Killing Your Sacred Cows since 1992

Found via popfiend , this video is pretty funny: what if Facebook interactions happened in real life?

Bonus: Captions for the hard of hearing

I was talking about the show "Little Britain" with J. last night and saying we hadn't watched an episode in a while. He said he had to be the mood for it, because it was so...

"Infantile?" I asked.

"Yeah, it's funny, but some of the characters are so annoying," he said.

"It's kind of like People of Walmart, only with British folks," I said.

And, it's got Tom Baker (aka the Fourth Doctor Who) doing the loopiest narration ever...

I'm amused at the mix of highbrow and lowbrow stuff to which I gave the thumbs up in my video posts: from Brokeback Mountain to Sledge Hammer!

I was going through my Netflix record to help me remember what I watched all year, but we also pick up some videos from the library. So, here are three more shows I enjoyed in 2009:

Alias Season 1: On the scale of 1-5 stars, it's more of a 3-star show, but still enjoyable. I tend to like shows with strong female protagonists.

That 70s Show Season 4: This is a pretty good season, though I think 2 & 3 were probably the best.

Spaced Season 1: I'm a Simon Pegg fan, so it was a pretty sure bet, but I really like the entire ensemble of actors- they have good chemistry and the writing is really fun.

What I watched & loved or hated in 2009, part 3:

July
TV Shows

LOVED The Flight of the Conchords Season 1. My mother, of all people, recommended this to us. A crazy comedy-musical duo from New Zealand try to make it in America while dodging their one rabid fangirl. Also loving Psych Season 3.

HATED: None.

Enjoyable: Ben Franklin (PBS documentary from 2002), Doctor Who Season 4, The Mighty Boosh Season 1, BSG Season 4.5, Sledge Hammer! Season 1, The I.T. Crowd Season 2, Tripping the Rift Season 3.

Movies

LOVED The Great Escape, the Steve McQueen wartime flick from 1963. Really a lot of fun, and very suspenseful, while also touching. 1963 must have been a great year for movies, because "Charade" (Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant) was also made in '63 and I loved this film.

HATED Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. The premise sounded interesting, but I just didn't care for this and turned it off after about half an hour. We'd also heard good things about "Death Note," but I found it just "meh."

Enjoyable: Watchmen, The Color of Magic, Coraline, My Name is Bruce.

August
TV Shows

LOVED In Living Color Season 2. Great season, great energy.

HATED: None.

Enjoyable: Smallville Season 8.

Movies

LOVED Slumdog Millionaire. Again, maybe an obvious choice since everyone else love it, too, but I really enjoyed this film.

HATED The Hound of the Baskervilles may be the only Sherlock Holmes film I've ever given less than a 3-star rating. Matt Frewer was badly-miscast as Holmes and chews the scenery. The movie is actually tolerable in the scenes where he's absent.

Enjoyable: Pygmalion, Finding Neverland, The Mists of Avalon, The Specials, 24 Hour Party People, Modify (documentary on body mod).

September
TV Shows

LOVED Dead Like Me Season 1. OK, this is an exaggeration. I found this show to be OK, but I love Mandy Patinkin.

HATED: None.

Enjoyable: Nothing new this month other than "Dead" mentioned above.

Movies

LOVED Bamboozled. I'm a Spike Lee fan, and this was a good one.

HATED Van Helsing. Easy to pick on, I know. It was so bad that J. apparently shut it out of his mind. About 2 weeks later, he mentioned that we hadn't watched this movie, and I made him re-watch part of it to remind him that we had, indeed, watched this stinker.

Enjoyable: Dhoom 2, Wet Hot American Summer, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, The Departed, Lathe of Heaven (2002, though I think the earlier one was better), The Iron Giant, Dead Again. (Edited to add: Also enjoyed "Up" at the second run theater.)

It's been a long time since I did a "What I've been watching" post, and I thought it'd be fun to look back at what I loved and hated on video in 2009. This is going to get long, so I'll break it up into a few different posts.

