Review: Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

This probably isn't the best review coming from me, a biased Conan O'Brien fan, but hey, I'll try to be as honest as possible.

I was pretty sad to hear that I would be Conan-less for about three months while he transitions from Late Night to the Tonight Show. However, I was satisfied to hear that Jimmy Fallon would be replacing Conan. I was a fan of Jimmy's work on Saturday Night Live as the Weekend Update co-anchor and as the crazy Red Sox fan. After Conan's departure, I wasn't really able to catch Late Night with Jimmy Fallon due to having class early the next morning. Although, since this past week, I've been on spring break and have been able to give Late Night a solid chance.

Beforehand, I read reviews saying that Jimmy was a disaster and I thought that it just couldn't be true! Well, I was wrong. One thing that Jimmy and Conan have is bad writers, but Conan can deal with that. Conan can make a bad joke funny just by reacting to it and realizing that it wasn't funny. Jimmy tries to do the same, but doesn't seem to have the charisma that Conan does. Another thing, Jimmy mumbles everything! I cannot understand thirty percent of what comes out of his mouth. Also, his interview skills are lacking. He can't transition from subject to subject.

Now, I had hope in Jimmy as the new Late Night host, but so far he's been lacking. He's only been on for a month, so hopefully he'll pick up just like Conan did when he first started.

03/31 Edit: I caught another episode of Late Night last night, and you can actually here no one laugh during his monolagues, and he notices it to. The thing is, he has nothing to follow up that awkward silence. I feel a little bad for the guy, yikes!

Review: Slumdog Millionaire

I'm obviously not one to comment on the greatness of movies and to be honest, I can count on one hand how many Oscar best pictures winners I've actually seen, but for some reason I really wanted to see Slumdog Millionaire. I heard many reviews saying that it was an excellent from family, friends, and yes, the ever-so-hated critics. I heard about the plot, I thought it was a rather interesting plot, but I still wasn't interested in going out and paying ten bucks to see it, but I just kept being bombarded with "go see Slumdog!" and by watching the Oscars, I couldn't escape it. That's where I became intrigued (Yeah, I guess it doesn't take much to intrigue me) and what made me want to watch it. I mean, it's also not your typical Oscar winner of a movie either, which I rather enjoyed. It's not a 3 hour period piece. It's definitely an all around movie, and here's why:

Slumdog has elements of everything. It's intense. You see slum children having to watch other children their age getting their eyes burned off. You see kids being chased through the slums by officers who are trying to keep their private areas safe. You see a child see Jamal's mom getting hit to death and falling into a puddle. It's sweet. Jamal spends the majority of the movie trying to find Latika. It's clever. It's about a game show and this kid from the slums knows all the answers, but how does he?

Also to note, the cinematography was beautiful. The portrayal of the slums may have been beautified, but the movie's point, I feel, wasn't necessarily to put you in the slums and the plot is unrealistic, sure, but that doesn't make it bad. The direction from Danny Boyle was marvelous, you felt that you were there watching the whole thing. The acting wasn't necessarily the best part of the movie, but the children from the slums were infact good actors for never acting (or probably even watching a movie) in their lives. Dev Patel and Freida Pinto gave rather satisfactory results for having little to no career before the movie either.

Sure, their were flaws, but this was the first Oscar winning movie to me that was all around good and had many elements to it other than just drama.

Acting: 7.5/10
Directing: 8.5/10
Story: 9/10
Overall: 9/10

Review: Freaks and Geeks: The Complete Series

Ahhh, the joys of Freaks and Geeks, the show that was cancelled before it's prime (as many other shows have). Why did I become a fan of this show? It was the summer of 2008 and I had just jumped on the Judd Appatow bandwagon. I already loved Superbad and was completely excited for Pineapple Express. Shortly after my viewing of Pineapple Express, I was in a James Franco craze (I tend to be in some 'insert actor name here' craze after every movie I watch.), on the Alkaline Trio Fan Club that I am a part of, I was reccomended Freaks and Geeks due to my James Franco/Judd Appatow addiction.

I watched the show for the first time online and instantly loved it. It's realistic portrayal of high school is amazing, which is odd because it takes place in 1980 and I wouldn't be born for another ten years. It's subtle humor which is definitely shines through the talent of Martin Starr as Bill Haverchuck and Seth Rogen as Ken Miller. Although, the rest of the cast is just as amazing. I can relate to Linda Cardellini as Lindsey Weir as being a nerd and trying to rebel, Jason Segel as Nick Andopolis is just adorable, yet pretty creepy, (hey, I'm probably the only one who thought it was sweet when he went to Lindsey's house in the middle of the night to tell her he wanted to see her face.) and who doesn't love James Franco? He's yummy. It's a great ensemble cast and everyone portrays their character amazingly. Also, Freaks and Geeks could have easily fallen into the typical cliche show about high school, but the show had new and fresh storylines every week. The morals of each episode were also not drawn out in the typical way. It's a shame it was cancelled, probably because it was too smart for it's own good.

As for the DVD package, it's pretty amazing as well. twenty-nine commentaries for eighteen episodes from cast members, the executive producers, fans of the show, etc. You get to hear many different perspectives on the show. They were fantastic commentaries and rather hilarious too. The special features are also amazing; seeing the auditions and deleted scenes were great. Very much worth th 56.99 that I spent for the boxset.

The actual show: 8.9/10
Special Features: 9/10
Packaging: 8/10

Review: Scrubs Season 7 DVD

I knew that I would start getting addicted to this blogging business. I told ya! Only 2 days in and I'm already super excited to write another one.

So, what will this fantastic blog entry entail this time? One of my favorite television shows: Scrubs.

But first off, I'd like to start with my addiction/fascination of your typical American sitcom. It's true, it's a large one and I'd like to point out, it started with Scrubs. Anyway, I can say that if you name me a TV show, there's a likelihood that I have not seen it. Although, I just might end up listening to you and end up watching it, but it isn't always likely. It would have to be a strong reccomedation, a show that falls under comedy, with some slight drama, and I'd have to atleast be somewhat familiar with the cast. Beware though, those aren't finite details for my TV shows. I tend to find out about shows on my own at random. So it's really all up in the air.

However, the shows that I do end up loving, end up in my room in completion on DVD. I don't particularly watch shows that I feel mediocre about, only shows that I absolutely love. They are a few shows in that collection, but they're always in rotation and practically all that I watch.

So there's a small intro to my love of televsion.

I had first become a fan of Scrubs in the fall of 2006 prior to the 6th season. I had bought seasons 2-3 (for some reason I had the need to buy them out of order) so I was familiar with the charachters, the basic idea of the show was run, etc. Although you could imagine that the storylines had made not much sense to me. But by the time season 7 rolled around on NBC in the fall of 2007, I was completely caught up with the whole show.

Now, I would say that the show had gone downhill in the midst of season 5 with it's unrealistic acts (JD fitting himself in Turk's backpack, sure.) but it wasn't all bad. I wasn't seeming to mind it as other hardcore Scrubs fans would. And this goes for the season 7 DVD aswell. When I was watching season 7 through the 2007-2008 season, I thought it was fairly hit or miss. I was bugged by the constant use of beardface and snoop dog jokes that they felt to have in every single episode and the fact that they kept on doing parodies of themselves, which is a good concept, but did not work for the show. However, the storylines were very well done and they were going back to having doctor storylines unlike in season 6 so I was pleased with that.

Now, when I had recieved the DVD about a week ago, I was currently going through a Scrubs relapse. I hadn't watched the show since season 7 ended in May, but as I started watching the show on DVD, it wasn't as bad as when I was watching new episodes every week. I don't know why. Yes, there were still the annoying beardface jokes, the parodies, and also the 2 minute fantasies, but I noticed some pretty funny stuff that I had not laughed at before. Dan's (JD's brother) zombie hug, the whole Kim giving birth episode, JD being the village idiot, etc. It seemed that the funny things outweighed the good in season 7. The only problems were the continuity with "My Princess" and that there were only 11 episodes due to the writer's strike.

Now since I'm a huge TV DVD buff, I love special features, commentaries, etc and I was a little displeased with the DVD content. The DVD menus resembled the whole rateyourdoctor.org website, so there were links everywhere that look like they could be clicked on, but it wasn't the case so that was rather annoying. I was fairly pleased with the "My Princess" featurette. It was very thorough, funny, etc. The alternate lines were funny as usual, and the bloopers were a little short, but still a good laugh. The commentaries were mostly done by producers, writers, etc. and I'd much prefer the actors, but they make good laughs anyway. I still need to see the deleted scenes and the "one on one" featurette with Ken Jenkins (Kelso) still though.

All in all, I give:
The episodes: 6.8/10
Special Features: 7.5/10
Packaging:4/10
Overall: 7/10