Classic Roots Choice #25

When Patton Oswalt was on the show last Friday his walk on music was a strange, slowed down version of "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)" with a certain evil overtone.

This was a reference to one of Oswalt's standup bits:

Listen to the actual slowed-audio version of the song here.

It's kind of a strange convention to make chipmunks have extremely high-pitched voices. There's no evidence for it as they don't speak English. Or if you say that they would have higher pitched voices because they're smaller animals then we need to adjust a whole host of animal cartoon characters.

Ricky Gervais Show Season 2 Premieres; Is Free; Is On My Blog

The second season of the Ricky Gervais show premiered today. And not only that, it's viewable from hbo.com. And not only that, it's free.

Ricky Gervais Show 2-01:

Ep. 14: Clive Warren - Full Episode

And not only that, it's the show where Karl pitches his idea for a new movie starring Clive Warren and Rebecca De Mornay. It's one of the maddest ideas for a movie ever but I kind of get the suspicion that it'll be made some day. After all, Karl pitched the idea that humans should age backwards and they made "Benjamin Button".

I'm not sure of the business model - no commercials, available for free - but I'll take it. Perhaps this is only for the season premiere.

WEETABIX!

Oregon 80s Power Ballad

In the world of college football there are many fight songs. But until now there have not been any 80's power ballads.... until now. Oh yeah, I already said that.

The A-Team

The A-Team (2010)

Pictured: The coolest toy ever.

I'll tell you something interesting about "The A-Team" (movie): it isn't terrible.

Going into it, I had heard nothing but bad things about how bad it is at badness. This, combined with the fact that I despise the current trend of making horrible remakes of things I like (see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "Transformers", "Transformers 2", "G.I. Joe" and so forth), meant that I had no hope for this remake of "The A-Team" TV series from the '80s. Still, my love for that series made me curious about the movie and kept me curious until I felt I should at least see it once.

The main criticism I heard was that it was ridiculous, mindless action that was both ridiculous and mindless. And there's no doubt that was right. I won't get into spoilers of specific actions/scenes/scenarios but I will say that calling it "unrealistic" is an insult to unrealism. If you think about the physics or logistics of this movie - or simply try to place the events somewhere within the space-time continuum in which the rest of us live - for any more than a few seconds, you WILL suffer an aneurysm and probably suffer brainexplosia. This movie takes believability and melts it with underwater fireworks and chocolate sauce.

However (and this is a hard "however" to face), it is most enjoyable. I never go for mindless action and I usually hate when other do, but in this case I do have to say that for me, believability and enjoyment were not on a line extending in opposite directions, but were rather on a circle continuum. In one direction, a movie gets more and more unreal and less enjoyable but then there comes a point where the movie gets SO unreal that it's laughable and fun. This movie is that event. The situations are SO ridiculous and SO over the top that I just chuckled and enjoyed the ride - I think you have to. And - let's be fair - we can't argue that the original A-Team didn't require a certain well-proportioned level of disbelief suspension.

It might be said that my opinion is skewed because I'm probably a pushover for all things A-Team... well, I guess that's a crime I DID commit. But how can you not be? If you got the A-Team theme blasting as the A-Team characters fire guns from a helicopter while being chased by the bad guys and BA is yelling at Murdock and it's all displayed on the big screen, what's not to like?!

And I know there's only one real BA and only one real Face, etc. and it is true... But the actors are good in this "re-imagining". The closest parallel is the new "Star Trek" movie. There are new actors playing iconic roles that are defined by the original actors but somehow it's not offensive, and actually is kinda fun.

In the end, is it Shakespeare? No. Is it smart? Not really. But it IS fun and if you're looking for some escapist entertainment for an hour, it's perfect. And it's The A-Team.

Trivia: Watch for two Phillies shirts worn by Face in the movie. Actor Bradley Cooper is a Philadelphia native. Be sure also to keep watching until after the credits are over.

Trivia Continued: Within the "A-Team" movie, there is an "A-Team" movie... (yeah). The first listed credit of this movie is Reginald Barclay. Reginald Barclay is Dwight Schultz (the original Murdock)'s character's name in "Star Trek: The Next Generation".

Personal Addendum: This may be the first time I've encountered a brainless action flick and gone along with the "turn off your thinker" mentality to laugh at the crazy explosions. So far I'm taking it in stride but it is slightly worrying that I may be getting stupider.

This Peacock Needs to Fly

The Other Guys (2010)

P.K. Highsmith and Christopher Danson (Samuel L. Jackson and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson) are two balls-to-the-wall cops who don't play by the rules. They're the kind of cops who shoot first and, then, when it gets down to the time where they should be asking questions, they're still shooting - walking away from an explosion in slow mo. This film isn't about them. Instead, it's about "The Other Guys" (Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell) - the guys who do paperwork at their desk and have their guns taken away from them because they accidentally shot Derek Jeter. The kind of guys who mount a red police emergency light on top of a Prius as they investigate scaffolding ordinance violations.

"The Other Guys" kind of slipped under the radar this year either because it was going up against dominant competition or people had grown tired of Will Ferrell movies. I can't blame them, his mostly-improvised comedic output has been downhill since "Anchorman". Still, in this case it's unjustified. This is the funniest movie I've seen in a long time - Will Ferrell or otherwise.

The great lines and great scenes of this movie are too numerous to get into. Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg give great performances. Michael Keaton and Steve Coogan are excellent surprises in supporting roles and the movie is narrated by Ice-T. In fact, maybe it's just me but I felt like I could actually hear Ice-T crawling on a log as he spoke. This movie actually made me laugh out loud multiple times - an extreme rarity.

That's why I creep.

Seinfeld Chronicled

Yesterday I completed a (about) 6 month-long project (I say "project" because it sound more impressive). Using Netflix, I had rented every disc of every season of Seinfeld as fast as the mail allowed.

I had previously confirmed that I had seen every episode and I'm well aware that thousands of reruns are aired every night on TBS alone. But the point was to go through all the deleted scenes, all the commentaries, all the extras as well as the flubs, bloopers, screwups and boners. I'm a big fan of all that "inside" stuff about where the ideas came from, how the show was created, what were the obstacles, etc. And on that count, it pretty much delivered although it was a long haul with a good number of thin spots. Still, next time anyone watches Seinfeld with me, they better prepare to get hit with some knowledge.

That's 9 seasons over 8 DVD seasons and 4 discs per season for 32 DVD rentals and 180 episodes. So, that's that done. On to the next thing...