Dollhouse

Joss und Summer sind noch dran, aber halt erst wenn Dollhouse und Terminator es erlauben:

“She’s even busier than I am. She’s busy terminating everybody,” Whedon said. “We’ve both very dedicated to the concept, and it is the next kind of dream for something to do, but it’s like working with any other artist. If they’re good, they’re very often busy, and you gotta wait.”

“We’ve been waiting to do this for years,” Glau said. “But when you’re on a series, you live there, and that’s all we do. So we’re going to have to wait until the next hiatus, but that’s not even that far away, so keep your fingers crossed.”

Link

wiesengrund - 13. Oktober, 23:56

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20th Century Fox über Dollhouse

Interview mit Dana Walden über die rezenten Panikausbrüche. was mich besonders fasziniert, ist was sie über die für mich von dem was ich bisher weiß als schwächste vorkommende Folge (1x03 "The Target") sagt:

TVWeek: The buzz surrounding Joss Whedon’s “Dollhouse” has been sketchy. The show shut down production for a couple weeks. What’s going on?

Ms. Walden: Trying to tell stories that involve a genre mythology, while also telling close-ended episodic stories, while also developing characters that people are going to want to come back to week in and week out—it’s an enormous, Herculean effort. [But] there’s no one we have more faith in than Joss Whedon.

The midseason opportunity is a blessing and curse. It’s a blessing because you have more time. And it’s a curse because you have more time. There’s a greater level of scrutiny. There is a greater level of intrusion from executives. The bar just keeps being raised because there’s no urgency to put the show on the air, so at no point do you just let go of it and say, “You know what, now it’s time for this country to decide whether this is something that’s going to tap into the Zeitgeist and become culturally phenomenal or successful in general, or not.” Being stuck in that limbo with a lot of well-intentioned executives is very difficult for a creator like Joss.

With [Mr. Whedon’s WB series] “Angel,” we shut that down at the very beginning of the process. There was a creative retooling. We went back up after a little over a month and the show just found the place where the stories were the most interesting and the characters just popped. And that’s where we’ve come to with “Dollhouse.” There’s a very complicated mythology that Joss is trying to crack in a way that’s satisfying to a broad audience but will also satisfy his core fan base who will watch anything that Joss does. This is a big task.

TVWeek: Is the retooling going well?

Ms. Walden: Absolutely. The first two episodes … are quite good. The third episode is as compelling a script as I’ve ever read. You just fly through it. It’s engaging, it’s exciting. It was the script where everyone said, “You know what, Joss is on to something. We need to give him some breathing room. Let’s take a couple weeks down so the scripts can catch up to this direction.”

Das erklärt den Shutdown aus der Perspektive.

wiesengrund - 13. Oktober, 09:20

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Sonntag, 12. Oktober 2008

1.05: "Man on the Street" - Gerüchte

Auf dem offiziellen Wiki hat gossi, unser quasi-Spitzel in allen produktionsnahen Belangen, eingetragen dass 1x05 von Maurissa geschrieben und von David Solomon gedreht wird.

wiesengrund - 12. Oktober, 21:19

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Samstag, 11. Oktober 2008

It's Own Worst Enemy

Das bald auf NBC startende Persönlichkeitsspaltungs-Action-Drama My Own Worst Enemy featuring Christian Slater wird mit Dollhouse verglichen:

If it's successful, Joss Whedon's upcoming series "Dollhouse" might find that "My Own Worst Enemy" is its own worst enemy. "Dollhouse" has a similar premise about an operative whose memory is wiped clean after each mission -- until she begins remembering.

"I think that the concept itself is not very important," Smilovic said. "It's the execution of the concept that really matters, and I think we're going to all do it very differently."

Well, let's hope.

wiesengrund - 11. Oktober, 15:29

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Freitag, 10. Oktober 2008

1x05: "Man on the Street" - Casting Sides

Nach dem Teaser gestern nun heute, das große Ding: Casting sides für "Man on the Street"!

