JJ Abrams is one busy guy. His “Bad Robot” production company has inked a deal for a new untitled series for ABC that’s centered around a mobile notary that gets involved with people’s lives. The new drama is co-written by a writer/producer from “Six Feet Under”.
Month: October 2007
Original Star Trek Series on the Big Screen!
Mark your calendars for November 13! Almost 300 theaters will will be showing Star Trek’s “The Menagerie” parts 1 and 2 in digitally remastered High-Def and Cinema Surround Sound, an intro from Gene Roddenberry son, and a behind-the scenes look at how the footage was remastered!
About a week later, they’ll release the high definition DVD of the first season of Star Trek The Original Series!
Thanks to Andy for pointing out this article at Ain’t It Cool News.
The Office – Pam and Jim’s Future in Jeopardy ?
Spoilers ahead
Is there going to be a problem in The Office soon for Jim and Pam?
Lots of confrontations happened last night on the office Angela broke up with Dwight, Kelly manipulated Ryan into thinking she was pregnant to get him to go out to dinner, and Ryan and Michael aren’t quite seeing eye to eye about the future of Dunder Mifflin.
When Dwight killed Angela’s cat last week, the thought occurred to me: What if their fight gets big enough that there’s a sudden corporate edict that said there was no dating allowed at work?
Fast forward to this week: Angela breaks up with Dwight. Ryan is really mad at Kelly. Michael is skating on thinner ice than usual with corporate (in particular Ryan). Ryan tries to get a date with Pam, but can’t because Jim is dating her. (“I guess he can’t get ANY girl” – Nice line, Jim!) Toby didn’t let Jim and Pam sign a note about their dating, because Toby still has hope he can date Pam.
So, what happens is Ryan gets really mad, turns around, fires Michael and takes over? (This happened on the British version of the show). The probably coming conflict between Angela and Dwight will expose their relationship, which was never reported to HR. What if it blows up badly and they get in trouble? What happens to Pam and Jim? There’s nothing at corporate saying they ARE dating (since Toby didn’t let them fill out a form), are they going to get into trouble because of it?
…yeah, I know… this is beginning to sound like one of my Lost theories posts….
Anyway, that’s how things would probably work out in “the real world”…. Is that how things are going work out this season at The Office?
The Office – Dunder Mifflin Infinity
Did you see the fake Dunder Mifflin commercial on The Office last night?
Yes, there is really a Dunder Mifflin Infinity website that you can sign up for. It’s been going for a week or two now, and you can sign up for free. Not much has happened yet. The only “assignment” so far has been to design a Logo for Dunder Mifflin.
If you’re a fan of The Office, go sign up!
Top Chef Season 3 Winner – Hung
Cooking at high altitude, celebrity sous chefs, surprise fourth courses, kicked off chefs, live reveal… There was a lot of action in this Top Chef finale.
The last three chefs, Casey, Dale and Hung, arrived in Colorado and were brought up to the top of a mountain to find out about their last challenge.
The chefs were asked to come up with three course menus, and once they did they found out they were getting sous chefs. They had fears they’d get sous chefs that were the weakest competitors, and wow, were they wrong.
Rocco Dispirito helped Hung, Michelle Bernstein helped Casey, and Todd English helped Dale.
(That’s some pretty fine help, I’d say).
You could really tell that the celebrity chefs wanted to tell the competitors how to improve things, but they all kept their mouths shut.
The next day, Casey, Dale and Hung all worked alone… until Tom pulled them out of the kitchen with two announcements. First, they were getting new sous chefs to work with. Hung got Sara, Casey got Howie, and Dale got CJ. The second surprise was they had to come up with a fourth course in the time they had left.
First courses:
Hung served “fish and chips”: raw Hamachi with potatoes, olive oil and tomato vinaigrette
Dale served Foie Gras mousse with peaches, Ras el hanout gastrique & Arugula
Casey served Cinnamon scented scallop with celery & foie Gras with apple
The courses were fairly even, but Casey’s got the most criticism for the salmon roe.
Second courses:
Hung served shrimp with palm sugar, cucumber salad & coconut foam
Dale served his “extra” dish – seared scallop with purslane grapes and sweet corn
Casey served poached prawn with rice cake in lobster mushroom broth
The judges liked Dale’s dish a lot, and Casey’s dish didn’t quite make it, again because of the roe.
Third courses:
Hung served Sous Vide Duck withe Mushroom Ragout & Truffle Sauce
Dale served lobster, corn, mushrooms & gnocchi in curry jus
Casey served crispy pork belly over pea shoots with a roasted peach and creme fraichee
They REALLY liked Hung’s duck. Todd English called it “Three Star Michellin” and Michelle Berstein said she was “a little jealous”. Rocco said that he was pretty sure Hung kept him busy the whole time with a list of things to do, just to keep him out of his hair (ha!), but everything was in that dish.
They didn’t like Dale’s dish.
Casey’s pork belly dish didn’t go over well either.
Fourth courses:
Hung served chocolate cake with raspberries & nougatine tuile
Dale served poached lamb with eggplant puree, tomatoes & squash
Casey served seared lamb sirloin with potatoes, mushrooms, ruby chard & parsley puree
Dale’s dish went over well, as did Casey. Tom didn’t like the fact that Hung’s dish didn’t “follow the progression” of what he served.
