Ten Moments from 2009!

Well I always enjoy Top Ten lists so I thought I would do my own for this post. Now these are not all moments from film and TV, some points in my own life I deem much more worthy and important to me and I really had trouble making a list from least to most important so they may be just thrown in there a little. So let us begin!

10. According to IMDB there were 31,310 movies and TV shows were released in 2009!

9. Rebirth of Star Trek from uber geek JJ Abrams.

8. Celeberity deaths, they used to come in 3's, now its more like the tens.

7. Paranormal Activity comes out of nowhere and scores a ton of money, and I have ye to see it too.

6. I discovered the greatness that is NetFlix.

5. My childhood is basically destroyed thanks to Transformers, GI Joe and Where the Wild Things Are.

4. Heroes gains some redemption by hiring an old writer back!

3. I turn 21! Now no other birthday is important.

2. I got an internship with a production house over the summer that offered me a job once I'm done!

1. I got engaged to my girlfriend of almost 5 years!

Final 30 Rock Post

Well I will be out of town and unable to watch all the new 30 Rock's on Thursday so I hit up NetFlix again and continued with the second episode. This was directly following the pilot episode and saw everyone trying to adjust to Tracy joining the show and it being renamed TGS with Tracy Jordan (I also congratulate the writers for making his real and fake name rhyme). I have to say I love the little flashbacks they did with Jack and explaining how he is a "genius" by looking a flashcards of everyone with his assistant. I'm really starting to get into the show now and maybe my earlier thoughts on the show's newer episodes would change now that I know a little more back-story, its something I would have to re-watch and try out sometime. In the meantime I think I will continue to watch some of the episodes in my free time and see where it leads me. Will I have another show I dedicate my nights to? Who knows!

TV Without Pity Recommendations

Well my first recommendation for the coolest feature goes to the page that you can watch all the episodes of the shows they have listed and get recaps on every episode. This is so valuable because I know I don't always have time to watch the TC show when it is on and the TV Station's website may not have that particular episode or is ridden with ads. All the episodes you see on here come from Hulu which I have gron to love for anything TV related.

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/hulu/

The second feature I bring to you is what I find the most entertaining, the picture galleries and lists. I am very fond of all those Top 10 lists out there and enjoy reading people's opinions on there favorite or least favorite show or movie. So I was pleased to see TWOP had them as well. My favorite though is probably the Decade in Review for favorite Sci-Fi and Fantasy movies because a lot of my favorites are on there, like Shaun of the Dead and The Dark Knight.

The most informative section I recommend is the section dedicated to canceled shows. I know we are all sad when our favorite show gets canceled for whatever reason and TWOP is there to comfort us. It tells you where you can find the episodes if you want to re-live the experience and also tells us why the show was canned. I was happy to see a section about Clone High on there, I think I may go look into a few episodes now......

No 30 Rock? Oh Well!

Well since 30 Rock is not on this week I went to another show instead and watched an episode I missed form Heroes. I watched it on NBC’s website so it still includes commercials. Something I have always noticed but never really though anything about was how almost every time the show returns from a commercial it is starting on another character’s story; this is unless there was some kind of cliffhanger before the break, which at times is wouldn’t always come back too. The writers for the show did a good job actually making every segment its own little TV show and taking those 15 minutes to give you the story of one of the characters. Two technical codes I notice a lot are the use of lighting for dramatic effect and the shot size for what type emotional response the creator wanted the audience to feel. In particular I was watching an episode in the 3rd season where the Heroes are being capture and sometimes tortured, so the lighting was very dark and depressing. On the other side in some newer episodes we see Claire at school and she is happy so the lighting is bright and gives an overall happy mood to the scene. When it comes to camera though I can only think of one thing, Sylar. Sylar being the main villain is out to obtain as many powers as he can by cutting the top of people’s heads off and examining their brain. So whenever he is doing this the camera pulls in to a close up of his face, smirking, and brings a great tension to the scene.

Back to the Beginning

Well for this week I went back to 30 Rock's first season and watched the pilot episode. I wanted to see how the show got its beginning and what was different from these more recent episodes I have watched. I have to say I laughed a lot more in the pilot than I did in the newer episodes. I think this was because I got to start from a fresh basis and not have to keep wondering "who this character is" and if there was some running joke going on. I was happy to see that everyone's character seems almost unchanged and just as funny. Tina Fey's character seems to be just as crazy as she has been in the newer episodes while Alec seems to still be the suave and know it all type character. Seeing this first episode also helped me understand why Tracy is there. I didn't want to just look up why he was there in case I actually went back and watched the series so seeing this episode made it just click into place. I enjoyed the two cut aways with Tracy, I have to say the one when he is on the highway in his underwear with a lightsaber yelling "I is a Jedi!" made me laugh a lot. Seeing this episode gives me high hopes at what I can see in the future when new episodes start up again. If I have more time maybe I will play a little catch up and watch some more earlier episodes.

