Episode 26: The Eleventh Hombre

Doctor Who is back! And it's FANTASTIC! Karen and Casey (role reversal!) bring you Episode 26: The Eleventh Hombre. This week, we gush like we've never gushed before over the new new Who and Dreamworks' How to Train Your Dragon. In between these book ends of awesome, we discuss men who hate women, men who love men, men who love women loving women, and Casey's hate for horsefaces.

WHO DA MAN???

Wondering what we sound like when we're not mindlessly drooling over Steven Moffat? You can find our whole library of ramblings on iTunes, most of which also revolve around Doctor Who.

Also, Kick-Ass is out TODAY. Who's excited?? We are. That's who.

UPDATE: It was mentioned this episode that Versus is a movie best watched in youtube clips -- this is basically everything you would want to see, including gun-slinging zombies. Please, don't actually watch the entire movie. We here at HP watch crappy Asian movies so you don't have to. Enjoy!

Episode 25: The Spuds of Time

Welcome one and all to Hombre Potato Episode 25: The Spuds of Time. The regular gang (...of two people) get all sorts of relevant as Casey finally gets off his ass and watches Doctor Who: The End of Time, Karen gets on her ass and delves into the TV catalog of Andrew Buchan, and we both admire Timothy Olyphant's ass in Justified and Deadwood. Cuz he's dreamy. Also on the docket are discussions of She's Out of Your League, The Vicious Kind, Good Hair, and 24's most recent insanity. With visual aids, seen below!


So class, this is Owen the boy CTU agent. Note his...boyishness and the phantom hands buckling his clip in lower left corner.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD!

But wait. Why aren't all of our other recent (and awesome) episodes posted up here on the blog? Because they don't require pictures of 12 year olds? Because we're lazy? A little from column A, a little from column B, folks. If you're not caught up, go to our iTunes page and get caught up. Let us know what you think of our show while you're there!

The Complete Music Guide to Hombre Potato

Hey all!
Episode 24 will be up for you later today, but in the meantime, I have painstakingly compiled a list of all the music used at the beginning and end of our episodes. Because I love you.

1: No music!
2: "Invincible" - OK Go; "White Moon" - White Stripes
3: "Ship Lost at Sea" - Phantom Planet"; "Crazy in Love" - The Puppini Sisters
4: "Later On" - The Spinto Band; "Dayman" from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
5: "Shiny" - The Decemberists; "Guitar Hero" - Amanda Palmer
6: "Smoochy smoochy pukey pukey" - Harry and the Potters; "Faster Pussycat to the Library" - Sam Phillips
7: "You Make My Dreams" - Hall & Oates; "Us" - Regina Spektor
8: "A-Punk" - Vampire Weekend; "Belt Loops" - "The Films"
9: "On My Way" - Billy Boy on Poison; "The Show" - Lenka
10: The Middleman Theme; "In the Morning" - The Coral
11: "Drop it Doe Eyes" - Los Campesinos; "Relator" - Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson
12: "She's So Lovely" - Scouting for Girls; "She's Got You High" - Mumm-Ra
13: "Better Version of Me" - Fiona Apple; "Happy Ending" - Mika
14: "What's My Age Again" from All the Small Things
15: "Common People" - William Shatner and Pulp; some weird Japanese song Casey gave me
16: "You Only Live Once" - The Strokes; no idea. Casey again!
17: "Lolita" - Throw Me the Statue; "You're So Damn Hot" - OK Go
18: The Supernatural Sitcom Theme!; "Dirty Rotten Guys" from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, sung by John Lithgow & Norbert Leo Butz
19: "Ne Me Quitte Pas" - Regina Spektor; "Je Ne Sais Qui Fumer" - Paris Combo
21: "You're Really Super Supergirl" - XTC; "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime" - Beck
22: "You Don't Know Me" - Ben Folds and University acappella; "Fire in My Heart" - Addison
23: "Being Bored" - The Films"; "Merry Happy" - Kate Nash
24: "Good Day" - Tally Hall; "Made-Up Love Song '43" - Guillemots

Heavy Rain: What would you do?

Heavy Rain is, if nothing else, a property that will keep you thinking long after the credits have rolled. The newest title by French studio Quantic Dream, a developer known for making complicated, story-driven games like Indigo Prophecy, it is the evolution of many types of media. You effectively “choose your own adventure,” but that would dismiss the strong cast of characters and world, and “interactive drama” (a term used by the developers to categorize it) may be misunderstood and neglect how the distinct way you play makes you feel the intensity of the onscreen action. The most apt description is that it is what a moviegoer so often wants when in the theater. Watching a film is a passive activity where you observe and cannot control the events leading up to the outcome. A game requires you control the action, but plot less often drives you forward than does the prospect of a badder-ass gun. Heavy Rain creates the truest sense of a self-made cinematic experience yet where everything is up to you. You are the storyteller, and the audience.

