I was recently introduced to "Dinner For Five" through the magic of the interweb. It's a show with ever so cool Jon Favreau (the director of next year's Iron Man) hosting an evening with four of his Hollywood friends (four different people or combination of different people each episode) who casually discuss the craft of acting and the pitfalls of fame (e.g., the ugly fan who says, "Everybody tells me I look just like you!"). Apparently, the show is a rip-off from the show Ruby Wax had called "Ruby". This show is much better, though. Mostly because it doesn't have Ruby Wax in it.
I've found clips of the show on Youtube and Dailymotion.com and compiled a small section of all the episodes here. I've seen most of these and they're all very good.
Episode 1.1: Jon Favreau/ Joey Lauren Adams, Peter Berg, Kevin James, Jeanne Tripplehorn View the full episode: Here
Episode 1.2: Jon Favreau/ Peter Falk, Cheri Oteri, Garry Shandling, Vince Vaughn View the full episode: Here
Episode 1.3: Jon Favreau/ Illena Douglas, Jeff Goldblum, Christian Slater, Fred Willard View the full episode: Here
Episode 1.5: Jon Favreau/ Ron Livingston, Kevin Pollack, Sarah Silverman, Rod Steiger View the full episode: Here
Episode 1.5: Jon Favreau/ Andy Dick, Daryl Hannah, Marylin Manson, (missing a fifth) View the full episode: Here
Episode 2.1: Jon Favreau/ Ben Affleck, Colin Farrell, Jennifer Garner, Kevin Smith Part: one/ two/ three
Episode 4.2: Jon Favreau/ Neve Campbell, Dave Foley, Jeff Garlin, Henry Winkler Part: one/ two/ three
Episode 4.6: Jon Favreau/ Bruce Campbell, Roger Corman, Faizon Love, Rob Zombie Part: one/ two/ three
Episode 4.8: Jon Favreau/ David Duchovny, Tim Blake Nelson, Stephen Root, Dax Shepard Part: one/ two/ three/ four/ five
Episode 4.9: Jon Favreau/ Tony Hawk, John Heder, Seth MacFarlane, Stacy Peralta Part: one/ two/ three
Episode 4.10: Jon Favreau/ Rosanna Arquette, Bill Maher, AlanisMorissette, Bob Odenkirk Part: one/ two/ three
Episode 4.12: Kevin Smith (guest host), J.J. Abrams, Mark Hamill, Jason Lee, Stan Lee Part: one/ two/ three (very good episode with some of my heroes)
Bonus clip: Vince Vaughn giving Rory Cochrane from C.S.I: Miami the hardest time ever recorded on television here. Funny stuff.
You can buy the first season exclusively from Amazon. It's an amazing line up of film makers, actors, producers, writers and damn right cool people. For some reason the complete four season boxset (which was only recently released) has been deleted from Amazon. There was apparently difficulty publishing the DVD and supplying orders made a month ago. The show is now being broadcast on ITV4, of all stations. On a sidenote: I've had exactly 1000 individual visitors in exactly 4 weeks. Go me!
I've finally seen The Simpson Movie and I thought it was... nice. Apparently, it's based on a TV show and embiggened to the cinema screen plus you have to pay to get in. So, to sum up, I give it 4 thumbs up out of a possible 5 star... percent. To be honest I really liked it and I cannot wait for the DVD. It's perfect material for DVD, especially since there was two movies worth of material cut from the film including Kelsey Gramer, Minnie Driver, Erin Brockivich, Isla Fisher and probably all the jokes that were missing from the film.
Anywho, I found a list of Simpsons lists so enjoy: -Top 10 Simpsons endings of all time (BestWeekEver) -Celebrity cameos on The Simpsons quiz game (Radar) -The weirdest stuff Homer Simpson has ever eaten (Stuff) -Greatest guest voices on The Simpsons (Bullz-Eye) -Sexiest ladies on The Simpsons (Maxim, obviously) -Top 10 vechicles on The Simpsons (The Mags Reports) -Top 10 religious episodes of The Simpsons (Beliefnet - a religious site) -Top 12 Simpsons created words (Cracked or a better list) -The best Simpsons band cameos ever (Blender) -The most obscure Simpsons characters (Maxim) -10 of my personal favourite Simpsons moments (Monscooch)
Edit: I've just seen this site. Destination Creation is a (mostlycrappy) graphic design company which, in it's own words, uses "award winning production tools, skills, knowledge and marketing experience to provide original and effective business development facilitation, visual marketing and multimedia advertising campaigns for a variety of clients through our full service Destination Creation studio." In other words, they make fancy photoshop pictures.
