I enjoy blooper answers from The Newlywed Game because unlike many modern game shows—whereby contestants self-select based on their (sometimes misguided) hope they're cerebral enough to be successful—the Newlywed Game cut across an entire different selection factor (being recently married) which, in my opinion, gave them a much more amusing...
Who Wants to Be A Millionaire's phone a friend thing should be renamed phone a friend's computer. Tap tap tap tap. "Spell it again?" Silence. "... uhh ... wait just a second. ... it's ... how did you spell that again?"...
...is any one that features turbine-powered modified Lola T70s as cop cars. Really though, THX 1138 was quite enjoyable....
Apparently Mythbusters and Extreme Engineering are highly correlated in the world of Netflix recommendations....
I queued up The Fall a month or two ago on a recommendation from Mouser (I think). The story is sortof a mix of Pan's Labyrinth and The Princess Bride, where a narrated story unfolds in a girl's imagination, set against tremendously rich backgrounds and sets. In fact, this film...
First Crossfire, and now Jim Cramer's attitude. Nobody is safe from the claws of Stewart! Read all about the most recent event at its own Wikipedia article. Damn we're good at documenting the present. Oh and if you haven't seen it, Hulu has parts one, err, two, and yesterday's one-on-one...
We just saw The International. It was about as bad as the Transporter franchise, except that the only car chase was between an Alfa 164 and a pair of Nikes. Skip this one unless you're really dying to see a 15-minute shoot-out in the Guggenheim. Guys like Clive Owen and...
A recent episode of Wife Swap exposed a guy with some serious issues—an environmentalist venture capitalist named Stephen Fowler who displayed some of the most incredible behavior I've ever seen on national television. See the whole episode on YouTube. It's incredible. And when you're done, visit the anti-blog dedicated to...
We've got the Roku Netflix streaming box running right now and I've killed our wireless router three times with firmware upgrades and by forcibly killing it with network traffic1. The Roku hasn't skipped a beat. Sweet. 1 never buy a D-Link WBR-1310....
We saw The Wrestler at the local luxury theater last Saturday evening. Interest in (or hell, even knowledge of) wrestling is absolutely not required to enjoy this film. Those of you who have seen Pi or Requiem for a Dream will appreciate that The Wrestler was directed by uberawesomeman Darren...
Outside of macho sports1, I can't recall any other situations where two grown men bicker to claim the honor of being the most disagreeable. But in tonight's debate, both Obama and McCain spent a good deal of time outlining exactly why they don't follow their respective party lines. 1 E.g.,...
I finally watched Eraserhead. Well, that was ... different....
We're watching the presidential debate for a few minutes before we split for a luau. One of the questions Jim Lehrer asked was about the likelihood of a terrorist attack on the continental United States. Apparently Hawai'i is on its own....
I abhor laugh tracks on television shows. Who ever thought these were a good idea?...
I found this (2.40MB, WMV) Southpark clip earlier for Layla since her org is letting her choose one of three green or brown colors to paint one of the walls in her office. Which color would you choose?...
The first episode of Planet Earth features something similar and a bunch of other amazing footage....
After watching about a third of Vanishing Point I was convinced this was the dumbest film of all time. There was barely enough dialog to support the 1970s-style car chase scenes, and the backstory was composed entirely in snippets of flashbacks. But now that I'm done with it, I'm impressed...
Layla and I have been watching David Attenborough's Life of Mammals series lately—today's episode touched on the Pangolin, found in areas of Africa and Asia. I've never heard of the Pangolin before, but it's a fascinating creature. It's a lot like an anteater (with a narrow mouth, long tongue, and...
Those of you who watch The Wire may be a little shocked when this guy opens his mouth and sounds nothing like a drug dealer from West Baltimore. Amazing actor. P.S. If you haven't already, watch this show....
Apparently I'm going to an advance screening of ... some film tomorrow. What's being released soon? Oh right, that Bat-man flick....
Layla and I watched The Madness of King George earlier tonight. The film was good, but that's not what this post is really about. I've had a good deal of exposure to British history in school and on my own in the last dozens of years, but one of the...
Layla and I recently watched The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, about the still-fervent races to set record scores on classic arcade games like Donkey Kong and...well, it's mostly about Donkey Kong. This is great stuff even if you aren't into Galaga and such. It's a good story...
Layla and I went to see Get Smart on Friday. It was good—not groundbreakingly awesome, but very solid and well worth the watch. The most interesting thing is that apparently we went to see it on opening night, and we were asked to fill out questionaires about us (demographics) and...
