The Week In TV

The fall television season has barely started. But I've been working on my Christmas knitting and needed some background noise so I watched a helluva lot of CW trash tv this week. And most of it was BORING.

One Tree Hill: Ugh, so BORING. This is an infinitely ridiculous over-the-top soap opera of a show and was my guilty pleasure of choice last year. This premiere was lame. Nothing happened. And Haley's outfits were just awful. They need another psycho stalker to come in and spice things up.

Gossip Girl: I took a break from this show last year because it stopped being awesome. This was not a return to form. Chuck and Blair were stupid and gross. Vanessa was her usual self-righteous self. Serena did stupid crap and lied about it for stupid reasons, and had sex with a tool. Again! And it was all incredibly BORING.

The Rachel Zoe Project: Something that wasn't boring. It wasn't riveting or anything and it lacked my favorite part of the series, which involves the dressing of actual celebrities, but Rachel's husband is the best reality show husband ever. He's all realistic, supportive, and obviously loves his wife. Even if she takes forever to get dressed and isn't great at sticking to his "no shopping" decree.

Melrose Place: Guess what? Also BORING. Well, except Katie Cassidy's publicist character. Jealousy? Boring. Prostituting to get through med school? Boring. Larceny? Boring. Sex-ing one's self up to get a job? Boring. Birth-Momma drama? Boring. Not killing your landlady even though she totally had it coming? Extremely Boring.

The Beautiful Life: Models? Turns out they're not that interesting. But, this show overall wasn't bad. Dumb, but bland. I actually like the lead actress and Mischa Barton's character. I know, Mischa Barton! Who was so unbelievably awful on "The O.C." I can't really believe it either.

Supernatural: Heh, "God God, Y'all!" Excellent title. And Ellen Harville! Wee! And Dean Winchester actually using his brains for once, yay! I love Supernatural.

Ace of Cakes: Um, they made cakes? I think I've been watching too much of this show and am starting to burn out. But they have been featuring Ben a lot recently and I am loving him. (Not as much as I love Geoff, of course, but loving nonetheless.)

Project Runway: Oh, Tim Gunn. "I'm woeful, Johnny!" Loved the outfits and challenge. Didn't really care for the ramped up drama. Loved the Tim Gunn. Even more so than usual.

Fringe: It feels like J.J. Abrams has found his footing and I'm excited to go along for the ride. "Is he really crazy?" "Oh, definitely." The only problem with this is it shares a timeslot with both Supernatural and Grey's Anatomy, so it automatically gets the Hulu watch the next morning.

America's Best Dance Crew: The Madonna performance was lame. The N'SYNC one was phenomenally awesome. The Afroborike performance was skanky (as usual). And I skipped the last one because it involved Chris Brown.



How proud of myself am I for actually finishing and publishing this before the next tv week starts? So damn proud.

Next week's potential highlights: HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm excited.

An amusing passage I marked when I was rereading Terry Pratchet's "Jingo" a month or so ago :

She took the very small book from Carrot and glanced through it. She sighed.
"Carrot, these disguises are meant for a potato."
"Are they?"
"Look, they're all on potatoes, see?"
"I thought that was just for display."
"Carrot, it's got 'Mr. Spuddy Face' on it."
Behind his thick black mustache Carrot looked hurt and perplexed. "What does a potato want a disguise for?" he said.

Ponyo On The Cliffs By The Sea

Despite asserting that I wouldn't take my little brothers (New retroactive nicknames: 8yr-old = Blue-Eyes and 6yr-old = Brown-Eyes) to see "Ponyo" since they were really distracting when we saw "Wall-E," I ended taking them anyways.

Mostly because we had two free movie passes and I really didn't feel like going by myself to a G-rated movie. (Though I will make an exception if no one will see "The Princess & The Frog" with me when it comes out). Also, we've been going to a bunch of the free summer kid movies at the theater and their behavior has been pretty excellent.

Well, this excursion turned out better than "Wall-E." Blue-Eyes is still completely incapable of NOT ASKING QUESTIONS CONTINUOUSLY during any film ever (though I eventually fixed that by switching seats to no longer be next to him). And 2 hours was a bit too long for an 8 and 6 year old to not get antsy. Especially if the 6yr-old sits on his feet and then bursts into tears because "My foot hurts so BAD! On the inside!"

Ok, so to get to the actual movie.


I liked it quite a bit. And so did the boys. And so did pretty much all of the other kids and tweens in our theater. "When can be buy it?!?" was Blue-Eyes' first question afterwards.


The plot mostly revolves around a spirited little fish-girl (?) who bonds with a little boy, rebels against her father, and decides to become a human girl. Either way, as fish-girl or human girl, she's pretty damn awesome. Heh, and she loves HAM!


