My summer TV obsession is back underway for yet another summer as Big Brother 8 premiered tonight on CBS. It’s funny as I was checking a message board before the premiere and someone made the comment that they were enjoying their last couple hours of summer meaning Big Brother was going to take up the rest of their summer. If you are a live feed subscriber, that very well can be true. As a live feeder for the All Stars season last summer, I felt like I didn’t get much of anything done from July through September cause I couldn’t pull myself away from the feeds. LOL!! So, Big Brother 8 is here. Initial thoughts are that I’m feeling good about the season so far. When they announced the twist to the season, I got the idea that everyone in the house was going to have a rival or ex in the house. That is not the case as only three people are tied to someone else. Eleven people were brought into the Big Brother house and then were told later on that three other people were hidden elsewhere in the house. Upstairs were three secret houseguests who were told the twist of the game. They were allowed to overlook the ongoing events in the house including the first Head Of Household competition. First, let’s reveal the connections between the houseguests. Upstairs in the secret room were Jessica, Dick, and Dustin. How do they tie to the other houseguests? I’m glad you asked. First, Dick is the estranged father of Daniele. The two have not spoken in two years and he says that she basically ignores him. I’m pretty sure that I heard her say that her claim is that he tried to be too much of a best friend of hers. Next is Dustin. Dustin is the ex-boyfriend of Joe. Things got ugly between them and what happened basically depends on who you believe. On to Jessica, Jessica is an ex school rival of Carol. The HOH competition happened and it was won by the team of Eric and Kail. The three upstairs got to be the ones to pick which of the two would be the HOH. Eric was saying how he was actually trying to throw the HOH but somehow ended up winning. The three decided on Kail to be HOH and it was announced that since the three couldn’t compete that they would be immune to being nominated this week. The remaining eleven were told about the twist of former rivals or ex’s coming into the house. Joe spoke up immediately to the group betting that his ex, Dustin, was coming into the house. He had all kinds of bad things to say to which Dustin was freaking out about upstairs watching on the monitor. Wow, I wonder if this may take Joe out of the competition cause he really looked bad in his outburst especially with how happy go lucky he had been up until that point. Dustin came into the house shaking hands with everyone but Joe wouldn’t even look at him. Daniele knew her father was likely coming in when talking in the diary room but didn’t say this to the houseguests. He spoke to her but Daniele just seemed numb to him appearing. She did break down in tears as she left the room later. Carol’s reaction to Jessica was just kind of ok, whatever. LOL. We then found out who America’s Player was and if I had to bet, wow, would I have been wrong? It was announced that Eric is America’s Player. He would have been one of my last picks on who it was. So, here is the deal with that. We vote via text messaging and via CBS.com on what he should do in this game and he does it. He is playing this game with us and for us. Every five tasks that he completes that he is asked by fans to do, he gets $10,000. Not sure how many tasks that he gets a week. Initial thoughts? It will take a few episodes to decide on who I like and don’t like. First impressions in this game are wrong a lot of times. When watching Carol in the diary room, my first thought was how she resembled Lisa from BB3. Kail is in a bad spot being the first HOH. I would throw that thing big time. It puts you in a position to make enemies first thing by nominating people for eviction.
Other Big Brother coverage to keep an eye on. For Showtime subscribers, don’t forget Big Brother After Dark which will have live feeds on the network for three hours every night on Sho Too. It will air 11pm-2am. Hey, I think Showtime needs to offer a free preview soon of its channels. LOL. I’ll be interested to hear what people have to say about it and how it compares to the live feeds. Speaking of live feeds, you can of course subscribe to the live feeds once again. Head over to http://www.cbs.com/primetime/bigbrother8 for more details. While you’re there, check out House Calls: The Big Brother Talk Show. The show is on CBS.com weekdays and is hosted by Gretchen. It’s for sure worth watching as I’ve watched it off and on for several years. I didn’t have much time to watch it last year cause I was watching the feeds.