We started watching The Wire based on a number of strong recommendations. We're about three quarters of the way through the first season and I'm in total agreement—this really is an amazing show. But, it's got the longest opening credits ever. FF FTW....
Flipping through channels earlier, Layla happened across some pedestrian clip show (America's Funniest *), which isn't notable except for the overlaid advertisement reminder thing in the lower left corner for an upcoming episode of NBC's Deal or No Deal. The overlay read, New Deal or No Deal/Saturday 9pm Seems the...
We finally got Idiocracy in the Netflix queue. Lots of fart jokes, so that's good. I had a difficult time paying attention to the second half of the film as I tried to figure out who played the Secretary of State. Turns out it's our good buddy Michael Bolton. He...
Following up on my Wikipedia post, I checked on the detail in the articles for Super Bowls XI and today's, XLII. Why #61 #11, you ask? I figured I'd pick one a few years after the first, and particularly after the Superbest of Bowls settled enough to be non-notable of...
It's taken me years to get around to watching Seven Samurai and now that it's here at the house, it's taken me three weeks to get through the whopping 207 minutes of film. For comparison, that's longer than:nine episodes of Who's the Boss Air Bud and Air Bud: Golden Receiver...
One of the terrestrial HD channels we receive is the local PBS affiliate's Spanish-language channel, V-me. And since we don't get much else in terms of broadcast television, lazy nights around the TV (like tonight) occasionally result in Layla and I watching shows in el-Spanish-o. I can't understand a word,...
Layla and I just finished watching Helvetica, a documentary about the ubiquitous typeface of the same name. Hearing modern designers reflect on the history and influence of Helvetica is absolutely fascinating to me—although I admit I'm a huge sucker for all things typeface. The film is very clear in its...
I learned about The Thin Blue Line because Philip Glass composed the soundtrack, but watched it because Errol Morris directed it. Good stuff. I love the Texan judiciary....
We've had this film in our queue for stinking ever and it's finally shifted off and into our DVD player. I Like Killing Flies is a documentary about Shopsin's, a hole-in-the-wall restaraunt which has been doing business in New York's Greenwich Village for the last four decades. The film focuses...
The special features on disc 4 of CSI: NY Season 2 contains huge massive spoilers for the big episode on disc 5 of the same season. Dammit, people....
After years of ignoring this show's recommendations, I've finally watched a handful of episodes of Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law. It's ... mostly great! Although, it's also mostly lowbrow and heavyhanded. Mostly....
Layla and I have been slowly making our way through CSI episodes over the last 18 months or so (thanks, Netflix). We've gotten through most of CSI and CSI: Miami, and are only now starting on CSI: NY—and one of the first CSI: NY episodes was Three Generations Are Enough,...
Layla and I watched This Film Is Not Yet Rated last week. It kicks ass. TFINYR exposes the MPAA rating system—the only major film rating system worldwide that relies on anonymous raters and opaque policies. The film explains how arbitrary the ratings can be, and then cracks into the way...
Layla and I just got done watching Pan's Labyrinth. Great movie, if a bit gruesome at times. I wanted to see this film when it first appeared in theaters here a few months ago, but missed the narrow window of opportunity presented by its independent release. Likely owing to the...
Layla and I watched Jesus Camp last night. It's a fantastic film about evangenical Christian camps run in the heartlands of America. Well worth your time, highly recommended, five stars, and all that. The thing that struck me most about the film was the burden placed upon fairly young children...
One of the local news channels amused me to no end this morning by totally botching pop culture. It all started when the news program returned from a commercial with some otherwise unused video of a boat, backed up with the hit song Crazy off of Gnarls Barkley's St. Elsewhere...
The other film we watched yesterday was Sketches of Frank Gehry, a short documentary about Gehry, an architect. Gehry's got an unusual style—those of you from Seattle have probably seen his most famous local work, the EMP in the Seattle city center. It's got a free and flowing form made...
Layla and I saw two movies today. One was fantastic. I'll talk about that one later (probably tomorrow). The other one ... sucked. We went and saw Night at the Museum because the previews looked mildly humorous, but mostly because it was actually showing soon after we arrived at the...
Layla and I just got finished watching Being There, one of Peter Sellers' last performances. A great reminder for how saying little is sometimes just what's needed. Five stars....
It turns out there's been some confusion in my household for quite some time. So, this all stems from the fact that I've got the motherload of all MST3K archives (thanks again, Ryan) and Layla ... hates MST3K. I can sortof understand because a lot of the episodes leave me...
So, because I hadn't seen it in a while (because I felt like having a good and extended gut laugh), I rented Zardoz to watch here at the house this weekend. And while looking for images with which to illustrate this post, I accidentally left the browser open to the...
