Fall 2005 Season Premiere Wrap-Up Part I

Prison Break: A unique premise, but just a little too far-fetched for me and Michael was just too smug and confident in his ridiculous plan to break himself and his brother out of prison. What’s up with placing him in the same prison as his brother anyway? They seem to conveniently have different last names, but come on, the justice system has to know these things. I stopped watching after Michael revealed that he had the plans of the prison TATTOOED on himself. Besides, depending on how long this show goes on, they’re not going to succeed in breaking out anytime soon…what a tease.

The OC: I used to completely loathe Marissa and wondered what the heck Ryan saw in her, but I think I get it now. Sometime last season she stopped being annoying and started being really good at being the supportive girlfriend. So yeah, keep Ryan and Marissa together. And Josh Schwartz has already said that Seth and Summer won’t be having stupid problems this season either. So that’s all good. But what is up with the introduction of all these new evil characters? I guess they got rid of Trey and Caleb so they need characters to replace them, but all these evil people in Newport are getting kind of tiring. Isn’t Julie Cooper enough?

Reunion: Cheesy and not terribly well acted, but I’m adding this to my list. I loved the concept when I first heard about it, especially when they said that if it’s renewed they’re going to start over with a completely new cast (which is what I had wanted FOX to do with 24 after the first season, but now of course I can’t imagine 24 without Jack Bauer and CTU). The eighties look of the first episode was kind of overdone but still funny and they did a good job of making Chyler Leigh look 18 and then 38. And man, Carla’s dad was the dad on My So-Called Life! Anyway, it was kind of unfortunate that the second episode was pre-empted by a presidential address so it kind of lost its early-premiere momentum, but I think that OC viewers will be pretty likely to stay with FOX and keep watching.

Threshold: One of the many sci-fi shows premiering this season, thanks to the success of Lost. It’s funny, I was complaining about the lack of sci-fi last year but I haven’t really been energized by any of these offerings. Sure, Threshold is about government agents and aliens, sort of like the X-files, but it just doesn’t have the right feel for me. I’ve never been into the slick CSI-type dramas and that’s exactly what this feels like. I got bored about halfway into the two-hour premiere.

Gilmore Girls: This show obviously gets its own posts…see below.

Supernatural: All I have to say is that WHY did they name the Jensen Ackles character Dean? This is on after Gilmore Girls and everyone knows that Jared Padalecki is Dean! Sigh. The WB has been trying really hard to make those two dudes stars and I think they finally will be, but I got bored of this one too. I may give it another try...we’ll see.

Bones: It's nice to see David Boreanaz back on TV and he's pretty good in this, but the main character, Temperance, isn't very sympathetic. Plus they seem to use really inappropriate background music. "Collide" by Howie Day in a scene where Temperance is reconstructing a skull? What the heck? This is in the same timeslot as Gilmore Girls, though, so watching it will probably take too much effort so uh, no.

House: I was always forgetting to watch this show last season, and I thought I would try to watch more regularly this season, but truthfully that’s not going to happen. I like the characters a lot but I’ve never been a fan of medical shows in general and it’s just getting to be too much. I’ll probably watch reruns next summer.

Arrested Development: Support this show! It’s always been quirky and crazy and out of left field and I LOVE IT. It's kind of hard to describe, so just give it a chance and watch!

How I Met Your Mother: Cute, but I probably won't get to watch it regularly. Neil Patrick Harris is awesome...when did he become such a great comic actor?

Kitchen Confidential: Loved this! There are so many old favorites in the cast...Bradley Cooper (Will from Alias), Nicholas Brendon (Xander from Buffy), John Francis Daley (Sam from Freaks and Geeks), and John Cho (though apparently he's only in the premiere), among others. I don't know anything about the actual chef and book this is based on (Anthony Bourdain), but it was really fun and it's a unique workplace to make a TV show about, rather than the standard hospitals and police units and law firms. Will likely be watching this on Mondays since it's on after Arrested Development.

Stayed tuned for Part II next week!

what I hate about Gilmore Girls

I hate that I've been waiting for years for Luke and Lorelai to get together but at the same time that happened I started despising Rory with a passion.

I hate that Logan is ridiculously hot but he's with Rory, who doesn't deserve him.

I hate that I've been progressively been getting more and more annoyed with the Stars Hollow townspeople but whenever they're not in an episode that just means there's more Rory.

I hate that they tried to make Rory a little more human by having someone tell her that she's not perfect and she totally overreacts and drops out of school but now she's just back to being perfect at everything she does. When it turned out that she had won over her fellow community-service trash people I wanted to barf. It's like when Joey won over the bikers at the tough bar by singing. Never mind her fitting in perfectly at the DAR and getting along perfectly with the senior citizens.

