Seth MacFarlane's new animated TV show "American Dad" premiered tonight and it was god awful. It felt like a re-tread of an old Simpson's episode combined with a rip-off of The Family Guy. But it was missing the heart and likeable characters of The Simpsons and it was missing the abrupt and sometimes hilarious segues of The Family Guy. Instead we have silly jokes about homosexuality and racism with the occasional splash of nudity or blood. Read the rest of this entry ...
As if Flash games weren't enough, Holger has released a new web-browser game written in SVG: Sokoban. This puzzle game is fun and challenging, but at 60 levels, it's unlikely that anyone is going to sit through them all. It's a shame that the game doesn't save a cookie and remember which level you've made it to (hint hint, Holger).
To play the above, your browser needs to support SVG (a relatively new web-based graphics standard). Until Mozilla Firefox 1.1 is released, I recommend you download the Adobe SVG Viewer plugin. For Internet Explorer, click here. For Mozilla Firefox, follow the instructions at the bottom of this page.
When Cartoon Network first came onto the scene it was owned by the Turner Network and had access to the entire Turner library of animation. This included a large chunk of Warner Brothers cartoons (Looney Tunes / Merrie Melodies up to 1948) and (I believe) the entire Hanna-Barbera library (Scooby-Doo, Flintstones, etc). Naturally Cartoon Network became to be known as just a network that reran old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. Frustrated with this image, Mike Lazzo (a producer at CN) asked Turner if they could create their own shows. Read the rest of this entry ...
Tuesday night, the Home Theater Forum hosted their annual live chat with Warners Home Video representatives, giving fans a chance to ask anything related to upcoming Warners video releases. I only happened to stumble upon this announcement last night after the chat was already underway, but since my interests lie with some of WB's animation releases (Looney Tunes Golden Collections), I decided to attend the last hour and a half. I accessed the chat through a web page but the technology underneath it was an IRC channel and it really brought me back to the days before Instant Messaging hit the big time on the internet. Before Instant Messaging, there was....IRC. Read the rest of this entry ...
Starting in 2003, Warner Brothers Home Video began releasing the Looney Tunes cartoons on DVD in wonderful 4-disc box sets packed with cartoons (of course) and extra features. The sets are called "Looney Tunes Golden Collection" and Volume One and Volume Two have been released in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Fans of the Golden Age of Hollywood animation (myself included) are eagerly awaiting each new volume of Looney Tunes. Read the rest of this entry ...