Tag: SYTYCD

So You Think You Can Dance Top 20 Announcement

On June 8, 2007

I’m pretty happy with the top twenty dancers chosen on So You Think You Can Dance last night. My only question is what happened to the girl who was injured during Vegas week last year and was promised that she could re-enter the competition during Vegas week this year? Didn’t see her, no mention of her at all. That was disconcerting.

After the cut, the list of the top twenty and videos of their auditions, if we saw their auditions. Oh, and I put down what each of their specialties is, but I need to mention that I’m not a dancer and am not that familiar with different dance styles…I can’t tell the difference between contemporary and lyrical, for example, and sometimes ballet dancers look an awful lot like contemporary dancers to me on the show. Also, hip-hop dancers throw all sorts of things in there, so I’m not differentiating between b-boying, b-girling, breaking, popping, locking, you name it. Plus, I’m not getting into jazz, pop, etc. So my three specialty categories are ballroom, contemporary, and hip-hop. If you can differentiate them better, let me know, and I’ll update to be more precise. edit – dance styles now more precise, since Fox finally put up contestant pages at the website.

Summer TV

By Jandy

On May 25, 2007

In Television

So, American Idol is over (congratulations, Jordin!!), and so are almost all the other shows for the 2006-2007 season. (I have a season finale recap post ready to go up as soon as House airs…oh, and as soon as I actually watch the Lost finale.) What are we going to do over the summer? Well, now that I’ve been converted into a ~~mindless~~ ~~sheep~~ reality TV viewer, I’ll tell you what I’m going to be watching.

So You Think You Can Dance started up on Thursday to fill the performance show gap left by American Idol. I enjoyed this show last summer at least as much as I enjoyed American Idol, even if my level of obsession didn’t quite reach as high. This will be SYTYCD‘s third season, and after the first audition show, there are already two or three people to watch. Of course, I neglected to take notes so I can’t tell you who they are. Ah well. (And this is a good time to state that I will not be live-blogging SYTYCD like I did AI. I enjoyed doing that, but it ended up taking over the blog a lot more than I intended it to.) Anyway, getting to see all the different types of dancers take on different types of dance from ballroom to contemporary to hip-hop is incredibly fun, and I can’t wait for the competition to start. Although the auditions are also fun and tend to be not quite so mean-spirited as Idol‘s can be. So, yeah. Y’all should watch So You Think You Can Dance on Fox, Wednesdays at 7pm (results show Thursday at 8pm).

On the Lot is a new show seeking to find undiscovered filmmakers. It’s produced by big names Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg, and the two episodes that have aired so far are very encouraging. They chose some fifty filmmakers via a tape submission process last year, and right now judges Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia in Star Wars, also a fiction writer), Garry Marshall (writer-director of Pretty Woman and others), and Brett Ratner (director of X-Men and others) are narrowing the contestants down to eighteen, who will then make short films every week and be voted on or off the show by the American public. The first round of eliminations was the ability to pitch a film based around a given set-up, while the second one put the filmmakers in groups of three to make a 2 1/2 minute short in 24 hours. Impressively for Fox, they’ve put all the short films up at The Lot.com. (In fact, I just noticed they’ve also put up full episodes. Niiiice.) I haven’t watched all the films yet, but the three or four they showed during the episode were quite impressive. I’m really looking forward to see what these filmmakers do throughout the rest of the series, because it seems like a very talented group of people. This one is on Fox on Mondays and Tuesdays at 7pm.

Hell’s Kitchen…yeah, Becky has gotten me to promise to watch this, in exchange for her watching SYTYCD. ;) I’ve seen a few episodes before, but never gotten into it. Maybe this will be the year? It starts on June 4th, Mondays at 8pm, also on Fox.

Project Runway…whenever it starts. I think several people who read my blog already watch this, but I found myself inexplicably fascinated by the show. I’m not a fashion-type person, so I never thought I would like a reality show about competing wannabe fashion designers, but I happened to catch an episode when I was flipping channels one day last year, and was completely hooked. Addictive, these things are. (But don’t get me started on the use of the word “auf,” which makes no sense on a number of levels.)

