TVSquad

Activision Blizzard is looking at the possibility of creating a concert tour and reality television show based on their popular video game Guitar Hero. Admittedly, I'm not a video game fanatic and have never played the game, but I don't get how such a program would work.

Would it be a competition to see which gamer could pretend to play the guitar the best, or would it simply be following a bunch of Guitar Hero enthusiasts in their day-to-day lives? My guess is the former. I know a few people that actually play guitar that don't like the game, mostly because it doesn't really teach you how to play the guitar. The controls involve pressing buttons rather than strumming the strings. Even the creators of South Park had a go at the franchise.

However, all this is speculation at this stage. If there were a television show based on Guitar Hero, would you watch it?

(S01E16) To quote Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill and as The Chin on Ugly Betty, "You didn't think it was going to be that easy, did you?" Tonight's theme - "it's complicated." I ended my review last week by saying this, but I think it bears repeating. Watching good TV can be an emotionally masochistic endeavor. One of the first lessons you learn in "how to be a TV writer" class is to put the screws to your characters. This lesson is often phrased as, "Give the audience what they want, and then take it away." This week's episode was all about giving us what we wanted and taking it away. Betty opens up to Henry about her feelings for him. Done. Christina catches a break. Done. Alexis gets to feel a little human connection post-op. Done. Justin gets to see Hairspray. Done. Hope you enjoyed it because now those cruel, cruel writers are going to make us regret that we ever wanted those things to happen in the first place.

Tomorrow night's episode of Ugly Betty will feature a dress designed by one of the show's viewers. Announced a few weeks back, the show held a design-a-dress contest in which viewers could submit sketches of a dress made entirely of office supplies. The winning bubble wrap, newspaper and paper clip confection was created by Ricardo Rodriguez of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Ricardo was flown out to LA and attended the taping of "Derailed," the episode which will feature his design.

The conceit of the episode is that Christina only has a few hours to create a dress for a prominent celebrity, but a blizzard prevents her from the leaving the office for fabric. Fortunately, she's a crafty lady and, like Scarlett O'Hara, Carol Burnett and Julie Andrews before her, uses whatever is available to whip up a celeb-worthy creation.

WARNING: SPOILER AHEAD

Some enterprising World of Warcraft players have recreated the opening to Battlestar Galactica using graphics and scenes from the game in a machinima video that ain't half bad. Gnomes, Cylons ... what's not to love? Although it really makes me jones for the show to return to the airwaves that much faster. When is a network going to finally get the right idea and put on an entire machinima show? When Red vs. Blue comes to television, then I'll stop ranting. Until then, enjoy a little BSG in your WSG.

Apologies to those of you who have never played WoW, as this won't make much sense. Just embrace the Battlestar love and run with it.

If you were wondering just how the South Park team went about getting all of the WoW game footage for their "Make Love Not Warcraft" episode, machinima.com has the details. They did a rather detailed interview with three members of the team that put the episode together.

The idea for a MMO story had actually been kicking around for some time, but was initially shelved due to the technical aspects of it. Once they finally decided to go with the WoW episode, it took three times as long to do the WoW footage as a normal South Park episode. And that was with full cooperation from the fine folks at Blizzard. It's an interesting read for South Park fans, WoW fans, or anyone interested in machinima. And if none of that works for you, you can still go watch Red vs. Blue, because that's just good comedy.

[ via slashdot ]