Reason No. 1 (tonight) for the End of the Republic:
SNL tonight is followed by Wacked Out Sports. Whatever happened to Showtime at the Apollo?! Note, this is on NBC, not ESPN-8—The Ocho.
(Reason No. 1a: Paulie Walnuts is still doing Denny's Commercials.)
UPDATED, 1:32 a.m.: Reason No. 1b: This was followed up with a 'Friends' "episode." I am now attempting to jam the Labatt's bottle through my eye.
That's all I got tonight.
Posted in Television by The Icepick 1 comments
THAT'S it? Well, we're not gonna try this again for at least another six-pack. You'd think the future Boston would rate a better episode. Looks like it was copyright 1981 (reading the end-credits). The ones I've been watching last week were copyright 1980, and were much better. But really, when you have a laser-sword wielding hero, a large, animalistic hairy compainon, and a feisty Princess in distress, I guess there's only so many storylines you can come up with, or no? (1:21 a.m.) ——— ——— ——— ———
Gorn is another bad guy/misunderstood creature with a John Matusak beard from Caveman the movie and dragon wings. Oh, and snakes for arms. Not kidding. He sounds like The Gimp in Pulp Fiction. (1:15 a.m.)
If this is Boston, why doesn't anyone speak in a The Departed accent? I think I picked the wrong episode to liveblogg. Though Gorn has potential, maybe as a member of Kansas.
The Princess casts a spell to turn Gorn back to half-human. I was drinking when this storyline was established. Never mind.
Thundarr destroyed the Gauntlet Claw at 1:20 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Modern civilization is saved. No word on how the Sox did on this day in 3994. (1:12 a.m.)
A bunch of donkey-dinosaurs are pulling Ford Taurus's while our heroes are in pursuit. There's that split moon again. The bad guy is wielding a gauntlet that looks like The Claw and shoots lasers.
They just passed a sign for Swampscott. No shit. They're on a rotted highway. Is this what's left of the Big Dig?
Thundarr and bad-guy Sirrot are fighting. Thundarr wins The Claw, and then must return to "the village." Again. Another village.
Yawn. The bad guy finds another research lab, um, again. Labatt's is getting warm. Why did the runaway-planet arrive in the far-future of 1994, 14 years before these shows broadcast? Fourteen years from now I'll be like, 50. And we'll have flying cars. Cool.
Yep. It's official: We're in Boston. Thundarr just arrived at the remains of Logan Airport to meet the villagers. There is dancing around a bonfire. Cue Oookla and some slapstick.
Oookla sounds again like a drunken Beavis with the bit stuck in his mouth while Butt-Head wields a whip. It had something to do with Santa Claus. Oookla is da bomb, even if he is a low-grade Chewbacca rip-off with short-shorts.
Commercial break [blissfully]. (1:02 a.m.)
(EDS NOTE: Shit, this useless effort took up a lot of space. I'm going back to combine this all into one or two posts to make this look halfway readable, if not less execrable.)
Posted in Liveblogging Thundarr the Barbarian, Television by The Icepick 4 comments
Whatever they're showing before Thundarr is using the Calexico music that they used for The Sopranos credits at the end of the episode where Tony killed Christopher. I know 'cause I got it on I-Tunes. There's a donkey onscreen in a robber mask. Wow.
Posted in Liveblogging Thundarr the Barbarian, Television by The Icepick 0 comments
We're four Labatt's in since The Baby's gone to sleep and Boomerang is about to show "Thundarr the Barbarian" in four minutes. So what better way time than to live-blogg this historic broadcast?
NOTE: I've never actually live-blogged anything, so I don't know how it works. Do you write all in one post, or do I just keep hitting the "publish post" button as I write? I don't know! I guess we'll figure it out. Two minutes to go.
I'm opting for the one long post up until every commercial break. I also reserve the right to go back and spell check this, since my typing is less than accurate, and my spelling worse. I'll also add in tags and shit later.
Posted in Liveblogging Thundarr the Barbarian, Television by The Icepick 1 comments
No word on if you can have a flamethrower in this new edition of GTA and run around singing that classic Twisted Sister song.
See no evil, don't you play no evil, don't you bring no evil down on me-eeee.
Burn baby burn, indeed.
Posted in GTA, My generation by The Icepick 0 comments
Was not terribly impressed with Joe Calzaghe's victorious performance over Bernard Hopkins last Saturday in the light heavyweight fight. I guess when they said he wasn't showing much punching power, you could actually see it. Still, he remained undefeated with a split decision over the aging Hopkins.
What I want to know is why was Sylvester Stallone, clearly sitting in like, the fourth row and in view of the camera, wildly gesturing as if he were commenting on the fight to the guy sitting next to him. He looked like one of those crazy tourists that wave behind the Today Show talkers.
