[Castle ABC] Save Castle... Again! How To Save A Show [The Fray]

You don't want Castle canceled, so you're probably wondering... how to save a show?

[Castle ABC] Save Castle... Again! How To Save A Show [The Fray]


Related links:
Castle: "Space Cowboy" (Firefly/Serenity)
Watch CASTLE on ABC
Publishing news (July 10) (ABC's fictional sleuth Richard Castle writes a book, a long-lost whodunit by Graham Greene, and Wonder Woman vs. domestic violence)



Watch CASTLE free on Hulu!

Castle: "Space Cowboy" (Firefly/Serenity)

Well, these are a hoot for fans of actor Nathan Fillion and writer/producer Joss Whedon ...

Castle: "Space Cowboy" (Firefly/Serenity)


[Castle ABC] Sneak Peek at 2x06 "Vampire Weekend:" It's Just A Theory! [Oct 26 2009]


Related links:
Watch CASTLE on ABC
Publishing news (July 10) (ABC's fictional sleuth Richard Castle writes a book, a long-lost whodunit by Graham Greene, and Wonder Woman vs. domestic violence)

October is Filipino American History Month...

... but to me, Fil-Am History Month is every month.

However way you observe FAHM, it's the perfect time for me to put the spotlight on comics that were drawn by Filipino talents, whether they're American or non-American. Several Pinoy illustrators have lent their pencils to Marvel and DC titles, such as former Flash artist and Secret Identities contributor Greg LaRocque (who, like many Filipino artists this month, did a wonderful gesture by auctioning off comic art to raise money for typhoon relief) and Secret Invasion artist Leinil Francis Yu.

I don't have any of Yu's Marvel work in my collection, but I dug up from my shelves the 2005 Batman/Danger Girl crossover special he collaborated on with inker (and komiks art historian) Gerry Alanguilan:

The superhero artwork by these Filipino artists frequently looks spectacular, but as Budjette Tan noted in a 2003 Comic Book Resources column about the abundance of Filipinos in the American comics industry since the days of Alfredo Alcala and Whilce Portacio, "so few are writing and drawing about who they are and where they are from." The autobiographical comic strips by Bay Area cartoonist Rina Ayuyang are an example of a Filipino creator writing and drawing about the Fil-Am experience for a change.

I first caught some of Rina's underground comics at a Cartoon Art Museum exhibit earlier this year and liked what I saw. Her Whirlwind Wonderland compilation, which she debuted at APE last week, is one of several books I grabbed at the expo.

Good thing I brought my copy of Whirlwind Wonderland with me while I was at my parents' house. I had my mom translate for me the Ilocano-speaking auntie's dialogue that went untranslated during a strip in which Rina can't understand what her relatives are saying. For instance, "Pagtartarabahuam? Taga ditoy ka kadi? Ilugan nak to man nga agawid no malpas ti pangaldaw?!" means "Where do you work? Are you from here? Can I get a ride so I can go home after we eat?!"

I'm bored with the superhero genre these days (my current favorite superhero comic is an anti-superhero title, Dynamite's The Boys, in which Garth Ennis takes the piss out of supers), but if I ever feel like creating a Fil-Am superhero, instead of an inability to see through lead, I'd make his weakness be an inability to understand his Ilocano-speaking aunties.

Shows I Miss: Cheap Seats

In some ways, the Sklar Brothers' hilarious Cheap Seats, in which Randy and Jason snarked MST3K-style on old footage from both the ESPN and ABC Sports vaults, was more watchable than the classic Minneapolis-based comedy show that influenced them. It was faster-paced than MST3K and only a half-hour long. At two hours, MST3K could occasionally be tedious viewing--especially when the B-movie was so unwatchable not even Mike and the Bots' jokes could make it watchable.

I particularly liked it when Randy and Jason would make music references even the MST3K writers probably wouldn't have understood (like their observation that a mustached, helmet-haired Scrabble tournament champ looks like he stepped out of the "Sabotage" video). It's too bad the show, which ran from 2004 to 2006 on ESPN Classic (a channel that at one point, attempted to ruin its best show by stupidly adding a studio audience to the Cheap Seats set), will never see the light of day on DVD. I assume that's due to footage and music rights issues. There are so many Cheap Seats gems like the "Sabotage" running gag during the Scrabble tournament footage, the Cheap Seats/MST3K crossover and the "Pam Poetry" odes to a blond '80s ESPN rodeo commentator named Pam Minick that I want to revisit without having to hunt for them on YouTube.

"I bring the juice! You bring the gin-ick, Pam Minick!"

