The Name Game: Julie Style

I can't believe it's been over a month since I lost blogged. I was initially going to write that opening line as some kind of "since my last confession" joke. However, I googled it to make sure I had my wording right, and tons of blog posts popped up containing that very joke. Plus, I realized it probably wasn't going to be a very funny joke anyway. 

Somehow I believed that I'd be some kind of non-stop blogging machine during the summer. Instead, my brain went into summer hibernation. In my defense, one of those weeks was taken up with a vacation, but that still translates into a lot of days of laziness. I managed two very time-consuming posts on my other blog consisting of youtube videos and a handful of sentences. Impressive, right?

Anyway, I've spent a lot of my non-blogging time marathoning the amazing show Friday Night Lights. Before watching FNL, I had a irrational dislike of Aimee Teegarden that was based pretty much on fifteen minutes of an episode of 90210 that I saw once and her short role in Scream 4. It was with this irrational dislike of her that I entered FNL. However, near the end of the first season her portrayal of Julie actually started to win me over a bit. This ended when season two started, and Julie turned into a complete brat. She's yet to win me back over. So, while my dislike of Aimee Teegarden remains irrational, my dislike of Julie Taylor is completely rational in my opinion. This is a bit of a bummer because as you possibly (but probably don't unless you've looked at my about me on the side of the page) know, my name is Julie.

I know, I know. According to Shakespeare, names aren't that important, and roses smell sweet regardless of what they're called. Whatever. I think names are kind of important. And I don't appreciate sharing mine with a bratty, fictional teenager.

So, I started thinking of other characters sharing my name, and I thought of Julie Cooper from The O.C. Not that much better. I mean, sure, she was fun to watch, but she was evil.

So, the search continued. I couldn't think of any more characters named Julie. So, I did some IMDB research.

 

Credit: IMDB.com

As you can see, there's a quite a few characters named Julie. But I'm sticking with the ones from shows and movies I've seen, and that limits the results quite a bit.

With that criteria in mind, we end up with Julie from Friends, Julie from Jawbreaker, crazy Aunt Julie from 7th Heaven, Julie from Sleepover, Julie from Monk, Julie from I Know What You Did Last Summer, Julie from To Grandmother's House We Go, two different Julies having single-episode roles on Grey's Anatomy, and Julie from Final Destination 3.

To be honest, a lot of these things that I've seen, I saw a long time ago. I do not really recall how likable most of these Julies are. So, I'm going to go with the winner of most deserving of the Julie name being Julie (Ashley Olsen) from To Grandmother's House We Go. This really is a bit of a cheat because I don't think I've ever seen the whole movie, and I don't really remember the parts that I have seen. But how could an Olsen twin role not win?

Do you have a different opinion on who should have won the Julie name game? Do you have a favorite or least favorite character that shares your name? If so, let me know about it in the comments.

Also, I'd love for you all to play the name game as well. If you want to blog about characters that share your name, please share a link to it with me in the comments as well. If anyone (fingers crossed) plays along, I'll make a list of those blogs posts in this post. If not, well, no harm done.

A Glee Rantaholic's View of Episode 2x22 "New York"

I'm seriously starting to think that I'm addicted to ranting about Glee. If you've read any of my other posts about Glee, you know that I have a love/hate relationship with it. I obviously care about the characters and show enough to watch it, and yet, it's so ridiculously bad at times. In fact, I kind of abuse the show. If I were not me, I would probably tell myself to just stop watching. But honestly, it's fun to criticize and it actually manages to be really good at times. For the most part, however, "New York" was not these times. Anyway, I wanted to embrace my rantaholicism for this post. I'm not even going to write in nice little paragraphs. I'm just going to list what bugged me about this episode, and then I'll say a couple of nice things about it. I know this is kind of an unclassy post, but what can I say? Glee brings out the worst in me. I feel like there's a little more class in my non-Glee related post so please don't judge me solely on the basis of my Glee posts.

