All right. Super Bowl. Well, first I thought the game was a good one. Seattle had so many chances in that game to do something big and just couldn’t do it. They’re still complaining over the officiating which the officials did make some bad calls but Seattle had a TON of chances to win that game only to mess up. The one guy stepped out of bounds twice right at the goal line. I enjoyed the game overall and it kept my interest more than last year’s game. Now, on to what I said I’d do last week and that is talk about the Super Bowl ads of 2006. I didn’t think this year’s ads were that good overall although there were some in there that I really enjoyed. I didn’t think last year’s ads were very good either for the most part. My favorite was the favorite of everyone else’s too according to the polls and that was the Bud Light commercial with the rotating fridge. I laughed out loud at that one especially when the guy said “the magical fridge is back”. The Clydesdales commercial was good which is good mostly every year. I liked watching the young Clydesdale trying to pull the wagon unknowingly having help from the horses behind the wagon. Just a feel good commercial and it worked with me. I liked the ESPN Mobile commercial with the sports fan having all the various athletes around him as he went down the street. It didn’t perform well in polls but I really liked it. What in the world were those Diet Pepsi commercials? They did the first one with P Diddy which left me thinking what was that? Then, they come back with another one later on in the Super Bowl with Jackie Chan that did as much for me as the P Diddy one. I just thought that those were lame. I must have been one of the few that didn’t like the Sierra Mist commercial according to all of the surveys. I guess maybe I tuned it out when I saw that comedian on it from Best Week Ever and all the other look alike VH-1 shows as I just don’t find him funny. It’s very clear that some of these companies need to get some people away from the Anheuser-Busch group as they are the ones that consistently do good commercials every year that people like. I always read USA Today’s poll results every year as they take 207 volunteers and have them electronically chart how they feel about each ad as they watch them. Anheuser-Busch won for a record 8th year and took 6 of the top 10 ads. Here are the results from USA Today of the top 10:
- Bud Light – Secret fridge stocks Bud Light
- Budweiser – Young Clydesdale dreams big
- Fed Ex – Cave man uses prehistoric overnight delivery
- Sierra Mist – Sierra Mist can’t clear airport security
- Bud Light – Men pretend to work but relax on rooftops instead
- Budweiser – Sheep streaks at big game
- Ameriquest – Patient’s family walks in on medical misunderstanding
- Bud Light – Office manager motivates employees with hidden bottles
- Ameriquest – Plan turbulence creates awkward situation
- Budweiser – Stadium crowd turns a wave into a Bud promotion
Survivor Panama: Exile Island premiered last week on CBS. It was a good premiere and we found out more twists in the game this year. Someone will be sent to Exile Island on each episode. One key to the island is that there is a hidden immunity idol somewhere on the island. If you find it, you can use it anytime you want to including after the tribal council vote. If you get voted off, you can hold up the idol and you are safe while the person with the next highest number of votes will be voted off. Very interesting twist that will mess with this game for sure. It could be a unanimous vote against one person and if the one person reveals the idol, he/she’s one vote could send someone home. Misty spent a night on the island before the game even really got going. The tribes are split into four this year. They are split into these categories, younger men, older men, younger women, and older women. The older women lost the immunity challenge and sent Jill home. I really think that they messed up. Jill was the strongest one who was getting stuff done and now they are going to have to do without her. Cerie was definitely the weakest of the tribe. I loved Cerie’s comment where she said that if you are a couch potato sitting at home watching thinking that you could do this show, stay at home on the couch. One of the best quotes I’ve ever heard on Survivor. I will enjoy watching the show from my couch as I know I couldn’t make it on that show. It looks like Shane is a ticking time bomb as he is with the older men. He just quit smoking before he left for Survivor. He is used to having 2 packs a day and now is not smoking at all. He isn’t handling it well at all and it’s just a matter of time before he snaps. He admitted that too cause he is so edgy without being able to smoke. We’ll see how things go with him on tonight’s episode.
