Catching up on House (which was especially funny) and SVU (which was typically not very funny) before Lost and everything tonight.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: A woman turns up dead, and SVU's trying to track down his spy fiancee (Nip/Tuck's Dylan Walsh). Only he turns out not to be a spy, he's just a married guy living a double life. His lies make him the immediate suspect, but soon evidence points to his wife finding out about the affair and getting pissed. Benson and Stabler show up just in time to find the husband shot and the rest of the family dead. 
One of those forensic tools they use about angles of guns (which I've always been skeptical about... if you shoot someone while holding a gun at a funny angle, couldn't you get one of these guys to say "based on the angle of the bullet, the shooter was eleven feet tall and left-handed") shows that Dylan Walsh's wound was self-inflicted. Turns out the guy was telling so many lies and couldn't control them anymore, so he wanted to just put the "reset button" of life by killing everyone he loved. Crazy. This pushes Stabler over the edge, and he gets a confession out of the guy by jamming the interrogation room shut with a chair and threatening to break the guy's neck, making this roughly the 10th time he should've been fired.
House: Foreman's still quitting, but nobody's telling Chase and Cameron why. Cameron figures he'll tell her when he's ready, but Chase is playing detective. House is unsurprisingly unconcerned, but Foreman's weirded out at the fact that he seems happier since he decided to quit.
House gets a couple in his clinic rounds who are vegans, wondering why his crap floats. He picks up three amphetamines from the pharmacy, then tells them the guy's been eating meat, and hits on the woman (Piper Perabo). Then he pounds the speed into a powder and spikes a cup of coffee. Amusingly, he anticipates Wilson's paranoia and offers him the non-drugged coffee, and Wilson drinks the drugged one. All to figure out why he was yawning. Turns out he was on antidepressants. House for some reason takes this as a challenge to his own state of depression, and volunteers to take antidepressants to prove his non-depression.
Wilson doesn't give them the antidepressants, because he's been dosing House's coffee with them for weeks. The happiness Foreman had been noticing was all Wilson's doing. But aside from helping him save the case of the week, which wasn't that interesting, it becomes a nice topic of conversation on the date he lands with Piper Perabo in the end.
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Some Catching Up
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Tuesday Night TV
While feeling excited that Veronica Mars is in good shape for next year, I caught up on The Riches, and then started in on Tuesday Night TV. When watching Gilmore Girls, I started getting the feeling that the commercial breaks were long, so I went back and checked the times. One was over 5 minutes, another was 4:40. Whatever happened to two minutes and two seconds, Chuck Woolery? My Tuesday night rundown after the jump...
The Riches: Wayne wants to be a partner at PanCo (with keys to the executive washroom... "I want to wipe my ass with a swan!"), and Hugh won't decide til the Malloys (or Riches) have him over for dinner. So the family's in a panic to throw a buffer dinner party.
Dahlia runs into Chunky K, her cell mate from prison who killed her husband, and even though she knows she should run away, she brings the friend home to show off the house. Wayne's obviously upset, but you can tell immediately how close they were. Chunky K's not having Dahlia's luck though, renting a fold-out couch that she has to fight two pit bulls (Britney and K-Fed) for, so Dahlia invites her to stay with them. Doug is freaking out though when she doesn't seem to leave and the dinner party's coming up soon. But Dahlia thinks its their duty to spread their good fortune around, and hires Chunky K to be their maid.
At the party, Chunky K's having trouble holding it together. She has a business idea breeding rabbits for meat, and Hugh laughs in her face. Sam doesn't help matters by coming downstairs in drag. Later, holding a knife to carve the pork (a nice choice for fake Jews), she seems to have flashes of killing her husband. Chunky K throws a fit, embarassing everyone, except apparently Hugh who ends up with his face buried in K's rather Chunky cleavage snorting what I assume is cocaine.
Thanks to K, Hugh agrees to make Doug a partner, but when presented with the papers by a noticeably high Hugh, Doug has second thoughts. Dahlia says it's because they're turning into buffers. Chunky K takes off with a big wad of cash, most of it given to her by Dahlia but some stolen. And in a strange development, we learn that Nina (the Riches' neighbor) has been in denial for years about her husband's homosexuality.
Gilmore Girls: Lorelai did give Logan her blessing, though they kinda glossed over it, as Gilmore Girls often does. Logan ends up proposing at a graduation party thrown by the grandparents, and Rory says she needs time to think. This is a show about girls, but can you imagine the hell Logan's going through while she weighs her options. She thinks about it for a while but decides she likes being at a point in her life where her options are open. Logan takes it hard and ends their relationship entirely.
