Saturday: watched “Kung Fu Panda.” Sweetly funny, cute and exciting fight scenes. Not offensive as I was afraid it’d be (maybe because using furry animals helps avoid cultural stereotypes to some degree), and teaches some interesting little morals for the kids in the audience.
Ken Tucker, Entertainment Weekly’s at-large critic – and longtime tv critic – put in his two-cents in remembering Tim Russert.
WPIX, a.k.a. CW11, is celebrating its 60th Anniversary! So, it’s airing all a marathon of the old tv shows they’ve aired – “My Favorite Martian,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “The Odd Couple,” “Get Smart” (in time for the movie, really!), and a retrospective of the history. My big Channel 11 memory: Channel 11 was where I was introduced to Star Trek (Star Trek: The Next Generation, and then watching oodles of original Star Trek reruns, and then Star Trek: DS9). I remembered that “Voltron” was also on Channel 11. NYC’s Movie Channel at one point (during the Oscars time, they’d drag out all the Oscar winning movies from the vault), and for awhile, kept airing “Dirty Dancing” as an annual thing (or it sure felt like that). The afternoon, after school cartoons during the 1980’s and 1990’s (not to mention the weird cartoons on Sundays). The “Friends” rerurns, “Everyone Loves Raymond” reruns (before Channel 9 bought “Raymond”). It’s a NYC fixture – local all the way, kind of like how “Daily News” is the hometown paper that’s left standing (perhaps it’s no surprise that Channel 11’s in the Daily News building). Quite the local channel – I think Marvin Scott’s the one who’s been longest now on Channel 11? Happy Anniversary!
Around here on triscribe, Asian Pacific American Heritage is… every day, ’cause we’re Asian Pacific Americans (and it’s only fair to recognize all Americans)… so it’s only good to see a report that tackles the “model minority” myth.
US Federal Magistrate Judge Kiyo Matsumoto, once confirmed, may become the first Asian Pacific American District Court Judge of the Eastern District of New York. How exciting!
On a not-so inspirational-level story: Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of Federal Appeals’ 9th Circuit is in a bit of a pickle, having some not-good-stuff on his personal website, thus referring the matter to judicial ethics review. The NY Daily News goes even further, putting up photos about Ch. Judge Kozinski’s time on “The Dating Game” back in the 1960’s (what? he did that before he became the judge who wrote all the gripping opinions we became familiar back in law school, particularly in the area of Intellectual Property? Good Grief!). Hmm.
An interesting read on diversity behind and in front of the tv screen, in this week’s Entertainment Weekly.
The New Brooklyn — they think they want to bring Manhattan to Brooklyn? Geez Louise, what’s with people!
Enjoy Father’s Day.