So there’s this new show called Fringe! At least I guess it’s new. Since I might as well be living under a rock, I’m not really sure. But it still seems to be in its first season, at least.

I am watching the episode “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones,” without having previously watched all the other episodes. Let’s see how I fare, shall we?

This isn’t exactly liveblogging, since I’m watching on hulu. But frankly, who cares?

Military boats, and a sinister drum corps. Generic “military” chitter-chatter. Lost-esque titles telling us this is Weymouth, Massachusetts. Not an auspicious beginning from my point of view, as I do my best to ignore the existence of Massachusetts.

Everyone converges on a rather dull-looking truck, containing stuffed pandas. Cuties!

The sinister guy from Lost receives a report of the Panda caper. From the looks of things, he has wandered away from an Excedrin commercial onto the set of 24. I applaud this parsimoniousness: in these rough economic times, waste not, want not, I say.

Mumbling, Budapest, a heart attack, and overturned chairs. Jack Bauer won’t be pleased with the state of his office when he gets back.

In case you were wondering, this is not an ordinary heart attack, but rather the work of a THING, which looks just like Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors. Rather cute, in a stomach-turning sort of way.

The uber-quirky Walter Bishop is on a quest for mints, but neither Pacey nor SGFL have any. Everyone here has the same headachy look as the SGFL. Walter Bishop is a great admirer of the THING. “Feed me, Seymour!”

The characters get out of that two-bit hospital set and return to one with much more scope for quirk, Walter’s lab at Harvard. Once there, they let us know what the THING is, by means of much talking.

A character named Astird, I mean Astrid, appears. Apparently, the writers have deemed that this character does not require a personality.

I am getting a headache just looking at Olivia Dunham. Nothing less comforting or informative than her speech to the victim’s wife could be conceived by the human mind. The wife has a program for a performance of “A Christmas Carol” and some lists of numbers for Olivia.

The THING does not take kindly to being poked with a scalpel. Who would? DNA Testing! Science! “DNA testing should tell us much!” I do like this quirkiest of characters.

“I don’t know if it’s *good* news, but it is *something*!” Great line reading, Pacey. I don’t care for the Pacey actor. He always gives the impression that he is facing the camera full-on and shouting all his lines. More lecturing! Fine by me. Lecturing is the most efficient way of conveying information. Do you hear me, freshmen of Aquinas College? The most efficient way! Wake up, quit texting, and pay attention! …Oh, sorry, forgot where I was.

A recurring line of DNA may be a code! Hi, Astrid. Just come right out and tell us what it is. Somebody’s been reading Dan Brown. Olivia determines, somehow, that the code translates to ZFT, which causes both her and SGFL to get that look they would get when the voiceover starts talking about the many benefits of Excedrin. The headache medicine!

Blah, blah, David Jones. Was he responsible for this? I’d think he’d be too busy tending to his locker. HAHAHA! Olivia and SGFL sit down to discuss The Pattern, obviously a metaplot element I’ve missed out on. The THING may be the work of Jones, but those scoundrelly Germans won’t allow the U.S. access to him. He’s in Frankfort, by the way. *Frankfort*. This scene does not want to leave you in any doubt of that.

Olivia may be able to get in. To Frankfort. Huh. SGFL posits that superpowers may be necessary for this feat. Not to diminish Olivia’s achievement, but all an American needs to access anywhere in Germany is a valid passport. I mean, I’ve done it, and I’m no brain wizard Superman.

“You’re not really going to Germany?” “Yeah! I’m going.” Geez, burn on Germany. An inexplicable moment of tension, as SGFL challenges Olivia’s ability to go to Germany, whereat she takes major offense. The victim’s name is Loeb by the way, which makes me think maybe Leopold panicked and tried to shut his mouth for good.

Pacey lunges toward Walter. “WHAT’S WRONG?” he barks. Maybe he’s the reason everyone else has headaches. “Walter! C’mere! What Is That!” I’m no MD, Pacey, but it looks like a saline drip.

Olivia calls Pacey to fill him in on her travel plans, for some reason. “The bad news is, I have to go to Germany…” grumps Olivia, with a look of pure petulance on her face. Boy, do these folks hate central Europe. Meanwhile, it’s not looking so good for Loeb.

FRANKFURT, GERMANY. Someone is holding helium balloons with the stripes of the German flag on them. Odd. An awkward meeting between Olivia and some guy. The man has contacts at “the prison,” where Jones is apparently. The prison looks just like the airport on the outside.

Meet Johann Lennox, the prison warden and an important enough character to have his own name, first and last.

As an avid scholar of the German language (“Of course, I think it is the most beautiful language in the world”), here is my translation of the conversation in German between Olivia’s friend (Whose name is Nougat, if I hear correctly) and Lennox:

Nougat: There are certain things which you can use, and it is already difficult to talk about these things.
Lennox: You think you can help me? Your name is laughably stupid!