Rory's graduating, and the entire town apparently wants to come, but tickets are in short supply, so somehow town outrage snowballs into planning an entire graduation reenactment in the Stars Hollow town square, but I guess that's not until next week.
Luke decides to reciprocate the sentiment from Lorelai's karaoke serenade and gets her a gift, but overhears Lorelai try to downplay the significance of it, and is completely crushed. They have an insane conversation when Rory was thinking about Logan's proposal that was one of those about-one-thing-but-really-about-another conversations that only happens on TV.
Veronica Mars: Desmond Fellows, played by Paul Rudd, is the guitarist from a band called My Pretty Pony, whose lead singer died ten years ago. He plans to play a benefit concert for Piz's radio station by playing along to old tapes of background vocals, but the tapes disappear, so Veronica's on the case. 
Desmond's a hilariously (more on that later) drunk has-been, who Piz almost gets back into songwriting, but a news report comes on showing his old band, and he goes right back to Behind the Music downward spiral. So will they find the tapes, allowing him to continue to suckle at the teat of past glory, or somehow fix the guy and have him do a concert of original material and turn his life around?
Well it turns out to be both. They find the tapes, arrive at the show, but call Desmond from outside and tell him they won't get there in time, so he'll have to fill. He plays his new stuff and everyone loves it, for an atypically happy ending for Veronica Mars.
Still, Paul Rudd is possibly the best guest star the show's ever had. And they gave him a lot of great lines:
There was also a bunch of relationship crap. Mac broke up with Bronson, probably to be with Max. Veronica continues to push Piz away and then be inexplicably forward. Logan gets all jealous of Piz. And Deputy Leo is back, and again a deputy.
The one development that wasn't relationship-y but was really awesome, is that Keith's opponent in the Sheriff elections is going to be Vinnie Van Lowe. I'm excited about that one.
The Shield: Vic's on the warpath after learning that Guardo didn't kill Lem. He visits Antwon (Anthony Anderson, one of the many awesome recurring guest stars on the show) and threatens him with everything under the sun, but Antwon is mostly proud at how Vic thinks he's a supervillain.
Vendrell is trying to push the blame back on Guardo, saying that Hernan is lying, but he pushes a little too hard. And for the first time Vic and Gardocki are thinking Shane might have done it. They count 73 grenades that they picked up before Lem's death, and will check that count against the number in the bomb squad locker. But they find 73 in the locker, and are terribly relieved. But Vic gets a hold of the lab report and Kavanaugh's confession, and when he reads it, he gets a look on his face like he's been kicked in the nuts. Gardocki later informs Vendrell that they need to meet at the site of Lem's murder to walk through the lab report and check it. But Gardocki isn't coming.
Vendrell shows up and its just him and Vic, and Vic knows everything. Considering the matters at hand, the words they exchange are surprisingly calm. But Vic makes one thing crystal clear: if he ever sees Shane again, he will kill him.
Guardo's girlfriend who the strike team kidnapped comes in asking Dutch about Guardo, Salseda, and her time in "protective custody." So Dutch and Colette are now suspecting Vic in Guardo's disappearance. They get Vic into the interrogation room without telling him who's in there, but he covers his ass pretty well. Dutch and Claudette are still suspicious, but as usual they have no real evidence.
The strike team catches a case where a city counselor's daughter is murdered. Turns out she was trading sex for drugs, which would be ugly for the counselor (and the barn, since he controls the purse strings). They find the guy who did it, and Vic convinces the guy to come up with a less racy story to confess to in exchange for a shorter sentence. And for his efforts, the counselor's going to try to pull some strings to keep Vic on the job.
Despite not just flipping out like he often does, Michael Chiklis' performance was really strong. It's hard to believe what we saw could be considered understated, but given the chair throwing, vein popping Mackey we've seen lately, it was relatively understated.
Flags of Our Fathers
"Every jackass thinks he knows what war is, especially those who haven't been in one."
I can't say I was all that interested in Flags of Our Fathers, but I keep hearing that Letters from Iwo Jima is great, and I figured since they're "companion pieces" I might as well watch them in order. And since the latter comes out on DVD in a couple weeks, it seemed like a good time to check this one out.
They way Flags was promoted, it seemed like a fairly run-of-the-mill war movie. And it certainly has its share of brutal battle sequences. But it's really about survivor's guilt, and the contrast between the public face of heroism and the reality of war. The main characters were in the famous photograph raising the flag at Iwo Jima, and are given a hero's welcome. They are used for a promotional campaign for war bonds and treated like celebrities, but the men who died get no fanfare at all.
