Flight of the Concords - Prostituting their Sugarlumps

OK, so the premise of this episode of Flight of the Concords is that they only own one mug so Bret buys a second mug for $2.79... which leads them to bouncing a check because they were $2.79 short in their checking account, resulting in their electricity being shut off and Brett having to sell his guitar... BUT... if you look at the photo above you can clearly see in the opening credits that not only do they each have their own mug in front of them but there are at least four mugs on the dish rack and one more mug on the table, background left, for a total of seven mugs! AND, none of those mugs match the two used in the episode (below) bringing the total to at least nine mugs owned by Bret and Jemaine! ...I'm sensing they are not being totally honest with us the viewers on this show... they may be trying to pull something over on us for comedic effect... hmmmmmm


"I see you girls checkin' out my trunks
I see you girls checkin' out the front of my trunks
I see you girls checkin' out my junk, then checkin' out my rump, then back to my sugarlumps..."


"It's a cold night
Beneath the street light
There's a man whose pants are too tight..."

Sugar Lumps

You Don't Have To Be A Prostitute

The Office - Hillary Swank, hot or not?

So disturbing...

I love Oscars' presentation and argument here... and even better is Jim's reaction (below) at the time and effort they're spending at debating whether Hilary Swank is hot or not... which actually a tough question and something I've wondered myself. She's one of those that can go either way, sometimes I think she's hot and other times, not so much... not so much at all...

Smallville... back to la-la-Lana land...

Lana is back with a new attitude and haircut...

...just as I was getting used to her being gone and really diggin' the Lois-n-Clark tension that was building ... (she actually came back last episode but I'm just getting caught up on this season of Smallville. I lost interest in the first couple episodes and stopped watching. So the other day I had a mini-marathon and got caught up on the season just in time to watch this weeks episode.)

Ok, so we know Lex is alive but fill me in... if he's in contact with Tess and running things through her - why is he "missing"?

Man, I need to get me some of those video optical eye implants - talk about a great way to keep up with my Facebook status! I'd just stream a live video feed of my day right to my profile...

...and back to the Clark-n-Lana drama....boooooring! It's already been played out so hopefully it won't last long and we can get back to checking out Erica Durance...er... I mean Lois... :-)

Lie to Me - Pilot Episode

Tim Roth... love this guy - Four Rooms is so underrated, he was brilliant in that movie and he'd be brilliant in this if his character wasn't so F'ING ANNOYING! This show has a cool concept and is supposedly inspired by a real life behavioral scientist who, if he's anything like the show character, must have been beaten to death long ago by his co-workers... OK, I GET IT! You can read people's expressions and body language and can tell if they are lying but please give this character a little bit of depth... he doesn't have to be constantly analyzing every person of every second of every day for us to get the point that he's good...THAT'S JUST ANNOYING!

...and speaking of annoying - I get it that they're trying to make this Dr. Foster character out to be this confident, witty, and charming character with a streak of sexy youthfulness - and the pudding scene was OK (I like pudding and would eat it for breakfast... yeah, I'm wild like that!) but they crossed the line when they tried it again with the cup and straw bit... Mary-Louise Parker from Weeds OWNS the "super-sexy 'older' hot chick sipping a drink through a straw in a carefree playful manner" bit! So don't even try it because you'll never be more than a second-rate!

Kelli Williams, not as sexy with the drinking straw as Mary-Louise Parker

Monica Raymund (above) and Michelle Rodriguez (below)

I'll skip my rant on the "always tells the truth" side-kick guy for another week (didn't he already get his ass 'Terminated' in another show ;-) and move on to the "new on the scene" chick, Monica Raymund, who has got me a bit interested... in her little blue uniform she looked a little bit like Ana Lucia in this weeks episode of Lost (which I watched live and recorded this new Lie show and watched later ).

Which brings me to my final point - they ran the pilot episode of this show up against the season premier of Lost... are you insane! You're competing in a Lost time-slot... literally and figuratively. Are they even attempting to making this show a success? Have they shot more than two episodes? Do they want to fail? ...stay tuned or rather set your DVR cuz' nobody's watching this show in real time...

Five New LOST Revelations!

LOST writers really advanced the storyline this episode by revealing 5 things we desperately wanted to know:

1. It was revealed, to the dismay of women around the world, that yes, Sawyer has found a shirt.

2. Hurley also found a new shirt which revealed to us that he "hearts" his shih-tzu (and I also learned that it's not spelled "shit-zu")

3. It's been revealed that yes, Sayid does indeed have dark brown eyes (note: we've only been able to confirm the left eye)

4. It's been revealed that when stranded on an island, rubbing sticks together is an inefficient and time consuming method for starting a fire - simply shout the word "fire" and it will appear! (the down side it that it may appear in the form of a flaming arrow in the chest...)

5. And lastly, it was revealed tonight that when in danger (and flaming arrows aren't an option) a flaming hot "Hot Pocket" can be an effective weapon... you just may need to work on your accuracy... cleaning greasy pizza sauce off the wall can be a bitch!

LOST - My life has meaning again!

Yea! Lost is back on which mean my life has purpose again! Pretty good opening scene with Daniel spying on the DHARMA Initiative...

...so if you missed it, the season opener was about Sawyer having 'lost' his shirt (to the delight of women around the world) and spending the entire episode trying to find another...

...and we found that deep down, Sawyer is a caring guy... who needs a shirt...

(I'm not going to bother giving an insightful review of Lost... there are too many websites out there already doing it way better than I have the time for!)

24 Day 7 - 12pm-1pm

And the plot thicken even more... another inter-office romance? Can this guy, Sean, be as creepy as he plays the part? It seems too obvious, too easy - I'm still going with my outside bet that his creepy actions and devious stare is misdirection from the writers and that Garofalo is going to be the bad guy on the inside...

...the overly nice "yes sir/sorry sir" bodyguard wasn't a surprise. And the whole crazy, paranoid, conspiracy theory imagining, spouse of the president is another 24 plot device that has already been used... and my guess is that something is going to go wrong with the plans to kill the president's husband... Samantha is going to be suspicious of something and screw it up...

Mini Jack (Agent Walker) has the most diverse acting job of anyone on the show... going from confident agent, to rebellious agent, to pissed-off agent, to scared agent... she's had to go through the whole range. I like her character but if they really do kill her off that would make for an interesting plot twist... how will Jack get out of that one?


...and how many times has 24 used the old "kill somebody to go undercover" plot device? And how many times is the bad guy going to fall for it? Even though they are on a tight time schedule, instead of taking 12 seconds to walk over and make sure she's dead he tells them to go through the time consuming process of burying the body and not checking things out for himself... makes for exciting and suspenseful TV but is just absolutely ridiculous!

Reminds me of days at the beach playing in the sand!

What the Frak?!

Well, we said "goodbye" tonight to one of my show favorites in an unexpected way. We'll have to watch for Kandyse in other shows... IMDB
I usually like movies and shows that end on a down note like a Greek tragedy but I've been hoping for a little hope, something a little more upbeat. Of course I don't want what happened with Galactica 1980 where they all show up on earth riding rocket motorcycles and cracking cheezy one-liners. But the direction the show is going I don't see how they can end it in anything but misery.

...and speaking of not knowing the direction something is going... what's up with the KFC "Frak Pak"? They do understand that frak = fuck right? So to translate the above ad "KFC proudly salutes BSG ad its fuckin' awesome fans! FUCK PAK SWEEPSTAKES" ... well, I gotta go now so I can enter the frakkin' sweepstakes...

A Frackin' Reminder!

As I was driving on I81 through motherfrackking Pennsylvania at 3:30 in the frackkin' morning on my way from frackkin' hot Miami to frackkin' cold Boston this morning, I saw this sign and though "Ohhhh frack! The new frackkin' season of Battlestar Galactica starts tonight!" (I know, it's a frakking lousy pic but I took it in the dark, through the windshield of my car while driving 80mph...)

The Office - The Duel

"...my philosophy is basically this... and this is something that I live by, and I always have, and I always will... Don’t ever, for any reason do anything, to anyone, for any reason... ever... no matter what. No matter where or who, or who you are with... or... or where you are going... or... or where you’ve been... ever... for any reason... whatsoever..." ~ Michael Scott

The duel challenge for Angela

24 Day 7 - 11am-12pm

Samantha's got a secret
Jack is acting like Jack
Agent Renee is acting like Jack

...it's 24 as usual

24 Day 7 - 10am-11am

It's "Chloe Classic" vs "New Chloe" in a battle of the nerds!

We got Tony, Buchanan and Chloe back now... it's like a CTU reunion... if we could only resurrect Michelle and President Palmer we'd have a real party going.

Well, I was right about my Tony prediction... he is undercover. Jury is still out about which new nerd is the mole. I'm still going with Garofalo as the inside bad guy... I still think that Sean Hillinger is too obvious to be the villain but I think he would make a good inside man for team Buchanan... we'll see.

