MyLifeInWriting.com » Entertainment

Fingers Crossed for “Flight of the Conchords”

Justin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 04:53:06 +0000

I’m a big fan of the HBO comedy series Flight of the Conchords. For those who aren’t familiar, it’s a really dry, comedy series about two musicians from New Zealand who are in a band and trying to make it in New York City. The dialog is hiliarious, as are the music scenes that they do.

Anyway, they had the first season last year and I had kind of forgotten about it, but I caught a few reruns this week and remembered how entertaining it is. I’m really hoping they bring it back! I was expecting season two to start along with Entourage last month, but that didn’t happen, which casts a little doubt. But, the fact that they’re still showing episodes, along with the 4 emmy nominations that it got, seem to suggest that another season is in the works. I guess we’ll see! Here are few clips for your enjoyment:

Chicken egg situation

"If you’re into it"

The Entourage Formula

Justin — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 04:29:57 +0000

I’m an Entourage watcher. I’ll admit it. It’s 30 minutes (actually more like 22, and getting shorter every week) of entertainment that I look forward to on my Sunday nights. Is it thought provoking? Well written? Well acted?… Not particularly, but their formula works:

A little plot +
A little nudity +
Some celeb cameos +
A few Ari Gold one-liners +
A lifestyle that everyone wants =
————————————————————
A show that most guys will watch

It really is that simple! Ready? Here’s a future episode of Entourage I’m about to dome off the top of my head in 30 seconds:

Vince finds a script he likes. Ari tries to get him the role, but together he and "E" screw it up. In the process, Ari pisses off his wife — but makes up with her later. Drama freaks out about his abs not being firm enough after (celebrity) Mario Lopez bumps into him at the beach. Turtle tries to lure some girls over to the house using weed as an incentive.

Hire me… Seriously.

I guess the beauty of it is that everyone knows exactly what they’re getting. They’re getting a half hour of the story I just described above (customized slightly for a different celebrity), with one or two larger, underlying plot lines that get nudged forward each week. Guys can sit, listen to Ari cuss his face off, see a few hot women, and dream that they had 20 million in the bank so that they could move out to LA or NYC with their boys. Until that formula fails — and I don’t think it will for some time — people will keep tuning in for Entourage… including myself.

“Watchmen” has caught my interest

Justin — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 01:16:18 +0000

I finally got around to seeing "The Dark Knight" two weeks ago (yes, I was officially the last person in the country to see it), and they showed a preview for a movie called "Watchmen." The title sounded familiar, so I decided to do a little research. I read up on it and found that "Watchmen" is a graphic novel (read: comic book) from the 80’s set in a world that’s influenced by the existence of "super" heros. Most of them, however, don’t have any significant powers, they’re more vigilante type heros, like batman — with the exception of this dude to the right who was given god-like powers after some kind of nuclear testing accident.

I’ll pause here while you unavoidably force yourself to check whether he’s wearing any pants…

Ok, now that that’s out of the way…

I know the whole "powers from a nuclear experiment gone wrong" is very cliche, and if you saw the preview yourself, you may be thinking that the other characters all seem pretty lame. They do have a kind of "old" feel to them, like something you’d expect to see in a movie 50 years ago. But, it turns out that "Watchmen" is actually supposed to be superbly written. So well written, in fact, that in 2005 Time magazine named it as one of the 100 best English-language novels! That’s not graphic novels, or comic book novels, or anything else… That’s all English-language novels. It’s up there with "The Great Gatsby", "To Kill a Mockingbird", etc. etc. which I found to be pretty impressive, so I ordered a copy off Amazon to read this week.

We’ll see if it lives up to the hype that I just created for it. As far as the movie, I don’t really have any expectations. The preview was kind of cool, but it’s hard to tell with these types of films, and it’s not out for another 6 months, so we’ll see when the time comes.