Memorable quotes from commentary tracks #4

Limey screenwriter Lem Dobbs: When I read reviews that say "style over substance," uh...

Limey director Steven Soderbergh: You blame me.

Dobbs: Uh yeah, I blame you.

--from a discussion of critics' responses to The Limey during the Limey writer/director commentrak

Vic Mizzy (1916-2009)

Recently on the blog, I brought up how the old-fashioned TV theme is a dying art form, so I was surprised to learn from Film Score Click Track's Jim Lochner that one of the kings of the old-school TV theme, Addams Family and Green Acres theme composer Vic Mizzy, died Saturday at the age of 93. The last major piece of music from Mizzy that I heard was a novelty song about Spider-Man he recorded for the Spider-Man 2 DVD's bloopers montage.

Lochner's more of an expert on Mizzy's credits than I am (his obit contains a full audio clip of Mizzy's memorable main title theme from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken). However, as a child of the '80s, when baby boomers' nostalgia for the TV shows and rock music they grew up with was at its most overbearing, I heard the Addams Family theme everywhere, from Harry and the Hendersons to a local radio ad campaign for Winchester Mystery House that reworked the song's lyrics to focus on Sarah Winchester's not-exactly-scary crib. My inability to get sick of hearing that Mizzy ditty is a testament to his witty songwriting.

Making up new lyrics for the Addams Family theme was a playground pastime. A popular new version was "The Addams Family started/When Uncle Fester farted/That's how they got retarded/The Addams Family." The not-as-twisted-or-funny lyric that I came up with was "Their house is an exhibit/When people come to visit."



Attaboy, Victor!

The funky score music in Amitabh Bachchan's Don sounds an awful lot like Together Brothers and Police Woman

This weekend, I finally got around to watching Amitabh Bachchan's 1978 Bollywood classic Don, which contains a musical number that Black Eyed Peas sampled in the first few seconds of 2005's "Don't Phunk with My Heart," and I was amused by how Don's score composer duo Kalyanji Anandji seemed to enjoy copping other musicians' works as much as BEP did with KA's hit songs.

In this clip of butt-kicking babe Roma (Zeenat Aman) disguised as a ditzy nurse, from 0:44 to 1:33, 1:41 to 3:17 and 3:56 to 4:12, here's KA's theme for Roma...



... which is basically Barry White's main theme from the 1974 blaxploitation flick Together Brothers, better known as the tune Quad City DJ's sampled in 1996's "C'mon N' Ride It (The Train)":




Also, the duo's theme for tightrope walker/safecracker Jasjit (Pran), or as I like to call him, Indian Dudley Moore Dressed Like a Gay Johnny Cash, is a note-for-note rip of Morton Stevens' Police Woman theme. Every time Indian Dudley Moore's on-screen, I keep expecting him to make like Angie Dickinson and disguise himself as a hooker.

This was a few years before E-mu invented the Emulator sampler, so the Indian musicians recreated the tunes instead of sampling them. The illegal use of themes from other films or shows is a staple of '70s Asian action flicks ranging from Don to King Boxer/Five Fingers of Death (Lo Lieh is gonna get Ironside on your ass). Barry White must have been too chill or too stoned or too unable to squeeze himself out of his bubble chair to care.

APE city

Indie cartoonist Javier Hernandez is a fan of the Fistful of Soundtracks channel (I'm glad to have introduced him to the comedy of Paul Mooney) and is always great to chat with about 007 music, so I dropped by the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco on Sunday to say hello to Jav, as well as grab some comics by Rafael Navarro, Debbie Huey and Rina Ayuyang, whose new Whirlwind Wonderland collection I've been looking forward to picking up. I also introduced myself to Hellen Jo and Martin Hsu, two Secret Identities contributors whose work was brought to my attention by the project while I wrote my Secret Identities story.

Also at APE 2009, I had Brandon Bird sign a copy of his brilliant Law & Order coloring book that I bought from him at APE two years ago (he ought to be a script doctor after explaining to me why he thought Harvey Dent was unconvincingly written as a "white knight" in The Dark Knight), and I chatted about '70s movies with Michael Aushenker (I was surprised he hasn't seen The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which Criterion finally released on DVD this summer, so I recommended it to him).

Because of the lack of booth babes and cosplayers, APE isn't as photogenic to me as its sister cons WonderCon and San Diego Comic-Con. (The even smaller Asian American ComiCon, where I was given my very first con table, was a lot like APE, in terms of low-keyness. Speaking of my first table, what was funny about that experience was that outside of Secret Identities, I had nothing else to promote at my table because everything I've written and drawn has been published only online. That's what I get for being a webcomic blogger.)

