Stuff for an Emotional Friday

Why emotional? Well, one could say that when you're in your final month of pregnancy, every minute of every day is emotional, but today, my daughter turns three. And I don't know where the time has gone. She's still that tiny tiny baby that I first held and vowed I'd never let anything bad happen. Since then she's developed this insanely funny personality, big golden curls, a curiosity that would have had most cats burn through all nine of their lives by now, an attention to detail that maybe only a writer/editor's daughter could have, and an imagination that rivals any novelist. She's perfect perfect perfect. And she's three. So I'm blogging as I stare at the clock, waiting for the moment when it will be exactly three years (at this point, seven minutes away).

OK, so I shouldn't be so excited about this, but one of my all-time fave words is "ginormous" and it has been officially added to Mirriam-Webster's dictionary! Now I can use it with no qualms whatsoever. Though... recently I've moved to using "gabillion" when looking for the perfect hyperbole.

Here's an interesting article on Ali Larter (a.k.a. Nikessica on Heroes) becoming a Bollywood queen. Who'd have thunk?

To show just how out of it I am, I've heard so much about the new series Mad Men (well... not so much about it, just people saying I should be watching it) and the night it premiered I couldn't find it anywhere on my television. I'll have to just set up the PVR to find it, methinks. Anyway, imagine my surprise when I'm perusing TV Guide online and find out Vincent Kartheiser -- a.k.a. Angel's demon child from hell who bonked Cordelia -- is on it! (That's him on the left in this picture.) Why didn't anyone tell me this? Now I MUST find this show. If only to see if Connor gets smacked around a bit. :) Go here to read the full interview with him. (Warning: as much as I find him intriguing as an actor, he's never been particularly charismatic in interviews.)

Weeds premiered in the U.S. with high ratings, and I couldn't find it anywhere on Showcase, here in Canada. I went to their site, and lo and behold, it's scheduled for a fall release. Sigh... in the past, they've run it pretty close to the U.S. airing, so I have no idea who came up with this boneheaded idea. Now I have to keep my head down and avoid spoilers.

And I just looked at the clock and it's exactly the time she was born. :::sniffle:::

Last night was the finale of So You Think You Can Dance. I'll be honest, I came into this one right near the end at the urging of my pals Crissy and Sarah, and because I know practically nothing about dance I just watched it, kinda fascinated, but probably never truly appreciating it. And when you have a PVR and can skip over the judges comments, especially that screechy Marie Osmond lookalike in the middle, then you just never fully commit. But that said, I was surprised at the final choice. First of all, the show was two hours long (and full disclosure, I watched it in less than 10 minutes, jumping through most of the numbers I'd already seen, all the blahblahblah in the middle, every single judge comment... I only stopped to watch people get voted off). And yet, despite it being two hours long they announced the winner three seconds before they had to switch off, so Cat says, "And the winner is SABRA, and now stay tuned for your local news" and it was over. No thank you speeches, no long good-byes for Danny (we got tributes to Neil and Lacey but not Danny), no big tribute for Sabra, etc. But did anyone else feel like the choice was contrived somehow? As in, Danny SHOULD have won, but they've had 2 guys win and it was a girl's year so they threw it to Sabra? I dunno... I like Sabra, but I just thought Danny was better. But what do I know... I watched most of it on fast-forward.

Hell's Kitchen, on the other hand, I watch a lot more carefully. And if you didn't see this ending coming, you were watching a different show. Just like Heather seemed destined to win from the first episode of season 2, Rock was the obvious choice from the first episode of season 3. I called it in the very beginning, and never wavered. It was like by voting Jen off in the previous week, Gordon made it even more obvious and easy for us to know that Rock was going to take this one. Not that Bonnie didn't fight all the way to the end. Just as in the last ep of season 2 I had fallen in love with Virginia and kinda wanted her to win, this time Bonnie had really won me over. The finale was fun to watch, mostly because you realized just how BLOODY inept all the other chefs were (honestly, this was SUCH an easy choice for Gordon it's almost funny). Josh was his usual self. I think he'd be more suited to a job at McDonald's. Solely on cash, never near the grill. Jen was great, kept to her game, and never faltered. Melissa was a disaster, never getting a clue how to cook a prawn, and only telling Bonnie that they were out of something when they had three people ordering that something. Dave surprised me at how hard he was willing to work to help Rock win. Vinnie was pretty forgettable. But Julia... Julia was the big one. This is the gal we all said goodbye to with sadness, thinking of how much she wanted it. Gordon had an immense amount of fondness for her -- as did we -- and offered to send her to cooking school. I never wanted her to win (the girl had never heard of a creme brulee, for god's sakes), but I liked her push. But there was always something about Julia that was a little... off. She was never friendly in any way. You rarely saw her smile. She was in this for herself and the others could all be damned.