But the animation was cool. It was different, but I actually liked the superposition of the really simple and clean animation mixed with the really fine and detailed hand-drawn stuff. And the "alive ocean" was pretty much the coolest thing ever. The way it bubbled and boiled over. And the fish-shaped waves. So damn cool.


My favorite parts were easily the two kids interacting. But my favorite thing about Miyazaki movies has always been the incredibly realistic children. The kids don't act like wise little adults (the main reason I just CANNOT stand The Peanuts). They act like 5-yr old kids.

The only significant criticism I can come up with was that I couldn't get a solid hold on the mythology they were working with. I don't know if it was the dub's fault (probably not, though, since the Disney dubbings are usually of really high quality), but it was damn confusing in spots. I'm pretty good at just going with the flow though so I didn't get really hung up on anything I didn't understand.

I can't wait for it to come out on dvd so that I can watch it again. And I'd really like to see it at least once with subtitles.

Things I've found on the internet today

I grew up watching a helluva lot of HBO (because my father stole our cable from the neighbors, naturally) and this song was one of my favorites. I've never seen the show (or read the book) it's apparently taken from, though. I think HBO just cut all the songs up and aired them in between programs.

It's relevant because I took the boys to the library today for "Summer Reading Program" activities and they were forced, strangely enough, to watch this in exchange for a soft pretzel. Brown-Eyes happily munched on his over the course of an hour while Blue-Eyes absolutely refused to take one with crossed arms, high-pitched loud voice, and everything. And no, I still have no idea why he got so angry and melodramatic over being offered a free pretzel.

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Romance author Jennifer Crusie pointed me to a blog where half of the pictures tend to remind me of something my friend Elliott either once did or will likely one day do.

The one that most comes to mind involves the time I went down to his dorm room in college and watched him happily stick half his body out of the window and proudly reemerge with a cold Dr. Pepper he'd chilled in the snow sitting on top of the central air-conditioning unit outside.

My favorite picture, though, is this ingenious spoon:

Duct Tape + Zip Tie = Spoon, indeed.

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"The Inventory" is easily my favorite regular feature at The A.V. Club and there was a particularly awesome one today concerning R. Kelly and gratuitous and often bizarre sexual acts mentioned on his recent album.

Also, I will totally buy their book when it comes out and place it on my coffee table... once I move out of my parents' house and again have a coffee table to put books on.

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And "So You Think You Can Dance" finally got good again. I think I forget every year that the dancing usually doesn't get crazy amazing until it gets closer to the Top 10 and they weed out most of the dancers who aren't versatile enough to pull off routines not in their particular specialty.



Man, I frickin love Wade Robson. He is totally my favorite choreographer on the show even if his stuff is sometimes absurdly strange. And I will say that I think Brandon's a great dancer but he has a bad habit (or unfortunate birth defect) of being unable to not look like Carlton from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." He also looks particularly stupid when he pouts and he does that all of the damn time.

Upcoming Movies

(Click on the posters for trailers)

Will definitely go see:


Because I have enjoyed all of Apatow's movies so far. And the trailers made me laugh.

(Ponyo)

Because Miyazaki's kid-oriented movies are my favorite of his. And it's about a mermaid!!

And I won't be taking the boys because they can be frickin annoying at the movie theater and I don't want to be distracted. They can watch it on video.


Will Probably Go See:

Even though I only got about 2/3 of the way through the book because I just didn't like Julie and didn't care to read about her anymore. This is usually my problem with non-fiction memoirs. I like Amy Adams, though. And Meryl Streep.


Note: This post was brought to you with hardly any complete sentences. Just the way I like it.

Realty Show Whore

I'm trying to post regularly in here but I have a really bad habit of writing but not quite finishing up so I've got an amazing backlog of about a hundred (sadly, not an exaggeration) unfinished drafted posts that I'm going to try and polish up and spit out. (There's probably a less gross way to phrase that but I chose not to explore that route.)

Anyway, this first one's fairly relevant since I wrote it only a few weeks ago and I spent a good deal of this past Sunday watching a marathon of the fourth season of Hell's Kitchen with friends.

So, I was sitting at the kitchen table voting on TWOP's Tubey Awards (or at least on the preliminary nominees? I don't know. It involved judging and clicking so I was all for it) and I was having fun. I watched a decent amount of tv this past year (way more than a normal human being, way less than I used too, but significantly more than the previous year) so I had a variety of choices to pick from but there weren't many tough calls.

Then, the "Best Reality TV Show Host or Judge" pops up and the shit hit the fan.