Despite the minimal photogenicity, I enjoy the smaller and much less crowded APE way more than the other two Comic-Con International cons. I prefer being able to walk around without getting poked in the eye by someone's Hasbro lightsaber.

Mr. Monk is Online

Earlier this month, novelist/TV writer Lee Goldberg and MONK writer/producer/director David Breckman participated in an interactive live interview webcast, where fans were allowed to question them about the adventures of TV detective Adrian Monk on screen and in print.

Here are all three parts of the interview from YouTube, available in one handy playlist. Recorded live Oct 4, 2009:

LEE GOLDBERG MONK WEBCAST




Related links:
MONK final season begins tonight
Mr. Monk and Season Seven on DVD
Shalhoub on MONK: 'Everything does come to an end'
Mr. Monk and the Finished Manuscript
ADRIAN MONK: The face of OCD
Mr. Monk And The Continuity Police
Mystery TV Themes: MONK
Q&A: LEE GOLDBERG (Monk, Diagnosis Murder)

AFOS: "Dance Into the Fire" live-tweet recap

Yesterday on Twitter, I live-tweeted an afternoon re-airing of the 2008 Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "Dance Into the Fire." (Repeats of AFOS: The Series air Wednesdays at 10am and 3pm on AFOS.)

Below is the recap of my 90-minute "Dance Into the Fire" live-tweet. (My typos during the live-tweet remain unchanged, like "Madonna referenced the Luke/Vader duel... Uh, what does that have to with 007?" and "The hiring of Daniel Craig and the grittier writing of Craig's 007 movies has really reinvigorated David Arnold's 007 score music." Oh Twittersphere, why do you infect me with absent verbs and subject-verb disagreement?)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'll be live-tweeting my own Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode in 30 min., for the two of you listeners out there who give a shit.
2:30 PM Oct 14th from web

Technically, #100 ("Dance Into the Fire") was the final AFOS:The Series episode, so I wanted it to involve a genre I enjoy: 007 score music.
2:31 PM Oct 14th from web

On my blog in '08, I said #100's the last AFOS ep b/c I got tired of the format. What I didn't say was it was also due to monetary reasons.
2:32 PM Oct 14th from web

I can't say I love the 007 series (only 7 of the 22 installments are actually good movies), but I love the music from those films.
2:33 PM Oct 14th from web

My AFOS live-tweet will be like Pop-Up Video. A tweet with a factoid or opinion about the Bond song will pop up while it's being streamed.
2:34 PM Oct 14th from web

An hour and a half of all 22 of Eon Productions' 007 opening title themes, right now on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel!
3:00 PM Oct 14th from web


Monty Norman's Bond theme in Dr. No is classic, but good God, the rest of his Dr. No score isn't as listenable as John Barry's scores.
3:03 PM Oct 14th from web

The version of the FRWL title theme that's on disc is missing the film version's organ solo. What a kick to that poor musician's solo organ.
3:04 PM Oct 14th from web

John Barry was da man during the late '60s, shagging Jane Birkin and if the rumors were true, Shirley Bassey.
3:07 PM Oct 14th from web

The Goldfinger opening theme is kind of an overplayed song. I'll fess up to overplaying it myself on the radio too.
3:07 PM Oct 14th from web

007 guitarist Vic Flick said Tom Jones fainted after hitting the high note at the end of the recording of the Thunderball theme.
3:10 PM Oct 14th from web

Somewhere, a Jones fan reads this and wishes she were there to revive him by putting her panties up to his nose. "Are you OK? Sniff these!"
3:11 PM Oct 14th from web

My favorite part of the You Only Live Twice theme is the electric guitar riffs. John Barry originally wanted Aretha Franklin to sing "YOLT."
3:13 PM Oct 14th from web

The On Her Majesty's Secret Service theme is one of 3 instrumental 007 opening themes b/c it's hard to find a word that rhymes w/ "service."
3:17 PM Oct 14th from web

They could have rhymed "service" with "nervous," but no one's ever nervous in a Bond song. They're always confident about their lovemaking.
3:17 PM Oct 14th from web

I like the Shirley Bassey Diamonds Are Forever theme more than Bassey's more famous Goldfinger theme because it's fonkay.
3:20 PM Oct 14th from web

"Live and Let Die" is the only 007 theme with a reggae beat, unless you count Bob Marley's rejected song about shooting Sheriff J.W. Pepper.
3:25 PM Oct 14th from web

Sheriff J.W. Pepper, who epitomizes everything that's lame about Roger Moore's Bond movies, is one sheriff no one would mind shooting.
3:26 PM Oct 14th from web

