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A cat nursing on a woman's breasts (NSFW, of course). Need I say more?
Thanks (I think) to Mark for the tip.
Just like the last cool commerical from Honda, this is a must see (click "watch").
Bob Denver (AKA Gillligan) dead at 70 from complications.
Either way, this is one of the best sports related commercials I've seen in quite some time.
Okay, what's up with the Oscars? Was there a memo sent out saying, "Please, dress in black. And, while you're at it, can you make your skin tone be as white as possible? We're trying to bring back the goth look."
Also, not liking the whole "we'll annouce an award out in the crowd".
This is probably something that Howard Stern already knows, but it seems that TV has discovered the axiom of lesbians == ratings.
A FAQ for people trying to figure out TiVo:
Q: Will I watch more or less television once I have TiVo?
A: You will not watch any television whatsoever. You will watch TiVo. Television has commercials. TiVo has only magnificent moving-picture programming filled with people you recognize and love because they are famous—not anonymous acting drones who have acid indigestion and limp penises and need life insurance.
Q: Will TiVo change my life?
A: No, TiVo will not change your life so much as He will destroy your previous life, permitting a new and improved life to rise, phoenix-like, from your ashes. Switching from cable television to satellite is “change.” Moving to TiVo is closer to rebirth.
Thanks to Rex for the tip.
I've said it before, but pretty much the only reason why I watch the Super Bowl is for the commercials. This year, there actually was a game, but the commercials were woefully inadequate.
I rather suspect it was the whole Janet imbroglio, but everything was safe, sound and completely boring. The only commerical that even got me to laugh at all was the cat killer one. The monkeys for Careerbuilder were amusing, as was the P. Diddy/Diet Pepsi truck spot. But for the most part, there was no there there.
The only company that even tried anything was GoDaddy. The ad was not in particularly good taste, mostly making fun of the entire 'wardrobe malfunction' concept, but they couldn't have bought this much free advertising. Once the NFL saw the first iteration of the spot, they complained and yanked the second one. Bravo, gentlemen, bravo.
A hip-hop remix version of an old movie classic, all in service of selling a car.
If there was something that you wanted to know about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this is the place to go.
DirecTV will be competing against TiVo. It seems to me that most of the TiVo sales has been from DirecTV imbedding the product in their receivers, so I'd suspect that TiVo is on a limited lifespan at this point.
The author of the EarthSea books talks about how the SciFi channel took her books and turned the to garbage.
The thing is, they'd probably would do each other, if just to get on TV some more.
If you look really careful at the center of the photo where their hands meet, you can actually see a tiny black hole of talent. It's incredible.
But there it is. Generation X's premiere sex symbol passing the torch to Generation Y's. It's like when Joe DiMaggio played next to Mickey Mantle, or when Screech became Mr. Belding's assistant for Saved By The Bell: The New Class.
First, the good news. Their own website, then a Disney movie. Now, the bad news. Disney owns them.
Tivo, one of my favorite toys at home, has made a rather poor decision. Now, when you try to fast forward past the commercials on a recording, a banner ad will appear.
Great.
Ashlee Simpson really wants a second go round at SNL.
Josh Whedon, creator of Buffy, Angel, Firefox as well as having his hand in a number of other projects, is walking away from TV for awhile.
"I spent a lot of time trying to think what my next series would be," Whedon said. "I couldn't think of anything. When that happens, it generally means something is just not working. I didn't feel like I could come up with anything that the networks would want."
Give that man a cigar for not forcing crap he didn't want to do on the rest of us. If only all artists felt that way.
Acid Reflux?!? That's the best that Ashlee could come up with?
Weak.
From Scott and from Pop Justice, complete with clips.
So it's Saturday night. It's live TV. It's quite literally Saturday Night Live. Ashlee's on the show to perform whichever of her songs she's releasing next and, after Jude Law introduces the performance, Ashlee's band start to play. Ashlee throws some Avril moves. It's impressive stuff - the band are performing totally live, meaning that Ashlee is real, just like her music. And then, out of nowhere, Ashlee's voice appears. Except she's not singing. And the vocals are for 'Pieces Of Me' - the song she'd played earlier on in the show. Clearly, Ashlee had been intending to mime her vocals.