Posted in boxing by The Icepick 1 comments
I know Gawker poked fun at it, but this is the type of thing that pisses me off: why do the fucking toothbrushes have to be so wide these days?
Put the toothpaste on the toothbrush, and brush. You don't need an ergonomical grip to do that.
In the toothbrush aisle at my supermarket, the only toothbrush with the regular handle — the kind that will actually fit into a toothbrush holder — was the store-brand on sale. How much longer do you think those will be available before they replace them with the fat gripper kind?
Posted in cranky by The Icepick 0 comments
Other than the anomaly of the golden year of 2005, what else has this decade given us in film? You got the Lord of the Rings triology and Million Dollar Baby. And then …? The Departed was OK, but it ranks well below Scorsese's other stuff. What else you got? Studios sending out flicks like 21, last week's big money-maker, the film based on that allegedly fictional non-fiction book? (link to Boston Globe thanks to Gawker)
No, this is TV's decade. As I said before, this is decade that's given us great shows, almost all dramas, many of whom I haven't even had the chance to catch up and see yet: “The Wire,” “Mad Men,” “Deadwood,” “The Sopranos” (yes, I know it began in 1999), “Band of Brothers,” “The Shield,” “Rome,” “John Adams,” and even more populist stuff like “Rescue Me,” “Sex and the City,” “Entourage,” “Playmakers” and “Battlestar Galactica.” What else am I forgetting? (“Friday Night Lights,” perhaps, another one I haven't seen.) The jury may still be out on some of the network comedy items — I'm thinking the American “The Office” and “30 Rock” — but it's enough to offset the Reality Crap and make you want to invest in a good DVR.
Why is all this? Well, I'm developing a theory that we're seeing the rise of writers and producers (and especially writer/producers) and the decline of directors, or at least in the power structure. A writer can stretch his or her legs out better over the course of a 7- to 20-episode season than can be done in a 2- to 2½-hour flick.
Sensing this, younger actors with producing ambitions are turning to TV and away from movies. Whereas you have aging and powerful actors like Robert Redford and Tom Cruise turning out panned self-important would-be Oscar bait like Lions for Lambs, you have another set of actors like Denis Leary going for something else on TV. And that's not to say Denis Leary will ever have the chops to compete with a Redford or even (it pains me to write this) a Cruise. But can you see Tom Cruise making a TV series? He's a Movie Star. The only one I can think of capable of crossing over is Tom Hanks, and that's as a producer, not as an actor/producer.
And the great series of this decade has had the net effect of raising the bar for all other dramas, even the overtly action-oriented popcorn ones. You can't just have “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” or even “24” and have them always blowing shit up — well, you can, but you've got to at least attempt to make it so the characters have a little more depth behind them, more than you'd find in a 90-minute action flick. This goes especially for the rich supporting characters that help carry a long narrative arc.
This is, of course, not counting the low-end of the spectrum on TV — your American Idols, your reality shows, etc. But the low-brow was the balancing end of movies, too. For every Godfather, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction and Unforgiven you had your Home Alones and your 8mm's ("Hello, Machine. I'm a big fan of your work").
As it was, the Writers Strike could have been worse for viewers than it turned out to be — and why the Studios, who must know the balance of power is swinging, were lucky it ended as relatively quickly as it did. A few months was more than enough time for the writers to get their points across. If it wasn't for HBO with “The Wire” and “John Adams,” think about how much deeper the void there would have been, and may still be as other shows are just now getting back into new episodes, with the re-start of others pushed back.
Meanwhile, the new auteur age of film ushered in by the ’70s crop of Coppola, Spielberg and Scorsese is, like the Baby Boomers, aging and declining in its influence, Munich and Coppola's wine aside. In fact, other than Munich, Spielberg's greatest impact this decade may well be in his influence on “Band of Brothers” and “John Adams.”
Which brings me to my recent post on “John Adams.” If this is the kind of show that gets panned by critics, then TV is doing something good, because not only is it better than any of the other movies out there, it does takes the dramatic approach that film cannot — the novelistic approach. It's like this year's criticism of “The Wire.” Even in what many considered was an off-year for the final season of the series, it was still the best thing on any screen.
Posted in Movies, Television, The Wire, Writers, Writing by The Icepick 1 comments
Now we come to TV, and the “John Adams” miniseries on HBO, which was kind of panned as boring after the first two episodes aired, and then you haven't heard any critical peeps since. And despite the distractingly off-kilter camera work (We get it, Director Man, you're "artsy." Go buy an easel.) this is a fascinating show and continues the decade-long trend of great television.
