Archive for TV shows

17 Things I’ve learned about life from watching movies and TV

Posted in hollywood life lessons, humor, movies, pop culture, TV shows with tags , , , , on March 4, 2010 by Paxton

1000-tvs1

My wife and I watch a lot of movies and TV shows. We love the s**t out of them. We try to see a movie at least every weekend and we have multiple shows we watch during the week. It’s hectic keeping up with that.

However, having watched all of these movies and TV shows, we have come to take away many deep and thoughtful life lessons. Things you can’t learn by living life, but by watching hours and hours of Hollywood entertainment.

So here are 17 things we’ve learned while watching all of these TV and movies.

Davy Jones
You will always have need of a celebrity (for a charity performance or prom) at the exact time that celebrity is in town for a concert or filming a movie/TV appearance. If you need to get in to see them, it’s very easy to sneak past or distract their security people because they are always completely ineffective. The celebrity will never get pissed that their security people suck and everyone keeps sneaking in to their hotel room.

Monica's Apt
Large, studio apartments (with or without wacky roommate[s]) are affordable even for the most meager of budgets. As are furnishings from Potterybarn or Crate and Barrel. College kids and people right out of college have immaculate decorating sense.

Jolie Wanted
If you are being held at gunpoint, start running away just as the shooter starts shooting and tip over a table/couch/chair to hide behind. The bullets won’t be able to hit you. Odds are the shooter is a terrible shot anyway, and will hit EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE ROOM except for you. If you do get hit, don’t worry, bullet wounds apparently don’t hurt very much as no one cries out or whimpers with a bullet in them. You mainly shrug it off and wait for someone to bandage you up (heavy, stuttered breathing and sweating may be the only symptom that you have been shot). You may also have a sudden urge to tell your partner to “go on without you”, even with a non-fatal bullet to the shoulder.

Dirty_Harry
When you walk into a room and see the person you are trying to capture or shoot, call out their name or yell ‘Hey!’ or ‘Stop!’ first to give them a sporting chance to run. The element of surprise is overrated…and unfair.

Mr Miyagi
If you are being bullied at school, seek out the friendly, ethnic janitor or find your apartment building’s gardener or handyman. All of these eccentric, foreign, older men were actually master martial artists back in their homeland and gave up the fame and glory of being badass tournament fighters to live the dream of being a janitor/handyman here in America.

Defeat
You can defeat a master martial artist who has been studying for his entire life if you spend a few weeks/months learning to fight from the aforementioned janitor or handyman.

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The Star Wars Holiday Special and its vintage merchandise

Posted in movies, nostalgia, pop culture, Star Wars, TV shows with tags , , , , on December 3, 2009 by Paxton

Chewies family

A few weeks ago I wrote about the infamous The Star Wars Holiday Special and its 31st birthday.  I also promised a followup discussing toys and items released to promote the TV special.  Well, that article is up on Monkey Goggles right this very moment.  I discuss the prototype Chewie’s family toys you see above as well as a media kit and several other items released back in the ’70s to promote the horribly received Star Wars special.

So click on over to the article and read about these rare and vintage Star Wars items.  Honestly, the Monkey Goggles article is one of my favorite articles I’ve written.  I really am proud of it.  Take a look and let me know what you think.

And just to let you know, Saturday is Ninja Day!  So I’ll have two new ninja themed articles on Friday and Saturday for your enjoyment!

Recent Star Wars toys based on The Star Wars Holiday Special

Posted in Boba Fett, holiday, pop culture, Star Wars, TV shows with tags , , , , on November 19, 2009 by Paxton

On Tuesday I discussed the 31st anniversary of the Star Wars Holiday Special. At the end of the article I promised to look at merchandise having to do with the Holiday Special. Well, that article is now going to be posted in a few weeks on Monkey Goggles instead of being posted here. However, I think I can give you a quick preview of that article right now.

In the upcoming Monkey Goggles article I’ll mostly talk about vintage Star Wars items that have a connection to the Holiday Special. In today’s article, I’ll take a look at a couple modern Star Wars items that have a definite, if not obvious, connection to the Holiday Special. Remember, Lucas hates it, and will not advertise the fact that certain toys have a connection to the special.

So let’s take a look at a few modern Star Wars toys that have their roots in the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special.

Animated Boba Fett figure Animated Boba Fett maquette Kubrick animated boba Fett
Lucasfilm may not want you to remember it, and many people don’t actually remember it, but Boba Fett, one of the most popular Star Wars characters, debuted in a cartoon segment featured in the Star Wars Holiday Special. That cartoon is considered the only good thing about the Holiday Special by the overwhelming majority of Star Wars fans.
Last year, during the Holiday Special’s 30th anniversary, several versions of an “animated” Boba Fett were released to celebrate Boba Fett’s 30 year anniversary (and also quietly celebrate the Holiday Special’s anniversary). Hasbro released an “Animated Debut: Boba Fett” figure (on the far left) which depicted the bounty hunter in the color scheme from the TV special. It even included the forked staff he uses in the cartoon.  No mention of the Holiday Special is on the front of the packaging, but there is a small mention on the cardback about Boba’s debut on the special.
Gentle Giant released a maquette statue (in the middle) also depicting Boba in the cartoon color scheme. The maquette is in a cool, “about to collect a bounty” pose including a dramatically flapping Wookie pelt as if Boba is standing in front of a giant fan.
Finally, Kubrick released a six pack of mini-Boba Fett figures, one of which was in the animated color scheme and they all came packaged in miniature versions of the vintage Star Wars figure cards (on the far right).  Those mini-figs are sooooo cute.

