Wednesday, October 8, 2025

American Gladiators: The Original and the Remake(s): Notes

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In comparing the original 1989 American Gladiators series with its 2008 NBC remake one sees the distance between one epoch and another in t...

The Career of Gina Carano: A Few Thoughts

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The career of Gina Carano would seem to have its points of interest for those considering the fortunes of celebrity broadly today, not least...

The Sports Celebrity's Decline, Revisited

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Discussing the decline of celebrity some factors seem to have relevance across that whole range of activities which make celebrities of indi...

The Upcoming Spartacus: House of Ashur: Some Reflections

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The STARZ Channel's series Spartacus was not a hit on anywhere near the scale of, for example, The Sopranos , or perhaps more comparabl...

Xena: Warrior Princess: A Few Reflections

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Reading of STARZ's revival of its Spartacus television series put me in mind of that first big Sam Raimi-Lucy Lawless period drama coll...

Howard Fast's Spartacus: Some Notes

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Howard Fast's Spartacus would not seem to be much read today and it is not at all hard to understand why that is. If Fast's book is...

Those Who Didn't Walk Away From Self-Publishing

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Those authors who elected to self-publish their books using such services as Kindle Direct Publishing these past two decades placed their ho...

The Politics of the Guardian Newspaper

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For those inclining toward the left of today's very far rightward center the extreme narrowness of opinion the American news media ordi...

Has Video Game Creation Become Stagnant?

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Has video game creation become stagnant? As is so often the case the answer to that question depends on which standard one has in mind when ...

Has Anime Changed Over the Years? (In a Word, Yes.)

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Not long ago I had something to say about the comparative poverty of fan discourse in North America regarding anime compared to other subjec...

The Limits of North American Fan Discussion of Anime

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First taking an interest in anime a long time ago I noticed that while it seemed that anime is very, very widely watched in North America th...

Gene Roddenberry's Genesis II: Some Thoughts

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Sitting down and properly watching the Gene Roddenberry scripted and produced made-for-television film (and would-be series pilot) Genesis I...

Remembering Andromeda: The Politics of "Slipfighter the Dogs of War"

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With an immediacy and specificity rare in scripted television due to the lag time between the conception of an episode and its airing the No...

Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda: A Few Reflections

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The small-screen space opera Andromeda (2000-2005) went off the air two decades ago. In spite of having a run longer than most of its simil...

Do Young People Watch Old Movies?

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Today it is common to look back at the summer of 2020 and its protests as the high point of the Black Lives Matter movement. I personally ...