So that’s my summer. Like I said, I’m not going to blog these while watching every week like I did American Idol, but I’ll probably throw some comments out there every now and then.

Randomosity

By Jandy

On July 3, 2006

In Personal, Television

Warning: This post is going to be random. I feel like writing, because I haven’t for a while, but I really don’t have anything substantial to say. End of disclaimer.

Back from Florida. And I didn’t get a sunburn this year! Maybe the first time ever. My coworker has been teasing me for weeks about using sunscreen, so there was no way I was going to come home burned. Granted, I’m not hugely tanned, either, but then I don’t tan well. I got a little, so I’m happy.

Back to work. Well, since I’m leaving in a month (!), my main responsibility right now is training someone else to do my job. Since I’ve been working with her for like three weeks now, and my job isn’t hard, she’s largely got it and is doing it. So, I’m filling time catching up some requests from other banks, stuff like that. It’s just sort of weird, not doing the the work that I’ve been doing since I started.

And tomorrow, off. But what the heck is going on with Fair St. Louis this year? No airshow? NO FREAKIN’ AIRSHOW? The hell? We go to the fair EVERY YEAR to get a funnel cake, see the air shows, and watch the fireworks. And I was especially looking forward to it because I won’t be here for the St. Louis County Fair and Air Show this September. Grumble. I’m boycotting Fair St. Louis.

So, with my long-proclaimed disdain for reality shows, guess what my summer TV lineup looks like? So You Think You Can Dance, Treasure Hunters, America’s Got Talent, and reruns of Who’s Line Is It Anyway? and What Not to Wear (the BBC versions, natch). Heh. But I can’t help it if TV stations don’t run real shows in the summer, can I? I suppose I could concentrate on catching up on Gilmore Girls so I can watch the new season this fall…I’m only five seasons behind. I even DVR’d Tuesday Night Book Club, but I watched the first ten minutes and deleted it. It was crap. SYTYCD, though, is not quite up to American Idol-level interest, but it’s getting close. I don’t know that much about dancing, and I have trouble enjoying contemporary dance because it just looks dumb to me, but the ballroom stuff and the hip-hop stuff is great fun to watch.

I’ve noticed something about me and hip-hop (/rap/r&b). I don’t like listening to it. Can hardly stand it sometimes. But I really like some of the hip-hop-style dancing. And I also often find that I like rap songs when they’re used in movies and commercials and stuff like that. Here’s my new theory. Rap is harsh and feels like it’s born from pain…like krump, it’s a lashing out in frustration, in anger. It feels heavy and intense. So when it’s put in a context like that, like the use of “Jesus Walks” in Jarhead, or “Lose Yourself” in 8 Mile, it fits. It raises the intensity. And later, when I hear the same song out of context, I’m reminded of that intensity, that unleashing of harsh feeling, and it’s meaningful in some way. But when I hear a rap song on the radio first, with no context, it feels overwrought and just seems noisy. I don’t know if that makes sense at all, but I’ve been thinking about why I do like rap songs that I first heard in a movie so much more than ones that I first heard on the radio.

Aw, no more grad students on Treasure Hunters. So, since they dropped out, does that mean there’s no elimination this round? Oh, no, the Browns are back. Okay. Hee…the Hanlons are worried. That’s because you suck only slightly less than the Browns! Heh. But I’m sad for the grad students. She tried so hard to keep going, and the other two worked so hard to carry her. Yay, more Ask.com product placement. Normally I’m not against product placement at all, but this show is a bit overboard. You know all the contestants are thinking, damn, I wish they’d let me use Google. And can I just say how disappointed I am in the Fogels? Come on, preacher man, quit being a jerk. Honestly. Okay, I’m done now. Nobody but me is watching this anyway.