Chuck x2

Good Luck Chuck

I have no interest in seeing Good Luck Chuck, but I was interested in seeing how it would do at the box office over the weekend compared to Shoot 'Em Up (which I have no interest in seeing other), which was released a few weeks ago, based on their very different advertising strategies. I had never heard of Shoot 'Em Up a week before it was released, and then the whole week prior to its release it seemed like every other commercial on TV was for it. The blitz didn't work too well, as during its opening weekend of September 7-9 it finished in 4th place and took in about $5.7 million. In contrast, it seems like there were a small but regular number of ads on TV for Good Luck Chuck over the last 2-3 months. Over its opening weekend September 21-23 Good Luck Chuck finished in 2nd place and took in $13.7 million. From the reviews, both of these are pretty bad movies, so I'm guessing that had something to do with the creative advertising techniques for them. I wonder how much, if any, of the difference in their opening weekend performance is because of the different advertising methods, and how this might affect future advertising. I guess I should be thankful that they haven't resorted to advertising crappy movies with the same despicable advertising technique used for that Head On thing, which I suppose is used because the stupid thing doesn't work at all (and even if in some parallel universe it did work, I think everyone there should boycott it on principle, to not reward the sleazy advertising used to sell it).

Chuck

I had seen some ads for this but I wasn't going to watch it until during a rerun of The Office last week there was a commercial for it and I heard what I thought was Adam Baldwin's voice. I was cleaning dishes at the time so I didn't see if it was him or not, but after I got done I looked it up on IMDb and sure enough it was him. Since the show had the guy who brought to life one of the funniest characters in the history of television, Jayne Cobb on Firefly, how could I not check this show out? So I set my VCR to record it, which ended up being a good thing since I forgot about it until 5 minutes or so after it started. So I watched the rest of the show, slightly confused. After it was over I watched the first 5 minutes and of course that helped everything make sense. Still, I thought the show was mediocre overall. The basic premise was pretty far-fetched (that's not how human memory works), and for a show about tech geeks (sorry, nerds) there seemed to be a lot of questionable computer things. For example, how does a virus destroy a computer? Even a really nasty rootkit wouldn't survive a hard drive wipe, would it? The best I could think of is if the virus somehow told the PSU that the mother board, CPU & hard drive(s) weren't getting enough power and when it put out more juice everything was fried. And how does a computer suffer complete destruction when it falls a few feet onto the ground, including a hard drive being in multiple pieces? I tried to put these quibbles aside and just enjoy the show, but it just wasn't that good. Adam Baldwin's character was not funny at all, and there were only a few laughs during the whole show even though from what little I knew about it, I thought it was supposed to be a comedy. It wasn't all bad though, as there were some funny parts in the beginning in the store. And then my favorite part was near the end show when Chuck diffused the bomb by searching for porn to kill the computer. I'm embarrassed I didn't see that coming, but I ended up laughing a lot harder than I would have if I had. Perhaps the overall lack of humor was because they had to setup all the plot stuff, so I think I'll give the show one more chance next week to see if they can bring the funny. Hopefully it turns out to be worth watching, but if not (and even if it does, for that matter), it completely sucks to see all the talented actors who were on Firefly, easily one of the best shows of all-time, appear in significantly lower quality shows (e.g., Nathan Fillion on Drive, Gina Torres on Standoff), so many of which fail, and they just keep coming up with new show ideas, most of which completely suck, all the while the Firefly 'verse is just waiting to be explored. I really hope Fox decides to give it another shot (or another network when Fox's TV rights expire at the end of the year), especially now that Kevin Reilly is there. He had a large part in saving The Office from cancellation after Season 1, and maybe if he'd been at Fox when they cancelled Firefly in 2002 and Futurama in 2003 (and then gone on to NBC to save The Office), maybe they'd both still be on the air.