So yeah, in a nutshell, I HATE RORY.

covers

I really enjoy cover songs...it's funny how different interpretations of the same song can be. (I still contend that the New Found Glory version of The Glory of Love is still ten times better than the original.) For fans of covers, there's a podcast called Coverville that puts together an amazing collection of interesting cover songs for three (yes, count 'em, THREE) shows a week. Check it out if you ever want to listen to something different.

Anyway, the reason for this post is that yesterday I was sitting in Barnes and Noble reading and the song that was playing caught my attention. They had been playing a CD of what sounded like Frank Sinatra type classics, like "Come Fly With Me," and this song had the same style and sound but something about it was just off. I started listening more closely and realized that it was actually a very bizarre cover of Maroon 5's "This Love"! Who the heck was singing it? I thought it might be Michael Bublé but I looked it up online this morning, and it's not. Who did then, you ask?

JOHN STEVENS! That skinny kid from American Idol third season! B&N was playing his entire album, and I have to say that I thought the vocals were really pretty good. Very pleasant background music for a bookstore, definitely. I'm not really sure what's the point of covering Sinatra songs in the exact same style as the originals but I thought the Maroon 5 song was a great choice to make the album more interesting. I wonder how well it's selling though...

Top 5 actresses I avoid

Before you start thinking that these Friday posts are going to become the only posts on this blog...there are some big fat season premiere wrap-up posts coming up next week. So look for those!

Anyway, this week's topic is actresses whose movies I avoid. I can't really explain why I don't like them but I will instinctively not want to see any movie that they're in regardless of other actors in it, critical acclaim, or well, anything.

1. Jessica Biel
2. Cameron Diaz
3. Kate Hudson
4. Charlize Theron
5. Dakota Fanning

Anyone see any patterns? A lot of them are blond I suppose, but I like Reese Witherspoon and Gwyneth Paltrow and they're both blond too though...

top 5 movies I'm looking forward to this fall

(in order of release date)

1. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (9/23)
2. Serenity (9/30)
3. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (10/7)
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (11/18)
5. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (12/9)

I used to be pretty into the whole indie movie scene but now apparently I'm only watching mainstream fantasy movies...anyone have any recommendations for me?

Bloc Party @ the Electric Factory

My first concert in Philly and the first concert Mira and I have been to together! The night started off with an unexpected ordeal: I had bought a ticket a few weeks ago, but Mira had been expecting to get a ticket at the door or buy one off someone who had extras. But when we got to the venue, the show was sold out! And then when we came back looking for people with extra tickets we were greeted by scalpers who were asking for $60 a ticket (originally $33.55 including service charges from Ticketmaster). So we held out for awhile hoping that people with extra tickets would show up and ask for a more reasonable price, and also contemplating whether I should just sell my ticket for a profit instead. Eventually someone came along asking for $35 so we jumped on it and ended up making it into the concert after all! The lesson: don't count on tickets being available on the day of show!

Anyway, once inside, the famed Electric Factory did live up to my expectations. It's a classic standing-room only venue, with the second floor balcony and bar area over-21-only. We got seats there after the first opener and had a really good view of the stage without having to deal with the crazy dancers on the main floor. There were some very bizarre scenes flashing on some screens on the wall in between sets though...

The two openers, the Noisettes and the Kills, were both very strange British bands...it wasn't so much their music as the actual band members and their performances. The Noisettes consisted of two guys with crazy hair and a girl wearing a gladiator helmet dancing around barefoot on the stage, and the Kills were a guy and girl both wearing very tight jeans with no drummer. Both groups kind of had a lot of theatrics during their performances which were amusing to watch, though, and I thought a lot of the music was actually pretty good.

Then Bloc Party came on. And they were awesome! The band members seemed like they were really nice down-to-earth guys and they looked like they were having a lot of fun. I think they played most if not all of their album Silent Alarm along with a couple of new ones. Their music has a lot of energy and great guitar riffs and they just seem interested in making good rock music for the fans, not making a statement or doing anything too new or experimental. And in live performance the energy level only increases. They did two encores and the lead singer threw in the opening to the Fresh Prince theme song in one of the songs (as a tribute to the Philly crowd?) which was really funny. I'm really glad that we made it into the show after all. Yay Bloc Party!

Mira: Seriously, my input is long overdue, but I just wanted to say, yay for finally getting to a concert with Jenn! I think that Jenn summed up pretty much all the important points concerning the concert. I didn't know any of these bands before I went, and I probably will not get to know the openers any much more either. But Bloc Party was seriously awesome. And the concert as a whole was really great. The Electric Factory is a perfect small-sized, but not-soooo-small venue to go watch concerts. Yay, for Bloc Party -- and I am officially obsessed with "This Modern Love."

my Top 5 most played songs in iTunes

I can't really explain this list...these aren't really my favorite songs of all time but for some reason they get an awful lot of play in my iTunes.

1. Jimmy Eat World - 23
2. Yellowcard - Only One
3. Modest Mouse - Float On
4. Guster - Two Points for Honesty
5. Jimmy Eat World - Kill

red eye

Perhaps I just have a huge crush on Rachel McAdams because of the fact that I've heard she plays Ultimate Frisbee. Or maybe she's just really hot. Well, she's hot, but yeah I think it's the Ultimate Frisbee. In any case, it was nice to FINALLY see her in a role where she's not playing a cheater (The Notebook, Mean Girls, Wedding Crashers).

I enjoyed Red Eye. But I went in only expecting face value of an action-thriller. Cillian Whatshisface is really creepy. I feel like he's typecasted for creepy roles for life. First Batman Begins, now this. But he's good at it, seriously. Between his girly lips and his eyes -- his crazy pale blue eyes. There's something very disconcerting about him.

Anyway, I have been enjoying the versatility of Rachel McAdam's roles. Playing Queen-Bee-Bitch, playing cute-and-spontaneous-blonde, playing tragically-in-love-auburn-haired, and now playing strong-extremely-put-together-asskicking-brunette-ish-haired. And I love that she promotes Ultimate Frisbee. :-)

Friday Top 5

I think we need to breathe a little new life into this blog, so I'm going to institute a weekly top 5 list. Topics will be basically whatever I feel like, but if you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave them in a comment. Now onto the first Friday top 5!

Top 5 John Cusack Movies

1. Say Anything(Lloyd Dobler, enough said)
   
2. High Fidelity (the inspiration for this list actually)
   
3. Serendipity
   
4. Grosse Pointe Blank
   
5. Anastasia (haha, perhaps this shouldn't count, but he provided the voice for Dimitri, the hottest animated character ever)
   

green day & jew!

Seriously? Two words: LOVE IT! It's funny, with each concert I go to, I learn more and more what I'm looking for in watching live performances.

The first concert I went to this summer: Keane-Killers. That was a good concert because I love both bands and all the songs they sing. And I mean there was something nice about seeing them live -- the Keane lead singer has an absolutely beautiful voice, Brandon Flowers (who unfortunately, now married) and the Killers sound a lot "raw"-er live. But truthfully? I could happily listen to the Keane CD day after day and re-realize the beauty of his voice. And the Killers, actually, I prefer their music videos more so than anything else. You can totally see their Vegas roots in their videos, especially "Mr. Brightside." In any case, I had great "seats" (the pit in front of the stage, like 3 people away from the stage), great company, and it was great music.

But musical performance? Nothing compared to that of Modest Mouse. It was at this concert where I was really reminded the impressiveness of great MUSICIANS. Now the Modest Mouse folks can really rock the stage -- no joke. As I've described in my previous post, they absolutely put on a fantastic show. With so many musical components, so many musical elements, it really is an incredible experience watching them perform.

This all leads me to my latest concert. Billie Joe seriously has the BEST stage presence of any of the performers I've ever seen. He grabs the crowd's allegiance so early on and keeps it throughout the night. TWO HOURS I got to see them perform -- TWO HOURS! He used "call-and-answer" techniques to keep the crowd involved in the performance ("waaaaaay-oh!"), he talked about his songs before performing them ("this is a big F-U to all the politicians out there, a little song called Holiday"), he "created" a band (brought 3 members of the audience on-stage to perform on GREEN DAY's instruments -- a frat boy on the drums, some teenager on the bass, and a 13 year-old on his guitar! gave the 13 year-old a hard time --"have you ever been laid? well you will after tonight!"--"where you from?" "virginia" "oh, i'm sorry to hear that... virginia is for looooooovers"-- then gave the kid his guitar!!), he sprayed water at the crowd through a water gun attached to a hose (and invited an 8 year old kid to assist him), he was just all out awesome! They performed all the big ones off of American Idiot, of course, and some of the great oldies: "Basketcase," "She," "Longview," and at the very end -- "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)." In any case, that was an AMAZING concert.

Oh, I feel like I should make a mention of Jimmy Eat World. They were pretty awesome but it's tough being an opener for Green Day. They performed two of my favorite songs by them -- "Praise Chorus" and "Sweetness" -- so I was pretty happy.

In any case, it's been a great summer of concerts. (Yeah all THREE, hahaha!) Especially since I came out of each concert feeling like it was the BEST concert I had ever seen until then. And seriously, this time around I really feel that. I worry that my next concerts will only pale in comparison. Billie Joe, you were fantastic. And I feel bad not having talked more about Tre Cool and the rest of the ensemble, because they were fantastic performers as well and equally as entertaining, but Billie Joe totally stole the show.

LOVE IT!