Lisa Tutankhamun

(via)

While out drinking with some friends upon seeing The Hunger Games (still in theaters), one of my friends exclaimed:

You know, Jennifer Lawrence kind of looks like Olivia Munn.

Okay, so he didn’t quite exclaim it, but because it shocked me, it felt like he did.  For those of you unaware of either of those ladies, here’s a refresher:

Jennifer Lawrence, meet Olivia Munn

Despite the obvious differences of hair and eye color, skin tone, noses, and lips, they both have:

1. White teeth (welcome to Hollywood)
2. Distinct, angled chins
3. Narrower eyes
4. Round faces with high cheekbones
5. Similar bodies?

Similar bodies: check

I still don’t exactly see it though.  Perhaps if they’re both in costume:

Katniss Everdeen, meet Slave Leia... I'm sure you'll both have so much to talk about

CONCLUSION #1: I don’t see it.

CONCLUSION #2: My friend is an idiot.

CONCLUSION #3: Ladies, call me!

Does this title scream western sci-fi space romp or what?

Joss Whedon is about to hit the proverbial big-time very soon.  Fans that know him already love him and probably consider him “big-time”, but I’m talking about the next level shit here.

Much like how Jon Favreau was merely that guy who was in that cool indie Rat Pack-era inspired 90′s film (that he wrote) alongside Vince Vaughn, Favreau was not a name the masses knew until a little flick called Iron Man.

With The Avengers, the masses will now know Whedon.  And if they don’t, they should.

That having been said:

What the fuck was he thinking when he named his best television show to date Firefly?

If you don’t know the show, you should be ashamed of yourself.  It’s the one-season wonder that was so beloved, it got a theatrical follow-up, Serenity… which is also a sucky name.  Firefly is the class of ship and Serenity is its name.

This is tantamount to calling a Star Wars TV show, Corellian Freighter, and the movie based on it, Millenium Falcon.  (Okay, the movie title kind of works.)

If Firefly had a different show title, would it have lasted?  All I can say is it would have stood out more.  (When I originally heard of the show, I heard “from the creator of Buffy, comes Firefly“… needless to say, I didn’t watch it in its original run.)

Here are my alternate suggestions for Firefly/Serenity:

• “Mal” - could have evoked Darth Maul, or malice… it’s better than using the lead character’s full name, “Mal Reynolds” (which is still better than John Carter), but it does not capture all the characters
• “Browncoats” – this is what the rebels of the Alliance were called… we’re getting somewhere, but this still only covers two players
• “OutRiders” - a play on the word that means forerunner or harbinger… evokes outsider and rider of horses/ships, perhaps… also sounds like it could be a show on Bravo
• “Spacecoach” – since this show is like Stagecoach In Space horrible idea
• “The Last Frontier” – frontier = boring to me
• “Space Western” – it worked for That 70′s Show

So why did Whedon go with Firefly?

Whedon wanted to give the show a name that indicated movement and power, and felt that “Firefly” had both.  This powerful word’s relatively insignificant meaning, Whedon felt, added to its allure.  He eventually wound up creating the ship in the image of a firefly. (via)

Face upgrades throughout his Hollywood career...

With Colin Farrell’s Total Remake Recall coming out this summer, it got me thinking… hasn’t he done this before?  It’s kind of like Total Recall in Total Real Life.  He’s becoming sort of the Remake King, and it may suit him well.

When S.W.A.T. was originally released, Farrell was the Sam Worthington of that moment.  He was the foreign Actor! living the Hollywood dream.  You couldn’t escape his movies – Hart’s War, Minority Report, Phone Booth, The Recruit,  and, ugh… Daredevil (his Bullseye was the best thing about that movie).

By the time Miami Vice was released, Anytown Vice could have been breathing down his neck.  Addictions to pain killers and Playboy models were derailing his career, and this film was not helped by it (or, ugh… Jamie Foxx.)

(SIDENOTE: Insert In Bruges here.  This film is not a remake, but to me, it remade his career.  This was the first time I thoroughly enjoyed his work as an Actor in bold, versus my usual sarcastic Italics!)

As for Fright Night and Total Recall, the court’s still out for me.  I enjoyed the originals of both, and I don’t think his presence will hurt either of the newer incarnations.  My big question is:

What’s the next remake he’ll, um, remake?

