The state of the television sitcom is completely dismal and we all know it. Finding quality laughs on the airwaves is like trying to find a hot girl at my annual screening of the Star Wars Holiday Special. And as bad as that joke was, the jokes on sitcoms are even worse! For every Cheers or Seinfeld or first nine seasons of The Simpsons, there are dozens of total stink burritos. Some such shows succeed in spite of having no discernible merit (this means you, Friends) and others come and go without being noticed by anyone (Andy Richter had his own show?), yet they all have one thing in common: they suck. But there's no excuse for shitty sitcoms, and as evidence I give you a little British program called Black Adder. Black Adder's four seasons aired on the BBC throughout the 80s. Each season is set in a different historical era, taking the same basic central characters and transplanting them in new surroundings. While this may make it seem like something other than a typical sitcom, don't be fooled. Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder and Tony Robinson as Baldrick are right out of a TV Comedy 101 textbook; their relationship is ...

America, I just moved into a new apartment. And those of you who, like me, have packed up all the remnants of your past selves into boxes, you know that such a venture isn't complete without an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. What was it that got me? Old pictures? Faded poems? That stuffed animal I thought I threw away? No. It was the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Now, I'm not one of those faux-luddites who pretend to hate the newest versions of things. I love all the "next generation" video game consoles. But pride doth goeth before the fall, dear reader. It was perhaps my affinity for all the latest games that made the sweet simplicity and sheer replay value of the SNES all the more appealing. Long had I been sneaking around redundant, silent corners as Sam Fisher in the Splinter Cell series. I'd been trying to maneuver my way around awkwardly designed 3D environments and completing absurd tasks as "Solid Snake" in Metal Gear Solid. Yes, I've even spent much of my time the last few years controlling six men at once, taking out entire enemy embankments in Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon. And then there was this. This system... it boasted four ...

[rating: 2] When Simpsons creator Matt Groening appeared on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, he said of his new feature-length Simpsons film, “Homer falls in love with a pig, and then the rest just kind of wrote itself.” While it appeared to be nothing more than a joke at the time, I now realize that this statement could also serve as an effective one-sentence review of the film. Indeed, the film feels rushed but plodding, epic but simplistic. It had plenty of jokes, and even a little of that famous Simpsons heart--so rare in the age of Family Guy--but the most effective word I can think of to describe it is “thin.” The film opens with a concert on Lake Springfield in which Green Day, the band performing, attempts to speak to the town about the environment, and is harshly jeered. “But your lake is eating through our barge!” the lead singer shouts as their floating stage dissolves, and they are wholly engulfed in the acidic lake. I’ve seen many happily take this opening as a shot at preachy environmentalists, but in fact this film is, at its heart, one about environmental stewardship. Shortly after the barge incident, Lisa leads a hard-fought crusade the clean ...

We've already established that the HD DVD release of Star Trek is going to contain "enhancements" in the form of a lot of digital bells and whistles and there'll be no HD DVD set of the unmolested episodes the way we remember them. The original series DVDs have cost me enough money already (twenty dollars each for forty two-episode discs with no special features at all, then 100 bucks a pop for 3 complete-season boxed sets with numerous special features of varying quality), so if they think I'm buying that shit again, they can take a flying fuck at the moon. But I'm totally torn about the CGI enhancements, unable to decide whether it's a good or bad thing. I've seen a few episodes on TV where they've made their changes, and while part of me screams "Don't fuck with the tried and true!" the changes are not as odious as those made to Star Wars. Also, Star Wars consistently attracted new young fans just the way it was, making George Lucas' decision seem to be more of a case of showing off than an action with legitimate motivations. Star Trek, however, hasn't been quite as able to bring in the ...

Listen, dear reader. I know on this site we usually cover topics of such monumental importance as Lindsay Lohan's diseases or 40 year-old movies, but today I have something more basic, something more pure, to discuss. Today, I want to take you back to a kinder, gentler time--full of wonderment and simple pleasures. And that time was 10:30 last night, when I was walking through the supermarket. It was there that I saw something I had once thought to be gone forever... That's right: Vanilla Coke. I was so shocked, so awed, that they actually had to call an ambulance because I wouldn't get off the floor, which I was kissing in thanks. I told the paramedics I was fine, but they insisted on having me breathe some oxygen for a while, and then, before they left, the saints actually helped me carry my four cases of that sweet liquid out to my car. You see, Vanilla Coke isn't just some delightful hallmark of the 1950's soda fountain era to me (though it is that). It was a part of my youth as much as my father's. Coca-Cola first started mass producing its Vanilla-tinged nectar when I was a first-year high schooler in Brownsburg, ...

[rating: 5] Number twenty-five my fat, bepimpled ass! How can E.T. be at number twenty-five? Can you honestly think of twenty-four movies that are better than this? Of course not! Nobody can! E.T. is a top ten film for sure. What movie has touched more hearts and set more imaginations soaring? E.T. tops Steven Spielberg’s already impressive resume because it’s a movie that embraces you completely and draws you in, heart and mind. If you don’t cry when E.T. dies and have your hopes reborn when he comes back, only to cry all the more when he goes home with an “I’ll be right here,” then you are dead inside with a heart as black as coal and that’s all there is to it. The movie captures the spirit of both the child and the child inside, and it does it effortlessly, making it look as though getting an audience to invest emotionally in a rubber puppet is as easy as falling off a log. We all know what the movie’s about (and I just told you that E.T. dies, is resurrected and flies back into space in a giant Christmas tree ornament, so if you didn't know...oops!) and we all know ...