Transformers is out in theaters and, oh yes, I have seen it. My thoughts in this are SPOILER FREE as I’m not going to go into detail on it until next week and let you get a chance to see it since it is still brand new in theaters. As you probably know, I am a Transformers fan since the 80’s with the original cartoon series. I still remember seeing the original Transformers The Movie in 1986. For me, this movie was a level of excitement as Star Wars is for die hard Star Wars fans. You people had your Star Wars, X-Men, Spiderman, Superman, but I finally got Transformers. LOL. Don’t get me wrong, I of course like all of those but this was my day in the sun. It’s funny how you are told that you’ll outgrow stuff from when you’re a kid. I did outgrow some things but two things that I for sure never did outgrow was wrestling and Transformers. I was very excited to see this movie and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. This is a very good movie. At the end of the movie, the people in the theater applauded so that told me then that people liked it. Very good turnout to see the movie. It wasn’t sold out for sure but most of the seats were taken up. I saw it on the 4th of July so many saw it the day before. While waiting for the previous showing to end, the line waiting to get in almost went out the doors. Visually, this movie is incredibly impressive. It might be the best movie I’ve seen as far as visuals go. The action scenes look amazing and it just let me impressed as can be. I liked the casting in the movie. Shia LaBeouf did really good in the movie and I think he is going to be seeing a jump in his movie career the more and more that he does. I thought he was hilarious on the Disney show, Even Stevens, from years ago. He can definitely do comedy and it shows in his comedic scenes in this movie. Good casting with putting him in the movie. I liked the casting all around actually. I had purposely avoided a lot of stuff about the movie cause I didn’t want to know too much. Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson are soldiers in the movie and do a great job. There was quite a bit of comedy in the movie which I didn’t expect. Lots of laughs to be had. For you Buffy fans, be on the lookout for a Buffy star to make a bit of a cameo in the movie and I loved that. Also, if you didn’t know, Peter Cullen who voiced the original Optimus Prime once again got to do the honors in this movie. I loved that!! The movie runs at about 2 and a half hours which I knew so I was settled in for the long haul of this movie. The time went by fast and plus I was so involved in seeing how the story was set up that I didn’t even look to check the time. There was the one scene in the movie that was used as the original short movie trailer and it was wild to think how long ago that seems when we got our first taste of the movie. Now, here we are with the movie in theaters. Good music picks to go with the movie. I’ll probably have to pick up the soundtrack sometime. Overall, big thumbs up from me. This is coming from someone that was extremely worried when I heard they were doing this movie cause I was concerned that it might end up bad. It was far from bad and a very entertaining and good movie. I’ll get into the story part of it next week so I can give those of you planning on seeing it a chance to see it.
Transformers opened big on Tuesday setting the record of the biggest Tuesday ever with $27.4 million. The previous record for a Tuesday was $12 million set by last year’s The Omen. It also had a preview shown on Monday which had $8.8 million as several theatres across the country offered a preview viewing before the official opening. So, that is $35 million in two days counting a short preview day.
Here is the box office for last weekend with how it looked before the release of Transformers. 1. Ratatouille – $47 million. 2. Live Free Or Die Hard – $33.4 million. 3. Evan Almighty – $15.1 million. 4. 1408 – $10.7 million. 5. Fantastic Four – $9.1 million. 6. Knocked Up – $7.3 million. 7. Ocean’s Thirteen – $6.1 million. 8. Pirates Of The Caribbean – $5.0 million. 9. Sicko – $4.5 million. 10. Evening – $3.5 million.
It’s nice to see how many movies that I am interested in seeing this summer or will likely see on DVD releases later this fall or winter. Last year, there just wasn’t many movies that I really wanted to see but this is a fun movie summer of stuff I’m looking forward to seeing.
During the previews before Transformers, the trailer for The Simpsons movie was shown. It looks like it is going to be very funny. I fully expected that anyway before seeing the trailer. This isn’t the trailer that aired at the theater but thought I’d put this in here in case you haven’t seen any look at the movie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OL50ddCSJmo
There was a lot of talk wondering how Kelly Clarkson’s new CD would do amid all the negative press that it has been getting. Well, it looks like it didn’t matter. In fact, this album had a better debut week than her last album. My December debuted at number two selling 291,000 copies. Her previous album debuted at number three with 250,000 copies. Kelly was kept from the top spot though by proof that the Disney Channel stars are for real. The Miley Cirus/Hannah Montana CD debuted at number one selling 326,000 copies. The album is two discs with one being Hannah Montana show songs and the other is a studio album not in Hannah character from what I understand. The previous Hannah Montana CD sold 281,000 copies and debuted at number one as well.
Not sure if any of you are Sex and The City fans but I’ll pass this along just in case. The long talked about movie is going to happen. New Line Cinema is said to be close to signing on with the movie. All four of the show’s stars are signed on to be in the movie. Production is said to begin this fall.
For any of you Nascar fans that have DirecTV, DirecTV will be offering a free preview of the Nascar Hot Pass during this Saturday night’s Pepsi 400 from Daytona. I watched the free preview of this during the Daytona 500 in February and liked it but also, during my review of it, was critical of some things about it. I have been happy to see that ever since the debut, they have listened to any fans’ criticism and try to improve it as best as they can. That is nice to see that fans are being listened to and people seem to like it more. Here is your channel lineup for the DirecTV Hot Pass. Keep in mind that each of these channels will each feature just what is going on with them so you’re literally riding along with that driver listening to radio communication and all.
