television

I’ve abandoned my child!

/ Jared / Leave a comment

I’m not sure who is responsible for the video below (Tomfoolery Pictures, I suppose?) or who is currently popularizing it on the internet (I was introduced to it by a tweet from Slate), but it has absolutely made my day.

Genius. I’m not sure I would actually want to play the game if it were real; I’ve never been a fan of side-scolling platformers that require precision jumping. But it certainly makes me want to go watch the movie again. It also reminds me of this sort of stupid but still hilarious SNL sketch that is just delightfully evocative of late-2007.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/10232/saturday-night-live-milkshakes

Mad Men Recaps

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Don Draper (played by Jon Hamm in Mad Men) of ...

Image via Wikipedia

Guys, I should tell you, having way too much free time is generally not that great.  But sometimes it’s the best, like on Mondays after Mad Men when I get to sit around and read episode recaps online all day long!  I love Mad Men recaps almost as much as I love Mad Men, which is tons.  I don’t even care what’s happening, I just like watching the awesome characters walking around in their crisp 60s aesthetic saying snappy things and eyeballing each other.  It’s why the “Next Week On” promos at the end of each episode are hilariously vague and reveal absolutely no details about any upcoming plotlines; they don’t have to!  This show is like visual crack.  I could watch the opening scene about beans in an endless loop.

Anyway, here’s what I’ve been reading today:

Hilarious superimposed word bubble fun over at Videogum.

The New York Times dipping its old, gray toe into the pool of television blogging.

Alan Sepinwall’s review is slightly less speculative, and therefore perhaps more useful in tying everything together.

New York magazine’s recap could use a few images or videos or something to break up the text, in my opinion.

Finally, this long, exhaustive, and rewarding number over at Defamer.

3-D Television and Gaming

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Paper glasses for viewing Anaglyphs.

Image via Wikipedia

I’m pretty excited about 3-D television. 3-D television! In your living room! And soon we won’t even need to wear the ridiculous glasses! Why are people not on board with this?  Everyone seems so ambivalent.  My wife seems sort of repulsed by the idea of owning a 3-D television, and she tried one, at Harrod’s in London, and thought it was great.  I don’t get it.

Until this post in the NYTimes ArtsBeat blog, though, I hadn’t given much thought to 3-D gaming.  I mean, I was fully aware of the upcoming Nintendo 3DS, but I’m not much of a handheld gamer.  I have no reason to play a mobile device, seeing as I rarely leave my apartment.

If you still think this 3-D thing is a gimmick, though, go read the post.  Author Seth Schiesel got to watch (although not play, unfortunately) a bit of Call of Duty: Black Ops in 3-D.  He says, amongst other things, “I simply have never had an entertainment experience quite like it. In its way it was one of the most impressive 20-minute demonstrations I have seen.”  And, “I immediately felt as if I would be missing something important playing it, or any other game, in the old 2-D fashion.”  The future: we’re getting there!

I’m actually excited about streaming something on Netflix!

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Netflix Instant Queue

Don’t let the title of this post fool you.  It’s not that I’ve never enjoyed streaming something through Netflix; that’s a feature I use regularly.  It’s just that it seems like nothing I’m ever really, really excited about watching is available.  I always decide I want to kill some time by streaming something and then struggle to find something worth watching, as opposed to deciding what I want to watch and then being pleasantly surprised by its instant availability.

That changed today with NBC Universal’s announcement that they’re going to allow Netflix to stream a ton of their content, including Battlestar Galactica, 30 Rock, The Office, Friday Night Lights, and, the kicker…

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What is going on with Sesame Street?

/ Jared / 1 Comment

I didn’t watch a whole lot of Sesame Street growing up, so for all I know, it’s always been this weird.  But I keep stumbling on these strange videos from the show.

First came the Katy Perry collaboration, which, while still available online, was pulled out of the television episode in which it was supposed to appear.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blE9qg-hCkc

I mean, I know they’ve done stuff like this before (I fondly recall Feist’s appearance from a couple of years ago), but Katy Perry seems like an odd choice.  Don’t get me wrong; I’m a fan of hers, and I don’t really think there is anything wrong with this.  But as soon as I saw her outfit and thought for a second about the unaltered lyrics of her honestly-not-Sesame-Street-appropriate songs I knew that people would be up in arms about it.  Don’t the good folks over at the Children’s Television Workshop know how much people love to have fits of hyperventilation about stuff like this?

Then today I saw their parody of True Blood.  It’s more benign than the Katy Perry performance, I guess, although I’m sure people can find something in it to complain about (vague vampire references = sacrilegious?).  I was more just baffled by it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dAZ1-nF3VI

I mean, I guess ostensibly we’re learning about rhyming?  Is that the point?  All I really took away from it was that grouches like mud.  I know they know more about education than I ever will, but it seems like we might be worrying too much about entertaining the adults watching along with their children here.

[via Best Week Ever]

[Update: Flavorwire has 10 additional Sesame Street parodies, including Mad Men and 30 Rock.]

Lawyers

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Oh, lawyer commercials. Initially hilarious, eventually depressing.  Like this one.

[via Gawker]

It’s not particularly relevant to me, because I don’t live in Florida. Also, my wife and I love each other.

Seeing this reminded me of a local lawyer commercial I saw recently. Now, I’ve never seen A Few Good Men. I don’t even know what it’s about, really. But learning that the real-life lawyer that Tom Cruise‘s character (the one who prompted Jack Nicholson to yell “You can’t handle the truth!”) is based on is now an ambulance chaser…well, that made me sad.

Vodpod videos no longer available.Although I’m sure that both of these gentlemen are very good at their jobs.