"Ooh, Adam Shankman... I love him... Oh crap! Cat Deeley! How do I pick? ... Well, who else is... Gordon Ramsey, Jesus Christ... John Barrowman's in this damn category? Well, I don't think I could watch that show so I can pass on that one... RuPaul versus Tim Gunn?!"

I ended up picking RuPaul cause she's awesome and was a great host.

Gordon Ramsey would have won for Kitchen Nightmares but he doesn't do a whole lot but scream constantly and call people stupid cows and donkeys on "Hell's Kitchen" (which is way more entertaining than it has any right to be) and Shankman and Deeley canceled each other out ... though I would have picked Lil C in an instant if he'd been a contender.

Oh, and then Nigel Lythgoe won my vote for "Worst Reality TV Show Host or Judge" without a moment's hesitation. Because he's a pervy old man who is constantly pushing his "strict gender roles in dancing" agenda on an otherwise pretty awesome show.


(For those who don't know: The last four people mentioned are all from "So You Think You Can Dance." Deeley is the incredibly adorable host. Lythgoe's the executive producer and a main judge. Shankman is a regular guest judge. And Lil C is a regular choreographer and guest judge... and his wikipedia page jut told me he was in Stomp The Yard and now I really want to pull out my dvd.)

My first response to this story about Brian Austen Green potentially joining the cast of One Tree Hill in the fall was "Noooooooooooo! You're too good for that, Brian Austen Green!"

Which is stupid (my reaction, not the potential news) for many reasons, including that:

• Brian Austen Green is most famous for playing a dorky guy on quintessential teen soap 90210
• I actually managed to fall madly in love in the past year with the crazy awesome that is One Tree Hill
  
• Brian Austen Green would be on my tv on a show I love... and awful Chad Michael Murray won't be! Nothing wrong with that!

Yeah, I don't think I've mentioned before how much I love Brian Austen Green. And it was all from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, where he managed to play the second best character on a mediocre show. And he was a total frickin badass. And really nice to look at.

Battle Of the P's!

Look! No video clips! Although this is a somewhat boring piece about Pride and Prejudice. You can't have everything.

So, anyway, my move collection battled Saturday night.

Well, that's not true at all.

See, I came home, my whole family left, and I had the whole house to myself to eat leftover chinese food and curl up and watch a movie with the dogs. (I know, exciting.)

And Joni Mitchel's "A Case of You" was playing on my ipod that morning so the logical film choice was "Practical Magic." I even picked the case out and took it downstairs. But then I suddenly NEEDED to watch "Pride and Prejudice." I don't even know where that came from. But then, as I was walking back up the stairs, I started thinking about how "Persuasion" was the better Jane Austen.

Battle of the P's!

(And the entire time, the only remaining P-movie on my romantic comedy shelf, "Price of Milk," was all "Dude, I'm a trippy-ass New Zealand fairy tale featuring 147 dairy cows, I'm staying out of this mess.")

Pride and Prejudice (the Kiera Knightley movie version) won.

And by winning, I mean it got to be played in the dvd player while I ate chinese food, knitted a hat, cuddled with Pepper, and took a couple of naps. Not much of a victory, really.

I don't think I'll be needing to watch it again anytime soon. I still love that proposal in the rain. ("Are you laughing at me?") And there are a million little visual cues and touches that I love as well. Especially the one that shows how enamored Bingley is by Jane that has Jane walking through a ballroom absentmindedly and Bingley literally clutching at the ribbons at the back of dress to be near her. It's a tiny bit, but I love it.

But I'm just not very fond of most of the cast. A lot of them overact and stand out way too much. And some of the original Austen dialogue is flat and terrible and just plain bad. I've always liked Pride and Prejudice in it's various forms, but I don't love it. I think I'm going to give it a rest for a couple of years and then see where we stand.

There's too many mother uckers ucking with my shiiiiiiiiiit. Too many to count. Mother uckers!

I haven't watched a single Flight of The Conchords episode all of the way through besides the Bowie one, but when I catch pieces, I'm usually amused. Like now.

My favorite part is that Brett's tirade about apples is so explicit that the only words not beeped out in the middle are "Granny Smith," "avocado," and "mango." Heh.


Oh, and as a bonus, here's a ridiculously awesome Footloose tribute/parody. Oh, Kevin Bacon.

I Call Shenanigans

Burn Notice is one of those shows I enjoy when I see it, but I don't follow regularly (which is becoming more common for me, actually). I should catch up with the season 2 dvd's.

Michael's "How To Be A Spy On The Cheap" tutorials are easily my favorite parts of the show. So, in honor of new episodes starting to air tonight, you get a clip of one of my favorites:



http://www.hulu.com/watch/30453/burn-notice-bad-blood?c=1645:1737

Blackpool!

