Author: News on Shuffle

Happy Birthday, Neil Patrick Harris

News on Shuffle would like to wish Neil Patrick Harris a very happy birthday. NPH has been in a number of our favorite things, including Dr Horrible, Glee, and How I Met Your Mother. He has also appeared on Broadway a few times, including the revival of Cabaret and the original cast of Assassins. My favorite of these however has to be Dr Horrible. It was a low-budget internet film that grew into a cult phenomena (at least among Whedon fans). The whole cast was great, but Harris was without a doubt my favorite.

Harris has been sharing his birthday wishes with his followers on Twitter for the past week now. The list is entertaining enough to be as much a present for us as it could be for him.

Things I Want for my Birthday (6/15), Chapter 1: an iPhone 4, magical automatons, original Banksy art, and 1 million followers.

Things I Want for my Birthday, Chapter 2: Haunted Mansion memorabilia, an actual Muppet, the superpower to eliminate oil from water, a pony.

Things I Want for my Birthday, Chapter 3: a working, authentic fortune teller booth, and Danielle Staub’s sex tape – but only on Blu-Ray.

Things I Want for my Birthday, Chapter 4: a saltwater aquarium, rad clothes from All Saints, wood burning brick pizza oven, and Disneyland.

What I Want for my Birthday, Chapter 4: Panasonic 152″ 3D plasma TV, Red Dead Redemption for Xbox, the ability to donate blood, and NPH.com. (Correction: Errr… That was Chapter 4.1.)

Things I Want for my Birthday, Chapter 5(ish): Giant labyrinth hedge maze, many lengthy massages, an Immunity Idol from Survivor, and socks. (Changed my mind. Instead of socks, I want a three bedroom loft in SoHo.)

Things I Want for my Birthday, Chapter 7: a goose that lays gold eggs for Easter, map to One-Eyed Willie’s treasure, lifetime supply of Tums

Things I Want for my Birthday, Chapter 8: A rolla bolla, VIP seats to the US Open, this skill: http://tiny.cc/77gtw and a spider monkey.

This morning he posted that CBS got him the Idol he asked for…

The CBS gang got me perhaps the coolest gift ever – the actual Immunity Idol from Survivor: China! Check it: http://yfrog.com/msar9lj

At least he got one thing off the list. As for my contribution, I’m going to try to get him that 1 million followers… either that or the spider monkey.

2010 Tony Awards – Part II

I was so excited about Memphis winning Best Musical last night that I neglected to mention some of my favorite moments from the rest of the show. I’m going to correct this error now.

First of all, I loved having Sean Hayes as a host. He was funny without being too crass and a real joy on stage. I actually considered going to see Promises, Promises based on his performance at the Tonys. Speaking of performances, they were all very good this year. I didn’t dig Fela! as much as other people seem to, but I think that was just personal preference. The rest all did a splendid job and picked great numbers to represent the best the show had to offer. Finally, Lea Michele and Matt Morrison both did a splendid job with their performances. I especially loved the choice of “Don’t Rain On My Parade” for Michele. I might just have that song stuck in my head for the next week, thanks to her. Oh, and when Morrison is done with Glee then he has to make his way for the Broadway lights (again). I would go see just about any show he was in. Broadway was made for him.

What were your favorite moments of this year’s Tony Awards? How many of the nominated shows had you actually seen? As always, feel free to sound of in the comments section below.

2010 Tony Awards

The Tony Awards have just wrapped up, and there is a ton of excitement here at camp News on Shuffle. If you missed all the live-tweeting we did, then you also missed our intense excitement for Memphis winning Best Musical (!!!). I have blogged about Memphis before and how much I love the show. I truly believe with all my heart that they deserve this win and am extremely proud of them. I wish them continued success in the future and that many, many more people will get to experience first-hand just how special a show it truly is.

There were plenty of other deserving shows that were nominated for awards tonight as well. Here is a list of all the winners:

Best Play – Red
Best Musical – Memphis
Best Book of a Musical – Joe DiPietro (Memphis)
Best Original Score – Music: David Bryan, Lyrics: Joe DiPietro & David Bryan (Memphis)
Best Revival of a Play – Fences
Best Revival of a Musical – La Cage aux Folles
Best Leading Actor in a Play – Denzel Washington (Fences)
Best Leading Actress in a Play – Viola Davis (Fences)
Best Leading Actor in a Musical – Douglas Hodge (La Cage aux Folles)
Best Leading Actress in a Musical – Catherine Zeta-Jones (A Little Night Music)
Best Featured Actor in a Play – Eddie Redmayne (Red)
Best Featured Actress in a Play – Scarlett Johansson (A View from the Bridge)
Best Featured Actor in a Musical – Levi Kreis (Million Dollar Quartet)
Best Featured Actress in a Musical – Katie Finneran (Promises, Promises)
Best Direction of a Play – Michael Grandage (Red)
Best Direction of a Musical – Terry Johnson (La Cage aux Folles)
Best Choreography – Bill T. Jones (Fela!)
Best Orchestrations – Daryl Waters & David Bryan (Memphis)
Best Scenic Design of a Play – Christopher Oram (Red)
Best Scenic Design of a Musical (Christine Jones (American Idiot)
Best Costume Design of a Play – Catherine Zuber (The Royal Family)
Best Costume Design of a Musical – Marina Draghici (Fela!)
Best Lighting Design of a Play – Neil Austin (Red)
Best Lighting Design of a Musical – Kevin Adams (American Idiot)
Best Sound Design of a Play – Adam Cork (Red)
Best Sound Design of a Musical – Robert Kaplowitz (Fela!)

Congrats to all of tonight’s winners and nominees. For all the nominees in each category, click on the title link above. And please, do yourself a favor… go see at least one of these shows. Theatre is a wonderful thing, but only if it is shared with the rest of the world. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of people messing around on a stage.

Doctor Who – The Hungry Earth

Sorry for the late recap, but I have class on Saturdays now. I know, lame, right? Anywho… without further ado, here is your recap of The Hungry Earth. *insert usual SPOILER ALERT here*

This week gave us part one of the two part episode which brought back the classic Who villains, the Silurians. If you were a fan of the original series, the last time you saw these guys was during Warriors of the Deep, which featured Peter Davison as The Doctor. Our Doctor’s adventure with them starts with a “big mining thing” and his natural curiosity that has gotten him into trouble countless other times before.

In terms of the Silurians, past encounters have been due to research or military bases that have awakened the creatures. This time it is a drilling project that does it.

While The Doctor and Amy is directly dealing with the danger, Rory gets sucked in to a problem that is connected with the Silurians underground activities (and we use the term “underground” in the literal sense here). There are bodies in the graveyard that have gone missing, and one of the townsfolk have asked Rory to figure out why.

Something I have noticed in watching both the current series and classic Who is that humans tend to be very foolish on the show and rarely ever trust The Doctor, even though he usually knows best how to handle the situation. There was more of this seen in this episode, especially from one person in particular. I love that the kid trusts The Doctor almost immediately but his Mom is skeptical throughout the show. It just goes to show how perceptive kids can be and how easily they except even the most impossible of scenarios. It’s a shame we tend to lose this as adults. Perhaps Doctor Who can be a lesson to try to keep the inner child from dying within us all.

Back to the matter hand though… Our bit of sunshine through the rain – when they are trying to get inside the one building but the door sticks:

Rory: Can’t you just sonic it?
Doctor: It doesn’t do wood.
Rory: That’s rubbish.
Doctor: Oy! Don’t dis the sonic!

Words to remember, folks. Words to remember…

It is worth noting that we don’t actually get our first glimpse of the Silurians until halfway point. That should have been our first clue this would be a two-parter (assuming you hadn’t read about it somewhere before). It also takes about this long for The Doctor to figure out who (or what) they are dealing with.

It is always fun watching The Doctor interact with different species, but it is especially true with the Silurians. They have been on Earth since before even the human race and have always fascinated The Doctor as a race. He also has always regretted not being able to negotiate a lasting peace between the two species. “Nobody dies today,” he says. Fans of the classic series remember the last encounter with the Silurians and you will know just how important it is to him to keep that promise.

Part 1 of our adventure ends thus: The captured Silurian says one of our group will kill her and ignite a war between the two species. Meanwhile, The Doctor and his TARDIS are dragged underground where the rest of the Silurian tribe is (which turns out is really an entire civilization). Oh, and Amy is in danger of being dissected by a member of said tribe.

Will The Doctor be able to keep his promise and keep Amy and the rest of them from dying? You’ll just have to tune in next week to find out.

World Cup News – June 13, 2010

Today’s World Cup action included the second match from Group C and both matches from Group D. There was tons of excitement including a red card in every match.

First up was Algeria-Slovenia. This was our Group C match-up. Final score for this one was 1-1, but I think part of that might have been the red card for Algeria.

Second was Serbia-Ghana. Serbia got a red card followed by a yellow, which lead to a penalty kick where Ghana scored. Final was 1-0 Ghana.

The last match for today was Germany-Australia. Germany dominated, scoring twice in each half to make the final score 4-0. Looks like they will be making it pretty far in this tournament.

