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"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
With our 12th Round selection, Team Sequioa is proud to select, in the Canadian category, Are You Afraid of the Dark?
From Wikipedia:
Quote:
Both series of Are You Afraid of the Dark? revolved around a group of teenagers who referred to themselves as "The Midnight Society". Every week, at a secret location in the woods, one member would tell a scary story to the group. The actual story, rather than the telling, was displayed to the television viewer. The story was shown between the group's arrival at the site and their departure. Each storyteller would begin their story by saying "Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story..." at which point he or she would toss out a handful of potassium nitrate (which the characters referred to as "dust") from a leather pouch into a campfire to heighten the flames and produce an eerie white smoke. The storyteller would continue by announcing its title (The Tale of...).
The themes of the stories usually revolved around a variety of paranormal phenomena, such as ghosts, goblins, magic, haunted houses, magical curses, aliens, witches and the like coming into contact with normal teenagers. Usually, the episodes were either filmed in the woods, in abandoned houses, or in public places like schools or libraries.
At the end of every episode one character would throw a red bucket of water onto the fire, stating "I declare this meeting of the Midnight Society closed." And the group would leave the campsite, thus ending the story telling.
The Tale of the Many Faces Part 1
The Tale of the Many Faces Part 2
The Tale of the Many Faces Part 3
The Show had two runs, the original from 1990 until 1996, and then again from 1999 to 2000. I used to watch it when I was younger, during it's original run, and will admit there were a few episodes that scared the crap out of me as a kid!
under educational, team Abe Vigoda chooses The Electric Company
How can you go wrong with a cast that included Morgan Freeman, Bill Cosby, Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder, etc?
The Electric Company was an educational American children's television series that was produced by the Children's Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) for PBS in the United States. PBS broadcast 780 episodes over the course of its six seasons, from 1971 to 1977. After it ceased production that year, the program continued in reruns until 1985. CTW produced the show at Reeves Teletape Second Stage in Manhattan. The Electric Company employed sketch comedy and other devices to provide an entertaining program to help children of elementary-school age develop their reading skills. It was intended for children who had graduated from CTW's flagship program, Sesame Street. Appropriately enough, the humor was more mature than what was seen there.
The original cast included Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby, Judy Graubart, Lee Chamberlin, and Skip Hinnant. Most of the cast had done stage, repertory, and improv work, with Cosby and Moreno already well-known from film and television. Ken Roberts, who was best known as a soap-opera announcer, was the narrator of some of the segments during the first season. Jim Boyd, who was strictly an off-camera voice actor and puppeteer in the first season, began appearing on-camera in season two, mostly in the role of J. Arthur Crank. Luis Avalos also joined the cast at that time.
Bill Cosby was a regular in season one, and occasionally appeared in new segments during season two, but left afterward. Nevertheless, segments Cosby had taped in seasons one and two were repeatedly re-run in shows produced throughout the following four seasons, and Cosby was billed as a cast member throughout the show's entire run. Similarly, Lee Chamberlin also left after the second season, but many of her segments were also repeatedly reused. Consequently, Chamberlin was also billed as a cast member for the show’s entire run.
Added to the cast at the beginning of the third season was Hattie Winston, an actress and singer who later appeared on the show Becker. Beginning in the fourth season, Danny Seagren appeared in the role of Spider-Man.
Based upon James Clavell's novel of the same name, the story of an English ship captain (played by Richard Chamberlain) who is shipwrecked in Japan during the 1600s, and follows his trials and tribulations in surviving and then dealing with the Japanese Shogun culture.
Shown every night for a week, this series was shown in the golden age of mini-series.
__________________
"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
Sorry for the delay team....I've been struggling to decide and I had a pick but then forgot it. So in its stead (and hopefully no one else takes it) I will take Who Wants to be a Millionaire? In the Game Show category
Admit it - that's where your crush on Alanis started.
__________________
"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
Team TV Guide calls to the podium one of the most excellent dramas to come out of HBO in the last few years, Rome.
The setting was lush & realistic, the costumes glorious in their authenticity & the acting superb - in many ways, it reminded me of the Sopranos, just a few centuries before Tony Soprano was running things in Jersey. You can argue that the series was not as historically accurate as it could have been, it did feel authentic tho and according to producers that was their main goal.
In the game show category the Infomercial Kings are proud to select American Gladiators.
In each episode, the contenders competed in a series of events. Six to eight events were played per show, varying from season to season. Most of the events tested the contenders' physical abilities against the superior size and strength of the Gladiators, who were mostly pro or amateur bodybuilders and former football players. In most events, the contenders were not directly pitted against each other, but against the Gladiators. In each event, the contenders earned points based on their performance.
For my next selection, Frozen TV Dinner is happy to select, from the UK's Channel 4, in the Miniseries category, 1989's Traffik.
I was disappointed to not get the movie Traffic in the movie draft, so I am happy to make up for it now by choosing the inspiration for Steven Soderbergh's Oscar winning film.
Traffik was a 6 episode series produced in 1989 and follows the flow of heroin from the poppy fields of Pakistan, through traffickers in Germany, finally to the addicts in England. The story is told through 3 intertwined storylines that give the viewer a glimpse into the underlying motivations of the people involved in all sides of the drug trade.
If you have seen the movie, you'll recognize the basic plot: The government's minister in charge of the "war on drugs" (Bill Paterson) discovering that his daughter (Julia Ormond) is an addict herself. The head of a German trafficking ring (George Kukura) is arrested, and after his wife (Lindsay Duncan) gets over the initial shock of discovering where her husband's wealth came from, she takes over running the family business. Also, the source of the drugs is traced back the poppy fields of Pakistan, where extreme poverty leads desperate people to do desperate things.
Because the miniseries had more than double the running time, it was able to explore the lives of the characters more deeply than the movie was able to. As much as I enjoyed the movie (it's still one of my favourite films of this decade), the miniseries is probably superior to the film.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find any clips of the miniseries on YouTube, but it is available on DVD, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the film.
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Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