Judge’s table:
The judges were happy with the overall meal.
Dale got high marks for his second dish, but the third dish fell flat, and they LOVED his last dish. They were especially surprised that he never made that before.
Casey really got beaten up for the first three dishes, and got nice compliments on her last dish… which she admitted that Howie handled.
Hung said that he didn’t plan the courses ahead of time, and was inspired by the ingredients. They loved the third dish, and weren’t impressed by the last dish. Even Hung said for the last course he “played it safe”.
After the competitors left, the judges talked about the dishes.
Hung’s dish won the first round.
Dale’s scallop was a favorite for the second round.
Third course, Hung won with his dishl
The last course, Dale’s dish was the favorite.
Based on what I saw up to this point, Dale should win this, with Hung second, and Casey third.
At this point in the show, they went live to judge’s table and announced that the winner of Top Chef Season 3 was Hung!
I think what ended up doing it for him was that throughout the whole season, he was very consistent, and did very well in the end.
Next week, there’s a Top Chef Season 3 reunion show.
The Real Reason People Didn’t Like Nikki and Paulo
Over on SCI FI Wire, the producers of LOST talk about fan reaction to Nikki and Paulo:
“People asked questions about the other characters on the beach,” Cuse said. “Are we ever going to learn anything about them?” In response, the writers expanded the storylines of Nikki Fernandez and Paulo (played by Kiele Sanchez and Rodrigo Santoro). “But once we did it, people were angry that we were taking time away from our main characters and giving it to Nikki and Paulo, so we listened to the fans and decided to bury them alive,” Cuse added.
Wrong, wrong, wrong!
That’s not the reason people didn’t like Nikki and Paulo! We’ve had a TON of new characters on LOST, and a lot of them have been interesting. Take “Mr. Friendly”… Great character, love to know more about him. Richard Alpert? Same thing. Even the ill-fated Artz was a great character which people liked.
So what went wrong with Nikki and Paulo?
The real reason people didn’t like Nikki and Paulo is that they just seemed to pop up out of nowhere on the beach. They acted like a couple of kids trying to inject themselves themselves in the group. Viewers have been in that kind of social situation before, recognized it and reacted just like they do in real life – they didn’t want any part of it.
Sure, the characters felt that they were being left out of the action (and they even said that), but there are better and more subtle ways of bringing characters off the beach. Bringing them in more slowly would have given them more of an opportunity to slide into the show the right way. If the characters had been brought in that way, people would have probably liked them a lot more. Even if their fates had remained the same, it would have been OK… In fact, it probably would have had a much bigger impact.
The way the did come into the show was like being hit over the head with a shovel.
Carpoolers Premiere
“Carpoolers” premiered tonight after “Cavemen”. It was a decent first effort for a show, and has at least some potential (unlike Cavemen). The premise for tonight’s show centered around the wife of one of the carpoolers who appeared to be making a lot of money flipping houses because of the great market. The husband doesn’t like the idea of his wife making more money than him (which in itself is crazy), so one of his friends volunteers to find out how much she has in her bank account. Turns out, it was a lot of money.
Given the recent downturn in real estate, I bet the producers wished that just about ANYTHING would have been on the air instead of that.
Anyway, it turns out that (surprise) she really didn’t, it was just money from a mortgage company that was in her account. The couple makes up, and all is good in carpool land again.
There were a few good laughs, and it has potential, like I said… but it better kick it into high gear, or the show could be leaving soon. Not as fast as Cavemen should, but soon.
Cavemen Premiere – It Was Bad
Wow….
The new ABC show “Cavemen” was bad.
Really bad.
Really, really bad.
I don’t think I laughed even once.
Now, I’ve got a pretty decent sense of humor, but I have no idea how a show like this makes it on the air. How did a show based on a premise that kinda of worked for some car insurance commercials make it past the first pitch, get greenlighted, go into development, go through casting, get filmed, internally screened, and put on the air…. without SOMEONE saying that the show was terrible? If it makes it back on the air for more than a couple more weeks, I’ll be very surprised.
Lois Maxwell, Ms. Moneypenny, Passes Away
Lois Maxwell, the woman who played Ms. MoneyPenny in 14 James Bond movies has passed away. She was 80.
Via Rotten Tomatoes.
Heroes episode “Lizards”
As usual, spoilers ahead…
Just a couple of points about last night’s episode.
Finding out that Maya and Alejandro were twins, and then seeing that Alejandro was able to absorb whatever was going wrong with Maya made me think “Wonder Twin Powers – Activate!”
I thought that Hiro was going to have to take over for Kensei, since everything seemed to be leading up to that. They even went so far as to get Hiro into Kensei’s armor. Then at the last minute, when it seemed clear that Hiro was going to have to become Kensei to carry on the “legend”, Kensei healed from the wound! That was pretty convenient – “I got shot with arrows! I thought I was dead! Phew! Glad these mysterious powers showed up!”
Unless I missed something that’s been revealed, I’m beginning to think that Angella Petrelli’s “hero power” is being rich. Maybe talking people into things. I don’t know. Whatever it was, it sure didn’t help her when she got attacked.
Speaking of which, that attack was made by someone that was invisible? Claude? Nah… He would have never survived the fall from the building when Kaito died.