Need some advice on picking this season’s American Idol winner? With the Top 24 debuting tonight, use this handy 5-step guide for divining a winner and be sure to impress your friends.
1) The South Will Rise Again
It’s no secret that contestants from the south seem to last longer than the rest. The voting strength of that region is a documented fact. Check out the hometowns of the past Idol winners: Season 1: Kelly Clarkson
Hometown: Fort Worth, TX Season 2: Ruben Studdard
Hometown: Birmingham, AL Season 3: Fantasia Barino
Hometown: High Point, NC Season 4: Carrie Underwood
Hometown: Muskogee, OK Season 5: Taylor Hicks
Hometown: Birmingham, AL Season 6: Jordin Sparks
Hometown: Glendale, AR Season 7: David Cook
Hometown: Blue Springs, MO Season 8: Kris Allen
Hometown: Jacksonville, AR
To get the inside scoop on this season’s hometown heroes, check out the Season 9 contestants page and that’s almost all you need to know.
2) Don’t Pick a Poseur
You can’t fake it on Idol, and that’s a good thing. While they whittle it down to the Top 12, this is the perfect time to spot the poseurs. One or two always make it through. That’s okay with us. They don’t win in the end. Remember: the winners can sing, the winners can strut, and the winners can take make-up without looking like drag queens – that goes for men and women. (This also applies to contestants who give up on the competition though that one is harder to pin down this early on).
3) Who’s Got the Looks?
Fortunately, Idol is rarely about judging physical appearance and vanity. That’s a good thing. It was inexplicable that Taylor Hicks beat out Katharine McPhee’s breasts, but there is a lesson to take with you. Contestants can (and do, if they make it far enough) get make-overs for the show. Voters are extremely forgiving when contestants have some, shall we say, less than pretty features. So cheer up Tyler Grady and Lilly Scott, you still have a chance. Being a frontrunner on the show is about being relatable too. That’s why being fat doesn’t count against you. I have no idea what the contestants are going to do with yellow teeth, but I guess we’ll see.
It works the other way too. Don’t let a hot crotch shot or big boobs convince you into thinking you have found your winner. A nice chest isn’t enough on its own in this competition to do any serious winning.
4) Squash the Believers
If a contestant, particularly at this point in the competition, spends on a lot of screen time talking about religion or their personal beliefs, run for the hills. Idol has never been a good soapbox for preachy contestants. Any time a contestant starts pushing really strong values on the audience, they lose the audience. Idol is all about mass appeal, and by bringing God up too often (or singing a overly religious song in the name of pop music, I’m looking at you Mandisa) you corner yourself into a niche market.
Nobody questions the value of being a moral person, but save the preaching for when you’re famous and people think you walk on water.
5) The Judges Have It
When all else fails to pick a winner, listen to the judges. Their influence on audience voting is at once the most obvious and the most understated aspect of the Idol competition. Even in the Top 24, it’s worth giving the judges their air time and using that to your advantage to pick a winner. Also don’t forget that contestants who talk back to the judges almost always get the axe from the voters. When you disrespect the judges, you disrespect the audience and it’s an easy rule for contestants to forget. So keep an eye on how contestants interact with the judges.
Ready to take out your notepad and jot down notes on the Top 24? Keep these guidelines handy and you’ll be able to spot a winner before you can say Top 12.
The Real World got me thinking. I know, strange. On Sunday, MTV aired The Real World Brooklyn marathon and what surprised me is that the cast seemed very “real.” The show in the last, oh at least ten seasons, has seemed very contrived. But this time, the over-sexed castmates came off as immature, whiny, vain and kind of stupid. And I thought, you know, that’s actually a pretty accurate reflection of the new generation of twenty-somethings.
It occurred me to that The Real World is grossly responsible for the societal shift to this kind of sexed-out, twenty-four a day spring break culture (no joke, Season 22 is in Cancun!) Oh sure, spring break behavior is nothing new, but it used to be reasonably contained to spring break, even on MTV. The Real World, long before other reality shows came along, popularized this sort of vain, vacant, pop stars in the making mentality that has dominated its casting for at least the last ten years (I’m looking at you, Tek). They gave up on casting intelligent, mature young men and women with actual lives around season 8. After that, you had to be gorgeous, stupid and have nothing better to do with your life than The Real World.
I guess that manufactured cultural identity was taken for real by its viewers and now The Real World really does mirror a generation that is just mirroring what it had seen on television. That. is fucking scary.