I really like Clint Eastwood as a director. He's not Martin Scorsese, but he gets good performances out of actors and doesn't let anything get in the way of the story. A few parts were derivative of Saving Private Ryan, but I guess if you're going to borrow from someone for a war movie, that's a good choice, and occasionally he makes his points forcefully when subtlety might do better (a shot of blood-red sauce poured on an ice cream mold of soldiers lingered a tad too long, for example).
Another odd thing about the promotion for this movie was that I don't think I ever knew who was in it. Not that it has an all-star cast, but Ryan Phillipe certainly has some fans. I'm not one of them, but this is easily the best I've ever seen him. Adam Beach, who played a similar role in Windtalkers, which I hated, was actually good here.
The only major problem I had was that the structure of the movie was a little too complex. The timeline bounced between the battle, the PR effort after the fact, and the recent past with a man assembling the stories. I don't see what the more recent timeline brought to the table that couldn't have been accomplished as a sort of epilogue, which would've simplified the rest of the story.
Otherwise, it was a pretty enjoyable film, and I'm looking forward to Letters from Iwo Jima.
Monday, May 7, 2007
Monday Night TV
Won't get to check out The Riches until later, but Everybody Hates Chris and Heroes after the jump. I'm still lukewarm on EHC, and this Heroes episode was, I think, mostly setup for stuff happening later. Not as exciting as a typical episode. Still not bad, though.
Everybody Hates Chris: Chris needs help in algebra so his mother tutors him, Risky has to get a real job, and Drew breaks Julius' chair. A pretty typical episode of late, with a few laughs, standard sitcom happy resolutions, but without whatever it was the first season had that really endeared me to the show.
Heroes: Hiro and Ando return to the present, armed with a comic book, a vision of a possible future, and false information about how to prevent the catastrophe. They go to see Isaac to fill in the blanks in the comic, but he's already dead, and Sylar's still there. And they only manage to just teleport out. Sylar paints the future, seeing Ted's explosive powers and New York blowing up, and thinks he's going to destroy the city. He's all about killing for his own benefit, but blowing people up and not getting anything from it doesn't do much for him, so he goes to two people for help.
First, Mohinder. He's not in a helping mood, so he goes to Thompson to learn more about the Primatech organization and use what they know to stop Sylar. Thompson introduces him to Molly Walker, the girl whose name they've been dropping the past few episodes, and she's sickly cute and precocious. She has the power to locate anyone on earth, which will help them stop Sylar, but she has the same disease that killed Mohinder's sister, and it's preventing her from using her ability. Mohinder beleives that he has an antibody in his body that will save her, and gives her a transfusion of his own blood, and it appears he'll save her.
Second, Sylar visits his mother. He's trying to reconnect with his old life as a simple watch maker (another Watchmen connection I didn't notice before), but his mother's crazy ambition for him gives us a clue as to why he is the way he is. He also beans her with a snow globe in a totally weird scene.
Hiro and Ando have followed him to his mom's place and are outside debating when to kill the guy. The comic doesn't have Hiro stabbing Sylar until later, but Ando shows him the comic page Future Hiro gave him which was of Ando's death at the hands of Sylar. Hiro busts in just as Sylar's mom freaks out and gets stabbed with a pair of scissors in a struggle, but I think he un-froze time while in his stabbing motion, and Sylar was able to stop him. Again, they teleport out. Sylar is left with his mother's dead body, and Hiro is left with a broken sword.
Claire is going to follow grandma's advice and going to France, but Peter convinces her she has to stay to save the world. She lets Peter know about Ted, so now Peter is wondering if it's not him that blows up. Of course, this is the worst idea ever, since pursuing the guy will put Peter close enough to Ted to get his explosive powers. Nathan calls Linderman when he finds out, but Claire spots Nathan meeting with Thompson, and now doesn't trust Nathan anymore. Peter and Claire have a plan, at least. Claire has a gun now, since she's the only one who'd be able to stop Peter. We get a creepy scene at the end were Ma Petrelli eases Nathan doubts about the plan... it seems it's not just Linderman's plan, but that all the older heroes are in on it. 
Candice still has Micah (and is keeping up the Niki illusion), and Jessica and D.L. are after him. They break into Linderman's office and find a painting of Micah during the explosion, and that he's been tracking their entire lives. Micah uses his fancy Jake 2.0/Mitchell Hundred powers to escape, but finds that every door in the place leads him right back into the same room. Candice is much more powerful than we thought.
