01. October 2005 · Comments Off on You Can’t Stop the Signal · Categories: Ain't That America?, That's Entertainment!

We saw Serenity this afternoon.

You don’t want to miss this. I’m not going to gush all over it. It deserves much more respect than that. There was a good story. There was intelligent dialouge. There were characters that you care about. If you weren’t a fan of Firefly then you don’t care quite as much, but I think you’ll still care. There was a LOT of action. The action made sense in context with the story. There is a depth here that is missing so much today.

This movie has love.

All the things that movies are missing these days.

My family and I laughed, and we cried, and we nodded grim-faced. There’s joy and sadness and resolution and retribution. There are “Big Damn Heroes.”

If I said anything else I’d start spoiling and nobody likes a spoiler.

But this is a movie that requires as much attention as we can give it. Hollywood wants to know why we’re not going to the movies. Give us more of this and less of the crap without any heart.

30. September 2005 · Comments Off on Movie Trivia For 10/01/05 · Categories: That's Entertainment!

D. W. Griffith’s classic The Birth of a Nation (1915) is popularly considered the first epic American film. But it was preceded by this.

Update: Congratz to reader tyree, who not only got it, but got one over on me (see comments).

29. September 2005 · Comments Off on Serenity Contest · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Box Office Prophets is giving away a free Serenity hat and t-shirt.

29. September 2005 · Comments Off on Serenity Reviews · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Over at Blogcritics, Matt Moore has this review of Serenity:

What really stood out was the writing, of course. The characters are mostly drawn from action film archetypes (there’s the amoral tough guy, the spunky woman [well, several spunky women], the conflicted leader) and they could have been cardboard flat. Instead they were all very human, reacting to situations and each other unpredictably, but always in ways that make sense. There were also lots of classic Whedon bits: extremely funny lines in the middle of intense action, emotionally crushing blows, and lifting moments of victory. Sometimes all three in the same shot.

Afterwards Zombyboy (he’s got a review with links to other reviews posted here) mentioned that he saw a strong anarcho-libertarian thread running through the picture. He’s absolutely right. Mal, the captain of the Serenity, fought on the losing side of a rebellion against the autocratic Alliance. Now he thinks only of himself. Well, only of himself and his crew. Well, only of himself and his crew until the good of the entire universe gets in the way.

Update: Danial Drezner does a great review. But my favorite part was this quote from Jacob Levy:

This is not a genre-buster like Matrix or even a genre-redefiner like Blade Runner. It’s more of an ante-raiser like Alien: “See? This thing that we’ve gotten used to seeing done badly can be done really, really well.” For Alien, it was making a monster movie genuinely suspenseful, scary, and visually compelling. For Serenity, it’s making space opera morally serious and centered on complete characters with convincing relationships and first-rate dialogue. I predict that it will make watching Star Wars or Star Trek movies harder to do without cringing.

Most of the Star Wars saga already makes me cringe.

Update 2: Movies Online: two 10s and a 9

28. September 2005 · Comments Off on Favorite Nip/Tuck lines, Inst. I · Categories: That's Entertainment!

“Three-ways are the new black.” Somehow, that line resonates with me. 🙂

28. September 2005 · Comments Off on Serenity Prescreenings · Categories: That's Entertainment!

For bloggers only.

Hat Tip: InstaPundit

Update: Glenn says they are tapped-out. I don’t know if he’s talking about everywhere, or just Knoxville, so I sent a request anyway.

27. September 2005 · Comments Off on Three More Days · Categories: That's Entertainment!

…but we won’t go until Saturday.

Serenity of course.

They’ve added to the site since the last time I was there. Oh myyyyyyyyy. This is looking very good.

27. September 2005 · Comments Off on Firefly Marathon · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Going on right now at the SciFi Channel.

26. September 2005 · Comments Off on BSG notes. Inst I · Categories: That's Entertainment!

I find it quite interesting how, in last Friday’s BSG discourse, no-one bothered to draw parallels between the current episode, and The Living Legend, from the earlier series.

26. September 2005 · Comments Off on Oh, This Is Interesting · Categories: That's Entertainment!

In an effort to bring my last Movie Trivia puzzle back to the front page, I edited the time stamp to something actually ahead of current time. And it disappeared.

I don’t think it’s gone. It will likely come back, once real time surpasses the time stamp.

Anyway, I still remember the puzzle. And there was only one post (from. I believe, James Agenbroad), with some teasing clues. BTW: I didn’t get the one about the Jeep.

26. September 2005 · Comments Off on Notes On Rome Inst. I · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Has anyone else noticed how much Kevin McKidd (Vorenus) looks like Steve McQueen?

26. September 2005 · Comments Off on Don Adams Is Dead · Categories: That's Entertainment!

And many blogger-pundits are making a big stink of it. Well, with all due respect to the late Mr. Adams, he was of little real consequence, with but one trademark character.

I find it interesting to contrast this to te recent passing of Bob Denver, who is not being given proper attribution for his most influential character.