SPOILER (mark it to read it)

Dies wird der große, epische Metakommentar der ersten Staffel werden. Das "Nightmares" und das "Out of Gas" von Dollhouse. Ein Reporter sammelt Stimmen auf der Straße über die urban legend namens Dollhouse. Die Stimmen sind unglaublich. Ein Professor versucht sich sogar an die Neurologie des ganzen. Und die Motive, die Meinungen, die Moral und Ethik, die Perspektive der gesamten Prämisse wird herumgeschleudert, zerlegt, wiederzusamengesetzt, erweitert, hinterfragt. Neben "Echo" wird diese Folge wohl das zweite wirkliche Juwel dieser ersten Season sein. Vom Gefühl her.

wiesengrund - 10. Oktober, 20:20

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THOUGHTS ON THE FIREFLY 7th SEASON PREMIERE

Sogar mit Dollhouse-mention. :)

But with last night's episode, "Rise and Fall," (the first season premiere not written by Whedon, who has apparently decided the leave the series in Cain's hands for it's final run while he preps Dollhouse and works on the Dr. Horrible stuff) the wishes of fans for things to be like the first season were met a little too literally. Be careful what you wish for and all that. The revelation that new government is actually a puppet of the New Sun corporation almost suggests that everything we and the crew have been though has been for naught. And with no Miranda controversy this time, what's gonna happen to topple yet another corrupt government (though this does serve as an interesting socio-political commentary on the dangers a too-powerful executive branch). Are we headed for a downer ending? A suicidal last battle come May sweeps?

Link

Meine Güte, sechs Jahre hat das Ding jetzt schon auf dem Buckel.

wiesengrund - 10. Oktober, 20:17

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"So... why do you write these strong female characters?"

Endlich hab ich nicht nur eines meiner Lieblingszitate von Joss belegt bekommen, sondern auch eine an sich sehr bewegende Rede seinerseits für Equality Now (die Frauenrechts-NGO, die z.B. jährlich von Whedon-Fans mittels Can't Stop The Serenity unterstützt wird) gesehen, die ich einfach mal für zwischendurch posten möchte. Mit einem Vorwrot von Meryl Streep:

(Direktequality)

P.S.: Joke zum Nachtisch.

wiesengrund - 10. Oktober, 02:10

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1x05: "Man on the Street"

Neben Titel gibt's mittlerweile traditionell bei Spoiler TV einen casting call:

[JOEL MYNOR]
30'S TO 40'S, MALE. He is a pleasant looking man, a client of the dollhouse who lost his wife several years ago. He has a very sweet engagement with ECHO. HUGE GUEST STAR. PLEASE SUBMIT ALL ETHNICITIES

Klingt nach dem Pop-Gemetzel von Folge 4 wieder nach etwas sehr emotionalem. A propos Tradition: Spoiler TV rückte mit diesen Infos bei Folge 4 fast zeitgleich mit Produktionsstart raus.

wiesengrund - 10. Oktober, 00:53

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Mittwoch, 8. Oktober 2008

Remote-free TV funktioniert offenbar wirklich

According to Magna, Remote-Free TV already is paying dividends. About 88 percent of people watching Fox's other dramas sit through the ad breaks, but 92 percent of people watching "Fringe" stay tuned. The ad agency pronounced this "a major improvement in audience retention."

Link

wiesengrund - 8. Oktober, 09:58

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Interviews!

Fängt jetzt schon die große Promo-Welle an? Wohl nicht, denn folgende vier Intreviews mit (großteils) selten interviewtem Cast liegen schon ewig rum, befor sie von dollrific! entdeckt wurden. Here they are: Olivia Williams, Fran Kranz, Dichen Lachman, und Tahmoh Penikett.

wiesengrund - 8. Oktober, 09:40

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Dienstag, 7. Oktober 2008

Das erste Bild von Dr. Clair Saunders! Die Narben!

Here you go:

Interview/Artikel gibt's hier.

wiesengrund - 7. Oktober, 16:44

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Official website!

...ist online! Zwar spärlich, aber doch.

Die neue Schrift gefällt mir viel besser als die alte. Zwar nicht so gut wie die ganz alte, aber besser als die alte. gossi hat Infos:

1) "Watch full episodes" will work at some point.

2) There will be a bigger website launch shortly. They're just tweakin' it (take off the "Dollhouse is copyright Warner Bros" is my latest thought).

3) I think/hope that logo may be from the new title sequence. (Edit: yeah, I totally think it is. It's all Fightclubesque).

Das von mir als aufgelassen befundene wetpaint-wiki (das mir schon wegen seinem Design nicht sonderlich zusagt) scheint offenbar bald die offiziele Fan-Community zu werden. Na mal sehen.

wiesengrund - 7. Oktober, 09:14

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Castle (Trailer)

Starring the one and only: Nathan Fillion.