Ted, Bennett, and Parkman are still after the tracking system, which they call "Walker" named, of course, after Molly. So are they lying to Mohinder, that her abilities will be used to stop Sylar? Is she the one that'll let them track down those with abilities after the nuke goes off? Lots of interesting possibilities. They arrive in New York with Claire and Peter waiting for them, and Peter instantly absorbs Ted's powers. We get a cliffhanger as his hands start to go nuclear, but I suspect that with Ted, Claire, Parkman and Bennett around, they can figure a way out of it.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
Sunday Night TV
A full slate of Sunday night TV, with Fox's animation block and HBO's Sopranos and Entourage after the jump.
King of the Hill: Dale checked out a new book on explosives from the library under the name Rusty Shackleford. But the real Rusty Shackleford showed up to confront Dale for all the damage he's doing to his name. Apparently Dale thought he'd died in third grade, but he just moved away. The guy's decided he's not leaving until he straightened things out with Dale. And Peggy's still working for Chris Elliott's real estate company. Chane Wasonasong teases Peggy with the idea that they'll move, but it's actually to talk over her commitment to be a Cozy Kitchen representative, which appears to fall somewhere between Tupperware sales and a pyramid scheme, and the only way out is to find a sucker to take over for you. 
At this point, it seemed like Rusty would be the obvious solution, since sending the Cozy Kitchen folks after him would send him running, solving both problems at once. But instead, Peggy and Dale go for a fake murder/suicide pact, figuring that if Cozy Kitchen and Rusty think they're dead, they're in the clear. That doesn't work out, but all Peggy has to do is agree to fake her Cozy Kitchen boss's death to get her out of her commitment, and Dale just has to sign some forms to clear up Rusty's identity theft issues.
A pretty cool episode if only for the appearance of an actual Rusty Shackleford, and a good Dale episode is usually pretty hilarious. Best lines:
The Simpsons: Homer takes Nappien, an Ambien-type drug, and starts doing "kooky" things at night (setting up videotapes as dominoes, vandalizing a wax museum). Rather than quitting, he decides to lock himself in his room so he can't get into any trouble. But Bart realizes he get Homer to do his bidding in his sleep, but after some hijinks they end up crashing into the fire station, injuring the entire fire department. So Homer, Moe, Apu, and Skinner volunteer to fill in (despite the fact that I'm sure Apu ran the volunteer fire department already). 
They start to enjoy the perks of the job with everyone hooking them up with free stuff after they save them, but when Mr. Burns' house catches fire, he gives them a half hearted thanks and tells them to get lost, so Moe comes up with the idea that they could exaggerate the severity of fires and just take stuff. Marge and the kids catch them in the act, though, and guilt Homer into stopping, just in time for Homer to heroically save the day.
Best parts:
Family Guy: The Griffins have ballet night? Chris' school has history books from 1948, so Lois heads to the PTA to complain, but the problem is budget cuts due to the No Child Left Behind laws. In order to raise the school's test scores, they expel the dumbest kid in school: Chris. At this point the episode takes a 10 minute detour with the return of the bad coupon chicken, which was pretty well done. 
But we pick the story back up with Carter Pewterschmidt getting Chris into a fancy private school, where being poor isn't going over well. To help him fit in better, Carter gets him inducted into the Skull & Bones society. But when he finds out that the family had to get second jobs (selling buttscratchers, prostitution, and following fat guys around with a tuba) to pay for his tuition, he just wants to go back to James Woods High, so Carter pulls some strings.
Best parts:
American Dad: The CIA has to hide their illegal stuff, so Stan gets to take all sorts of fancy gadgets home. But a listening device reveals that the neighbors, who Stan assumes love him, all think he's a jackass. So Stan becomes consumed to faking his way into being liked. When all his efforts fail, he uses a new CIA power to seize all their property to "help with the war on terror." When his family thinks he's gone crazy, he kicks them out too. But eventually he discovers that everyone hates everyone, and all is well.
