If you read only one blog full of ranting and raving about sports (local and otherwise), movies, TV shows, miscellaneous pop culture, life and other assorted flotsam and jetsam, make it this one!
Showing posts with label Sacha Baron Cohen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sacha Baron Cohen. Show all posts

Saturday, August 30, 2014

#EverySimpsonsEver -- Day Eleven

Really. It's almost over. One more day after this. (I repeat: stop applauding!)

MUST-SEE!

8/31 12:00 AM ET “The Greatest Story Ever D’ohed” -- The Simpsons join the Flanderseseses on a trip to Jerusalem. Guest stars Sacha Baron Cohen, but not as Borat or Bruno or Ali G.

8/31 5:00 AM ET “MoneyBART” -- Lisa becomes the coach of Bart's Little League team and, using sabermetrics, the team starts winning. Notable for a very unusual opening couch gag from the artist known as Banksy.

8/31 7:30 AM ET “The Fight Before Christmas” -- Formatted more like a Halloween special, with four different Christmas-related dreams, including one with Martha Stewart and another with Katy Perry in a live-action segment featuring the Simpsons characters as Muppet-esque puppets.

8/31 9:00 AM ET “Flaming Moe” -- Not to be confused with "Flaming Moe's," this is one more super-gay-gay-gay episode. With the help of Waylon Smithers, Moe's Tavern becomes Mo's, a trendy gay bar. If you've ever wanted to see Homer and Marge voguing, this is your episode.

8/31 8:00 PM ET “The D’oh-cial Network” -- Lisa creates SpringFace, a social networking site. Featuring a couch gag with David Letterman and a brief bit at the end with Armie Hammer as the Winklevoss twins (just like in "The Social Network"). They're competing in a rowing event at the 2012 London Olympics...against the Bouvier twins, Patty and Selma.

8/31 9:30 PM ET “At Long Last Leave” -- The 500th episode, in which the residents of Springfield vote to evict the Simpsons from the town.

MEH. M-E-H, MEH.

8/31 1:00 AM ET “Chief of Hearts”
8/31 4:00 AM ET “Elementary School Musical”
8/31 4:30 AM ET “Loan-a Lisa”
8/31 6:30 AM ET “The Fool Monty”
8/31 7:00 AM ET “How Munched Is That Birdie in the Window?”
8/31 8:00 AM ET “Donnie Fatso”
8/31 8:30 AM ET “Moms I’d Like to Forget”
8/31 9:30 AM ET “Homer the Father”
8/31 1:00 PM ET “The Real Housewives of Fat Tony” -- Fat Tony marries Selma, making her Selma Bouvier-Terwilliger-Hutz-McClure-Stu-Simpson-D'Amico.
8/31 4:30 PM ET “Replaceable You” -- I can't, for the life of me, remember anything about this episode. Even after reading the Wikipedia entry, reading that Jane Lynch appeared in it, I can't remember it at all. Hey, maybe it's a brilliant episode. But I'm gonna say...no.
8/31 7:00 PM ET “Holidays of Future Passed”
8/31 7:30 PM ET “Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson” -- With the utterly repugnant Ted Nugent.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Quick Reviews: May 2012

Since I continue to procrastinate and waste time (not entirely wasting it, as I've had some stuff to deal with as well), I have to lump together the films I've seen instead of trying to do post after post. After today I've got seven that I've seen since the start of the "summer" movie season (which this year was, I suppose, the week "The Avengers" was released, which was before Mother's Day). Since I saw four of them in May, I'll wrap them up. Really, though, what's finally spurring them on is the one I just saw a few hours ago, so stay tuned.

Marvel's The Avengers: Do I really have to refer to this as "Marvel's"? Anyway, I am a bigger fan of the DC superheroes -- although with their "New 52" crap driving me away from the comic book stores, not to mention the better success of the Marvel character movies, it's a bit harder to say that. I have high hopes for "The Dark Knight Rises," but once Christian Bale's final Batman movie is over with, anyone trying to make a DC movie will seriously need to step up their game to come close to what "The Avengers" pulled off.  I was so dazzled that I had to really think of a reason to not give this a perfect A-plus grade. I finally came up with this: there's an obligatory scene where some of the heroes fight each other. This happens in the comic books and almost always is contrived -- they have to fight each other before teaming up to fight the bad guy. Even though in this movie it was almost plausible and understandable plot-wise, it was still there. My grade: A.

Dark Shadows: It started with a surprisingly long prologue before getting to the 1972 setting for the main story, which turned out to be quite disappointing. I love that Johnny Depp throws himself into these roles, and there were a few moments that were enjoyable, but resurrecting this old TV show just seemed totally unnecessary. My grade: C-minus.

The Dictator: If my generalization is correct, people mostly loved Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat" and mostly hated "Bruno," although I loved both,

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Quick NON-Review: I'm Still Here

We all became familiar with the story of Joaquin Phoenix and his apparent meltdown -- saying he was quitting acting to pursue a career as a rapper, gaining weight, growing a scraggly beard, acting bizarrely on the Late Show with David Letterman, etc. Some suspected it was a hoax because Casey Affleck was following him around with a camera, documenting everything.

Then it was announced that a documentary called "I'm Still Here," telling the story of Phoenix's seeming descent into madness, with scenes of drug use and hookers included, would be released. Still, there were doubters who were sure that it was a put-on of some kind, but everyone involved kept insisting it was not a hoax.

Until they decided to tell us it was a hoax. With the film now in theaters, Affleck just came clean to the New York Times and Phoenix is slated to return to the Letterman show next week, in a presumably more coherent condition. (Oddly enough, it seems that one of Letterman's writers did an interview in August 2009 in which he said that it was all a hoax and that Dave was even in on the joke. Only now is anyone paying attention to that interview, it seems.)