The Big Rewind, or Staples and its Evil Music Pens!

Well I didn’t work in a Blockbuster; I worked at Staples back in my hometown of Columbus. While there I was a both a clerk and Office Supplies person, so where does media come into this? Well for one I got to listen to my “favorite” twenty songs about eight hours a day and even less songs during the Holiday season. And to also add to that I got to listen to these great singing pens at our checkout counters. Nope they didn’t play good music; they only played High School Musical and Miley Cyrus….ugh. To make these pens play music all you had to do was click the pen and away they went! And what did everyone do when they came up to the register? Press the damn pens! So guess what I would have stuck in my head the rest of the day? My favorite part about these pens though were when people would press one then look right at me and say “wow that has to get annoying” and then proceed to press another pen. We as the employees had fun messing with each other though when it came to these pens. We would go up to the service desk to ask a question and right before we left we would hit the pen and walk away laughing. Of course karma catches up and we’ll get that customer with the kid who wants to play with all thirty pens and once. So there’s my story, but where does it all lead? Well the thoughts that always occurred to me during this time were “is this where music is heading?” and “who is the defining musician in our generation?” To tackle the first question I have to say if this is here music is heading please let me off the rollercoaster I don’t want to be on this ride anymore. I was brought up listening to the good stuff, The Beatles, The Who, ACDC all the classics as we call them now. As I look at music today I see an upsurge in pop and hip-hop music while the punk rock and just rock in general seem to be falling to the wayside. I mean my two favorite bands are Taking Back Sunday and Blink 182, but yet when I tell some people older than me about them they of course don’t know who they are. It’s taken four albums for Taking Back Sunday to finally be heard on the radio and Blink 182 just got back together from breaking up a few years back. Now I’m not claiming that these bands are the greatest in the world, because they really aren’t, but I’m merely giving an example that there many other groups out there that are not part of this new pop and hip-hop movement. It seems that every year or so there is a new music fad. The last few years it was country and even before that it was boy-bands. So where are we heading now? Some of the most popular artists are either Disney stars or rapping about something I can barley understand. Who knows maybe in a few years we’ll see a resurgence of these oldies bands or even a new fad will appear. My next thought was always about our generation’s defining musician or group. I know with my parents there is always The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Elvis, but who do I and others of my age have? Is it Kanye West? What about Justin Timberlake? Or even Miley? I really don’t know! There hasn’t been anyone I feel like that has stepped out of the spotlight and given me some proof that they should be that artist, except Kanye but his ego is too big for me to care. It’s something that I still don’t think has been answered and probably won’t be for many more years. So to tie this into A.O. Scott’s article. Records, CD’s orMP3’s? I’ve seen over the years this strange re-emergence of Records. While in Best Buy I was seeing bands like Green Day and Nickelback had actual records out and they were placed next to The Beatles and Steppin’ Wolf. This was while I was listening to music on my iPod while looking at the CD’s; talk about all the formats being together all at once. Its obvious MP3’s are what’s in right now and CD’s are dying off while Records are coming back for some reason. I have a roommate who will refuse to use programs like iTunes to legally download anything, even if it’s free. When I ask why he mumbles something about DRM and other things I have no idea about and carries on. So where are we heading when it comes to formats? I still like having a CD in case something goes wrong on my computer but I know others who hate anything about digital music because of the quality and will go and buy records instead. Also what comes next after the MP3, I know I’ve started to see the Mv4 format a lot, but what’s next?

Let the Christmas Episodes Begin!

So 30 Rock tonight took the path of many other TV shows and had its Christmas episode. I never was fond of the Xmas episodes of shows because I felt they were just a week off from what really goes on in the show and are just a not as impressive show. I laughed a few times but was not all that impressed. I found the parts with the whole "getting sarcasm" parts humorous but that was about it. I'm trying to not let this effect my judgement on the show since it is the pretty much mandatory holiday episode and I know it will be different next time. Holiday episodes to me are "lets just make everyone happy" episodes. I can see why because who wants to see a sad show around the holiday season. Instead I propose some story arc or just leave out a Christmas episode if possible, they don't bring anything new to the table. The other part that got old fast was the poking fun at Facebook. For some reason I just haven't got adjusted to people talking about social networking and texting in TV shows and movies, so to here it made fun of to a point beyond funny gets old really fast in my book. Like I said I wait to see what happens next time but I'm hoping for something better.