Why I'm psyched for Spring '10

It's only the end of February, and I’m already anticipating all of the big-budget eye candy that makes up summer 2010. Iron Man 2! The Last Airbender! Dolph “Go f*** yourself, Spaceman” Lundgren!!! But before I can even start to get all drooly over those upcoming films, spring has a whole slew of media to keep me preoccupied. TV premieres and finales, film and gaming all have their entries that are making me budget how much time I’ll be spending in a darkened room over the next few months. It’s going to (wait for it) kick ass.

My Top Nine of 2009

There's honestly too much TV for me to try and remember which episodes of Supernatural aired this year, and I would only be repeating Karen in saying that Torchwood is the BEST five hours of television you could find in 2009, so I’m moving onto my top films of 2009. I'm going with 9 films for right now, not out of some douchey tie-in like "9 from '09!" (even though I totally take advantage of that in my title), but because I know there are movies that I haven't seen from this past year that would make it on here. I'd rather be able to revisit this list and add an entry or two then potentially bloat it now. With further ado, my Top 9 Film from 2009:

Karen's top eleven TV shows of the year, 2009

I just couldn't narrow my favorite TV shows of the year down to ten. So he we have, in honor of Matt Smith's upcoming eleventh incarnation of the Doctor, my top eleven TV shows of 2009.

11. Free Agents (Channel 4, UK - 6 Episode Series)


I fell in love with Stephen Mangan back in 2006's Jane Hall, a sweet ITV show with 6 episodes in its only season and a bitch of a cliffhanger. This year he starred on Broadway with Jessica Hynes and Ben Miles in The Norman Conquests trilogy. Sitting front row in Circle in the Square? Let's just say I was on a Stephen Mangan kick. So I was lucky that Free Agents came along. Like Jane Hall, it seems to have a been a one hit wonder - six episodes, no chance of a second season - but it deserved so much more. Centered around a will they/won't they (except they do in the first episode) couple (Stephen Mangan and Sharon Horgan) the show explored issues of celebrity, death, sex, loneliness and parenthood, all while maintaining a tone that allows their foul-mouthed boss (Anthony Michael Head) to use blue phrases like "knob jockey". Note to Casey: if you loved Malcolm Tucker's creative insults in In The Loop, you will love this show.

10. Party Down (Starz - 10 Episodes)


Despite spawning from the mind of Rob Thomas (showrunner of Veronica Mars, one of my favorites), Party Down took a while to grow on me. I needed time to get used to Ken Marino's crazy boss, which takes Ricky Gervais' and Steve Carell's characters from the various versions of The Office and manages to take them to a darker, more pathetic and even more deluded place. I needed time to grow to love Adam Scott as the most gormless hero on TV. But love I did, along with supporting characters Ryan Hansen, Jane Lynch (who sadly left the show for an admittedly star-making role on Glee) and an endless parade of guest stars that included George Takei and JK Simmons at his best. Party Down is the true child of the British Office.

9. All the Small Things (BBC One, UK - 6 Episodes)
All ye Glee fans, cower your heads in shame to All the Small Things. Another small British show without the likelihood of a second season, All the Small Things focused on a quaint British town with dualing choral groups. There's some British TV favorites here, including Sarah Lancashire from Coupling, Bryan Dick ("Adam" from the Torchwood episode of the same name) and Annette Badland (who shall always be the Slitheen/Mayor of Cardiff from s1 of the new Doctor Who), but what's really engaging is that in a show about church choirs, it constantly defies your expectations. Sharing any of these developments would spoil the journey, but I truly believe that all I need to sell you on this show is the video below:



8. Community (NBC)
Oh how disappointed I was by the new fall TV season. The one shining light was Community on NBC, with a likable ensemble cast of only slightly stereotyped characters in a beautifully simple but endlessly rewarding premise: community college. It just got better and better, culminating in the poignant yet hilarious holiday episode.