And yet, knowing all of that, her behaviour in this final episode was just unbelievable. She bawled her head off at simply being there. She was so emotionally unstable that even though Rock and Bonnie knew she was a hell of a cook, neither one wanted her on their team until they had no other choice (when Bonnie is faced with Julia and Josh, even she knows you do NOT pick Josh). Julia made it clear to the camera that she thought Rock should win, so she couldn't care less if she threw the game for Bonnie. She was rude, ignorant, and a very bad team player in the final, refusing to listen to Bonnie, telling her to go away and she wasn't going to argue with her, and just acting like a complete cow. Yeah, if I were an executive chef watching this show Julia is TOTALLY the girl I'd hire for my kitchen. What an idiot.

When they stood behind the doors, ready to open one and walk through to victory, the camera kept panning to Rock's wife and two small children, and I knew he'd won at that point, as if they were reminding us of the solid family he had and how he could really use that $250,000 (did you notice the little girl totally falling asleep on Mommy's shoulder, and then when they starting popping champagne corks she awoke with a jolt and began crying?? Poor little thing... I bet they were filming this at one in the morning or something). I'm glad Rock won, even if he had a bit of an anger management problem. But then again... look at Gordon.

This made me laugh out loud. I LOVE when they do Brit-Brit. :)

Superbad opens this weekend. I am SO excited to see this (and a film critic friend of mine whose taste runs pretty similarly to my own saw it a couple of weeks ago and LOVED it). I won't be able to see it this weekend, but maybe next week.

I did see The Simpsons Movie and LOVED it. I had no idea it was going to be as funny as it was, but there were moments when I was completely doubled over (well, as doubled over as I could be with a giant belly in the way), and one moment -- "Spider Pig" -- when I thought my husband was going to require medical help, because he was laughing so hard he couldn't breathe. If you love the Simpsons, you'll love this film.

I saw Waitress with Keri Russell and Nathan Fillion, and it was a great little movie. The pie-making will make you hungry, and the pregnancy tensions and worries are more realistic (if less funny) than in Knocked Up, and for a while I was a little worried that it was a little too anti-baby, until it got to the end. What a lovely film.

I'm FINALLY starting to watch season 1 of Big Love, and it's fantastic so far. Possibly the best pilot I've seen of an HBO show; usually it takes me 2 or 3 episodes beyond the pilot to like an HBO show, and then I love it, but this one nabbed me from the get-go.

And I still haven't watched John From Cincinnati, but the season finale was this past Sunday and it was written by none other than Zack Whedon, Joss's baby brother. Now it's worth watching the entire series just for that one. I wonder if lil' bro has the same Whedon magic?

And... there's my segue into Whedonland. I was surfing apple.com's trailer site last night and hit the preview for this movie, Death at a Funeral, and it looked hilarious. One of the stars is Alan Tudyk, who Whedon fans know best as Wash from Firefly and Serenity.

James Marsters has accepted a role on Without a Trace in the fall, according to his official website. It's unclear how many episodes he'll be in, but let's hope, like with Spike, he's able to win over audiences and stay on.

There's a rumour that Joss Whedon will be directing another episode of The Office. EEEEE!!!

The AV Club at The Onion, who always does fantastic interviews, has done a long one with Joss that is awesome. In it he explains that if Buffy Season 8 continues to do well, there may be a season 9, but again, in comic book form:

There's not going to be a Buffy season nine on television. I don't think Sarah [Michelle Gellar] has the slightest interest in doing that, and quite frankly, I don't think it's a good idea for me, either. I do have to prove at some point that I can do other things.

I interviewed Alexis Denisof a couple of years ago when working on my Angel book (he was absolutely lovely and talked forever) and he told me that Joss never would have killed off his character if the show hadn't been cancelled. Joss confirms that statement in this interview. Joss also talks about Wonder Woman, and gives a little taste of what would have been in the movie had he written it.

My favorite thing was the bracelets. I mean, the bracelets are cool, but how do I make that work? In the original comic book, they needed them because they fire guns on Paradise Island. I don't think I'm going there. So, I thought about it for a while, and I realized, "Oh, right, this is how this works." So in my version, she left Paradise Island with Steve, who was a world-relief guy bringing medical supplies to refugees, which is why he was so desperate to get off the island. She goes with him, and the moment she sets foot on land outside of Paradise Island, somebody shoots her in the chest. And it hurts. [Laughs.] She's just so appalled. And obviously, she heals within a few hours. She pulls the bullet out herself, and kind of looks at it like, "What the hell is this?" She heals, but she's appalled and humiliated, and the next time someone shoots at her, she puts her bracelet in the way because she's terrified of getting shot. It's just a reflexive thing. She has these bands that they all wear, just
a piece of armor, and she puts it up. And then she gets good at it. By the end, it's kind of her thing, but it's because she got shot one time and didn't think that it was awesome. I think that is probably not the feeling the producers wanted to have. Though honestly, that could have been their favorite thing. I don't know, because when I asked Joel Silver, point blank, "Well, if they don't want what I'm doing, what do they want?" he said, "They don't know."

Ah, the world of what ifs... sigh.

And finally, the Buffy comic #8 cover has been released (Brian K. Vaughan's Faith arc will be issues 6-9). Behold the awesomeness:

And finally finally, my brother has been bugging me for ages to watch this trailer, and I finally saw it and laughed my head off. If the movie is 1/8 as good as the trailer, I am THERE.