A few thoughts on Jack Ryan, Season 2

This post includes spoilers so if you haven't watched Season 2, you might want to stop reading now.

After having been reasonably satisfied with Season 1, I raced through season 2 over the past week. A few random thoughts:

• After initially alluding to Jack Ryan's "Boy Scout" image (which is the quintessential feature of his character), he immediately sleeps with an unknown woman but likely to be (and in fact is) an intelligence agent of a foreign government. I just can't imagine Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan ever engaging in such reckless personal behavior.
• Speaking of sleeping with a foreign intelligence agent, whatever happened to Jack's girlfriend/fiancée/eventual wife Cathy Mueller? In season 2, Jack is portrayed as single with no hint of Cathy anywhere within the season.
• The ambush scene in the first episode was a complete rip-off of the ambush scene in Clear and Present Danger, to including the death of a close friend of Jack which serves as his motivation for the rest of the movie/season.
• It was immediately obvious to me (someone who doesn't necessarily do well in picking up on signaling or foreshadowing) that Senator Chapin was going to be one of the bad guys.
• It was even more obvious that when Matice split up with his team he was going to be killed. I suppose this shouldn't have been much of a surprise but this is an overused trope.

Here's a comparison of the Rotten Tomatoes scores for the first two seasons. Although critics were slightly less favorable in their Season 2 reviews, audiences were much less impressed.

Law in Plain English: ABC, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc.

This is one in a series of posts designed to describe court decisions in plain English. For more detail and background on the legal issues, see the link to the case below. For similar posts, click here.

SCOTUSblog: ABC, Inc. v. Aereo, Inc.

Argument: Apr 22, 2014 (Aud.)

Aereo's array of dime-sized antennas.

Discussion: Aereo uses thousands of individual antennas to receive broadcast television channels, and Aereo assigns an individual antenna to each of its subscribers. Aereo transmits to its subscribers broadcast television programs over the internet for a monthly subscription fee, but it does not have any license from copyright holders to record or transmit their programs. The 1976 Copyright Act gives copyright owners an exclusive right "in the case of literary, musical, dramatic, and choreographic works, pantomimes, and motion pictures and other audiovisual works, to perform the copyrighted work publicly." 17 U.S.C. § 106(4). ABC and other holders of copyrights in programs broadcast on network television moved for a preliminary injunction barring Aereo from transmitting programs to its subscribers while the programs are still airing, claiming that those transmissions infringe their exclusive right to publicly perform their works, as defined by 17 U.S.C. § 101.  The District Court denied the motion. It concluded that, although the Plaintiffs had demonstrated a likelihood that they would suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a preliminary injunction,an injunction would severely harm Aereo, likely ending its business. The balance of hardships did not tip "decidedly" in favor of the Plaintiffs and an injunction "would not disserve the public interest." The Second Circuit affirmed, finding that Aereo's transmissions of unique copies of broadcast television programs created at its users' requests and transmitted while the programs are still airing on broadcast television are not "public performances" of the Plaintiffs' copyrighted works.

Issue: The question before the Court is whether a company “publicly performs” a copyrighted television program when it retransmits a broadcast of that program to thousands of paid subscribers over the Internet.

Holding: In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Aereo performs petitioners’ works publicly within the meaning of the Transmit Clause. The practical impact of this decision is that Aereo's business model is illegal.

By request: my top ten TV shows of all time

In discussing the Breaking Bad finale, I indicated that I had long since put the show in my "top ten" list of favorite TV shows. My friend Dave Lapinsky indicated he would be interested in knowing my top ten. So here they are, with some important caveats. I know there are many other shows that could conceivably belong on this list. For example, Seinfeld and The Sopranos are generally highly regarded TV shows; but I never watched either of them with any regularity. I simply haven't watched everything out there. So when I say my top ten TV shows of all time, it really means my top ten TV shows that I've actually watched most or all of the series. Also, this list is fluid and subject to future edits due to new shows, watching older shows, or simply forgetting.

My top ten TV shows of all time (in alphabetical order)

24

Breaking Bad

Burn Notice

Hogan's Heroes

Homicide: Life on the Street

Law & Order

MacGyver

Quantum Leap

Sons of Anarchy

The Wire

Honorable mentions

All in the Family

Family Ties

Firefly (more than one season and a movie would have helped!)

