Aaron Sorkin

A Sneak Preview of the Aaron Sorkin Facebook Movie

August 28, 2008 by Jim Connelly

From various sources today comes the news that legendary TV & Film writer Aaron Sorkin is going to write a film about the rise of Facebook. What makes this so interesting is that Sorkin has been hating on the internet since the West Wing days, so this choice seems, well, counter-intuitive.

At first blush, Oliver Stone’s film about George W. Bush seems like it will be more sympathetic to the subject than any film that Aaron Sorkin is going to write about the internet.

But as it turns out, that’s wrong. At least according to this sneak preview of the film, which will be called Yourbook.

NBC’s Insidious Plot

October 24, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Last week, NBC Universal announced that, as part of a cost-cutting measure, that they were going to totally abandon the 8:00pm hour to game shows and reality shows. No more sitcoms or dramas with their pesky and expensive money-wasting frills like “actors” and “scripts.”

In the age of TiVo, YouTube & iTunes it doesn’t really matter when or where a show airs as long as it does air. So the worry here is mostly if this means something like Nobody’s Watching will ever make it to the airwaves. Also, how much longer NBC will be considered a “major” network when the fracking CW ends up carrying more scripted shows just because NBC doesn’t think it can have a sitcom hit at 8:00pm? Bill Cosby must be spinning in his grave.

Anyways, I thought it would be ironic to get some comments from fans of NBC’s low-rated freshman drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip — which has spent a lot of time and energy railing against this exact type of situation — but I had a helluva time finding any. And when I did, I was very much surprised by their reaction to this news. They weren’t at all upset. As a matter of fact, they supported NBC’s move.

[Read more…] about NBC’s Insidious Plot

Blogosphere Without Pity

July 20, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

Let us speak, for a moment, about a new phenomenon: the Internet. As some of you may recall, it slipped quietly into the room way back in, what?, the seventies? For many years, it cruised along quietly, picking up fans via discussion groups and bulletin boards. Somewhere along the line, they added pictures and clickable links and sound and motion and more users than you can imagine. All of this is the stuff of legend and only included to make a point: the Internet is not this brand new thing that just showed up yesterday!

In a thinly disguised promotional piece about the upcoming Studio 60, the Los Angeles Times tries to focus on the rapid-fire response of the blogosphere to every bit of news about the show. Hello? We’re bored out here. It’s summer and they don’t seem to be rerunning anything good but The Office. You can only watch “The Injury” so many times, you know?

Upfronts: Will Studio 60 Be The Greatest Thing Ever?

May 16, 2006 by Jim Connelly

It’s a rhetorical question, I know, but has any TV program in the history of Television been so overly publicized six months prior to its debut than Studio 60? Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, too, but this Wall St Journal headline might be a bit too much:

Can ‘Studio 60’ Save NBC?

No! No single show can save any network!! Period!! Well, except for Veronica Mars, that might save the CW . . . OK, that was just plain wishful thinking, which is what this is.