The last TV show that I loved as much as I love Mad Men was Ally McBeal which was on 1997 to 2002. Calista Flockhart was wonderul in the lead as the cute but quirky attorney along with a fantastic cast of characters from David E. Kelly. He went on to become the first person ever to win the Emmy award for best drama (The Practice) and best comedy (Ally McBeal).
Here are some of my favorite clips from the show, including with the great opening theme “Searching my Soul” for all five seasons.
I finally got all caught up to date with the Mad Men TV series. I bought the first two seasons and proceeded to watch all 26 episodes in no time at all! So now I’m like all of the other Mad Men maniacs anxiously waiting for the 7th episode of season three on Sunday at 10 PM EST. SIGHS….
Here’s a wonderful example of why I love MAD MEN. Yes, there are many other reasons why people love the show such as the attention to detail about that period of time, the style and fashion of the time, the drama, etc. But for me, it’s about the power and love of family. The lead character, Don Draper, had a horrific childhood and struggles to deal with his demons as a father and husband. This scene is a breakthrough for him as he starts to realize what’s most important to him in life… not his incredibly successful career or the allure of beautiful women…but the beauty and magic of family.
Mad Men – The Carousel
Here’s my MAD MEN playlist with some more video clips about the show. Some make fun of the fanaticism and others are just fun informative stuff.
Even though I’m not and have never been a Mac owner, I thoroughly enjoyed the documentary “Welcome to Macintosh”. I found the well-made film extremely informative and entertaining, perhaps because I’m just a huge fan of technology and these types of things get me excited quite easily. For example, I’ve written about my love for other projects like this, the first great technomentary, Triumph of the Nerds (1996) and the movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley”.
At the heart of the Apple Story (not really just the Mac), sits Steve Jobs. While he did not take part in the documentary, his presence resonated throughout every frame. His tremendous impact is clearly illustrated on all of the individuals interviewed as well as the company and the industry as well. I’ve shared my thoughts and feelings about Steve Jobs in recent posts “Genius” and “Clash of the Titans”.
My favorite segments of the documentary were:
The man who has the world’s largest collection of old Apple and Macintosh computers and just about anything else they made! He had them crammed in every nook and cranny! Amazing stuff.
The Hollywood film editor that shared how the Mac with Final Cut allows him to do the work of six or seven film editors.
Jim Reekes was hilarious and a blast in every piece he contributed. He share the history of the startup sound for the Mac where his composition ultimately became the classic startup sound. I loved his quote “People think it was like going to work at Oz but in reality it was like a sausage factory. I mean, you really don’t want to know how these things were made”.
Guy Kawasaki’s funny takes on the good times and bad times at Apple. I especially liked his story about having a 44,000 mailing list which was basically the first blog.
Here’s the trailer for Welcome to Macintosh
This isn’t from the movie but it’s a visual history of all Apple and Mac computers from 1976 to 2008
They say bad news comes in threes but here’s some good news in a Happy Birthday three pack. Coincidentally, it’s the anniversary for three techie things that are pretty popular these days. Here are some good pieces about all three birthday babies.
Google Chrome is ONE! (born 9/2/2008, announced 9/1/2008)
Blogger turns 10! (Aug 1999)
The Internet’s 40th Birthday (born 9/2/1969)
Here’s a toast to all things old and new.
I love motion picture soundtracks so this new site called MOMUPI caught my eye. It’s sports a back to basic interface with merely a search field at the center of the page. All you do is start entering the name of the movie soundtrack you want to find and it starts showing you what’s available. Despite being so new, it did an excellent job finding old and new movies.
For example, here’s the soundtrack for the delightful 500 Days of Summer starring the lovely Zooey Deschanel.
Like I said, it’s simple but it seems to work well if you just want to hear your favorite movie soundtrack or see a list of the songs from a movie you love. You can then proceed to get the songs or entire CD if you want elsewhere.
The only gripe I had was the fact that in this day and age of Web 3.0 and the Semantic Web, this site should have included some other bells and whistles. Checkout what the wonderful MusicMesh.net does and you’ll see what I mean. One search should provide many different types of results and data. I’m thinking since this is a service for movie and music lovers, then mashing up results with IMDB, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon would have been very cool.
The other criticism? When I did a search for Grease it only displayed the dreadful Grease 2 soundtrack! Yuck! OK, I added that to poke fun at a friend who LOVES Grease 2 for some unknown reason!