They photoshopped the entire Simpsons family as real people (but still ends up looking like an alien family) here. I'm most impressed with the pictures of Snowball II (as seen above), Santas Little Helper, and Blinky (scroll down here). That's it for now. Off-topic: Kevin Smith rocks.
This alternative video to Kanye's first single "Can't Tell Me Nothin" defines the word "pimptastic". It's so much better than the first video which Hype Williams pretty much phoned in, but that wouldn't be a hard task in the first place. Kanye hired Zach Galifianakis (who is a genius) who filmed the video on his farm and put the video on his official website. His sidekick is Will Oldham a.k.a. Bonnie "Prince" William.
Some brilliant Zach Galifianakis quotes: "I like to go to really bad movies, during their sixth week, and there's only one other person in the theatre, and I like to sit right next to them. And they're like, 'excuse me?', and I'm like, 'Shhh, I can't hear Keanu."
"You know you're an alcoholic when the bartender knows your name... and you've never been to that bar before."
"Guys, have you ever woken up with an erection, and then you realize you're just face-down in a massage chair at Brookstone...and then you yell out, 'I'll take it!'"
"Three years ago my sister was diagnosed with multiple personalities, and there's nothing funny about that. But she phoned me the other day...and my caller ID exploded."
"That show 'The Amazing Race'--is that about white people?"
"I would start a revolution, but... I just bought a hammock."
"I'm working on this new screenplay. It's called "Schindler's List 2: Let's Get This Party Started."
"I want to move to India or Pakistan, and become a cab driver."
"Hello everyone, my name's Zach Galifianakis, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right."
"I just released a DVD. It's selling like whatever the opposite of 'hotcakes' is."
"At what age do you tell a highway it's adopted? I think around seven, because, that's when they start to think, 'I don't look like the Kiwanis Club.'"
"I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day in my fort."
"I want to open up a store for cross-dressers. I'll call it 'Susan B. Anthony'."
"I wear a lot of Axe bodyspray, but I live in a black neighborhood and it's called Ask. And if you don't get that you're not racist."
"Last night, I got so drunk that I African-Americaned out."
24 There were a few things revealed: CTU will be disbanded by the government and Jack will be hauled in front of a Senate Committee to explain his actions over the past several seasons. The show, itself, will be set in Washington DC and not Los Angeles.
The movie won't be filmed until after the next season. An idea that's thrown about is having one half of the film in normal movie time and have an event set off a timer leaving the second half in real time.
Spoiler: An alternative end sequence was written but not filmed for the 6th season. When Jack was looking down the cliff he would hear "Jack, we have a lot to talk about". He turns around and who should he see? Tony Almeida. The theory is that if you didn't see someone die on screen, then it's still open for Tony.
Futurama Good news everyone! While it was already announced a few months ago that Futurama would return in some form, it was only announced yesterday that it would in the shape of full-length high-def films sold on DVD. The first will be called "Bender's Big Score" released on November 27th.
It will be followed by three additional films, and each film will be divided into four episodes each to be aired on Comedy Central. So, that's 4 DVD movies or 16 new episodes depending on how you look at it.
The remaining three films will be titled, 'The Beast with a Billion Bucks', 'Bender's Game' and 'Into the Wild Green Yonder' but are subject to change. There was no information as to their release date. The first film centers around some nudist aliens and the secret to time travel which is somehow attached to Fry's buttock. Expect lots of animated asses actually. Welcome back,Futurama. The entire cast is returning and the first film is to be written by Ken Keeler and David X. Cohen (my favourite writers in the series).
Get Smart The new movie based on the TV show of the same name had some more promising footage shown. It stars comedy superstar of the moment (alongside Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow that is) Steve Carrell taking on the role of Maxwell Smart. It also stars Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), MasiOka (Hiro from Heroes with an IQ of 180) and Anne Hathaway (my future ex-wife). Click here for the brilliant trailer. Click here for the original TV show intro and here for the 1989 version. As a bonus, click here for the Simpsons spoof.