Roger's out to make a quick buck and convinces Steve to help lie to a neighbor when Roger pretends to fall on the sidewalk. This quickly turns into a scheme where Roger goes around injuring Steve for money and free stuff, but Steve comes up with the idea of selling one of the evacuated houses to an unsuspecting couple. But Steve cons Roger out of his half of the money, leaving Roger stranded in Mexico, with only a fire extinguisher full of tequila to comfort him. Best parts:
Entourage: Benicio Del Toro pulls out of Medellin, but the studio chief's only given them til sundown to find a replacement. The only problem is that it's Yom Kippur and the producer, played by Adam Goldberg, and studio head are both Jewish, so they can't do business or use the phone. Ari represents Goldberg's character, so even without Vince as a client, he stands to lose a lot of money if they don't land Vince in time. Amanda and Ari play sacrilegious phone tag trying to work the deal out, but they fail to meet the deadline and the movie gets shut down. Vince blames Amanda for not pursuing it hard enough and confronts her, saying he shouldn't have left Ari. She says the movie was ruined by Adam Goldberg, who interrupted the studio head at his synagogue twice that day to get an answer. Vince apologizes, but Amanda feels like she never had his confidence and drops him as a client.
Elsewhere, Drama buys a horse to save it from the glue factory, but unsurprisingly it doesn't fit well at Vince's house. It'll cost to much to keep it at a stable, and he's picking up fines for having a horse without a permit. He finally gets rid of it by showing up at Edward Burns' house with the horse as a gift. Burns wants to turn it down, but his daughter sees it and flips out, so now he can't give it back without breaking the kid's heart.
The Sopranos: A.J.'s depressed about his fiancee. He goes to visit her at her job and is all weepy and creepy. He spots a happy couple at work, breaks into tears, and quits on the spot. Meadow begins to suspect that he might be suicidal. Tony convinces him to go to a party at the Bing with some of Tony's friends' kids who are at college. They run a bookmaking operation, and A.J. goes along with them for a collection. When they start beating the guy down and pouring acid on his foot, A.J. gets a scary look on his face like when Tony's about to do something evil, which was kinda great, and when he returns home he's alive again. I definitely see him joining the family business if it doesn't blow up in his face first.
Christopher and Paulie, as usual, are at odds with each other. Paulie sends Little Paulie twice to boost power tools from Chris' father-in-law. Chris gets more pissed each time and eventually throws Little Paulie out a window. Paulie in return drives all over Chris' lawn and tears it up. Tony brokers an uneasy peace, again as usual, an uneasy peace between them. But to seal the truce, Chris has a drink. So naturally they cut straight to Chris loaded, and Paulie being an even bigger asshole. He goes to Tim Daly's house for help, and gets a little annoyed with the guy so he pops him in the head.
Kind of an awesome episode, between Christopher's random violence, Paulie driving like a maniac on his lawn, A.J.'s great transformation from depressed to mobster, and a great therapy session. I know lots of people want a bloodbath between New York and Jersey to wrap up the series, but if they just keep giving us episodes like this I'm perfectly happy.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
Massive Catch-up
Having already seen Spider-man 3, I don't have a movie to catch this weekend, which leaves a little extra time to catch up on TV. A whole mess of shows after the jump.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Olivia has a brother pops up again, but she's lost faith in him and is now helping the Feds find him. Soon though she bails to follow leads about her father, learns a lot more, and begins to wonder if her mother was really raped. It turns out, though, that the Jersey cop who was after him in the previous episode had framed Simon, and was out to kill him after her sister, Simon's alleged first victim, killed herself. Olivia shows up just in time, and talks the cop into confessing everything, and Simon gets off entirely. 
Bones: I don't have too much to say about this episode, except that if, in a case involving someone falling out of an airplane, you find that the body's been chopped up by a heavy not-too-sharp object moving really fast, and that he was struck many times almost simultaneously, how does it take you half the episode to come up with the "hit by the propeller" theory?
Law & Order: Criminal Intent: Of course one of the Law & Orders was going to rip this particular story from the headlines... diaper-wearing crazed astronauts is just too juicy to ignore. Weird though that this episode aired the same week as the Bones about an astronaut... also weird that they both used the same fake NASA-like group (the National Space Agency). I found Tate Donovan's wife entirely creepy, the way she referred to him as "the Commander." But otherwise it was a pretty forgettable episode.
Entourage: The "one time thing" concept doesn't seem to go well with Amanda and Vince, since they both are really into each other. Ari has a formerly loserish college friend (Artie Lange) visiting who has an inexplicably hot fiancee (Leslie Bibb). Turns out that he made millions on the internet, which makes Ari really jealous.
Pauly Shore wants Drama for a new Punk'd ripoff show, but Drama knows about it ahead of time, planning to act surprised. When a UFC guy argues with him over a parking space, he assumes that it's the prank and practically gets in a fight. But the prank turns out to be something else, and the UFC guy's after him. Drama goes to a fight to kiss up to the guy, but ends up in the octagon on his knees begging for forgiveness when Pauly Shore pops out and reveals that it was all a big prank. Kinda funny, but predictable.
