Best of the Week - 3/26/11

Quote of the Week: You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth! (Corbin Bernsen, Castle)

Song of the Week: I'm Not Calling You a Liar – Florence and the Machine (Pretty Little Liars)

Big News of the Week: Lights Out Lights Are Out: With just two episode left in the season, FX pulled the plug on its latest series Lights Out following in the footsteps of the similarly rated and critically acclaimed Terriers. Lights Out will air the final two episodes in its regular time slot on Tuesday. After two straight failures, FX looks to rebound with some big names. They recently inked a deal with Oliver Stone to produce and direct a conspiracy theory-themed drama and there is also previously announced American Horror Story from Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy starring Connie Britton who herself is attached as producer as another drama in development for the network. But what may be the most buzzworthy is their comic book adaptation of Powers which could do for FX what The Walking Dead did for AMC. As for its current programming, FX is close to renewing Justified, which looks to take the title of best show on television now that Friday Night Lights has ended, for a third season.

Gratuitous Token Hot Chick Picture of the Week:



Free Download of the Week: The World Is Yours – Glasvegas (Rcrd Lbl)

Deal of the Week: Up to 59% Off ABC TV (Castle, Lost, Desperate Housewives)

New Album Release of the Week: vs. & Vitalogy 3 CD Deluxe Edition (Featuring Live At The Orpheum, Boston MA) - Pearl Jam

New DVD Release of the Week: Mad Men: Season Four

Video of the Week: Forget Rebecca Black, this will be the greatest internet video you will watch all week who takes The Song Otherwise Known as Forget You and turns it into a pro God song with a little MC Hammer thrown in for no reason beside raising its awesomeness. My favorite part is Tyrone Biggums on keyboards. And it is about time someone put Bravo on blast.

GMDOCNICE – Bless You


Next Week Pick of the Week: Shameless, Sunday (3/27) at 10:00 on Showtime: After last week’s duel bombshells of Lip and Ian getting arrested in Steve’s stolen car and Karen’s webshow with Frank, there are going to be a lot of repercussions in tomorrow’s season finale and after all is said and done, we very doubtfully will be seeing a couple of characters around at all next season. And with all the outrageousness in the first eleven episodes, the finale still manages the most shocking scene yet.

Around the Tubes - 3/25/11

I have gotten a plethora of cool press releases have been flooding my inbox recently that you may find interesting. This post will include blurbs on NBC summer schedule, MTV Hive, 120 Minutes, Laura Jansen, Big Love, Monster Madness, Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen, Pusha T, Fairly Legal, Elizabeth Taylor, The Best of the Dean Martin Show, Leverage, The Hub, and The Wild Thornberrys.

- NBC announced its summer schedule earlier this week. America’s Got Talent will return Tuesday May 31 at 9:00, while The Marriage Ref will see its second season begin Sunday, June 26 at 10:00. New show The Voice, which premieres April 26, will continue through June. Without premiere dates are new shows Still Standing (no they are not bringing back the sitcom of the same name, this is a competition show) and Love in the Wild which is a reality show about, well you should be able to guess from the title. Another show It’s Worth What? will also be come your way this Summer. But the most important NBC Summer show will be the final season of Friday Night Lights starting Friday, May 7 at 8:00. Also in NBC premiere news, The Paul Reiser Show will be added to the Comedy Night Done Right Thursday April 14th at 8:30. No word on Friends with Benefits.

- I hope everybody made Monday unscaved as it was National Alien Abduction day. Sammy Hagar didn’t who told MTV Hive: “It was real. [Aliens] were plugged into me. It was a download situation.” I have a feeling someone has been drinking too much tequila. For those that do not know what MTV Hive is, it is, it’s “MTV’s newly launched standalone pure music destination curated for passionate music fans whose deep connection to the music has no boundaries. Hive takes fans onstage, backstage and offstage – and closer to their favorite artists – via exclusive and original editorial, interviews, videos, mp3s, innovative products, live concerts and beyond. Hive, quite simply, is an immersive, deep and boundless celebration of music.”

