TV

One of my favorite parts of the Will Ferrell era of SNL was the slew of “Celebrity Jeopardy” sketches. Nothing beats Sean Connery asking for “The Penis Mightier”. Comedy gold. So I was pretty excited to find out that Saturday, in Ferrell’s return as host, they did a brand new edition. This time they got Tom Hanks to appear as himself. Genius. Watch, and laugh!

“And Tom Hanks is caught in a dry cleaning bag…”

The guys who brought you “Dick in a Box” are back, with their own special way of celebrating Mother’s Day. Hilarious!

Love Justin Timberlake or hate him, you have to admit he’s awesome on SNL.

The Decemberists returned to The Colbert Report last night, and unlike last time’s unsucessful Guitarmageddon challenge, there was no Peter Fucking Frampton to mess with the band’s mojo. They played “The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid” from Hazards of Love, and it’s impressive how well the song translates live. The first part just sounds like a standard Decemberists song, but once My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden steps up to belt out her part everything kicks into higher gear. Check it out:

If you liked what you saw and want to see the whole crew perform the whole album, go see them on tour this summer.

Because Hollywood is truly out of original ideas, 20th Century Fox is bringing back the Predator franchise. Robert Rodriguez is set to direct Predators. The movie will follow a team of commandos who have to face down a group of Predators, plural. Since Rodriguez’s schedule is full of Machete and Nervewrackers we probably won’t see this until 2011. Can’t say I’m disappointed by that.

We got a trailer for Sasha Baron Cohen’s new movie Bruno a couple of weeks ago. Now we get the first poster. And it’s fairly disturbing. If anyone knows how I can scrub that image out of my brain, please let me know. Bruno follows an Austrian fashion designer who makes everyone around him very, very awkward. If it’s anything like Borat it should be the most uncomfortable kind of fun possible. (click on the picture to see it full-sized)

Nobody realized it at the time, but looking back, The Dana Carvey show had an unbelievable cast of writers. The show had almost as many great writers as episodes. It only lasted 8 shows, but check out this list of writers: Louis C.K., Dana Carvey, Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Bob Odenkirk, Robert Smigel, and Charlie Kaufman. Yeah, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich Charlie Kaufman. The episodes are all up on Hulu now, so you can try to figure out how such a great team of writers didn’t succeed.

I love a good trailer mashup, and this one’s pretty damn good. Take the audio from the Ocean’s Eleven trailer, and video from The Great Muppet Caper, and you get something totally awesom:

And finally, from the WTF department, watch as Richard Simmons flips the fuck out:

If you’re not a fan of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia just stop reading and go watch it now. It’s probably the funniest thing on TV, and it’s definitely the most wrong. It’s like Seinfeld, but with no morals.

Anyhoo, if you ARE a fan of the show you’ll remember the musical the gang put on at the end of Season 4, The Nightman Cometh. It was a high water mark in television history. It had drama, glamor, singing, and trolls. Truly spectacular. What could be better than The Nightman Cometh on tv? How about a live performance?

A couple weekends ago the whole gang got together in LA and performed the whole musical on stage. I would have give my right nut to see that. Luckily, via the magic of the internets, we can see some clips. Dayman, a-wo-OH-OH!

The world is one Golden Girl short after Bea Arthur died today. She was 86. I’m too young to remember her as the title character on Maude, but I’m the perfect age to remember her as Dorothy Zbornak in Golden Girls. And of course who could forget her in The Star Wars Holiday Special? But despite her acting talents, which resulted in multiple Emmy awards, she’s probably best known for her mannish looks and man-voice. Oh well, everyone has to be known for something I guess.

By way of tribute, listen to the classic theme song from Golden Girls, “Thank You For Being a Friend”:

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The boys of South Park could have a field day with this: Figure skater Brian Boitano is coming to Food Network. He’ll be hosting a show called What Would Brian Boitano Make? (a nod to the musical number from South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut), where he’ll prepare food for a different event each week. This is just another sign of the descent of Food Network in to crap. If it wasn’t for Good Eats there would be no reason to watch it at all.

Moving on to good television, if you were a fan of The Wire you don’t want to miss this. It’s original scripts for three episodes (including the first and last episodes) and David Simon’s original pitch to HBO for the series. It’s fascinating stuff. The pitch in particular makes you realize just how much of the series was thought out ahead of time, and how many layers there really are to it. And it’s pretty funny that Stringer Bell was originally supposed to be called “Stringy”. Aw hell no.

