Another atypical police detective from another part of the world
It was the first week of April 2026 when I first wrote my piece on Det. Frank Columbo starring the incomparable* Peter Falk.
See this link provided for more details.
Read More »When networks were in on the fun
Originally, this was going to be about channel bumpers and how overlooked those are compared to other filmed and animated media that hasn’t been archived, and I will get to channel bumpers in this piece. It will merely open up into the springboard of wider media and what the bumpers mean. As a guy who jackhammers the corner of the YouTube mobile app screen hoping in vain that it’ll skip the ad sooner, this may seem odd, but the bumpers weren’t just a showcase of the network you were watching ChalkZone on.
It seems to be something of an exercise in animation. Already an expensive and labor-intensive medium, be it hand-drawn or stop-motion (the latter of which I have experience with TTwTT), making a silly animation in an extremely crude manner is nothing to sneeze at. The history of the medium has a rich lineage as attributed to the likes of Walt Disney and Warner Bros. With tech catching up and more and more animators and studios abusing the new tech to see what can and can’t be done, eventually some madman would turn channel idents into an art form.
Read More »The story of the vassal with little to do about nobility
Let me ask you what comes to mind when you think of the word noble or some similar word. Aristocrat, vassal, bureaucrat, baron, or any other such title. If you’ve seen enough medieval media you might default to European nobles in their fancy castles with arguably too much bright light, too much orchestral music, and too many grand displays of grandeur…
Yeah, isekai ironically lost its luster for me.
Read More »Working forwards and working backwards
Long time readers know by heart my love for Max “Painkiller” Payne is outdone only by that of Detective Frank “One more thing” Columbo. But for those who are checking in from an uncharted part of the world (or galaxy), here’s my piece on Max Payne and here’s my most recent piece (as of this writing) on Columbo. Short version: play Max Payne, it’s great; and watch Columbo, it’s great.
Beatles and Stones out of the way
Take a look at some of the biggest games and entertainment products to release from 1997 to 2003, look at their country of origin, and count on your fingers how many of them are British. By my estimate, there’s a handful of the most famous ones that come straight to mind. Majority video games, but also film and TV. Regular readers and subscribers know what my go-to is and we’ll get to the video games in a moment, but let’s talk about British TV a little. The Brits reading this can name some of their favorites (excuse me, favourites), but let’s look at the one that successfully crossed over to the American TV world:
Back to the obscure parts of my childhood
Yeah, this one is a day late, a doubloon short, and in debt to the Charon Syndicate thanks to the Needs of the Army (and my stubborn refusal to replace anything until it physically falls off my body, because I’m El Cheapo), but it’s no big deal. The only problem here is that the topic for this week’s blog hasn’t been well-researched, so forgive me if its connective tissue doesn’t have any industrial reinforcement.
I have come to introduce ye all to an obscure French-Canadian collaborated 3D animated series known only as: Skyland.
I look at this now after 20 years and think of how far CG has evolved from the ’80s to Reboot (1994-2001) to everything going on these days.
Read More »See, there’s, uh, just one thing that doesn’t look right.
Before you, dear reader, is an atypical series with an atypical protagonist played by a rather atypical actor for an atypical runtime.
Columbo!
Read More »A Tragedy of Media
The title of this post is meant to have two purposes: to highlight how media can become lost and the modern era’s means of recovering lost media. There isn’t always a perfect method to prevent lost media nor is there a perfect means to recover lost media without sacrifice to the media in question. I’ve faced this problem personally while gaming and emulating games, but I’ll get to that soon.
A brief overview of lost media is any piece of media whose preservation methods were either nonexistent or severely compromised to the point that part, most or the entire medium is effectively ruined or destroyed. Surviving copies can’t be located or recovered because they either don’t exist or sometimes won’t be released publicly, even after the copyright expires or the original author dies. For the longest time for obvious reasons, this has mostly applied to film, like so:
This film was released in 1927. It was kept in the MGM vault for decades until all surviving copies were destroyed in the 1965 vault fire. As of this writing, it only survives in posters like this and surviving still shots.
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