Posted on July 8, 2011 at 8:17 am
ABC is going to license its cancelled soap operas, “One Life to Live” and “All My Children,” to continue on the web! Prospect Park, co-founded by a former Disney executive, will continue both shows and promises the same length and quality. They are meeting with the actors, advertisers, and others involved with the series to try to keep as much continuity as possible.
Posted on July 7, 2011 at 3:05 pm
I love character actors, those utility infielders who have to create a complete character in seconds and hold a scene opposite a superstar. They’re the ones who always seem vaguely familiar but are so chameleon-like that we never quite place them.
One of my favorites is the astoundingly versatile Denis O’Hare, who seems to be in everything these days. He’s a testy judge in “The Good Wife” and the vampire King of Mississippi in “True Blood” (very mature material). He has played officious bureaucrats in “The Proposal” (watch the closing credit outtakes) and “Charlie Wilson’s War” and a singing, dancing prince in “Once Upon a Mattress.” He has appeared in “Brothers and Sisters” and “CSI: Miami.” It is a pleasure to be able to pay tribute to such a versatile performer.
Posted on July 7, 2011 at 8:00 am
As more original content is being created for the web, deaf and hard of hearing audiences are urging producers to include closed captions. The Washington Post reports:
Last year, President Obama signed into law the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, requiring that captioned television shows must be captioned online. But there’s a loophole: The law does not require original online programming to be captioned.
The story reports on grass roots efforts to persuade producers and distributors of online content to include closed captions through social media and some lawsuits against Time Warner and Netflix, charging discrimination. There is a petition calling on Netflix to improve and expand their closed captioning and search functions.
My dad, Newton Minow, was one of those who fought for closed captioning of television shows, in part because his older brother was hard of hearing but mostly because he has always worked for choice and accessibility. The networks objected for years. But once forced to comply, it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to them because the captions are what make it possible for TIVO and DVRs to find the shows they record.
Earlier this year, Regal and Cinemark made a commitment to full captioning in their movie theaters by the end of 2012. Netflix and the producers of web series should do the same.
Posted on June 22, 2011 at 8:00 am
When did “My Little Pony” get so cool? According to BNET’s Constantine von Hoffman, the new Hub series “is the new, hip thing among the geekerati.”
I love this presentation from a high school student whose assignment was to examine the physics of a stunt in a movie or television.
Posted on June 8, 2011 at 3:59 pm
ABC Family has a new series about two families who discover that their teenage daughters were switched at birth. The girl who grew up with a single hairdresser mom and the girl who grew up in the wealthy home of a former pro athlete meet their biological families for the first time. It’s a very good show and one of its brightest stars is Katie Leclerc. She plays the bright, confident biological daughter who grew up with the single mother. And she is deaf, and attends a school for the deaf, though in the first episode it looks like she will transfer to the school her biological parents want her to attend.
Leclerc has Ménière’s disease, a disorder of the inner ear. She is fluent in American Sign Language. She has a dazzling smile and a glowing presence on screen. It is a joy to see the portrayal of a character who has a disability but is neither a saint nor a victim, and it is an equal joy to celebrate the arrival of a talented newcomer who has the skill and charisma to become a major star. The show has an appreciation of deaf culture and being deaf is just a part of who the character is. The excellent cast also includes Lucas Grabeel, Lea Thompson, Vanessa Marano, and Constance Marie. Don’t miss this show.