- While over at MTV Hive, you can also check out 120 Seconds, a companion of the recently revived 120 Minutes with Matt Pinfield (with MTV bring this back along with Beavis and Butt-Head, you wonder how long until they resurrect other 90’s classics Remote Control and The Grind). Below is the first episode featuring The Kills:

The Kills, Matt Pinfield
Tags:
The Kills, MTVHive

- For those that read my review of Laura Jansen’s debut album yesterday (see: I Have the Modivation to Be a Free Girl Now) and wanted to hear more, Laura will be on Livestream today at 3:00 for a stripped down set and will be answering fan questions.

- Big Love wrapped up its series last week and for those left wanting more, here is a After the Final Featurette.



- For those whose NCAA bracket are as busted as mine, you can participate in Syfy’s Monster Madness tournament in honor of their 200th original move Scream of the Banshee tomorrow at 9:00.

- Will over at Syfy.com, you can enter a contest to “meet and eat” with Marcel Vigneron, star of Marcel’s Quantum Kitchen in Los Angeles.

- Pusha T was the breakout star on Kanye West’s Dark Beautiful Fantasy and now he has dropped his own mixtape which you can download for free over at Grooveshack. If you only download one track, I would suggest Raid.

- Sarah Shahi of Fairly Legal recently shared with USA’s Character Blog the six things she cannot live without including Spanish plates from Toledo (Spain, not Ohio).

- In honor of the recently deceased Elizabeth Taylor, Turner Classics Movies will be running a 24 hour marathon of her most memorable roles on April 10 starting at 6:00 A.M. including her two Oscar winning performances Butterfield 8 (at 8:00 P.M.) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (10:00 P.M.).

- For the first time ever, The Best of the Dean Martin Show will be released by Time-Life on May 24.

- What better name for a convention than Con-Con? The official Leverage event will return to Portland, OR this June 3-5. Tickets are available at Leverage Fans. Look out for the fourth season to begin June 26 on TNT.

- Fans of Yo Gabba Gabba will want to check out The Aquabats Super Show from the creators of the same show coming to The Hub for the 2011-12 season. Another show that caught my eye coming to the channel next fall is Clue based on the board game that will see six teens brought together when they believe they have witnessed a terrible crime. Considering I was one of the few people that liked the movie, I may have to check that out. The Hub also announced the acquired the rights to Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?

- Here is another one for the kiddies out there, The Wild Thornberrys: Season One will hit shelves May 17 on DVD and Blu-Ray.

I Have the Motivation to Be a Free Girl Now

It seems like every couple years Scandinavia imports some pre packaged pop act before they retreat back to the frozen tundra of their homeland such as Roxette, Ace of Base, and Aqua. But Dutch born Laura Jansen is a singer-songwriter right out of the mold of the Lilth Fair. The piano she plays will draw her comparisons to Sara Bareilles, Fiona Apple and Regina Spektor, but Jansen for the most part lacks the snark, edge, or quirkiness of those artist but with a more serene voice.

Jansen’s debut album is pure piano pop. Naturally Bells opens with The End which sets up the album with heartbreak that seeps into many of the songs. This is most notable on the first song off the album Single Girls where Jansen chronicles her newly single life which manages to be heartbreaking and touching at the same time. She even manages to make the Kings of Leon’s Use Somebody a beautifully stripped down song of yearning from a female’s perspective. Many have tried to turn the song into a balled, but no cover has come as good as Jansen’s.

Laura does try to speed things up throughout the album including on Wicked World where she bounces around on her piano while namedropping fairy tale characters but sound a little too much like Bareilles’ own Fairytale. Jansen starts taking more chances near the end of the album like on Elijah where she highlights song percussion and other instruments on the song. And the album closes with the moody Signal which ups the production, including a guitar solo at the end, and even lets go vocally compared to the mainly piano and voice of the pervious tracks. The music may not be there yet, but Laura Jansen has the kind of voice that you can put on and drift away while listening to.