Not all the themes J. Barry touched turned to gold. His Man w/ the Golden Gun theme sucks. That's partly b/c Lulu sung it w/ a sore throat.
3:28 PM Oct 14th from web

Alice Cooper's rejected Man w/ the Golden Gun theme, which wasn't sung w/ a sore throat: http://bit.ly/2rOvAK
3:29 PM Oct 14th from web


I'll forever associate Carly Simon's Spy Who Loved Me theme with the badass parachute jump by Roger Moore's stuntman that precedes it.
3:30 PM Oct 14th from web

Safeway killed whatever smidgen of coolness Carly Simon's Spy Who Loved Me theme had left by playing it to death in an ad campaign.
3:31 PM Oct 14th from web

@JavierHernandez Thanks, man. This might sound crazy, but LALD is actually one of the few 007 score CDs I don't own yet.
3:34 PM Oct 14th from web in reply to JavierHernandez

I've never seen Moonraker, but a movie w/ laser gun battles shouldn't open w/ a ballad so tepid, even though Shirley Bassey brings it again.
3:35 PM Oct 14th from web

@JavierHernandez I didn't know that. I gotta hear that version!
3:39 PM Oct 14th from web in reply to JavierHernandez

I like Bill Conti's For Your Eyes Only gunbarrel music because of the cowbell.
3:40 PM Oct 14th from web

The For Your Eyes Only theme was the first 007 song that had a music video on the then-new MTV. Roger Moore, side-by-side with Billy Squier!
3:41 PM Oct 14th from web

I'll admit to being one of the millions of viewers who wondered if Sheena Easton was naked during the the For Your Eyes Only video.
3:41 PM Oct 14th from web

Yeesh, the Octopussy theme "All-Time High" is so yacht-rocky I keep expecting Michael McDonald to sing backup.
3:45 PM Oct 14th from web

Duran Duran's A View to a Kill theme is my favorite 007 theme with lyrics even though some of the lyrics are nonsensical ("A sacred why"?).
3:49 PM Oct 14th from web

@JavierHernandez Thanks. That was sweet. Thom Yorke would be a great choice as a future Bond opening title theme singer.
3:50 PM Oct 14th from web in reply to JavierHernandez

Like Safeway did with "Nobody Does It Better," Chris Kattan killed whatever smidgen of coolness a-ha's "Take on Me" had left, so...
3:52 PM Oct 14th from web

... the only a-ha songs I like are "The Sun Always Shines on TV" and the Living Daylights theme, John Barry's final 007 theme.
3:52 PM Oct 14th from web

The 007 music went through a bit of an identity crisis during the years between John Barry's departure and the addition of David Arnold.
3:56 PM Oct 14th from web

Gladys Knight's awesome and there's a nice Goldfinger reference, but the License to Kill theme sounds more like The Bodyguard than Bond.
3:57 PM Oct 14th from web

The GoldenEye theme was sung by Tina Turner, written by Bono and the Edge, produced by Nellee Hooper, and catered by Taylor's Fish & Chips.
4:05 PM Oct 14th from web

When Sheryl Crow tries to hit high notes in "Tomorrow Never Dies," I keep thinking of the Citizen Kane opera singer wife singing in pain.
4:09 PM Oct 14th from web

k.d. lang's "Surrender," restored to the Tomorrow Never Dies opening credits by a YouTuber: http://bit.ly/k7yjn
4:10 PM Oct 14th from web

"Surrender," the World Is Not Enough theme and the Casino Royale theme were all produced by David Arnold, which is why they don't suck.
4:13 PM Oct 14th from web

Woops, I spelled it "License" instead of "Licence." Colour me ignorant.
4:16 PM Oct 14th from web

In her "Die Another Day" video, Madonna referenced the Luke/Vader duel from The Empire Strikes Back. Uh, what does that have to with 007?
4:17 PM Oct 14th from web

A lot of 007 fans hate on Madonna's "Die Another Day." It's not a shitty song. It just doesn't sound very 007-like.
4:17 PM Oct 14th from web

Aw, Chris Cornell and David Arnold's Casino Royale theme "You Know My Name." Now that's more like it.
4:22 PM Oct 14th from web


The hiring of Daniel Craig and the grittier writing of Craig's 007 movies has really reinvigorated David Arnold's 007 score music.
4:23 PM Oct 14th from web

@pfunn GoldenEye is actually the only PB 007 flick that I think has held up well. His other three movies are so schizophrenic in tone.
4:24 PM Oct 14th from web in reply to pfunn

