…I’d probably have somebody else. Tim Minchin on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson:
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Tags: tim minchin, video
According to Variety, NBC has canceled Outsourced and The Event, but Chuck will be back for at least 13 more episodes. I never watched The Event, but I did like Outsourced. Diedrich Bader was pretty funny there, and I dig cute Indian (and Aussie) girls, but I admit it wasn’t quite the laugh riot it could have been. Glad to see Chuck return; even if the ratings aren’t great, they must be making money from those embedded Subway commercials.
UPDATE: Bad news, NBC announced that this will be the final season of Chuck. I imagine the ratings will have to be phenomenal to reverse that.
UPDATE 2: They’ve now announced that Chuck will air in the Friday 8-9PM slot, the death knell for all sci fi/fantasy shows (BSG, Smallville, etc.). Enjoy it while it lasts!
Tags: chuck, nbc, outsourced
Party Down is yet another brilliant comedy series you’ve never heard of. It has excellent writing and acting that feels improvisational, like a Christopher Guest film or Curb Your Enthusiasm, even though it’s 90% scripted.1 The comedic setup and payoff is intricate ala Arrested Development. And it has the realistic bittersweetness (more bitter than sweet) of the original (British) The Office.
The cast comes from other cult hits, mostly Veronica Mars and The State, plus a few Judd Apatow and Christopher Guest veterans. Standouts include Jane Lynch (40 Year Old Virgin, Role Models, Best in Show), Ken Marino (The State, Reaper, Veronica Mars), Martin Starr (Freaks and Geeks, Knocked Up, Adventureland), Lizzy Caplan (Mean Girls, True Blood) and a slew of guest stars.
It had critical acclaim and a cult following – a cult which I have just joined – and like clockwork it was canceled after just two 10-episode seasons. I guess that’s what happens when you air at 10PM on a Friday night on Starz, when Starz wasn’t known for any original programming.2 As a consolation, you can watch the entire series on Netflix streaming, and I highly recommend you do so. If you’re as excited about the series as I am, when you’re finished watching it you’ll enjoy reading The Complete Oral History of Party Down.
Here’s a trailer to whet your appetite, although it doesn’t quite do the show justice.
Tags: christopher guest, jane lynch, judd apatow, ken marino, lizzy caplan, martin starr, party down
This is going to be a touchy subject, so I’m immediately going to defend the title. This article represents my opinion only and here are my qualifiers: I am partly of Asian descent so I feel I can write these words without seeming prejudiced against folks from the world regions that used to be called “Oriental” (that would be the Far East; continental Asians such as Indians and people from the Middle East are not included in this discussion).
So this is only my own, twisted, outrageous viewpoint. But please believe that I am not being sensationalistic for shock value: I really do not find Asian girls attractive.1 I think this has a lot to do with the environment I experienced as a child (heavily Jewish neighborhood, almost totally Caucasian school) and not with any learned behaviors.
Therefore, my view is totally unfair to the beautiful ladies gracing this page, or to the many good looking ladies married/dating many members of the CT. This only represents my preference, and nobody should care about my preferences, really.2
I watch a lot of Chinese, Japanese TV shows and movies so I’m definitely exposed to lots of beautiful actresses. But no matter how highly regarded they are, I am not in the slightest moved or attracted. Is this a loss or an advantage? I’d like to think that not being attracted to these ladies gives me a bit of an advantage. I cannot be manipulated or influenced by the beauty of a good 50% of the world’s population. This is good. It feels a bit like a super-power of sorts.
So the title of the article should be “Asians? Not attractive to me, and that’s great !!”
I procrastinated writing an article on using a cool little device called the TV Guardian which allows you to watch TV and DVD with the foul language muted. You can read more about it here but in short: it scans the Close-Caption (CC) signal and everytime it detects a “bad word” it mutes the sound and presents a “cleaned-up” version of the dialogue in the close captions area (eg: Let’s have sex !! became Let’s have hugs.1)
Unfortunately, my delay has cost me dearly. In the years since I tried out this fantastic new technology, most studios have disabled the Close-Captioning signal opting instead for built-in subtitles. So TV Guardian has in effect stopped working for 50% of the movies on DVD and all movies on Blu-Ray, which does not carry the CC signal.
Enter James Cameron, my hero.
He is releasing a 3-disc collector’s edition of Avatar, featuring a family-friendly language track. In this New York Times article, he mentions that he was motivated to do this by watching his kids picking up foul language from watching the original movie soundtrack. He reasons that the clean language track will be made available for airline and network showing, so why not include it now in the Collector’s Edition release.
- Exclamation points deleted, because nobody gets excited about a hug [↩]
The Flintstones turns 50 today and an article in the Christian Science Monitor highlights the dumb things The Flintstones producers did over the years. It makes rather humorless observations like dinosaurs didn’t exist and the Great Gazoo was jumping the shark. OK. But it also points out the smoking:
It asks how the producers could have been so dumb to include it in a cartoon, accepting the fact that smoking was prevalent in 1960. What the author doesn’t know is that The Flintstones wasn’t entirely a kid’s cartoon; it was an animated version of The Honeymooners, one of the most popular shows of the era. It’s written by adults and there’s comedy in there that would be lost on children, but appreciated by adults. And it originally ran during prime time in an 8:30PM slot.
Of course, today, a prime time cartoon wouldn’t dare show characters smoking.
OK, this was where I was going to show Patty and Selma, but apparently Simpsons videos are not on the internet. Fox even keeps the clips off. The closest I could find was this, which I find absurdly funny:
I also learned that in Russia, dubbing means “talking loudly over the original dialogue, without removing it.” Exhibit A.
I’ve noted a wonderful new trend these past few years: hot celebrity babes dressing up as Princess Leia in her metal bikini slave costume. Not a ton, and maybe I’m being liberal with the word “celebrity”1, but enough to get my attention. Here are my favorites. And by favorites, I mean all I could find. If you know of more, let me know and I’ll add them.
- Not unlike every reality/competition show out there. [↩]
Tags: chuck, jennifer aniston, kristen bell, olivia munn, scifi, star wars, yvonne strahovski
FlashForward has been canceled. It was a great show, the show I thought would replace Lost like Fringe is belatedly replacing X Files. Sadly, it is not to be. I guess there’s always the book, but word round the campfire is that it’s pretty different from the series.
In related news, ABC also canceled Scrubs and Better Off Ted.
Found an interesting page that’s simply a composite of character actor head shots and names, so when you’re trying to remember someone you can scan the photos and find out. There are some that are obvious to even part time film buffs, like Giovanni Ribisi, Charles Napier, and James Cromwell, but also a number I could only recognize by face. Sooner or later someone is going to turn this into a photo quiz.
I take back anything bad I’ve ever said or thought about McG. On Monday, Kristin Kreuk started a multi-episode guest appearance on Chuck. You may remember her as Lana Lang on Smallville; coincidentally (or perhaps not) Superman Returns actor Brandon Routh has also joined the cast. On Chuck Kristin will be joining the Nerd Herd, which means she’ll be wearing their official uniform, which looks like it was stolen off a Catholic schoolgirl. I’ve never noticed that uniform at Best Buy’s Geek Squad, but then again I never never seen anyone quite worthy of wearing it.
Zachary Levi does his impression of me in Kristin's presence.
Tags: chuck, kristin kreuk