KB: 360 (11.3.08)
TV
Two shows that have seen better days had significant rebounds this weekend.
I thought SNL had one of its best shows in recent memory. The opening with (the real) McCain and Sarah Palin on QVC was well-done. The “Palin 2012″ t-shirt was particularly funny. I snickered a few times at the Target lady sketch. “The View” has made for an easy target and SNL did it proud. But the sketch that had me rolling was Ben Affleck doing Keith Olbermann’s Countdown. Truly awesome. Best single sketch in years.
The other show was The Simpsons with its annual Treehouse of Horror. Spoofing It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Mad Men, and Transformers was good fun. See the full episode here. Not quite as good as the time they did “Monkey’s Paw“, but still a solid effort.
Jumping off a sinking ship? Two executive producers from Heroes leave the show due to “creative differences”.
King of the Hill, RIP.
Movies
Another part to the LA Times interview with Christopher Nolan. This time he chimes in about Heath Ledger and The Justice League.
Also from the LA Times, The Hobbit might be 3-D?
Sequel alert! Boondock Saints 2?
In other sequel news, Spider-Man 4 enlists the help of a Pulitzer-winning playwright. Maguire, Raimi, and Dunst are all back.
Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg are teaming-up for a 3-part Tintin movie. If you’re not familiar with the story, see here.
First trailer for the Da Vinci Code sequel (prequel?), Angels & Demons. Nice haircut, Tom.
Posted on November 3, 2008, in Pop Culture. Bookmark the permalink. 20 Comments.
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That’s not what I heard. I read that they were fired, which makes perfect sense. Apparently, this is being reported more than one way.
That does make sense. Though it’s probably too little too late to salvage the show’s direction.
hmmmm…
SNL was amazing. McCain showed why he’s the Maverick and Palin is second fiddle. I nearly died when he announced McCain Fine Gold and then Cindy was there to show it off.
Olbermann was also a classic. Word is that Keith visited the set during a closed dress rehearsal and made Ben uncomfortable.
Didn’t see the Simpsons and don’t watch Heroes…
I am fearful of The Hobbit. del Torro is not the right director and does not love the material. Though I don’t know who should direct it if Jackson won’t.
Finally, I’ll admit to having read both Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code. I have not seen the DaVinci movie. Angels and Demons is the better book, which isn’t saying much. The reason that DaVinci became so popular is that the “secret” is such a heresy that it got people excited.
I think Peter Jackson wrote the Hobbit scripts and is producing if that’s any consolation.
I’ve heard the same about Angels & Demons being better than Code. Code the movie was pretty meh, but I don’t think there was much you could do to make the movie that exciting. As you say, it was more about the premise, the mystery, the secret, than the actual plot.
The entire premise of A&D is record-shatteringly bad physics. I couldn’t read any more after learning what one rogue scientist or group had done “in secret” (which in actuality is the whole POINT of building an accelerator). He might as well have based it on someone in the 20th century discovering that the earth is spherical instead of flat. It’s that bad!
Hulu is pretty cool, and that Simpson’s ep was excellent. “You roast the unborn?!?” Lol!
I actually stayed up to watch SNL, something I haven’t done in years. It delivered, too. Even the final German coat sketch had me laughing, despite being perhaps the weakest one.
Keep these 360 posts coming!
I jumped ship off Heroes at the end of the first season. Lame.
This season isn’t much better. I’m about to give up. The writing is just bad. Rather than thinking about where they want to go and then trying to see how the characters personalities would go there they just arbitrarily make something happen without concern for the characters.
I have a couple on my DVR unwatched. Ditto with Fringe.
BTW – South Park was fantastic this week and last making up for that lame Indiana Jones episode. When Guinea Pigs rule the earth.
If you stopped reading Dan Brown every time you came to a preposterous and poorly-researched passage, you’d never make it through two consecutive pages.
I must confess that I also read A&D and DC. They were both awful. The writing is horrible and the plots have massive holes in them. The one thing that Brown has going for him is that they are very fast-paced and shamelessly exciting. He’s kind of like John Grisham on meth.
Both books use the exact same plot structure, to the point where if you’ve one, you know how the other one is going to end within about twenty pages or so. A&D is the less awful of the two, but it also has about three major plot twists at the end that are each more ludicrous than the one previous. It’s insanely ridiculous.
I didn’t see the first movie and don’t intend to see the next one.
Clark, I agree with you about Heroes, but vehemently disagree on Fringe. I think Fringe is moving along in a nice, linear fashion. It’s almost minimalist in the way it approaches the overarching storyline, unlike Heroes (bad example) and Lost (good example). I think it’s been really very consistent so far, and probably gotten better with every episode.
I’ll note that I have no intention of seeing A&D either. I just thought it was a better bad book. And yes, they both have exactly the same structure with alternating cliffhanger chapters and secret villains. I hope that didn’t spoil it for anyone.
SNL was pretty great, the McCain stuff was much more interesting than and of the Palin sketches when she was on.
Greg, come on. Here’s the plot of every Fringe episode. (1) Something weird happens (2) FBI investigates with crazy doctor (3) Agnst ensues (4) someone is in trouble (5) crazy doctor has a crazy theory that just might be able to find them (6) crazy idea works.
There is nothing that interesting about it beyond some slight curiosity about the weird guy with no eyebrows.
To add, the acting is good enough that I’m still watching but they have to improve the writing stat.
I’m still watching Heroes (though I missed last night’s episode) and am enjoying it.
Danithew, don’t worry, there wasn’t an episode last night.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Tim Kring, the man who gave us Teen Wolf Too and various episodes of Knight Rider, can right the ship. Personally, I think he deserves more of the blame than he’s getting, but I guess it’s hard to fire a show-runner mid-season.
Despite it’s difficulties (including last episode’s worst ratings ever), it’s still the most popular scripted show on NBC. It’s also very expensive to produce, though, so that doesn’t mean it has nothing to fear from crap like “Deal or No Deal.”
We’ll see. TV as a medium has been struggling, and every network show has pretty much been losing viewers for the last two years or so.
If you’re citing best Treehouse of Horror episodes, you’ve got to include Lisa’s reading of “The Raven”: http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Simpsons-The-Raven
(especially since we’ve just been treated to two other readings of the poem on this site)
Q: “You know what would have been scarier than ‘nothing’?”
A: “Anything!”
Word on the street now is that Kring is going to bring back Bryan Fuller, which is both good news for “Heroes” and bad news for “Pushing Daisies.” I wonder if that means Fuller has seen the writing on the wall concerning his own show. Frankly, I can’t imagine “Daisies” surviving long without Fuller’s vision.
On a related note, I’ve started watching “Wonderfalls” and recommend it to people who like quirky television. (I know a lot of people here have seen it already and I’m late to the bandwagon, but it really is good.)
I think Heroes is, at this point, a lost cause. They’ve written themselves into too many holes. It’s sort of akin to Alias at the end of the third season. No matter what happened that fourth season it was going to suck.
I’d much rather have Fuller stick with Pushing Daisies. But if that show is going down after 2.13 then have Fuller do something more interesting.
Pushing Daisies is going down? WTF!!!!
My wife and I just got hooked on the show over the summer and have enjoyed the season thus far. That’s too bad!
Now that I am out of the states and have to download TV shows from iTunes, I am much more judicious in what I watch (before, the only thing I would lose from a crummy show was space on the DVR and maybe 40 minutes). Sooo, after I watched the first two episodes of Heroes, I gave it up. It was awful…