Song to Download – Single Girls

Bells gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

Feed Your iPod vol. LVI: Lies

You have to feel bad for two hit wonders, enough talent to conjure that elusive second hit, but not enough to sustain a career. Everyone can sing along with Lou Bega with just the mention of his name, but who remembers Nine Days? Then there are the strange class of one hit wonders whose other songs are forgotten by the annals of time despite being as big as the original. Seriously, Vanilla Ice’s Play That Funky Music was a top five hit, not to mention the show jam I Love You got plenty of airplay. EMF is also a group whose songs not named Unbelievable (which was #31 on VH1’s 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of All Time) vanished from conscienceless. This is a shame because Lies (which reached #18 on the Billboard’s Hot 100) is another great track from the band. Sure I may be part of the problem considering I got a couple arguments saying that songs on my 100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 00’s did not belong, but let me rectify by reminding everyone that EMF does not deserve the one hit wonder status.

Lies - EMF

Got a Secret, Can You Keep It

Despite posting a list entitled The 100 Guiltiest Guilty Pleasures of the 00’s, I really do not feel guilty about any of the music I listen to or television I watch. Yeah I have Hilary Duff’s Come Clean on my iPod, if you don’t like the song than that’s your problem. But Pretty Little Liars during its first season really asked the question of when does a guilty pleasure becomes just plain guilty.

The premise was primed for guilty pleasurness: four friends who drifted away after their Queen B disappear are reunited a year later when she is found dead, each of who are harboring a dark secret of their own that a mysterious figure is harboring over them claiming to be the dead friend.. Best case scenario is the show would be a poor girl’s Veronica Mars, who was even mentioned during the first season. Unfortunately it turns out the four Liars have a combined IQ of the junior private detective.

The dumbest of the all being Aria, who, despite catching her English professor dad in a torrid affair with a student that ruined her family, carried on a torrid affair with her English teacher for the entire season. What’s worse is the writers made this seem like a grand forbidden love story on the lines of Romeo and Juliet instead of the creepy statutory storyline that Nancy Grace would have dedicated a month of shows to if it happened in real life.

The other liars didn’t have much better success with the opposite sex. Or same sex in the case of Emily who announced her lesbianess only to attract every other gay chick in a five mile radius. Hanna, who took over the mantel of Queen B when Allison went missing didn’t have much luck when she was trying to decide between the captain of the football team (who may have had his own sexual questions of his own) and the Yearbook nerd only to choose the skeevy bad boy who was paid to get close to her. But worse choose in boys goes to Spencer who kept on hooking up with her sister’s boyfriend (include the one who may have killed Allison (but probably not) and then tried to kill her) only to end up with the town pariah.

At least the season ended on somewhat of a high note when we got more back story about Jenna, the chick that Allison, who was aided and abetted by the other liars, blinded. The lead suspect for “A” since the beginning we learned that Jenna had to stay away from town because Allison was blackmailing her because she found video of Jenna blackmailing Toby that was made by Ian (or possibly not, it is never confirmed, Ian may had thought the video Spenser was blackmailing him with was the one where he “killed” Allison). This revelation may cross Jenna off the suspect list of being Allison’s killer because she never returned to town until Allison’s body turned up dead. But her hooking up with the cop adds to the theory that she is “A” with the officer being her eyes.

Unfortunately the season didn’t end with the curtain being pulled off of who is “A” though we may have gotten a look at her (him?) as the person who pushed Ian off the bell tower (worst death scene ever). Even though Jenna still remains at the top of the list, with Toby, Mona, Melissa, Lucas, or some combination of them also ranking high on the list, I still hope that “A” turns out to be a not so dead Allison. Though I am not sure I will still be watching when they finally get around to the reveal.