I was asked recently what the weirdest movie I've ever seen was. Since apparently I haven't mentioned it on this journal before, here it is. The weirdest movie I've ever seen is, without a doubt, Zardoz. It's an odd science ficton film made in the mid-1970s and starring Sean Connery,...
Layla and I watched American Splendor tonight, the story of real-life comic writer and average guy, Harvey Pekar. Absolutely fascinating movie about a simple man who lives each day by the only rules he knows. There's no facade to the things Harvey does, and there's no bravado. It's just a...
We've taken the plunge and have gotten a Netflix account. So for the next [quite a while], that's what's going to be on the TV. I've done this once before—me and my roommates had a group Netflix account in Socorro, and each of us had our own queue. This was...
Rob (from the office Rob) loaned me a copy of Cannonball Run late last week. What a film. In terms of the "classic" things you'd like to see in a movie (good acting, engaging storyline, etc.) it was absolutely bare, but it was absolutely chock-full of ridiculous cars, bad puns,...
I'm sure most of you have seen a DVD of TV shows—something like Family Guy or Seinfeld or, as happens to be in our household, Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Because TV shows are often divided into discrete episodes, most of these DVDs offer a "play all" feature to plop down...
Now that I'm going to the gym, the amount of live television that I watch has gone through the roof: I'm generally getting around 40 minutes of CNN a day, compared with ~six hours of actual broadcast TV watched for the entirety of 2005. I'm also occasionally catching things on...
That's right. Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Much like a number of other old kids' films, Pee-wee's Big Adventure is absolutely nutty to watch when you're older. It's absolutely mindboggling just how much crazy crap is jammed into the 90-minute-long film. Watching this movie as a kid, I remember it being marginally...
Earlier tonight, Layla and I spent some time looking around the movie selections to see if there was anything good that we haven't really watched. I've never seen Bridges of Madison County, and Layla had mentioned that it was actually pretty good—so as always, I took a look at the...
Layla and I suffered as a captive audience to Christmas with the Kranks on the flight back from New Mexico on Sunday. Neither of us sprung for the headphones—and I'm confident that if we had, we certainly wouldn't have enjoyed the movie any more. It sucked, with a capital S....
Many people have said that although the United States government is a terrible institution, that it's nevertheless the best in the world. I didn't honestly believe this for a very long time and had only really even begun to consider the idea after a woman for whom I have a...
I found a sticky note that I remember writing on two years ago. On it are three movie titles:8 1/2 Wish You Were Here Le Règle du jeu I've watched the first of these. The second two, I haven't. And the only reason I'm posting this right now is so...
I'll talk about Fargo first because, suprisingly, it's the less-weird of the two. This was the first time I've seen Fargo. I'm sure most of you have seen it already. There's not really much to say about it besides: the Coen brothers are awesome. On to The Secret of Nimh,...
A few days ago Layla and I watched Barry Lyndon. The title of this post comes from the fact that the title character of the film starts off life as Mr. Redmond Barry. But whatever. Here's how the film is: really really long. It seems that Layla and I have...
Layla and I watched Amadeus yesterday. It's a ridiculously long movie. I can't stress that enough. It's really really long. Like, 3 hours long. You had better like sitting on your butt or pressing the pause button often, because if you want to watch this entire movie, you're going to...
Two days ago I found a torrent for the entire 3rd season of MXC, or Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. Admittedly, I haven't watched any of them yet—but that's because they're just now finishing downloading. Nevertheless, I'm pumped. Fantastic show. Update: Technically, I'm listening to NPR on the radio on my...
I was recently watching MST3K Ep. 0422: The Day The Earth Froze, which is good until the part where I get bored and do something else. Seriously, I hear it's a great episode, but I didn't have it in me to actually sit through it. Nevertheless, the opening was of...
Have you ever heard of The Phantom Tollbooth? I suspect you have. I remember reading it a bunch of times when I was a kid. Rather, now that I've watched the movie, I certainly remember reading it. If you had asked me yesterday if I had ever read it, I...
In my downtime, I've been going through the third season of Futurama. The third season was on after I really quit watching TV, and I finally downloaded it a few weeks ago. Behold, hilarity!...
I just saw a Boeing commercial which included a bunch of CG shots of new things they were developing—things like repair satellites and whatnot. When they showed a picture of the scramjet plane, though, the voiceover said, "at Boeing, we do things that other people think are impossible." I would...
