Ol' Scoop Casey has been getting so much mail here at blawg HQ that we had to set him up his own mail stop. Like his Weekly News Roundup? Hate it? Let 'im know.
Other developments: We have new AdServer functionality, thanks to the good people in the Media Delivery department here at AllBigvine. Now we can dynamically serve phony banner ads and perform in-depth clickstream analysis. Pretty fancy, huh? Well, considering I pretty much know all of you personally, it's not that hot. But it's cool. If you have a banner you'd like to run on the ABA network, email it to me. You just may see it here on the pages of blawg!
So, after some ado, it's Scoop Casey's Weekly News Roundup!
<Yesterday's News, Today>
<This week: Drugs! Porn! Canadians!>
<And now, a joke stolen from Saturday Night Live>
<Scoop Casey's Bonus Internet Porn Coverage>
I got nothin' today. I'm tired. So, I will use the blogger's fallback: the list.
Things that are pissing me off these days are:
There are a few things on the Web that make life worth living. In no particular order, they are:
I'm done. ßßß
Megnut has finally gone too far. I've never been a fan of her self-aggrandizing, overly earnest blog, but this is too much. She's now doing a "slog": a source log.
What is a source log, you ask? Well, that's what you do when you say you're going to stop blogging, as megnut did last Friday, but you realize that you love the sound of your own voice so much that you just can't stop. Then you comment out your blog entries so only the cool kids [read: Web dorks] know to view the source code of your page to read your blog. Sample entry:
Yes. I can't shut up. It's harder than I thought. You're on to me. You're so smart!
If you're going to do a freaking weblog, do it. If you're not, don't. But don't do both. And don't claim that the celebrity you've garnered as poster child for the blog generation is too much to bear. Get a sense of humor and a sense of perspective. Soon. Please.
Now, on to more happy subjects: DVD reviews! Yay! Over the weekend I got my NetFlixing back on track, and two out of the three entries were really good.
First up: Time Code. I resisted Time Code for a long time, because it sounded kinda hokey, and I'm not a huge Mike Figgis fan. But it rocked. They filmed the entire movie 15 times in four concurrent takes of 90 mintues. That's a lot of numbers, but essentially they did the movie on DV in real time, with no cuts, and then showed all four takes at once.
It's a movie that lends itself perfectly to the digital versatile disc format. The DVD includes both the fifteenth (theatrical release) version as well as the very first version they did. Watching both is illuminating, as you get to compare 'em and see how the actors developed their roles over time. It also includes an interactive audio mix (this feature is killer!) where you can isolate the audio of a particular frame. Super cool, and highly recommended. Five stars.
Animal Factory is a film that premiered at Sundance last year, and is already (inexplicably) out on DVD. It's a solid prison film, directed by Steve Buscemi and starring Willem Dafoe and Edward Furlong. Excellent performances from the ensemble cast, including a disturbing turn by Mickey Rourke as a muscle-bound drag queen. Creepy. Four stars if you like prison stuff, and three even if you don't.
How could the cat who cowrote the screenplay for Blade Runner write a piece of banal crap like Minus Man? Allegory, fable, or otherwise, if you write a movie about a serial killer, al least do your homework. This movie was misguided, meandering and silly, and is saved from a no-star rating only by intriguing performances by Owen Wilson and (especially) Janeane Garofalo as a drunken postal clerk. The Minus Man is a cipher. Two stars. ßßß
Mike T. Vee's email of yesterday got me thinking about my television-viewing habits. Surprisingly, I agree with much of Mike's (pretty mainstream) TV views. I resisted Will & Grace for a long time before I finally succumbed and realized that it's well-written and damn funny. My only real issue with it is that Debra Messing is a horrifying skeleton of a woman, and not nearly funny enough to be that ugly. Debra: eat a freaking sandwich. Jeez.
Friends has returned to near its former glory, even though Coutney Cox and David Schwimmer are profoundly irritating. Ditch the dead weight; we all know that Matt LeBlanc and Jennifer Aniston are carrying the whole show.
Am not, have never been, and will never be a Real World fan. Luckily, Kathy's So-Called Reality has come to my rescue. All the reality show sleaze, without having to watch the actual shows. It's a beautiful thing.
Star Trek: Voyager?!? The less I say about that the better. OK, just one word: Trekkies.
Futurama? Ehh. Can't really get on board with that. I gave it several weeks early on, and I was sorely disappointed. I catch it every now and then, and I laugh, but I certainly don't seek it out. Groening seems burnt out. I'll stick to Life in Hell, thanks.
Same for ER. Seen it maybe a half-dozen times, and I thought it was really well done, but it just never hooked me. I mean, it's no West Wing, fercrissakes.
Here, in no particular order, are the shows I'm watching these days:
And, alas, here is Ian's online vigil for dead TV shows that should never, ever have been canceled:
The long-awaited two-hour season premiere of the Sopranos was last night, and while David Chase and co. didn't knock it out of the park, it was still better than just about anything else on TV.
Last night's back-to-back episodes had to tie up all the loose ends from last season, and, as such, some of it seemed contrived. They had to deal with the death of actress Nancy Marchand (Livia Soprano), and they did so by cobbling together a bunch of clips of her from old episodes. Then she died. Trés surreal. The last 10 minutes of the second episode, though, were as good as anything I've seen, and bodes well for the rest of the season.
In other television news, I got this email from Mike T. Vee:
To: ian@blawg.com
Subject: Mike's Picks
Mr. Blawg:
Given that you haven't reviewed any shows yet, I thought I should at least pick my favorite shows, or rather, the shows that I still bother to watch.
Will & Grace. More aptly titled, Jack & Karen. So bitingly witty you need TiVo to catch all the Zucker Brother-paced zingers and oh-my-gawd-did-I-actually-see-that? antics.
Friends. So good that people have taken this show for granted. But don't stop tuning in ... you'll miss the one where Joey and Chandler finally just get it over and done with. And you'll also ensure we don't yet launch another dumb Schwimmer or LeBlanc vehicle like "Ed" or the "Pall Bearer".
MTV's The Real World. The original reality show and still the best. More realistic than a bunch of pretty people eating pigs in the Outback. It's twenty-somethings at their best: lazy, whining, narcissistic, and very eager to bitch-slap each other. Experience it again for the first time.
Star Trek: Voyager. Will they or won't they get back to the Alpha quadrant? Or was it all a dream? A terrible, terrible dream?
Futurama. Where the Simpsons would have evolved had the creativity not been exhausted two years ago.
ER. There isn't an infinite number of ways to portray blood and guts. But this is still the fastest paced and most engaging show on television. Except for the occasional episodes where cast members are allowed to direct.
— Mike T. Vee
The opinions expressed above are not necessarily those of this blog or the management thereof, especially the Star Trek: Voyager remarks. Tune in tomorrow for a considered rebuttal/consensus.
P.S.: To fellow weblog dorks: I've instituted some anchor tag technology that will allow you to link to specific posts if you so desire. It's a little convoluted, so pay attention.
Figure out what week we're in. You can click on the Last week link in the sidebar and add 1. The URL for the archived version of the current week is http://blawg.cementhorizon.com/weekN.html, where N is the current week. Then tack on that day's date in this format: #030501 for today, for example. So the link to today's blawg, f'r'instance, would look like this: http://blawg.cementhorizon.com/week8.html#030501. Got it? Good. ßßß
Don't miss last week's brilliant insight.
