23 posts tagged “television”
The cast has been announced. I am disappointed.
Some of Canada's most accomplished female skaters, including Jamie Salé, Shae-Lynn Bourne and Barbara Underhill, are to join the cast of the CBC reality television series Battle of the Blades.
Other participants include:
- Isabelle Brasseur, who was an Olympic bronze medallist with partner Lloyd Eisler.
- Marie-France Dubreuil, who transformed ice dancing with husband Patrice Lauzon.
- Christine Hough-Sweeney, who represented Canada at two Olympic Games with her partner Doug Ladret.
- Jodeyne Higgins, who has performed for the past 10 years as a professional pairs skater.
- Kristina Lenko, an international dance competitor.
NHL players Sean Burke, Ken Daneyko and Ron Duguay have been added to the men's roster.
What...no Wing & Lowe? No Sanjaya? Not even Speidi? What sort of reality show is this?
Hopefully Isabelle Brasseur meets a better reality TV fate than Lloyd Eisler. (He dropped his wife for his "Skating with Celebrities" partner Kristy Swanson. At least it wasn't KKKristy Lee Cook.)
Do the viewers get to vote on this show? This could be VFTW-worthy.
"Pauler" is in talks to guest star on "Ugly Betty." If she gets on the show, I might actually watch it. And her proposed character gets to hang around with Amanda...and Marc. I actually like Marc and Amanda (and Willy) far better than I like Betty. Wilhelmena is hilariously evil and a surprisingly complex character. Yes, she's a (hilariously) manipulative evil bitch, but the viewer can also see how she got that way and what potentially motivates her to do the things she does. As for Marc and Amanda, one senses that there is far more to them than shallow twitdom. (The episode where Marc came out to his mother was really good. And the episode this season where Amanda found out that Gene Simmons really wasn't her dad had a few touching moments.)
In comparison, Betty is just sanctimonious and boring. Maybe she is the "Jerry Seinfeld" of the series. Jerry was the least interesting character on "Seinfeld," but he brought the other characters together.
Spongebob Squarepants turned 10 on Thursday. Has it really been that long?
I want a Krabby Patty now.
Hey, maybe Red Dwarf might be coming back!
The new two-parter will begin a decade on from when the crew of the Red Dwarf were last seen, with a "shock development" throwing Rimmer, Lister, Cat and Kryten back to Earth.
Chris Barrie will return as Rimmer, Craig Charles as Lister, Danny John-Jules as Cat and Robert Llewellyn as Kryten, with the new storyline written and directed by Red Dwarf co-creator Doug Naylor. Filming of the new episodes begins next month.
I notice that there's no mention of Kristine Kochanski. Thank God. I always thought she worked better as an incidental presence. I wonder how the characters will go over now. Rimmer was supposed to be a commentary of Thatcherite Britain. Lister, as long as he remains a vindaloo-swilling, lager guzzling slacker, should probably stand up. If it weren't for Lister, I wouldn't have tried vindaloo (damn hot and spicy!).
Incidentally, I used to call my ex-PHB NOR "Goal-Post Head," after Cat's nickname for Rimmer. NOR was a complete and total smeghead.
Why smart women like frivolous reality shows.
Maybe I'm not as smart as I think. I don't watch any of those shows. I do watch American Idol, which requires virtually little brain power, and, from what I've gathered, has legions of incredibly stupid fans.
Meh. When is the next new episode of "The Simpsons?"
I really don't understand Veggie Tales. Why do those veggies bounce around all the time? Given that they're veggies, wouldn't they just roll around?
I guess I should have just watched Skate America on CBC.
(Quote from Zach Werner, Canadian Idol's answer to Simon.)
Carrie Underwood is on tonight's broadcast of Opry Live. She was recently inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, probably the first "Idol" to be inducted. Better Carrie than Pickler.
The Oak Ridge Boys just performed. They sang "Elvira," which is my least favourite of their songs (giddy-up a oom papa oom papa maw maw - no kidding!), and a song about some sinner who was baptized, thus depriving Satan of a right hand man.
On to Canadian Idol.
Today's show features the cattle-call auditions. The best thing about the show was that it covered three audition cities in an hour. American Idol drags the damn things out over a month or so.
Toronto: There were many people who could sing loud, but not that many people who can sing well. There was one guy* who reminded Zach of the Juicy Fruit commercial guy. (The one who sings about Julcy Fruit gum and strums his guitar, and subsequently has his guitar broken.) And a girl named Tetiana, who auditioned for American Idol. (She didn't impress me, but she got a golden ticket.) I liked the Piggott brothers (so did the judges), even if one kind of butchered an Elvissong.
Calgary: The Calgary auditions didn't get off to a roaring start. They opened with a chick who melismafied Amazing Grace beyond recognition. (Unfortunately, that's one of the BIG issues that I have about American Idol; it mistakes melisma and glory notes for actual singing talent.) The rest weren't much better. There was a guy who refused to leave, and was escorted out by a security guard. The bright spots included Jesse Cottam (I liked the clip of him teaching little kids how to play guitar; he said that six year olds were really energetic and he had to keep them from hitting each other with the guitars).
