Whooaaa!!! Last night’s Office was GREAT! NBC put up a sort of recap of it on YouTube. So what’s gonna happen now? I won’t spoil last night’s episode for anyone, but all I can say is that I can’t wait for next week’s (full hour) season finale.
But now that that’s all said and done, I recently found a hilarious clip on YouTube called “The Death of Jim Halpert.” It’s basically what happens if Jim died using previous clips from The Office, but it’s done sooo well:
And finally, The Onion has a funny article about what would happen if CBS adapted The Office.
Serenity is probably the best Sci-Fi movie to come out in the last decade (when digital technology was available.) I have talked about both Serenity and the series it was based on, Firefly. I recieved the complete season of Firefly on DVD for my 13th birthday, knowing nothing about it. I did eventually find out though, that it was a sci-fi TV show made during the 2001-2002 season that takes place 500 years in the future, and now instead of riding boats, we ride spaceships.
The show pulled very much from a classic western style of life. The main characters were crewmates on a small ship called Serenity who are always trying to evade the Alliance, an interplanetary government trying to control the galaxy. Of course, they’re not the good guys. There ways of getting things done can be considered… violent at times.
Anyway, the TV show (all 16 episodes of it) were simply amazing. Despite a normal TV budget, it is still in my opinion one of the most imaginative and great shows I have ever seen. Joss Whedon, who created Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the executive producer, and despite his fame, the show was cancelled before the end of the season. But the fan base was amazing. The fans pushed for Joss Whedon to continue it, even raising money to give to him. Finally, in 2005 Serenity comes out. Serenity is the continuation of the TV show, and it stays true to all of the characters, only this time we have a slightly larger budget.
Even without seeing the TV show (although it definitely helps) Serenity is funny, exciting, scary and just FUN all at the same time. Take a look at this clip from the opening sequence of the movie:
That clip shows the characters and the heart of the show/movie. Although Serenity is a Sci-Fi movie, it doesn’t over-do the special effects (the budget was fairly low) and it keeps things real. So rent Serenity from your local store or on Netflix! You won’t be disappointed. Then, if you like it, buy Firefly on DVD.
Lost that was is now dead. Lost used to be a great show, as I have mentioned at least 6 times on my blog. Season 1 was amazing. Season 2 was always exciting. But Season 3 really has jumped the shark. Seriously. If I were to list every single un-resolved mystery on Lost, it would go on for pages upon pages.
But I won’t, for that reason. I’ll just do some of Season 3. Season 3 has been like The Twighlight Zone, only in color. It’s jumped the shark. When did it do it? When we found out that there were in fact 2 islands, and then when Eko died. Oh, and then when Desmond started time traveling and seeing the future. Oh, then there was the whole thing with Hurley’s restraunt being hit by a meteor, Nikki and Paulo being buried alive, Locke being thrown out a window by his father, and then his father all of the sudden appearing on the island, and then a helicopter coming to the island, but crashing. And then Desmond’s ex-fiance is all of the sudden there, and then there’s the farm on the island that no one ever knew about containing none other than Mikali, who is in fact an other, dies from a seizure the next episode by being electrocuted by some weird electro-fence thingy. But then Mikali is alive again, all pregnant women die on the island, and now, FINALLY when this new woman on the island says that they found Oceanic Flight 815 and that there were no survivors!!!
These aren’t even all of the new mysteries introduced JUST in Season 3 so far. The sad thing is that Lost is still such a good show. Aside from the whole thing that each episode there’s another person who suddenly appears on the island, the quality of the acting and episode structure is as good as it’s always been. I will continue to watch Lost, but it has recently crossed the line where it no longer makes any sense, and it can’t come back from that. Because even if they had a whole season explaining all of the mysteries, they wouldn’t get through them all.
Anywho, I’m still watching it - it’s still enjoyable - so… It’s not really goodbye to Lost, just to when it still made sense. Anyway… Is it just me or does interface on the satellite phone from 2 episodes ago look just a LITTLE like the iPhone’s??? They have the same rounded corners on the boxes……
Last Thursday The Daily Show had a hilarious segment featuring Jason Jones going to find the “other side” of the global warming debate. He makes a movie with an opposing view to “An Inconvenient Truth” and shows it to a 7th grade class at the request of a parent.
As that 7th grade teacher remarks in the segment: “I found an article from Newsweek that opposed the film’s (An Inconvenient Truth’s) view, but it was over 30 years old.” The clip is hilarious, although way to short. They could have done a whole show on just this! Here’s the Comedy Central embedded player: (sorry there’s no YouTube version)
It wasn’t a new Office this past Thursday. That was disappointing. But this promo for next week made up for it. Thank you NBC!!! Jim imitating Dwight is one of the best Office scenes ever!
