TV And Films

The shows and movies I like (or don’t).

They made a sequel?

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While I was not exactly overly enamored with Underworld — “disappointing and frustrating” were my actual words after seeing it, in fact — I just took a look at the trailer for the sequel, Underworld: Evolution. I may end up wandering out to catch a matinee to see how it fares…the original was quite pretty and nice eye candy, and perhaps they’ll actually have invested in some slightly more competent screenwriters this time around.

I won’t hold my breath…but hey, if nothing else, it’s a chance to watch Kate Beckinsale wearing skin-tight outfits.

America’s Next Muppet

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I’m not sure what I got more excited about — the fact that there’s a Muppet-centric weblog that I just discovered, or that the Muppets may be coming back to TV!

People have been buzzing about “America’s Next Muppet” for months now. Disney is still planning to relaunch the Muppets with a prime-time ABC “reality” parody series. […]

A network representative has said that the Muppet project is still in the extremely early stages of development. But ABC has now officially ordered a pilot script and five additional script outlines for “America’s Next Muppet”. This will be shot in the format of a “reality show”, and will use a lot of the same syntax and cinematic grammar that the genre has developed, however like all past Muppet TV shows will be scripted. If ABC is impressed with the pilot episode script and the pilot episode, than the five outlines will start being turned into scripts and episodes. These six episodes are hoped to air in Spring/Summer 2006, and if successful then more episodes could be ordered, and the series continued.

Other fun news from the site: the short-lived “Muppets Tonight” show may be coming to DVD, and Palisades Toys have acquired the rights to create a line of Labrynth collectibles (including multiple Goblin King figurines with various outfits)!

Scalzi’s Top 50 Significant Sci-Fi Films

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Another list meme: this time, John Scalzi’s top 50 significant sci-fi films (alphabetical, not ranked).

…the part of the book that’s going to get most people’s attention — and raise hackles — is The Canon, which features the 50 science fiction films I have deemed to be the most significant in the history of film. Note that “most significant” does not mean “best” or “most popular” or even “most influential.” Some of the films may be all three of these, but not all of them are — indeed, some films in The Canon aren’t objectively very good, weren’t blockbusters and may not have influenced other filmmakers to any significant degree. Be that as it may, I think they matter — in one way or another, they are uniquely representative of some aspect of the science fiction film experience.

As always, films I’ve seen are in bold.

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On that whole TV thing…

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Most people who’ve known me for a while are aware that I’m not much of a fan of television — and actually haven’t really watched television in a long, long time. Seeing as how a couple people commented on my watching Lost, I thought it might be worth addressing this. :)

I’m really not sure when exactly I got sick of TV, but my best guess would be sometime around 1992/1993 or so I decided that it just wasn’t worth my time. Most programs didn’t have enough intelligence to keep my interest, and even when I did sit down to watch something, the insipid and insultingly stupid commercials would drive me up the wall. So I quit.

In the intervening years I’ve seen bit and pieces of shows here and there, generally when I’ve been over at friends houses. For the most part, though, I’ve relied mostly on recommendations from friends as to what shows were actually worth watching…and then I’d wait for the DVDs to start coming out. Thanks to DVD, over the last few years I’ve seen (for the first time) all of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, the first four seasons of The X-Files, and the first four seasons of The West Wing.

More recently, adding BitTorrent to my repertoire has allowed me to keep up with more recent shows. I first saw Firefly this way, I’ve been keeping up with Battlestar Galactica, Gray’s Anatomy got a few trial weeks, and I’ll soon be watching the first three episodes of Surface to see if it’s worth keeping an eye on.

So I’m not really entirely against television as a whole — in a very general sort of way, yes, I think that TV is primarily a waste of time, and most people (especially children) would be far better off finding better ways to spend their time — but I’m not entirely opposed to finding specific shows that are better written, more intelligent and/or more entertaining than most.

I’d have been quite happy sticking with BitTorrent and watching things at least a day or two behind most of the rest of the world, too, except for two things: Prairie, and Lost.

Prairie, while sharing many of my views on the majority of the shows on TV these days, has never been quite as militant about her anti-TV views as I have been over the past few years. She’s had a few shows that she’s been enjoying keeping up with, with her top three being ER, Desperate Housewives, and Lost. All during last year, she’d occasionally drop tidbits of what was going on in that week’s episode of Lost to me…and then, after getting me to admit that it sounded interesting, and determined to get me hooked, she picked up the Season 1 DVD set when it came out.

We spent the next week powering our way through all of Season 1 — and she won. I’m hooked. So, Wednesday nights are now “Lost Night” for us. Admittedly, I still grit my teeth during most of the commercials (and even the ones that are cute once or twice get extremely grating the twentieth or fiftieth time they show up), but I’m quite enjoying watching the show itself.

So I’m still primarily anti-TV, and am far happier spending my free hours either fiddling with projects on my computer, wandering around town with my camera, or getting together with friends whenever possible. For one hour each Wednesday night, though, I’ll be joining the majority of America in setting back, grabbing some munchies, and keeping up with this week’s adventures on the boob tube.

(Oh, and while I’m just not interested enough in a hospital soap opera to get sucked into ER, she just might get me hooked on Desperate Housewives if I’m not careful. The last two episodes have been pretty entertaining, I must admit….)

The Sesame Street Theme…in Klingon

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Original:

Sunny day
Sweepin’ the clouds away
On my way
to where the air is sweet.
Can you tell me how to get,
how to get to Sesame Street?

Klingon:

pem Hov jaj.
Haw’choHnIS ‘eng ‘ej Haj.
ghoch vIghaj;
‘ej pa’ muDmo’ jIbel.
chay’ Sesame He vIghoS?
SIbI’ jIHvaD ‘e’ yIDel.

Translation of the Klingon:

A day of the daytime star.
The clouds are compelled to commence fleeing, and are filled with dread.
I have a destination;
and there, because of the atmosphere, I am pleased.
Describe to me immediately
how to go to Sesame Street.

And there’s two more verses at the original location. This is so wonderful!

(via MeFi)

Another Cheaper by the Dozen?

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I ranted a while ago about the Cheaper by the Dozen film, a bastardization of one of my childhood favorite books, vowing not to see the results.

It’s time for another vow — this time, sadly, for Cheaper by the Dozen 2.

Never, never, never. The only even vaguely interesting pieces of the trailer were two quarter-second long shots of girls in bikinis…and since if I ever feel the need to see that I can do a quick Flickr search, that takes care of that.

Would someone please just forcibly retire Steve Martin and put us all out of our misery?