The Sopranos: Tony is seriously strapped for cash. Gambling problems, funding Carmela's spec house, losing Vito (his best earner), and his debt to Hesh leave him in bad financial shape. Carmela closes on the spec house, but she figures it's her money, so Tony won't see any of it, leading to a whole lot of tension.
With Vito gone, his kid's doing the goth thing (Phil says he looks like "a Puerto Rican whore") and acting out. His mother wants a fresh start somewhere else, and money to move there from Tony. Given the money issues, Tony's desperate to straighten the kid out somehow. But it doesn't work, cause for some reason the kid ends up taking a Count Dooku in the shower after gym class. Tony advises her to send him to a (much cheaper) camp for troubled kids.
Penn & Teller: Bullshit!: I was two episodes behind, so two weeks ago they covered immigration. They talked about some interesting stuff. Apparently, just as many illegal aliens enter the country legally and stay after their visas expire as sneak across the border. They rather amusingly hired a group of illegal immigrants to build a fence like the one proposed for the Mexican border, and then had them go under, through, and over it. It took eight hours to build, and 5 minutes to get past.
This week's episode was on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The ADA's statistics count 51 million disabled people in the US, which is one in six. It includes people who have trouble with money or using the phone. That seems kind of messed up, though the braille on the drive-up ATMs is quite funny. Penn & Teller as Libertarians obviously also don't like the idea of the government telling people what to do with their own private property, and generally legislating niceness.
House: A kid about to donate bone marrow to his brother develops an infection, so the race is on to find and cure the infection before his brother's leukemia kills him. The plan is to keep him cold to make the infection worse so they can figure out what it is faster. But that turns out to backfire, forcing the infection into the son's heart. Foreman's still dealing with losing a patient last week. House thinks he has Steve Blass disease, and is actually trying to be patient with him, which is pretty un-House-like.
House is still keeping Hector, Wilson's ex-wife's dog, and it's causing him lots of problems. It gets into his vicodin stash, chews up his cane (forcing him to get a sweet new one with a flame decal). But when he eventually gives the dog back, he seems sad to let it go.
They finally track down what was causing the son's infection, and this is where the episode took a crazy left turn that I didn't get. Foreman straps the now-healing son to the table and without anesthetic (because he wasn't well enough), starts extracting bone marrow even though it sounded excruciating. It works, both kids are going to get well, but Foreman doesn't like that he's "becoming" House, and gives his two weeks notice.
Smallville: And old fashioned mystery at the Planet. Lana gets shot, and gets medivac-ed to Smallville for some reason. But what was she doing all dolled up at night, out with Lionel instead of Lex? Jimmy's fascination with old movies and a blow to the head send us into an extended black & white film noir fantasy/dream sequence. There were some nice touches, using the back projection and sped up film during the car chases, the old timey wipes to transition between scenes, cigarette smoke pouring into every frame (I'm surprised they can even do that). 
Since most of the episode was spent in fantasy land, very little was devoted to the actual goings on. Towards the end, they worked in Canadian-filmed TV staple Richard Kahan, a plug for Sprint, let Clark save the day, and reveal the plot behind the attempted murder, which was entirely uninteresting. But the fantasy sequence was fun enough that the episode wasn't a waste of time.
Friday, May 4, 2007
Friday Night TV
Not much tonight, but I'll be catching up with stuff over the weekend (among others, Bones, SVU, Criminal Intent, House, The Sopranos, Entourage), but tonight just Law & Order and Acceptable TV.
Law & Order: This week, our case is ripped from the story about those kidnapped boys in Missouri a few months back. A young boy is kidnapped and killed, and the evidence leads them to a kidnapper who's held an older boy captive for five years. It turns out though that the kidnapper wasn't the murderer, it was the older boy, leading to a traditional L&O court case. It was nice to see Olivet back, but otherwise the episode was a little too generic.
Acceptable TV: Mr. Sprinkles and Who's Gonna Train Me returned (with a Steve Agee cameo in the latter), and Sin Trek, I'm Not Racist, and Price of Dollars (which was funny, but I don't see how the concept lends itself to a second episode) premiered. I'll be voting for these two:
Spider-man 3
I have an easier time with a movie that's just no good than I do with a movie that could be great, does a lot of things well, but shoots itself in the foot with its own stupidity. Before I continue, I should say that I was lukewarm on the first two installments in the Spider-man series, so fans of those should ignore me and go see this, because a lot of my frustration extends from the first two.