January
TV shows:

LOVED "Frisky Dingo" Season 1. This show is so wrong and so fun.

HATED Mutant X Season 1. Worst sci-fi show I've seen in a long time. We compare everything else to this now, as in, "Well, it wasn't as bad as Mutant X."

Enjoyable: BSG Season 4, Numb3rs Season 2, Monk Season 3, Doctor Who Season 2, Little Britain Series 1, Jeremiah Season 2.

Movies:
LOVED "Futurama: Bender's Dream." Actually, we've been loving all the stand-alone feature Futurama movies.

HATED: Nothing, really, though several movies were kind of "meh."

Enjoyable: King Solomon's Mines (1950), Repo! The Genetic Opera, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Legends of the Fall (a guilty pleasure rather than an outstanding movie).

February
TV Shows

LOVED Kids in the Hall Season 4. The kids were really on this season.

HATED Earth 2. Man this was a piece of crap! Runner-up is Galactica 1980. Also a piece of crap.

Enjoyable: South Park Season 9, Smallville Season 7, The Monkees Season 1, Frisky Dingo Season 2, Doctor Who Season 3, Heroes Season 3.

Movies

LOVED Juno. It got a lot of press and awards, so this is a pretty obvious choice, but I really did like it. Runner-up, the film "Birdy" which I reviewed here.

HATED Event Horizon. J. made me watch this again, even though it sucked the first time I saw it.

Enjoyable: The Count of Monte Cristo (2002), The Brother from Another Planet, Velvet Goldmine, Fierce Creatures, Dangerous Liaisons (1988), Domino.

March
TV Shows

LOVED Numb3rs Season 3. I love both the science and the relationships. Runner-up: X-Men Evolution Season 3. This is the best of the cartoon X-men interpretations, in my opinion.

HATED none, but Ren & Stimpy: The Lost Episodes was disappointing. It's mostly an excuse to inject more boobs and booze into the Ren & Stimpy universe.

Enjoyable: The Kids in the Hall Season 5.

Movies

LOVED The Bucket List. Another obvious choice, but I never claimed I wasn't sentimental!

HATED the Woody Allen movie Celebrity. I hated every character introduced in the first 10 minutes, so I never finished it.

Enjoyable: Return to Oz, Scotland PA, Sherlock: Case of Evil, True Believer, A Passage to India.

J. and I watched "The Monkees a la Mode" last night, and I think we've discovered the Ugliest Shirt in the Universe. The plot revolves around them being featured in "Chic" magazine and the staff trying to do a makeover on the boys. As you can see in this clip, they put Davey in a gawd-awful shirt in green, blue, white and yellow geometric panes. What you might not be able to see from the clip is that the shirt is also hairy.

*shudder*

Movies-

The Librarian: Return to King Solomon's Mines. I thought the premise of the first movie, "The Librarian: The Spear of Destiny" was funny enough that I enjoyed it. The writing in the sequel was a little more cliche, and I thought the special effects were super-cheesy. Worth one watching, but not a classic by any means.

Steal This Movie. I loved this movie, a biopic about Abby Hoffman. Sad, though.

The Butterfly Effect: Director's Cut. Sure, Ashton Kutcher can only really play one character, a sort of spaced-out duuuuude, but I don't think this movie deserves all the rotten tomatoes people threw at it. For a time travel movie, I thought it was OK. And no Hollywood happy ending, either, which was refreshing.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Highly amusing again, but I'm a Kevin Smith fan.

Brick. A teenage film noir. J. got bored with it and walked away about 1/3 in, but I liked it. The special features showed clips from the original version shown at Cannes and I think the edited ending works much better, actually. It is a tad slow, but it worked for me.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Yes, it's an animated film based on a videogame, but the visuals and universe are kind of interesting. Magic: The Gathering fans will know what I mean when I say if feels a bit like "Mirrodin vs. Kamigawa".

