Quote of the Week: The reporting of the past few days have proven tackier than a costume change at a Madonna concert. (Mike Huckabee, RNC)
Song of the Week: Just Stand Up! - Mariah Carey, Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, Fergie, Sheryl Crow, Miley Cyrus, Melissa Etheridge, Ashanti, Natasha Bedingfield, Keyshia Cole, Ciara, Leona Lewis, LeAnn Rimes, and Carrie Underwood
Big New of the Week: Let the Fall Season Begin: A couple weeks ago Hey Nielson invited me and some television bloggers to help them with their fall preview. They had us rank each show on a one to five scale. Also be on the lookout for which of my quotes they used in their preview. Click the banner below for details and clips of over twenty new shows and a chance to win a HDTV.
Coalition Links of the Week: Buzz launched a printable night-by-night TV calendar so you can know when your favorites are on. Pretty! (BuzzSugar)
With everyone complaining about how terrible the new 90210 is, Marcia made the point that the old one was pretty damn awful when it started, too. (Pop Vultures)
WWE Diva Mickie James makes a guest appearance as a derby girl on this week's Psych and we spent some time chatting with her about the experience. (RTVW)
Vance finally has time to start posting about the Fall TV Preview. (Tapeworthy)
This week, Jace found that he was less than thrilled with the CW's relaunch of 90210, complete with overplayed songs, one-dimensional characterization, and found it to be much less fun overall than Gossip Girl, The O.C., or Skins. (Televisionary)
TiFaux never got around to watching TNT's premiere of Raising the Bar, but Dan had some very important things to say about Mark-Paul Gosselaar's new shaggy mane. (TiFaux)
Never miss your favorite show this fall! Download and print theTVaddict.com's Ultimate Fall 2008 Season Premiere Calendar. (The TV Addict)
We gave you our take on summer's TV landscape -- and it wasn't pretty. (TV Filter)
I Love Money: Megan continues to amaze me week after week. Again escapes an elimination getting the Entertainer to get rid of hid only ally and keep her. How does this keep happening? You can download episodes of I Love Money on iTunes.
The Middleman: When Manservant Neville showed up I predicted that he would turn out to be the opposite of the Middleman, an archnemesis as you will, but I guess since they are an evil empire in the other dimension I am wrong with that prediction. I have to nick pick with that other dimension, specifically when Noser was quoting Shaft, should be have done something like Barry Manilow? But anyways. I saw next Monday ABC Family is running a Secret Life of the American Teenager marathon so we may have seen last of The Middleman. You can download episodes of The Middleman on iTunes.
Greek: I would like to thank the show for the greatest pick-up line ever. Ever. For dudes out there that missed it, if you are sitting around waiting somewhere and see a cute girl and say to her how about you save me from reading whatever is in you hands (in this case the pregnant man) and tell me your life story. Brilliant. You can download episodes of Greek on iTunes.
Stand Up 2 Cancer: I would like to thank NBC, ABC, CBS, and E! (as Brad Garrett said while receiving a prostate exam live on camera, I can’t believe Fox is counter programming this) for dedicating an hour of prime time programing to focus on raising funds for cancer. If you missed it, of course you can head over to SU2C.com to donate or to see Dana Delany get a breast exam and Charles Barkley get a colon cleaned out. Also check out the Song of the Week to download the charity single.
Free Downloads of the Week: Rain of Madness (iTunes): For those that could not get enough of Tropic Thunder here is a behind the scenes look at the movie.
Mr. Rock and Roll (Borders): Another week another free song by Amy MacDonald, at this week you may have the album free by Christmas.
Also if you missed any of the speeches from the DNC or RNC, you can download them all over at iTunes for free:
Promo of the Week: Aside from the Hey Nielson I have also be enlisted in Oprah digital network (no seriously) which may include giveaways (no word if you get a car and you get a car just yet). Monday sees the 23rd season premiere where Oprah will be welcoming home over 175 Olympic medalist (sorry women’s field hockey team, no car for you). Some technical difficulties are keeping me from posting the promo but if you check back later I hope to have it up soon.
Pick for Next Week: 102 Minutes that Changed the World, Thursday at 9:00 on History: The seventh anniversary honored by History (the channel) in this commercial-free retrospective on the time between when the first tower was hit and the second tower fell.
The most interesting part about the press release for Samurai Girl is not what it says but what it doesn’t say. For mini-series namesake Jamie Chung is touted as a guest star to such shows as Veronica Mars and Greek, yet I implore anyone to remember her appearances on those shows. Certainly when you saw her in the preview and though “I know her from somewhere” it is not from those show but instead the only thing people will recognize her as cast member of Real World: San Diego and the spin off Inferno II.
But anyways. Samurai Girl is a story you have heard before. But before her marriage, a Japanese princess and her marriage is attached, both her father and brothers are targeted. She escapes only to find out that not only is she a princess but a warrior princess. Or should I say a samurai girl. The story deviates from a modern day Japanese fairytale when Chung crashes a party in her bridal wear. Lucky for her it is a costume party so she fits right in.
That is until the party host finds Chung in her closet the next morning. This begins a relationship with housemates played by Saige Thompson (who also lists Veronica Mars on her resume but try remembering who she was) and Kyle Labine (no Veronica Mars appearances by Kyle), ambiguous roommates than aren’t live in partners but never explained how they came together but play like the Samurai Girl’s own Scoobie Gang.
Keeping with the Buffy theme, Brendan Fehr (Final Destination) would be the Giles figure guiding Chung through her training taking her raw talent into something to use in the field. The mini-series is at the very least watchable if you have nothing better to do this weekend as it premieres tonight at 8:00 with another two hours Saturday and closing on Sunday. But for anything with “Samurai” in its title, the fight scenes should be cooler than they are. Maybe as the girl grows and learns more on the craft it will get better, but I am not holding my breathe.
Also, the moderately attractive Stacy Keibler is supposable is in the cast as Chung’s rival, but sadly she won’t be showing up tonight. If you cannot wait to watch it tonight, you can download the first hour of Samurai Girl on iTunes for free.
There have been no more soother musician this decade than Jack Johnson becoming this generation’s James Taylor with a surfboard. So hearing that the Handsome Boy Modeling School, which features producers Prince Paul (Del La Soul) and Dan the Automator (Gorillaz), remixed the song for one of their album didn’t sound like it would work, but surprisingly managed to update the song and making it just as good, if not better than the original.
You would think a movie called Nick and Norah's Infinate Playlist would be right up my alley and you would be right. First you got George Michael Bluth and then Kat Dennings who is moderately attractive in a goth chick kind of way. Below is my own personal infinate playlist present in no perticular order and just random songs that randomly came across my brain.
If you have no idea what I am talking about, here is the trailer of the movie that opens October 3rd:
Kids today may not remember, unless they saw Hal Sparks wax poetic about them on I Love the 90's, but in the middle of that decade, there were few bigger bands on the planet than Oasis. Please remember they were so huge that an argument of the brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher even charted on Billboard. (What’s the Story) Morning Glory managed to the pinnacle of their career (which why it is this month’s induction into the Scooter Hall of Fame) and the point where the band started their went in a tailspin.
But lets start with te good, and the good is really good as Wonderwall is easily one of the top twenty-five songs of all time. It is one of those songs that no matter who sings it or how it is preformed it will still be a great song. Where Wonderwall is a sit you’re your room alone in your room with just an acoustic guitar, Don’t Look Back in Anger is a sing a long be it in a stadium or along with the jukebox at your local bar. And on songs like the title track and the opener Hello, Oasis show they could still continue their rock swagger like on their debut album.
For a band that wears their influences on their sleeves (then completely tear them down) Champaign Supernova seems like a blatant attempt at The Beatles psychedelic era and even starts with the two untitled tracks on the album that just enhances the bloated album closer. That is not to say the song in all its overwrought glory isn’t great in its own right but its success let to more over reaching songs like the first single off the next album, D’You Know What I Mean just went too far and led to the downfall. But Oasis has show flashes of brilliants over the decade since Morning Glory which hint that the band could mount a comeback at any time.
Quote of the Week: It was a bold choice, interesting background and a potential Hot for Teacher situation, don’t ya think? (Tony Kornheiser, Pardon the Interuption)
Big New of the Week: John McCain Picks for His Vice President, Wait, Who?: Just an addendum to yesterday’s post, the more I think about the more brilliant the pick of Sarah Palin is for John McCain. After a day of seeing talking heads blast her inexperience you can almost see the democratic strategist realize right after doing so that their candidate is not that much more experience. And having your inexperience at the bottom of the ticket is better than having it at the top. Granted Palin has more executive experience than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and McCain combined.
And it didn’t take long for the liberal communist of the left to start their smear campaign hitting the internet to make people believe that Palin has had multiple affairs and that Palin faked her last pregnancy and that her eldest daughter is the real mother of her youngest (I even had a couple hits to yesterday searching for Bristol Palen pregnancy) like a bad plot line out of Desperate Housewives. Just because she lives in Juno doesn’t mean all the teenagers are pregnant. This rumor is as truthful as Obama being a Muslim, McCain fathering a black baby, and Biden, well Biden isn’t interesting enough to spread falsehoods about.
(Scooter's Update: More proof that Brisol is not the mother of Trig: she is five months pregnant accorfing to a press release from the Palen clan. Read more about it over at MSNBC.com. This makes my Juno crack a little less funny. Well, it still is pretty funny.)
Coalition Links of the Week: Buzz chatted with 90210's Shenae Grimes about the responsibilities of being "The new Brenda." (BuzzSugar)
Marcia returned from the Edinburgh TV Festival with tales of Heroes and Doctor Who, straight from the showrunners' mouths. Also, new site design! (Pop Vultures)
Rae's spent the summer with her nose buried in a book and it's finally paying off for us with her review of the Burn Notice novel The Fix. (RTVW Online)
Vance loves Gavin & Stacey and insists that you all watch it too so that you too can fall in love. (Tapeworthy)
This week, Jace took an early look at the first three episodes of the new season of Gossip Girl and offered up which new and returning series he'll be watching this fall. (Televisionary)
Before the conventions started and we got all partisan, Sara got all "thinky" and discussed the optimistic nationalism of the Olympics. Never fear, we'll soon return to our guttural reactions on Project Runway. (TiFaux)
The TV Addict had the time of his life at Fox's Fantastic Fringe series premiere party in New York City. (The TV Addict)
Raoul got excited about the possibility of a (re)animated Buffy Summers. (TV Filter)
I Love Money: How can no one see that Megan is playing everyone. It doesn’t get more transparent than”backstabbing” people she is supposed to be aligned with right in front of them. Yet even with that blatant going aganst her alliance’s wishes, she was able to talk her alliance out of voting off White Boy even though they had just seen her align herself with him against their wishes hours before. I am begining to wonder if Megan is the smartest dumb person ever. You can download episodes of I Love Money on iTunes.
The Middleman: It seems like every week I throughly enjoy The Middleman, but for some reason when I sit down to write 57 Channels I rarely have anything interesting to say about the episode and that pretty much sums up the most recent one. And if I am not mistaken, next week s the season (series?) Finale. Hopefully it goes out with a bang. Literally and figuratively. You can download episodes of The Middleman on iTunes.
Busted: I typically do not flip through channels, but flipping through all the NBC networks during the Olympics had me do it a little lately, that is how I found this gem on MTV. For those that haven’t seen it, Busted is basically Cops for the college age set. So you get a lot of under age drunks and stoned morons. Man, I miss college. My personal favorite segment has to be the two girl who get pulled out of a club and when the cops say they were accused of solicitation, one of the girl, who had the most possible amount of clevage possible without being techincally naked, yells at the cop, “Do we look like prostitutes?” Sadly the cop didn’t say when everyone had to be thinking, yes. Nonetheless, highest of high comedy.
Promo of the Week: Last year was a bit of a down year for My Name Is Earl. This could have been due to the writer’s strike, but Earl spent way too much time in jail or a coma and really didn’t cross much off his list. As the new season suggests, Earl is back to the list, but first, here is a recap for last year.
Pick for Next Week: Stand Up to Cancer, Friday at 8:00 on NBC, ABC, and CBS: It is cliched to say that we all know someone with Cancer, but sadly it is unavoidable with one presidential candidate a Cancer survivor with the other who lost his mother to the disease, granted one would rather give a speech to a bunch a Germans than to show up to Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong Cancer forum. With that in mind it looks like Cancer may be overlooked in whoever is elected’s budget (not so fun fact, our government has spent more in a month on Iraq than all the years combinded since Nixon declared war on Cancer) on so it is again up to the individual to fund a cure. So the big three are banding together (Fox would rather air Guess the Lyrics) for a telethon which includes performance by Mariah Carey, Beyonce, Mary J. Blige, Rihanna, Fergie, Sheryl Crow, Miley Cyrus, Melissa Etheridge, Ashant, Natasha Bedingfield, Keyshia Cole, Ciara, Leona Lewis, LeAnn Rimes, and Carrie Underwood. And those are just the people who will be preforming together. Head over to StandUp2Cancer.com for more information and to donate or buy the charity single below.
and 
, yet I implore anyone to remember her appearances on those shows. Certainly when you saw her in the preview and though “I know her from somewhere” it is not from those show but instead the only thing people will recognize her as cast member of Real World: San Diego and the spin off Inferno II.
) would be the Giles figure guiding Chung through her training taking her raw talent into something to use in the field. The mini-series is at the very least watchable if you have nothing better to do this weekend as it premieres tonight at 8:00 with another two hours Saturday and closing on Sunday. But for anything with “Samurai” in its title, the fight scenes should be cooler than they are. Maybe as the girl grows and learns more on the craft it will get better, but I am not holding my breathe.