This time around, producers went back to an old school model of letting the cast kind of do their own thing for most of the season. The whole notion of having them work together always seemed unnecessarily contrived to me; I actually approve of the switch back this season. A startlingly number of them as a result (no surprise) wanted to be models/actors which is probably the most realistic reason for them to have tried out for the show in the first place. After all, no matter what Beauty and the Geek pretends to be, reality television hasn’t been about social experiment for a long time now.
The Real World hasn’t been entertaining to me since before they parked themselves in Las Vegas. But this season took on a fascinating social context, (ironic, I know) because the cast’s behavior and attitudes seemed real and believable. I wonder if that isn’t how we expect kids to act these days. Over-sexed, over-stimulated, overreacting. It’s the overdrive generation. And while The Real World didn’t create the overdrive generation single-handedly, the show deserves at least some of the blame. Yeah, producers would just say they are a reflection of what is going on in society. But I don’t buy it. Sometimes, it really is the other way around.
There is a Thundercats movie trailer floating around the websphere for a live action adaptation of the cartoon.
It’s pretty wild. Just watch it and don’t let anyone tell you it’s fake. Taken from a composite of films, actors Brad Pitt, Hugh Jackman and Vin Diesel are transformed into Lion-O, Tygra, and Panthro respectively (the best visual gag: Garfield as Snarf). Any fantasy buff will recognize the scenes from the original movies (you might even go so far as to scratch your head with a little deja vu. Isn’t Jackman’s Tygra just a little too similar to Wolverine?)
Whatever, it was kind of awesome to watch, though I kind of think a live action adaptations of cartoons are sucker bets. Even with cutting edge digital technology ruling special effects these days, something about humans playing the cartoons is lost in translation.
Thundercats is one of those iconic characters in my childhood memories. It was G.I. Joe, Thundercats, He-Man and M.A.S.K. in that order. G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra has an August 9 release date. Its stars include (sigh) Dennis Quaid and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. (Okay, so he wears a mask but Gordon-Levitt as Cobra Commander? Really?)
Really?
The movie itself looks slick so we won’t condemn it out of hand for questionable casting.
Thundercats is supposedly in development for a 2010 release as a animated feature film. But since there is literally not a single rumor about the film, maybe it’s caught in development hell.
He-Man, well Masters of the Universe wasn’t just terrible, it was 80’s kitsch terrible (Dolph Lundgren again? Really?)
Really?
Then there’s a 2011 He-Man film given the Sin City treatment. The idea is kind of intriguing, no?
(Shaking head) No.
Fortunately, even searching far and wide, I could not find even rumors of a M.A.S.K. live action film, or any film adaptation at all.
Adaptations of any type are dicey propositions. You have to capture a new fanbase without alienating fans of the original. In a way, a movie like Transformers benefits from having a continuous series of cartoons since the original that mutilated and demolished any myths from the original. Kids of the newer versions of Transformers probably didn’t notice anything amiss. And the visual elements were such a departure from the cartoon versions you had a hard time making that emotional connection to your childhood anyway.
But they can be done well, at least comic book adaptations can be. There’s really no evidence that a live action movie based on animation ever really was pulled off successfully (maybe Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or is that just me? Just me? Okay then). It’s just too jarring to see, say, Brad Pitt playing out Lion-O. The voice is wrong, the look is off. It just looks like Brad Pitt going to a Halloween party. (Though cool costume!)
You know, come to think of it, the Scooby Doo films did manage to approximate the cartoon in a live action film. Though perhaps they inadvertently found success by making the story way more adult than the cartoon. (I actually thought the first installment was really entertaining or is that just me? Anyone? Just me?)
Out with the old and keeping the (relatively) new. After 13 seasons, King of the Hill won’t be back. Fox has ordered a last round of 13 new episodes to air at some as-yet-undetermined time during the 2009-2010 season. King of the Hill followed the blue-collar Texas family the Hills on various red neck adventures (though the Hills were in fact remarkably enlightened compared to most of Texas.)
King of the Hill was spawned by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels, the former who is probably more famous for bringing Beavis and Butt-head to life on MTV, and even more famous for the 1999 cult film Office Space. Judge also voices the characters Hank Hill and Boomhauer on the show. Kathy Najimy and Brittney Murphy are the other well-known voices in the cast.
Fox inexplicably ordered another season of American Dad. That show is has something to do with a functionally retarded CIA agent, an alien, his inept family and a talking fish. The formula is retread, dumb dad does stupid shit, family goes along with it or not. It’s not funny. But only 5 seasons old, American Dad must seem like a busty coed compared to King of the Hill.
Both shows have been part of Fox’s Sunday night Animation Domination line-up anchored by the Simpsons.