This is of course ONLY on DirecTV.
Channel 795 – Carl Edwards
Channel 796 – Mark Martin
Channel 797 – Jeff Gordon
Channel 798 – Tony Stewart
Channel 799 – Dale Earnhardt Jr.
TNT is also debuting their “wide open coverage” during the Pepsi 400. This includes the race only having three local commercial breaks every hour. No national commercial breaks. Instead of commercials, graphics and vignettes will appear at the bottom of the screen. It’s an interesting concept and we’ll see how it is.
Everyone got their iPhone’s yet? Wow, those things are impressive. I watched the unveiling presentation of the iPhone several months ago and was amazed with all that it can do. The reaction to them has been amazing too especially for the price tag. I find it funny that every bit of technology that is coming out that I’m excited about is coming from Apple. I really do find them to be ahead of the game. Just my opinion though. iPhones appear to be selling extremely well although I haven’t seen any official numbers put out yet. Several businesses are having a tough time keeping them in stock. So, for my Apple readers here, which is going to be the first one to break down and buy one? I’m looking forward to seeing who is the first to jump on it. Here are a few videos that have been posted of the iPhone going on sale.
Issue four of the season eight Buffy The Vampire Slayer comic is out and this comic ties up the first part of the season eight arc. We’ll now get a break until August when the next comic is released. The next issue is written by Joss and will see the return of Faith. So, what happened in issue four? I liked how it all wrapped up this part of the story and leaving us ready for where things are going. If you don’t want spoilers, move on to the next paragraph. We left off with Warren having Willow captured. Well, we found out at the beginning of this issue that Warren was not killed by Willow in season six. Amy actually saved him and had kept him alive. Buffy and the gang save Willow and we find out more info on the military unit that is tracking Buffy and the group. They are a group of soldiers led by a general that thinks that Buffy’s gang are some kind of demon powered group and will eventually declare war on humanity. There are of course other happenings but I won’t reveal all of it. You have to read the comic but I thought it tied up the first part of season eight very well. Looking forward to seeing where things go from here.
If you’re a music fan, check out Live Earth this weekend. The concert will be covered all over the NBC Universal networks including NBC, Bravo, CNBC, and others.
The statistics on the top selling DVD’s in the first half of 2007 have been released. Here they are with the amount of discs sold: 1. Happy Feet – 8.6 million. 2. Night At The Museum – 6.6 million. 3. The Departed – 5.1 million. 4. Open Season – 4.2 million. 5. Charlotte’s Web – 3.8 million. 6. The Pursuit Of Happyness – 3.7 million. 7. Casino Royale – 3.6 million. 8. Cinderella III: A Twist In Time – 3.5 million. 9. Peter Pan – 3.4 million. 10. Flushed Away – 3.2 million.
Not only is Smallville getting a normal DVD release of season six in September but the show will also be released in two high definition formats including Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Season six is set for release on September 18th.
The World Series Of Pop Culture returns for another season beginning on Monday, July 9th on VH-1. This is a very fun show!! This is also the show where I sit around and feel smart with being able to use this useless pop culture knowledge for something. LOL. Seriously though, this is a very addictive show to watch and just really enjoyable.
Fans of the Fox show Driven must be even more mad over the news that came out this week. Fox had announced several weeks ago that they would air the final episodes of the show on July 4th. My first thought for those fans was, gee thanks. Air it on a day when not many are watching TV. It was announced this week that Fox had decided to pull the episodes set to air on July 4th and instead air the movie, Anger Management. You’re going to need anger management for these fans that keep wanting to see the last remaining new episodes of that series. Fox has moved the date back to July 13th as the day when they are going to air the remaining episodes. That is the last that I heard unless they change that too.
Gilmore Girls’ Scott Patterson has been signed on to star in the new CW series, Aliens In America.
TV on DVD releases for Tuesday, July 10th. First up, if anyone was happening to be looking for that Bozo DVD set that was supposed to be released last week, they have delayed it until July 17th. Here are Tuesday’s releases. Beauty and the Beast (Season 2), Bewitched (Season 5), Extras (Season 2), Home Run Derby (Volume 1), Hustle (Season 3), My Super Sweet 16 (Seasons 1 & 2), Punky Brewster (Volumes 1-6).
TV Line Of The Week: This is from the season 8 DVD of Seinfeld. Jerry was bumped from career day at his old junior high school due to the zoo guy going long with time. He is talking to George and Kramer about it. I laughed for a while after the last line.
“It sounds like they’re trying to screw with your head.” – Kramer to Jerry
“Now, why would a junior high school want to screw with my head?” – Jerry
“Why does Radio Shack ask for your phone number when you buy batteries?” – Kramer
Wishing all of you a great weekend!!
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