Ashlee reacts by doing what any of us would do if our entire career and already flimsy credibility were at stake: she does a little dance. It's like a pixie dance. Then she stops. And then she does it again, before muttering an obscenity and then exiting, stage right.
The band play on, and the best thing about the whole sequence is this brief exchange of looks between two of Ashlee's band members.
While I was trying to fix my footboard, SNL was on the tube as background noise. I caught Ms. Simpson's first tune (Pieces of Me, I think it's called), and it was pretty straightforward and standard. Later on in the show, Jude Law introduced her again. The band started playing some song, but then what was obviously a recorded vocal track came on -- Ashley Simpson "singing" Pieces of Me again.
The musicians on stage covered for her, switching immediately to playing Pieces again. Ashleuy was pretty clearly embarassed, did a little dance and then ran off the stage. The best part were the musicians who were looking at each other, trying not to laugh.
Jon Stewart talks about what it was like being on Crossfire.
Jon Stewart takes Crossfire to task. From the transcript:
BEGALA: Let me get this straight. If the indictment is -- if the indictment is -- and I have seen you say this -- that...
STEWART: Yes.
BEGALA: And that CROSSFIRE reduces everything, as I said in the intro, to left, right, black, white.
STEWART: Yes.
BEGALA: Well, it's because, see, we're a debate show.
STEWART: No, no, no, no, that would be great.
BEGALA: It's like saying The Weather Channel reduces everything to a storm front.
STEWART: I would love to see a debate show.
BEGALA: We're 30 minutes in a 24-hour day where we have each side on, as best we can get them, and have them fight it out.
STEWART: No, no, no, no, that would be great. To do a debate would be great. But that's like saying pro wrestling is a show about athletic competition.
And it actually gets a lot better....
So what's does it say when the most honest thing said on TV in quite some time is from a comedian?
A bunch of clips showing the title sequence of old TV shows. Features such chesnuts as Battlestar Galactica, Fraggle Rock and Magnum PI.
Thanks to David for the tip.
Michael Jackson is upset that Eminem's latest video (for Just Lose It) makes fun of MJ with some kids. BET has decided to pull the video from their airwaves. Which will have the net effect of making anyone who watches BET want to see the video all the more, just to see what the hoo-doo is all about.
1.2 million dollars, to be exact, over racy footage in the Married To America reality show. Said footage involved strippers covered with whipped cream and digitally obscured nudity.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again -- turn the frickin' channel!. Why should bawdy behaviour on Fox be surprising to anyone?
As usual, the Daily Show's coverage of the debate is absolutely priceless.
while interviewing the "undecided"
Why can you not decide? Keanna.... How the #(@$ do you dress yourself in the morning? You can't make any decisions. They're so @)*%&@ different. I don't (&2@#*&! get this @)(*$. How can you not decide!?
Yes, thank you, undecided voters, for helping me make a decision.
I'm just going go and drown myself.
I'm really hoping that Lisa posts a few clips.
-- Update --
In the interim, here's a bit torrent of the daily show. (Thanks, Cory!)
The BareNaked Ladies may be getting their own TV show.
I'm sure you've heard this already, but Conan O'Brien will be taking over for Jay Leno in 2009. Congrats, Conan; here's hoping that you don't mainstream your humor for an hour earlier.
All the music you could want and more.
CBS fined a little over a half million dollars. Maybe now this will just go away.
I'm pretty sure that this is not a real commercial, but it's still pretty nifty.
His reality series will appear on Bravo.
Some of these are pretty darn good.
Ever wondered where to find things in the Simpson's home town? Now you know.
I make no secret about my opinion for TiVo (easily the best development in home entertainment in quite some time). Given my penchant for geeky web stuff, the step-by-step how-to to web-enable a TiVo almost excites me to an embarassing degree.
Thanks to Waxy for the tip.