THE BAD

• Why would Quinn know more about Broadway shows than Rachel? I'm pretty sure Rachel would be aware that Cats is closed.
• Speaking of Quinn, I was way disappointed that her "big plans" turned out to be NOTHING. I was actually looking forward to her sabotage. 
• Why was the Glee club acting like that kiss is what ruined their chances? Maybe it was the fact that they waited until they were in New York to even write their forgettable and auto-tuned songs.
• I miss the Jessie St. James of season one (pre-egging, of course). I feel like they've made him into some nasty sleezeapalooza in an effort to make Finn look good by comparison.
• But if that is their plan, the liking Finn part is not working on me. I'm just sick of Finn. I actually used to like him a lot and Cory Monteith seems like a cool guy in interviews, but Finn has turned into such an unlikable character. First he's dating Quinn, but he starts to have some feelings for Rachel. Then the whole baby drama happens, and he and Quinn break up. He starts dating Rachel but really doesn't even seem that into her at times. Then, they break up and he has ~*~fireworks~*~ (yes, I used sarcastic wavy lines and asterisks) with Quinn, and gets back together with her even though she's dating someone else. Then, Rachel seems to finally be semi-happy with Jesse for a second, and Finn throws a tantrum. Then he breaks up with Quinn to be with ~his true love Rachel~. Then he throws all this romantic crap at her. Ugh. Oh, what do you know? This kind of turned into a paragraph. I guess, I just really dislike Finn.
• My dislike of Finn had me hoping that Rachel would turn him down because he's a jerk. I mean, she sang "Jar of Hearts," a song about being done with a heartbreaker, just a few episodes ago. So, she says no to him because Broadway is her true love. Good enough for me. Except, oh wait. They're getting back together for their senior year. Ugh, again.
• That song or song mashup or whatever it was that they sang as they jauntily bounced around New York was just embarrassing.
• The Vocal Adrenaline performance was pretty boring. In fact, it's already been mostly erased from my memory.
• The original songs were pretty boring too. I honestly don't remember what they were about. 
• That kiss scene had me cracking up with the disappearing audience. So cheesy.
• I was pretty disappointing with Glee for dropping another storyline so quickly. Will has a Broadway gig lined up, and just like that, he drops it for the kids? Seriously? Well, at least he got to pimp out his new album.
• In general, much of the episode was kind of a snoozefest.

That's enough ranting. It's time for:

The Good

• I actually think I like the idea of Sam and Mercedes as a couple. It's fun and a bit unexpected, but I can see it. So, props on that pairing. Plus, Mercedes is finally getting a storyline not about her tots!
• The "For Good" performance was so good. Yeah, it was a bit unrealistic, but it was actually, dare I admit, a bit moving. 
• Quinn's new hair cut was adorable.
• It was nice to see a scene between the three ex-cheerios.
• The New York scenery made the episode very beautiful.
• It was cute that Kurt and Rachel at breakfast at Tiffany's.
• "My Cup" is an amazing song.
• "Whereas I'm spending my summer composing Pip, Pip, Hooray, the Broadway musical about Pippa Middleton."
• "Yeah" had me cracking up.

That's it for now. If you have any thoughts on the episode, be they good or bad, please feel free to share them in the comments.

Television-Triggered Commentary

Hey everyone! I survived finals, and as promised, I'm back. I started writing a post about the upcoming pilots that I'm most excited about (which I still might finish). However, a certain Youtube video caught my eye, and I felt like writing a post on it. It features an excited-no, exuberant-(I don't really know what's going on with my punctuation there, but I'm just going to claim artistic license) Smallville fan's commentary on the final few minutes of the show. It's probably the it's-five-in-the-morning-and-I-still-haven't-gone-to-sleep-and-in-fact-might-try-to-stay-up-all-night effect taking its toll, but I didn't just laugh at this clip, I guffawed. I guffawed at a Youtube video at five a.m. while sitting in my bed in a room by myself. And, I just publicly admitted that fact. 

I haven't regularly watched Smallville in years. Okay, scratch that, I guess I never regularly watched it, but I used to watch the earlier episodes from time to time when they aired on ABCFamily. Anyway, I did manage to catch some of the finale because a family member was watching it. Honestly, I was pretty much just cracking up at how lame and cheesy the whole affair was. However, I'll resist the urge to snark too much on the show and this Smallville fan (and honestly, I'd be in a more appropriate place to snark if I'd actually seen enough episodes to know what was going on) because I too have been known on occasion to talk to the television screen. Granted, I've never had a reaction quite like this and sincerely hope to never do so. 

The fact remains, however, that I do lamely talk to the television at times. The most recent example I can think of is during The Vampire Diaries season finale. I'm pretty sure I whispered "what?" to myself in a creepy, low voice for at least thirty seconds after the episode ended. This second example is not exactly talking, but I found myself uncontrollably making some kind of strange squeal a couple of hours ago during a cute scene (I'm currently rethinking the whole not going to bed today scheme because I just spelled that "seen" and had to correct it.) from Letters to Juliet. (Edit: I just realized that that's a movie, and I'm talking about television in this post. The principle still applies, though, so I'll leave it in.) These example are kind of tame, but I know I've done much weirder that I just can't remember.

Honestly, though, is it that strange to talk to the television or get emotional over the fictional events that occur on it? Yes, it probably is. But, most of us  many of us some of us hopefully someone other than me will admit to having strange audible reactions to a television show. You know what? I think it's okay as long as we make sure that they stay far away from Youtube.

Just a Note

Hey everyone. I just wanted to let all of my amazing readers know that I'm going on a short hiatus. I only have a couple weeks left of school, and there's a lot of studying and schoolwork that I'm going to have to finish by then. So, in the interest of my grades, I'm not going to post anymore until I'm done with this semester. I should have a lot more free time then and will be able to post more often.

Thursday Night TV aka The Night That I Stayed Up Until 3-Something In the Morning Because Too Many Good Shows Air on Thurdays and I'm Impatient

Geeze Louise! That's probably the longest title I've used so far on this blog, and I'm not sure why I used it because now I don't have much to talk about in the intro. So, yeah, like the title says, I stupidly stayed up watching all my Thursday shows when I had an eight o'clock class the next morning. I watched a total of five shows: two CWs and three NBCs. Sad? Maybe. True? Yes. Worth it? Oh yeah. Because I got from 3-4 hours of sleep last night and because whoever's reading this most likely won't care one iota, I'm not going to write up full reviews of any of these shows. However, most of the shows were awesome, and I wanted to touch on them. So, it's mini review time. They may not be as good as other mini things like mini burgers, but they're still pretty awesome. What's that? My lack of sleep is showing? I guess that means I should get onto the reviews. Not that it matters, but they're ordered by the order in which I watched them. Also, be warned. There are spoilers ahoy up in this post.

The Vampire Diaries
I know all-caps are annoying and kanye-esque so I'll resist the urge to use them. But pretend that they are there to get the full-effect of my opinion because they encapsulate my feelings. Also, don't judge me if I sound like a teenybopper. This is a CW show, so I'm allowed to embrace my inner teenybopper. Anyway, this episode was so so so so awesome. Jenna finally found out about the vampires, and now, maybe she won't be so extraneous to the plot/useless/inviting vampires in/ect. Stefan was so awesome and supportive in this episode. Damon kind of sucked and had a lot of feelings. Stefan, Elena, Elijah, & co. are trying to come up with a plan that doesn't involve Bonnie dying, and Damon's off sulking in the corner. I'm glad that they're finally addressing how awful he's being though, so props for that. What else? Oh yeah, apparently there's no sun and moon curse. Hahaha. Sometimes a twist like that would anger me, but I kind of love the writers for making all of that stuff up. But, apparently Klaus is a werepire?!?!? What? It's a little bit crazy, but I think I like that twist. Also, Elijah is his brother. What? And he's also totally awesome. I liked Elijah okayish the last time around, but he totally won me over in this episode. Okay, I better stop writing because I feel like your opinion of me is dropping with each additional word, and this is supposed to be "mini."

Nikita
Nikita wasn't quite as thrilling as TVD, but it was still a pretty solid episode. I like the Michael, Nikita, and Alex combo quite a bit. I know that a common criticism of recent episodes is that there's been too much focus on Alex. I definitely think that the show could use some more focus on Nikita, but honestly, it hasn't bugged me too much. I like both Nikita and Alex, and so I enjoy watching whichever one the show runners choose to show me. Jaden, on the other hand, could use less screen time. She's annoying, and I would have shed any tears if she'd died in the explosion. Her little turncoat move at the end just proved that I'm justified in not liking her.

Parks and Recreation
I finally got caught up to Parks and Recreation last weak (in a shamefully short amount of time, might I add), and I love this show! Amy Poehler is the reason I started watching, but the whole cast is great. From Andy's favorite food to Tom's lingo, this episode was chock-full of amazingly hilarious moments. Also, the moment between Leslie and Ben in front of the mural was kind of adorable. The whole episode worked really well, and I was really impressed with it.




Community 

Community was pretty brilliant this week. I typically dread flashback episodes, but using fresh material for the flashbacks was an amazing idea. My favorite parts of the episode were the Jeff/Annie and Pierce/Abed montages featuring one of my favorite songs, "Gravity" by Sara Bareilles. In case you didn't know (I read this online before watching the episode), these videos were a spoof of a Jeff/Annie fanvideo posted on Youtube. But, honestly, the whole episode was pretty ace.




The Office 
For some reason, this episode of the office didn't click with me (for the most part, but we'll get to that in second). The jokes weren't that funny to me, and the storyline was just kind of blah. However, what did work about this episode was a nostalgia factor. This was Michael Scott's second-to-last episode, and for that, it was worth watching. It was touching to see all of the employees embracing the Dundies that they had earlier mocked. And the final song was unbelievable sweet. It may have even brought a couple of tears to my eyes. I guess it's a warm up for next week when I will most likely be bawling my eyes out (figuratively, of course because literally that would be disgusting).

Glee: "A Night of Neglect" aka the Writers Neglected to Write Anything Interesting

For the latest episode of the show I love to hate on but just can't quit, I thought I would do a recap. Recaps are more fun when you can make fun of show because otherwise, you're just retelling what happened. If you neglected to watch Glee, you didn't miss much. It was a pretty sucky and forgettable episode. The only thing that really progressed the plot was that the Glee club got money to travel for their next competition, and we hopefully saw the end of Gwyneth Paltrow's character. And really, they'd had money from the Cheerio's budget (I think) prior to this episode. So, really the plot didn't progress much at all.

The episode started off with (shocker) the Glee club needing money again. Apparently the money they would have received from the Cheerios budget (the Cheerios were disbanded, right?), has been put in untouchable offshore accounts by Sue. I guess it's no surprise that Glee got rid of that money because otherwise, they'd have to think of a plot line that doesn't consist of New Directions raising money and being thwarted by Sue. To be honest, I'm just impressed that they remembered the Cheerios money plot line. Will (surprisingly not wearing a vest) gets super-pumped about selling $20,000 (then $20,250) worth of taffy. Also in the opening, we find out that Mike, Tina, Artie, and Brittany are in some kind of academic club which will most likely be forgotten about by the next episode. Also Will makes some crack about being surprised that Brittany's on the team, insinuating that she's dumb. As true as that may be, I don't see that as being a great thing for a teacher to say. Also, Sunshine from about a million episodes ago is on the opposing Braniac team.

Next up, Sue has a meeting with the director of Sunshine's glee club, Terri, and Sandy. Any guesses as to what the meeting is about? Because Glee is incapable of giving Sue any other storyline (except for those moments that she shows kindness/growth that's forgotten by the next episode) she has assembled this team to bring down the Glee club. The only notable thing about this meeting is that Sue makes a reference to the hilarious honey badger video on youtube. 

Will and Holly have a pizza date as his house. Thankfully, this part is brief because I think they're kind of gross couple. They're both so gross, inappropriate, and annoying.. He brings up his taffy plan, probably expecting Holly to admire his brilliance. Instead, she says it's stupid and suggests that they hold "A Night of Neglect." Will possibly loves this plan even more than his taffy plan. It's a good thing that Will is a Spanish teacher because he really has no financial sense. How in the world did he expect to make even a dent in the $20,250 with some concert? He explains the plan to the glee club (somehow believing it will being an annual event), and he's still not wearing a sweater vest!

More boring Sue scheming happens. It makes me sad that Sue's become so one-note, cartoonish, and repetitive. She used to be one of the best parts of the show, but now I get bored every time she's on screen.

Both Mercedes and Rachel, missing the point of the "Night of Neglect," decide do do songs by well-known artists. Sunshine offers to participate in their performance. Sunshine also misses the point of the show and sings a song about neglect rather than one by a neglected artist. I guess it's a little more understandable than Mercedes and Rachel because she didn't actually hear Will explain it. Rachel tries to point out that Sunshine may be trying to spy on them, but of course, everyone gangs up on her.

Lauren has some dumb conversation with Mercedes and tells her to be a ridiculous diva leading to a stupid plotline. Lauren really just needs to go. Confidence is not the same as being rude and pushy. She's just annoyingly rude. Same with Mercedes. She was so terribly divaish and annoying in this episode. It was much, much worse than Rachel. Yet, everyone's nice to her and terrible to Rachel who normally seems to have good intentions, despite her self-centeredness.

Then, there's a nice scene with Emma and Will about Emma's OCD problems. As much as I think Will is way too terrible for Emma, it was actually a sweet scene.

This episode is boring me, so I'll just quickly sum up the rest of it. Sunshine bails on the benefit. Karofsky (is that his name) makes fun of Blaine/Kurt (who appears to wear a hippo head broach) but is bested by Santana. Only a handful of people show up the benefit (despite the fact that the glee club's school performances usually get a good response from the crowd), most of them "hecklers." Tina, yet again, fails to get to sing a full song. Mike dances. Gwyneth Paltrow manages to get another solo. Mercedes sings an Aretha song, inspiring Sandy to donate the necessary money. And Will and Holly break up. The end to a boring episode. The most surprising thing about it was probably the lack of vests.

District 9

I'm a bit late to the game on this one. District 9 came out in 2009, but I just watched it on Netflix Streaming for the first time. I'm actually a bit surprised that it took me this long to watch it, because I'd heard so much hype for the movie. And I really have no excuses because it's been on streaming for a while. Anyway, I really liked it. It was enjoyable and intriguing. I'm not much of an expert in alien movies or science fiction movies, and so my opinion is coming from a novice of the genre. I'm not really sure how to go about sharing my opinions on the movie, because they're a little all over the place. So, how about this? (not that I'm really asking because by the time you read this I'll have done it anyway, but whatever) I'll share some adjectives to describe the movie, and then I'll go into a little more detail about each one: horrifying, complex, engaging, and realistic (I know, ha ha at me calling an alien movie realistic, but as I said, I'll explain.)

Oh, I guess I should go into the storyline a bit for those who haven't seen the movie. I'll try to be as spoiler-free as possible in this review because I feel that's probably the best way to go into this movie (even thought I had kind of been spoiled as to its plot). However, I can at least give you the setup as best as I can remember. I may be a little off, but I'm going to try and do this without looking anything up so there's that. Basically, the movie begins by explaining that twenty years ago or so, an alien ship came to a town in what I think was Africa. Somehow, these aliens got to earth, and they were put into this place full of shacks. Most people didn't like these aliens, and wouldn't let them shop in their stores, treated them badly, ect. So, now they want to move these aliens into some type of camp resembling a concentration camp. Our main character (whose name I can't remember and am really tempted to look up right now but I'm sticking to my non-looking-things-up goal) is a kind of nerdy looking guy, and he gets put in charge of this group who's trying to move these aliens into this new camp. In the midst of this, however, he get's sprayed with some kind of alien device. That's when things start getting interesting. And while I'm saying that in a tagline, trying-to-intrigue-you-kind of way, I also mean that it was literally the point when I got interested in the movie. The first 16 minutes or so was setting the movie up, and my impatient self considered turning the movie off. But, I'm glad I stuck with it because it was really interesting once the plot got going.

Photo Credit: Sony Pictures

Horrifying

District 9 was horrifying on both an emotional level and on a visual level. Visually, it was just really gross. There's a lot of gore, and I found myself cringing several times throughout the movie. To be honest though, I don't have the best tolerance to gore, so you'll have to take my opinion with a grain of salt. On an emotion level, it was horrifying too. One of the movie's main themes is the mistreatment, and that can be pretty hard to watch. Even if it's happening to alien creatures, it's appalling to watch someone get yelled at and treated like they're nothing. 

Complex

District 9 is pretty obviously trying to comment on the mistreatment of people and racism by showing the mistreatment of these aliens. However, the movie really made me think about questions of morality in the situations shown. Because, to be honest, if aliens came to earth, we might be right in being wary about them. The main alien shown and his son seemed pretty nice, but most of the aliens shown were kind of scary and tried to hurt people. It honestly might have been pretty stupid to just welcome the aliens right away. On the other hand, torturing them is not cool either. Plus, the storyline about the main human character lends itself to some morality questions. 

Engaging

One reason that District 9 worked for me is that I felt a strong connection to the characters. I think part of the reason that I felt a disconnect from the first little chunk of the movie was that I hadn't become invested in any of the characters yet. And to be honest, the main guy wasn't the most likable guy ever. But interestingly, I cared a lot about what happened to him. I became invested in his fate, and therefore, I was invested in the movie. Also, I became invested in the two main aliens. They were still very "alien-like," but there was almost a humanity to them. This engagement with the characters was probably one of the strongest aspects of the movie for me.

Realistic

When I use "realistic" here, I'm talking more about the style of the movie than its plot. Although the whole movie isn't done in this style, it's partially done as a mockumentary. This was a really interesting choice stylistically because it was cool to imagine this as a real event. They looked at the alien invasion from the perspective of "what if aliens really landed on earth?" Parts of the movie looked almost as if they could have come from a special on the History Channel. This style gave a uniqueness to the film, and made its horrifying moments all the more horrifying.

I could see some people not liking this movie, but I'd say it's worth a shot, especially if you have Netflix. And if you decide to watch it, I'd advise you to stick around until the main plot kicks in. District 9 is a bit weird, but it's interesting and different from a lot of things that I've seen.

Have you seen District 9? What did you think about it?