There’s a teaser trailer floating around out there. Yes, they’re using “Jack is Back” again. ::sigh::
Not much to the teaser, but it’s just good to see Jack with a gun again while cars fly, robbers rob, and none of the other usual cast members appear. I can’t call it completely spoiler free, but it didn’t bother me at all.
Update: If you have problems with the above link, try this one from the gang at 24natic.
* Better late than never for me to notice: November is National Diabetes Month.
* WIRED now has a glowing review of GUITAR HERO, one of the coolest games I’ve ever played. I kicked butt on “Iron Man” this week. The solo bit gets a bit complicated, but I’m sure it could be mastered with a little practice.
* WIRED is also running some extremely annoying pop-up type ads all of a sudden. UGH
* CSI MIAMI fans will have to go to the web site for a crucial bit of plot business for this year’s story arc.
* Shockwave game of the day: Roll On. Like Marble Madness for the web. Pretty spiffy graphics for a web game, too.
* The last BABYLON 5 telemovie, LEGEND OF THE RANGERS, is finally coming to DVD. Damn shame, that one. Had great potential, and got killed in the ratings by a playoff football game.
I caught about half of the Country Music Awards last night in a desperate bid to broaden the appeal of this blog. OK, not really. I was curious about the whole thing, and they had a lot of interesting artists promised for the show.
I think a lot of other awards shows could learn something from this show.
* All acceptance speeches were time limited and those time limits were enforced without favor. You got cut off when the time ran out, period. When Alabama accepted their Hall of Fame entry, the second guy to speak had nothing to say and kept taking long pauses between thanking the little people. He got cut off. Hopefully, they also cut him off at the bar or the prescription counter, whichever he had just come from.
* The show moved, and featured the musical performance. You’d have a performance, then cut straight to a presenter. There would often be one or two lines of painfully not-humorous dialogue (see Shania Twain’s dialogue with Billy Joel, or anything involving James Gandolfini - UGH), before getting right to the award. And guess what? There were no clever and elaborate video montages and applause breaks for each nominee. The presenter gave a list of all five names and opened the envelope. All you’d get for the later awards was the screen with cameras in the faces of the five nominees sitting in the audience or backstage. That’s it. Simple, fast, effective. After that, you’d go straight to the next performance.
* There was no one-upmanship games going on for spectacularly disgusting performances, slutty clothing, or perverted imagery. This was not, simply put, MTV.
* Man, Faith Hill has seen better days, hasn’t she?
* The performances included “pop” stars and country stars. Bon Jovi even played a ditty. Elton John did a painful duet with Dolly Parton, that was interesting only for its curiosity value. (She butchered “Imagine,” but I never much liked the song much, anyway.) But for a genre trying to bring in new fans, they had a good idea in this cross-pollination.
* And, in the end, I was exposed to a bunch of artists I would never otherwise find on the radio here in the NYC area, a portion of the country notoriously devoid of a country music station. The Country/Western world thinks that this show being hosted at Madison Square Garden might be a step towards that, but I tend to doubt it. They weren’t all winners, but there are two or three names I plan to look up on iTunes soon for a listen.
* Podcatcher client iPodder has been forced to change its name by iPod. It’s now called “Juice Receiver.” Ouch.
* I think I finally hit a dead end on Round 93 of Lightning Break. It was a fun game while it lasted.
* Speaking of web game: Here’s a web game to measure your typing ability. I’ve scored a 682 on it, but find it terribly frustrating. I don’t type random single letters. I type words. Typing singles like this slows me down horribly, plus the game relies on the most infrequent letters. Q, J, X, W, and D are regulars. If you’re supposed to type it with your ring finger, expect it to show up annoyingly often. (Via)
* Why do truckers tie up stuffed animals to their trucks? The New York Times investigates.
* Brooke Burns dove into her pool, hit her head, and broke a bone in her neck. She’ll be ok, it looks like. You may remember her from the short-lived game show, “Dog Eat Dog,” which current repears on GSN.
* Linux-powered Internet Tablet from Nokia. Uses Wi Fi. Has a widescreen display. Pretty cool. (Via)
This is the forty-fifth DVD podcast:
Listen directly to the MP3 file (Roughly 7 minutes and 3.6 MB)
Vote for this podcast at PodcastAlley.com.
Read about this podcast in PODCASTING HACKS.