Tomorrow’s matches include Netherlands-Denmark at 7:30 AM, Japan-Cameroon at 10 AM, and Italy-Paraguay at 2:30 PM. For all the scores and highlights, keep it tuned to News on Shuffle.

World Cup News – June 12, 2010

For those of you who don’t follow News on Shuffle on Twitter, the blog will be reporting as much of the World Cup as we can. This will sometimes include play-by-play action on the Twitter-feed, especially during USA matches. Here are today’s highlights:

The first match of the day was Korea-Greece. I unfortunately couldn’t watch this match, but the final score had Korea win 2-0. This was the first match from Group B

The second match from Group B was Argentina-Nigeria. I was able to follow this one partially online. Argentina had a strong start and was able to win 1-0.

The real big match for the day was England-USA. England scored within the first few minutes, but USA was able to get a lucky break just before the end of the first half to tie it up. The final score was 1-1. Both teams were in Group C.

The other match from Group C will be tomorrow between Algeria and Slovenia. That is the early match for the day (7:30 AM start time in the US). Other matches for tomorrow include Serbia-Ghana and Germany-Australia. Personally that last match is the one I am looking forward to most of all.

Have any comments on today’s World Cup action? Feel free to share your thoughts on any of today’s matches (or the tournament overall). Just remember – try to play nice. I would hate to feel the need to censor anyone for being inappropriate :/

Glee – Journey

Warning: some spoilers contained in this blog on Glee’s season finale.

The blog hasn’t covered Glee nearly as much as it would have liked, but you can blame that on the competing time-slot with Lost and an overabundance of schoolwork. The season finale was so overwhelmingly good that I couldn’t keep silent about just how it made me feel. It was an emotional roller coaster that had already completely wiped me out by the first quarter. When Quinn’s mom showed up just in time to hear their performance… done. And their Journey medley was basically a mash-up of all my favorites by them, with the show-stopping “Don’t Stop Believing” tacked on at the end for added emotional power. Now you need to understand something – I don’t cry. That’s not to say I’m heartless, I just normally don’t get emotional over television shows. Glee’s season finale had so much heart though, well, you would have to be heartless to not feel something watching these kids lay everything out on that stage and enjoying every minute of it. I was sorry to see such an unfair treatment by the judges in giving them third place. Vocal Adrenaline’s performance of Queen’s hit “Bohemian Rhapsody” was great (as were the scenes of Quinn’s delivery that went with it) but New Directions definitely deserved second place. Having said that, it was a nice surprising twist having Sue be the one to not only defend New Directions during the judging process, but save them from extinction once they got back to school. They now get one more year to prove their worth to Principal Figgins (they’ve already proved themselves to their fans). I am confident that next season will be just as good as the first, and possibly even better.

What did you think of last night’s finale (or the season as a whole)? Sound off in the comments section below.

New Torchwood Series Confirmed

It’s official – Starz and BBC have joined forces to give us an International Torchwood. Not all the details are available but here is what we have so far:

Russell T Davies wrote the pilot 7 months ago and did not take what network it would be on into consideration. Which I think is code for he didn’t care what anyone said and is not going to be watering things down to make people happy. Which shouldn’t be a problem now that Starz will be the network airing the series.

The people behind the show want it to be made clear that this is not a reboot of the show but a continuation of the old series. They are just changing locations to enable more flexibility with the story.

Speaking of story, the only details on that front are the number of episodes that it will take to complete said story – 1o. Which is twice the length of Children of Earth. Imagine the possibilities…

Besides Russell being involved, there are also many other names connected with the previous series coming back (on both sides of the camera) including the two main stars: John Barrowman and Eve Myles. There will also be some new faces as well to complete the team.

Finally, the series air date has not been officially announced but we know it will be sometime during summer 2011. That means we only have one year to wait before we finally get our fix of Torchwood that we’ve been craving. And I’m sure there will be lots more updates from Team Barrowman both on Twitter and his website. News on Shuffle will also give you the latest news as it is made available to us.

Doctor Who – Amy’s Choice

Sorry about the late posting here. I wish I could say I have lots for you, but this one had so many twists and turns I tried to just keep it simple. So, without further ado, I present – Amy’s Choice.

The opening scene showed Amy pregnant (which made me think – This can’t be real!). Then The Doctor shows up and says something about it being 5 years later. I barely had enough time to owner if maybe this was real before they fall asleep and wake up in the TARDIS. Confused yet? Yeah, I was too.