It's been a long while since I've been completely obsessed with something... and then my friend A. had to go and discover Blackpool. And we spent the whole weekend watching it. And re-watching the you-tube clips. And listening to the soundtrack repeatedly in the car. (Those last two were mostly me, though).

Oh, Blackpool.

So frickin awesome.

For those not familiar with random-ass british television. Blackpool is a 6-episode musical drama series revolving around bastardly gaming-house owner Ripley Holden, his family (unhappy wife, whiney daughter, and drug-dealing teenaged son), a murder, and the investigating detective.

The twist? Did you catch the word musical?

Oh yeah. Each episode contains 3-4 musical numbers/fantasy sequences featuring the cast members singing and dancing along with (mostly) well-known tunes. And more than half of those numbers feature middle-aged men singing women's parts and dancing with each other. Yeah, totally awesome.

Odd as hell. But totally awesome.


As for clips, YouTube doesn't have my favorite one (Ripley breaking out into The Supreme's "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" in front of the planning commission) but it does have most of the ones featuring David Tennant.

So, the one with the best song (and most hilarious ending) is here:

The one with the best choreography is here.

And the only one featuring two men angrily tangoing to a country music standard is here.

To Paris, With Love (Whatever that means)

Happy New Year!

But before I depart, I have to share the strangest movie trailer I've seen in a very long time.

It looks like a buddy-cop movie staring John Travolta and Jonathan Rhys Meyers.

Yeah, I just said those two names together.

Makes no sense, right?

And I didn't even get to Travolta's bizzare bald/beard combo and bazooka-shooting penchant.



Seriously, what the hell was that? Probably really awful. Possibly totally awesome.

Again, happy new year.

Man, I want to see this movie. I'm such a sucker for underdog "man with a dream" tales. We all know how I feel about "Hustle and Flow." I'm sure if it's playing around New Years in Ithaca that A. would go see it with me.

Also, that Springsteen song playing over the trailer? Damn.

"Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?"

I know that if you dissect Springsteen songs up, they're mostly very simple, repeating melodies with easy rhyme schemes. But that's always been the key to Springsteen. I like to think of them as lean, instead of simple. It's like there's nothing superfluous or showy tacked on that doesn't belong there. It also helps that Springsteen's got such a full voice that it ebbs and flows and fills in any gaps. Man, I love that voice.

Proof? I downloaded a goddamn Christmas song the other day because of Bruce.

I even managed to find a single youtube video featuring the version I downloaded. My favorite part is when he can't stop laughing at the member of his band doing the "ho, ho, ho" bits.

One of these days, you'll get an entry without youtube videos. Probably not soon, though.

Doh!

So, we're at the dinner table tonight and I said yes to something and the boys erupted into a fit of "yes, yes, yes!" and "no, no, no!" I couldn't place the reference and Blue-Eyes' only response to my question of "where's that from?" was "you" so that wasn't very helpful.


Much googling finally presented by elusive prey.



Yeah, I pretty much have that entire movie memorized. I am such a dumbass sometimes.

And Blue-Eyes was right, he's never seen "Singin' In The Rain," so he got the reference from me.

You would think, given the amount of television I watch, it would be near impossible for me to discover shows on dvd that I haven't yet seen.

I'm currently totally enthralled in the demon-hunting adventures to be found in "Supernatural." I just finished the second season, am waiting for netflix to send me the third one, and am mostly caught up on the current fourth season.

The show is basically a never-ending male-bonding road trip revolving around two seriously attractive brothers who drive around in a totally awesome car, listen to a steady stream of classic rock, and... oh yeah... hunt demons and other supernatural baddies while trying to connect with their rogue father who has spent the last twenty years being singularly obsessed with tracking down and killing the demon who murdered his wife and burnt his house down.

Most episodes find the brothers investigating paranormal crimes (most often grisly murders), lying through their teeth with only charisma, fake IDs, and occasional costumes (see photographic evidence below) at their disposal.

I tuned into the first handful of episodes when it first came out (it's currently in a looming-apocalypse-themed 4th season). It was entertaining, but I didn't get hooked and eventually wandered off. I found the first season entertaining but didn't get hooked until the ridiculously awesome first third of season 2. The show can be kind of uneven. For episode that's ridiculously awesome there's one that's flat and cheesy. But the awesome ones are totally worth it.

Dean Winchester? Easily one of my favorite tv characters ever.

Here's a quick sample clip that not only showcases the funny, but a little bit of the brother interaction as well:

And this seriously cheesy link's for my friend C. and her remarkable ability to capture hilarious screen captures of attractive men, because the middle of the video features approximately 30 back-to-back shots of Dean pouting: