TV

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The Newsroom: The Medium vs. The Message

the-newsroom-season-2-promoCanadian media theorist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase “the medium is the message.” The premise of the phrase is that medium influences the message of a piece of media.

Sometimes, this influence works to enhance the message. Just look at video games like Spec Ops: The Line and Hotline Miami that break the fourth wall to make you question violence of video games.

However, the medium and the traditional expectations of the medium can have the opposite effect and hold back what can be a great message. If there’s a key reason why The Newsroom is hated and hate watched by so many, it’s because of the requirements of the medium of dramatic TV.

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Entertainment Link-Off: Show Me the Money

ronda-rousey-maxim13-03Jackie’s off this weekend and I’ve drawn in. As tends to be the case when I do the ELO, I don’t have any good new releases to talk about this weekend. Sure, Denzel’s got a new movie with Marky Mark but it doesn’t sound like 2 Guns is a great film. If you’d rather completely melt your brain out your ear, you can always check out The Smurfs 2. Poor NPH getting stuck with this.

Let’s start off today’s links with UFC Women’s champ and Ultimate Fighter coach Ronda Rousey.

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Sorkin, The Newsroom and the Price of Perfection

the-newsroom-season-2-promoWhen you talk about great modern TV series, the conversation will always include a mention of Aaron Sorkin. The man was the driving force behind not one but two modern classics, Sports Night and The West Wing.

However, Sorkin’s current series, The Newsroom, isn’t considered a classic by most TV critics. It’s not because it’s a bad show. Anyone that has watched network TV over the last few years will know that most series on TV now are pretty poor. Critics don’t like The Newsroom because it doesn’t live up to Sports Night and The West Wing.

That’s the problem when you set the standard too high.

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Wednesday Link-Off: With or Without Google Reader

chrissy-teigen-gq13-09Welcome to the post-Google Reader era of The Lowdown Blog. So this weekend has seen troubles with me finding a new RSS reader and WordPress screw up image embedding so now most of them won’t work in a paragraph. So I don’t know if the linkdump image is going to be to the right of this paragraph or above. It might eventually sort itself out. I’ve noticed that this has gone retroactive so it looks like some update got pushed down that messed up the layout.

Anyway, let’s start this post with Chrissy Teigen.

Getting kicked out of two of the most popular bands of the 90s would completely devastate most men but Jason Everman isn’t most men. (New York Times)

The iWatch isn’t something that Apple has to make for you or me but it has to make it for their investors. (The Atlantic Wire)

The NRA might blame video games but it looks like Newtown school shooter Adam Lanza was a student of mass murders. (Orlando Sentinel)

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Wednesday Link-Off: I Spy…

ewelina-olczak-self13-02It’s the middle of the week which means it’s time for links. Since we’re doing all sorts of video games and E3 coverage everywhere else on the blog and et geekera, there won’t be much gaming in this set of links. We do, however, have Polish model Ewelina Olczak.

We’ve briefly mentioned the NSA’s massive data monitoring program called PRISM. Now, meet the man who blew the whistle on the program and became the NSA’s #1 enemy. (The Guardian)

President Obama is getting a lot of the blame for a program that started in 2007. Ironically, in 2001, he warned that a PRISM-like system was possible under the Patriot Act. (BuzzFeed)

Political analyst extraordinaire Nate Silver thinks that this will play an issue in the 2016 election. (New York Times)

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Entertainment Link-Off: Aftermath

olivia-munn-esquire13-01Don’t adjust the dial. I’ve drawn in for Jackie this week. Normal service will resume next week. My problem is that Jackie has this uncanny ability to off-load the ELO to me when the weekend movie releases are terrible. This week, we have the Smith family sci-fi movie After Earth and the magic crime movie Now You See Me. Well, at least the latter looks like it could be fun. After Earth looks shit. Catch up on old movies or save up for Man of Steel and read a book this weekend.

Rather than promote anything out this week, let’s start off with Olivia Munn. The Newsroom is back soon and you really should watch it. As much as some people hate it, I’ve seen a real change in the importance of fact checking and how news is reported since the show started airing.

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Sunday Link-Off: Taking Control

nina-agdal-nicholasroutzen13-02It’s the end of the week. It’s been a busy one at Lowdown HQ too with all the work we did for Canadian Gaming Week. Maybe we’ll do that again in the future but for now we’ll resume normal programming. So let’s start today’s links with Nina Agdal.

The week before last was about two things: Terrorism and gun control. At first, those were two separate issues. Now, you can actually link the two as bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was on an FBI watch list but was still able to buy high-powered firearms. (Bloomberg)

Midterm elections in the US Congress is still a ways away but gun control could be the biggest issue in 2014. (The New Republic)

Australia banned all semi-automatic and automatic firearms despite concerns over the effect it might have over people’s safety. Almost 20 years later, Australia is one of the safest places in the world to live. To be honest, I felt safer in Australia than I did in Toronto or Ottawa. (Uproxx)

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Sunday Link-Off: Be Right, Not First

alison-brie-esquire13-03Tomorrow is the start of Canadian Gaming Week on The Lowdown Blog. We’ve got some reviews, columns and other features on Canadian games and the people who make them. I’m hoping that it’ll be a lot of fun and that we can do something like this again.

Anyway, it’s Sunday so it’s time for the end of the week links. For the third straight week, the Sunday links feature a star of Mad Men. This week, it’s Alison Brie.

For people trying to keep up with the news story of the Boston bombing, there was a massive problem. Some media organizations consistently kept screwing up the story by trying to be first rather than trying to be right. CNN might have been the worst. (BuzzFeed)

On the print side, the New York Post was consistently wrong. If there was a fact in this case, the Post got it wrong. (Capital New York)

And then the Post slandered a couple of high-school runners by claiming they were the bombers. Just a bit wrong there. (Gawker)

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Forget the Silver Screen, Put Mass Effect on TV

mass-effect-the-movie-posterHollywood and the video games industry don’t have a very good track record of adapting the other’s work. A quick look at the movie adaptation of video games shows a track record of consistent critical flops with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within scoring the highest Tomato Meter score of 43%. Video games based on movies and TV shows haven’t fared much better as good licensed games are more the exception than the rule.

As the week’s go by, I hear more and more about the planned Mass Effect movie. It’s not just Hollywood’s terrible track record in turning video games into a live-action dramatic presentation that worries me. It’s that Mass Effect can’t be turned into a movie without removing its soul.

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Wednesday Link-Off: Spoilers

magdalena-frackowiak-victoriassecret13-04It’s time for the middle of the week which means it’s time for the links. Let’s skip the intro and go straight to the show. First, here’s Magdalena Frackowiak who is making her first appearance on the blog.

Thanks to DVRs, Netflix shows, downloading and social media, has the spoiler warning gone the way of the dodo? (Wired)

Speaking of going the way of the dodo, could Microsoft not be long for this world? (Yahoo Finance)

You may not know but I’m a bit of a cricket fan and watch the IPL every weekend during the spring. Anyway, here’s a look at how Washington National (I think that’s the singular) Bryce Harper would fare in cricket. (Natstradamus)

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