there is a small thread hanging off the world

Reminder: full lists of how many episodes remain can be found here: http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2007/11/writers-strike-update-ultimate-guide-to.html

The Season Finales are as Follows:
( Read more... )

How many new episodes are left for your favorite shows?

http://brentevans.blogspot.com/2007/11/writers-strike-update-ultimate-guide-to.html

Okay, I know that several of our friends enjoyed THE ARISTOCRATS in the theater, so we decided to rent it on DVD. Sorry, but we were only to able to make it through the first 17 minutes before we decided we were done. It wasn't so much the language as it was the beating of the dead horse; hearing about the circumstances of people's "first time" was interesting, but after we learned the joke and people started riffing on it, it quickly became boring. I didn't think the joke concept was itself very funny, so how many variations can you hear of the same joke before it moves from interesting to an academic exercise to blah? Not too many, it turns out, when the whole point of the telling is to see just how over the top you can be with concepts as offensive as possible. Just not our style, I guess, but then I don't care for jazz music, either.

Project Runway: When we first met Malan, I was convinced he was a pretentious ass along the lines of Stephen from TOP CHEF. I really didn't like him (either of those two guys), and was happy to see him go. However, I do now feel a little sorry for Malan after the revelations we got about him in this episode - his mother completely blowing off his design efforts as a child, and his loneliness and how much he valued being a part of the PR group. DSR doesn't buy it, and thinks Malan was just being manipulative at the end.

The Miss Universe pageant was last night. Miss USA's evening gown was nothing like any dress from the PR episode. Huh?
EDIT: found a photo of her in the dress http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5504/2884/320/TaraConner.jpg


New DVDs coming soon: ANIMANIACS!!! (vol 1) PINKY AND THE BRAIN!! (selected episodes) We're very excited. :) They'll be released tomorrow.

Gossip for fans of Project Runway:
http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/7660806.html#cutid1

D.E.B.S - basically a parody of Charlie's Angels, funnier than we thought it would be, and worth catching on cable

The Producers (2005) - pretty good, Broderick is obviously channeling Gene Wilder (only not quite as good), and I can visualize what this probably looked like on stage. Uma is a hoot.

Nanny MacPhee - the kids were really quite rotten, so I'm not so sure I'd show this to Z again even though he requested it. It was interesting how very beautiful Emma Thompson looked after seeing her in the ugly makeup. Colin Firth is aging fairly well, but I'll always vote for P&P as his ultimate charisma role.

MirrorMask - simple story but visually stunning and quite magical; we're considering buying.

Just Like Heaven - cute, fairly predictable, but better than many of the rom-coms coming out these days.

Last Holiday - Queen Latifah does a good job here even though the supporting actors are caricatures, but it's an airy confection that won't stand up to too much scrutiny. Vaguely a rom-com, but there's not much rom.

Walk the Line - very good, powerful performances, and reminded me that I've always liked Johnny Cash's music.

The Second Coming - Christopher Eccleston before he was Doctor #9; the story is powerful and very well done, if a bit creepy.

40 Year-Old Virgin - funnier than we thought it would be, and worth watching. Good acting.

Legend of Zorro - not nearly as much fun as Mask of Zorro, but Antonio and Catherine are still muy sexy.

We have just purchased the 4-dvd set "The Best of The Electric Company", containing 20 episodes of the show. Z is entranced. And I am realizing just how complicated this English-language thing is.

And what about ... Naomi?

"The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra"

Umm, yeah.

I think this review says it best: "It's not really for people who love bad movies- those fans are laughing AT the movie. Lost Skeleton wants you to laugh WITH it. On the other hand, you have to have a certain familiarity with schlock cinema to appreciate it. I guess MST3K fans would be the closest thing to an ideal audience...but it's still not the same experience. The script is so carefully crafted to be horrible, it's impossible to make fun of MST3K/Rocky Horror style. The acting is also excellent. The easy way out is to "pretend" to be a bad actor. This crew comes off as a group of good actors making the best of a dreadful script. I know I sure couldn't memorize and/or deliver lines this complicated."

Free on a cable channel near you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=zLElfJ9YCh0

I looooved it!

- Still very funny, especially the more musicals you know.
- Serious mic problems; not switched on when they should be, not working consistently, a little feedback. Unfortunately, you lose some of the lyrics because of this.
- As often happens at MIT (and other schools that don't have theater degree programs), the orchestra and the actors were woefully under-rehearsed. The music is often fairly sophisticated, and sometimes the melody escaped the singer or instrumentalist.
- Still, a funny evening that we enjoyed and would recommend to other SW or musicals geeks. Count the cameos in the cantina scene!

HOWEVER: important note for those going on a weeknight like we did - the running time is 3 hours 30 minutes including intermission! We got home just after midnight, and blessed my mom for having gotten Z into his jammies and asleep in his own regular bed spot.

EDIT: also, apparently all waiting list people were seated. This was a Wed, so I don't know how long the wait list was, though.

Feh - missed watching/taping Penn & Teller last night.

The early bed time was nice, but I would have liked to have been able to see the show. :(

Trailer for Harry Potter 4: http://harrypotter.warnerbros.co.uk/gobletoffire/

New trailer for RENT: http://movies.aol.com/movie_exclusive_rent_clip

http://www.apple.com/trailers/sony_pictures/rent/

Gave me goosebumps. It's been too long since I listened to the cast album. (Bumps priority of mental note to rip favorite musicals to MP3 for playing in the car.)

