Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and Other Important News

Now if you are a regular reader of the good parts of this column, namely all the contributions from people other than me, you are probably still buzzing over the big news stories of the past week, and there is a chance that you missed out on a very important story while you were busy discussing the threat to Barack Obama's testicles, or the inactivity of John Mccain's testicles. This news story that I speak of will probably already be a well worn topic of discussion to those types who read the life section of the newspaper first. Naturally I don't fall into that category, since I read the sports section of the paper with my morning breakfast of razor blades, sulfuric acid, and napalm, but after I finish my exercise regimine of wrestling with a bunch of bears that I set on fire in my backyard, I do enjoy perusing the life section of my paper for the latest celebrity gossip, and home decorating tips. I should probably cut the suspense since the title of this blog already gives away the topic of this writing, and say that "You all should probably watch Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog". In fact I recommend that you watch other things on the internet too, but first let me sell you on the idea of donating 14 minutes to the good Doctor.

Firstly Doctor Horrible is unlike any internet show you have ever seen!!! It has relatively well known actors, like Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie Houser, and Harold and Kumar fame), and Nathan Fillion (I only really remember him in Firefly/Serenity, but he was awesome in that show/movie), and Joss Whedon is involved in some way, I don't know how exactly, but I'm going to assume he created it, wrote it, and hopefully directed it. However, the key selling point of this production is that "It's a musical with Supervillains". Now I bet you all are excited now, huh, and you should be, while the show does have a pretty cliched framing story, it makes up for it with good jokes, and catchy musical numbers, and cliches can be forgiven if they are as well executed as they are in this production. Overall I give this 37 Rabbit-man points which translates to 340 Element of Surprise points.

----UPDATE----

Well I just saw the ending of Dr. Horrible and you can take away all the stuff I said about cliches and forget about it. Man I was expecting an ending similar to the way every Jennifer Lopez movie seems to end (not that I have ever willing watched a Jennifer Lopez movie), but shit they pulled a fast one on me with that one. Good stuff all around, and there's just a hint of ambiguity to leave you guessing, and fuel debates on message boards. This whole thing seemed like one great big setup for something else, an origin story if you will, so I wouldn't be surprised if there was more of this to come (Especially since Dr. Horrible has kind of become a media darling). Not to say that there needs to be more. Oh well you people have like a day left to watch this for free on the internet so get to it. I did have one gripe, spoiler alert highlight to read, if you think you can handle it punk. Why did they show bad horse? it worked better when his appearance was a mystery.. Jeez. End Update

Now if you liked Dr. Horrible then I'm sure you'll love Time Warped a musical romp through time that represents some of the earlier work of Trey (South Park) Parker (Click here for part one, Click here for part two). It's kind of obvious from the South Park movie that this man has a gift for entertaining musicals, and the first episode of Time Warped helps to solidify his place as a pretty decent musical writer. Without spoiling too much I will say that Time Warped probably presents the best version of the Moses escapes from Egypt story that I have seen. Unfortunately the show was drastically changed in its second episode, and it really sucked. So don't watch the second episode, it starts around the middle of part two of the link up there FYI LOL BYOB.

While those are two examples of good musicals I would like to take the time to address musicals that aren't good, namely musicals that don't have original songs, but force their stars to lip sync to well known pop songs. Everybody knows these things are bad, hell Viva Laughlin was canceled after one episode, but somehow Hollywood keeps shoveling this crap in our collective plate. I can see why executives would place Mama Mia, the latest example of this genre, opposite the Dark Knight this weekend at the movie theaters, they are obviously hoping for a repeat of the Devil Wears Prada (Which was released opposite Superman Returns, and stole business from that movie), but why was this movie ever greenlit? I vow to never ever learn more about this movie than I learned from staring at Mamma Mia's poster for about 15 minutes, and watching one trailer for the movie before Wanted, but it seems to me that the whole conflict of Mia is moot (for those of you not in the know the plot goes like this: some girl is about to get married, and she finds out that her mom was a huge whore, along the level of cartman's mom, and she doesn't know who her father is. Apparently this is a problem because she wants her dad to give her away at her wedding, even though the fact that she doesn't know who her dad is means that he probably doesn't care enough about her to want to be involved in her life anyway. Somehow the field of candidates for her father is narrowed down to three, and the fact that she could get a paternity test is either dismissed or not brought up at all, so the girl has to figure out who her dad is by singing ABBA songs.) since it is easy to tell who fathered a child, Jerry Springer does it all the time. Oh well I guess the moral to the story is to watch the Dark Knight this weekend, and if you watch Mamma Mia instead I will come to your house and cut you.