Several things bothered me. First, I've never liked Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker. Most of the time, he has a goofy grin on his face that I find irritating, but when he plays a scene where he has to cry, rather than looking emotional he has an "ouch, stop it" look like someone's got a tight grip on his nads. Second, I've been reading WWTDD (which is sometimes work-unsafe) for about a year, and now I can't stop staring at Kirsten Dunst's teeth. Third, and most importantly, this one went for a lot of easy jokes. There's an extended sequence in the middle where I thought the tone of the entire movie was derailed for cheap laughs. It seemed to work, as most of the theater was laughing the whole way through, but I felt like it was one of the dumbest sequences I've seen in a big budget movie.
And the flaws don't end there... some more specific, slightly spoilerish gripes, and a few positive things after the jump:
The Sandman makes for cool special effects, but the Flint Marko character was an extrageneric villain with a heart. The movie clocked in at 140 minutes which is a bit too long, and since they had three major villains, they really could've cut the Sandman entirely. The Stan Lee cameo was dreadful, and Sam Raimi threw in a cameo of his kids in one of the climactic moments which was distracting (I'm sure they're great kids, but they're not actors). Harry's butler gets a lot more screen time and his dialogue is cringeworthy and his performance not much better. There's an action sequence involving a damsel in distress and a giant disaster waiting to happen, but after Spider-man shows up and saves the girl, he never does anything to stop the disaster and they just ignore it. Plus, during that sequence, there's a shot of Gwen Stacy running towards the camera as the floor starts to collapse, and the effects are terrible. It's only one shot for about a second and a half, but you'd think that for $250 million, they could make it look a little better. Also, Kirsten Dunst apparently did her own singing, but they pre-recorded it and had her poorly lip sync to herself early on, which was weird.
As for the good, the action sequences, as usual, were mostly well done, and they have a lot of fun with the web slinging. The venom suit looked just how I'd imagine it, the sandman scenes were pretty cool, Bryce Dallas Howard and Topher Grace were both nice additions to the cast, and Bruce Campbell got a bigger part than the past two movies and did an excellent job with it.
As I said, fans of the first two should just go see this (not that they needed me to tell them to). I suspect they won't like it as much, but if you liked Tobey Maguire as Peter, it's not a bad movie at all, and if you also dig the more ridiculous comedy elements they go for in the middle, you might even love it. But for me, it was a few fun action scenes surrounded by stuff that I generally found boring.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
Thursday Night TV
Didn't catch Smallville, cause I was watching NBC comedies. And I'm idiotically off to a midnight Spider-man 3 screening after this, so I'll be half dead all day at work tomorrow. And the movie probably won't be as good as Earl, Scrubs and The Office, which we'll get into after the jump.
My Name is Earl: I didn't pick up a smell-o-vision thing, so all the numbers on the screen were quite distracting. Earl picks up with his three part plan to become an adult. After getting his G.E.D. last week, it's off to work loading and unloading trucks at an appliance store. He gets the hang of it quick enough that he's wondering how he could spend his life doing something so easy, so he sets his mind to becoming a salesman. He makes it, but in the process the dock workers hate him for trying to be like one of the "junior college intellectuals" out front, and the guys out front hate him for being a docker.
I feel dense for not noticing that all the famous guest stars (Chelcie Ross, Charles S. Dutton, Sean Astin) were all in Rudy, but that worked out great, cause when Dutton came along to give the "Six-foot-something, a hundred and something" speech, it was both uplifting and hilarious.
The other plot was Joy finding out she really might be going to prison after all, so she gets everything ready for her to be gone, but instead of prepping for prison, she was preparing to flee to Mexico. I'm guessing that's where she'll be for Jaime Pressly's maternity leave. They really spent most of the effort on the smell-o-vision and the Rudy parody (which was excellent), so the random jokes didn't get as much attention. The only one that really stuck out was Randy saying "Someone said Wednesday is hump day. I don't see any ladies around, so I'll watch your back and you watch mine." But the parody was well done enough, making the joking reference but in a loving way, that this was a really great episode.
The Office: Beware the full disagiliation! Which sounds like it has something to do with the guy who flashed Phyllis, but it's something else entirely. Dwight's determined to catch the pervert, and comes up with a photo lineup of penises, including his own. He also tries to require the women to dress extremely conservatively and not wear makeup. Oh, and the number on the flyer is 800-984-3672, and the message is kinda funny (though it was tough for me to get through).
Michael's reaction is one of the more assholish things he's ever done, actually, laughing at the idea that he'd flash her instead of Pam or Karen. But at least he recognized that he crossed a line, and decides to make up for it by having women's appreciations day. Which quickly turns into an awkward field trip the mall.
