BLUE MAG

About five minutes into the premiere of “The Black Donnellys” on NBC last night, I could tell it wasn’t going to work. When the titular Donnelly brothers — Tommy, Jimmy, Kevin and Sean — were introduced by the weasely Joe “Ice Cream” (worst. nickname. ever), I thought I’d never be able to figure out which one was which. You got your nice one (Tommy), your gambler (Kevin), your pretty boy (Sean) and your cripple (Jimmy). I wanted a freeze on each boy’s face with the name, so I could rememberize it better. But in the end I think the show did a great job of making that work. Even the next day I can remember which one is the skinny brooding one who gambles and which is the skinny brooding one who is an art student!

What they can’t make work, however, is that the whole concept seems implausible. Continue reading The Black Donnellys: Pilot

Via digg, Wizard Entertainment is reporting that “Venture Brothers” creator Jackson Publick confirmed that Adult Swim has picked up the show for a third season and a possible fourth. However it looks like it won’t air until Spring of 2008!

Continue reading Venture Bros. picked up for season 3, possibly 4

Academy Awards

The shameless meat parade known as the Academy Awards took steps in redeeming itself for what will forever be known as the “Crash Debacle” by awarding Martin Scorsese a much deserved best director award Sunday night. This ties him with 3-6 Mafia for one academy award apiece. The fact that his picture “The Departed” went on to win best picture also shows the Academy in good light. Scorsese’s win and composer Ennio Morricone’s “special Oscar” also served as a powerful reminder of how behind the times the awards are. That Morricone has never won anything and it’s taken 26 years for Scorsese to win is nothing short of awful. Not to mention that Alfonso Cuaron (who actually directed the best movie this year, “Children of Men”) wasn’t even nominated. Despite this history I found little to take issue with this year. Sure, it was a little boring but overall I was happy with the results. This either shows that I’m getting older and more complacent or … I guess that’s all it really shows.

Independent Spirit Awards

On the other side of town in a parking lot in Santa Monica the Independent Spirit Awards were a different animal entirely. Hosted by Sarah Silverman and if seen uncut on IFC was the more like those R-rated celebrity roasts than an awards show. I’m not sure what was left for AMC to air a few hours later. It was a very brisk affair clocking in at just less than two hours and had the atmosphere of hanging out with friends rather than some gala ball full of sparkling diamond dresses (see above.) That said I was a little tired of “Little Miss Sunshine” before this show and now am really tired of that movie being the Indie darling of the year. I was rooting for “American Gun” of course and in the end it did have the best song and dance number performed that afternoon (the awards started at 2PM) by Neil Patrick Harris.

Golden Razzies

“Basic Instinct 2” took home Worst Picture and I am sorry but “Wicker Man” was robbed. Nick Cage’s foray into confusing, woman-hitting horror was by far the worst thing to end up on movie screens this past year and deserved some recognition for it’s incredible badness. Our former buddy (remember when we liked him?) M. Night picked up a couple for Worst Director and Worst Supporting Actor for his work in “Lady in the Water.” The Waynes brothers picked up some recognition for their opus “Little Man,” somehow getting an award for Worst Adapted Screenplay by connecting the premise to an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. All these wonderfully terrible “films” are available on DVD and in some cases Blu Ray and HD-DVD so you know what to do.

This pairing did not disappoint. The only thing better than Arcade Fire really nailing “Intervention” was Win Butler methoically smashing his guitar after. Best nonet ever? I wasn’t sure if they’d bother pulling of an “Office” spoof, so opening with that worked great for me. Jason Sudeikis’ “Jim smirk” was hilarious. The one thing I would have liked to have seen was some sort of bit involving the visual similarity between Will Forte

and Arcade Fire’s Win Butler

A guy can dream, can’t he?

All in all, the special three-part “Grey’s Anatomy” event, which ended tonight, was very good. But my wife brought up a good point about Izzie’s insistence that George’s and Cally’s marriage is a sham. How can Izzie, who married Denny, whom she met in the hospital and never knew outside the hospital, accuse George of marrying hastily? (That ended up sounding like one of those logical puzzles–George, who married the woman with the green dress, and Sally, whose husband prefers Gitanes…)

I don’t think the writers have thought about it, because it would be a good point on which to give Izzie depth. She could be projecting her leftover angst about getting so invested in that doomed relationship. But the way Denny was written back into this three-parter made it clear that he will always be remembered in gauzy, teary eyed flashbacks, rather than forgotten as an unfortunate mistake.

I think they missed a trick there, or they are asleep at the wheel.

I’m watching this Oprah Oscars thing with Julia Roberts interviewing George Clooney, and I’m quite positive I’m not the first one to say this, but when they heck is George Clooney going to play Cary Grant. Hopefully in a movie about Cary Grant, who has a fascinating story, not in a remake. Unless it is a remake of “North By Northwest” made by David Fincher, which would be the best movie ever.

And that marks the debut of a fun feature here on BLUE MAG, a phrase I’m borrowing from my wife: And That’s What I Want to See In the Movies.

The promos for last night’s Lost promised “three of Lost’s biggest questions…answered.” Well, about halfway through, Alex confronts a caged Jack about why he saved Ben, who is apparently her father now. Jack fires off some questions at her in return, and she remarks that it was three questions and he was only supposed to ask one, that old bit.

Did you see what they did just there? Because unless one of the other burning questions was whether or not Bai Ling would wear modest clothing, I think some soulless marketing jerks just weasled us big-time.

I’ve been keeping up with the angst and drama and uselessness of LC and Heidi on “The Hills” via MTV’s online video site (i.e. their website) and I noticed that Heidi and LC appear to live in Lucille Bluth’s apartment, or at least they have her kitchen.

Continue reading Does LC live in Lucille’s apartment?

This is one spoiler news headline I wasn’t upset that I read too early…

Simone goes out with a bang
A love triangle came to a dramatic conclusion on last night’s Heroes, when Isaac fired his gun at “invisible” Peter and accidentally killed Simone.

To my mind, killing off Simone improves Heroes by about 20%. And with Mohinder rolling with Sark…I mean Sylar, the show has the opportunity to double their scores by getting rid of even more boring filler!

Leftover observation from last week’s Battlestar Galactica… An interesting wrinkle in the BSG world is that Tom Zarek, the leftist anti-government terrorist character played by Richard Hatch (no, not the naked Survivor one, the original Battlestar series’ Apollo one), was originally introduced as being a Sagitarron sympathizer. The nature of the Sagitarron colony’s struggle was thereafter fleshed out to make the Sagitarron colonists rabidly pro-life religious zealots in Season 2 (when a girl from that colony made her way to the Galactica to get Dr. Cottle to perform an abortion) and now last week that has been expanded to make them anti-modern medicine religious zealots.

It’s just another one of those art-mirrors-life-or-does-it? twists that the show pulls off–most heavy-handedly presented by placing the humans on New Caprica in the position of an occupied society–that makes this surely the greatest science fiction show in history.

For complete nerds: Tom Zarek represents “Chaotic Neutral.” Discuss.