Heroes Show creator Tim Kring said that they had chosen the first director to do an episode of "Heroes: Origins", a six-episode spin-off series debuting in April, after the end of the regular season of Heroes. Origins is an anthology series, and each episode will serve to introduce new characters to the Heroes universe. Kring had previously noted that he felt the show was a great opportunity for writers, directors and actors who might otherwise not be able to commit to a TV series to have fun briefly playing in the Heroes sandbox.
Kring then said he wanted to bring the just-signed director up on stage. As the clueless panel all looked off-stage to see who was coming, Greg Grunberg (Matt Parkman) started saying "No way! No way!". The audience then erupted in cheers, as none other than Comic-Con favorite Kevin Smith took to the stage.
In other Heroes news, there will be a hardcover DC graphic novel publication released of all the online comics that tied in with each episode collected together in a neat little package. The comics will feature the art of Tim Sale (of Batman: The Long Halloween fame) who created the artwork featured in the TV show as painted by the drugged painter who saw the future. The HD DVD boxset is out on 24th of August and I can't wait to pick that up.
The Incredible Hulk It's still in the pre-production stages but the main cast and director came to Comic Con to reveal the bare minimum of information on the new Hulk movie. “This is a part one, this is the beginning of a whole new Hulk saga,” confirmed The Incredible Hulk producer Kevin Feige. Read the rest of the panel here. The film stars Edward Norton as Bruce Banner and Liv Tyler as love of his life, Betty Ross.
An interesting revelation about the film is that Eddie boy (as I like to call him) is more than just an actor. He said "I came into this and I wrote the screenplay. I was the Marvel kid. I had subscriptions to a lot of the marvel comics. I loved Hulk, the early incarnation of Hulk and then the television show when I was a kid." He goes on to say "I always felt like it was one of those great contemporary myths. It's almost like out of Greek mythology. This suppression of your inner demon". You can see the concept art for the new Hulk here. As you can see, they're taking it in a different direction i.e. longer hair.
Indiana Jones There was just a live video presentation from the set of "Indiana Jones and the Something of Blah" or "Indy IV" since the full title hasn't been revealed yet. Stephen Spielbergo and the main cast were there (including Karen Allen who returns as Marion Ravenwood). The new members of the family include ShiaLaBeouf (he's so hot right now) and Ray Winston (he's so hot right now). Here's the video of it all.
Lost There wasn't much revealed at the Lost panel, but to be honest, this is Lost we're talking about. Nothing is ever revealed about anything. Ever. Oh my gosh, there's a polar bear after Jin! What happens? A flashback about Sun and Jin and how they struggled when living together. There was very little information given out except for the re-appearance of who plays Michael in the show. A lot of crazy promises were made by the shows producers with a new film also revealed to keep fans busy until next Spring.
What excited me most at Comic con, Lost related, was the first glimpse of Lost: The Video Game. It looks pretty effin' good to me. That said, I'd say there would be very little point to it. A game based on the first season is not going to reveal something we don't already know plus all the loose ends are going to be tied up by the show in the next 4 seasons. Season 4 starts next February for an uninterrupted 16 show run. Click here for a good panel report.
Smallville The adventures of young Clark Kent is a guilty pleasure of mine as a huge Superman fan and of DC comics in general. At the panal presentation, we were introduced to Supergirl who will be played by the lovely Laura Vandervoort. Haha. That's a funny name.
Some nice tidbits were revealed. Some obvious points are that Bizarro and the Martian Manhunter take up the most of the season's early episodes. The early JLA will reappear with some old and new members with Green Arrow appearing mid-season. Bruce Wayne will never, ever appear in the show, however cool that would be with Wonder Woman an idea for the distant future.
Spiderman There was a sneak preview of yet another new Spiderman cartoon series. The series will be based on a 16 year old Peter Parker who goes to high school. The show is promising to show the origins of everything in the Spiderman universe. I still love the old 1996 Spiderman cartoon.
