Tag: Moses (Page 3 of 3)

The Biggest Loser: who is Captain Dumbass?

I can’t help it…I can’t help but talk about what a dumbass Arthur is in this season’s “The Biggest Loser.” I’ll get to exactly why in a minute, but first, let’s begin the recap of last night’s episode…..

So host Alison Sweeney kicked things off by telling the contestants that they would officially be going to a red team (the unknowns) and either blue or black (ranch team). The ranch team chose black, so it would be red vs. black for this week’s weight loss challenge. And they started with another temptation challenge–chocolates for Valentine’s Day. The person who ate the most chocolate could control things a bit–they could either choose to keep the teams as is, or they could swap out one couple from their team for a couple on the other team. The good thing, though, is that it would be a secret who ate the most and who made a decision to change teammates. Q was eating chocolate and could not stop, and the same went for Rulon, Marci and Moses, the latter who ate 21 pieces of chocolate. But Arthur, as you might suspect, ate 35 pieces. It was really disgusting to watch such a fat man stuffing his face with chocolate. But that was all they showed, so we didn’t know if Arthur won or not. What we did know is that Jay and Jen from the ranch team had to switch sides and they were trading places with Sarah and Deni. Yikes. Was it Arthur? Why would he do that? No, it had to be someone else, right?

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The Biggest Loser: the big merger

We’re not talking about a multi-national corporate merger here, just a merger between the Biggest Loser ranch contestants, and the “unknowns,” as they have come to be known.

Since the President’s speech last week cut the episode short, they had to finish up the weigh-in of the Ranch group. But first, they showed the unknowns working out, and Q being disrespectful to his trainer Cara and the rest of the team by walking away from a group workout. The dude didn’t feel like he was getting his “burn” and I have to be honest here–I know he walked away without saying anything, but I understood why he did it. Still, many of those around him don’t feel like he’s pulling his weight, so to speak; the same way the ranch contestants feel about big Arthur.

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The Biggest Loser: the masks are off

So in its third episode of the season last night, NBC’s “The Biggest Loser: Couples” revealed the faces of the “unknown” trainers–Cara Castronuova and Brett Hoebel. Man, it’s gonna suck having to write those names and trying to remember how to spell them! But in all seriousness, these two seem tough as nails. Bob and Jillian tend to have soft sides, and these two seem like they don’t have any–they both are all business.

Then they showed the “unknown” camp, and how Rulon and Justin were calling out a couple of their fellow contestants for not giving their all last week, when they lost the weigh-in to the Biggest Loser ranch contingent. They called out Q and Austin, both of whom realized that they indeed had to step things up.

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The Biggest Loser: no fear of the unknown

Last night was the season premier of “The Biggest Loser: Couples,” and it sure was interesting. The producers always try to keep both you and the contestants guessing, and last night they did that, and in fact they are still doing it as you read this today. That’s because the two trainers they added this season still have no identities, and why they won’t just come out and say who they are is just plain annoying. But more on that in a bit.

At the start they focused on Arthur, who at 5’8″ and 507 pounds is the largest person in density this show has ever seen. This season also includes Moses, a 400-plus pound man who is of Tongan descent, just like Sam and Koli and Filipe and Sione were in seasons past–proof that those folks love to eat and eat bad things. There is also Rulon Gardner, the wrestler who won a gold medal at the 2000 Olympics and also competed in the 2004 games, but who is now over 400 pounds. The theme is couples too, which only means that the contestants were brought on in pairs–parents and children, siblings or just friends.

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What they should do, what they will do

The Deep Blue GoodbyeAfter the geek movie bloggers finish mulling over the possible return of Bryan Singer to the X-Men films — none of which have particularly wowed me in the first place — another topic for discussion is Mike Fleming’s post about producer Peter Chernin’s plan for an upcoming Bible-epic about Moses to be made in the style of “300” and directed by Timur Bekmambetov (“Wanted,” “Nightwatch“). Since Bekmambetov seems to have the same degree of difficulty with basic storytelling as I do with pronouncing his name, and I didn’t much care for “300” in the first place, this does not excite me.

I could go on and on about how the green-screen technique might be appropriate for some films, but not really for a classic biblical tale, but I don’t really care about that. It will be what it will be. However, buried in the same item is this:

Chernin adds the project to several pre-existing Fox projects he has joined as producer, including the John D. MacDonald novel series adaptation “The Deep Blue Goodbye,” the Appian Way-produced drama that’s a potential star vehicle for Leonardo DiCaprio.

Now, this probably won’t get much reaction from most of you. How many old books by successful authors get optioned and then attached to big movies stars for a time? Lots. Also, this item ran a couple of weeks ago, but escaped my notice.

Here’s the thing that you’ve missed if you’re not already familiar with MacDonald’s work. “The Deep Blue Goodbye” is the first book about Travis McGee. That’s a big deal, to me anyway. In his earlier article, Fleming does a pretty good job describing the series:

DiCaprio is in line to play Travis McGee, a self-described beach bum who lives aboard 52-foot houseboat the Busted Flush [which he won playing poker] and alleviates his cash-flow problems by hiring on as a “salvage consultant.” He recovers property for clients, taking a hefty percentage and getting into a lot of danger and romance in sun-drenched Florida. “The Deep Blue Goodbye,” the first in a 21-volume bestselling Travis McGee series, was originally published in 1964.

The series has mostly been ignored by Hollywood, though there was a long forgotten 1970 movie with Rod Taylor and a 1981 TV film with Sam Elliot, neither seen by me. MacDonald supposedly also scotched a planned TV series because he feared it would hurt books sales if fans could see McGee on TV every week.

Blood DiamondWhat Fleming left out was the appeal of the books, a sort of bridge between Raymond Chandler/Ross MacDonald style medium-to-hard boiled gumshoe tales and “The Rockford Files” — and also probably “Magnum P.I.” which I never really watched much.  To me, this seems an obvious attempt for DiCaprio to find the conflicted inner macho-man he did a good job of capturing in “Blood Diamond,” which I personally otherwise kind of hated. To be fair, pretty or not, he is a first-rate actor. Moreover, in his less skinny near-middle-age, he actually more or less fits the physical description of McGee given on Wikipedia.

Still, MacDonald’s Magee was a more old fashioned kind of a character and, as in Leonardo DiCaprio‘s well-acted yet just somehow wrong performance in “The Aviator,” this is a part that cries out for the kind of old-school “real men” type actors who today only seem to come from Australia or the African-American community. If it were up to me, and if no Aussie wanted the gig and black stars didn’t care for the seriously nontraditional casting — I’d personally go with Jon Hamm of “Mad Men” fame.

Indeed, the ultra-commitment phobic Don Draper really does want to be the eternally footloose, Peter-Pan-Knight-Errant Travis McGee, who’s basically a tougher Jim Rockford, or a less ruthless James Bond. I know I do. In fact, I think all guys do. But will this movie or what sure sounds like a ludicrously amped-up Bible movie actually get made?

Coming eventually, maybe: Why Paul Giamatti must be forced, against his will if necessary, to play Magee’s brainy, hirsute economist sidekick, Meyer.

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