I spotted an ad earlier on CNN—apparantely E*Trade is now using a security system which involves a keychain toy which generates strings of digits every 60 seconds which are used in lieu of passwords. The ad says it's, "convenient and revolutionary." I agree—if, by "convenient," they mean, "pain in the...
I just heard a very conservative-looking late-60-year-old spokesman for the US Chamber of Commerce (Mr. Donahue) say the best thing on CNN today: If you remove all the illegal immigrants from this country, you'll hear a loud sucking sound from the economy. Awesome....
I've had these damned screenshots lying around since I reviewed Soylent Green oh so many weeks ago. So here we go. Soylent Green. WEST SIIIIIIDE! And here are two more....
I just got done watching one of those really forced CNN weekend segments on 911 calls. It involved one of those stories where a 911 operator saved the life of a lady who had—get this—been blown up inside a Petco building. Right. The point was, the show that all this...
I like C-SPAN. A lot. Every once in a while something superboring will be on (e.g., legislation that names post offices after politicians) but most of the time it's really interesting and relevant stuff. Today, for example, I found out that the Yucca Mountain fuel dump is going to cost...
The Killing Fields was just on the TV. I thought I had posted about this previously, but searching through my entries hasn't revealed what I'm looking for. So, here's the story. I originally heard about the "killing fields" of Cambodia through a Wikipedia random link. In specific, I think I...
Rat Race was on the TV last night. This was one of those surprisingly good films disguised as an otherwise crap film. Although it seems I originally thought this film was better than I think it is now, it's still pretty good. Of course, the end is terrible. I recommend...
Right now I'm watching MST3K: The Thing That Couldn't Die (ep. 0805). Frankly, I haven't caught most of it. It was rated highly on the MST3K boards, but ... ehh, I've lost interest. Assuredly, most of this has to do with the fact that I'm trying to work while I'm...
In order of appearance, Ashley, James, Will, and Laura came over earlier to watch Soylent Green. Overall, it wasn't bad. I suspect I wouldn't have really enjoyed it too much when it first came out. It was tolerable because A) Heston was in full form, and B) I made bad...
Just got done watching The Incredibles. Fantastic film. For a largely kid-targeted animation, it was almost completely free of forced and uncomfortable kids-only moments....
The first part of this post is about Citizen Kane, which was finally on the TV a few days ago. I enjoyed Citizen Kane immensely. I ended up watching it twice—the second time, with Roger Ebert's fantastic (if ridiculously repetitive1) commentary. I'm a giant sucker for excellent storytelling, and Kane...
I'm trying to watch Citizen Kane on my computer right now. Unfortunately, it keeps freezing. Twice so far. Fuck this, I'm going to sleep....
Rob told me that I needed to watch City of God a long time ago. It's taken me until now to get around to it, and I'm really wishing I hadn't waited so long to actually do so. This film is probably one of the best I've seen in the...
Dances With Wolves is on the TV. I love this film because looking back, it serves as a clear marker for the exact moment that Kevin Costner went batshit insane. People—and least of all Americans, if you dare call them people—have ridiculously short attention spans. With the exception of LotR,...
8½ is on the TV. Rather, it was on my monitor in my room. More GT4 is on the TV, technically. I was a bit worried when I popped this film in, to be honest. I've heard nothing but fantastic things and would be somewhat embarrassed if, for example, it...
Gone in 60 Seconds is on the TV. Lots of movies tonight. My favorite part about this film is that its IMDB page currently features a user review that reads, TRASH OF THE LOWEST ORDER. Brilliant! It's interesting that IMDB viewers gave this a 5.7/10—rather, I find it interesting that...
Ôdishon is on the TV right now. Ken informs me that it's a film about a man whose wife dies and who holds auditions to find someone new. I asked him how it was. His response was, "anticlimactic." Update: Ken now informs me that this is the most disgusting movie...
Halo 2 is on the TV right now. Two players on this Xbox, playing online. When piping the in-game chatter to the main speakers (instead of the Xbox Online headset), this turns from a somewhat böring experience into ... a slightly less boring one. Listening to 12-year-olds bitch each other...
Lots of GT4 is on the TV. Lots. And apparantely, Clerks, although I haven't actually seen it being played. Clerks is one of those films that's supposed to be good because it's an early work of a director who makes largely different movies. I agree that Clerks is unconventional in...
GT4 has been on a lot, but that's to be expected. Yesterday (or the day before?) it was Hero, whose IMDB page hilariously lists the movie's tagline in Japanese, and later Crouching Tiger, Hidden Tiger Dropping. Massive kung-foo up in here....
