Posts Tagged ‘tv’

Update: three days after ordering and being charged three times, my duplicate "authorization" charges have finally been removed from my account.

So, here's what's going on.

First the countdown till the time we could order the Dollhouse SDCC Limited Edition DVD set ended, but the order form did not appear. Instead, the countdown started counting up.

Then the order form appeared, but it rejected more credit cards than it approved and kept giving errors or blank pages. Problem: refreshing the page, using your back button or pressing "submit" more than once apparently caused it to try your credit card again, resulting in multiple charges on the cards of many fans, me included. According to Fox these multiple charges are "authorization charges only" and will be refunded/canceled within one to two business days, depending on your bank.

And the promised confirmation e-mails were not coming out.

Then they brought down the page and redirected it to the main Fox store while they worked on the problem.

Things seem to be a bit more stable now. One of the credit card problems was fixed (if you typed in 2009 for your credit card expiration date, it only read the 20 part and not the 09 part, causing the validation to bounce) and orders are now going through. Give it a shot!

I just received my confirmation e-mail, about 8 hours after I received my confirmation number.

About the sneak peek of "Epitaph One" we were promised: In your confirmation e-mail you get a JAGTAG, which you must take a picture of with your cellphone and send it to a specified number. Also, you must be a customer of Verizon, AT&T or Alltel, none of which was mentioned by Fox beforehand. Also, your phone must be the right sort to handle the content, which mine apparently is not. From reports it was JagTag's problem, as their own site was giving up errors. A few hours later, I finally received the video to my phone (even though earlier I got a text message telling me my phone wasn't good enough), and there it was: 25 seconds of a confrontation involving a familiar face. And there's Felicia Day! Hi Felicia! By the next day the clip was posted at Dollverse.com for everyone to see.

I don't know what the deal ultimately was, but this promotion had serious problems on every level. Glad to see they seem to have it patched up now — and I don't know if they've ever tried anything like this before — but I'm glad to see the mood among fans is mostly tolerant, with some very understandable beefs.

All of this is to get the limited SDCC edition Dollhouse Season One, numbered, with different packaging (see above) and a note from creator Joss Whedon. Only 5,000 will be produced, and you'll have to pick it up at the con or have a friend pick it up at the Fox booth at the con (#4129) starting Wednesday at 6 pm.for you, and you'll need to provide your friend's e-mail address when you order.  One per customer.

$49.95 for the regular set, $69.95 for Blu-Ray. Or you could just order the regular edition from Amazon for just $31.99 (or $48.99 for Blu-Ray).

Or you could try to win one from me…

Announcing BashinginMinds' first giveaway: two Dollhouse Season One DVD sets!

Season one of Joss Whedon's controversial series Dollhouse will be hitting the streets on July 28, but you can win one a week early. All you have to do is tell me this:

Why would you hire a doll?

Please keep comments under 50 words or so, and relatively PG-13. Otherwise, go wild. Please use the form below; entries posted as a comment to this post will not be entered.

Entries must be received by midnight EST on Friday, July 17, 2009, and there will be two ways to win. First, I'll select the best 10 and put those up for a vote, winner gets a DVD set. And I'll select a name at random from all the entries for the other set. Winners will be announced Tuesday, July 21, so folks going to Comic-Con will know if they should be trying to buy one or not…

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Good news! I can tell you about most of the upcoming Dollhouse DVD set!

Bad news: reviewers only get the first 3 discs with the aired episodes, but not the final disc with the extra goodies. So I can't tell you about the unaired episode 13 "Epitaph One," or the original unaired pilot, or the features, or the deleted scenes. FOX wants to keep those under wraps until the release date and I can understand that even as I secretly hoped their shipping department would mistakenly send me the wrong disc. But I did get to listen to the commentaries from creator Joss Whedon and star Eliza Dushku, and those were well worth it.

The show

The Dollhouse is an illegal underground company spoken of in whispers, where you can hire an attractive young person for literally any purpose you can imagine. These people, known as "actives," have had their memories completely removed so that they can have new memories and new personalities imprinted in them to order. Actives can temporarily become perfect lovers, thieves, assassins, companions, detectives, whatever the very well-heeled clients want, and afterward their new identities are stripped away again so they're ready for the next engagement. Only, one of them is starting to remember…

Dollhouse stars Eliza Dushku as Caroline/Echo; Harry Lennix as Boyd Langton, Echo's handler; Fran Kranz as Topher Brink, the amoral genius behind the Dollhouse tech; Olivia Williams as Adelle DeWitt, the boss of the place;  Reed Diamond as her creepy chief of security Laurence Dominic; Enver Gjokaj as Victor; Dichen Lachman as Sierra; and Tahmoh Penikett as FBI agent Paul Ballard. Regular guest stars included Amy Acker as staff physician Dr. Claire Saunders and Miracle Laurie as Mellie. The series had an uneven start, with the first episodes being mostly standalones that simply showcased what actives from the Dollhouse are hired to do with only a passing nod to any ongoing story arcs or show mythology.