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The Star Wars Holiday Special: Boring fans for 31 years

Posted in holiday, movies, pop culture, Star Wars, TV shows with tags , , , , on November 17, 2009 by Paxton

Star Wars Holiday Special

The infamous Star Wars Holiday Special aired for the first time on CBS on November 17, 1978, 31 years ago today.  The Holiday Special was created as a bridge between the original Star Wars in 1977 and The Empire Strikes Back in 1980.  It was a way to keep Star Wars “on people’s radar”.

The Special was neither written nor directed by George Lucas.  Lucas only allowed the use of his Star Wars characters and environments.  The Special was produced by the same group that created the Brady Bunch Variety Hour (itself a famously bad variety program).  Lucasfilm does not regularly comment on it and has never officially released it on home video nor has it ever been broadcast since the initial airing in 1978.

Lucas famously said that if he had the time and a sledgehammer, he’d track down every bootleg copy and destroy it.  And trust me, there are TONS of bootleg copies of the special out there.  If you can’t find a bootleg copy for yourself, then you just aren’t looking hard enough, my friend.  You can probably watch the majority of the Special on YouTube.

Bea Arthur

Is the Special really that bad?  Yes it is.  The format is similar to variety specials that were popular in the ’70s.  The main story involves Chewie and Han as they are racing back to Chewie’s homeworld for Life Day, a generic Star Wars version of Thanksgiving.  The story goes back and forth following Chewie and Han and then following Chewie’s family (wife, son and father).   Little to no action happens when the camera is with Chewie’s family.  You may think I’m exaggerating but there is NO ACTION during Chewie’s family’s scenes.  Periodically little vignettes are inserted into the non-action like Jefferson Starship or Dianne Carroll singing a song or Bea Arthur running the cantina (image above) or Art Carney mugging for the camera.  You also get short visits with Leia and a Luke Skywalker with so much makeup on he looks like he’s about to perform Kabuki (see image below).  To be fair, Mark Hammill had just been in a car accident a few weeks prior so they were covering up massive amounts of reconstructive surgery.

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Star Trek Original Series Season 1 highlights Part II

Posted in movies, pop culture, Star Trek, TV shows, Uncategorized with tags , , , , , on November 11, 2009 by Paxton

Star Trek castThis is the long awaited Part II of my look back at highlights of the Season 1 of Star Trek the Original Series.  I posted Part I back in September.  However, thanks to AWESOME-tober-fest, I couldn’t get this one posted until now.

To refresh everyone’s memory, after the awesome JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek back in May, I wanted to watch the original TV show episodes again. I’d seen a few episodes in reruns, but never really sat down to watch the episodes back to back.  I wanted to see if they are as good as I remember.  And since the first two seasons were recently released on Blu-Ray, I thought it was no time like the present (Season 3 will be released on Blu-Ray December 15).

Last time I looked at three of the best episodes from the first half of Season 1 of the Original Series (Where No Man Has Gone Before, The Enemy Within and The Corbomite Maneuver).  Here are three more episodes from the middle of that season.

ST The Menagerie
The Menagerie (Part I and II) — The first and only 2 part episode in the original series’ 3 year run. This episode makes extensive use of the unaired pilot, The Cage, to tell its story. I imagine Roddenberry walked into the writer’s room and announced, “Dudes, I went on a bender of coke and whores this weekend and totally forgot to write this week’s episode.  Any ideas?”  So the writer’s cobbled together this episode using a minimum of new footage and letting the old pilot pad out the run time.  This episode is okay, but it reminds me of the ’80s sitcom device of the “flashback episode”.  The events of the pilot, within the context of this episode, are said to have happened 13 years prior when Christopher Pike was the Enterprise captain and Spock the science officer.  In the new footage, Spock hijacks Kirk’s Enterprise to bring Capt Pike (now blonde and a paraplegic due to an accident) back to Talos IV, the planet visited in the pilot. Spock gets court martialed while the Enterprise makes the journey and clips from almost the entire episode of The Cage are screened during the court proceedings.  In the older footage, Pike gets trapped on the planet Talos IV and the aliens residing there put him in a type of zoo for observation.  The aliens use holograms to make Pike feel more comfortable by making him believe he’s living a different life, even going so far as to give him a hot chick to mate with.  Pike, not being Kirk, is outraged that the aliens would try to make him comfortable with a cool, imaginary life and then also have the temerity to give him hot women in which to have copious amounts of sex so he sets out to destroy the entire observatory/zoo.  Many, many years later, in the new footage, after having become a quadriplegic, Pike is totally fine with living a fantasy life with lots of hot chicks so works with Spock to break every Federation rule and bring him there, even risking Spock’s career for his own comfort.  After seeing this episode I have no desire to watch the full pilot.  I’ve probably seen 90% of the footage anyway.  And the actor who played Pike in the pilot, Jeffery Hunter, didn’t return for The Menagerie, hence Pike being an invalid, blonde mute (it’s like they didn’t even try to make him look the same) in the new footage.

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