Jericho (more than 1 1/2 seasons would have helped! Nuts!)

Magnum PI

Person of Interest

The Simpsons

Star Trek: The Next Generation

I had no faith in my own Breaking Bad prediction (spoiler)

Sunday morning, I took a guess at how I thought the Breaking Bad finale might turn out. I (and I assume many others) thought it was too obvious to happen, so I foolishly qualified it with just that point:

Well, needless to say, I was pretty close. :-)

Mr. Blutarsky, zero-point-zero

From the Houston Chronicle:

According to television’s official scorekeeper, nobody in the 20-county Greater Houston area watched the Astros’ game Sunday at Cleveland.

The score was 9-2 in favor of the Indians on the scoreboard and 0.0 for Comcast SportsNet Houston — the regional network owned by the Astros, Rockets and NBC Sports Group — in the daily report compiled by the Nielsen Co., which measures television viewing levels.

It was the first time in Houston, where games have been broadcast on cable outlets since 1983, and perhaps the first time in the history of Major League Baseball that an MLB game had no measurable viewership in its home market.

That's right, Mr. Blutarsky--zero-point-zero:

Guess what day it is!

Breaking Bad: Jesse Pinkman's Complete "BITCH" Compilation

Friday funny: Worst burglary, ever

Baltimore Police solve a murder solely by dropping F-bombs

Friday Funny: Senator Clay Davis (The Wire)

Baltimore Police reveal new, highly precise polygraph

Zimmerman Trial live stream

TV Places: Person of Interest, S02E17

In the opening scene of the episode, Finch and Reese are exiting a theater, the Cinema Village:

As the camera moves down, we catch a few geographic hints: a blue awning with the address of "18 E 12" (most likely 18 East 12th Street) and a blue awning with "Gotham" on it:

Here's a screen capture from Google Maps showing the Cinema Village (22 East 12th Street). 18 East 12th Street is at the gray awning (it's blue in the episode), and Gotham Bar & Grill (12 East 12th Street) is a further down at the blue awning.

TV Places: Finch's Library (Person of Interest)

A screenshot showing the exterior of Finch's abandoned library headquarters from Person of Interest:

The real location, East 30th Street and Lexington Avenue in New York City, from Google Street View:

Hollywood Unoriginality, Redux

If you remember back as far as June of last year, I did a short series of posts on what I perceived to be the lack of originality in new movies: they're mostly remakes, sequels, or something (TV, comic book, video-game) to movie.  Over the course of that period I found that only about 20% of the movies were realistically original.

So after a break of six months let's take another look at last weekend's top ten:

1. Little Fockers (sequel/series)
2. True Grit (remake)
3. Tron Legacy (sequel)
4. Yogi Bear (cartoon)
5. The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader (sequel/series)
6. The Fighter
7. Tangled (fairy tale)
8. Gulliver's Travels (book, remake)
9. Black Swan
10. The King's Speech

So, more or less, only three "original" movies.  Again, this doesn't de-value the potential of the "unoriginal" movies; some or many of them are undoubtedly good movies.  They're just not truly original.

A Walk in My Shoes

Looks promising; I think I am going to check it out tonight:

Geography of The Wire, Season 2

One of the primary locations during Season 2 of the The Wire was Little Johnny's, a small restaurant and carry-out place on S. Clinton Street.  It was the hangout for "The Greek" and his second-in-command, Spiros Vondas.  Little Johnny's is still there, but it is closed and boarded up.  It's location, according to Google Maps, is in the area of 1905 S. Clinton Street.

I also went in search of the warehouse location where the Major Crimes Unit was stationed.  I was looking for something bigger, but I finally found it a hundred or so yards east of the extreme south end of Clinton Street.  Interestingly, it's only perhaps a half of a mile (or less) from Little Johnny's.  Here is a screenshot of the building from S2E07 (51:56):

And here's the picture I took:

Geography of The Wire, S2E01

This is a series of posts that attempts to locate the actual, real-world locations of some of the scenes filmed in the HBO series, The Wire.  The locations are time-stamped screen captures compared with Google Maps/Street View images.


Clement Street Cafe, 27:03.  It's a little difficult to make out in this screen capture, but the orange neon sign in the distance is the iconic Domino Sugars sign.

