T.V.’s Most Famous Season Cliffhangers (Part Two)

In Part One, I bravely examined some of T.V.’s most famous cliffhangers. But not just any cliffhangers - the really cruel ones. The ones that end a season. Making us wait a year or two for resolution is quite nasty on the part of the show runners, and it’s ever something that I’ve enjoyed. If I’d been around in the ’70s when Star Wars first came into being, I would have gone insane. I’ve had a pretty good track record of just waiting until the whole series of (popular show) gets released on DVD, and watching it all in one big butt-numbing lump. Works great for Buffy, with the slight disadvantage that I can never remember what happened in which season.

You may recall that my last article ended on a cliffhanger of sorts. It was more than just a clever literary device - it was to make a point. Cliffhangers are annoying, sure, but they’re even worse when they don’t get picked up later.

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I’m Federal Agent Jack Bauer…

…and today is the longest day of my life.

It’s been a banner year for 24, considering that its latest season was delayed due to the writer’s strike. The show creators have been working hard to make sure that we don’t forget about Jack. It turns out that T.V. viewers are fickle. Plot-driven shows with an overarching storyline lost viewership in buckets after the strike, and 24’s highly serialistic nature wouldn’t have suited a mid-season breakup. Suits wisely decided to delay the show until next year, keeping the conceit of the show intact.

But how to keep people interested? Why, a T.V. movie, of course!

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Movie Trivia: Shia LaBeouf’s Huge Problem–His Dad

You know, when you blow up fairly big in Hollywood, as the young star of Transformers and several other films has done, you can expect some problems to go along with that. You know, standard Hollywood stuff…paparazzi following your every move, long-forgotten “friends” and “relatives” sucking up or trying to bum cash off you, your dad living in your garage and refusing to leave….

Apparently, this is actually happening to Shia LaBeouf. His dad spends his summers living in a teepee in Montana, but when the horrors of a windblown Montana winter rear their ugly head, dad Jeffrey LaBoeuf–a Vietnam veteran, I might add–heads for movie star son Shia’s garage.

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Video Game Trivia: Son of News Potpourri

-Jeremy Parish of 1up.com (and of the late and lamented ToastyFrog) has an interview with gaming’s godfather, Shigeru Miyamoto. The article retreads the familiar Nintendo narrative that began with the DS and continues with Wii Fit: For gaming to survive, it needs to be made accessible to the non-hardcore. Also if you ever wanted a picture of Miyamoto doing yoga for your own mysterious purposes, now is your chance.

-Shows from the G4 network will soon be available on Xbox Live. Now you can get your awful, awful television for only a modest download fee.

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Video Game Trivia: The Squeenix Rumor Mill

It looks like I misinterpreted that blurb yesterday about Square-Enix’s rough financial news. When Square President Yoichi Wada said the company needed “to go beyond traditional Square-Enix,” I thought it meant a renewed emphasis on innovation. If Kotaku’s rumor mill is to be believed, it may mean less.

Word has it that a fierce meeting was held over a month ago where the Square Enix honcho threatened to start axing employees if they didn’t (and we’re paraphrasing) “stop making games that only they wanted to play.” Wada is supposedly worried that the company’s games have become more and more insular, alienating itself from the mainstream.

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Movie Trivia: Marcus Belby Actor Dead

No, seriously. It’s been a weird day for celebrity deaths, and Robert Knox, the actor who won the role of Marcus Belby in the upcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, was murdered recently while trying to protect his brother from knife-wielding assailants.

Apparently, Knox and his brother were out in Kent, which is in the southeast portion of England, when Knox and his younger brother Jamie got in a fight with two knife-wielding men over what was reportedly something to do with a stolen cell phone. The men attacked, reportedly stabbing four others, and Knox was taken to a hospital where he died of his wounds shortly thereafter. Police have opened investigations, and don’t believe as yet that the murder was gang-related.

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T.V.’s Most Famous Season Cliffhangers (Part One)

On May 29th, the second and third parts of the highly anticipated Season Four finale for Lost will air as a two-hour special, bringing conclusion to the May 15th beginning. Are you excited? I know I am!

No, I’m not. I really can’t fake this. I’ve never seen Lost.

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Movie Trivia: Sydney Pollack, RIP

It’s a significant year for losses in the movie camps, o my readership, and long on the list is Sydney Pollack. Director of movies like Out of Africa and Tootsie, Pollack’s career was at its height in the seventies and eighties. Though it wasn’t all over when Reagan left the White House–his final on-screen appearance was in the very recent film Made of Honor, where he played Patrick Dempsey’s frequently-married father.

Pollack was seventy-three.

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Video game trivia: News potpourri

-Devo is coming to Rock Band as several downloadable tracks. Could there be a more perfect medium for Through Being Cool than a video game?

-Valve has announced that Left 4 Dead is coming out in November. Such a long time! Dead Rising just hasn’t satisfied my zombie-killing urges, but I guess I’ll have to wait until then.

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Video Game Trivia: Secret of Mana’s non-spiritual sequel

If you had a Super Nintendo and were an RPG fan, chances are you played Secret of Mana. Squaresoft’s action-RPG was a classic of the time, and still fetches a high price on the secondary market. With cartridge prices exceeding the $100 mark, the ROM is a common download on emulation sites.

The quality of Secret of Mana is one reason that its spinoff, Secret of Evermore, was such a disappointment. The game, which wasn’t really intended to be a sequel, just seemed like a big mess.

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