Just to reassure you: No, this is not an April Fools Day prank.

No joke. I’m actually doing this.

This is me finally making good on a promise I made — oh, I don’t know — about 15 times over the past 36 months.

Three years. Yes, it’s been three years since I posted my last reviews for season four of Star Trek: The Next Generation Inertia can be a real bitch, let me tell you. Granted, I partially put this stuff on hold because I was reviewing BSG and later Caprica, but my attempts to get back to this failed time and time again, and before I knew it, one, two, three entire years had gone by.

Is there still anyone out here? Anyone who believed that I would finally actually do this instead of offering up my promise of “I’ll get back to it eventually”? (Read more…)

You can call this post what it is — a snarky, sight-unseen prejudgment of something that just looks stupid on its face.

Amanda Seyfried is going to grandmother’s house. (Warner Bros. photo)

I’m talking about the making of “Red Riding Hood” into a Hollywood “thriller” starring Amanda Seyfried in the title role, and I think involving a werewolf.

Yes.

With any luck, the werewolf, if there is one (and I don’t know that there is; I did NOT consult the Google on the Internets for a plot description), will be played by Taylor Whatshisface, in a crossover appearance from the Twilight franchise.

(And speaking of Twilight, why did they have to go and split the last book into two movies which I’ll now have to sit through with my wife? Greedy Hollywood bastards!) (Read more…)

As previously alluded to, I will not be individually reviewing the final nine episodes of Caprica as I did the first eight plus the pilot, but I figured I would at least offer up some belated closing thoughts of the defunct Battlestar Galactica prequel, whose final episodes showed that this indeed could’ve been a compelling series. Based on how the first and only season wrapped up, I’d have been back to see more, had it been renewed.

Caprica’s mob storyline reaches a turning point — one of several story strands that played out in satisfying fashion.

The single-season, 17-episode run of Caprica (not counting the pilot movie, which would make for a total of 19 hourlong episodes), to me plays like a compelling argument for the 12- or 13-episode run typical of many cable dramas. In this day and age, with so many choices out there, with so many mediums of content consumption available to audiences and with their attention divided and their attention spans shortened, does it really make sense to do a TV series — and even more so, a TV serial — that spans 20 or 22 episodes?

Granted, you could make the argument that season one of Caprica could really be called two seasons with two arcs, but that’s not what Syfy or its creators called it — and more to the point, the stories being told here just didn’t warrant as many hours as were devoted to them. (Read more…)

Since I’ve got nothing else right now, let’s talk a little bit about the Monday Night Football announcing team, shall we?

Ron Jaworsky, Mike Tirico, and Jon Gruden. That’s one HECK of a football announcing lineup! (ESPN)

I generally like the Monday Night Football booth lineup. Mike Tirico is a knowledgeable and excitable play-by-play guy. Ron Jaworski brings his quarterback credentials to the mix and is capable of being critical, especially of offenses (as is typical of former QBs turned color commentators). And Jon Gruden brings in the coach’s perspective. The three work well together and they have good voices that sound solid and football-y.

(Yes, football-y is officially an adjective for describing football voices. Bryant Gumbel doing play-by-play on NFL Network a couple years ago, on the other hand: not football-y at all. Terrible, in fact.) (Read more…)

An FDA proposal set to be put into effect in 2011 will apparently require tobacco companies to put large new warnings on their products. These warnings will take up a full 50 percent of the packaging on a pack of cigarettes, according to the proposal on the FDA website.

Follow this link to see some of the proposed warning labels, complete with illustrations.

Now, I know that smoking and the negative health effects related to it are not a laughing matter.

Except in this case. (Read more…)

The thing I like about Conan O’Brien is that he seems like a guy who wants to do good comedy and at the same time wants to be himself. His best quality is that he is genuine. His jokes don’t always land or feel polished (indeed, they can be incredibly stupid and/or bizarre), but that’s part of his charm. He’s got that shaggy-dog appeal. Take, for example, his Show Zero promo for his new TBS show Conan (premiering Monday), which features grade-Z production values and off-the-cuff silliness.

Here’s a guy having fun and just trying to do something different. Does this work as a web-based “minisode” or a gag? Well, kind of, I guess. I admire the spirit even more than the end result itself. Conan puts himself out there, because he wants to entertain. (Read more…)

Hello, fans of Jammer’s Blog & Reviews. Hopefully there are still some of you left out there. Long hiatuses can be bad for retaining your audience. One can at least partially ascribe the rating woes of Caprica to that reason after a mid-season break of some six-plus months. (Not to mention the very long time between the initial pilot movie’s release on DVD to when the series premiered in the first place. Syfy’s baffling scheduling of BSG and Caprica prolonged air dates at the expense of rational sense.)

So it was announced today that Caprica has been canceled by Syfy. (Read more…)

I’ve not set aside much time to write lately. I’ve just been so busy this summer, and my approaching wedding is in three weeks. (Hell, this may very well be my final blog post as a single man.)

But I thought I would share this, since it would be quick to post and is just so absolutely insane.

After a week in which a publicity-starved d-bag held the American news cycle hostage (which is so easily distracted by crazy yahoos for the sake of entertainment value and shallow “debate” based on polarizing controversy — see this post for a perfect reading of the situation) because he threatened to set a bunch of Korans ablaze, the video below shouldn’t surprise me one bit. (Read more…)

Warning: Major spoilers follow for various swaths of “Lost” in general, and the series finale in particular. I urge you NOT to read this review if you have (1) not watched “Lost,” (2) remained spoiler-free on “Lost” and (3) ever intend to watch it (which I highly recommend).

Jack gets beaten and battered in the final episode of Lost.

As I’ve said before, the true genius of Lost was that it could be so many things to so many people. Because of its vast array of diverse characters and settings (in its various flashbacks, flash-forwards, and this season’s “flash-sideways”), it could do so many things as a narrative universe — episodic, serialized, weaving in and out and connecting characters in Short Cuts-like ways.

And because all of these characters were stranded together on a mysterious island with bizarre electromagnetic properties, a mysterious smoke monster, and apparently no hope of rescue, there were so many stories to be told, and plenty of conflicts to be had along the way. Also, lots of teamwork and camaraderie. It was a community of necessity. Sometimes dysfunctional. Sometimes working well together. Often pitted against outside forces (like the button, or the Others, or a band of Widmore’s mercenaries). And sometimes pitted against one another. (Read more…)

I do my best not to bring the divisiveness of politics onto this blog, but this is just too nutjob-crazy (*) to ignore. And hilarious.

* Of course, nutjob-crazy is probably in reality a misnomer. These things are probably so cynically calculated as to appear nutjob-crazy simply for the purposes of going viral and being posted on a blog that otherwise would never have even heard of Rick Barber. So, I suppose: Rick Barber 1, Jammer 0.

This is almost as hilarious as that instant-classic Demon Sheep spot. Not quite, though, because honestly nothing could ever be that awesome.

Gather. Your. Armies. [TM] And remember: No amount of excessive, over-the-top hyperbolic bluster is ever too much!