For a big burger, although the name of the clip might cause you to think something a little more, um, recreational.
Thanks to Rex for the tip.
This ad is worth a good chuckle.
Thanks to Lynn for the tip.
Uncle Grambo gets it right. The VMAs this year reeked.
From the files of "things-I-never-really-wondered", here's a page of what would happen if various members of The Simpsons had offspring.
Bobby Brown may get his own reality show on Bravo. No word if the drug buys will be on or off camera.
Go on MTV Videa Music Awards, get lots of free stuff:
- iPod
- Versace sunglasses
- a diamond bracelet
- a year's supply of Wonka chocloate
Must be nice.
Brandy, having found that the pop world has largely forgotten about her, wants to go back to the small screen to resurrect what's left of her career.
I'm watching the opening ceremonty to the 2004 Olympics in Athens. I've got two quick thoughts:
The musical selection played as the last group countries entered the stadium (just prior to Greece) was Agnus Dei. AGNUS DEI!?! A requiem for the dead?!? On what planet is this an appropriate welcome to the sport? It's a great song (3rd track, if you're interested), very moving, but probably just a touch out of place
Scott gives us a little sneak peek.
I sorta like Bands Reunited the first time around; hopefully this one will be good, too.
Telemundo, home to overly melodramatic soap operas and dubbed films from the 80's (along with other things, to be fair), is expending great effort to get their on screen personalities to change their accents.
Mexican Spanish, Telemundo says, hits a middle ground between Colombian Spanish, which the network considers too fast and terse, and some Caribbean accents that are too slow and imprecise. Telemundo executives say Mexican Spanish is the broadest-appeal, easiest-to-understand Spanish -- if Telemundo's coaches can iron out its typical sing-song cadence. In other words, it becomes the Nebraskan of Spanish.
First off, congrats to the SP team, this is a big win for them financially. I'm just hoping that this doesn't result in South Park toning down their writing.
SP was painfully funny when they first came out, and then they lost their way for a while. In the last season or two, they've found their footing again, coming up with some wicked funny satire. I just hope that the FCC decency requirements won't cause them to tone it down.
The Knight Rider car is for sale. Well, one of them, at least.
Thanks to David for the tip.
Say it isn't so?! (and there was much rejoicing)
Drea de Matteo, formerly of The Sopranos and presently of Joey, uses fake boobs on the show. That's not what caught my eye, though. What did is this little sentence:
"In the auditions, we had all kinds of women coming in with real ones, fake ones. It was sort of interesting," executive producer/writer Scott Silveri said. "We chose Drea, but we stopped short of making her go under the knife just for a sitcom."
Excuse me? Making her go under the knife? I'm glad that you had the decency to stop her from get surgery "just for a sitcom." Had it been a movie, cut away!
The hip place for late night TV these days is Cartoon Network's Adult Swim.
Unless you're one of its growing number of insomniac fans, you may not have heard of Adult Swim. But these shows are among the most innovative, and increasingly popular, new programs on television today. The block includes such off-kilter postmodern cartoons as "Aqua Teen Hunger Force," a send-up of classic action-hero shows starring a life-sized talking milkshake prone to such bizarrely ill-informed pronouncements as "plaque is a figment of the liberal media and the dental industry to scare you into buying useless appliances and pastes"; "Sealab 2021," a workplace comedy where nobody can ever leave the underwater office; "Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law," a "Perry Mason"-like spoof in which a winged superhero with a law degree defends famous cartoon figures accused of various crimes; and "Home Movies," a show about a single mom, her movie-making son, and his alcoholic soccer coach, all united in their mutually amiable incompetence.
The Adult Swim fare now consistently rates as the top block in its time slot on cable among the coveted young adult demographic. In the last year alone, the ratings for the entire three-hour block jumped by over 60 percent, from around 180,000 viewers to 431,000 viewers (as of April); a few shows in the block, like "Family Guy" (about a dysfunctional Rhode Island family), regularly draw more than a million viewers. Most of those viewers are young men. In fact, for males age 18-24, Adult Swim now demolishes the ratings of broadcast standbys like Leno and Letterman--beating Leno by 36 percent and Letterman by a whopping 87 percent.
