes in the services and products we are used to getting will dramaticly change. You can start thinking about VoIP phone services that are way cheaper than regular phone.
I might of drifted away from the main subject but one thing I’ll settle on is that I will not judge the value of a show, a song, an artist or a movie from it’s ratings or it’s popularity. There are some movies that are rated 35% on rottentoamoes.com that I still like, and no matter what some critics may say I’ll still love it. Whenever you get the chance make yourself an idea using your own head. Thanks to the marvels of the Internet I can do that…
**Sorry for the delay before this post was finally published**

This pun came to me, a little play on words referring to the movie the Dead Poets Society. I’m dedicating this post to the TV shows that have been cancelled carelessly after only one season. From what I understand the television business is worse than the one of movies. If the ratings are low, that means around 6 millions viewers, the show is cancelled and the fans disappointed. I’ll open my heart about two TV series I’ve discovered recently and have been butchered by FOX in 2002/2003.

My discovery of Firefly started with a movie trailer, the one of the movie Serenity. The weird thing was that during the trailer they mentioned critics who had loved it. It did not make sense at the time since the movie was not due for an other 6 months! But I discovered that this movie was in fact a sequel to a TV show that was cancelled. Seeing the trailer again and again I was gaining some interest in the whole series and decided to watch the show before the movie was released in theaters. I was disappointed to realize such a great series had been cancelled without me ever hearing about it before. I really loved the characters and themes that were used in this series produced by Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel). I won’t discuss the story line but that sci-fi show was cancelled by FOX and they even chopped three of the filmed episodes. In my opinion they really wanted to get rid of that show because of its ratings.

Now you’ll all tell me it makes sense to cancel a show that no one likes, but is tricky because you have to consider the democracy we live in. It was decided that for their audience the show needed to be removed from the air in order to make room for new and better shows. But have they ever considered international viewers? We keep talking about global economy and exchange market but some “produces” are not deemed worthy of being exported. The same thing can happen to games and music. The power of Internet is not to be taken lightly and it is through that medium I’ve discovered the existence of this show and took a deep interest. If it had been broadcasted here I would of been a weekly fan! My logic would bring us to a point where the work of someone, whether it is music, art or a film could be easily shared to the whole world at minimal cost helping the “minorities” get full coverage. Who knows, there is possibly a TV that aired in UK and that I’ll never be able to see or hear about. Does it mean it’s a bad show? Does it mean that to be good you need to be internationally acclaimed?

My analysis will be extended on Part 2 of the Dead Series Society. Stay posted, syndicate my blog with RSS feeds, bookmark me and leave comments!

This show is addictive and I’m sure the producers will be thrilled to hear me say that it has a very strong story line and is handled in a great way.

So what is all the fuss about this new show, let’s break it down in a few words. Lincoln Burrows (left) is sentenced to death after being charged with the murder of the Vice-presidents brother. But Michael Scofield (center), Lincolns brother is sure of his innocence. Thus elaborates a plan to free his brother, Scofield gets the blue prints of the prison and hides them in a full body tattoo that he applies on himself before robbing a bank on purpose. Once inside the prison he can start his break out. He seems to have everything accounted for his escape of the maximum security prison. He is soon to realize that the inmates are not as cooperative and shot after shot his plan takes a fall. Outside the walls, Burrows old girlfriend (that happened to be an attorney) starts to investigate the case that has long been closed. She quickly discovers that the secret services want to drown the hole case! What is it that they want to hide, will Michael’s plan work? Are the other inmates required for the escape will be cooperative (left to right, Sucre, T-Bag, Abruzzi)? You’d have all those answers already if you watched the first eight episodes! Be sure to catch the new ones on FOX and Global at 9PM. The secret service get nervous as more and more people try to save Lincoln, executions are starting sooner than expected.

Just been confirmed by GateWorld today. Stagate SG-1 will be:

[...] the longest-running science fiction series in U.S. television history, surpassing the nine years and 202 episodes of The X-Files. The series will air its remarkable 200th episode early in Season Ten.

This is a great news for a show that learned to evolve over the years and make sure they don’t loop back to themes previously used in the show. Even with the important cast change of season nine the shows rating is still strong and it sure convinced Scifi Channel to renew the show for an other 20 episodes. Even before the departure of Richard Dean Anderson in season nine, Scifi downgraded the seasons length by cutting them from 22 to 20 episodes starting in season eight. This choice did not affect the show in it self but might be a sign that the series is starting to fade…

But lets not look at the downside and hope they still make great entertainment! Let’s mention that the Stargate spin-off series has also been renewed for a third year. Stargate Atlantis starring Joe Flannigan will continue the current season in January joining SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica for new episodes.

Visit Scifi Channel Website for more information on the shows current season.