Batson's Blog

Another season of TV shows is just starting. In fact, tonight is the season premiere of White Collar on the USA Network . I can’t personally attest to the quality of the show since I’ve only seen a few episodes of it. However, the fact that the show is on its fifth season says something. The couple of times I did watch, I watched for one reason: Tiffani Thiessen . She, among a few others, is the topic for my blog today. At this point she has got to be considered one of Hollywood’s most sustainable stars. Thiessen’s first major success was as Kelly Kapowski on Saved By The Bell . That show is still on reruns in syndication (the same can’t be said for Saved By The Bell: The New Class ). After SBTB , Thiessen went on to 90210 , keeping things interesting as the vampy Valerie Malone after Shannen Doherty’s departure from the show left a possibility of boredom on the Beverly Hills-themed drama. Thiessen floundered a bit after her run on 90210. Shows like Fastlane , Good Mor...

I'd never seen the original Star Trek, but J.J. Abrams' 2009 movie gave me an itch to watch a little more of the Star Trek franchise. I figured the best place to start was square one. Turns out that may not have been the case. The effects in the movie weren’t too bad – despite being several decades old. Granted, they kind of played it safe. They didn't have the cast involved in a lot of the special effects. Much of the effects were done in the outer space setting, so it was probably easier to incorporate graphics into that than it would be to mix with actual human beings. There were some primitive green screen spots as well, however, like when Spock was floating into the invading alien's ship. The story is what was lacking. It lacked a little bit of logic (this alien ship seemed more friendly than threatening), but most of all it lacked excitement. The alien ship, which was operated by robotics (no humans or other races aboard), didn’t really both to at...