That’s what I got out of it, anyway.

Olivia knows that Lennox has his reasons for not allowing access to Jones, but she really really wants to see him! She’s willing to sign anything! To prove this, she breaks out her own mad German language skillz:

Olivia: For example, that I was never here. Also, I have the worst freaking headache right now.
Lennox: I too have a terrible headache, and if I were to smile my face would break into one thousand pieces.

That last line will no doubt appear in a deleted scene.

Back at Quirk Labs, Walter quirks it up and Pacey jabbers irritatingly, recapping Walter’s history in a mental institution for those who missed earlier episodes. A fellow who looks something like Adam Arkin calls SGFL, reporting that he’s down with the ZFT, and blah blah, the guy they need is a Joseph Smith, back from the dead and very annoyed that people like me are always mixing him up with Brigham Young. Naw, it’s a different Joseph Smith.

Meanwhile, in prison, Olivia receives word that Jones will talk to her if he can first talk to a fellow named…Joseph Smith! Olivia confers with Pacey, and declares that Joseph Smith *must be kept alive*! Pacey races off in his gold station wagon to apprise the forces which are surrounding Smith’s house of this, but it is too late! Or is it??? Walter orders Pacey to bring him the head of Joseph Smith. Astrid appears briefly in this scene.

In an unnecessary scene, Nougat, whose first name is Lucas, propositions Olivia. Then, back to the action.

“Does Jones know about Smith?” Pacey speed-yells, sounding like the setup for a joke dating from the days of vaudeville, while driving the gold station wagon in an irresponsible fashion.

At Quirk Labs, Walter is setting up for a quick convo with a deceased Joseph Smith. Walter talks and talks until Pacey finally shuts him up by dragging up an old grievance about his dad experimenting on him with electric shocks, like way to hold a grudge, Pacey. Besides, now is hardly the time. Pacey literally huffs and puffs in anger. I’m not sure whether the experiment worked or not.

During another scene with Olivia and Nougat, I catch a quick nap. The scene is interrupted by Pacey calling Olivia to tell her the experiment might have worked. I’m put in the unpleasant position of being grateful to Pacey for having interrupted that scene, but am not sure why he and Olivia have to call each other every five minutes when they don’t actually have anything to say to each other.

Astrid is in the following scene. I enjoy Walter’s characterization of the late Joseph Smith as “our naked friend.” Meanwhile, back “im Deutschland,” Olivia lies to Jones that Smith is alive, and so begins the dangerous and dubiously ethical procedure of talking to dead Smith via Pacey, whose head is electronically connected up with the dead man’s. You’re correct, that sentence didn’t make any sense. However, Jones does reveal that the Audrey II in Loeb (remember him) is his, Jones’s, doing. Pacey is injected with a mystery substance, and reacts by giggling like a schoolboy. Whatever. SGFL and Loeb’s wife come bounding into the lab, all “What’s all this ?!?”

In prison, Olivia and Jones are seated tete-a-tete, and Jones wants to ask Just One Question: “Where does the gentleman live?” Suspense ensues as we wait to see whether Pacey will get the answer! Then, as the prison guard arrives to eject Olivia. Pacey cries out for paper! “Untie my head!” he gasps, amusingly. On the paper, he sketches a series of parallel lines; unfortunately, no one gets the gist of Smith’s meaning. I think it looks like a pedestrian crosswalk. The gentleman lives in Abbey Road? In prison, the prison guard shakes a chastising finger at Olivia for not leaving right away. Finally, they reconstruct the lines as the words “Little Hill,” and Jones directs an injection of something or other into Audrey II. It works!

Next, Olivia and Nougat are shown riding around in a car. Nougat offers to dig up more info on Jones. She smilingly agrees. Ah, the Excedrin is kicking in.

In the hospital, Loeb is feeling much better, and SGFL lectures Olivia for a while about something unimportant. Then Pacey arrives. It’s a regular class reunion. Instead of going in to visit Loeb, though, they wander off to not get a bite to eat. When they are gone, it turns that it was all a plot by Loeb and Mrs. Loeb to get the answer: Little Hill.

How excited are you about this? I’ll answer that for you: very.

Via here and (of course) here.

As it turns out, I didn’t remember much from the original video, which made the re-interpretation of it all the better.

Via kottke, mefi

I hate to say it but…I think one of my former favorite time-wasters, Television Without Pity is getting kind of lame.

I started to get a Bad Feeling™ about it when it was acquired by some cable network that I know nothing about. Now, it seems to be owned by NBC in some way. I find that 30 Rock can be humorous about this uncomfortable situation, but it seems TWOP can’t.

I knew the situation was dire when I was trying to watch one of their little video offerings, and my mind kept wandering back to the work I was supposed to be doing instead of watching TWOP.