A lot of 007 fans also hate on "Another Way to Die," but at least it sounds more like a spy movie theme than say, "All-Time High."
4:26 PM Oct 14th from web

I like Jack White's shout-out to the On Her Majesty's theme during a brief guitar riff in "Another Way to Die." End of AFOS ep live-tweet!
4:29 PM Oct 14th from web

There's old friends and new friends and even a Bear: Grading this fall's new TV themes

The TV theme isn't quite dead yet. The endangered art form is finding refuge in scripted cable shows like Bored to Death and nighttime network cartoons like Seth MacFarlane's shows, where opening title sequences aren't limited to five seconds, unlike almost all other prime-time network shows (according to film music scholar Jon Burlingame, many showrunners have downsized title sequences because the five networks are desperate to keep viewers from changing the channel and are ordering showrunners to keep things fast-paced).

On the Fistful of Soundtracks channel, I stream a few TV themes, but my tastes lean more towards the longer instrumental themes (Cowboy Bebop, The Persuaders!) than the 30- or 60-second ones with lyrics. I don't miss the latter category, but once in a while, it's nice to see a new prime-time show open with an old-fashioned example of the latter (The Cleveland Show). Here's a rundown of five of this fall's new original themes, including Cleveland's.

Archer: The new spy spoof from Adult Swim veteran Adam Reed (Sealab 2021, Frisky Dingo) doesn't join the FX schedule until January, but I caught a sneak peek of the first episode right after the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia season premiere. I'm a sucker for spy show themes like Archer's. Aqua Teen sound designer Michael Kohler's Scott Sims' theme is like a less avant-garde take on J.G. Thirlwell's over-the-top Venture Bros. theme. (Kohler is the same guy who remixed the Superfriends theme for a classic Cartoon Network promo.) Grade: B.

Bored to Death: Jon Brion meets A Shot in the Dark-era Henry Mancini in a brassy theme written by Jason Schwartzman and series creator Jonathan Ames and performed by the Rushmore star/ex-Phantom Planet drummer and his current band Coconut Records. The lyrics are like the show's dorky P.I. hero (also named Jonathan Ames): under a slick veneer lies a not-so-slick bundle of nerves. The full version of the theme can be streamed at Entertainment Weekly. Grade: B+.

The Cleveland Show: MacFarlane's '80s fetish continues with an old-fashioned theme that's easily the best part of the show. It's reminiscent of the peppy themes from forgotten late '70s/early '80s sitcoms like Angie and House Calls. I've found myself singing along in Cleveland's nasally voice. The final version closely resembles the preview rendition performed last year by Mike Henry--Cleveland's very white portrayer--except "my happy black-guy face" is now "my happy mustached face." Grade: B+.



NCIS: Los Angeles: This spinoff-of-a-spinoff opens with a so-so and really brief Media Ventures/Remote Control Productions-style instrumental from Media Ventures vet James S. Levine, who apparently has been instructed to score the show's comic relief moments in ABC "Please Laugh Now" music mode, to borrow Alan Sepinwall's words. LL Cool J's old producer Marley Marl would have come up with a doper theme. Grade: C.

Trauma: Bear McCreary's latest opening theme isn't as memorable as his work from Battlestar Galactica, but it's an energetic, ass-whupping 7/4 opener in the style of his Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles chase cues. Too bad the rest of the low-rated Trauma, which is set in a San Francisco where all the Asians have disappeared, isn't as interesting as McCreary's theme (though Cliff Curtis is always a standout actor, and I like to check in on the show occasionally to play a game of "Spot the S.F. location I once passed by"). I like how McCreary is candid about some of the show's missteps on his blog: "They really messed with [the intro] after I delivered it. It sounds like it is almost mono now and sounds really small and wimpy. I'm hoping in the next few episodes I can re-mix it and make it sound better." That is if there will be any next few episodes. Grade: B.

20 favorite Current TV stories (Part 2)

Previously on A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Blog: #20-#11.


My favorite Current TV show is a recent addition to the channel's lineup, The Rotten Tomatoes Show, a unique movie review show that's reminiscent of both the earlier years of G4's X-Play (the hosts participate in movie parody sketches) and ReelzChannel's Movie Mob (it features webcam reviews that are less obnoxious and insipid than the ones on Movie Mob because they're submitted by film bloggers who have a sense of film history and professional comedians, instead of anonymous morons who think they're funny and make the review about themselves instead of the movie). Two of my selections on this post are examples of why The Rotten Tomatoes Show is the most entertaining movie review show since the time Ebert threatened to sit on Siskel.