Now that Hollywood’s diving into 90′s television with the reboot of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (which I guess was technically and re-imagining of the comic book character), my suggestion is to go back to the TV remakes with Full House: The Movie!

Uncle Jesse, anyone?

This first one doesn’t seem like a real ad on TV, but oh yes – it is:

Does this one feature Legos?  Legos?!  Who’s watching this?!

This one might (?) be (?) racist (?), but the scariest thing is the concept of a communal chocolate fondue…

T-shirts are definition in cloth form.  They’re not only brand labels, but personality labels.

When I wore Rude Dog shirts, I wanted to be seen as a Rude Dog:

I was usually more in the mood to be annoying.

When I wanted to be as bad as Bart Simpson, I’d get out my slingshot and this shirt:

Somebody ate my shorts.

When I wanted people to think I was stuck up and well-traveled (and well fed), I’d wear something from my Hard Rock Cafe collection:

(Insert city name above... and Ray-Bans)

And then there was one shirt I always considered wearing because they were punny, but never did because they were, well, you be the judge:

Additional phrase: "Something-something-something up-stares."

And you may or may not have heard that a bug called the Polish cochineal (insert joke here)is used as a food and drink color dye called carmine.  The bug looks like this:

The drawing is easier to stomach... so to speak.

The big reveal was that Starbucks (heavens!) was using the dead beetle dye to color one of their strawberry drinks.

I told you so.

So what’s the next thing that’s going to shock us?  It’d have to be big.  Big like finding out Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick, who have been happily married for 23 years, are – I don’t know – related.

They are "The Closer" than they thought. (<----Much better than a "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" joke.)

TV DRAMAS RULE: I will not watch a new drama in its first year (because it might get cancelled).

I followed that rule with Justified (WIN!) and LOST (fuck LOST), but not American Horror Story (fuck AHS… but not as much as LOST).  With sitcoms, the rule is even simpler:

TV COMEDIES RULE: Watch… if funny, repeat.

So that brings us to this show:

This show is not following the promise of its premise. (<----writer's lingo)

WHY I GAVE THIS  SHOW “THE SHOT”

Well, to begin:

1. Will Arnett
2. Christina Applegate
3. …

Both of them deserve a chance to be on another decent show, and I thought the “cool couple have to adjust to be cool parents” wasn’t the stupidest idea out there.  So why not?  The remainder of the cast didn’t hurt/help either (Maya Rudolph’s okay, and Scientologist former skateboarder Jason Lee showed up for a while).

WHY I DECLARE THIS SHOW AS “JUST SHITTY”

Applegate’s Reagan isn’t likeable.  And I’m not saying likeable is required.  The casts of Seinfeld, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Arrested Development, and even Friends featured some unlikable members.  But you still liked them despite the distaste they left in your mouth.  And I don’t think it’s Applegate’s fault.  (Well one thing is… I hate her stupid baby name necklace.)

Ick.

No, I blame show creator Emily Spivey.  They always say “write what you know,” so to me, this former SNL scribe fancies herself quite the privileged producer that’s entitled to have it all – just like Reagan.

The biggest moment that turned me off the show was an episode in which they were flying to a wedding with the baby.  They had a plan that involved them sitting together, and upon finding out they couldn’t, she threw a fit and hassled the woman at the reservation guest because she didn’t get her way.  As she walked off, she disconnected the retractable straps that compose the queue.  Was I supposed to be on her side?!  Because all I thought was fuck her,  Even the neighbors they hate that we’re supposed to hate makes them look callous.

In closing, I wish the show this premiered along with lasted.  Free Agents was way more interesting… and adult.

But I might have to find The Silver Lining in his decision to reboot the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as aliens.

These are not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

What good might I find in the seemingly asinine idea to change the beloved oozy origin of our pizza-loving, sewer-dwelling crime fighters?  Midi-chlorians, anyone?

These are not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Sometimes such changes work.  In the Sam Raimi Spider-Man series, didn’t a genetically altered spider make a lot more sense than a radioactive one?  (Maybe not enough.  Part 3 did suck, and the new film is abandoning that concept.)

This might be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.

I think the best part is that we might finally get to see this guy: Krang.

Okay, he's technically from Dimension X, but isn't that alien enough?

Four movies in, and the best baddies we’ve seen are these two?

Tokka and Rahzar. Why not Bebop and Rocksteady?

That’s at least my hope.  I can’t take any more Shredder nonsense…