Eventually I figured out that they’re switching between the real world and a dream world. And it’s all thanks to some Dream Lord character. One world’s real, one world’s not, and they have to figure out which one’s which. It was loads of fun trying to follow both worlds and guessing which one was the real one. Both worlds have a danger in them – in one they are in danger of freezing to death and the other they are being chased by a dangerous alien species that has hidden itself in the bodies of the elderly. At first it seems like the episode won’t have anything to do with the overall story arc, but by about midway point I realized this is all about Amy and how she is split between these two worlds. She loves Rory but knows life with him will probably be quite boring in comparison to her life with The Doctor. So even though there is no romantic attachment to The Doctor there still is conflict in terms of where she wants to be. I know, I should have seen this a lot sooner given the title of the episode, but your Blogger can be a bit slow at times. Which is ok, because Amy can be a bit slow too and takes forever to finally commit to something and make her choice. Of course it takes Rory “dying” for her to realize that is who she wants to be with.

Shocking twist: BOTH WORLDS WERE A DREAM. So people guessing which one was the dream world – you were right and wrong at the same time. And those guessing which world was real, well, you were all wrong. Also, The Doctor says the Dream Lord was really him. I guess the purpose was a life lesson for all of them.

As always, there was a Doctor Who Confidential that went with the episode. This week we got some behind-the-scenes stuff that kinda made me wish I was there (mostly because they seem to be having loads of fun together). Much love especially to Arthur Darvill (Rory), who has been a great addition to the cast.

Doctor Who will be on again next week at 9pm. The next episode is Hungry Earth.

Happy Town – Slight of Hand

After taking a break for the past couple of weeks, the residents of Happy Town came back to entertain us last night. Well, most of them did. In the last episode, Tommy’s wife (played by Amy Acker) went missing at the same time the incarcerated Stiviletto brother resurfaced. Could Greggy Stiviletto be the Magic Man we keep talking about? Stay tuned to find out.

We begin this week with the search for Rachel Conroy. It looks like every police officer in town is on the case. Some flowers were left on the door to the Conroy house that seem to be the Magic Man’s calling card. In desperation, he goes to visit his crazy old man for help. “Go see the englishman,” he says.

Englishman = Merritt Grieves.

Tommy takes him into the station for questioning, calling him a “person of immense interest”. He was definitely on my short list for at the very least being involved somehow. He claims he has an alibi for the night (playing cards with the widows of the boarding house) but then reveals he collects information on the Magic Man. By the end of the night we learn he is interested in the case for personal reasons, but we don’t know exactly what those reasons are.

The other story for the week was Henley/Chloe trying to get the creepy goat hammer from Aiden/Greggy. Thought: What is with the double identities meeting each other? And is it a coincidence they hooked up? I guess it makes sense that the two shady people with a past would be drawn to each other, but it seems like more than that maybe. Second thought: Why is it that all of the Stiviletto brothers seem crazy except Greggy? Or is it that Greg is the smart kind of crazy? Which would make him more dangerous.

Back to the main story though: A severed hand shows up in the bread factory. I don’t know what grossed me out more, the idea of cutting someone’s hand off or that it was mixed in with the bread supply for the entire town. Strike that, the second one is definitely grosser. I don’t think I could even look at a loaf of bread again for quite some time if I lived in that town (especially if I was there to see it happen). Anyway, Tommy identifies the ring on the hand as Rachel’s engagement ring but says it isn’t Rachel’s hand. Which actually made sense to me from a casting standpoint. Why get Amy Acker to be one of the stars of the show and then kill her in episode 4? Maybe I’m just bias but I feel like she is one of the bigger names on the cast list. Anyway, it turns out the hand belonged to the first victim and was only severed approximately 48 hours ago. That means the girl had been alive up until that point. Which means that the rest of the victims could be alive too. And not too much later Rachel is found alive, proving my suspicions were correct. All she remembers is being at the festival and everything going dark. Next thing she knows, she is waking up in her own bathtub. She has no idea where she went and didn’t see who nabbed her. Dave mysteriously turns up at the house though, which makes me wonder about him. Maybe all that stuff from before was him covering his tracks because he is really the guy they are looking for…? Or maybe it is a red-herring to throw us off the track.

In other news, Carl Bravin is stuck in his basement with… who is that? We see his face but I couldn’t tell who it was. I’m not even sure it’s someone we’re supposed to know at this point. Mystery Man drives off at the end of the episode, leaving George behind. What’s up with that? More questions to add to the ever-growing pile.

The very last words of the evening are a declaration from Tommy Conroy that “We are going to find the Magic Man”. And that brings us to half-way point for the season (and likely the series). It has been promised that by the last episode (which airs June 30th) we will know who the Magic Man is. That is the only reason I am still watching this show, since ABC doesn’t seem to want to give it the chance it deserves. There is a petition going around to save the show and a Twitter campaign to go with it, but I am skeptical it will do much good. I have still participated though in the hopes I will be pleasantly surprised.