The Domino Sugars sign faces generally west, and if we follow a westerly direction from the sign, combined with the knowledge of Clement Street, brings us to the corner of E. Clement Street and Jackson Street on Locust Point. The bar is no longer there, but the corner door stands out.  Also, the trees in the Google Street view obscure it, but if you travel a little further east down Clement Street, you can see the Domino Sugars sign.


View Larger Map

Rear of Nick Sobotka's parent's home, 33:33.  The pattern to notice here is that the home he is leaving has one door with a security light and a small window, and the house to the left has a door and two small windows:

With later visual clues that indicate the house is in the immediate vicinity of the grain silo, it doesn't take much to find the actual location:


View Larger Map
Here is the rear of the same two houses; you can see the house that Nick is leaving on the right (with the small fence) and the house to the left with the door and two small windows.  This is the rear of Reynolds Street, just a few houses up from E. Clement Street (although a different section of Clement Street from the cafe above).

Alley behind Nick Sobotka's parent's home, 33:56.  This is a view of the same alley from the south, taking in the huge grain silo.  Notice how the southern corner of the silo is roughly aligned with the right edge of the alley:

The conversion of the grain silo into the Silo Point Condos (which is alluded to at the end of Season 2) shows that considerable development has occurred since filming, but some parts of the building remain.  Also, the building of the condominiums to the east of Reynolds Street completely changes the view.  This is the view down the back alley of Reynolds Street:


View Larger Map

Fort Avenue Meeting, 38:15.  Key indicators are the street sign (Fort Avenue), the sign above and to the right of the stop sign, and the crane in the distance:

This capture is actually less than a block away from the previous one, looking south from Reynolds Street.  Notice the sign (which is more visible on Google Street View) and the crane.  It's also interesting to note how the filmers framed the shots to make the cranes appear much larger than then do in the "normal" view:


View Larger Map
Here is a close-up of the sign on the corner of Reynolds Street and Fort Avenue:

That's it for Season 2, Episode 1.  If you have other locations that you're curious about, post a comment and try to get a screen capture or at least a timestamp and I'll see what I can find.

Geography of The Wire, S3E01 (special)

This is a series of posts that attempts to locate the actual, real-world locations of some of the scenes filmed in the HBO series, The Wire.  The locations are time-stamped screen captures compared with Google Maps/Street View images.

Consider the following screen captures from Season 3, Episode 1 of The Wire.  In the first picture, we see the building on the far corner with the white front and red letters.  It's the "Thank God for Jesus Church."  Also note the gray siding and the white door with the air conditioner.

Now check out a few seconds later as the car comes around the corner.  We see the near corner with "McCall's Grocery" fronting the red store:

It turns out that McCall's Grocery doesn't exist (at least not anymore), but the Thank God for Jesus Church does exist:


View Larger Map
Note the distinctive white and red front, and door-mounted air conditioner.  Let's back up a little bit and take a look at the near corner:


View Larger Map
There's our red store.  So this is our corner, right?  Yes, well, sort of.  Google Maps identifies this intersection as N. Bond Street and E. Federal Street, which is in East Baltimore.  However, take a closer look at the street sign from the original screen capture:

This indicates that the intersection is actually Poppleton Street and (I think) Fayette Street, which is squarely in West Baltimore.  Street View of Poppleton and Fayette clearly indicates it is not the location.

Why does this matter?  Well, realistically, it doesn't.  But I thought it was interesting that during the filming they went as far as changing the street signs to indicate the location as West Baltimore rather than East Baltimore, even though it was unlikely that anyone would notice.

Hollywood Unoriginality: Week 3

Part of a series on the lack of originality and creativity in Hollywood. New releases in bold.

1. Toy Story 3 (sequel)
2. The Karate Kid (remake)
3. The A-Team (tv)
4. Get Him to the Greek (spin-off)
5. Shrek Forever After (sequel)
6. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (video game)
7. Killers
8. Jonah Hex (comic)
9. Iron Man 2 (sequel)
10. Marmaduke (comic)
(11. Sex in the City 2)
(12. Robin Hood)

Week 3 originality rating: 10%
Overall rating: 20.0%

EDITED 6/24: Jonah Hex is based on a comic book.