23. September 2005 · Comments Off on Television To Dream By · Categories: That's Entertainment!

I’m currently tuned to the middle of Run Silent, Run Deep, on TCM. As always, I’ve preselected C-SPAN’s Washington Journal – at 4am. I’m about to program the interval between. It’s unlikely I will see any of this. But, if I do, I don’t want to awaken to crap. 🙂

Update: Midnight – Austin City Limits – Los Lobos and RatDog – Yeah Baby! Of course, I’ll likely be asleep. 🙂

I need a TiVo.

23. September 2005 · Comments Off on My G_d, Gaius – It’s Me! · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Tuesday’s season premier of Nip/Tuck was pretty hot. But I think they still have a ways to go to surpass Battlestar Galactica.

23. September 2005 · Comments Off on Why I Love Mythbusters – Inst. I · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Build team member, Kari Byron, has to be about the most drop-dead-georgous woman in reality-TV. 🙂

Kari Byron

Too bad she’s a San Francisco vegan freak.

Oh: Sorry, Paige; you’re hot, but not THIS hot. 🙂

21. September 2005 · Comments Off on Lost Blogging (050921) · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Okay, does anyone else have a problem with introducing MORE new characters at the beginning of the season when we still don’t know what the frell is going on with the folks we met LAST season?

21. September 2005 · Comments Off on Confession Time (050921) · Categories: That's Entertainment!

I’m a HUGE Wallace and Gromit fan. The movie is coming out on October 7th. I’m as happy as Wallace with a wheel of cheese and a box of crackers.

20. September 2005 · Comments Off on Movie Trivia For 9/21/05 · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Joan Collins and Madonna have this in common. Collins did it in 1986, and Madonna ten years later. And no, it has nothing to do with Warren Beatty. 😉

Update: Congratz to reader Jay Tea (see comments).

20. September 2005 · Comments Off on As I Suspected… · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Christopher Orr reviews The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy at TNR (free registration req’d):

After its first third, the movie loses faith not only in its predecessor’s tone, but in its storyline as well. The leisurely jaunt to one alien planet is replaced by a hectic commute to no fewer than three–one of them the setting for a nonsensical subplot featuring John Malkovich as a religious evangelist, which is inserted abruptly and then all but forgotten. A love triangle between Arthur, Zaphod, and Trillian is laboriously constructed. And the Vogons, who were not heard from in the book after the airlock incident, are reimagined as ongoing antagonists who chase the heroes across the galaxy for a series of tiresome gun battles. As a result of these and other interventions, the movie has a choppy, episodic feel and will, I suspect, prove almost incomprehensible to anyone not already familiar with Adams’s oeuvre.

[…]

Talent-wise, the cast is a tremendous upgrade from the B-list actors who performed in the 1983 BBC miniseries. (Simon Jones, who played Arthur then, has a cameo as the holographic Magrathean face in the new movie.) Yet that miniseries, though somewhat hard to find, is nonetheless rather more satisfying than its big-budget successor. Sure, the alien costumes look as though they were constructed from the innards of a 1970s sofa, the laser beams appear to have been drawn on the film stock with a highlighter, and the sets are worthy of a community theatre production (or, worse, an episode of “Dr. Who”). But this shabby, secondhand feel actually suits the story rather well. When Arthur first arrives on the Vogon ship, he asks, “Is this really the interior of a flying saucer? … It’s a bit squalid, isn’t it?” It’s an apt description of Adams’s entire universe, which is simultaneously incredible and mundane, awe-inspiring and ridiculous.

The makers of the new film obviously got this. There’s a deliberate cheesiness to the special effects, and an improvisational feel to many of the scenes. But $50 million is still $50 million, and it will find a way to get on screen. Why have just a few Vogons in the early part of the movie, when you could have dozens reappear throughout it? Why not have an entire Vogon planet? And maybe another planet, too, where John Malkovich can crawl around on dozens of crablike mechanical legs? When your special effects credits run into the hundreds, you have to find something for all those people to do. And, of course, to make space for the new material you’ll need to cut a lot of that boring old talk talk talk.

In Hollywood, budget is often destiny. There’s no doubt that a movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide was destined to be made–with its large and loyal following, how could it not be?–but thanks to the economics of the industry it was probably destined to be made badly. And it was.

19. September 2005 · Comments Off on Movie Trivia For 9/20/05 · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Popular rumor has it that this actress underwent breast enlargement to play in this 1983 biopic.

Update: Congratz to reader Bill (see comments).

18. September 2005 · Comments Off on Movie Trivia For 9/18/05 · Categories: That's Entertainment!

When this Hollywood megastar learned that a Los Angeles television station planned to show this movie, his first big-screen appearance, he took out an ad in the LATimes, urging viewers (counterproductively) not to watch it

Update: Congratz to reader Taj (see comments).

17. September 2005 · Comments Off on Over There Jumps The Shark Again · Categories: That's Entertainment!

On tonight’s episode of FX’s Over ThereSituation Normal, they have some civilian, who claims to be an “engineer”, telling some local imam, “we’re building our oil pipeline through here, whether you like it or not!” I’m just waiting for him to say he works for “Calliburton”, or some such.