Four Rooms. This movie is four stories by four different directors, sort of held together by the premise that they're all happening in the same hotel, and Ted the Bellboy is in all of them. I think the movie, overall, is only a B- but I LOVE the Robert Rodriguez section of the film. It never ceases to make me laugh hysterically, even though this is my third viewing.

The Darwin Awards. Better than I expected, though fairly fluffy. It's got David Arquette in it, which automatically makes a movie suspect in my eyes. But he does play a dumb redneck minor character, so the casting was appropriate, I guess. Joe Fiennes' former detective character teams up with Winona Ryder's insurance adjuster character to investigate really stupid accidents to see if they can find a set of characteristics by which they can profile extraordinarily stupid and risky policy holders (i.e. nominees for the "Darwin Awards").

TV on DVD-

Buffy Season 4. Still highly enjoyable. It lead J. to want to check out...

Angel Season 1. It's OK, but not as good as Buffy. Angel is Mr. Emo boy, so he was never my favorite character. He does get some good lines in the show, though. At one point, he's being tortured, and his torturer mentions that his ex-girlfriend Buffy looks cute when she's scared. "She's even cuter when she's kicking your ass," Angel says.

Smallville Season 4. I felt the first couple episodes were a little repetitive of themes from earlier seasons (Chloe is jealous! Clark's Dad doesn't want him to play football! Clark just wants to be a "normal" boy!). But the development of Lex continues to be interesting, and the development of Lana Lang's character even more so! Yum.

Red Dwarf Season 6. Still hilarious. Kind of a downer season in some ways since they've lost and are unable to find Red Dwarf and are traveling in their smaller "Star Bug," but still highly amusing.

Monk Season 1. J. got this as a gift, and we're really enjoying it. We love Tony Shaloub, and it's got sort of an updated Sherlock Holmes (whom I also love) feel to it, but funnier.

Numb3rs Season 1. I got this with birthday money. So far, have just watched the first episode, but it's stylish and smart, and I think I'm going to like it. I was made aware of it by a positive review in my Skeptical Inquirer Magazine, so I can be assured there isn't going to be any pseudoscience in it to piss me off.

TV shows on DVD
Buffy Season 2: Darker and even better than the fun-but-uneven Season 1.

Smallville Season 1: It's fun, but I'm not exactly "sold" on the series. I think J. likes it better than I do. Pretty young people with problems...

Ren & Stimpy Season 3: We love this series and own the DVDS of Seasons 1 & 2, but it was good to catch Season 3 via Netflix. Some of these are classics, such as "Ren's Pectoral Implants," while others highlight that the show sometimes just goes for the gross-out without being all that funny, like the "hog jowls" episode. Ick!

Roast of William Shatner '06: I'd seen this before, but watched it again with J. A lot of the lesser-known comics went for the obvious aging/fat/gay/racial jokes, roasting all their co-stars as well as the Shat-man. I think George Takei and Nichelle Nichols were some of the most fun and least run-of-the-mill in their remarks. And Andy Dick was an alien, as per usual.

Movies on DVD

Equilibrium: With apologies to effy, I thought this was a stinker. The whole premise didn't make any sense, as you can't have humans with NO emotion at all. Adrenaline rush? Ambition? Those are emotional states as well as love, sadness, and so on. It was so campy that I laughed during parts that were supposed to be serious. The upside? Christian Bale looked hot, hot, hot in that facisct suit-tailoring.

Killing them Softly: Dave Chapelle Concert movie. Somewhat uneven, but mostly very funny. If you like Dave you'll like this. If you don't, it probably won't change your mind.

Capote: Seymour Hoffman did a wonderful job as Capote. I had read "In Cold Blood" last year, so it was fun to see the back story behind this. I'm fascinated that he grew up next door to Harper Lee, of "To Kill a Mockingbird" fame.

"Watch Now!"

A nice netflix feature is being able to watch certain films for no extra charge if you download them and watch them on your computer. Since J. was able to hook up the laptop to our projector, we can watch these for free on our big screen. We've been watching episodes of "Jeremiah" from Season 2 and while it's dark and depressing, it's also quite good.

