Re: Ain\'t It Cool News Has A Review Of B5:Rangers!!!!!!
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino:
AICN is a fan (or "fanboy" ) run site, and gets a lot of its information from folks who are far from professional writers, but who happen upon information. Some of it is accurate, some of it isn't. They don't do much in the way of editing submissions, either, they just post them as-is.
I used to supply them with stories myself, in the early days of the DVD format, when I knew some people who knew some people who could get me information from the studios.
Their TV stuff used to be much better when a guy named Glen was in charge. (He was also a B5 fan, so my view may be a bit biased.) But AICN broke the story about the infamous "TNT/Crusade Memo", the one that contributed to the first production shut down, and Glen ran very favorable reviews of "Racing the Night" and (I think) "The Path of Sorrows" when he saw them in rough-cut form.
The current editors seem to have taken one look at B5, noticed that it wasn't Star Trek and reached for the remote. This review is actually a pertty good sign, maybe if Rangers makes enough noise generally they'll be forced to cover it.
Regards,
Joe
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
An excellent point, vis a vis the current attitudes taken over at AICN by certain individuals there. Harry is certainly a fan of the series, one of the very few TeeVee projects he even confesses to watch, much less love, but a couple of other people contributing to the site rub me ever-so-slightly in the wrong direction regarding their attitudes.
For starters, I have also heard about the extreme anti-
B5 bias exhibited by "Hercules the Strong," a frequent denizen of the site, whom, as Joe pointed out in another posting, has apparently gone well out of his way to purposefully
avoid giving major coverage to the new project, denigrating JMS, and essentially once again escalating the entire affair into Yet-Another-
Babylon 5-Versus-
Star Trek-Holy-War over outmoded, old-school sentiment and whatnot.
(
Nota bene: Also keep track of how much bloody bandwidth has been devoted by "Hercules" to the new
Enterprise series on AICN, and a much broader picture begins to emerge.)
"Robogeek," apart from engaging in a few shady dealings a year or so back with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, spewed forth many ill-conceived comments concerning the quality of
Crusade a couple of moons ago, with very little informed opinion backing up his assertions. Indeed, on occasion, he comes across as nothing more than a hyper-winded fanboy, riding hard upon whichever trendy bandwagon is
au courant at any given moment. But enough grousing upon this, methinks.
Glen, the former proprietor of the "Coaxial" section of AICN was quite (I believe) even-handed and fair in his dealings with
Babylon 5...even if Fiona Avery did once rake him across the coals in her column in the Official Magazine for something minor.
He always approached episodes and suchlike with an open mind; even when I did not agree with his reviews, I knew that they were at least founded upon some measure of acroamaic insight, unlike those of one "Robogeek."
So, we shall see what the future bodes for the saga on Ain't It Cool News, and I certainly hope that Harry Knowles will put his (quite massive) foot down and permit a bit more news to be disseminated there despite the efforts of certain overzealous individuals to sandbag the proceedings.
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[This message has been edited by Leto II (edited July 21, 2001).]