Apparently his relationship with Jan is also completely messed up sexually, and she pays him to do crazy stuff. Pam and Karen, who'd been bonding a lot lately, disagree on what he should do. But he decides to break up with her, then changes his mind, then accidentally does it anyway. Best parts:
Scrubs: Elliot says yes, and Keri Russell is still around, looking great, which is nice. J.D.'s happy for her, but everyone is expecting him to take it hard and he doesn't understand why.
Everyone's fantasizing about what it would be like to be married to Elliot. Dr. Cox kills her, Janitor's was his usual insanity, in Turk's he cheats on Elliot with his Latina maid (Carla, I'm not usually a fan, but she was looking fantastic in this fantasy), Kelso's is just like his current marriage, Carla's fantasy involves making out with Elliot, which is awesome.
Turns out Keri Russell's the last single girl from her college sorority, so J.D.'s trying to take advantage of her potential newfound desperation. He keeps breaking the macking rules though, so she shoots him down. When she finally asks why he's working so hard to get her in bed, he realizes it's because he really is upset about Elliot getting engaged. And his fantasy about married life with Elliot was just being happy. I guess we were about due for that to come back. Best parts:
TV Scheduling
Traditional TV listings are great at telling you what's on now. But they give you a list of all 100+ channels filled with reruns or shows you'd never watch. So where do you go if you want to schedule your DVR? Or just find out when your favorite shows have new episodes? I've found two useful sources for just that: CAT and TVRage. Neither looks so hot until you've registered and selected the shows you want to track, but once you do, both will give you a customized listing of your favorite shows' new episodes and nothing else. Past the jump, find out what each does best.
First, we'll look at CAT (or TV CAT or pogdesign... I'm not entirely sure what to call it). It looks pretty ugly when you first go there, but that's just because all the display options are on by default. The advantages of this site are a simple setup process and a very clean interface. Once you register (from the link in the top right corner), you can follow the link in the top center (the "0/145" link next to "Select Shows") to pick the shows you want to track from a list. This way, the calendar isn't cluttered with shows you're not going to watch. When you're done picking those, click the "Save Filter" button at the bottom, and it'll take you back to the calendar. Finally, check out the settings button in the top right to decide how much info you want displayed on the page. Personally, I like to have as little clutter as possible. You'll get a whole month's calendar, but since that won't fit here, check out the bottom left corner of April for me:
You may notice a couple other key features at this point. There's a whole lot of color coding going on. The current date is highlighted in orange (I took the snapshot on the 30th), regular episodes are in white, season/series premieres are also orange, and green is for episodes you've already seen. You'll notice the "<" and ">" symbols next to each episode. Clicking on those indicates that you've seen the episode and will toggle the listing of that show between green and white. So I can just scan the calendar for past episodes in white to figure out what I need to catch up on (like the Sopranos and Entourage).
Pretty cool, eh? There are a couple drawbacks for me. First, the selection of shows is slightly limited, and they're sometimes slow to add new ones. Most of your favorites will be on the list, but new shows, especially ones on cable that don't get much hype, don't always appear on the site. And I've found a few mistakes in their listings (like it listing an episode of Drive on 4/30 when it had already been canceled). Nothing too big, but just to warn you that if there's a show you can't miss, you might want to double check to be sure you're not missing anything.
Now TV Rage personalized listings are more of a hassle to set up, the interface isn't as cool, it's not as helpful for looking into the future, and it doesn't keep track of what you've watched, but it does have a killer feature: customized RSS feeds. I discussed RSS feeds not long ago, so check out that post for a brief overview of what they are.
To get all set up for TV Rage, you register (the button should be in the top right), select your favorite shows (the "My Shows" link in the lower left menu), and get a link for your own RSS feed (the "RSS Feeds" link in the left menu). Copy that link and add it to your RSS reader and you're good to go. The selecting of shows can be time consuming if you want to track a lot of them. You have to search for them one at a time, there's no list to select from like CAT. I ended up with a little over 50, so it took quite a while. But in the end it was worth it, because every morning I'm now greeted with a nice list of what's on later that night:
There are some other nice features of TV Rage, but I've only just started playing around with the site recently. The front page is customizable (see the image at the top of this post) and there's a "My Schedule" section where you can look ahead to see what new episodes are coming up (though not in as nice a format as CAT). Aside from scheduling, the site looks like it's aiming to be sort of like tv.com with episode-by-episode information on various shows, and areas to interact with other users. But for now, I'm just in it for the RSS feed.
