It’s our lucky day. Not only did I blog about Chuck below, but EW also has a photo gallery up titled:
Lowest on the list is Yvonne, but she’s on it at least! That’s something.
Other notable entries that I like are River (from Firefly) and Trinity (from the Matrix).
So it turns out that Yvonne Strzechowski has taken pity on all of us Eastern European-challenged folk and changed her name to a more pronouncable Yvonne Strahovski.
I don’t really see it, but supposedly it’s the phonetic spelling of how you should be pronouncing her real name.
Out of respect, I’d like to keep using her real name on the blog but frankly I get tired of looking up how to spell it, and Strahovski will probably get me more hits on Google.
Sorry, Yvonne. It’s the thought that counts, right?
This week in Chuck continued what looks to be a show with staying power. This is always going to be a hard show for me to review because it’s designed to be pretty much the same thing every week just like all comedies are.
Baldwin gets more Jayne-like which is always for the win. If they know what’s good for them, they’ll have him grow a goatee as part of his cover and then start naming his guns. I vote for Viera.
Fight scenes are fun as always. You wouldn’t expect fight scenes in a comedy to be such a draw, but they have thus far been quite inventive.
Chuck’s sis still can’t act. Seriously, did they even screen test her?
Captain Awesome likes to tango in his boxers. I’m sure the girls love that, but at least it’s funny to us guys.
And the part of the show that I’m starting to love more than any other is the romantic tension between Chuck and Sarah. I guess it’s an obvious ploy, but the chemistry between the two actors is phenomenal.
I read that Chuck is going to gain a love interest other than Sarah in subsequent episodes. That should provide for great hilarity.
Hell hath no fury like a woman super-spy scorned.
Okay, so maybe I should just start calling this post “Yvonne” instead of Chuck. /shrug
Although many will say that the latter trilogy of Star Wars was a travesty compared to the original trilogy, I submit to you that they are about equal.
The only difference is a lot of nostalgia and possibly more charismatic actors. But only slightly.
Mark Hammill isn’t that far removed from Hayden Christensen on the horrible actor scale. Carrie Fisher isn’t even half the actress that Natalie Portman is.
Yet, they all sucked in Star Wars.
Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, Alec Guinness, Harrison Ford, James Earl Jones — they all delivered poor acting performances in their respective Star Wars movies.
You may be cursing me right now, but it’s the awful honest truth.
All of the Star Wars movies have the worst display of acting ability in the entire universe, as well as galaxies far far away.
We could blame these great actors for phoning it in, but I think the real blame lies with one man — George Lucas.
George Lucas is quite simply devoid of directing talent. He couldn’t direct his way out of a seedy cantina on Tattooine, much less a blockbuster film.
Yet, Star Wars lives on as one of the greatest movie franchises of all time. But why?
Because for what George Lucas lacks in directing talent, he makes up for in great writing and character concepts.
Star Wars is one of the most familiar, yet unique, stories every told.
I watched Episode III recently and I realized that some of the plot devices that he’s trying so desperately to bring to the big screen are actually quite clever.
The angst, the anger, and the confusion of Anakin is all there in the viewer’s imagination. But never on screen. On screen, Anakin has one emotion — anger.
I hope that 40 years from now when Lucas has left his estate to his family and Star Wars is but a distant memory of the old folks, someone has the rights and the guts to remake the Star Wars movies.
It may sound like blasphemy, but there are some great stories and characters there that deserve to be brought to the big screen by a director who can really bring this stuff to life by more than just special effects.
There. I’ve said it. Star Wars sucks.
Today I write about Claire Danes. Unlike previous posts about actresses, this one cannot be defined as a hot actress who can’t act.
To frontload the good, Claire Danes can certainly act. She has never been in a role in which she uttered her lines like a zombie. She can express emotions fairly well and can draw the viewer in with her portrayals.
Unfortunately, she’s about as compelling as a dead goldfish on a sidewalk. And the goldfish may be more compelling if it’s begun to bloat.
I don’t know what it is about Claire Danes that repulses me. By traditional standards, I guess she’s not unattractive. Some would say she’s hot. To me, she’s not hot at all.
Although she can act adequately, I find nothing about her acting that makes me really appreciate her. She can convey her part, but in almost every case I can think of an actress who could have done it better.
She also always plays her parts with a little too much whine, which is a shame because the only cheese you can get in movie theaters to go with it is that gross liquid cheese that comes on stale nachos. And that’s exactly the kind of whine she brings — the gross liquid stale kind.
Looking over her filmography, I can’t find a single film that I loved. Of the ones I liked, I could easily peg her as my least favorite part. That’s just the deal — no matter what part you put her in she always feels like the second-best person for the job in my opinion.
I just don’t like Claire Danes. She’s probably a fine person in real life, but I would be happier if she fell out of the limelight and contributed to mankind in some other meaningful way.
On the upside, she does have a Governator number of 1.
So everyone has heard of the Bacon Number. It’s that fun little game where you take an actor and try to find the shortest path to Kevin Bacon.
For example, let’s take Megan Fox. Megan Fox recently starred in Transformers with Jamie McBride, and Jamie McBride starred in Beauty Shop with Kevin Bacon. So Megan Fox has a Bacon number of only 2.
Well, yesterday I came across something even more intriguing — the Erdős-Bacon Number.
This mishmash number is the sum of a person’s Bacon Number and their Erdős number. Paul Erdős is a Hungarian Mathematician who is used to determine a persons worth at writing mathematical papers. Interesting cross, eh?
More surprising is some of the people who actually have relatively low Erdős-Bacon numbers. Among them are Natalie Portman, Danica McKellar (aka Winnie Cooper), and Mayim Bialik (aka Blossom).
So I got to thinking — who is the center of the Blogosphere? Kevin Bacon is actually not the center of the Hollywood circuit. In fact, analysis by the University of Virginia shows that Rod Steiger would actually be a better center.
So why Kevin Bacon? It’s really a mix of a lot of things I think. Kevin Bacon is prolific, famous, and also slightly infamous.
With those three criteria in mind, I hereby deem Wil Wheaton to be the center of the Blogosphere. Mr. Wheaton is definitely prolific, unquestionably famous, but also undeniably infamous.
I mean this as no offense to Mr. Wheaton, of course. He’s both a scholar and a gentleman in my book.
But how do you make the ties in a virtual world without the clear bounds of mathematical papers or big-budget movies?
I think it works like this. In order to have a Wheaton number, your blog has to have been linked from a post of someone who was linked from a post of Wil Wheaton’s, etc, etc.
As far as I know, I have no Wheaton number at this point in time but if I were to catch Mr. Wheaton’s attention with this (for example), then sites such as Cryptomundo, Screen Rant, and The Technonaut would all gain a Wheaton number of 2 (assuming they didn’t already have a Wheaton number of 1).
Let the games begin! Kudos to the first person who can post here who actually has a legitimate Wheaton number.