Where to find release lists:
DVDJournal’s release list
TVShowsonDVD.com - monthly release list
Where to find more information on these movies:
Internet Movie Database
You can also subscribe to the podcast, and not have to wait for me to remember this posting to listen to the podcast.
E-mail me or send voice comments to AUGIEDB *at* GMAIL *dot* COM. Or leave your comments in the comments section of this message.
Noticed some interesting releases over at MoviePoopShoot.com’s New Music listing:
I think rock covers of “Baby One More Time” are now officially cliche. It was fun while it lasted, though.
I’m not a Parrot Head or anything, but that sounds cool for his fans.
As if there aren’t enough Elton John DVDs out there, we’re getting another one. The DVD has nine songs from the album performed live in Georgia.
If you were “waiting for the trade,” comics fans, here’s your shot.
The animated series is out on DVD next week. The soundtrack for the new movie is out this week. It’s all tied-in, folks.
It ticks me off now that my occasional reference to the one or two Johnny Cash songs I know will now be considered trendy. A year ago, nobody got the “burning ring of fire” or “I’ve seen the train a’coming, a’coming around the bend” references. Now, they’re all lifelong Cash fans. UGH
Full release list here. This week’s podcast should be released tonight, but there’s a small chance it won’t make it till tomorrow night. We’ll see.
The amount of TV-on-DVD is overwhelming again this week, so let’s plow through some of those releases first:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Chosen Collection (40-disc set)
All the seasons in one bix box, plus a bonus disc with more stuff.
Charmed: Season Three (6-disc set)
Cheers: Season Seven (4-disc set)
Fantasy Island: Season One (4-disc set)
Frasier: Season Seven (4-disc set)
Friends: Season Ten (4-disc set)
Friends: The One with All Ten Seasons (40-disc set)
If you hadn’t gone broke already on the 40 disc BUFFY set, you could always grab this one. These are both pikers, by the way. There’s a Mega Set out next week that you’ll have to see to believe. I’ll talk about it then.
The Flintstones: Season Four (4-disc set)
Huckleberry Hound: Vol. One (4-disc set)
The Yogi Bear Show: The Complete Series (4-disc set)
I put together the three Hanna Barbera releases here. Sadly, there are no Augie Doggie shorts in this HUCKLEBERRY HOUND set, so I don’t need to buy it. Pixie and Dixie are in there, though, which almost makes it tempting.
More TV shows, all of the movies, and a teaser for next week after the break:
I’m stealing this from Tom’s blog, to buy time while I put together this week’s DVD list.
Empire Magazine’s 50 Greatest Independent Films. I’ve seen 12 of them.
Bold the ones you’ve seen and liked.
Strike the ones you’ve seen and which you didn’t like or which are just plain overrated.
Italicize the ones you haven’t seen but want to.
Underline the ones you haven’t seen and don’t want to.
Don’t do anything to the ones you’ve never heard of.
After the break!
* Funniest Billy Joel headline yet.
* Walt Mossberg explains why you should use a Mac.
* The Nintendo DS finally has an application that makes valid use of its two screens: Intellivision emulation. Scroll down a page or two and see how the DS uses its secondary screen to emulate the inlays the Intellivision controller had for each game. Perfect!
* Forget office bingo for now and use something from this list of office slang at work today. Begin with “Tourists - Those who take training classes just to take a vacation from their jobs. “There were only three serious students in the class; the rest were just tourists.”"
* They’re still trying to figure out how to measure podcast listeners and accurately report listenership to advertisers.
* More of the greatest bugs of all time.
* I don’t know what’s sadder — that Nintendo executives believe part of the reason the GameCube isn’t #1 is because its design looks childish, or that they’re right and gamers really are that superficial.
* The Toyota Prius gets an update, with tons of spiffy new features. Pictures at the link.
* Take a look at Norwegian Web Cams. Sometimes, you just have to marvel at how the web brings the world to you.
* Camino 1.0 in beta! That’s the Mozilla browser specifically re-engineered for the Mac.
I know this is almost too easy a complaint to make, but I found it extremely funny this week.
I watched TRL on Tuesday, because O.A.R. was going to be there to premiere their new video. This is TRL’s Brand Spanking New Music week, where they plan on introducing a lot of new bands to their audience.
O.A.R. was introduced as this brand new band MTV wanted to show off. (Sure, they’ve been around for more than five years, but better late than never, MTV.) They did a little interview which was made up of about three questions and took a minute and a half.