Pretty Little Liars gets a on my Terror Alert Scale.

I Want My Music Television - 3/21/11

There have been a couple of videos that have caught my eye lately so I thought I’d give them some love since the death of Musical Television left a void for a forum on the art form. If you are interested in buying the video through iTunes, click the title link (where available). If you are interested in buying the song, look for a link in the analysis.

Rope - Foo Fighters



It seems like Foo Fighters alternate videos between cheesy dress up ones and artsy performance based ones and after the eightiestastic White Limo it’s time for artsy. And did I miss the memo that Pat Smear was back in the band?


I Do - Colbie Caillat



The whole (un)happy faced inanimate objects is cute and all for Colbie Caillat, but is there a credit card ad that already did that a year or two ago?


How You Love Me - Talib Kweli



Those credits seemed a little long for a music video featuring a dude and a chick in a bedroom. At least it was another killer track from Talib Kweli.


'Til The End of Time (Edited Version) - Timothy Bloom



For those that think like me that R&B died about a decade ago, here is a song by Timothy Bloom that might give you hope for its resurrection. And the music video is like a two person D'Angelo video. And for those wondering, yes there is an undited version.

57 Channels and Only This Is On - 3/20/11

Shameless: When Liam’s blood test came back with Frank as his father I was convinced that someone swapped it because I didn’t see how there were going to explain it any other way. I guessed the title of the episode, Nana Gallagher had an Affair should had tipped me off. Speaking of Nana, we actually get to meet the matriarch tonight.

Chuck: The top of the Greta crop were the Old Spice Guy and Stacy Keibler? Didn’t the latter get knocked out by Stone Cold Steve Austin? It is too bad Olivia Munn and Summer Glue were too busy slumming it on shows that are already doomed. Also not to producers in charge of finding Regis’s replacement: drunk Olivia Munn would be rating gold. (If you do not know what I am taking about, Google it.) You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Chuck on iTunes.

The Event: I really hate when show insult my intelligence. Just minutes after complaining that the prisoners at Innastranka didn’t have the security of the nuclear plant, they only guard the transported uranium with two guys and three drivers? If you still do not trust Sophia, how about using a small army as an escort? But I did like the unintentional comedy of the token hot chick being paranoid that guys were watching her. Of course every guy is tailing her, she is absurdly attractive. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download The Event on iTunes.

Lights Out: No better fight promotion that an impromptu brawl that probably hit YouTube before either fighter made it to jail. Almost makes you wonder if Barry K. Word did some puppet mastery behinds the scenes to make it happen. I know Don King is kicking himself for not thinking of it first. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Lights Out on iTunes.

Survivor: Redemption Island: We have finally reached the point in the season where it has gotten too predictable. No matter who wins immunity it is clear who will be going home. Hopefully there is a blindside or switched tribes, because this could get boring quick. You can stream recent episodes over at cbs.com.



Mr. Sunshine: This show really needs to incorporate more lingerie football matches into the show. You can stream current episodes on Hulu. You can also download Mr. Sunshine on iTunes.

Justified: I am a little surprised that they are expanding the Wynona theft storyline into multiple episodes. I assumed that when Raylan found the bill that would be the end of that. I am not sure how more of this can continue being entertaining. But I guess if they can include something as funny as Art’s footrace with the guy who needs an oxygen tank in the next episode, it will be entertaining enough. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Justified on iTunes.

Community: Jeff really needs a hair intervention. If you have a receding hairline, you have no business trying the Justin Beiber. You can stream current episodes on Hulu. You can also download Community on iTunes.

Outsourced: Why are we not celebrating Holi here in America? It could be right up there with the biggest drinking days in college along with Fat Tuesday, St. Patrick’s Day and the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. My college experience now feels incomplete having not throwing a Holi party. You can stream current episodes on Hulu. You can also download Outsourced on iTunes.