Stephen Dillane as Thomas Jefferson had a great portrait of the writer in the second episode. After penning the Declaration of Independence, he sits in the same room as Adams and Franklin read over his draft. Dillane has the wounded writer pose down perfectly — uncomfortably sitting as his editors read and perhaps gut his work, legs tightly crossed, attempting to look casual by slightly slouching against a chair-back but his one crossed arm belying his defensive posture trying to graciously accept edits while defending that "every single word was precisely chosen," even as Ben Franklin corrects it: "'Self evident'? 'Self evident' then."
You can't argue about the work of the two primary leads, Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. And in supporting roles as Jefferson and Washington, Dillane and David Morse are great, and even as a hammy Benjamin Franklin, Tom Wilkinson chews his scenes with relish and presumably bad teeth.
This week's penultimate episode leads with now-President Adams and VP Jefferson trying and failing to renew their friendship. It's poignant without reaching. Ditto for the scenes with Adams debating whether to sign the Alien and Sedition Acts. Giamatti plays Adams as a tortured soul here, even as he eventually signs the Acts and Jefferson later chides him as restricting the very freedoms they fought for some 20 years earlier. Can't imagine the current Veep doing that (yes, I know Adams and Jefferson were not running mates in the years before the 12th Amendment).
This show isn't even considered that good by many critics, at least based on their early reviews (the New York Times review has a surprising (or not) pair of fairly obvious corrections that shouldn't have happened), though speculation is that it is Emmy bait.
I have to hand critic Alan Sepinwall of the Newark Star Ledger credit for the great line that "'John Adams' often feels like the 'Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead' of American Revolution stories" — it's a put-down, but I take it as one of the things I surprisingly like about this series.
As we've seen before with “The Wire,” and has been stated elsewhere, it sometimes takes a few episodes to get a series' feet under itself — that's the beauty of HBO, and I think something many critics forget. It's like they're network execs, and if a show doesn't smash them in the mouth from the first 20 minutes, they're ready to cancel it. Usually, the critics (if not the network execs) come around.
This is a show that has me reading and surfing (yes, even real books on my lunch break at Borders and (duh!) The Web) for history that I normally wouldn't have peeked at. The scene in the second episode where Adams runs into Franklin and Washington and Jefferson in the span of, like, three minutes was like a walk into the American Hall of Fame.
And this week, with Adams and Abigail carriage-riding through the clear-cut forest to an under-construction White House among a field of "underfed slaves" was eerie and excellent at once, like a peek at the partially-built Death Star at the end of the third Star Wars (in a pandering bit to the old-school Star Wars fans at the end of an otherwise regrettable prequel series).
Plus, The Wife says John Adams looks like a Hobbit in the preview for the Final Episode. And I can't take that as a bad thing, either.
Is there any greater sign that I have fully, irreversibly corrupted The Wife when she went on to expand on the Adams-as-Hobbit analogy by describing Peacefield as "Hobbit-land" — by which she meant Hobbiton, and more broadly, America.
"He is a Hobbit, always worrying about Hobbit-land."
Posted in Television, Writers by The Icepick 0 comments
Affirmation! Confirmation? Whatever. See New York magazine's anniversary listing of their NYC cultural cannon since 1968, specifically page 2 of the music list. Scroll down to the listing for 1993, and then who dares question the wisdom of the unanimous decision by St. Jimmy and me? Doesn't it sounds just a little bit better to your questioning mind, ye of little faith? I'd say our unanimous decision has one more apparent decider in agreement — so it is still unanimous.
Posted in albums, unanimous decisions, Wu-Tang by The Icepick 0 comments
Shit, yeah, people are bitter, and everything is not all rosy, but if you pander enough and lie enough and you get the nomination you think you're entitled to, well it's all good, right? Let's see how well her current line of reasoning plays to the core party voters.
Posted in The Race by The Icepick 0 comments
I'm no economist. But if you make a bad deal as a homeowner, it's too bad on you. If you make a bad deal and you're Bear Stearns, then the Gov't gets to bail you out, even if it did a shitty job itself?
OK, that said, Win Ben Stein's Money column in Sunday's Times about executive pay is interesting. To quote:
In other words, it’s not a pretty picture. It shrieks greed and contempt for shareholders and workers. …Or maybe it's now that the Baby Boomers, into their 60's and 50's and fully running the country, can set their own level of greed and continue on their course to justify their own ambitions and world view, while socking it to the next generation. Thanks, Greedy Ones!
Now we come to a sad fact about modern American life. It was brought up by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who often said that America, through its technology, has made of itself a neighborhood, but not a brotherhood. It is a lot worse now. The nation has become, to some at the top, far more of a looting opportunity than a family.
I am not sure where this has come from — maybe from media that glamorize wealth and high-end consumption, maybe from poor moral training.
Posted in Baby Boomers, Gen X, My generation, Work by The Icepick 0 comments
