The Company

Here is the movie that Netflix told me I saw:

In this drama from Robert Altman, a young dancer (Neve Campbell) is focused on becoming a principal dancer with her ballet company, but finds it progressively more difficult to stick to the demanding schedule that's required. As the pressure mounts, she grows more preoccupied with other interests and with her boyfriend (James Franco), who vies for her time.

Here is the movie I saw:

Neve Campbell dances. She hooks up with a guy. More dancing. Intermittent scenes with other dancers where the dialog is hard to hear, but doesn't seem important. More dancing. Non-ballet scenes. More dancing. Neve wears a balloon on her head. She hurts her shoulder. The end.

---

The dancing was beautiful, and the choreographer character was pretty hilarious, along with the costumes in the last ballet (there are monkeys), but I imagine that the person who had to write that blurb had to think pretty long and hard just to come up with that. Or maybe the scenes with the pressure mounting, the preoccupation with other interests and her boyfriend, and the difficulty sticking to the demanding schedule all ended up on the cutting room floor.

- nyanko

TV news

One of my other favorite tv news sites is tvtattle.com, which has links to lots of articles that talk about TV. I have no idea how this person gathers their links; I would assume that other people email article links to this person, but either way, it covers a wide variety of media outlets. The funny thing is that I read about this site in InStyle magazine, when it was mentioned by some actress - I can't remember who, but someone like Tiffani Thiessen ... Heh.

- nyanko

How Netflix sends your movies

This Fast Company article touches on how the DVDs are handled in order to send you your next disc. No shelves or sorting/storing discs. They just scan the bar code on the disc label and the computer tells the employee what to do with the disc.

I found this article browsing a recently edit blog on blogspot; a person has an entire blog dedicated to Netflix (the link seems to be broken right now - maybe it will be up later...). I'm obsessed with my Netflix, but not that obsessed... I think.

- nyanko

Desperate Housewives

Most of us who are fans of Alias have heard the news about its schedule next season. In its timeslot for the first part of the season, ABC will instead run Desperate Housewives, a decidedly unappealing title, but I figured it deserved a look.

I just saw the pilot, and I must say that although I'm a little intrigued, I'm definitely not sold. It primarily tells the story of 4 women in anonymous American suburbia, our very neighbors could be like this, I suppose. It hails the return of Marcia Cross (most recently seen on Everwood), Teri Hatcher, and one of the women from Sportsnight. The show is entirely narrated from an omniscient third-person who also happens to be one of the wives who commits suicide in the opening scene. The rest of the pilot was basically spent on setting up the women in their niches.

Teri is the divorcee whose husband cheated on her and left her with a clever teenage daughter, Marcia is the perfect housewife whose family can't stand it, Dana from Sportsnight is a high-powered careerwoman who gave it up for kids who are absolutely out of control, and then there's the ex-model who married for money and is now cheating on her husband amidst their loveless marriage (not sure what she's been in). Basically, nobody is happy, but everyone thinks everybody else is. Hmm.

Oh, and then there are the two presumably season-long storyarcs which are good for cliffhangers. The narrator has some sort of secret, as does her family (husband and son). And a bachelor who just moved in also appears to be harboring some intrigue.

My main gripe is that there is very little funny. Without the funny, I usually expect some action/suspense (Alias). This show provides neither, though the 'secrets' of the neighborhood do provide a little of the suspense, it's really not enough to keep me watching just to find out what those secrets are.

But hey, I was willing to give Tru Calling two tries, so why not this one, especially since we know that the ReplayTV will have that timeslot open.

- totoro

Fox's year-round programming

The new summer programming that debuted this summer has been pretty horrendous and depressing. For example: Summerland (great shades of Young Americans, the Dawson's Creek spinoff that had Kate Bosworth; not good although I watch it - which is really not a meter of anything), the North Shore (blatant Las Vegas rip-off, but much, much worse), Method & Red (I've heard it's weak), & Quintuplets (Mr. Boyfriend swears by the comic genius of Andy Richter, which I do believe, but I hear the show is still um, finding its legs).

I don't think these new shows are getting very good ratings, and I'm worried that Fox and all the other networks will decide to throw in the towel on year-round programming, which is in fact a good idea, but one that they didn't execute well on this year. There's no evidence that summer programming will always bust, as proved by Survivor, last summer's debut of the O.C., and the various original cable programming (The Shield, Monk, the Dead Zone, Nip/Tuck, etc.). I'm dying for some decent TV, but the networks are being terribly tight-fisted about giving me what I want. In the next two weeks, I think I have perhaps six hours that TiVo will be recording for me. But that does leave me time to read some of the books that have been getting dusty on my bookshelf.

