Scrantonicity no. 50: “Beach Games”

The Pre-Game Show

With only one episode of Gilmore Girls left, I’ll be replacing the Gilmore Sounding Board with a new feature dedicated to NBC’s The Office, which is far-and-away my favorite show on television right now.

First things first, I need to figure out what to call it. Here are some early thoughts on the matter:

Office Talk

Dunder-Mifflin Water Cooler

Dunder-Mumblin’

Office Suggestion Box

The Money Beet (suggested by Bob!)

Dunderballin’ (also suggested by Bob)

Please feel free to weigh in on which ones you like the most, or make suggestions of your own.

Update

I think we have a winner! Bob suggested Scrantonicity, which is the name of Kevin’s Police cover band in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I think that’s what it’s going to be. Thoughts? Feelings? I’ll keep voting/suggesting open for the time being as I tiptoe through my trial run here.

Anyway, for each episode I’ll award Dundies for best dialogue, best character moments, etc.

Tonight’s SUPER-SIZED episode of The Office — “Beach Games” — airs from 8:40 to 9:20 on NBC, who describes it thusly:

Michael is being considered for a position in corporate and has to recommend his replacement, but while the group expects a fun outing at Lake Scranton, Michael has planned a day of “Survivor”-like competitions to find his successor. Meanwhile, Pam is not asked to join in any of the activities and is forced to watch Jim and Karen have fun together. Directed by Harold Ramis.

Harold Ramis, of course, was one of the Ghostbusters, and has directed many episodes of The Office in the past.

The plot sounds hilarious; I can’t wait to see what kinds of competitions Michael designs, or how all of this plays out. And will Pam finally take charge of her feelings for Jim, who still thinks she doesn’t want him? What’s going to happen between Karen and Jim? With only one episode left this season after tonight’s, anything can happen. I mean, think about how much happened in just the last few seconds of last season’s finale, “Casino Night.” Talk about having to spend your whole summer in turmoil.

Anyway, there’s a lot more to come, Office fans! Thanks for joining me for the maiden voyage of this latest feature, and I’ll add the review when I can.

The Review

You tell ’em, Pam! It felt so good to see Pam finally stand up for herself. And that’s all I’ve got to say at the moment, unfortunately, and I probably won’t have time to talk about this one or hand out Dundies until Monday.

I will go ahead and predict that next week, when Michael and Jim and Karen interview for the same position in corporate, Karen will get the job and that’ll be the end of Jim and Karen.

(And once again, Rashida Jones will be missed. Though last night my friend Melissa realized that if I married Rashida Jones, my father-in-law would be Quincy Jones, and the wedding song could be a “We Are the World” reunion, though Melissa said she wants to do the Cyndi Lauper part, so, sorry, Cyndi. And if Quincy Jones was my father-in-law, I could go around saying, “Shades of Quincy,” like that secretary GOB had in the “¡Amigos!” episode of Arrested Development, who claimed to have had a relationship with Quincy Jones. “From now on, we’re going to use just the big printer.”)

More soon.

Tim Roth joins Ed Norton and Liv Tyler in The Incredible Hulk!

YES!

Variety reports that Tim Roth has joined the cast of The Incredible Hulk, which is going to be an entirely different take on the character than the convoluted, complicated and generally unpleasant mess of a movie we got from Ang Lee in 2003.

This revamp — from Transporter director Louis Letterier — will take things back to the roots of the early comics and the man-on-the-run scenario from the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno television series.

Awesome.

Every new cast announcement makes me even more excited about this. We’ve already got Ed Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner and lovely Liv Tyler as Betty Ross.

Roth is set to play Emil Blonsky, a KGB agent who attempts to purposefully recreate the same gamma ray accident that caused Banner to become the Hulk. Blonksy succeeds … kind of. He turns himself into a monstrous abomination called — are you ready for it? — The Abomination, who’s got more way more gamma power pumping through his veins than Banner’s Hulk. Unfortunately for Blonksy, however, he’s unable to revert back to human form the way Banner can and therefore blames Banner (however unfairly) for his condition.

This is pretty exciting, because it means that Banner will be on the run not only from the military but also from a monster who’s even more powerful than his own.

All we need to know now is who’s going to play Betty’s father, General “Thunderbolt” Ross, who’s leading the military’s efforts to bring in the Hulk. Sam Elliott played him in Ang Lee’s version, and it’s going to be really hard to find somebody better than Elliott to play the part in the restart. We’ll see what happens.

Previous Hulk coverage:

Liv Tyler joins Ed Norton in The Incredible Hulk!

Ed Norton to make green for being green

Movie Review: Hulk

Interviews: Bill Bixby remembered

Share your Mountain Dew and nachos with The Incredible Hulk — because you wouldn’t like him when he’s angry (or hungry) — at the theater near you on June 13, 2008!

Lucas insults Spidey, promises two more Star Wars flicks?

One of the first things I remember is my parents taking me to see Star Wars at the Georgetown Drive-in. I’m still as big a Star Wars nerd as I ever was, and The Empire Strikes Back is probably in my top five of all time. Between those original Star Wars movies and the Indiana Jones flicks (which he produced), I owe a massive chunk of my childhood happiness to Mr. George Lucas.

These days I tend to give him a pretty hard time, because I thought the Star Wars prequel trilogy was flat, soulless and mostly ridiculous. (Ewan McGregor’s Obi-Wan Kenobi was about the only thing worth the price of admission for me.) And then there’s his arrogance about what he thinks makes a good story, even though it seems to me that he’s tragically out of touch with the sense of wonder that once made his work so great.

Frank Darabont, whose Indiana Jones IV script (that director Steven Spielberg loved and wanted to make) got vetoed by Lucas, talks a little about how stubborn Lucas has gotten in this interview with MTV.

Moving on.

Lucas talked to a Fox News entertainment reporter on Tuesday night, and the resulting article makes about as much sense as you’d expect from a conversation between the creator of Jar Jar Binks and the “news” network that operates with the journalistic integrity of Snidely Whiplash.

In the article, Lucas says this of Spider-Man 3: “It’s silly. It’s a silly movie. There just isn’t much there. Once you take it all apart, there’s not much story, is there?”

While I agree that Spider-Man 3 is mostly garbage, I think such a comment is spectacularly hilarious (and more than a little hypocritical) coming from Lucas, who wrote and directed the Star Wars prequels with the general pizazz of a soggy old french fry. (I never thought it would be Lucas himself who’d introduce fart jokes into that long ago galaxy far, far away, but hey, whatever floats your boat.)

Later, the writer of the piece says, “Lucas tells me he will make two more live-action films based in the Star Wars era.”

Lucas adds, “But they won’t have members of the Skywalker family as characters. They will be other people of that milieu.”

Lucas also reportedly — though there’s no exact quote — told Fox’s genius reporter that the movies will “probably be an hour long each” and that they might debut on television.

An hour long? Does that even count as a movie?

I’m sensing a disturbance in the Force, but there it is, kids.

Lucas does lots of smiling and winking in the “interview” and also mentions that Sean Connery’s character is in the Indy IV script, even though Connery has yet to sign on. This worries me, because I’m afraid Lucas will try to replace him with a computerized Connery or some kind of Jones Jones Binks if he can’t get the real thing.

Though I’ll always be grateful to Lucas for creating the characters and movies that sparked my imagination as a kid, I can’t help but think he’s maybe lost his marbles.