The commentaries

Now, there are three types of DVD commentaries. There's the one where the people talking get caught up in the show and forgot to comment on anything, but I've rarely seen that on a Whedonverse DVD. Talkative bunch, they are. Then there's the type where the commentators are just having a blast, reminiscing and cracking each other up and offering funny little behind the scenes moments. That's what Joss and Eliza do in their commentary on the aired pilot episode, "Ghost."

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In ABC's "Castle," Nathan Fillion plays a best-selling mystery novelist. So when they need a cute tie-in to drum up interest in the show's second season what better way than to publish one of his books?

Starting Aug. 10 ABC will publish chapters of Richard Castle's "Heat Wave" as they air reruns of the show, leading up to the season premiere in late September. The book will reportedly include elements from the shows — which makes sense, given the premise, that he's following the cops to get story ideas. The book itself will be published September 29 by Hyperion.

There's one problem with stuff like this: what if the book by this fictional bestselling writer sucks? No one's saying who the real author is. Personally, I hope it's Nathan. Look for these to show up on Fillion's autograph lines real soon.

Dollhouse Season One will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray on July 28, but if you're going to the San Diego ComicCon you can get one the week before. Even better, it'll be a limited edition, numbered, with different packaging (see above) and a note from creator Joss Whedon. Only 5,000 will be produced. Sweet!

If you're going to the con, stop by the Fox Store on Monday, July 6, starting at 10 am PST. You'll need to take your order confirmation, plus a photo ID to the Fox booth (#4129) starting Wednesday at 6 pm. If you're not going to the con but you have a friend willing to pick it up for you, you'll need to provide your friend's name and e-mail address when you place your order. Only one per customer.

They're not cheap, mind you. $49.95 for the regular set, $69.95 for Blu-Ray.

Click here for more details!

If that's too rich, or if you don't have a way to pick up a ComicCon one, you can order the regular edition from Amazon for just $31.99 (or $48.99 for Blu-Ray).

And check back here, within the next few days I'll be posting a mini-review and telling how you how you can win a free Dollhouse Season 1 DVD.

Professor Farnsworth: "Yes? I see… Good news, everyone! Those asinine morons who canceled us were themselves fired for incompetence. [The crew cheers] And not just fired, but beaten up, too…and pretty badly. [The crew cheers doubtfully] In fact, most of them died from their injuries. [The crew remains silent. Bender laughs] And then they were ground up into a fine pink powder.
Fry: Why?
Professor Farnsworth: Oh, it's got a million and one uses. [Pours some down his pants] Ah, that soothes the fire.

Sometimes shows do come back…

Just announced, Comedy Central has placed an order for 26 new episodes of Futurama to run over two seasons. Apparently the four 2-hour movies released during the 7-year hiatus of the show helped, and I'm glad to see it. The last movie left the crew of Planet Express with an open-ended future, so it'll be great to see where they go with it.  Much as I loved The Simpsons, Futurama quickly took over as my favorite cartoon.

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PaleyFest 2009 was this year's annual 10-day event honoring the best of the small screen, held at the Paley Center for Media in L.A. Creators and stars of many of your favorite shows got up on stage and talked about, well, everything, unscripted and unsupervised. iTunes now has those panels for sale at $1.99 a pop, and the crew from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is one of the funnest.

Gathered together onstage was Joss, Nathan Fillion, Felicia Day, Zack Whedon, Jed Whedon, and Marissa Tancharoen, which was almost everybody. "I'm so happy, I can't even tell you guys," Nathan said, emotion welling in his voice, "how much joy it brings to my heart… that Neil couldn't make it."

Behind the scenes details, where they found inspiration, and plans for the future make this an excellent companion for your Dr. Horrible DVD, which hits stores today, hint hint. One hour, eight minutes.

I also highly recommend the star-studded, hilarious panels for "Pushing Daisies, "House," "Dollhouse," "How I Met Your Mother," and "Monk," but they're all pretty good.

"Pushing Daisies," the brilliantly wacky show from Brian Fuller about a piemaker who can (temporarily) raise the dead, was canceled by ABC last year before all of the existing episodes were seen. There are three left, which will be on the second season DVD coming soon, but "Daisies" fans wanted them now, and ABC finally said they'd be broadcast over the summer. Summer's here!

The first one, episode 11, "Window Dressed to Kill," aired last Saturday but with the lack of advertising on ABC's part you might have missed it. No worries! It's now available for free viewing at abc.com's "Pushing Daisies" site (you can also find it by searching at Hulu), and for sale at iTunes.