10. "YouTube's Worst Parents"
Brett Erlich's "Viral Video Film School" is always a highlight of infoMania.



9. "Hipsters in Space"
When's South Park going to skewer hipsters? SuperNews! beat them to the punch.



8. "Beatboxing the Flute"
One thing that's missing from this piece about Nathan "Flutebox" Lee is his ill cover of the Knight Rider theme. I assume the music clearance fee would cost more than a new chassis for KITT.



7. "Hookers are the Best Roles in Town by Ellen Fox"
The Rotten Tomatoes Show co-host sardonically sings about Hollywood's fixation on hoes-with-hearts-of-gold. On the shallow side, Fox looks hotter in the Pretty Woman hooker outfit than Julia Roberts does.



6. "Joe Gets Game"
Even though I know very little about Harry Potter (the first movie was so ponderous I never got into the rest of the franchise), Joe's bad pick-up lines in Potter slang are amusing.



5. "Blue Scholars Seattle"
This mini-doc featuring Geo and DJ Sabzi is actually more about Seattle than Blue Scholars, but any segment with them is worthwhile viewing. The video title makes the duo sound like a bad prime-time procedural franchise (Blue Scholars: Seattle, Blue Scholars: Miami...).



4. "La Vida Flamenco"
Damn.



3. "Sexy Scientist"
Double damn.



2. "Ode to the Indie by Ellen & Brett"
There's one frequent indie comedy element that's missing from this Rotten Tomatoes Show list of indie clichés: "Oh, those funny-talking yellow-faced and brown-faced people!" humor.



1. "Sarah Haskins in Target Women: Cleaning"
Each week on infoMania, Haskins' great "Target Women" segment shows how advertising panders to female viewers. The funniest of these "Target Women" pieces spoofs dumb bathroom cleaning product commercials.

20 favorite Current TV stories (Part 1)

The San Francisco-based, Al Gore-owned Current TV is the once little-known documentary/news channel that went from covering headlines to becoming a headline itself earlier this year when two of its employees, journalist Laura Ling and footage editor Euna Lee, were arrested on trumped-up charges of trespassing by North Korean authorities and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. Fortunately, Bill Clinton successfully negotiated with Kim Jong Il for the release of Ling and Lee, who were in the middle of shooting a story about human trafficking for Ling's investigative journalism series Vanguard when they were captured.

I was familiar with Current and Vanguard long before the Ling/Lee situation. I've always liked the mini-docs (the VJs refer to them as "pods," kind of a dorky term for these docs) and original programming like Ling's often fascinating series and the animated SuperNews! Lately, the channel's hosts have been presenting countdowns of their personal favorite Current stories, which have ranged from Vanguard segments to SuperNews! shorts. Because Vanguard's new season premieres tomorrow night at 10, I'm taking a cue from the hosts and posting my favorite Current stories. (One of these selections is an example of Ling's terrific work as Vanguard team leader and correspondent.)

20. "He Punched the Sandman"
Remarkable one-armed Muay Thai champ Baxter Humby is the subject of this mini-doc. At 5:19, is that Joey Buttafuoco?



19. "Black Violin"
Miri Ben-Ari isn't the only hip-hop violinist out there. There's also the Florida duo Black Violin.



18. "The Poor Dollar"
I've never been much of an expert on the economy, so this piece by Vanguard correspondent Adam Yamaguchi opened my eyes to the weakened U.S. dollar's effect on the rest of the world (it makes imported goods like gas and oil more expensive). Yamaguchi's segment, which first aired in early 2008, mentions how at that time, one U.S. dollar is worth 40 and a half pesos in the Philippines, my parents' birth country. This year, the peso will gain even more strength against the dollar due to the influx of cash that's being sent from overseas Filipinos to relatives who have been affected by the Ondoy disaster, as a post by a Filipino blogger from the Netherlands points out. "The Poor Dollar" also provides some interesting insight into what travel and food expenses are like for Vanguard correspondents and producers while they're out in the field. At 5:09, I like Ling's reaction in the background as Yamaguchi calls her a cheapskate.



17. "Joe Gets Bent"
I don't know what's funnier: The humorless yoga instructor or a purple-faced Joe Hanson looking like a turnip with eyes.



16. "Urban Streetbikers"
This piece from the channel's VC2 imprint (it stands for "Viewer-Created Content" and is pronounced "vee-cee-squared") was the first Current video that caught my eye because of the Harlem bikers' badass wheelie stunts.



15. "My Friends at Fox"
infoMania host Conor Knighton mocks Fox and Friends. Watching a single minute of Fox and Friends would make me want to start the day with a gun to my head.



14. "KAPOW! The New Comic Book Heroines"
I wonder what any of the female illustrators who appeared in this mini-doc would think of "Sampler" if they read it. If "Sampler" ever spawns a miniseries, I'd like to have one of them take a crack at drawing June Park--or better yet, writing her dialogue. There needs to be more female comic book writers, and a Sampler miniseries would be a great way to give some of them work or introduce them if they're newbies like me. My plan would be to write the first couple of miniseries (I'd rather have it be a bunch of miniseries instead of a regular series that's always in danger of being cancelled, partly because as "KAPOW!" interviewee Valerie D'Orazio noted on her blog, regular series about superheroines are doing poorly), and then I'd hand the rest of the storylines over to female scripters, particularly Asian American ones.



13. "Geek Monthly Magazine"
I was introduced to Geek Monthly at WonderCon a few years ago. Jeff Bond, a frequent interviewee during the earlier years of the college radio incarnation of A Fistful of Soundtracks, has been running an excellent magazine, and it's the only one I currently subscribe to. This VC2 piece takes a peek at a Geek Monthly photo shoot with hot actress-turned-mathematician Danica McKellar. It also includes an appearance by Geek Monthly staffer Heather Anne Campbell, who's currently co-starring with Dollhouse's Fran Kranz and Wild 'N Out's Randall Park in Atom.com's funny series MegaBot, a Power Rangers spoof.



12. "TV's Gay Friend Obsession"
Bryan Safi's gay version of Jack Bauer is the funniest part of the segment.



11. "Battle Against Bird Flu"
I first caught this 2006 Ling piece while swine flu paranoia first swept America (and while Ling was imprisoned). It puts a human face on an overseas problem I wasn't aware of, Vietnamese bird flu's effect on the livelihood of the country's poultry farmers.



Next: #10-#1.

Memorable quotes from commentary tracks #3

Jack Black: Look at my dick! Oh, it's gone. It's out of focus now.

Lincoln Osiris-voiced Robert Downey Jr.: Was you chubbin' up?

Black: [Laughs.] You know, Ben would lift weights, and I would chub up.

Osiris-voiced Downey: Baruchel comes into his own here too.

Black: Everyone has their own preparation.

Ben Stiller: Yeah, Jay's great in this scene.

Osiris-voiced Downey: Jay B. brings it.

Stiller: He's the grounding force.

Osiris-voiced Downey: Man, look at Brandon T. That's a beautiful man.

Stiller: Yeah, Brandon has great skin. Really, uh, just has a thing that just jumps off the screen.

Osiris-voiced Downey: Well, he's handsome.

Stiller: He is.

Osiris-voiced Downey: Man, look at him.

Stiller: The thing about... And Brandon did a great job in this scene...

Black: He does glisten.

Stiller: ... because this is a big reveal for his character.

Osiris-voiced Downey: You was all over him about the knittin' and how he need to make the knittin' look a certain way. You were fuckin' up in his head that day, man. I don't know how he made it, you toxic muthafucka.

--from the Tropic Thunder cast commentrak

Stuff White People Like But This Brown Man Can't Stand #3: Gosselin press coverage

Why are these two famous? (Come to think it, why is anybody from the casts of these lame, heavily scripted reality shows famous?)

What's dead-behind-the-eyes Jon Gosselin's big talent? Modeling crappy, overpriced T-shirts?

What's Kate's big talent? Having a gigantic, super-stretched-out twat?

Memorable quotes from commentary tracks #2

"That's not passion. She's getting granite burns on her ass. 'Ow! Hey, next time let's do it on some volcanic rocks so I'll be more comfortable.' Would it be going too far to gouge my own eyes out right now? Well, this movie promised hot bouncer-on-doctor action, and it's not lettin' us down. Yeah, right about now, I'm nostalgic for scenes of fat guys punching each other."

--Michael J. Nelson, from the RiffTrax commentary for Road House

Memorable quotes from commentary tracks #1

"When I first think about composers and choose one either from the experience of the work he's done or by a particular score that he's written, I always like to sit down with him obviously and run the film and let him take the film back with him and play it at home a couple of times and then come back and discuss what is needed, where music is needed or where music is not needed. I mean, there's a time during Bullitt when Quincy Jones was going to write the score, when I ran the picture with him early on, and he said, 'Nope. That's a mother. I couldn't put music onto that. It would only spoil it.' So he felt that to... I agree. A lot of cases, music does take away from the drama. Once you hear music, you're inclined to think that it's Hollywood, so I was very careful with the music in Eddie Coyle because the one thing we avoided all the way through was making a Hollywood movie."