It’s funny how I was able to connect me dying to two TV shows! Anyway, no, I haven’t died (yet) and it’s 8:00 PM. But then again, I didn’t die on the last “cursed” day either.
What makes a TV show work? No, not that people like it. I mean the actual show itself, not the ratings it gets. In movies, chemistry between the actors is something the gives it a big bonus. But in TV, it means even more.
In a movie, the director has approximately 2 hours to introduce and set up characters. But in a TV show, they have the whole season. And it’s more important there too. If we’re going to believe that people are really friends over and over again for each episode, they really have to be friends.
For instance, take Scrubs. Aside from J.D. and Turks very relatable immaturity (for me) their friendship is what keeps the show going. You really believe that they’re best friends, and that they went to college together.
The same holds true for Turk and Carla. Actually, what makes their relationship so cool is that we actually see it evolve. In the first episode, they meet. A season later, they get engaged. Then they marry. They have marriage problems. Carla gets pregnant. They have a kid. Watching their relationship over a span of 6 seasons is so relatable and real.
Both chemistry and evolution are what makes a TV show more relatable and true to real life. The short lived but simply amazing TV show Firefly managed to make science fiction relatable, by basing it on a traditional cowboy western type of living. But in space. And it worked so well! The Office is relatable, because - well - it takes place in a boring office! And the reactions of the “normal” characters to the loony ones are priceless and real.
I watched The Sopranos Monday night for the first time, and it’s - well - it’s interesting.
I’m not sure how the premiere episode for the second part of the 6th season compares to the rest of the seasons and episodes, because except for the part where the brother-in-law blew that guys brains out (literally) it was pretty calm. Oh wait, I take that back - there was the part with Tony Soprano and his brother-in-law fighting. But BESIDES that it was about Tony Soprano and his wife visiting his sister and her husband. Not initially that exciting.
But I enjoyed it just because it was a breath of fresh air from network TV programs. No commercials. No annoying stars dancing at the bottom of the screen to advertise for “Dancing with the Stars.” And because of this, they were able to take time to slow for down for a second, and just show a boat on the lake. Network TV would never do that, they wouldn’t give up 5 seconds for a peaceful shot like that.
What I found so interesting about it was that if you took out, just like 3 scenes this could easily have been just a family get-together. They’re such a normal family, but then they go and blow people brains out! The contrast between the family life and the violence of Tony Soprano’s job was interesting.
One example of this was at the end when Tony Soprano’s brother-in-law goes and kills a guy, and then comes home and picks up his daughter, and holds her up to some happy “sunshine” music. But just 10 seconds ago we saw him murdering this guy. It’s very effective.
Yes, this happened last Thursday, but I don’t care.
The Office FINALLY returned with a new (super-sized) episode after a month-long hiatus. It was hilarious. Here’s the initial clip with Roy trying to attack Jim, but being stopped by Dwight and his pepper spray.
Yes, I finally found a YouTube embeder that actually works: EasyTube. I also mean to check out TubePress for displaying YouTube video galleries, perhaps to use it on the movies page.
I recorded Saturday Night Live last week because The Office’s Rainn Wilson, who plays Dwight Shrute was on it. It was pretty good. The best part was this sketch during the beginning.
You have to watch The Office to really get it, but it’s hilarious. They got all the looks perfect, from Pam’s sad look to Jim’s wide-eyed camera look to Michael’s happy-and-proud-because-he-has-a-new-coffee-mug face.
The Academy Awards this past Sunday night were very good. Here’s what I thought:
Ellen Degeneres was a great host - she’s funny, and very real. I especially loved the vacuum skit towards the end.
The dancers who created logos and other things from nominated movies was very, very awesome. I loved the Little Miss Sunshine one with the guy running behind it.
Forest Whitaker for best actor was also obvious, but from the clip they showed from The Pursuit of Happyness (which I have yet to see) Will Smith looked like he had a good chance at it.
And Forest Whitakers’s speech was definitelly better than the Golden Globes one, but it’s so weird how he’s the vicous and terrifying dictator in The Last King of Scotland, and then he’s like so nervous and stuff when he gets the award.
The awards seemed pretty even until The Departed took the last two big ones: Best director and best film.
Finally, I barely recognized Jack Nicholson bald. Here’s why.