Also, Elisabeth Rohm, the ADA on Law & Order had decided to leave the show after 13 episodes next season. She was the main reason I stopped watching L & O, so perhaps now is the time to go back to watching! Now if only Sam Waterson could tone down the brow-beating... But sadly, no more Jerry Orbach - he was a fixture in my L & O universe, so it will be very odd to watch the show without him. I wonder if Jesse Martin has negotiated in his contract to get the quippy one-liners that always lead right into the opening credits...

Coming soon on DVD

There's a whole bunch of TV shows coming out on DVD soon that I'm really excited about like: Arrested Development (late summer - no release date set), Sex & the City Season 6 Part 2 (fall), Everwood Season 1 (Sept), Wonderfalls (Dec?), Undeclared (soon).

Here's the source of all this great information. My little Netflix queue is loaded up with lots of exciting stuff, of course, the bad thing is that each tv show tends to add between 2 and 5 discs to my queue... Sadly, I think I am going to rent the Alias discs just to hear the commentary after reading some posts on the TWOP forum talking about how funny the commentary is. I may have to watch that when my roommates aren't around though... Sigh.

The Fame Audit

I have to put in a plug for one of my favorite websites. If only I could be this funny and mean. A goal to aspire to, really. Unfortunately, I think I need to have a bigger sleep debt before I can be this mean, and I think my meanness has gotten rusty since I finished college and no longer had weirdos in my classes or underclassmen to openly mock (for example, emails to dorm mailing lists saying "Has anyone seen my keys? They had a Stanford lanyard and a bottle opener on them!").

Anyway, Fametracker is a hilarious website that, among other things, does Fame Audits on celebrities. The latest one is on Jason Bateman, from the sublimely funny show Arrested Development. (When Arrested Development comes out on DVD, I'm buying it so I can watch it and Armageddon when I'm really blue.) Anyhoo, a snippet from Jason Bateman's Fame Audit:

"You know, we liked Kirk Cameron as much as anyone back in the day. We weren't, like, huge Kirk Cameron fans or anything, but we thought he was cute and huggable in that teen-idol kind of way. And we admit we assumed we'd seen the last of him -- forever. We never -- never -- expected that Kirk Cameron would come back in such a huge way. Kirk Cameron! After all these years! Suddenly, he's starring -- nay, anchoring -- the funniest sitcom on television. And wait! There's Kirk Cameron with a hilarious bit part in Dodgeball, nearly stealing the movie! Kirk Cameron! Who knew?

Okay, we admit the above paragraph sounds a bit ridiculous. But it sounds no more ridiculous if you substitute the name "Jason Bateman" for "Kirk Cameron." And if you do that, the paragraph has the added strange quality of being absolutely true."

Other funny audits: Johnny Depp or Ben Affleck.

- nyanko

the office, series 2

The second season was so painful, I actually had to stop watching after three episodes and take a break. I think I spent almost half the show covering my eyes and moaning pathetically. As one of my co-workers said, "I mean you knew when the staff from that other office showed up in Slough and there was a woman in a wheelchair, that it was going to get uncomfortable." It was exponentially more painful than the first season, but somehow still manages to be extremely funny. However, thank goodness that was the last season ever because if a third season came out, I would be horribly torn between not watching to avoid the pain and desparately wanting to see it. So, watch it if you dare.

- nyanko

oh tivo, cover your eyes!

Is it bad to be slightly horrified by the dreck that your roommates program the TiVo for? My roommates tend to program lots of stuff onto the shared TiVo, and some of it makes our viewing habits look somewhat smarter/better than my actual tv watching habits (The Daily Show, Meet the Press, the George Stephanopoulos show), but some of the stuff is just, oh.... Like For Love or Money, ER (sorry ER fans, but I just can't take the melodrama), the Practice, Ally McBeal (the later seasons of the last two seem most cringe-worthy), Reba (!)... and I've seen my roommates watching 7th Heaven and Full House. Poor TiVo! And even though the viewing statistics are anonymous and aggregated, it's really a crime to put Tivo through that. Sometimes I look at the Now Playing List and just have to shake my head in sorrow.

Maybe I need separate TiVos - one for the stuff that I'm embarrassed to be taping, and one for the stuff that I would admit to watching, so at least one would have a pristine profile.

- nyanko

How many is too many?

How many movies on a Netflix queue is too many? I think I currently have 124 movies in my queue (after hovering for a long time at 90), which means that I could watch 3 movies per week for the next 10 months or so, without running out of movies. And that's without adding any new movies to the queue, like the first season of Everwood, or the last half season of Sex and the City. Boyfriend says that he has more on his queue, but is that supposed to make me feel inferior (you should have more!), better (at least I'm not as much of a loser) or normal (everyone else has at least that many)? At what point has your Netflix queue completely spiraled out of control? When you have two years worth of movies? I guess I'll go with that definition since I'm dangerously close to one year worth of movies as is...