I've seen a number of these shows (thank you Tivo -- I don't stay up as late as I used to), and they are definitely inventive.
One of the more interesting aspects of the article is how it talks about the way in which this creativity was allowed to happen:
...[T]he good stuff tends to come when nobody's looking--created by those on the fringes of the studio system, occupying marginal creative real estate with minimal supervision.
Kind of like what happens in the music world where the interesting music comes out of the minors, not the majors, huh?
At least you don't live in England, where there is a reality show starting that will feature porn stars and average joes.
Salon magazine has what they consider to be the top ten on camera screw-ups. "I'll sue you" and "Leaping lizards" are good ones.
I think this was supposed to be an infomercial for Winnebago, but I'd be afraid to count just how many f-bombs he lets loose during it. Probably not something you should listen to at work.
I'm not even sure what SourceNext does (something software/cell phone-ish, I think), but they have some interesting commercials.
I don't know what this means. It certainly doesn't say "Buy our poo-goo" to me, but nothing in this commercial does. Does he have a bomb in his ass? Is it a coded message from the Pepto Rebellion?
From someone who really doesn't like the latest commercial from Pepto-Bismol.
Thanks to Emma for the tip.
Coming soon to a cable channel near you, Gifted, "a Christian version of the popular American Idol TV show".
Just think about Cartman doing this, and everything will work out okay.
More oddness from the land of the rising sun:
We'll close with the Kick The Can Crew.
From SpecSpot, a place where aspiring directors make commericals for real products, hoping to get signed.
Here's an ad for Budweiser, a strange/disgusting one for Tide, one for Canon and an MTV spot featuring Ron Jeremy.
Thanks to Jeff for the tip.
One of the pleasures of HBO's The Sopranos has been the consistent use of quality music to enhance a scene. Some of the ones that immediately come to mind are Junior singing in Italian at the end of the season a few years ago, or Tony sitting on his boat by himself at the end of the prior season. Alex Ross has a few words on the subject.
What do Procol Harum, Anton Webern, the Eagles, Steve Reich, and Otis Redding have in common? The answer, the Pulaski Skyway informs you, is that they've all appeared on The Sopranos. I’m a fan of the show, like any upstanding American citizen, and I love its wildly imaginative use of music. I realized something quasi-epochal was going on musically back in the second season...
Namely, that it's hard to compete with free.
Based on the book and movie Ghost In The Shell, a TV show has sprung up in Japan called Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex. From the review, it looks to be quite interesting.
The criminal stories are often simple, but that’s almost beside the point. The real question isn’t who the culprit is but why the culprit did it: The series depicts intricate infighting within the government, with the intelligence agencies jockeying with the police and the military while the Department of Health uses other departments as tools for its own schemes.
In the cyberpunk novels and films of the 1980s, the future was usually run by megacorporations that had taken over all the functions of government. Ghost in the Shell takes a slightly different road. Rather than vanishing, the government becomes symbiotic with the corporations: a corporate state.
Such corporatism, of course, is hardly alien to Japan -- or to Europe and America, for that matter. The show merely pushes the idea further. Corruption in a company spills over to the government and vice versa; trade secrecy and national security combine to eliminate transparency. Unlike many science fiction dystopias, this one seems uncomfortably realistic.
I know that I rather enjoyed the film when it came out.
Andre has a great write-up on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it's spinoff show, Angel.
The casualty is quality television, of course. Television that challenges and moves while it entertains, television that utilizes the medium’s inherent serial nature to really connect an audience with characters’ lives, television that goes beyond what television normally tries. Just look at Joss Whedon’s recent history: Buffy ended at seven seasons through a mutual agreement between Whedon and star Sarah Michelle Gellar, but his fledgling (and fantastic) Firefly was unceremoniously dumped after half a season, and Angel was hacked off at the knees during one of its most successful runs.
