absnow54

Has anyone been watching the SNL rewind marathon on VH1 Classic? They're still in the 2000's, but it's been fun remembering the featured players who never were (Finesse Mitchell, Rob Riggle, Casey Wilson... even Abby Elliot is better than I remember her) and also the recurring sketches that never quite took off. One of my favorites in the early 2000's was Amy and Seth as the Needlers (or the couple that should be divorced) it was a real precursor to their Weekend Update dynamic, especially the "Really!" segment. And yesterday they played two of my favorite sketches, The Falconer with Kevin Spacey when they keep on going back in time to rescue Donald ("Donald, duck!") and the entire cast is dressed as the Falconer doing awful impressions. The other is the Ben Affleck episode when they get stuck on an escalator and they parody every disaster movie cliche. At one point Rachel Dratch does this over the top anguished scream and the entire cast just stand there with a blank expression to keep from breaking. Ben also gets extra points for performing most of the sketch with his back to the cue cards. They're almost to the late-90's era, this weekend is the Sandler years with a Chris Farley block/tribute, then Monday they're into the golden age of Hartman, Hooks, Carvey, Dunn... The non-Lorne years are Wednesday, and then Thursday through Sunday will be the first five seasons. Here's a pretty nice layout of the schedule. My DVR is getting quite a workout.

I've been scrolling through the channel guide and adding episodes to the DVR. I kind of wish they were playing it from the beginning, because I'll probably be burnt out by the time they reach the Hartman-years, and especially by the time they hit the original cast. They play the episodes from the late 90's through the present season so regularly (I'm pretty sure VH1 plays all of Justin Timberlake's episodes every weekend) I'm not too excited for the first week of the marathon. I still miss when Comedy Central had the rights to SNL reruns. They did a really good job of balancing episodes.

With Aaron Sorkin as the writer, I imagine this movie will come off as The Social Network: Graduate School.

Even near the end of Dawson's Creek, Katie still had some critically acclaimed work like Pieces of April. The whole Tom Cruise debacle really crushed her career though. I think Katie wanted to be a movie star, but instead the overexposure shot her in the foot. Sure, Maggie Gyllenhaal was pretty forgettable in The Dark Knight, and the character of Rachel Dawes was an uninteresting wet rag, but damn, that was a dumb franchise to walk away from. I think Katie Holmes' biggest issue is that the roles she is largely known for and was most successful at is the "aw, shucks, boys like me?" ingenue, and that doesn't carry over to a woman in her 30's.

Didn't they cast someone to play Horrocks? I assume they're going to start episode 9 with Jamie and crew on their way to see Horrocks, and what we saw was Jamie's inner monologue as he contemplates his choice to leave Claire behind so he could clear his name, and then we'll briefly see how Jamie came to stand in Randall's window to rescue Claire, and pick up where the cliffhanger left off. That, or it's right after the rescue and before strap-gate.

I thought the same thing. I don't know if they write their own jokes, but Michael's were all terrible too. (What was the one about King Abdullah getting hit and killed by a female driver?) I think Colin is getting a bit better with his delivery, I especially liked his "National Hug Day... DAD!" delivery. It was an easy joke, but it worked. I think they could both take a lesson from Bobby, who actually knew how to set up a joke and then deliver a punchline with the right inflection and pacing. Che and Jost seem to try and plow through every joke with the same "can you believe this?" candor that makes all their jokes fall flat.

And Leo was pretty terrible in Titanic as well, and people considered that a snub, because, well, everything else in that movie got nominated. I did watch What's Eating Gilbert Grape again recently, and even with my tween, heart shaped glasses removed, I still found it to be a damn good performance. That was a tough year to be nominated.

I could see them revealing that Claire's voice over is her retelling the story -- we don't have to see who she's talking to -- at an older age, sometime in the future, ie little visual clues to hint that she's in the 1960's. The Dragonfly cliffhanger that happens at the very beginning of the book, is too big to pass up for a nearly year's long hiatus. They want people to continue talking about this show, and honestly, the end of Outlander sort of tinkers and meanders, and sure they've got plans, but "Maybe we'll persuade France into not funding this rebellion by going to lots of parties and talking to people" is a lot less exciting than "WHAT IS CLAIRE DOING BACK IN THE FUTURE!?!?!?!"

I think Monty only disabled jamming on the frequency that they were transmitting their distress signal, so unless they're looking specifically at that part of the spectrum, it could go undetected for a while. That part killed me! Especially since the episode revolved around grounder!Bellamy betraying grounder!Clarke. I'm sure something will go terribly wrong with the Mount Weather rescue, and Clarke's love for her people will prevail and she'll go back to caring too much, but for now, the look on Bellamy's face when she was like, "Meh, if you die, you die," broke my heart.

I agree that Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel are much stronger contenders for the SAG awards than Boyhood, but I can still see them honoring the actors for their 12 year journey with the characters. Besides Patricia Arquette, and to an extent Ethan Hawke, the actin in that movie wasn't very strong.

Silence is directed by Scorsese. Scorsese is only executive producing Bleed for This (the movie with Teller) according to IMDB.

I was impressed that for the first 20 minutes, Eddie carried the entire episode by myself. Also, during the Black History Minute when he mispronounced soil, and someone in the audience commented loud enough for Eddie (and the boom mic) to hear, and he -- without a beat or breaking character -- was like "yeah, I messed up, shut up!"

Leonardo DiCaprio, definitely. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck too, although Ben crashed and burned spectacularly by the time he was 30.

I don't see Chris Christie shying away from the republican ticket, which mean Bobby will be spoken for.

This is why The Critic's Choice Awards is my favorite award show of the season because it takes place the day of the Oscar nominations and you have people who are either really excited because they were nominated that morning, or people who are kind of salty because they've just been snubbed. Affleck won best director that night and the first thing he said was "I'd like to thank the Academy." and it was so on point and hilarious.

Have we seen Joe Biden since Sudeikis left? There's the democrat primary to consider too for next season!

Keaton took home the Critic's Choice for Best Actor last night over Redmayne, and while the CCA isn't the best for predicting Oscar winners, they've been pretty consistent with the actor category, so I agree that Keaton has pulled ahead.

I don't think Michael Keaton is a lock. I'd say that Eddie Redmayne has just as good a shot. I think the SAG awards will be the deciding factor. Keaton has the comeback momentum, but Redmayne has every Oscar bait box checked off on his scorecard.

He's very good at playing a manic asshole, and that's pretty much all I've seen from him. I haven't seen him in American Sniper, but I thought he was great in SLP (and was undeservedly overshadowed by Jennifer Lawrence that award season -- she's Oscar worthy, no doubt, but not for that role) and it was unfortunate he had to go up against the Daniel Day Lewis juggernaut that year. It does seem crazy that he's been nominated 3 years in a row.

I wouldn't call it a Best Picture snub, I'd call it an undeserved directing nod. The performances were great, but the pacing was terrible.

Not completely. "Everything Is Awesome" pulled a nomination for Best Original Song.

Tony Stark's mother is named Maria though. Since Tony's not born until the 60's (if we're going by RDJ's age) it may be some time before we're (if ever) introduced to Mrs. Stark. I don't think CMM can be that picky, and I imagine getting into the Marvel Universe is incentive enough for most actors. I did have the same thought about fair haired Sharon Carter, but I couldn't remember if she was playing Peggy's granddaughter or niece (because wouldn't Peggy's granddaughter have a different last name, I almost asked, but of course this is Peggy.)

Oddly enough, I feel like Colin Jost should play Mitt Romney. He's got that out of touch, robotic vibe down pat.

Ugh, VH1classic is running late 90's episodes with him right now, and I always thought I was too young to appreciate him, but no. His Weekend Update was just straight up terrible.

Another great episode. I liked that the other SSR agents were competent enough to be making progress on the case instead of Peggy solving it all by herself behind the scenes. Does Peggy even know about the Fringe typewriter? I'm looking forward to the two investigations colliding and the boys admitting that Peggy knows what she's doing after all. I wouldn't be surprised if they set Thompson up as the reformed asshole, that's a trope that show runners seem to find hard to resist. Sousa seems like too obvious a choice at this point that I don't trust his sincerity, and could easily see him "shockingly" revealed as a big bad. What I really like is that the show isn't thrusting chem tests in our faces and letting all of Peggy's relationships naturally progress. So is Chris Evans' likeness in the opening credits? Good for him for earning some lunch money every time the show airs!