P.S. Netflix is definitely hitting the mainstream - in Esquire magazine they now have a article/sidebar every month where they ask some celebrity/personality "What's in your Netflix queue?" Sort of like what's on your iPod, etc.

-nyanko

The Ocho

In a previous post of mine, I mentioned Zoolander, which I consider to be one of the best comedies of recent times. "best" as in so funny I start convulsing when I even think about some parts of it.

The reason I mention this is because the leading box office movie of this past weekend was, in fact, Dodgeball. Featuring Ben Stiller of course. And his character is remarkably reminiscent of Derek Zoolander in many ways. Dodgeball is probably not as good as Zoolander, but it's still extremely entertaining, and from thenceforth I have had a Pavlovian response wherein I start chuckling any time someone says "the ocho".

You can read any number of reviews concerning Dodgeball elsewhere, but the bottom line is the plot is silly, and some of the acting is not the best (Vince Vaughn, Mr. "you're money" is a notable example), but there are so many other aspects that make it worth your time, assuming you have a sense of humor.

It's almost worth watching for the cameos alone.

Go see it. Or rent/netflix it when it comes out on DVD.

One more thing: I have 3 words to say regarding Summerland, as my comment on nyanko's post below.
Kill. Me. Now.

- totoro

a Mandy Moore-athon

I apologize, I think Mandy Moore's name is really a curse, because it's way too easy to create horrible puns on her last name. For instance, on the Chasing Liberty DVD, one of the extras was 'Moore' on [something I can't remember - probably her character]. But anyway, I have unfortunately been on a Mandy Moore movie kick - which has led to some unpleasantness and some not so horrible mediocrity.

Chasing Liberty - So. Not. Good. I had such high hopes for this movie - it looked like a fun, fluffy teenybopper European adventure movie. And it was so much pain. The writing! The plot! It was completely embarrassing that my roommates saw that I was watching it. And of course, I never learn, because I have very high hopes for this upcoming Katie Holmes movie, First Daughter, with exactly the same premise.

How to Deal - Also starring Alison Janney. Really, not so bad. Granted, this might just be relative to Chasing Liberty, but I found this movie to be interesting, with characters that weren't too annoying, and a generally entertaining plot overall. So, not a rousing endorsement, but also not a frantic "Escape while you still can" warning.

So, onward to 'All I Want' - starring Mandy (of course), Elijah (Frodo!) and Franka Potente.

-nyanko

new summer shows

The dearth of new tv programming during the summer is giving me the chance to actually clean off the TiVo backlog (too much travel in the past few months has forced me to keep about 20 hours of saved shows for the past two and a half months - scary) and to catch up on shows that I don't really have time to watch when other shows are on.

I finally got around to watching Summerland and the North Shore, two of the new summer offerings. And my take is that Summerland is not good, but my standards somehow do not require 'good.' (Really, a horrifying thing to realize about yourself.) It's crappy, but enjoyable summer fluff - and does not have the huge cringe-inducing moments like say, Tru Calling (see below), at least not yet. The adult characters on the show are reasonably interesting/entertaining, so I'll keep watching.

The North Shore, on the other hand, is just a retread of Las Vegas, but with less attractive actors. And the occasional, half-hearted Hawaiian accent. I'll watch this week's episode to see Amanda Righetti (Hailey from the O.C.), but the Season Pass is already revoked. Is it bad to hope for a show's demise so that a good character goes back to another show? (Of course, I almost wish the Gilmore Girls spinoff succeeded so we could stop seeing Jess, but I supposed we would have been subjected to crossover events ...)

I also watched two episodes of Tru Calling, and although I like Eliza Dushku (Faith!), they were so painful that I just revoked the season pass. Sigh. I didn't get to see any of the Jason Preistley episodes, but I just can't take it anymore.

-nyanko

Look away! Look away!

Is this serious? This document has descriptions of upcoming ABC Family movies, including one starring Gary Cole, as a former music star, and another one involving a woman who suddenly becomes a mob boss. Sweet! And uh, in case you're confused, Gary Cole was in Office Space, Gary Coleman just ran for governor. No, I didn't get those two mixed up. But the thought of either of them in this movie is hilarious.

-nyanko

Yeah! Dean!

From TV Guide Online: Roswell's Jason Behr and Gilmore Girls' Jared Padalecki are rumored to be candidates in a movie remake of Superman!

Ah, the WB star factory - it would be hilarious to see either of these WB dreamboats end up as Superman. I can still keep my dreams of being "discovered" as a WB starlet since you become famous, but usually not too famous and um, existing acting skills not required. Sweet.

-nyanko