Also via the "Watch Now" option, we've recently seen these:

Who the @#$%! is Jackson Pollock?: Documentary about a working class truck-driving tough lady who buys a painting for $5 at a rummage sale and then spends tons of money and time trying to prove whether it's a Pollock painting worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was rooting for her and against The Man. We actually got interrupted and missed the last 15 minutes of this, so I'm going to have to go back and watch it.

Red Dwarf Season 1: I'd seen an episode here and there before and have friends who are big fans, but I'm getting hooked now. I find it highly, highly amusing.

Joe Rogan Live: Hate the show "Fear Factor"? Me, too, from what little I've seen of it, but I still thought his stand-up act was great. Some bits were better than others, but he does actually slag on "Fear Factor" a lot and his observations about love, racial epithets, and other matters are fresh and spot-on. I was pre-disposed to give him a chance because I loved his evil, manipulative electrical engineer character on News Radio.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (the movie). I watched this years ago when it first came out on VHS, but hadn't seen it since then. Recently, J. picked it up at the library, and we enjoyed the heck out of it all over again. Luke Perry can even kinda-sorta act. The TV show definitely takes liberties with some of the "rules" of the story's universe that were set up in the movie. In the movie, she can sense vampires and gets cramped up when they're nearby. In the TV show, they make a nod to her being able to sense vampires in the pilot, but later they contradict it when she walks right past a vampire or two without even noticing.

"Catwoman". The general consensus on this was, "It wasn't as bad as I was expecting!" It had such horrible press that I was really expecting it to stink worse than it did. Sure, it was bad, but the cat suit was fun, and I liked some of the mythos set-up. Of course, it also seemed like someone was trying to sex up the "crazy cat lady" archetype, which... just... *shudder*. Even Berry called it "A piece of shit" when she accepted a Razzie award for it.

Castaway. I never watched this until this weekend because I thought an hour and a half movie about a man being stranded alone on an island for four years would be boring. I liked it a lot better than I expected to. The "message" about slowing down and appreciating what you have seemed over-obvious, but I did think the dynamic between him and his fiancee and the psychology of his behavior on the island was spot on. Overall, I thought it was well done.

The 13th Warrior. I watched this once before about four years ago and remembered liking it, so we rented it again and showed it to my Mom. She doesn't usually like gory movies and was tired but stayed awake through the whole thing and enjoyed it. It *shouldn't* work as a movie. It's got about 2 minutes of set up, about 2 minutes of denoument, and the middle is a gorefest of Vikings vs. Goddess worshipping cannibals. But I do like it. My favorite scene is where Antonio Banderas' Arabic character reveals that he's learned the Northmen's language merely by listening carefully. Good stuff. Fluff, but cinematically gorgeous fluff.

Other entertainments:
-We listened to "America" by John Stuart as a book on CD on our Memorial Day trip. I'm not counting it toward my 50 books in 2007 because it was extremely abridged. However, it was a great artifact in and of itself. To begin with, it's 3 disks, with Disc One being red, Disc Two white, and Disc Three Blue. He does most of the reading, but there are other voice actors doing "supplemental material," including Rob Corddry and Stephen Colbert. Some of it was just grin-worthy, but other bits were laugh-out-loud. I think Stuart is better heard than read; we have a copy of his "Naked pictures of Famous People" and it's just kind of "eh". I don't think his humor comes across as well in writing.
-We've been watching Season Two of "News Radio" and listening to the actors' commentary tracks on several episodes. David Foley was asked to compare the cast with working on Kids in the Hall. He indicated that "Kids" was less fun because there was a sense of cut-throat competition. That's too bad, because "Kids" was freaking brilliant. Apparently, though, Phil Hartman was known to have made similar unfavorable comparisons between "News Radio" and SNL. I get the idea that actors feel they have to compete for air time more on sketch comedy shows than they do on an ensemble sit-com.