The Office Lipdub

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Excited for tomorrow’s return of The Office? Not even a little bit? Man, you guys are a tough crowd. What about after watching this video?

[Update: The video I put up from Hulu expired, like, immediately after I posted it. And I can’t figure out how to embed from NBC.com. So here is a basic link to a worse, shortened version on their website. This is what failure feels like.]

[Second Update: I finally figured out how to embed video from places other than Hulu and YouTube!  So the video is now available below.  Plus, NBC put up the full version.  It’s like a pot and pan set double bonus!]

Vodpod videos no longer available.I have to admit that it makes me feel sort of sad and out of touch when The Office parodies an internet meme that I wasn’t even aware existed. At least with the wedding dance I got the reference.

The Emmys, 2010

/ Jared / 1 Comment

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Here we are again.  Another award show, another winner-picking competition between me and my new wife, Johanna.  And after slogging through a few shows that, while fun, were ultimately inconsequential (The ESPYs, The Daytime Emmys, and the MTV Movie Awards) we finally have a big one: The Emmys.

This has traditionally been my award show of choice; I’ve always been more of a television guy than a movie guy, I guess.  Plus, I don’t usually get around to seeing many of the nominated films before the Oscars, whereas I’m always pretty invested in the Emmys and opinionated about the categories.  It feels like the recent golden age of television has faded a bit, and my interest has waned slightly, but this remains my favorite masturbatory Hollywood event.

Tonight is big for Johanna, too.  My friend Alex, in anticipation of tonight’s competition, asked me if Johanna had won any of these.  I quickly said that yes, she had.  While I knew I had taken the last few, I thought we were actually pretty even.  Having gone back to check, though, I’m surprised to report that I won The Grammys, The Academy Awards, The MTV Movie Awards, The Daytime Emmys, and The ESPYs, with Johanna only claiming the Golden Globes, the first one of these we did.  I’m up five to one!  She needs a win.  In preparation, she’s been scouring the internet for expert predictions.

As always, we choose for the most part whom we think will win, not whom we want to win.  Never is that more true than with the Emmys; trust me, I’m no fan of The Good Wife or, heaven forbid, Glee.  Categories and winners are in bold.  Johanna has concocted an Emmy cocktail containing peach vodka, Sprite Zero, and a splash of grenadine.  She’s named it the “Leading Lady.”  It’s better, both in name and taste, than the drink she fixed us for the Daytime Emmys.  Let’s do this.

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7:41 – Taco night is over, the red carpet has begun, and I’m filling out my ballot.  All of these interviews are so unbelievably awkward and cringe-worthy.  I instinctively reach for the mute button.

Picture 8

8:00 – Here we go.  We’re opening with a shot of the director’s booth.  This is such an ego move; it’s like they think we’ll assume the show was put together by elves if they don’t show themselves.  Johanna just thinks it’s hacky and compares it to starting a school paper with a Webster’s definition.

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The Daytime Emmy Awards, 2010

/ Jared / 1 Comment

DSC00438

So, guess who stumbled across The Daytime Emmy Awards in the cable menu while setting up the DVR for the week?  That’s right, me!  The Daytime Emmys, everybody!  I could not pass up this opportunity to have another winner-picking competition with Johanna.  I mean, what other award show features categories like this:

OUTSTANDING SPECIAL CLASS SPECIAL

WE ARE ONE: THE OBAMA INAUGURAL CELEBRATION AT THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL
HBO
CLEAN HOUSE: THE MESSIEST HOME IN THE COUNTRY
THE STYLE NETWORK

ON THE EDGE: THE POVERTY CRISIS IN AFRICA
FOX REALITY

That’s right, Clean House up against Obama and poverty in Africa!  Also, since when did Fox Reality Channel have shows about things like poverty in Africa?  Neither of us has even heard of a lot of these shows, let alone see them, so our choices will be almost completely arbitrary.  This is going to be more bonkers than our MTV Movie Award competition.

Believe it or not, not only was there not a printable ballot to be found online, I wasn’t even able to find a list of the categories than were going to actually be in the telecast.  So I printed the huge list of unbelievably specific awards off of the Emmy site, and then set about eliminating all but the seemingly most important categories.  I brought it down from sixty pages to a concise eight.  We’ll find out together whether or not I chose the right categories.

Johanna has made a special cocktail for the occasion out of pear vodka, cranberry juice, and lemon.  She’s calling it the “Bitch Slap.”  It tastes delicious, but I’m going to give her the first hour of the show to punch up the name.  Let’s get started.  As always, categories and winners in bold.

9:00 – You know an award show is extra-classy when it comes to you live from beautiful downtown Las Vegas.  They’re listing all the performers and presenters here, and outside of our host Regis Philbin, I think the biggest star is Simon Cowell.  Chubby Checker???

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The Lost Finale

/ Jared / 2 Comments

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So, Lost is over.  I was out of town and therefore a few days behind on everything, but I managed to avoid spoilers and sat down last night to watch it with an open mind.  When I went to bed after watching not only the finale, but also last week’s episode and the two-hour recap show that had aired immediately prior to the finale, I certainly had some questions.  I felt mostly satisfied, though.  Then this morning I found myself getting kind of angry about it.

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“The End” was a fitting end to this season, and I think it was pretty great as a stand-alone episode.  The final season was not a fitting end to the show as a whole, though.  It’s not even a matter of tying up older plotlines; there are enough holes in the recently introduced plots alone that there is no way that this finale will age well.  The more people think about it, the worse it’s going to get.  Which is why everyone who wants to love it unconditionally is telling the rest of us we’re thinking too much about it.

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