Thursday, February 19, 2015

I watch too much TV

My blog productivity took a big dip last year. Part of that had to do with personal issues that no longer apply, but so far in 2015 I haven't gotten back up to speed. While my postings for 2012 and 2013 are inflated because many of those years' posts are based on newspaper clippings, I still feel that I'm not writing as much as I should. One enduring reason for this is that I've been reading more over the past year, though my reading in the pulps did result in several posts in 2014 and may still bear fruit in a new blog this year. The main stumbling block now is that I spend too much time watching TV, by which I mean TV shows rather than movies. Until about two years ago I was just about totally cut off from modern TV trends. I never watched The Sopranos or Breaking Bad; I've never seen an hour of Mad Men or The Wire. I caught a random hour of the first season of Game of Thrones, but instead of watching further I worked my way through the first of the novels last year and plan to start the second soon. I watched practically no series television from the time I started blogging until the fall of 2012, and then the balance started to tip the other way. TV gradually became more interesting if not better than it was before, until I found myself with less time to take screencaps or write reviews at the length and frequency I had taken for granted before. Something had to give -- and now I propose to give more space here to the shows I'm watching, to account for my interest in them. Don't come looking for the best shows on television, but I'll stick up for at least a couple of them as indisputably good if not great programs. Others may count as guilty pleasures, not just of the present but of the past as well. Much of what I'll review here is based on comic books, and I'll touch on the ways in which superhero stories are reshaped for TV formats and TV audiences, and the ways in which compulsive retellings reshape our modern folklore. Overall, my choice of subjects may disappoint many of the more committed connoisseurs of television, but I think they'll live up to our continuing mandate to explore a wild world of cinema. And of course, I'll continue to review movies, including newer theatrical releases once winter lets up around here and I feel like traveling more on weekends again. By the time I get all of this out of my system the main TV season will be over, and all other things being equal this blog should get back to normal, at least for the summer. For now, stay tuned.

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