And I can’t fail to mention Tim Minear’s Wonderfalls. Minear co-produced Angel for years, writing some of the best episodes, and he left to develop a show about a strange girl who hears strange voices. It was yet another expensive, challenging endeavor, and Fox canned it after four episodes. The reality is that Fox will simply make more money by releasing the Complete Series DVD set than they would in advertising revenue by airing the remaining seven episodes.
I was a big fan of both shows; each one took chances and (for the most part), they paid off. The last season of Buffy never quite came together, and the 4th season of Angel (the next to last) was an all or nothing thing -- you either bought all the way into the entire ride, or it was a lost cause. Whedon's writing was some of the best I have seen on TV; I'm going to miss it.
American Bandstand is going to be resurrected by Simon Cowell's company (the same good folk who bring us American Idol).
But I know that some people do. My caption for this photo of the spastic white guy (his name is Clay Aiken or something, right?) from American Idol: "Really! I'm not gay! See!!"
Simon, from American Idol, does the 20 questions thing.
HEFFERNAN Several of the "American Idol" performers have gospel in their pasts, and in interviews they make frequent references to God. What do you make of the religious element to the show?
COWELL Well, you know the answer to the question, don't you? Obviously a lot of people are using it to gain votes. Come on. You know that, and I know that. I also don't like the constant dedications to children. Give me a break. Like Fantasia, who has an edge on her. I think she's used her kid twice now in the show. And you just think: "Enough. You're now behaving like a politician rather than a pop star." It all becomes a bit gruesome.
If you were wondering what the Friends spin off Joey is going to be like (and I know that some of you are), here's a sneak peek.
Really. This version could happen....
It would seem that there are at least three full length epsiodes floating about on the web (mostly via bit torrent). However, at least one place has them. Only problem here is that two of the episodes don't seem to play nicely with Windows Media Player.
Thanks to Frank for the tip.
Her sitcom didn't get picked up (everyone now, "Awww, darn it"), but at least she'll be making commercials for breath mints.
I just saw a commerical for Starbucks double shot expresso in a can. It featured the 80's group Survivor singing a little ditty about a guy named Glen. To the tune of Eye Of The Tiger
Glen!
Glen Glen Glen!
Glen Glen Glennnnn!
Glen's the man
Goin' to work
Got his tie,
Got ambition
He knows one day he just might become
Supervisor....
You really have to see this. They're dolled up in leather pants and bright silk shirts, playing the song as Glen goes to work.
The years have not been kind to them, but at least they have work.
And, as a side note, if anyone can find the audio to this, I'd love to have it for work....
-- Update --
I managed to find a clip online.
Apparently, this weekend was the last show for SNL's Jimmy Fallon. Good luck with whatever comes next, Jimmy.
A Wrinkle In Time (a book from my childhood) was made into a TV movie (it aired tonight, but I had a show and missed it). The author of the book had a pithy review:
NEWSWEEK: So you’ve seen the movie?
Madeleine L’Engle: I’ve glimpsed it.
And did it meet expectations?
Oh, yes. I expected it to be bad, and it is.
Thanks to Maude for the tip.
Personally, I rather dislike spoilers. I'd rather find out what happens over the course of the story rather than skipping to the end of the book. But that's just me. Other people like spoilers.
It's an odd wish — for control of the story, for the chance to minimize your risk of disappointment. With spoilers in hand, a viewer can watch the show with distance, analyzing like a critic instead of being immersed like a newbie. The emphasis isn't so much on the plot's outcome but on how the writers get there, and on the unexpected twists they add along the way. But the price for that privilege is that you never really get to watch a show for the first time.
Apparently at one point during the salary negioations, the good folk at Fox told the voice actors that they could all be replaced. Great strategy, guys, particularly for a show that the CEO of the company has called "Fox's greatest single asset."
Thanks to Defamer for the tip.
Big Tom has been voted off of Survivor. Normally, I wouldn't care, but Big Tom is from a part of the world where I grew up. I remember watching him on the Africa show and being really jealous of him when he got to go to the Serrengetti (somewhere that I've always wanted to go).