Empire asked Sam Raimi about a possible Spiderman 4. He doesn't know whether he'll want to direct it or produce the film and he wants to find a script good enough so he can work on. All he did reveal was that the first meeting regarding Spiderman 4 happened only last week. Whether it'll still be the same cast again or if they'll introduce 17 antagonists in the next film is all guesswork at this stage.
Superman Doomsday The direct to DVD cartoon based on the classic comic book had a quick Q&A on the film and why it's being done. I don't think it should have. As much as I love Bruce Timm's animation style and The Death Of Superman/ World Without A Superman/ The Return Of Superman/ Hunter: Prey graphic novels, I don't think they should have mixed. The trailer shows that the cartoon pretty much takes the comic shot for shot and throws some voices on it. Click here for the lifeless trailer in more ways than one.
Star Trek The big news before the actual Comic Con was the confirmation of ZachariQuinto from Heroes as Spock as I posted a few days ago. At the actual panel presentation, people hoping to find out more about the cast (in particular, who'll play the young captain Kirk?) were disappointed. The only information given about Star Trek XI was that Spock will be played by two different people: Quinto and the original Spock and music superstar, Leonard Nimoy. When asked why he chose to come back to the Star Trek universe, Nimoy said that "it was logical". Geddit? Logical! Because that's what he would always say 40 years ago but with pointy ears. Hilarious I tells ya. JJAbrahms admitted because of how great the script was that he'd be incredibly jealous of whoever would direct. It was also announced that the first season of Star Trek would be released on HD DVD in November. To see the comic con presentation, click here.
Star Wars There was very little Star Wars news for such a geekfest. The actual Star Wars related news came in the shape of Family Guy. Airing in the States this September will be an hour long Star Wars special called "Blue Harvest". The title comes from the code name Episode IV had when filming. Here's a ten minute clip recorded at the Star Wars festival a few weeks back. It might reveal some of the best bits so be advised.
Wall-E This new CGI animated feature film comes from Disney/ Pixar studios and is directed by Andrew Stanton, the man who was in charge of Finding Nemo. It's to be released on June 28th 2008 so there's still a good while until we see a trailer.
The story goes a little something like this: "WALL-E is the story of the last little robot on Earth. He is a robot that his programming was to help clean up. You see, it's set way in the future. Through consumerism, rampant, unchecked consumerism, the Earth was covered with trash. And to clean up, everyone had to leave Earth and set in place millions of these little robots that went around to clean up the trash and make Earth habitable again.Well, the cleanup program failed with the exception of this one little robot and he's left on Earth doing his duty all alone. But it's not a story about science fiction. It's a love story, because, you see, WALL-E falls in love with [Eve], a robot from a probe that comes down to check on Earth, and she's left there to check on and see how things are going and he absolutely falls in love with her." This one is going to be different and is one to keep an eye on.
So that was most of the news. I'll have the biggest movie projects of the convention Iron Man and Watchmen summaries tomorrow. I'm still trying to find the Iron Man footage as the one on Youtube was just taken down due to legal reasons.
It's apparently the new single from a Linkin Park gone soft but there isn't an official video yet so here's a performance they gave on Saturday Night Live. Mike Shinoda seems to be having waaay too much fun here. It's as if he's channelling SNL staple Jimmy Fallon, constantly grinning like a muppet through every word. There's not a lot of options this week for a good new song. I would have said Kaiser Chief's "The Angry Mob" but for the awfulness of it all. They ran out of ideas after incuding an "oooaaaOOOAAAHHH" in most of their songs. Another possible song would be the Simpson theme tune since it's Simpson fever right now.
This is the weekly lazy post with (suprise, suprise) my favourite song of the week. Here are my last Sunday song posts: 22/07/07, 15/07/07, 08/07/07.
I've found clips of the show on Youtube and Dailymotion.com and compiled a small section of all the episodes here. I've seen most of these and they're all very good.
You can buy the first season exclusively from Amazon. It's an amazing line up of film makers, actors, producers, writers and damn right cool people. For some reason the complete four season boxset (which was only recently released) has been deleted from Amazon. There was apparently difficulty publishing the DVD and supplying orders made a month ago. The show is now being broadcast on ITV4, of all stations. On a sidenote: I've had exactly 1000 individual visitors in exactly 4 weeks. Go me!