Sadly, no one was anywhere near as awesome as Jaydee Bixby from last year. The show needs more Elvis people. (If only so that I can point them out to Lord Thingy, so that he can enjoy them, too!)
Edmonton: The auditions opened with a less greasy, but no less obnoxious, version of Constantine Maroulis. He managed to screech it up worse than CarlyPlant. And then there was the girl who screeched Whitney Houston (who I hate).
There was a montage of rejected singers. Moderately amusing. And sometimes pathetic.
The most memorable audition from Edmonton was Earl Stevenson from Bob's Backhoe in Lloydminster. He used to be a snowboarder, until he hurt his knee.
Once again, Vote for the Worst has an embarrassment of riches.
*I looked this guy-Taylor Abrahamse- up on Vote for the Worst's CI6 forum, where he's called Gaspy 2.0. (Gaspy is one of their nicer nicknames for Archuleta.) He played Jimmy Osmond in the "Inside the Osmonds" TV movie, among other things. Is he the Canadian version of CarlyPlant?
I saw a link to this performance from the German "Idol" show, Deutschland Sucht den Superstar, while reading Vote for the Worst. Daniel Kublbock (someone on VFTW called him Daniel Double-Umlaut) finished third on the show in its first season. He and Julien and Sanjaya should sing together.
Daniel was voted Most Annoying TV Personality of 2003 by a German TV network, and second most annoying personality the following year. He is also known for causing a car crash with a cucumber truck.
I will have to look for his album at HMV. I may buy it as a gift for Lord Thingy for the International Day of Unspeakable Evil.
So what's going to fill the void in my life now that the worst season of "American Idol" has come to an end?
Well, "Canadian Idol" starts soon. Maybe Zach Warner will throw a garbage can at someone again.
And, there's the Eurovision Song Contest. Sadly, Dustin the Turkey didn't make it to the semis. I still think that he should come to the States and do a duet with either Chicken Little or Carly Plant.
ETA: While snooping through Vote for the Worst this AM (Sun.), I found a link to this interview with Season 4 contestant Constantine Maroulis. He says that he's found Jesus and goes to church regularly now, and strongly implies that Sanjaya and Archuleta are gay (and not in a nice way, either). Has ConstantScream contemplated minding his own damn business? There is obviously a good reason why Constantine was nicknamed Constantcrap/ ConstantScream/ ConstantlyAnnoying/ many other mostly unprintable variations on his name. Maybe Constantine should do a duet with CarlyPlant (they're both such attention whores); Dustin the Turkey is too good for both of them.
Memo to Constantcrap: making homophobic innuendos about Sanjaya (and, gosh, Archuleta) makes baby Jesus cry. It's BLASPHEMY, y'know.
Speaking of ConstantlyAnnoying: I originally posted this on my LiveJournal last year. One of Constantine's legions of admirers stumbled across it and took umbrage to it, thinking it was a diss on Constantine. (The above paragraph is a diss on Constantine. That post was not.) Apparently, rhetoric is completely wasted on fantards.
Archuleta is the new VFTW pick. Admittedly, he has been stinking up the place a lot lately, but I can't bring myself to cheer on the overpimped butcher of Elvissongs. Because THAT would make him Lord Thingy's favourite "Idol" candidate of all time.
Make it stop!
In honour of recently departed VFTW darling Jason, I ripped some Bob Marley songs onto iTunes. Including "I Shot The Sheriff." "Idol" needs more reggae. I thought that, if Sanjaya had made it to "Inspirational Crap" week, he should have sung "One Love." (He said that, had he made it that far, he would have sung "Wind Beneath My Wings.")
When I was in Paris, I watched "Star Academy." It's an "Idol" knockoff (the French "Idol" show is called "Nouvelle Star"), and it's louder, cheesier, and more garish than any of the North American "Idol" shows. But it seems to allow a wider range of musical styles and genres than "Idol" does. I think I saw a folk singer and a rapper. No heavy metal types, though. It also had its own version of Chicken Little -- a guy named Ludovic. Ludo, I guess, was ultimately voted off prematurely - TRUQUÉ!! (Or so he said.)
The Star Academy format is a bit different from "Idol" in that it looked like someone (who had performed the previous show) was eliminated quickly, and then the remaining contestants performed. It also showed more of the "behind the scenes" stuff, like Top Chef or Project Runway.
Yannick Noah, a former professional tennis player turned pop star (no, I am not making this up) was guest mentor/ performer that week. He sang better than "Idol" mentor Rod Stewart, anyways, Unfortunately, he obviously has not aged gracefully, and he has horrible fashion sense; he went on the show wearing a Hawaiian shirt that William Hung would have envied.