What do you get? Olive brooding over the Piemaker's revelation from the previous episode that he might have feelings for her, or not. Cherry hanging. Ned renouncing his abilities. The resurgence of Randy Mann the taxidermist. Reappearing kidnappers. Emerson solving a case without Ned's magic finger, but with the help of the Alive Again Avenger. And more!

And be sure to preorder the second season DVD, coming July 21, for a better price!

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In the battle of the fandoms, Stephen Colbert wields a mighty force. Even in space.

Fans of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" have marched forward on his behalf many times before. All he has to do is casually mention how nice it would be to have something — or, more accurately, everything — named after him to get hundreds of thousands of his eager followers swinging into vote-box-stuffing action. Colbert has already had his name slapped on a minor league hockey team mascot (Steagle Colbeagle, for the Saginaw Spirit), a trapdoor spider (Aptostichus stephencolberti), a Ben & Jerry's flavor ("Americone Dream"), any number of animals in zoos and scientific studies, and even a Virgin America jet ("Air Colbert").

His latest conquest? Node 3 on the International Space Station, thanks to the naming contest for it that NASA just held which included a write-in option, something they now may be regretting. The first two nodes are named "Unity" and "Harmony" and until very recently it was assumed that the third would become "Serenity." Not only does it fit the theme, but "Serenity" is the name of a spaceship in Joss Whedon's beloved-but-canceled TV show Firefly and the subsequent movie Serenity. And the early voting numbers confirmed overwhelmingly that no one is better at organizing online campaigns than Joss Whedon fans.

Except for the Colbert Nation.

"Colbert" won with over 230,000, beating "Serenity" by over 40,000 votes. Another write-in suggestion took third ("Myyearbook," with 147,637) and "Gaia" came in fourth with 114,427. But NASA may not be a democracy. NASA's human space flight chief, Bill Gerstenmaier, appeared evasive about Colbert's ascendency on Colbert's show on March 10. "Well, we're going to have to go think about that," he said.

"That's NASA's problem," Colbert said to him. "You guys think too much."

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Spaceships by any other name… According to TV Week, the Sci Fi Channel soon will be announcing a name change and rebranding themselves as (wait for it) "Syfy."

"The name Sci Fi has been associated with geeks and dysfunctional, antisocial boys in their basements with video games and stuff like that, as opposed to the general public and the female audience in particular," said TV historian Tim Brooks, who helped launch Sci Fi Channel when he worked at USA Network.

Mr. Brooks said that when people who say they don't like science fiction enjoy a film like "Star Wars," they don't think it's science fiction; they think it's a good movie.

"We spent a lot of time in the '90s trying to distance the network from science fiction, which is largely why it's called Sci Fi," Mr. Brooks said. "It's somewhat cooler and better than the name 'Science Fiction.' But even the name Sci Fi is limiting."

But wait, sci-fi… um, syfy fan! Before you arrange your face into its habitual scowl of personal disapproval, just look at all the good reasons for this completely unnecessary change:

1. "Sci Fi" means "geeky losers." Always has, always will. But this new brand can be made to present the image that the network wants out there, which apparently (now that Battlestar Galactica is ending) means bad made-for-TV movies and in-your-face wrestling.

2. The new slogan, "Imagine Greater," has the added advantage of being both ill-defined and grammatically questionable, two things that science fiction fans simply adore.

3. Syfy is way easier to twitter.

4. Insulting your core audience is a proven method of increasing market share, as evidenced by the incredible success of Animal Planet's new Let's Euthanize Fido! and the Lifetime Network's surprise hit show, Stop Crying and Suck It Up, Geez.

5. Manipulating your mind into thinking something is new when it really isn't… hey, if that isn't science fiction I don't know what is.

6. Brand changing provides stimulation to the economy in the form of new advertising, all new logos and shirts and hats and stationery and executive name plates, marketers who desperately needed something to do, new interns to handle the piles of new "WTF?" hate mail, and eventually new executives to replace the ones who thought of this.

7. The Sci Fi channel has just had the best year since it began, ranking 13th in total viewers among ad-supported cable networks in 2008. Clearly, the old name and format just weren't working. (See "Coke, New")

8. Now all the old Sci Fi-branded stuff will become collectible.

9. 73% of the coveted 18-35 market responded favorably to a brand name vaguely suggestive of a venereal disease.

10. Now, finally, Sci Fi executives will get to date cheerleaders.

See? Perfectly sensible. But this was not just a marketing-driven decision to shed a public perception that, by all rights, should be targeted and advertised at. No, in true science fiction style there's a deeper, more nefarious plan in place: by announcing this seemingly needless change, Syfy will rally those science fiction fans who love nothing better than to band together in loud opposition to something stupid (i.e. all of them), who will then have to watch Syfy in order to snarkily condemn it properly.

It's genius.