Entertainment

This has not been the best of weeks for me, but it has been a good week in entertainment news...

Oldboy. A movie I have been waiting to see for years now... a Korean film called "Oldboy" finally has a US distributor! When I was last in Korea I looked for it, but it had left theaters there (having been released in 2003). It's a mystery/revenge thriller that won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and has critics falling all over themselves with praise (in fact, it's #93 on the IMDB 250 meme I did yesterday, and is assured of going higher on the list once more people have seen it). You can read about the movie and see a trailer over at FilmForce. The only down-side is that I will probably end up having to go to Seattle or L.A. to see it, unless it starts making Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon box office.

Veronica. E! Online's annual "Save One Show" television poll is over, and Veronica Mars devastated the competition with 56% of the vote! All while beating out popular favorites like The West Wing (less that 1%) and Arrested Development (9%)...

1. Veronica Mars (UPN) 56% — Highly recommended! My favorite show on TV now.
2. Arrested Development (Fox) 9% — Funniest show on TV. A must-see!
3. American Dreams (NBC) 7% — Looks cheesy. I don't watch it, and don't care.
4. Charmed (WB) 6% — Sad. Should have been cancelled when Doherty left.
5. Life as We Know It (ABC) 5.5% — Pale Freaks & Geeks and Popular imitation.
6. Tru Calling (Fox) 5% — A good show I was sad to see cancelled.
7. Enterprise (UPN) 3% — Boring and shitty. Wasted opportunity needed better writers.
8. Point Pleasant (Fox) 2.5% — Pathetic O.C. imitator.
9. Joan of Arcadia (CBS) 2% — Stuck in a rut. Stopped watching because Joan is a whiner.
10. North Shore (Fox) 1% — Yet another pathetic O.C. imitator.
11. Jack & Bobby (WB) 1% — Unlikable Lahti ruins this otherwise good show.
12. The West Wing (NBC) <1% — Still good, but slowly dying after Sorkin left.
13. Medical Investigation (NBC) <1% — Horribly, tragically, laughably bad.
14. Kevin Hill (UPN) <1% — Started great, then ended up being a one-note show.
15. The Wire (HBO) <1% — Excellent show HBO has already renewed.

Hartman. After being announced, then unannounced, scheduled, then unscheduled, Phil Hartman's final show News Radio is finally coming to DVD! One of my all-time favorite comedians, Hartman headed up an absolutely brilliant cast that included Dave Foley (Kids in the Hall), Stephen Root (Office Space), Andy Dick (Less Than Perfect), Maura Tierny (E.R.), Vicki Lewis (Celebrity Makeover), and Khandi Alexander (CSI: Miami). I stopped watching after Phil died, but every show until then was GOLD and will be a welcome addition to my DVD collection.

Renewal. NBC has already announced renewals for The West Wing, Crossing Jordan, Las Vegas, ER, and Joey. I stopped watching ER ages ago, never got into Crossing Jordan, and thought Joey sucked ass. That leaves me happy for Las Vegas a guilty pleasure which has four of the hottest ladies on television, and The West Wing which took a nose-dive after creator/writer Aaron Sorkin left, but has been rebounding with great new characters (the new National Security Advisor, "Kate Harper," is the best addition since "Ainsley Hays"). It will be interesting to see what happens when the show gets a new president.

Bullshit. Proving that it can't be all good news all the time, The Sci-Fi Channel has debuted what has to be one of the most embarrassingly bad concepts for a movie in recent memory... MANSQUITO! He's half-man, half-mosquito, and all killer...

They cancelled the brilliant Farscape so they could have money to finance this crap? WTF?!?

Comments

Just for clarity—that Mansquito thing isn't a farce or a Photoshop joke with some clever html to fool me into thinking the website is real? They're really trying to play off of the Fly or something? I think I'm speechless. Even though I just said sort of a lot...

Posted by Dennis on March 19, 2005

   

Sad but true. You can look it up on IMDB, and there's even a review (one star out of five, natch!) on IGN FilmForce. They played a clip from the "film" on "Talk Soup" today and it's just as bad as you can imagine.

Corin Nemec sure has fallen from his "Parker Lewis Can't Lose" days!

Posted by Dave2 on March 19, 2005

   

TWW will have a seventh season? Don't they know that my angst over what the show's become is killing me? Oh, well never knew NBC to be sensable.

Posted by kmsqrd on March 21, 2005

   

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