And, then, to show the MTV viewers what this brand spanking new music sounds like, they showed the new music video.
No. They didn’t. They never played the video. On Brand Spanking New Music week, they refused to play any new music.
Earlier in the show, they threw the spotlight on another band in a pre-taped bit. There’s some interview footage in there and an explanation of their music and how the bassist graduated high school early to go play on the road with the band and — they never played any of their music, either. They showed the band jamming or something, but you never heard the music.
They did show music videos from Madonna, Green Day (for, literally, the FIFTIETH time they played the same video on the show), and Kelly Clarkson. There was even a live performance from Shakira. All of this happened on Brand Spanking New Music week — all the music they played came from established MTV favorites, going back as far as two decades.
Even on those rare occasions when MTV does play a music video, they can’t get it right.
* ANIMANIACS on DVD updates, including a tentative release date.
* America’s Next Top Model can’t live up to the title.
* Billy Joel is going back on tour in 2006. Cool.
* Tickets for OAR’s January concert at Madison Square Garden go on sale tomorrow morning. I already got mine on the presale — I’ll be on the floor, about 15 rows from the stage.
* Everybody loves Carrie Underwood.
* Sad to see: SuSe Linux founder resigns. SuSe was the Linux distribution I liked the most, and used when I stuck with Linux-only at home for a year not too long ago. Easy to install, easy to upgrade, with lots of support. Novell purchased it, and the worrying began from certain factions. It seems the founder of the system finally had enough of working for “The Man.”
* Everything you always wanted to know about traffic signals. Thanks to Mark for answering my questions from Sunday.
The Podosphere Clashes! Seems to be a whole lot of nothing, but it generates more press.
Sometimes, I feel disconnected from the podcasting scene. When I first started my podcasts, I listened to Adam Curry’s DSC show religiously. I sought out new podcasts. I kept up with all the developments through numerous websites — not that there were that many back in January 2005.
Right now, I haven’t listened to a single DSC in months. Jan Polet’s Hit Test is dead. Coverville is piling up in a folder of my iPod somewhere, although I do get around to one of those every couple of weeks or so when I have a moment. Sites devoted to podcasts are a dime a dozen, and the initial 1,000 podcasts are dwarfed now by every Tom, Dick, and Harry with an internet connection. iTunes boosted the entire Podosphere in one fell swoop. Jeopardy! dedicated a category to Podcasting this week.
I had the first comic book podcast, with all sorts of plans on how to add to it and make it better. Now, there are a bunch of others, many of which take the time and make the effort to do all those things I dreamed about doing with mine at the start — creator interviews, roundtable discussions, recurring features, etc. I didn’t exactly have the first DVD podcast, but it was and remains unique. Other movie podcasts, though, have garnered much larger audiences. And then we’re all dwarfed by Ebert and Roeper. ;-)
I haven’t done much of anything to promote or upgrade my own podcasts. It shows, because the hits aren’t all that different today than they were six months ago. I enjoy doing what I’m doing, but I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be taking it more seriously at the moment. I’ve wanted to add music to the backgrounds for months and months, but never had the time to find podsafe music I liked anywhere. (Or, when I found it, I just didn’t like it.) I should redo my RSS feed to work better with iTunes, even adding a logo of some sort to identify the podcasts with. Every other “serious” podcaster has done it.
It’s like the podcasting scene is passing me by sometimes.
On the other hand, I was interviewed for an O’Reilly book, so it’s all been worth it. =)
I don’t know; I’m just thinking out loud. I’m not giving up by a long shot yet, but it’s been an interesting thing to look back on. It may be time to make a push of some sort, if I can find the time to do it.
* I knew Weird Al was starting to work up songs for his next album, but now comes word that he’s working with REN AND STIMPY’s John Kricfalusi on a music video for the first single. Yay!
* Did anyone here sign up for NaNoWriMo this year?
* 100 Greatest Internet Moments. Everything from Abe Vigoda to Jump The Shark to Pathfinder. Lots of great memories in there. (Via)
* Remember how silly an episode of the original STAR TREK that “Spock’s Brain” was? We may not be far off from it now. (Thanks, Adam!)
Augie De Blieck Jr. doesn't know when to shut up, which makes him the perfect blogger. That, and he reads a lot of other blogs. You can e-mail him, if you really wanted to.