>From the Associated Press:

Paul Winchell, voice of Tigger in 'Winnie the Pooh,' dies at 82

Paul Winchell, a noted ventriloquist, children's TV show host and longtime voice of Tigger in animated versions of A.A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh," has died. He was 82.

Winchell died early Friday morning in his sleep at his Moorpark home, Burt Du Brow, a television producer and close family friend, told the Los Angeles Times.

Over six decades, Winchell parlayed his talent for creating countless voices from the earliest days of television to film. But he was perhaps best known for his work as the voice of the lovable animated tiger

Winchell first voiced Tigger in 1968 for Disney's "Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day," which won an Academy Award for best animated short film, and continued to do so through 1999's "Winnie the Pooh: Seasons of Giving."

In 1974, he earned a Grammy for best children's recording with "The Most Wonderful Things About Tiggers" from the feature "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too."
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peterdavidblog2 on the Enterprise finale:
Basically, the last episode of "Star Trek" consists of a guy in a Starfleet outfit sitting around watching a rerun of "Star Trek," and even creating his own fanfic by writing himself into the story and making himself a wise, wonderfully intelligent individual who all the crewmembers unburden themselves to.


And the comment from ebiannah:
Riker Sue!



Here's hoping Scott Bakula gets another decent job.

From a friend who is not on LJ:

Partial clips of some of the ads:
http://www.ktvu.com/superbowl/index.html
Total of 20 clips and 26 stills; the Budweiser "Snowball Fight" is in the second set.

Vote for your favorite commercial: http://sports.channel.aol.com/nfl/superbowlads

The ad Lincoln made for its new truck is the one that was pulled due to invoking lust in a priest. They had no backup ad to fill that timeslot, which is why the cold Ford Mustang commercial ran twice.

www.superbowlads.com has a link to http://dyn.ifilm.com/superbowlads/
which has the full commercials, including the banned ones (Mickey Rooney's butt, the racier Go-Daddy, Lincoln truck and Las Vegas).

From my friend David:

Don't panic (maybe).

What I gather from reading about this is that there is nothing wrong with the discs. The original movies were shot in the 1.33:1 aspect ratio, then projected in 1.85:1 or 1.66:1, with mattes removing the top and bottom of the image (as the director and editor intended). When they produce a "standard" version of the movie for VHS or DVD, rather than pan-and-scan, they simply open up the mattes, showing more at the top and bottom of the image (which can occasionally pick up things like boom mikes). So when you view the wide-screen DVD, you are seeing exactly what you are supposed to see. When you view the "standard" version, you get more (on the top and the bottom) than you are supposed to see -- but then, if you watch a wide-screen movie in standard mode, you get what you deserve.

So what is the lawsuit about? Apparently the text on the packaging of the films implied that the wide-screen version showed more image than the "standard" version, which in this case isn't actually true -- the "standard" version shows more image than the wide-screen (although it is image the director didn't intend you to see). So the lawsuit was about this "deceptive" packaging.

So don't worry, there is nothing wrong with your discs.

-- David

P.S. My explanation above is the best info I could find, but some people on the net dispute it and claim there is an actual problem with some of the discs (that some of them were shot in an even wider aspect ratio, pan-and-scanned down to 1.85:1 or 1.66:1, and then matted for the "wide-screen" version); I haven't found a definite statement from a source that I would regard as authoritative.

Here's an example of what they did to THE PRINCESS BRIDE.
http://dvd.ign.com/articles/037/037273p1.html

They must die.

http://mgmdvdsettlement.com/

You are a member of the proposed settlement class if between December 1, 1998 to September 8, 2003, you purchased certain MGM widescreen DVDs (DVDs for films shot in the aspect ratio of 1.85 to 1 or 1.66 to 1). There are 260 DVDs on this list.

If the proposed settlement is approved by the Court, Class Members who submit timely and valid Claim Forms may exchange each Eligible DVD for (i) a new MGM DVD from a list of 325 titles or (ii) $7.10. To request a Claim Form, call 1-800-285-2168 (toll free). Before requesting a Claim Form, please verify that your DVD is an Eligible DVD by reviewing the Eligible DVD List. (See the website)


Note that all of the Bond films are MGM, which gets us right there since we have several of those. Also Much Ado About Nothing, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and that's just my first glance through the list ... geez. They say they will send a package big enough to return the DVDs to MGM - I hpoe that's without the packaging!

I'm going to compile our whole list, then call the number. I hope we can just exchange them for the same movie done correctly, since that's what Universal did with the Back to the Future 2 that they messed up.

I hadn't heard this, dsrtao hadn't heard this, so it stands to reason there are other fans who haven't heard this ...

From: Joseph DeMartino <jdemarti@bellsouth.net>

A Call to Arms

Some of you may have heard the recent rumors about the upcoming B5
feature film, "The Memory of Shadows" - how the money people are
talking about recasting many of the roles from the original series
with "name" actors,

I am here to tell you that this rumor is true and that unless the
powers that be are convinced that tinkering with the cast will hurt
them in the pocketbook, they will do what they want to do, without
regard to JMS's wish or ours. The only people in a position to
convince them that there's money on the line are US.

( more info on what you can do is here )