The Crack Team » Television

If I Didn’t Have You…

archangel — Fri, 13 May 2011 22:26:13 +0000

…I’d probably have somebody else. Tim Minchin on The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson:

Outsourced, The Event Canceled; Chuck Renewed

archangel — Thu, 12 May 2011 03:47:44 +0000

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!

Share/Bookmark

Party Down

archangel — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 10:05:29 +0000

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.

They didn’t have the budget to make it improv.
Fred Savage, one of the regular directors, said they came up with the slogan “Starz. You must might have it.” during filming. And yes, it’s that Fred Savage. Apparently he also directs a number of Sunny episodes.

Share/Bookmark

Asians? Not attractive.

bladerunner — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 18:33:00 +0000

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 !!”

or Asian guys, by strong inference !!
except for my wife, and I am definitely attracted to her. She is not Asian.

Share/Bookmark

James Cameron, TV Guardian of the Universe

bladerunner — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 21:41:49 +0000

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.

This is very wise. One of the things that initially excited me about the DVD format was the capability to include alternate soundtracks with the movie. Over time, most studios used this feature to include commentaries by the director, producer, actors, SFX and caterers and anyone else remotely connected. And not a single one ever included a clean-language track.²

Now, the entire world is grousing about the fact that James Cameron has not included a commentary track to Avatar. But between you and me, I am 10 times more likely to listen to the clean language track in repeated viewing with my family than to listen to the commentary, as desirable as the latter may be.

Foul language adds substance to some films (Quentin Tarantino come to mind) but most other times it is just used as a filler to make sure that your movie does not get the dreaded PG rating. And I’m not looking for vulgarisms to enhance the reality of a scene. Reality may come at the cost of barraging me with foul language and that’s a hefty price. No need to have the theatre usher pummel me during action scenes so that I can feel the pain.

Let the free market decide what supplements are more useful in a DVD or Blu Ray release. Just hopin’ that the world follows your lead, Mr. Cameron. You are a true visionary.

Exclamation points deleted, because nobody gets excited about a hug
Roger Ebert has railed against clean-language tracks, calling them bowlderized travesties. But he doesn’t strike me as a person that watches film with his family.

Share/Bookmark

Flintstones Turn 50, Cough Up A Lung

archangel — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 01:06:31 +0000

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.

Share/Bookmark

The Best Celebrity Slave Leias

archangel — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 10:59:04 +0000

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.

Carrie Fisher
Update: As Blade Runner commented, I really need to start with the original for comparison purposes. So here’s the woman who set the bar.

Kristen Bell
Best for last? Screw that! Best for first! Bell was in Fanboys, that movie about the Star Wars fans that drive cross country to break into Skywalker Ranch and see a rough cut of The Phantom Menace². You didn’t see it, but it’s a fun movie and it’s on cable. And it has hottie³ Kristen Bell as a brunette. And also (sorry for the spoiler) as slave Leia:

Yvonne Strahovski
I don’t know what drugs I was on when I omitted this initially, but they must have been good considering she was one of the main reasons for this article and I have another post devoted to her. Anyway, this is from an episode of Chuck, which makes sense since it’s often making geek pop culture references. She definitely rocks the metal bikini.

Olivia Munn
No surprise, she’s a big time geek icon.

Melissa Joan Hart

Jennifer Anniston
This is from an episode of Friends not surprisingly titled “The One With The Princess Leia Fantasy”. Help me Dr. Geller, you’re my only hope!

Adrianne Curry
Starting to really stretch celebrity, Curry is a model and Peter Brady’s wife.

Kelly Brook
Total Film magazine made a spread with Kelly Brook in movie-themed bikinis. This is the least authentic Leia bikini and hair, yet for some reason I can accept it. Probably because it’s the most heavenly body on this page. But I’d still take Kristen Bell over all of them.

Non-celebs
If you liked this, check out Leia’s Metal Bikini, a fan site dedicated to the illustrious garment and those who have taken up the mantle.

You’ll probably also enjoy this hot, wet footage of the G4 Slave Leia charity car wash that happened earlier this year in LA. I’m still tracking down the person I need to kill for not telling me about this.

That’s all folks. My prediction for the next geek-babe trend? Orion slave girls:

Not unlike every reality/competition show out there.
This thing is available on VHS, but not Blu-ray? WTF?
Firefox wants me to replace hottie with hogtie. A little creepy.

Share/Bookmark

FlashForward Canceled

archangel — Fri, 14 May 2010 21:03:48 +0000

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.

Share/Bookmark

Character Actor Composite

archangel — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:19:43 +0000

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.

Share/Bookmark

Kristin Kreuk on Chuck

archangel — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 06:45:22 +0000

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.

Share/Bookmark