// Category Archive for: TV

Bottom Ten: 2010 Deaths

By Matt Keeley

Man, the Grim Reaper sucks. I know, I know, he provides a valuable service and when he gets stuck up a tree, all sorts of bad stuff happens, but sometimes his aim sucks. Like seriously, Mister Rogers? Talk about all-time candidates for immortality. Anyway, here’s a list of the Ten Least-worthy Folks to have kicked the bucket this year.

Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Nielsen was awesome. Sure, he made a lot of crappy movies, but he also made ones so awesome that no one minded! Yeah, Mr. Magoo exists, but so does The Naked Gun. And, really, Spy Hard wasn’t that bad. But the cool thing is that Nielsen was also a renowned dramatic actor and even—in his youth—a heartthrob, which kinda messes with folks of the younger generation, just because we think of Lt. Frank Drebin. But, honestly, Frank Drebin was pretty hot.
(more…)

Doctor Ew: Best Of 2010

Brass Eye

Band: The Elwins

Albums:
Women, Public Strain
Mantler, Monody

Songs:
Hooded Fang, “Straight Up The Dial”
Marvin Gaye, “Anna’s Song”
Steven McKay, “Ignite”
Bad Yoga (Neil Fuckin’ Quin), “A Saturday in the Cold Sun”

Craziest comedy show of all time: Brass Eye

Musician: Sandro Perri

TV: The Walking Dead (first episode)

Doctor Ew, a.k.a. Drew Smith, has just released his first solo album, Gadzooks. He is also a member of The Bicycles.

David Markey: Best Of 2010

The Runaways

Underwhelmed by most things in film this year, but here’s a few things I enjoyed.

Movies:
The Runaways (Floria Sigismondi)
The Social Network (David Fincher)
Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine)
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright)
8: The Mormon Proposition (Reed Cowan)

Still waiting to see:
I Love You Phillip Morris (Glenn Ficarra & John Requa)
Casino Jack (George Hickenlooper – RIP)

Waiting for the DVD:
Machete (Robert Rodriguez)
Piranha 3-D (Alexandre Aja)
The Kids Are Alright (Lisa Cholodenko)

TV:
Mad Men
Breaking Bad
Dexter

The only CD I bought all year:
Kill City (reissue) Iggy Pop & James Williamson

David Markey is a musician and filmmaker, who has most recently directed The Reinactors.

When Three Is Neither Company Nor A Crowd: Least Favorite Love Triangles On TV

By Maureen

I’m not a fan of love triangles. I’ve never been involved in one, and neither has anyone I know. The modern television writer, however, seems to think that love triangles are so commonplace a situation that shows feature them frequently. Usually I am able to ignore them, but three particular examples in recent memory come to mind as especially aggravating. In the spirit of the “power of three,” here they are.
(more…)

Seinfeld: You Got To Have Three

By AJ Wood

Comedy duos are always the front of our minds, as though funny only happens in pairs: Lucy and Desi, Burns and Allen, McCain and Palin. For me, as typified in that first sentence, three is the funniest of numbers: one and two set up the pattern and three knocks them down. Works every time.

What becomes even funnier is using the same structure on top of itself: having three different series of three gags which are each funny on their own, but funnier still when they come together to form something greater. Something like a comedy turducken: nothing is left to idle stuffing; it’s just meat on meat on meat. Or perhaps as a vegetarian, I should say a comedy Voltron, with powerful parts coming together to make something more. Or maybe I should stop giggling over the fact I just wrote “meat on meat on meat” and “powerful parts coming together” and move on to the next slide.

One of the best examples of seamless tripartite comedy writing comes from an unassuming source: the show about nothing, Seinfeld. Running from mid-1989 through the 1997 TV season, this sitcom created by Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David offered something fresh and different from more typical sitcom formats. While “about nothing,” it was still quite unlike anything else on the air. One well-known episode from the early years setting this show apart was “The Chinese Restaurant” (Season 2, Episode 11): a continuous 22 minutes of Jerry, Elaine, and George waiting for a table in a restaurant. Pretty standard fare for a one-act stage comedy perhaps, but definitely not the realm of the typical sitcom.
(more…)

Terrorists, Tours, And Tourette’s: Season Three Of Curb Your Enthusiasm

By AJ Wood

Season Eight of Curb Your Enthusiasm will be starting soon, and I will of course be watching. No matter what it brings, it will be difficult for it to reach the brilliance of the third season, which aired in 2002.

Not that episodes from seasons before and after the third one have not been great in their own regard: Porno Gil’s dinner party, opening night of The Producers, and of course, a wrestler named Thor. But as a whole, the third season brings the best mix of those three things that make CYE such a comedic goldmine: impossibly bizarre situations, a wonderful supporting cast, and some great insights into the mind of Larry David.
(more…)

Armchair Casting Director: Dark Shadows

By Lisa Anderson

As a pre-teen vampire fan in 1991, I was very excited when NBC launched Dark Shadows, starring Ben Cross as vampire Barnabas Collins. The show got good ratings, but was pre-empted so often by Gulf War coverage that it was canceled in March after premiering in January. I realized at the time that it was a revival of an earlier show, but it wasn’t until I was in college that I got to watch some of the original Dark Shadows, which aired on ABC from 1966 to 1971, and in which Barnabas was played by Jonathan Frid.
(more…)

Les Oraliens, Or How I Found The Scariest YouTube Video Ever

By Emily Carney

Obviously, I am more than familiar with what scares me the most in my real life; in my attempts to look for “scary” videos for this issue of Popshifter, I stumbled across a lot of scenes from horror films, bad attempts at karaoke, videos of methamphetamine addicts doing their “thing,” clips of “actor”/mess Paz de la Huerta, and of course Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video (which I never watched until I was in my twenties. . . no kidding).

However, I can’t say that any of these actually frightened me; at most, they were mildly amusing. So, I became blocked on what to do for this article. . . that is, until last night, when I discovered a masterpiece of an absolutely terrifying kids’ show.
(more…)

Don’t Be Afraid Of The DVD?

By Less Lee Moore

As a fan of the 1973 made-for-TV movie Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, the news of the upcoming remake made me skeptical.

Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark was one of those movies from my childhood that could scare me just thinking about it. I can’t even remember if I actually ever saw it, but like I said a few years back, I always remembered it as “the movie with the things in the fireplace.”
(more…)

Top Five Nerd References In Hip Hop

By Matt Demers
(more…)