Untertainment Weakly (9-23-11)

By Jake

News Corp.’s COO has discussed the possibility of a (digital) channel that shows nothing but episodes of “The Simpsons.”  


Speaking of “The Simpsons,” the fastest ways for you to lose my respect is to be racist or to say that the new episodes of “The Simpsons” aren’t as good as the old ones (especially because the people who say this haven’t watched in nearly a decade).


Netflix’s DVD service is becoming Qwikster and will have video game rentals!  Plus, I got an email from Reed Hastings apologizing about the split up.


Justin Lin leaving “Terminator 5” for “Fast and the Furious 6” is the first time I even heard about a “Terminator 5.”  Sequels, am I right folks?


Bill Clinton turned down “Dancing with the Stars,” did not turn down jewess intern.


This season’s debut episode of “Two and a Half Men” scored an enormous 28 million viewers.  “Two Broke Girls,” the show following it, got 19 million.


Lifetime has canceled Rosanne’s reality series where she works on a nut farm called “Roseanne’s Nuts.”  I wonder why, it sounds soooo good!



Fall TV Roundup
This is a section that will only exist this week and next week.  This is where I will be discussing the new comedy shows television has decided to unleash on the viewing public.


Whitney - This show is in the style of a traditional sitcom.  It has a live studio audience, multiple cameras and more sex jokes than the other side of a centerfold.  I sort of liked this show.  My wife liked it a lot.  The thing I mostly took home from this show is that I find Whitney Cummings more attractive than I thought.


Up All Night - Will Arnett and Christina Applegate are new parents.  Arnett is a stay-at-home father and Applegate works on a TV talkshow hosted by Maya Rudolf.  This is a new style sitcom with no laugh track and one camera.  It’s weird how much that shifts the tone of a show, makes it more of an intimate experience, really.  This show is fine.  I’ve seen the first two episodes and still haven’t formed a complete opinion on it.  That’s not good.  I laughed a few times through both episodes.  I sort of hate Christina Applegate, but I really like Will Arnett and Maya Rudolf.


Free Agents - This is similar to “The Office” in that it a lot of it takes place at work, it’s based off of a BBC series and it’s a single camera/no laugh track show.  It has a really good cast (Hank Azaria, Natasha Leggero, Al Madrigal and Joe Lo Truglio).  I enjoyed this quite a bit after seeing two episodes.  The second episode was better than the first.


Two Broke Girls - I watched this only for this article.  I was pretty sure I would not like it even a little.  Yet, I did.  It is very raunchy.  There were puns involving the words “coming/cumming” and “wet” and there was a very funny rape joke.  This show is mostly set in a diner, so it’s like “Alice” for a modern era.  Whitney Cummings wrote/created this and one of the main characters is very similar to her.  Surprisingly good.  My wife really liked it.


Movies Out Today
Abduction - Another movie where somebody gets abducted.  This stars Taylor Lautner from the “Twilight” series of books and movies.  Who gets abducted?  You’ll have to see the movie to find out, because I certainly do not know.


Dolphin Tale - An entire tale about dolphins?  You bet your ass, brother.  Do you love dolphins?  If you answered yes, then this is probably up your alley.


Killer Elite - Robert De Niro, Jason Statham and Clive Owen are some elite killers.  They kill everybody on the entire planet of Earth (this is not sci-fi, after all).  Want to see everybody get killed (including yourself)?  See this film.


Moneyball - The invention of a new sport is always lead in by a film of it.  “Moneyball” is going to take this country by storm.  Baseball?  Yeah right!  Soccer?  HA!  Football?  All right, buddy, you can fuck right off.  Moneyball is where it’s at.  This film goes over all of the rules and minutiae of this soon to be classic sporting contest.  My only issue with this film/sport is that we’re in the middle of a horrible double-dip recession (the second dip is coming soon to a theater near you).  Do we really need to be turning money into balls?  Yes!  See this fucking movie!


Other Thoughts
I watched a few movies this week.


Intruder - A pretty good slasher flick.  Low budget, but with good cinematography and some really funny performances.


Ball of Fire - A group of professors are creating an encyclopedia containing all knowledge.  Gary Cooper, on the for profs, feels the slang section is lacking and sets out to improve it.  A pretty good comedy (directed by Howard Hawks and co-written by Billy Wilder) and very screwball.