24 Day 7 - 9am-10am

Well, the Jack and Tony relationship got intimate in the second episode, so soon in the season. Is Tony not the main villain this season or is Tony not a villain at all? We'd like to think that like Jack, Tony will always do the right thing. Is he deep under cover trying to expose the governments involvement? .. I guess we'll see...

Ahhh yes, a staple sub-plot to any season of 24... the 'ol inter-office relationship. The overly concerned "are you ok" question was popped...

...and now on to the nerds at the FBI office. Ms. Garofalo has been plaing the nervous character while nerd #2 (forget his name) is playing the sterotypical arrogant nerd. Now if these two turn out to be more critical to the plot, then who would be pulling strings from the inside; the obvious jerk or the scared of her own shadow teckie? Seems like the 'ol character personality bait and switch may be a little too cliche for a show like 24 that tries to be on the cutting edge of shock but they do have a heavy track record for using recurring plot devices ... so as an early prediction I'm putting Ms. Garofalo on the "naughty list."

24 Day 7 - 8am-9am

We got our villain for this season... Tony is back and this time he's got a score to settle. He's another one of those whisper actors... like Jack, everything he says is in a low raspy whisper voice... I think I'm going to start talking like that and then threaten to stab people in the ear with Bic pens if they don't listen to me.

Janeane Garofalo... who 'da thunk it? I guess she's our Chloe for the season... nervouse, on edge but with that witty sarcastic personality of hers. I thought she was going to turn to the camera and give us all a wink when she said she's a cheerful person who hates sarcasm...

"Jack, you're a dumbass just like my son Eric!"

24: Infomercial... err... Redemption

Gearing up for the new season of 24 and so I just finally got around to watching 24: Redemption which brings me to the subject of product placement. Subtle placement is expected, hell, we've got products and logos all around us in real life and if they want to make TV shows realistic you expect them to be there but some of the product placement in this show was just downright in-your-face obnoxious! Especially the scenes on the Sprint/Nextel phones and the way they'd hold the phone in unnatural positions right up to the camera lens!

The Decline of AMC

My discovery of AMC back in the mid-90's led to my discovery of a whole library of movies I had never seen and movie stars I barely knew. I could turn on AMC any hour of the day, any day of the week and knew there would be a movie worth watching and best of all they were shown in their original format, unedited and commercial free!

My list of favorite movies was rapidly changing to include His Girl Friday, All Quiet on the Western Front and All About Eve... I discovered who was ready for her close-up, who coulda been a contender, and why he didn't give a damn... That George Bailey had a 6' rabbit for a friend and was also a politician, a cowboy, and a clown... and it didn't matter if her name was Sabrina, Natasha or Golightly, her smile always had the same affect on me... that was AMC - before it changed.

How did AMC change? Commercials. Those annoying little advertisements changed everything that made AMC great, to what it is now...Another Mediocre Channel... how and why? Well let go through the progression:

• It started off with classic movies primarily from the 30's-50's (with a bit of 20's and 60's sprinkled in the mix) that were unedited and uninterrupted.
  
  
• The first change came when then they started adding commercials between movies...
  
  
• Then they started adding a block of commercials halfway through the movie...
  
  
• Now AMC is like any other broadcast station with 5 minutes of commercials every 10 minutes.

But the commercial interruptions aren't the worst part it's the changes that were made to appease the advertisers, changes like:

• Editing the movies for content so as to not offend the advertisers... but what about us the viewer? What offends you more, the content in a movie you want to see or the "male enhancement" ads they're feeding you every 10-15 minutes?
  
  
• Their shift to more full-screen pan and scan movies - especially when their audience is shifting to widescreen TVs... does that make sense?
  
  
• And the biggest offence? Instead of primarily showing classics from the 30's and 40's they're now showing such "classics" as Steven Seagal's Out for Justice. And who can forget such classics as 2007's Return to House on Haunted Hill or better yet, get out the popcorn and gather 'round for the "classic" movie Survival Island with Jamie Pressly! A movie that reviewers on IMDB gave 2.5 stars... yes, a whole 2.5 stars out of a possible 10!

In the age of home theatres, HD players, and on-demand movies I'd have to say AMC's future is as promising as the movies they're calling the "future of classic!"

Some favorite movie camera shots

Some of my favorite camera shots and angles

Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo

Alfred Hitchcock was the master of using the camera to create tension and emotion

The Trouble with Harry

Above and below - Cary Grant in North by Northwest

Luc Besson's Léon (The Professional)

Rose McGowan in Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror

"P-51! Cadillac of the sky!"

Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun starring Christian Bale long before his gravely voiced Batman days.