17. September 2005 · Comments Off on A foot-stompin’ good time! · Categories: Domestic, Local, That's Entertainment!

The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, here in South Georgia?? Yep! The lovely Nurse Jenny and I got the great opportunity to go to a concert by the “old as us” band at Georgia Southern University last night. It was great, right down to “Mr Bojangles”! We had a great time!

They opened the second set with “Mr. Bojangles, and closed out with “Will The Circle Be Unbroken“, the title of an album that won them a Grammy, and has three volumes now. Wow, just teriffic! After two standing ovations, they came back for the encore. No one wanted it to end. What was really amusing was that most of the audience were our age, not the college students. That, along with the wheel chairs and the walkers in the audience, really cracked me up!

17. September 2005 · Comments Off on Loggins and Messina, Qwest Center Omaha, 16 Sep 05 · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Loggins and Messina, Sittin’ In Again.

Okay, let’s get the obvious taken care of first. If you want Kenny Loggins’ solo stuff, if you demand Kenny Loggins’ solo stuff, do NOT go to this show. No “I’m Alright,” no “Danger Zone,” no “Heartlight,” no “Celebrate me Home.” You’ll have to trust me on this though, after you walk out of the three hours with Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina with one of the tightest bands I’ve ever heard backing them up, you won’t care. Not a lick.

The first set opened with “Watching the River Run” and “House at Pooh Corner.” This satisfied the casual fans in the audience and also let everyone know that they weren’t just going to play the songs the same way they were done 30 years ago, they’d reworked them, tweaked them here, moved parts around there. All still very recognizable, but what we witnessed tonight was not a concert of old songs done by a couple of old guys, it was a band jamming together still working on songs that were written 30 years ago.

Watching these two perform together again was joyous. When they sing and play together, the sum is so much more than the total of their parts. Kenny Loggins can sing, but when he sings with Jimmy Messina, angels weep. Jimmy Messina is an awesome guitarist, but when he jams off Kenny Loggins his fingers fly and dance and tickle your ears so that you’re left with a stupid grin on your face while he’s playing from the sheer wonder.

The end of the first set ended with a gospel rendition of “Peace of Mind” that had hints of the Staple Singers and the keyboardist brought in a taste of Ray Charles and the audience was on their feet singing as if we were all in rapture on Sunday morning. That went into a killer version of “Your Momma Don’t Dance” that took it back from Motley Crue, and aren’t we glad that finally happened?

The second set opened with the rest of the band a bit more forward and with Kenny and Jim amoung them more. The songs here were primarily acoustic and still they improved on old standards. Oddly enough, they played a song from Messina’s Buffalo Springfield days and an ol’ Poco standard. As the set progressed the jams became a bit harder, the arrangements a bit harder rock. One song I didn’t recognize but have sense realised I own, divided the audience pretty quickly. It was clear, “Same ol’ Wine,”is an anti-war song. It was a pretty good rythm and blues number musically but this is the heartland and once it became clear how much of an anti-war song it was, some people chose to leave. I admire their convictions, but they also gave us more room to dance. See, I have no problems with old hippies being anti-war, I sort of expect it and it doesn’t bother me all that much. It was one song, shake it off, move on.

And with the second set closing out with an amazing rendition of “Vahevala” and encores of “Angry Eyes” and “Danny’s Song” we just had to get up and dance and sing and just plain enjoy.

Three hours of exceptionally good music played and sang well by two guys with a killer band who know how to do it better than most of the “stars” of today. We paid about 50 bucks a pop for main floor seating and I feel like I got my money’s worth and then some.

If they’re coming your way, go if you can, you won’t be disappointed.

15. September 2005 · Comments Off on Forget Sabine Schmitz, Wait Until You Meet Milka Duno · Categories: That's Entertainment!

The new Biography Channel series, Girl Racers is a MUST SEE.

15. September 2005 · Comments Off on Bill Maher Strikes A Blow Against Katrina Victims · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Just reflecting upon Wal-Mart’s announcement yesterday of opening their gift registry to Katrina victims, which our own dear APV had blogged on earlier: The idiot Bill Maher, who has used Katrina, on the last two episodes of his HBO series Real Time With Bill Maher, to justify some of Hollywood’s most savage and blindered Bush-bashing, led his last “New Rules” segment off with the proclamation, “no more gift registries.”

Well Bill, I think you owe Katrina victims, and Wal-Mart, an apology.

Oh, and equal bad-ons to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Cynthia Tucker, who falsely claimed it took the US military “two days” to respond to the tsunami at Banda Aceh. In fact, it took five. And, as I think we all know, we had the first large-scale operation on the scene. (Singapore got there in two days, but on a scale that was trivial relative to ours.)

15. September 2005 · Comments Off on The Answer! · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Although I didn’t see it at first, in his rather cryptic post, DemoMan came up with the answer to my Movie Trivia for 9/12/05 puzzle yesterday. John Hughes frequently goes by “Edmond Dantes”, the protagonist in The Count of Monte Cristo.