With the new season upon us, season sets from the big shows are dropping all over the place. This week offers some great choices. Leading the pack is The Big Bang Theory. And if you like that, please do check out my pick of the week, The IT Crowd. Other comedy offerings include It’s Always Sunny, and the final season of My Name Is Earl. For the more medically inclined viewers, Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice have their latest seasons ready.

On the sci-fi side, we have the Doctor Who 2008 Christmas Special, and Sanctuary. The big shows are rounded out by Crash, CSI: Miami, Primeval, The Clone Wars, and Fear Itself. If nostalgia is your thing, also look for new sets from Bonanza, Fame, Dark Shadows, One Step Beyond, and Transformers. And that’s just for starters. The full list is after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll never understand the thought process behind TV on DVD release dates. Why do so many of them end up coming out just weeks before the new season starts? After everyone just had a whole summer with a drastically reduced television schedule. Shouldn’t there really be a flood of new season sets in May and June? Whatever the case … as has become the norm, with the new seasons approaching we have a bunch of current shows releasing new sets. Among those you’ll find Supernatural, Heroes, Two And A Half Men, The Game, Brothers & Sisters, Desperate Housewives, Rescue Me, and CSI. My pick for the week actually isn’t even a TV show. It’s the latest Bring It On movie, Fight To The Finish. I’ll explain that, and have the rest of the releases, after the jump.
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Let’s continue our occasional series on animated robots of the 1980s. In the first part we discussed Challenge of the Gobots, which was a less than stellar example of the transforming robots genre. This time around we’ll talk about the Greatest Robot Cartoon Ever Made! I speak of The Transformers.

You may not believe this, but the original (and greatest) Transformers series premiered twenty-five years ago! No, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. It’s been a quarter of a century since you rushed home after school to forego your homework and watch Transformers (as well as G.I. Joe and Voltron) before your folks came home from work. With the current Transformers movie raking in the big bucks at theaters and the 25th anniversary Transformers season 1 DVD set currently available, now is the perfect time to talk about these “Robots in Disguise”. Read the rest of this entry »

I am such a big fan of Holly Hunter as Grace Hanadarko on TNT’s Saving Grace. She brings an intensity to that role that reminds me of Glenn Close’s Patty Hewes on Damages, although the characters are very different. Patty is a lesson in control, whereas Grace is the exact opposite. But both get the job done.

Grace is a tiny firecracker who parties hard and regrets nothing in her job as a cop with the Oklahoma City Police. In her words, she has “an angel on my ass, a man who hears God talkin’ to him, and a killer on Death Row who shops at the Gap. None of this makes sense.” Read more about Grace in Ivey’s preview of season three.

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Computers are my life. Well, a big part of it anyway. And since you’re reading this, chances are they’re a big part of your life too. We use them for work, school, play and everything in between. Then again, you could be someone’s technically unaware grandma who found this printed out on some crumpled up paper used as packing material for your newest Hummell.

Not only are computers part of our lives, but they consume the lives of those we watch in movies and TV. Some of them are as large as cities, some of them talk and have personalities, and some of them even have pet names. Here’s a list of some of the more notable computers on TV (and before you whine, this is not counting robots):

ARDVARC (Get Smart)
The Automated Reciprocal Data Verifier And Reaction Computer is the central computer owned by Max’s employer, CONTROL. Its best friend is a cigarette machine — how quaint for a show of the ’60s. And let’s not forget the lack of political correctness of the time: on episode number 50 (”The Girls from KAOS”), ARDVARC scans its databases for a particular Asian KAOS enemy agent, but eventually concludes it can’t find the agent because “they all look alike.”

Sadly, on episode number 109 (”Leadside”), ARDVARC blows up. Rumor has it the cigarette machine, overcome with grief, traveled to Japan and now dispenses iPods and eyebrow trimmers in downtown Tokyo.
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If you lived through the Transformers era, you’ll get the joke when I say that this giveaway is more than meets the eye. All my life, I’ve been surrounded by Transformers in one incarnation or another. My brothers watched the animated series and had all the original toys: Optimus Prime and the whole gang.

Now, my four-year-old was gifted his first “transformer” this Christmas: Luke Skywalker turns into a snow speeder. Naturally.

You’re in luck if you’ve been a Transformers fan for a long time, because Cliqueclack’s got three copies of Transformers: Animated Series: Season Two to give away to three random commenters to this post. Just leave a comment telling us why you’d like to receive this DVD set.

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Sci Fi

If you’ve been keeping up, you know that here at CliqueClack, we’ve been nominating some of our favorite TV characters for president. With that silly actual election a week away, we figured it was time to start the voting for CliqueClack president. Be sure to vote. You have a civic duty here. Plus, there are no pesky age minimums or citizenship requirements to vote in this election.

The poll will be open for one week, until election day on November 4th. Let’s quickly review all of the nominees (and you can click on their names for more details)….

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