After years and years of speculation on sequels and announcements that didn’t quite materialize, Spaceballs: The Animated Series is set to debut this coming weekend on cable network G4. I’m trying to keep my expectations in check, but still, I have hope that this will be worth watching. Okay, I’m really excited enough that it’s tough to keep my pants dry.
When the original Spaceballs film came out in 1987, I was eleven years old and the humor was just right for me. Amazingly, as I grew older, the movie’s jokes grew with me. Its wit became clear on more and more levels. While at 11, “Barf!” “Not in here, mister, this is a Mercedes” gave me hysterics, college eventually came along and my friends and I were earnestly discussing the ways in which Princess Vespa’s change symbolizes the feminist movement. By the time I finally parted with it in favor of a DVD copy, the crappy VHS tape I had used to steal the movie off of HBO nearly 20 years ago had become practically unusable from so much use.
When the rumors started flying around for Spaceballs III: The Search For Spaceballs II, I was ecstatic. But all through the ’90s, my hope dwindled as it became clear that a sequel was just not going to happen. When John Candy died in 1994, the likelihood of a second entry dropped to nil, since it just wouldn’t be Spaceballs without Barf. Then in the early 2000s, rumors started to circulate again, this time about an animated sequel. I did not, however, give them much credence as nothing seemed to happen. The show was announced on more than once occasion, but never seemed to actually make it onto a network’s schedule.
That’s all changed now with Mel Brooks finally bringing his gem to the small screen. Brooks will star in the new series as President Skroob/Yogurt, while Daphne Zuniga will reprise her role as Princess Vespa. Sadly, the rest of our favorite characters have been recast (Bill Pullman, are you too good for TV?). Still, I’m pulling for them to do a good job.
Check out Spaceballs: The Animated Series on cable network G4. The premiere event starts at 3:00 p.m. (EDT — check your local listings elsewhere) with a screening of the original film, with 4 episodes of the new show starting at 5:00 p.m. Check back next week to see if I like it more or less than The Dark Knight.
You can check out a seriously boobtastic trailer for Spaceballs: The Animated Series by clicking here. It’s boobarrific. Boob.
You can get more information on the new series at the G4 website.
The unofficial marker of autumn is upon us with the start of the next season of Monday Night Football (the Monday after Labor Day), the start of a new semester of classes, and another birthday. Of course, fall is also the start of a new television season, after enduring so much new summer filler they threw at us on television.
I don’t watch much television, most of it seriously sucks, but there is room for America’s Next Top Model and a couple hours worth of Project Runway reruns every week. Kathy Griffin is a riot, so is Family Guy and both never fail to lighten my mood when I need a TV break. Most of my TV time is reserved for the Red Sox and anything related to pro football. That’s my ritual Sunday for the fall (and Monday night, and Thursdays when I can find someone who actually gets the NFL network).
But for the most part, I am no longer sucked in by medical dramas, supernatural mysteries (unless you count the popularity of Monk) politically correct sitcoms and How I Met Your Mother. Some of it is better written than the rest, but none of it drags me in front the TV the way Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Friends and early episodes of CSI used to.
Maybe it’s because a television habit is not a compatible activity without just about any other productive use of my time. Nothing drains away my mental capacity like Next. It’s not even the visual menagerie that distracts me so much as the constant audio stream. It’s amazing that I long ago learned to tune out commercials (even as I watch them, I have no idea what they are advertising) but the shows themselves still wrest away my attention.
I realize our addiction to TV is piled on years of conditioning. It’s my babysitter, my best friend and occasionally, my lover. It has been with me through all the ups and downs of my life and somehow, never passes judgment on…okay, I can’t keep that up anymore. But you know where I was going with it.
Fall itself is a product of the same rigorous conditioning. Even people who no longer live on the academic cycle from September to May have the imprint of twelves years or more of moving to the tune of the school year. It’s ingrained in many of us from an early age. The best television starts in the fall. Summer is for vacations, for camping and long weekends and day trips. Autumn is for buckling down and relearning all the good habits that were so easily forgotten for the three months when the sun shined. Winter is the darkness, and spring the revival. Even when all those patterns of behavior are striped away, we still think of the start of fall as a substantial indicator of promise, the least of which is there might be something worth watching on TV.
While I’m damn excited about the next season of Top Model, it’s the promise of another season of football that has me restless and buzzing with eagerness. Sure the Pats might have to rely on a back-up quarterback (pick one, the result will be the same) the Jets are riding Brett Favre until he drops, and Pennington is with Dolphins? Apparently, they are comfortable bottom dwelling for another year. But, fuck Lost, that’s all the drama I need to make my fall a special one.
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