Bad news Bourne fans: We won’t see a new Bourne movie until 2011. Apparently everything is in place except, you know, the script. No biggie.

So you went 0-16 last season. What do you need to do to improve? Get a new coach? Nah. New players? Nah. Make your logo looks slight more intimidating? Yep, that’ll do it. Even without Matt Millen the Detroit Lions are morons.

Drummer Josh Freese’s unique album packages are working. Read about the guy who bought the $20,000 package and played mini-golf with rock stars. I’m not sure it’s worth $20k, but it’s pretty damn cool.

Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon went back home and performed with his old high school’s jazz ensemble. Check out the videos of him performing his songs as well as some standards. Must have been pretty cool to be one of those high school kids.

Finally, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen all week. It’s the TV edit of the famous line from Snakes on a Plane:

What would Star Wars’ opening credit have looked like if it was an 80s action TV series? This video answers the question by mixing MacGuyver’s theme music and title style with clips from the original trilogy:

via SlashFilm

Love him or hate him, you have to give the guy props. John Madden is a Hall of Fame NFL coach. He’s an award-winning broadcaster. And he’s built the biggest video game franchise on the planed. Today, after 30 years on the job, he retired from broadcasting.

Madden takes a lot of flack for his broadcasting style, and a lot of people don’t like him, but I’ve always liked the guy. Sure, he often says things that are painfully obvious. And things that don’t quite make sense. And sure, he’s got favorite players that he treats differently (I’m looking at you Mr. Favre). So on paper I should hate the guy. But I don’t. And I’m not completely sure why. It could be because I can’t remember football without him. And because of the hundreds of hours of his games I’ve played, the majority with him spouting the same 20 phrases, over and over. So I’m actually a little sad to see the guy go.

Or I was until I heard who’s replacing him as Al Michaels’ partner on Sunday Night Footbal: Cris Collinsworth. For my money Collinsworth is the best color commenter in the business. And pairing him with Michaels makes something of a Dream Team. So rock on NBC!

After 20+ years on the air The Simpsons are finally getting some recognition. The Postal Service announced Simpsons stamps this week. Fans of the show can go to the USPS site and vote for their favorite stamp. Oh, and the release of the stamps in May happens to correspond with the price of stamps going up 2 cents. D’oh!

Speaking of things that are overdue, every Beatles album is getting remastered and re-released. The new editions will be out on September 9th, corresponding with the release of the Rock Band Beatles edition. Truthfully I’m not sure how I feel about this. On one hand, the mix on the current batch of Beatles CDs isn’t great, so it would be nice to get an upgrade. On the other hand, the vast majority of music these days is mixed WAY too loud, to the point where it eliminates the dynamics and clips damn near everything. Don’t want to see that happen to The Beatles. We’ll just have to wait and see how these turn out.

Are we getting to the point where Lego is a legitimate artistic medium for sculpture? Or at least as a serious model making medium? Seeing this recreation of the Japanese Battleship Yamoto in Lego I would have to say yes. The artist’s site has more pictures of this amazing creation.

Eastbound and Down is coming back for a second season. If you didn’t catch the first season on HBO you don’t know what you’ve missed. Danny McBride, who you may recognize from Pineapple Express or Tropic Thunder, plays a former major league relief pitcher whose arm gave out. He returns to his hometown and teaches gym while he works on his comeback. The show’s not for the faint of heart though. McBride’s character, Kenny Powers, is a racist, egocentric redneck. His catchphrase as a pitcher was “You’re Fuckin’ Out!”. In short, if you’re easily offended, maybe this isn’t the show for you.

Speaking of coming back, The Rentals have a set of new EPs on the way. They’re calling the series Songs About Time, and there will be one release every three months through the end of the year. You can pre-order the set now, plus purchase or stream the four songs from the first installment, The Story of a Thousand Seasons Past, at their site.

This is just unholy: Peeps Lip Balm.

Google and Univeral Music have decided to play nicely. In order to appease Universal’s concerns about their music videos on YouTube, the two companies will launch Vevo, a site dedicated to videos from Universal artists. I feel like as a music fan and internet junkie I should have an opinion on this, but oddly I don’t.

Finally, a group of film students in England have started what I hope will be the next big internet trend: Films in One Minute, One Take. They’re remaking big Hollywood movies, but in one continuous take that lasts one minute. Since they’re made on a very low budget, props are homemade. They’ve put together two so far, Forest Gump in One Minute, One Take and Kill Bill 1 & 2 in One Minute, One Take. Both are brilliant, but I’m partial to Kill Bill. Check it out: