DVDS
THEN SHE FOUND ME (1.5 SPUDS)
MEET BILL (1 SPUDS)
TV
KNIGHT RIDER (2 Spuds)
KNOW YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks
Ahhh. Now this is my time of year. The days are sunny but cool. The nights are breezy and even cooler. You can feel the seasons change. The baseball pennant races are heating up. The US is getting ready for yet another shellacking in the Ryder Cup which starts this week. The NFL is in full swing and so far it looks like it going to be one hell of a season. Even business is coming out of its summer doldrums and starting to warm up. Life is good. Riding the Spudcycle down to ye olde movie shoppe is more a pleasure than a sweaty workout. Now all that has to happen is the arrival of some decent movies. And I’m afraid there will be time to watch them, this season as last year’s writer’s strike has really retarded the development of a number of the new series for this season. Oh well, there’s always the Discovery Channel and National Geographic. Lots of good stuff on there, especially if you want to get really familiar with the world of big time construction projects. And I think I’m busy when I have a couple of web sites to do.
The new season on network television was severely impacted by the writer’s strike earlier this year, so a lot of the shows that were normally scheduled to appear in the fall, and relieve us TV viewers of the interminable boredom of late summer viewing, will be trickling in this year, instead of launching in a big bunch.
That is, believe it or not, a good thing because even though I’m PVR’d up the wazoo, some nights, especially Monday and Tuesday are packed with great returning show and new ones. What I usually do is watch the favourites and record the newbies, just in case they really don’t live up to their hype. Especially the advance reviews of anyone working for media who depend on the networks for advertising revenue. Because as shocking as this may seem, they will actually bullshit you about the quality of the programs they are reviewing just to keep their advertisers happy. What a world, eh?
So far only a couple of new shows have popped up on the horizon. With a couple more scheduled each week from here on out till November.
KNIGHT RIDER (2 SPUDS)
PEDIGREE: Dave Hasselhoff has been famous for a long time. But he got his start more than 25 years back on a series called Knight Rider which was about an advanced automobile with a brain and more gizmos than a James Bond Aston Martin. The Hoff’s Michael Knight was one of the coolest characters on TV back then and he instantly became pretty much of a TV idol. This season, Knight Rider’s original producer Glenn Larson has brought the show back in collaboration with Gary Scott Thompson (Las Vegas), so you can be sure that this series, if nothing else will be slick and exciting.
IN A NUTSHELL: This scientist has developed a new version of the famous Kitt car (voiced by Val Kilmer). But the (as yet to be identified) bad guys are doing their best to steal it. In the meantime the mantle of driver has been passed from the Hoff to the offspring of the Hoff, Justin Bruening, who will probably elevate himself to the same Hoff-Idol status, but hopefully won’t spend the latter part of his career judging cheesy talent shows. The show has a solid cast, including Deana Russo, who is one of the best looking TV babes out there, along with Evangeline Lilly and a few others.
FEARLESS FORECAST: TV needs shows like this that are pure escapist. That’s why a show like Chuck did so well last season. The 2 hour pilot was a lot of fun with great chase scenes and even a little character development thrown in for good measure. I’ll be a fan for as long as it lasts and if they play their cards right, they could last a long time.
SPUDITORIAL — DEADCOMS ARE STILL ALIVE AND WELL
Television is a strange monster in the corner of our living rooms, bedrooms, family rooms, dens and kitchens. The people who run television have always believed that you can get a certain number of people to watch just about anything. And that may be true, but what they can’t get us to do is to keep coming back to watch crap over and over again. If they could do that, their job would be dead easy. And don’t think for a minute that they wouldn’t paper the airways from end to end with it. I mean, quality, like anything else, costs money. And there’s no guarantee that even a quality show will succeed. I mean look at all the great shows that have not been able to find an audience over the years. Men in Trees, most recently, Byrds of Paradise,Heist, Murder One the list is endless.
But hey, there’s no use crying over spilt milk, right? Well maybe there is. Because I think there’s a whole lot more at play here. Most of the crappy shows that make it to TV in the first place aren’t always there because the executives who green light the development of these shows are idiots, although that is an arguable point. Most of the shows are there because somebody owes somebody a favour. It happens in every business. In my business, at any given time, I owe someone or am owed by someone at least a dozen favours. Same in the TV business. Unfortunately for the TV business is that the results of these favours turn into TV shows that some of us end up watching and shaking our heads over, wondering how they could put crap on the air that’s that bad.
This question, at least for me, arises most when I watch a new sitcom. I caught a couple of them this week and I have to say that these were both pretty awful.
The first one was called Do Not Disturb, and it was set in a ritzy New York Hotel. It stars Jerry O’Connell (Scent of a Woman) and a bunch of other people I’d never really seen before. It was simply abysmal. It had the energy level of a two-toed sloth on a hot afternoon. But most of all, it just wasn’t funny. However, you might have thought differently if you were a brain dead idiot, conditioned to laughing when the canned laughter kicked in. But you might soon find yourself going crazy wondering just what the hell you were laughing at. This show was so bad that I think the favour called in to get it on the air may have bordered on blackmail.
The second show in our little excursion to hell is called Worst Week. This show didn’t have any laughs either, canned or otherwise. By reason of the title you could assume that this was going to be a comedy of errors. And it is…about a guy and a girl who are engaged, but she is pregnant, and they are arduously making their way to informing the girl’s parents. The trouble with these kinds of shows (ie comedies with no laugh track) is that even the brain dead aren’t quite sure where to laugh and when that happens the only other options you have are switching it off or going to sleep. Take your pick.
There have been a lot of shows that have tried to be comedies without laugh tracks, and, in my opinion, the only two that have ever really succeeded are Sports Night and Sex In The City. But that’s because they weren’t trying to be comedies. They were just trying to tell a story in the best way they knew how.
But I’ll tell you. I will take an unassisted half hour that makes me chuckle without insulting my intelligence over a dumbed-down laugh-track assisted piece of crap any day of the week.
I can remember a time when there were at least half a dozen good sitcoms on every week. Frasier, Cheers, Home Improvement, Taxi, Sienfeld. There was actually a choice. Now all we have is Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory. After that it’s just a dog’s breakfast.
DVDS
THEN SHE FOUND ME
This is the directorial debut of actress Helen Hunt, who I have always thought of as a pretty good actress…as a director, not so much. First of all, she needs to know that appearing on camera without the benefit of make-up of any kind or decent lighting is something she, or any other actress for that matter, should never do. I hate to say this but she looked downright hideous in some of the early scenes of the film. Also
this script was all about Jewish people in New York and it was kind of dopey and uneven. This flick also stars Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler and Colin Firth and everybody does a good job with the material. But the movie had the look of a $1.98 Made for TV flick and that made it kinds of hard to watch.
I think Helen Hunt may have some talent as a director, but I feel like I just contributed 6 bucks to subsidize her learning curve and that kinda pisses me off.
MEET BILL
This is some sort of indie flick starring Aaron Eckhart and Jessica Alba, and is probably even dopier than the Helen Hunt flick. In it Aaron plays this whipped arsehole who decides to take his life into his own hands and stop being whipped. This log line for this movie is ‘a comedy about someone you know.’
Poor pitiful me…I guess I just don’t know any assholes on this magnitude. In spite of being pretty dopey and not really going anywhere, it was much better photographed than the Helen Hunt flick.
I really have to stop taking chances on these weird little movies. There’s something wrong with my hunch playing mechanism these days. It’s been a long time since I brought home a good flick on video.