Wednesday resumed the 3rd season of Lost, and I have to say that I’m conflicted. On one hand, it continues to be engaging, thoughtful, and creative, but on the other hand, it’s getting to the point where I look back on Season 1 and ask myself “How did we get here?” It’s literally crazy, the amount of unresolved mysteries. But if you suspend belief, it’s a great show, and Wednesday’s most recent episode, in my opinion, was better than any of the six that aired back in October.
The show’s creators have expressed that they plan to end the show after 5 seasons or so, and that’s great. But I can’t help wondering if there are going to be zombies, and perhaps a NASCAR track on the other side yet-to-be-discovered third island by the end of the season.
We recently purchased three 1GB USB flash drives from Amazon for only $15 each. And they are VERY handy. You can backup any file on your computer onto them and then transfer it to another computer whether it be music, word documents, movies, or even programs. There is a new type of program sort of coming into existence - portable versions of open source programs. Basically, they’re popular open soucre programs like Firefox, Thunderbird, and Gaim optimized to run on ANY computer from a tiny USB flash drive.
PortableApps puts together some of the best there are, in large collection of popular open source programs to use on any computer with USB. (Just about all of the alternatives mentioned in the last post have portable versions.)
Once you install it onto the flash drive (it takes a little while) it runs from a sort of start menu interface from the windows taskbar, and allows you to open any of the programs installed and ready to use, or check your documents and file space. And it also allows you to add more of their portable apps from their website. I currently have 17 apps installed, and it doesn’t even take up half of my 1GB flash drive. Portable Apps rocks.
You can’t directly sync settings between, say, your computer’s firefox and Portable App’s, but you can customize the portableapps version to be just like it, and the same with Thunderbird, so you can essentially access your email and RSS Feeds from your usual interface, on any Windows PC.
This is amazing, and actually a great tool for students - if you need to work on a paper digital word document at school, you just drag it onto the flash drive from your computer, and plug it in at school. In Paris, incoming high school students will actually be given a flash drive next year pre-loaded with open source software.
Yes, here’s yet another (very) late post. But here are some of my highlights from the Golden Globes:
Meryl Streep’s speech (very funny)
Forest Whitaker winning best actor for Last King of Scotland (he soo deserved it, if he isn’t nominated for the Academy Award I’m not going to watch them. But his speech - I mean he’s such a great actor, but did anyone else see it? It looked like he had a nervous breakdown or something. I mean, some actors pretend to be nervous and they’re like “oh, microphone” but Whitaker was seriously like that - it was awkward to watch. But still, he definitely deserved it - see Last King of Scotland if you haven’t already - I think that they’re re-releasing it.)
Did you notice how during the award for best comedy, four of the five shows are from the four-show NBC Thursday night comedy line-up??? (My Name is Earl, The Office, Scrubs, 30 Rock (the guy said “3rd Rock” heheh)) I think that it shows that they’re doing something right. Alec Baldwin for 30 Rock won. I mean, he’s good but Steve Carell really deserved it.
Ulgy Betty isn’t actually ugly (!)
Looks like I have to see Babel now, as it won/was nominated for a bunch of awards
That’s all. I couldn’t find very many videos (from the actual award-giving ceremonies themselves) on YouTube. So it’s just another post with just text. Sorry!
I’ve had a couple of thoughts recently regarding TV, so here they are:
The Scrubs musical!!!!!!!!! If you didn’t see it, first check out Guy Love and then buy it on iTunes, it’s hilarious, and actually a great musical - seriously - not some cheap excuse for one that’s mildly funny, but a realistic one - it’s great!
My Name is Earl has really been doing some great stuff lately. From the trip to find Catalina to the Cops episode they were filmed for (even though it had nothing to do with the list, it was soo funny!) to the episode not one, but 4 intros. My Name is Earl, My Name is Joy, My Name is Randy, My Name is Crabman, and oh - my favorite, My Name is Dotty! I hope they keep up the interesting things, because Season 1 of list item after list item was getting a little boring.
(spoilers) 24 returned, and 4 episodes in they had Jack kill Curtis!!!! And then they nuked Los Angeles!!!!!!!! 24 is back! (spoilers)
Oh, and Heroes returns tommorow (finally!)
And Jim and Karen have broken up on The Office! (I hope) FINALLY!
Austen Squarepants is a 15-year-old high school student and geek. He lives in New York City with his parents and is interested in technology, filmmaking, and anything funny.
Netsua is his personal blog and website, where he writes about a variety of topics that interest him. The word "Netsua" is in fact Austen's name spelled backwards. It literally translates from gibberish to "Greatness on the level of Austen."
In addition to Netsua, Austen also writes for the mac application blog MacApper.
No!!! Today is Friday the 13th! We’re all going to have bad luck today! Here are some possible ways that I could die today:
