My girlfriend got me hooked on So You Think You Can Dance, and at first, it was more about watching the auditions at the beginning of the show, just like on American Idol, where you simply watch to see the bad people.

But with dance numbers like this, how can you not want to see what else they come up with?

Every fan of 90210 TOS (The Original Series) has their moment. Maybe it was Donna Martin graduates, maybe it was Kelly joining a cult or when the noxzema girl died in Dylan McKay’s arms. How about when the kid blew his head off and we all learned a valuable lesson? Maybe you just liked the Peach Pit. Well for me, it was 12 illustrious episodes that showed me what a bad girl really was.

Enter Emily Valentine.

As soon as she showed up on screen with her short hair cut and too cool for this shit attitude, I got the feeling she was going to be trouble, and I liked it. Every guy likes the crazy girl but in this case, she didn’t start out that way. She had a whole other element that attracted guys like flies to sticky stuff – she was the new girl.

If you were a guy who watch 90210 and are willing to admit it, Emily Valentine was the best additon to the show. Not only was she cute, she was smart and could sing! Then she became a druggy, and tried to kill Brandon, but I forgive her.

As I sit here waiting for the new 90210 to come on, I wonder, can it even come close to moments like this? I doubt it. What was your favorite 90210 TOS moment?

Image credit

After a hot summer, it’s almost time for the leaves in the keystone state to start turning colors and then die. I love this time of year more than any other -  although, spring is a very close second. The crunching of leaves under your foot, the smell of Fall staples like, pumpkin and apple pie,Starbuck’s Gingerbread Latte, etc. It’s all the sights, sounds and smells of the best season of the year.

But what I’m really looking forward too, is the start of the Fall TV Season. I’ve always enjoyed watching TV shows, but the last few year have been especially enjoyable. Maybe it has to do with getting older and appreciating TV more, or maybe it’s the fact that I’ve come to understand what it takes to write great shows every week that keep people coming back for more.

With last season being a strike shorten season and missing whole shows like 24, or getting, what could be called water down versions of the shows I love like, House and Grey’s Anatomy, this season will hopefully see these shows and others back in their old form. Some might argue that some shows lost their greatness before the strike, but that’s a whole other post.

So here are the shows I’m looking forward to returning in all of their glory, and some new ones I hope can be great.

MONDAY:

8:00 – Monday Night Football.
If the Eagles are on, I’m there or pretty much any other team. I might get to watch the other Monday shows live if the game isn’t that good, but most of the time Monday’s shows will be watched on Tuesday afternoon.

8:30 – How I Met Your Mother.
I really like this show. I’ve thought about doing a spec for it. Last season I missed a bunch of episodes because something came on in it’s time slot, I can’t remember what. This is pure fun, I’ll pick it up when I can. It’s not a must watch but I do enjoy it.

9:00 – Heroes.
While season two was eh, there is still enough there to keep me wanting more. It’s a world full of super heroes, how can you not like it?

10:00 – Weeds.
This will be ending soon, but it’s been a great season so far. I’m a little weirded out by one thing that has happened during the season, but I still love it. Mary-Louise Parker does a great job, and is quite the MILF.

TUESDAY

8:00 – House.
This is my favorite show on TV. Gregory House is one of the best characters on TV and Hugh Laurie one of the best actors. After last seasons shorten run and the way it ended, I can’t wait to see what the shows writers come up with. What will come of House and Wilson’s relationship? What will happen with the new team members? I get paresthesia just thinking about it!

8:00 – 90210.
I’ll give it a try, but as someone who loved the first show, I can’t see this being good. I mean come on, they couldn’t even come up with a new name for it?  How about the new generation? Or, 90210-08. At least it comes on before all the other shows so I can ditch it early if I have too.

9:00 – Fringe.
OK, you got me Mr. Abrams. As someone who just caught up to Lost before the beginning of last season, watching the first 3 seasons over a span of two months and enjoying season four and now, just starting to watch Alias, I’ve become a huge J.J. Abrams fan. Cloverfield helped too. I even want to see Star Trek just because I’ve become a huge fan boy of his. I’ve only seen a few previews of this show and have no idea what it’s about. That doesn’t matter, I’m in.

WEDNESDAY

9:00 – Private Practice.
Dr. Addison Montgomery Shepherd was a main draw once she entered the Grey’s world. Now let’s hope this show picks up speed and gives its fans a reason to watch besides Kate Walsh. I look froward to seeing what Shonda Rhimes has up her sleeve.

THURSDAYS

9:00 – Grey’s Anatomy.
One of my top five favorite shows. I still think season two was the best this show will ever get, I really hope I’m wrong and this season will be better than that one. What I love about this show is, a lot of people don’t like the main character. I’ve even hear people go as far as saying they wish they’d kill her off. While I don’t mind Meredith Grey, I can see how people could not like her. Will she ever make up her mind about anything? We shall see. Once again, I believe in Shonda. Really interested in seeing where the Torres and Erica “put the lotion in the basket” Hahn relationship goes. How will Meredith and Derek stay together and not effect the show. Are they each others lobsters? Hmm?

9:00 – The Office.
One of the best shows on TV and possibly the funniest. Some people just don’t get it, but this is my type of humor. It’s gotten funnier with each season and you get a sense of who the characters are which makes it even better. For someone to just try and watch it randomly, they might not get it or if they do, they don’t get the whole story. This show, while made to be able to stand on an episode alone, really needs to be seen intact with all episodes watch to really get the show. At least, That’s what she said.

FRIDAY

10:00 – Life.
Out off all the shows I was hoping to get picked up, this was the one I most wanted to see again. Journey Man was good, but I could live without it. I even liked K-Ville, but I can deal with that being gone. You can read how I feel about this time slot, but I’m hoping that it won’t hurt the show and maybe even help it. The end of the show was a little bit of a let down because of the strike but it really pulled me in. I’ve talked to everyone I could about this show, I hope more people start watching it. Too bad NBC didn’t run reruns of it during the summer, which makes me think they don’t care about it at all.

SATURDAY

None: I have to have some kind of life.

SUNDAY

9:00 – Dexter. This is my second favorite show following House. The writing and acting are great and I’m excited to see where this show goes in season 3. They’ve added some new characters and the first two season were outstanding. It will be hard to top those.

10:00 – Californication. A really underrated show that I don’t think many people saw. I thought it wasn’t coming back on because of the trouble with its name, but that must have been settled and it’s back which makes me happy. The show is so good David Duchovny has become Hank Moody.

Those are the shows I’m looking forward too. I’m sure a few new ones will pop in somewhere. Other shows I’m looking forward too are, the return of 24 and Lost. I’ll write about them in another post. What shows are you excited about?

Of the few new shows that came on BTWS (before the writers strike), one that I really liked and was looking forward to coming back on ATWS was Life . The show follows Detective Charlie Crews who, after being convected for a crime he didn’t commit, returns to the force. He gets a new lease on “Life” after being given “Life” in prison. He has to deal with all the people who turned their backs on him including his ex-wife and former partner, while trying to find the person who actually committed the triple murder he was sent away for.

It was recently reported in early April that Life would be coming back for a second season but was given and the dreaded Friday time slot. While NBC is touting this as a move to get people to watch TV on a Friday night, I highly doubt this is the best strategy. Shows like Life, which is procedural based, but has an over all mystery that must be played out over the season, haven’t done good recently. The show Journey Man comes to mind. The shows are billed and promoted as big mysteries that cover spans of time (think Lost), which makes the person who might have missed the pilot or the first few episode not want to even bother trying to catch up. 

Luckily, there are ways with sites like Hulu, to keep up or catch up on what you might have missed. I just hope Life gets the push it deserves and this Friday placement wasn’t just a, “If it keeps it’s audience, we’ll keep it, if not, oh well” move. Either way, checkout the pilot below on Hulu.

I’ve been away learning about blogging and having issues with my hosting company. I lost all of the comments that used to be on this blog but I did manage to save all the post. Oh well, here’s to a new start. I’ll be back with more soon.

In the meantime, check out this cool video.

Here is a quick list of all the movies I’ve seen this year. (That I can remember and were in the theater.)
1.    Hostal
2.    Annapolis
3.    Final Destination 3
4.    16 Blocks
5.    Block Party
6.    Inside Man
7.    Brick
8.    Hard Candy
9.    United 93
10.    Mission Impossible 3
11.    One Last Thing…
12.    The Da Vinci Code
13.    X-men: The Last Stand
14.    The Break-Up
15.    Superman Returns
16.    The Devil Wears Prada
17.    Clerks 2
18.    Lady In The Water
19.    Little Miss Sunshine
20.    Talladega Nights
21.    World Trade Center
22.    Half Nelson
23.    Invincible
24.    This Film is Not Yet Rated
25.    The Last Kiss
26.    The Departed
27.    Saw 3
28.    Borat
29.    Deja Vu
30.    Dreamgirls
31.    LOL
32.    The Descent

Top Ten Eleven in no particular order:
1.    Half Nelson – Saw this at the Philadelphia Film Festival. Great acting, and hearing the director talk about the movie made it even better.
2.    Dreamgirls – and I’m telling you, Jennifer Hudson was Great!
3.    United 93 – Well directed movie, gripping.
4.    Deja Vu – Took a lot of thinking but I really liked this movie.
5.    Little Miss Sunshine – Great cast. A very good “Dramedy.”
6.    Hard Candy – WOW! Very, very tense. Also viewed at the Philly Film Fest.
7.    Brick – Detective noir, set in a high school? Great!
8.    Clerks 2 – Pillow pants!
9.    This Film is Not Yet Rated – Great Doc about the MPAA. Philly Film Fest.
10.    The Departed – Great cast. As good as if not better then the original.
11.    The Pursuit of Happyness – Will Smith, also great!
Movies that underwhelmed me:
1.    LOL – Saw this at the Philly Film Fest also. I maybe in the minority because a lot of people thought this was good, but I can’t say anything positive about it so I won’t say anything at all about it. The director and cast were there which made it cool. Maybe I missed something and should watch it again.
2.    Super Man Returns – Boring.
3.    Block Party – I guess I thought this was going to be more of Dave doing jokes and stand-up. A good concert movie, but I really didn’t like it. On the DVD they have extended footage of the performances. Maybe I should have watched that.
Movies that surprised me:
1.    The Devil Wears Prada – After being highly disappointed with Super Man me and my girlfriend walked  into this movie as the trailers started playing and thought we might as well stay for awhile. Very funny movie and well acted.
2.    Invincible – Didn’t have high expectations for this one. Good, plus the Philly connection was a plus.
3.    One Last Thing… – Philly Film Fest, also. Another local touch and the Director was present and took a swipe at Mark Cuban’s Magnolia Distribution company for not distributing the movie right. Only in the theater for 3 weeks then to DVD didn’t help this little movie. Check it out if you get a chance.
As far as writing, I didn’t do as much as I wanted to this year. I did send out one of my short scripts to get notes. The best and worst parts of this process was reading the notes and finding out what I knew was wrong with the script, (I know I shouldn’t have sent it out but I did.) and being told that there is something there and with a few rewrites it could be a better script.
That’s a quick wrap up of the year, and I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and good luck on whatever it is you set out to do this year!
Next week I will talk more about the Sitcom and other projects I have planed.

Surfing around the Newyorktimes.com website I came across an article on Indie Sitcoms . While the article didn’t go in depth, it did highlight a few shows like, Duder, Floaters, The Burg and Soup of the Day. One of the projects I’ve been working on is a sitcom. I had the idea of producing it myself for straight-to-Internet distribution but I wasn’t sure it could be done or how to do it. After waiting a few episodes of those straight-to-Internet sitcoms, I plan on making that my focus and creating either a sitcom or a drama.
Check back on Wednesday for a more detailed description of my plan and how I will go about doing so. Until then click on the links of the sitcoms and check them out.

Over the last 2 weeks I’ve made my way down to old city on numerous occasions to catch a few flix at the Philadelphia Film Festival. Alicia and I have been talking about going for the past 2 years or so but never made it  there. This year we caught 4 good movies and 1 not so good one. The first was Half Nelson staring Ryan Gosling which I liked a lot more then I thought I would. I picked this one because I’m fan of his and the director was giving a Q&A afterwards. While I thought some parts were very awkward I enjoyed this very much and got to ask the director, Ryan Fleck a question. Also in attendance was the young female lead in the film Shareeka Epps. She did a great job and was very excited to be in Philly as she wants to attend a local college here. Great movie followed by an even better Q&A.
The next film was the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated which is about the MPAA ratings board and the rating system it uses. I highly recommend this one. Go see it when it’s released wide. The cut we saw was different then the one in Sundance and the director, Kirby Dick said he still has a few things to tweak before it’s released wide. The film uses film clips from well known movies to expose the hypocrisy of the ratings system in a funny, informative and entertaining way. The Egg people explaining what can and can’t be done in movies is classic. The film also interviews well known directors (John Waters, Kevin Smith, Kimberly Peirce, Matt Stone) who’ve had to deal with the MPAA’s self-righteous maneuverings.  Afterwards Kirby Dick fielded some questions and entertained the crowd before running out of time before the next movie screening. This movie was well worth it and made me want to see some of his other films.
Next was LOL. Before LOL the short film Fly was screened and received a warming applause. It was a funny 12 minute movie about a young man’s compulsive attention to his “fly.” After seeing this I had a feeling it was going to be better then the feature to follow. I was right. LOL is an 82 minute film that could have been cut now to the 12 minute running time of its opening act Fly. Most of the cast was in attendance as well as the director, and after the movie ended they took some questions from the crowd. The director announced that they film was not scripted and you could almost here the audience exhale and say, “That’s why it wasn’t good.” The Q&A did add a little incite which made some things make since but it was not enough we make me like the film even though I wanted too. After the Q&A they gave out CD’s which was cool but it was music from the movie, so it really didn’t matter. This film has been compared to the film Funny Ha Ha which I hated but many people love. I think the same thing that pulled me into that film pulled me into this one. A Young cast, young director and good trailer. The one thing I liked about this was that they were all happy to be at the screening and seemed truly excited.
On Saturday April 9th, we saw Hard Candy. Hard Candy comes out this weekend, GO SEE THIS MOVIE. This is an awkward and tense work of beauty. Ellen Page’s performance was amazing. One of the best torture scenes ever! Once again, GO SEE THIS MOVIE! The gripping suspense will have you stuck to the edge of your seat with an unease that’s gut wrenching but engaging. Do it, go see it, do it.
And lastly we saw One Last Thing… which has local ties with the writer, director and some cast members being local as well as some of the movie being shot in Marcus Hook, PA. This movie was very funny despite of the subject matter – a young man with a terminal illness makes an unconventional request on local television. The writer did a great job making you care for every character and handle the inclusion of religion with out making it seen preachy or forced. This is a great movie to see with a great cast to boot.In all, I had a great time at the film fest and will be attending next year. One thing I would have liked to see more of is people hyping there own films. I only had one person hand me a flier to go see his movie. I wish there were more people pimping there films. Hopefully next year I can hand out fliers to my film at this festival.

First, what I’m not doing:

I’m not hating myspace anymore.

I signed up after swearing I would never. For what I want to do it’s the perfect application. (More on that later)

I’m not buying a Canon XLs (Also more on that later)

Being indecisive about buying a mac.
I want a laptop and was considering getting the new mac book pro but the reviews aren’t favorable for what I want to do with it. It doesn’t run Final Cut Pro yet (as far as I know) and that’s the only reason I’d want to get it. I have Adobe Premiere for editing but I really want to learn and use FCP. So, right now, I’m not getting it.

Not checking comments posted to my blog (Sorry Carrcakes). I thought all comments were approved.

What I am doing:

I’m planning to shoot a short script that I wrote sometime this summer. I have a few more polishes and then it’s on to casting and location scouting. There will also be a lot of begging for favors

I am buying a PANASONIC AG-DVX100B with my tax return. I was planning on getting the Canon XL1s but after doing a little research I’ve found this is just what I need and at the right price

I also signed up for a myspace account to help promote this short. I have a myspace film account and once I figure out how I want to use it I will link to it from here.

I started thinking about ideas I want to write for a spec script of Grey’s Anatomy. I just watched all of the episodes from the first season and started to work on an outline. This is purely for my entertainment only as I have no plans for this once I’m done. If I think its any good, then I will let others read it. If they think its any good, I will maybe, maybe send it out. As of right now I’m only doing this to practice writing for T.V

Trying to find a way to make my page look right in Internet explorer.

I’ve been messing with code for a while and can’t get it to look right. It looks fine in firefox, Internet explorer, not so much

And lastly, I will be going broke and crazy very soon but it will be very fun.

A couple of months ago I took an online writing class at the Writer’s University in Television writing. I wrote a post about it here. In that class we had to pick a show to start the beginnings of what would become a spec. I chose Grey’s Anatomy because I had just started watching it around that time and had all the episodes on my DVR. The class didn’t turn out to good for me but I did learn a lot. One of the main things was to know the show before you start to try to write for it.

If you’re not a fan of Grey’s Anatomy, the main character is Meredith Grey. She usually starts and ends the show with a voice over. Last night when the show started I set expecting to hear the voice of Grey, as she’s called on the show, but in place of her voice I heard George, another character on the show. Immediately I thought, they cheated! How could George be doing the voice over? I didn’t have a problem with what they did, I thought it was actually cool, but isn’t this against the rules?

One of the problems I had with the online writing class was the instructor made a point about a show’s story being able to take place only in that show, otherwise it wouldn’t be that show. Example being, you could never write a CSI episode for Law and Order because that’s not the show Law and Order is. CSI wouldn’t work in that show. Since I picked Grey’s Anatomy as my show I had a hard time with this. Although I think Grey’s Anatomy is unique to it’s self, I think you could take an episode of ER and replace the characters and it would work. Another reason I  had a hard time with the class was because I thought the main character, Grey, was not the focus of most of the episodes or at least, the other character were more interesting then her. So I would write my episodes around the other characters. I was told that was wrong, but that’s just what the episode did last night.

Being as Grey’s Anatomy has a blog by the writers, the first thing I did was head over there to see what the writer said about this. Here is what she said:

The important thing to remember, though – is that while Meredith wishes things could go back to the way they were before the sex… (the way, I think, most of us have felt – or would feel – in similar situations…) George does not. And that’s huge. Because… before the sex – George was in limbo. But after the sex? As painful as the outcome was – he’s suddenly not. George knows exactly where he stands. There’s finally some closure. And that’s a good thing. It’s what will fuel him through the rest of the season…

Which is also why it was so important to break from tradition, and let George do the voice over for this episode. We needed to be inside HIS head. Hearing HIM tell us about karma. We needed to hear George explain how karma isn’t unfair – it isn’t unexpected – it just evens the score. Hearing George say that is what assures us that – even after all of this, he’s going to be just fine.

And so are we.

Will we be fine? I posted a comment over at the blog asking:

Isn’t George doing the voice over breaking one of the shows rules? If someone wrote a spec and did this, wouldn’t it have been looked at as that person not knowing the show up until this point? Now that it was done with George, can it be done with Izzy or anyone for that matter? Or was this a one time thing?

The posts are moderated and mine hasn’t been posted yet, but I hope it is and these questions answered. We always hear about how you need to follow the rules in Hollywood and know what you’re doing to break in, but how can we do that if the rules are broken by the very people who tell us not to do it?

UPdate: My post was posted along with a few others. Its funny, Alex Epstein thought the samething I thought saying:

Thought it was interesting you gave the VO to George. Together with Meredith’s increasing toxicity… I wonder if you’re moving away from Grey as a central character, given that she is the least interesting of all your fascinating personalities…

Read more about what he has to say on his blog here.