Television

Wednesday Night Menu

April 20, 2011 by Christopher

I haven’t watched much TV this week due to all the gaming I’ve been doing, and I’ve been remiss in posting my daily menu for the two of you who read it. The menu tonight:

Justified: There’s only a few episodes left, and there’s a whole lot of story threads out there. I find myself hoping they don’t wrap everything up by the end of the season. With Boyd re-entering the criminal underworld, Mags as the marijuana kingpin, and Dickie as the loose cannon, I’d be thrilled if this all spilled into season three, because having multiple crime bosses struggling for control is more interesting than just one bad guy on the top of the heap. I suspect most of it will be resolved, though. Mags will probably take a fall and Dickie seems too stupid to survive much longer. I’m sure Boyd will make it to season three, though.

As far as the hitmen from last week, I suspect they were sent by Winona’s ex (or the mob goons he’s associated with) to rub her out — Mags wouldn’t employ anyone who drove a Mercedes. So, that’s all gonna be in play, too, along with the stolen money storyline… man, it’s gearing up to be a busy conclusion this season. (FX)

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Movies | Television | Video Games

Weekend Menu: Presidents, Parrots, and Possibly Portals

April 15, 2011 by Christopher

Busy week, what with trying to get this blog off the ground. Thanks to anyone who’s been reading!

My own personal menu for the weekend includes a watching of Tron: Legacy, which just arrived on DVD from Netflix. I’ve seen the first ten minutes of the film already, and I don’t have a lot of hope that I’ll enjoy the rest, because the preview featured a digitally-created young version of Jeff Bridges that was creepy and unconvincing. He looked like a character from a video game cut-scene. From two years ago. Also, there was a guy base-jumping off a skyscraper that served no purpose except to make the character doing it seem X-TREME.

Here’s the weekend menu; see you on Monday!

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Television

Thursday Night Menu

April 14, 2011 by Christopher

I was a little disappointed in last night’s Extreme Couponing. The first segment featured twins who went around finding free stuff on their birthday, like lunch at Red Robin. That’s not extreme. Anyone can do that. Then, they found a grocery store selling ten pork chops for ten dollars. And they only bought ten! How is that extreme? They should be backing a truck up and buying enough pork to last them until the Rapture. Lame. Double lame, because they were twins.

The second segment featured the guy from the pilot, who bought a ton of stuff with the intent of donating some of it to U.S. soldiers, which is nice. Apparently, he’s donated tens of thousands of dollars worth of goods in the same manner. It’s great to see such support for our soldiers, I only wish they’d shown video of the soldiers opening their gift packages to see the looks on their faces as they received twenty pounds of women’s deodorant and Colgate toothpaste.

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DVD | Television

Wednesday Night Menu

April 13, 2011 by Christopher

I watched Unstoppable on DVD. Based on a true and interesting story about a runaway freight train, it was directed by Tony Scott, who I think realized too late that he wanted to make an action film but most of the action boils down to two guys sitting in a train cab, talking.

His solution was to never, ever stop swinging the camera around and around and around. It was almost funny if not for the fact that I was almost getting motion sick. No matter how mundane the topic, the camera was always swooshing all over the place. Anyway, the movie was not enjoyable awful, nor awfully enjoyable. It was just sort of there.

To the menu!

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Television | Video Games

Tuesday Night Menu

April 12, 2011 by Christopher

Video Games

Portal 2:  Nope, it’s not out yet, but it is currently available for pre-loading off Steam, which I’m excited about, which is a little weird. All it really means is that I can download some chunks of it but can’t play it for another week or so. But still, the idea of that game-y goodness slowly leaking into my computer, and just knowing it’s waiting there, is a nice warm feeling. It’s like owning a gun and knowing that you can kill someone if you want.

I’ve been on a complete Portal 2 info blackout for a couple months. Valve do great promotion work for their games, but with all the videos and ads and mysterious puzzles they’ve been releasing lately, I don’t want to have seen 95% of the game before I get to play it. I won’t even visit the link I just linked.

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DVD | Television | Video Games

Monday Night Menu

April 11, 2011 by Christopher

Quick recap of Sunday night’s entertainment:

We watched episode 2 of The Killing. With an entire season devoted to one case, the information is coming in at a leisurely trickle, which is good, though I admit I’m already impatient for more. I sort of wish we’d missed the season, waited until it was out on DVD, and rented it so we could consume it big, multi-episode gulps (The Wire was much more satisfying that way). Still, it’s very good, and it’s devoting a lot of time to the family of the deceased and how they’re trying to cope, which is both painful to watch and extremely rare for television to show. Generally, the only time you see the reaction of the family of a murder victim is when they’re informed of the murder, and they cry a little, and they mention “She used to hang out with this kid down the street” and then the investigation shifts away from them, until maybe you see them in the courtroom at the end.

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Television

Sunday Night Menu (TV)

April 10, 2011 by Christopher

The Killing: The excellent two-hour premiere is airing again, followed by a new episode in this season-long murder mystery, featuring a teenager killed in the woods near Seattle and the two detectives who are tasked with solving the crime. The show has its share of cliches: one detective is weary and seasoned and a day from transferring to another city, the other is a rookie, formerly a vice cop, and has questionable methods. Still, it all works and it’s a breath of fresh air when compared to most murder-of-the-week shows. In other words, it’s closer to The Wire than CSI. (AMC)

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Internet | Movies | Netflix | Television

Stream Cuisine: The Best Stuff on Netflix Instant

April 8, 2011 by Christopher

Mitchell & Webb

Netflix, I’m convinced, is the greatest invention of all time. It took a tedious, nigh-impossible chore — going to a video store, picking out a movie, coming home, watching it, and then going back to the store to return it — and made it as easy as ticking a box on the internet and opening and closing an envelope.

Naturally, opening and closing that envelope become too much goddamn work, so Netflix quickly reinvented the greatest invention of all time, and came up with Netflix Instant, which lets you strean movies and TV shows on your PC and TV just moments after you decide you want to watch them.

The catalog of streaming entertainment isn’t entirely fantastic, but it’s constantly growing and changing, so from time to time I’ll post about the better stuff I’m watching, so you can watch it (in the U.S., at least) if you haven’t already.

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Television

Coming Up: Coupons. Now: Coupons. Previously: Coupons.

April 7, 2011 by Christopher

I want to talk about my unabashed love for the television show Extreme Couponing (actually, I sort of don’t because I’m horribly embarrassed about it) but first I need to talk about my unrestrained hatred for the annoying habit some TV shows have of constantly showing you what is coming up next before they go to the commercial break, then showing you the thing they’ve told you is coming up, and then recapping that same exact thing again after the next commercial break.

This practice means you see certain moments of the show three times. With commercials, a half-hour show is only 22 minutes long, so if you’re repeating half the scenes three times, you might want to consider that you don’t have quite enough content for a show. Or, maybe it’s that the producers don’t think we can manage to pay attention through a two minute commercial break. Thanks for the vote of confidence.

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DVD | e-Books | Movies | Television | Video Games

On The Menu: Nazi Dinosaurs, Medieval Stoners, and Norm!

April 4, 2011 by Christopher

As I’m typing this week’s menu, I’m sitting in a cafe across from two young people clearly on a first date. Man, I’m so glad I’m not single anymore. The mid-day coffee date is the worst date ever. Even if things totally work out, both people have horrible coffee breath and it’s the middle of the afternoon (on a Sunday, in this case). Luckily for these two, it is clearly not working out, though they’re both trying to pretend it is. I feel like I should pull a gun and rob the cafe, if only to give them an excuse to cut the date short.

This cafe also appears to be a prime spot for divorced couples to swap out their shared children. So, this whole place is incredibly depressing.

Anyway, here’s what’s coming to screens this week!

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