Unfettered Brilliance: Walter White Wednesday 112

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Walter White Wednesday 112

This past weekend, Ensley and I appeared at a book signing for Wanna Cook? at a nearby Books-A-Million. It was a fun event, and they're talking about having us back around the holiday season, although I'm slightly conflicted about that - Wanna Cook? is a guide to Breaking Bad, which just doesn't much seem like a heartwarming holiday show for the whole family. But hey - different strokes, right?

By the way, Ensley wrote a fantastic post about the book signing and the people-watching that went with it over at his blog - click here to go there!

We'll be making another appearance in a couple of weeks in the Triad area of North Carolina - catch our act at the Winston-Salem location of Barnes & Noble on August 9 beginning at 3 pm as part of their "Get Pop Cultured" events. Details are in the link over on the left - come on out and say "hi!" to us! We'd love to see you!

In other Breaking Bad related news, there are these two items for your consideration:

Bryan Cranston recently played President Lyndon B. Johnson on Broadway in the play All the Way, a role for which he received the Tony Award. The play also won Best Play and I hated that I couldn't get to NYC to see it. Never fear! A television version is being prepared for broadcast on HBO next year with Cranston reprising his role. He will also serve as an executive producer for the show, along with Steven Spielberg and two others. The playwright, Robert Schenkkan, will take charge of the adaptation.

Also, Disney is working on a live-action version of Kipling's The Jungle Book, which I'm also excited about. The cartoon version was always a favorite of mine. What's that have to do with Breaking Bad, you ask? Good question. Let me just say this, and then you can check out this link. Gus Fring. Wolf. Fine, go click the link and then marvel.

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Points of Interest

Lurker's Guide - Excellent fan-run resource guide for Babylon 5

Breaking Bad - The official AMC site for news and recaps about the best show on television

Mockingbird's Nest - What I do outside of my day job

Ensley Guffey's Blog - Musings and links worth noticing

Nik At Night's Blog - Most things TV, including the 2011 Rewatch

TV Tropes - What you've seen, over and over and why it matters

Slayage - Whedon given the scholarly treatment

Whedonesque - Clearinghouse of all things Whedon

BuffyWorld - Shooting scripts, screenshots, and more

Who?

K. Dale Koontz may have watched too much television as a child. She learned to count via Sesame Street and first learned that genres could cross-pollinate through M*A*S*H. When she discovered Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the die was cast. In 2008, McFarland published her book Faith and Choice in the Work of Joss Whedon which focused on themes such as redemption, choice, and consequences in Whedon's work up to that point. (She's fairly sure Volume 2 could be written to include Dr. Horrible, Dollhouse, and The Avengers.) She is a founding member of the Whedon Studies Association (a great group of people, but don't mention Twilight. Just sayin'). She has presented original work on the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse, Kitty Pryde, and Japanese anime. In 2014, she and co-author Ensley F. Guffey worked with ECW Press to publish the critically-acclaimed Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad. Her most recent project was to team again with Ensley and ECW to publish A Dream Given Form, which is the only guide to all the canonical works in the Babylon 5 universe. That book is currently available for preorder and will be released in September of 2017. Dale is available for speaking engagements and only occasionally uses puppets in her presentations.

What?

I have long been interested in storytelling - how we do it, why we do it, and what happens when we mix things up. This interest might be the result of being born and raised in the American South, a region that has long celebrated the involved story over the quick answer. Television - the good stuff, anyway - does this brilliantly. Far from being film's red-headed tacky cousin, good TV lets characters and relationships build slowly and often mixes up genres, so horror is next door to humor and fantasy rubs shoulders with procedurals. This blog focuses on both the "good stuff" being broadcast that catches my fancy (with a special emphasis on Babylon 5, since that's the book that's in the process of being written right now) as well as film. The films are usually new releases being watched for TV19's weekly Meet Me at the Movies, although I reserve the right to veer off into classics and under-appreciated gems as well. Older posts cover what my introduction to film class was up to - currently, I'm not teaching that course, but who knows what the future may hold.

Notable Whedon Work