I finally watched Serenity which is the movie based on the Joss Whedon series Firefly. Let me say that watching the 14 episodes of Firefly just to get to the movie is well worth it. This movie was really good and if it is the final thing that comes from the Firefly series, they went out big. Firefly was canceled early on when it was on TV a few years ago. Whedon and everyone involved were furious. Whedon went searching for other options and fought with everything to get something else for the series whether it was another network or a TV movie. They ended up getting a movie on the big screen. The movie runs about 2 hours and does a great job picking up where the series left off. I don’t want to spoil too much of it so I won’t go into detail about it. There are shocking moments, great stories, and backgrounds on parts of the universe that we had been waiting to hear about. Typical Joss Whedon stuff which is good. I watched every bit of the DVD except for the commentary. I recommend checking out all the extra stuff. There are 15 minutes of deleted scenes, a blooper reel, and many featurettes. One is entitled “Relighting the Firefly” where they talk about how the show was canceled and the fight to continue the series. The fans get credited big time for helping make this movie possible. They also show footage from the San Diego Comicon where Joss and the cast of Serenity were there to preview the movie for the fans in attendance. They all got a huge standing ovation that lasted a while. The cast got backstage after the Q&A deal and were just wide eyed not believing how great the fans were to them. It’s been said but Joss Whedon fans are “hardcore” which is what is also said on that featurette. I’m also one of those fans. So, to wrap things up, I just want to give a double thumbs up to Serenity as it is a great movie. If you like Buffy and Angel, watch Firefly and then Serenity as you won’t be disappointed!!
American Idol is now up to the Hollywood episodes so the competition has really begun. One thing that is clear so far just by the auditions up to this point is that the guys have a long way to go to catch up to the girls. The guys just haven’t been up to the level of the girls. I’ll go ahead and tell some of my favorites that I like so far. With there only being an hour of each episode, we haven’t been able to see everyone so it’s hard to pick a favorite just yet. The ones that have stood out to me so far that I like are Kellie Pickler, Paris Bennet, Chris Daughtry, Lisa Tucker, and Katharine McPhee. This is also the round where a lot of the arrogant people get a reality check and get sent home. Speaking of arrogant, how arrogant are those Brittenum twins? They come across like nice guys but geez when they start talking, it all goes down hill. The judges sent them on through to the next round but gave the twins some criticism and they didn’t like it at all. They were giving their opinion on anyone and everyone. They also said that Carrie Underwood was just an average singer. Well, it’s nice to know that average singers can now sell 2.2 million albums and go double platinum.
Kelly Clarkson is the first of the American Idol winners to win a Grammy. She won 2 awards last night. She won best pop vocal album and best female pop vocal for “Since U Been Gone”.
Has anyone seen that movie “My Date With Drew”? It’s a movie that this fan did where he is trying to meet Drew Barrymore and get a date with her. I haven’t seen it but it looks really interesting. I was curious if anyone had seen it and could give me any feedback on it.
There are many Suncoast and Sam Goody stores closing around the country. They are closing 341 stores in total. This includes the Suncoast here. You might want to get into some of these stores if you find one closing cause they are starting to do closing sales. I can’t say this is really a surprise cause if you’ve price shopped, you know that Suncoast is always higher. I have went looking for new release box sets at the mall and found one set at Suncoast for $10 higher than everyone else had it. The real kicker was that they had a sticker on it saying “on sale”. On sale and still a ton higher than everyone else. I have read that people are finding 20% off sales already at the closing stores. For me, 20% off finally just gets them closer to the prices that other stores sale DVD’s normally for. If you want a list of the stores that are closing go to this link. http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20060201006073&newsLang=en
In case you missed the 5 million promos during the Super Bowl, Sons & Daughters premieres March 7th on ABC. Sometimes these networks over do promos to where I’m sick of the show before it even airs. ABC Family is really bad about this. Speaking of ABC TV promos, you would think that they would air an Alias promo somewhere in that game considering how it is one of their big shows. The Alias situation really has people talking where they still aren’t set for a comeback date yet.
A Buffy reunion will be taking place on How I Met Your Mother with Alyson Hannigan’s husband Alexis Denisof doing a guest starring role for two episodes. If you aren’t watching this show, what are you waiting for as I think it is one of the best sitcoms that has been on TV in a while.
Joey is losing a cast member as Andrea Anders isn’t waiting for the likely cancellation and has already signed on for a CBS show.
The Winter Olympics open up tomorrow night on NBC. I am a big Olympics person although I am a lot bigger of a fan of the summer games than the winter. I’ll be keeping my eye on the Winter Olympics for sure. There is a lot of talk that the Olympics may have some problems with viewers this time as the Olympics are going to go head to head with American Idol for the first time ever. Idol is definitely going to take away some viewers.
Arrested Development will finish out its run of episodes tomorrow night. There will be a two hour block of episodes. I still can’t believe how insulting that is that the network put the last episodes up against the big ratings getter of a Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony on NBC. A lot of people have been critical of that decision as it really did come across as an insulting move by Fox.
Well, I might as well join the speculation on what Kristen from E Online had to say this week concerning Firefly. A friend of hers saw three members of the Firefly cast leaving the Paramount studios this week. Go ahead and let the speculation begin with the new CW network. I do seriously hope that the CW network has been talking to Joss Whedon about doing something with either Buffy/Angel or Firefly. It would be dumb if they didn’t at least talk to Joss to see if he would be interested in doing a new show for the new network.
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