Anything VII

[ianviking]

Ummm, far, far, far too short on the Ent scenes.

Could have cut out all the elf stuff and lost nothing, and put the ents back in. *sigh*

[iznardy]

Anybody watching Celebrity Mole? I haven't been too interested in these new game shows, but this one is fun to watch and hard to figure out. Doesn't seem too popular with the reviewers, though ("the worst of a bad bunch of midyear reality," according to the San Francisco Chronicle). But then, the Chronicle is the worst in a bad bunch of second rate newspapers.

Here's the cast of players: Stephen Baldwin ("Usual Suspects," "One Good Cop"); Corbin Bernsen ("L.A. Law," "Major League"); Michael Boatman ("Spin City,"); Kim Coles ("Living Single," "In Living Color"), supermodel Frederique, Kathy Griffin ("Suddenly Susan") and Erik von Detten ("Princess Diaries," "Dinotopia").

So far, I going with Stephen Baldwin as the mole, even though that seems to be the obvious choice. Kim Coles was eliminated in the first round. I've ruled out Erik von Detten and Frederique. Kathry Griffin and Corbin Bernsen are possiblities.

Funniest line so far, Corbin Bernsen. There was a contest were the players had to herd sheep into pens, and the best team was von Detten (6-foot-one blonde surfer boy) and Frederique (6-foot blonde Victoria Secrets model). Bernsen quipped "This is great. I love watching Hansel and Gretel chase sheep."

[ProfCrash]

Two Towers was good but I don't get why they added some of what they did. There are more then enough battles in the book that adding more battle scenes made no real sense. I agree. Get rid of the Elf scenes. I know that Liv is pretty but Arwen was not in the book. Kill the Arwen scene and you remove the need to toss Aragorn off a cliff (which was not in the book) and life is much better.

I am guessing that the last 1/3 of Two Towers will appear in Return of the King.

I have seen the 4 disc DVD. I listened to most of Peter Jacksons commentary on the movie and know some of what is going to be cut from Return of the King. If people want me to tell them I will. I am not sure if this counts as spoiler material so I figured I would ask first.

[ProfCrash]

Iz, I normally watch the Mole religiously. It is one of my favorite shows. I am not watching it right now, mainly because Anderson Cooper is no longer the host and he is part of what made it a great show.

My favorite was last year when one of the contestants ended up in a room for an evening with Tiny Bubbles being played, slow, the fast, then normal, the high pitched, with tiny bubbles being blown all over the room. I could not get Tiny Bubbles out of my head for a week. It was hilarious.

[AsIs]

I love the mole. So I watched it last night. I do miss Anderson Cooper, but find it funny that the new dude talks almost exactly the same way. It is kind of cute.

It is fun having the comedians on the show. Kathy Griffin and Corbin Berson crack me up. I can actually see Corbin being the Mole. HE is making such a issue of everyone else being suspisious that he could be trying to throw people off. He is being totally obnoxious.

My favorite part last night was when the sheep started jumping and hearing all the celebs scream.

Crash, go ahead and start a topic for the DVD and people can choose to be spoiled or not.

[iznardy]

Seen The Two Towers twice now and actually am much happier with it than with Fellowship, primarily because the characters of Pippin, Merry, and Sam get more play and are much truer to the characters in the book. Jackson definitely likes battle scenes. He added the troll fight in the first movie, the warg fight in the second. I guess he'll have a field day with the siege of Gondor and the battle at the Black Gate. We've been talking about the Arwen, Elrond, and Haldir scenes at SV, and pretty much agree that Jackson had to find a way to keep the elves in the plot. I thought it was okay. He did the same with Galadriel, having her tell part of the story. Not in the book, but plausible, as she is a ring-wearer, and can thus perceive much of what is going on. I had far more problems with Arwen in Fellowship than in Towers. If you go back and read the original, the Nazgul's pursuit of Frodo to the borders of Rivendell is FAR more dramatic in the book. The Nazgul stand at the River Bruin and hiss out "Come back, come back, to Mordor we will take you. The ring! The ring!" Frodo defies them saying "You shall have neither the ring nor me." Now that's a heck of a lot better than "Surrender the halfing, Sheia" that they use in the movie. If they were going to introduce Arwen, they should have at worked in all the original lines. Instead, Frodo is just a prop lying on the ground, and Arwen does all the talking. This is were I part company with Jackson. Why diminish a crucial scene for a main character to give some lines to a secondary one? The Two Towers is better because he avoided this.

[Nommy]

I don't watch ANY of those reality shows. I can always find a scifi something or another on. Also there are regular shows that I need to bring me back to the almost reqal world. Besides...the wife stole the clicker...grrrr. Has anyone seen the History Channels "Fantastic Voyage" show. It was the History of Scifi! Pretty interesting.

[iznardy]

AsIs:

There's an online E! article that says a fire in the studios may have damaged the Celeb Mole master tapes and they may not have anything past the first ep!

But . . . here's my argument for Baldwin the Mole. First, he's the heftiest guy on the show, yet when Ahmad asks people if they want to be part of the "Strong group" (and Bernsen and Detten immediately volunteer), Baldwin hangs back. So he becomes the first person to do the waterfall stunt, and, as the Mole, he can't lose. If he screws up and wins no money, he can blame the people operating the hoist. If he gets the money quick enough, he will block the people coming after him from breaking his time and winning more money.

Then, with the sheep-herding, he again hangs back and stands on the sidelines. So he's in place to either double the group's money and win exemption, or lose all the money they've accumulated. Again, its a win-win situation for the mole. If he succeeds, the group gets extra money, but he masks his identity. If he loses--well, it was a tough task.

Finally, Ahmad Rashad called attention to Baldwin right at the start off the plain, commenting on the flower he had stuck behind his ear. That might have been deliberate, so that everyone would remember the color of Baldwin's lai, because that was one of the questions handed out later on.

All speculation, but he seems more suspicious to me than any of the others.

[AsIs]

Iz, Baldwin is *too* obvious. btw, in previous Moles, several contestants delibertly tried to look Mole like to throw off other contestants. In fact, the first Mole, two guys screwed up so many competitions that in the end the Mole commented that she didn't have to screw up that many, they were doing too good a job!

Regarding the fire, my guess is that they wouldn't have aired the show if they didn't have other stuff they could show. Now the fire may account for the choppyness of some of the events.

[surfraw]

Great Thread