Now, it’s possible that I’m just getting too old to Get It, but on the other hand, I’m about the same age as the people who do TWOP. So maybe they’re getting too old. In which case we should understand each other pretty well, something like this:

TWOP: Hey, remember Trapper Keepers?

AT: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Alas, how things change. Maybe now creating class activities centered on original historic documents will become my time-waster, and reading about television will somehow become my job. And the transformation will be complete.

http://my.spill.com/profiles/blog/show?id=947994%3ABlogPost%3A355506

Enjoy.

P.S.  In case you’re wondering, I’m not serious.

I don’t know what the general trend is, but it seems like more than a few comic authors have a good sense of humor about their strips. Check out this entry from the Sally Forth author’s blog, along with the resulting awesomeness (scroll to the bottom of the entry). And of course, it’s a well-documented fact that Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, is awesome (no specific entry in mind… just a generally excellent blog).

So I guess that’s three authors. And we’ll count Bill Watterson and Gary Larson, too, because they must be awesome. Right?

I hadn’t watched this when it was in theaters, mostly because I wanted to re-read the novella before seeing it (the last time I read it was in High School, when Skeleton Crew came out). I also rarely get to the cinema anymore unless the movie in question involves muppets or talking cartoon fish.

I never got around to re-reading King’s original story, and it was gone from theaters before I could. The DVD came from Netflix the other day and so I pulled my paperback copy of Skeleton Crew off the shelf (need to get that one in hardcover soon). I read the first bit and then decided I didn’t want to wait to finish the book before starting the movie. So I read and watched in tandem (probably about 20-30 pages at a time before watching its corresponding scenes in the film). Weird way to do something like that, and I probably wouldn’t do it again.

The movie was pretty great, I thought, and some Darabont/King regulars have roles again (most notably William Sadler, who appears to be Frank Darabont’s lucky charm — he’s been in this, The Green Mile and Shawshank). Reading and watching in parallel did give an interesting perspective on the way the written word had been adapted to the screen. Most of the novella made it, including chunks of dialog that were transferred virtually word-for-word. What I found more interesting were the changes: the ending was slightly different from the book in that you got to see more of what happened after the main characters left the store, and a scene of adultery was taken out of the script, probably because it would have lessened our esteem for the characters involved.

There are some truly frightening moments, and they do really well by the tension created so deftly by King in his book.  A lot of King’s work has not fared well in transfers to the screen, or even stuff written directly for the visual media (”Kingdom Hospital” and “Rose Red” were just baaaaad). This one’s a good treatment, and I wish I’d seen it in the theaters.

Well I’m thrilled to be the first pizappa-er (pizappan?  pizappese?) to post about Dark Knight.  I won’t say much about the plot or the action as I don’t want to spoil anything.

Now I thought Batman Begins was brilliant, but I was trepidacious about Dark Knight when I first heard about it.  My main issue was “why remake the Joker, when Jack Nicholson was so good?  Why not go with one of the other multitude of Batman villains?”  And then to top it off, they apparently have Heath Ledger playing the Joker?  What?

Now this was before Brokeback Mountain came out, which (gay jokes aside) was a brilliant movie, and Heath Ledger was incredible.  After that, my mindset started to change about him, and after seeing some of his work in a new light, I was starting to feel better about him taking on one of the best villain roles ever created.  In fact, a week before his death I even confessed to a fellow pizappish that I “officially consider myself a Heath Ledger fan.”  So I was quite saddened by his death.

After seeing Dark Knight, his death has become even more tragic, as his performance is nothing less than brilliant.  He is absolutely mesmerizing, disturbing, and hilarious everytime he’s on the screen.

Though Ledger steals the show, Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhal (best cast change ever), Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, seesh, the rest of the cast, are all wonderful.  And Christopher Nolan has never been better at creating a blockbuster movie that has a whole lot of depth to it.  It’s going to break every sales record there is, and it’s a movie that truly deserves it (beating out shallow summer blockbusters like Spiderman III and Episode III.  I’ve probably offended a ton of people with that comment).

The only two criticisms I could even make (and these are not spoilers, don’t worry) are:

- why is the mayor so clearly wearing eyeliner?

- I can’t quite tell if it’s the writing or the actors, but several of the one liner actors are just terrible.

That’s literally all I’ve got.  It’s hard to not say this is the best movie thus far this year, so I’ll just say it.  It’s the best movie I’ve seen thus far this year.

So this is a rare occurrence where I encourage you all to be one of the masses flooding to see this movie.  At the very least you should be massively entertained by the Caped Crusader once again.

To try to describe this or even comment on its awesomeness would be a disservice to you. Just go and watch. Episode 2 became available today, Episode 3 comes on Saturday, and the whole shebang disappears on July 20. It’ll be available on iTunes too, but the website version is free. For now.