Ahlschwede Blog

Murder House

My friend Tom is working on a new PBS show Murder House. John tells me  he's seen this ad for the program on the air in Nebraska, and it features Tom himself! It's always nice to know a celebrity.

Serenity and Dr. Who DVDs

Serenity, the movie based on the short lived Firefly television series, will be released on DVD December 20th. I saw the movie twice in theatres and I'm not exactly itching to see it again, but the DVD extra, Future History: The Story of Earth That Was sounds interesting.

The new Dr. Who series, only available on the BBC in the UK before now, is getting a European DVD release on November 21st. The discs are region 2, so you'll need non-standard equipment to play them in the US. From what I've heard the series is excellent.

Link: Serenity in December
Link: Dr. Who Series 1 on Amazon.co.uk

Enterprise Inspiration?

I recently installed Picasa 2,which works much better than older versions, and is letting me find all sorts of files I had misplaced on my computer. I was just looking through some of the photos from last year's trip to the Pacific Northwest, and I was given pause by this image. I'm left wondering if the  similarity of form between the Space Needle as seen from the ground and the starship Enterprise from Star Trek are incidental or intentional.

Matt Jeffries created the original Enterprise design, and while he talked about his design constraints, "No flames, no fins, no rockets", I'm not sure he ever explained where his inspiration came from.

Reading Rainbow Contest 2004 Stories

As I was about to lay down and go to sleep, I suddenly remembered what I had to blog - we posted the final stories for The Reading Rainbow Young Writer's and Illustrator's 10th Annual Contest (gosh it's a long name) today! Check em out.

The BBC and HBO visit Rome

A BBC press release today announced that they are co-producing a 12 part drama series about Rome with HBO. (This is the first series co-produced deal between the two companies.) The series, which will air in 2005, begins with Julius Caesar's triumphant return to Rome after his conquest of Gaul. It is described as being epic in scope, and filming will take place in Rome, North Africa, and throughout Europe.

The press release draws comparisons with I, Claudius, a 13 part mini-series that the BBC produced in 1976. John and I watched I, Claudius on our local PBS station over one summer while we were teenagers. (Why they were showing Masterpiece Theatre summer afternoons is beyond me.) I recently rewatched it earlier this year after John gave me the DVD set for a Christmas gift, and if this new series uses I, Claudius as its standard for excellence, I have no doubt that they'll produce a great series.

Children's Stories

We just made the rest of the 9th Annual Reading Rainbow Young Writers & Illustrators Contest stories live! There are now somewhere around 115 stories from this year's contest online. Personal favorites from this batch of stories (we put the winning stories online a month or so ago) include How I Got My Robot (it has a giant Moon robot! ), Cortni and The Magical Golf Cart (for its surrealistic vision), and The Elf and the Mermaid: Poems from Land and Sea (written by a little girl in Maine, featuring the Door of imagination™).

There were more than 40,000 entries this year, and there are literally hundreds of people who did a lot of work to run the Contest from start to finish. Great work everyone!

Media Giant to Uncle Sam: Stop Propping Up PBS

The Baltimore Sun (a subsidiary of the media congolmerate Tribune Co. [which owns 28 individual TV stations and 22% of the WB network]) has printed an editorial calling for the Federal Government to stop funding PBS. [via Current]