I guess this has less to do with what I don't watch and more to do with why I don't watch it. I used to watch a lot of TV when I was growing up. I can remember many afternoons spent absorbing ridiculously stimulating shows like Double Dare and You...
I just got an email from JC Whitney ensubjected: What's on TV?. What a bunch of tossers....
Snatch is on. Another film with fantastic execution. I tried watching Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels a month or two ago but was bored mindless....
Gran Turismo 4 is on the TV—or, at least, it was earlier. I'm surprised by how disinterested I am in the game. I'll probably end up playing it eventually, but not because I want to win any races or break any records. I'm much more interested in tooling around a...
Ken and Erick were playing some snowboarding game earlier, although I can't remember the name of it, but I think it started with a P. Hilariously, they were playing in battle mode when the game borked and sent Ken's score nonlinear. Performing a simple flip, for example, earned him 1,600,000,000...
Cowboy Bebop is on the TV. And actually, Mac was watching Akira again earlier.* Cowbop Bebop is one of those series that tends to be hit-and-miss with the storylines, but which nearly always has brilliant style. The artwork, voice acting, and especially music are universally spot-on. Even when the writing...
Halo 2: The Shortest Game Ever is on the TV. I find it funny that both Halo 2 and Half-Life start out with a quasianonymous voice talking at you while you're riding in a tram to nowhere. As Ken pointed out, both games start with Hal... As Erick pointed out,...
The Emporer's New Groove is on the TV. I'm not sure what I think about this, mostly because I haven't ever seen it. I'm usually pretty turned off by the sort of hamfisted cutesy jokes that the writers try to cram in these films, but occasionally they pull it off...
Because hey, why not? Screenshots after the jump....
Goodfellas is on the TV right now. Somewhat surprisingly, this is the highest-rating film that's been listed here so far, and is #30 in the top listings on IMDB. I'm actually a little surprised this was made in 1990. I thought it was older than that. I don't have any...
Dodgeball is on the TV right now. Spoilers ahead, like you care Under extreme duress and boredom, I watched this with Mac a few months ago. The entire thing was ... exactly what I was expecting, with two exceptions:The Hasselhoff cameo and German connection were hilarious, and The fact that...
Friday Night Lights is on the TV. This is yet another football film, which means my ability to understand it is approximately zero. The kids (and, oddly, old ladies) seem to like it, though....
ATHF: Dusty Gonzagas is on the TV. There's a section in the episode where Carl, Master Shake, and Meatwad list the gentlemen's clubs in the area.Wild Wild Chest Funbag Junction Nipple Hut Crotch Town Boobburg Boobburg...Boobburg is kind of a scam....
Troy is on the TV right now. This looks like Yet Another Bad Historical Action Epic, a la Gladiator and Spartacus. ...maybe not Spartacus....
I, Robot is on the TV right now. I have absolutely no idea how good this movie is. I keep asking people who have seen it and they invariably reply with a noncommittal shrug. IMDB reinforces that it's OK, but not great. Anybody feel like weighing in?...
The subject line in this post is courtesy of one of my roommates. The Program is on the TV right now. Oddly, this is not a selection plucked from the local DVD collection, but has instead been lovingly imported for consumption herein. The film is apparantely about football, although there's...
Spaceballs is (or was, a bit ago) on the TV. Spaceballs is, in my opinion, the best of Mel Brooks' movies (that I've seen). It's better than Blazing Saddles and barely beats out History of the World: Part I and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. I haven't seen Young Frankenstein...
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is on the TV right now. I really disliked this film. A lot. It isn't all that bad if considered a standalone film (correction: yes it is), but unfortunately it's part of the Terminator: franchise, and that makes me expect a lot more from...
The making of House of the Dead (the film, not the game) is on the TV right now. Actually, "The Making of the House of the Dead: the film" is on the House of the Dead 2 game disc. Confusing. Honestly, the only reason I even walked out into the...
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is on the TV right now. You know, the colon has to be the single most overused piece of punctuation in titles of any sort. Commas get an occasional mention and exclamation points seem to make their way into anything...
Akira is on right now. Engaging and well-executed. No complaints....
Resident Evil: Apocalypse. I have no idea what this film is about or if it's any good, but a 5.6 on IMDB can't be all that great. They've traded the rarely targeted "Males, 18-35" demographic for the uberlucrative whiny women under 18 market. That would explain why the DVD came...
What's on? Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Season 4....
Right now, Ken is playing Outrun 2....
I'm starting a new category entry called, ... it should be obvious by now. Anyway, the idea here is that anytime I see anything being watched (or not, I suppose) or played on the TV, I'll go ahead and throw it on here. People at whom I bitch regularly know...