--Bullitt and The Friends of Eddie Coyle director Peter Yates, from the Coyle commentrak (where he also praises Dave Grusin's jazzy Coyle score, which some have derided as "the sort of thing that gives the electric piano a bad name")

Ear candy: AFOS October 2009 segment playlists

Starting tonight at 11pm, these October '09 playlists (intro'd by yours truly, of course) will air all through the month on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel. Until November 1, they'll be repeated every Tuesday and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm and every Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.


"Steven Soderbergh's Scorezopolis":
1. Marvin Hamlisch, "Golf," The Informant!, New Line
2. David Holmes, "Dice Men," Ocean's Thirteen, Warner Sunset/Warner Bros.

"Bubblegum Music Is the Naked Truth":
3. Lynn Carey & Barbara Robison, "Sweet Talkin' Candy Man," Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Soundtrack Classics
4. Danny Janssen, "Seven Days a Week," Scooby-Doo's Snack Tracks: The Ultimate Collection, Rhino

"Cardiff Rift":
5. Jacques Loussier, "Main Theme" (from Dark of the Sun), Guns for San Sebastian & Dark of the Sun, Chapter III
6. Lalo Schifrin, "Carry On," The Liquidator, Film Score Monthly

"Bollywood and the Stars":
7. Asha Bhonsle & Mohammed Rafi, "Chura Liya Hai Tum Ne" (from Yaadon Ki Baaraat), The Rough Guide to Bollywood, World Music Network
8. Lucky Ali, "Ek Pal Ka Jeena" (from Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai), The Rough Guide to Bollywood, World Music Network

"Life in La-La Land":
9. John Carpenter in association with Alan Howarth, "Tenement/White Tiger," Big Trouble in Little China, La-La Land
10. Shirley Walker, "City Street Drive/Sal Velestra/Good Samaritan," Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, La-La Land
11. Danny Elfman, "Trailer," Mars Attacks!, La-La Land

"Harmony of Dissonance":
12. Ennio Morricone, "Trafelato" (from Giornata Nera Per L'Ariete), Crime and Dissonance, Ipecac
13. Ennio Morricone and Bruno Nicolai, "Il Buio" (from L'Anticristo), Crime and Dissonance, Ipecac

"Sally (That Girl)":
14. Michael Small, "On the Roof" (from Klute), Klute/All the President's Men, Film Score Monthly
15. Lalo Schifrin, "Scorpio's View," Dirty Harry, Aleph

"Yes, I Only Hunt Blaculas":
16. J.G. Thirlwell, "Bolly," The Venture Bros.: The Music of JG Thirlwell, Williams Street
17. The Hues Corporation, "I'm Gonna Catch You" (from Blacula), MGM Soul Cinema Volume 1, Beyond/MGM Music

"...And Then James Woods Staked Edward--The End":
18. John Carpenter, "Stake and Burn," John Carpenter's Vampires, Milan
19. Texas Toad Lickers, "Padre's Wood," John Carpenter's Vampires, Milan

"In Absentia Luci, Tenebrae Vincunt":
20. Marco Beltrami, "Stand by Your Man," Hellboy, Varèse Sarabande
21. Marco Beltrami, "B.P.R.D.," Hellboy, Varèse Sarabande

"Fitted for a Suit of Flame":
22. Christopher Young, "Drag Me to Hell," Drag Me to Hell, Lakeshore
23. Christopher Young, "Lamia," Drag Me to Hell, Lakeshore

"Death Ain't No Way to Make a Living":
24. Danny Elfman, "Intro/Titles," The Frighteners, MCA Soundtracks
25. Danny Elfman, "Patty Attack," The Frighteners, MCA Soundtracks

"Loungin'":
26. Ennio Morricone, "La Cugina" (from La Cugina), More Mondo Morricone, Colosseum
27. Lalo Schifrin, "Tape Machine" (from the Mission: Impossible episode "Underground"), The Best of Mission: Impossible: Then and Now, GNP Crescendo

"R.I.P. Jerry van Rooyen":
28. Jerry van Rooyen, "The Great Bank Robbery" (from How Short Is the Time for Love), At 250 Miles Per Hour, Crippled Dick Hot Wax!
29. Jerry van Rooyen, "Sundown" (from The Vampire Happening), At 250 Miles Per Hour, Crippled Dick Hot Wax!

"That's Good Chowdah":
30. J.G. Thirlwell, "Warped Span," The Venture Bros.: The Music of JG Thirlwell, Williams Street
31. J.G. Thirlwell, "Tuff," The Venture Bros.: The Music of JG Thirlwell, Williams Street