(Direktkastl)

wiesengrund - 7. Oktober, 08:15

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Montag, 6. Oktober 2008

Und a propos Werbung...

In diesem langen und elaboriertem Artikel über product placement (vor allem in 30 Rock) kommt Mr. Whedon als Geschäftsmodellvisionär auch vor:

Then something interesting crops up on the Internet, a different type of experiment. It’s by Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I’d last seen Whedon on the set of Firefly, a Fox space-Western about a group of rebels fleeing a corporation that governs their universe. The series premiered in 2002, in retrospect the year everything changed. Joe Millionaire became a monster hit. DVRs were new; DVDs were a big deal; online TV hadn’t happened, but it was on the horizon. Aired out of order, Firefly was canceled after eleven episodes despite a fanatical online following. Yet it was a surprise hit on DVD, enabling Whedon to make a movie. Serenity won raves but flopped at the box office. So it goes.

Whedon is about to launch Dollhouse, a new series on Fox. But in the interim, he’s whipped up a pet project, a labor of love that is also a stab at a new kind of TV economics—and a response to the paralysis he witnessed during the writers’ strike. It’s a musical called Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, 42 minutes long, filmed in six days, starring Neil Patrick Harris as Billy, an anarchist nerd who dreams of being a supervillain. Quirky and hilarious, it streamed free for a week online (crashing the server the first night.) Then it went onto iTunes, debuting at No. 1. A DVD launches this fall. A tech blogger ran the numbers and concluded Whedon might make real money. This could “signal the beginning of the end of television as the medium of the least common denominator and the beginning of the profitable niche market,” the blogger wrote, applauding a “freemium model” enabling cult creators to get funding directly from their audience.

I ask Whedon about 30 Rock. Like Fontana, he’s a fan. He thought the Verizon joke was fantastic. But he adds a caveat: You can only do that joke once. “You can’t do it again and be cute, because then it’s a different type of shilling. Eventually you realize the reason they’re making a joke is because there’s something abhorrent going on.”

I tell him about the SoyJoy deal. He’s troubled; he hadn’t realized that was an integration. (He also hadn’t realized it was a real brand.) But it’s the American Express podbusters that really set him off. “My wife and I get very angry. We invest in the reality of the show! And this is one of the ways they’re picking apart the idea of the narrative, keeping you from knowing if it’s a show or not.”

It’s not just one series or one network, he points out. Everybody does it, and the strike added almost nothing to his colleagues’ ability, or willingness, to push back, not merely against integration but against the way storytelling itself has been corroded—by required “Webisodes,” the insistence that writers blog every impulse, even the erosion of the end credits. “They want to take the story apart so they can stuff it with as much revenue as they can. And ultimately what you get is a zombie, a stuffed thing—a non-show.”

Asked to use a particular phone, Whedon might say yes. “If we need to talk about the wonder of that phone? I don’t know.” Television is a mass art, requiring compromise, pragmatism, he knows—but the line creators draw should not be about “How coolly can I do this? The most artful can be the most unethical.”

LIZ: So, we wrote a product integration sketch.

JACK: Good.

LIZ: But we wanted to run it by you first, because it’s about how GE is making us do this, and we were kind of hoping that the GE executive in the sketch could be played by you.

JACK: Oh, I get it. The whole self-referential thing: Letterman hates the suits, Stern yells at his boss, Nixon’s “Sock it to me” on Laugh-In. Yeah, hippie humor.

Which is more naïve, Whedon’s belief in the radical power of storytelling—or the notion that every integration is acceptable, as long as the suits and the creatives stay friendly?

Could Whedon’s experiment really suggest an alternative to the Branded Universe? I want to believe in that possibility. But I know there’s another future, and it’s by far the more likely one, especially now that the economy has crumbled for real. In this version, that creative riddle that stumped Dick Blasucci on Mad TV has been solved. It is indeed possible to create subversive comedy that also sells Yarises. On most TV series, brands are woven indiscernibly into each plot twist—while on others they are referenced openly, with tremendous finesse, because there’s no longer any distinction between what’s funny and what moves the needle. Characters are designed as shills or consumers from day one. Shows themselves are brands, actors are brands, and so are songs and sodas, and these entities link and detach with the elegance of acrobats. No one will see a distinction between a scriptwriter and a copywriter—least of all an audience member—because that frog has boiled beyond recognition.

Welcome to the new Golden Age, fortified with optimism.

wiesengrund - 6. Oktober, 12:10

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