7. Dexter (Showtime - 13 Episodes)


Every season I think the same thing: where the heck can Dexter possibly go from here? Each season seems so final, so obvious. And each season comes back and manages to feel as natural as the first. John Lithgow's Trinity Killer was a viable foe and interesting foil to Dexter, who is still trying to adjust to fatherhood and struggling with the danger his dark passenger presents to family life. Suspenseful and enjoyable, and what a ending! And so I ask again: where the heck can Dexter possibly go from here? You'd think I have faith by now.

6. Being Human (BBC Three, UK - 6 Episodes)


Yes, it sounds like a bad sitcom: a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf all living in a house together! And yet somehow, Being Human lived up to the question implied in its title - how, as a monster, do you reconcile yourself with a life of attempting to be human? Another 6 episode British TV series (you'll notice a trend - I like to think that with only 6 episodes, the writers spend more time in development creating a tight narrative and a small set of solid episodes), but this one has found success, returning 2010 for a second season on BBC, and being remade for Americans on the SyFy channel. I look forward to the former; dread the latter.
Fans of Being Human be sure to check out the original 2008 pilot, with different actors for both Mitchell and Annie. The 6 episode series both started its own narrative and dropped hints to the occurrences of the original pilot, and I think I full understanding of the characters and mythos would be helped enormously by viewing of this episode.

5. The Colbert Report (Comedy Central)
I should include The Daily Show with Jon Stewart along with this, but I grow increasingly bitter at that show winning all the awards when Colbert, whose show I find infinitely more entertaining and inventive, gets left to the sidelines. Riffing on the conservative blowhards that litter cable news these days, Stephen Colbert gets an enormous amount of mileage comedically and politically from his sharp satire. And yet he manages to keep the absurdity level high - continuing his endless rivalry with Korean popstar Rain, his quest to get his name in space and his continuing (but sadly waning) war with bears. And when he shaved his head at the behest of Obama? I may have cried. I find it unmissable.



4. Supernatural (CW)
When you first watched this show and saw the legends of the hook man and Bloody Mary play out as hot brothers Sam and Dean Winchester fight demons, did you ever expect it to turn into a war between God and Lucifer, with angels and archangels fighting over the proper way to proceed and arguing whether humanity is worth saving anyway? And did you expect them to still be able to pull off episodes amidst this war that put Sam & Dean in fictional versions of all your favorite TV stereotypes, drooling over "Doctor Sexy" and shamelessly mocking David Caruso's one-liners from CSI: Miami? And that that particular episode would culminate in the bad guy being THE ARCHANGEL GABRIEL??? I didn't. Supernatural grew its way from a show you watched for the hot boys (which doesn't really explain why Casey stuck with it) to a thought-provoking and suspenseful treatise on God, family and loyalty. The first strains of "Carry On My Wayward Son" never fail to excite me. Paris Hilton can't kill it.



Bonus!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsyMtYoSkC0

3. The Soup (E!)
So, Joel McHale, you have made it on this list twice. Congratulations. You and your suffering staff have saved me from the hellish void that is reality TV and packaged it into an entertaining weekly 30-minute package. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for keeping me up to date on Miley Cyrus (It's Miley!) and the saga of Jon and Kate without subjecting me to their mindless shows and the mindless talk and "news" shows that cover them. Plus, you're hot. Moving on!



2. Misfits (ITV, UK - 6 Episodes)


It's Heroes with the sensibilities of Skins. 5 teenagers develop powers during a freak electrical storm while they perform their court mandated community service. These are not your high-school cheerleaders: they're the nymphos and the arsonists and the drug users and the chavs. It would be a crime to tell you what happens in even the first episode of this twisted show but be warned: it's probably not one to watch home alone at 2am. I hope and pray that a US cable network picks this up and exposes it to American audiences. A second series has been commissioned, and I can't wait. Special shoutout to Robert Sheehan, giving a standout performance in an admittedly showy role as loudmouth Nathan.

Watch the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODl-kAhVsXY

1. Torchwood: Children of Earth (BBC One, UK - 5 Episodes)


I have a tormented relationship with the work of Russell T Davies. On the one hand he's written some of the worst and most labored Doctor Who episodes of the last 3 years - on the other: Children of Earth. A 5-part miniseries aired over 5 consecutive days, it was the perfect storm of everything Torchwood strove to be. The 456 were a villain that seemed truly alien in every sense (I'm looking at you, every other sci-fi story ever written), but the real terror lay in the human story - the government trying to work through a trying situation and exposing the darkest side of human nature in the process. This is true television drama. And to those intimidated by the canon of the Doctor Who/Torchwood universe, feel comforted by the knowledge that Children of Earth can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of the series.

_____________________________

And with the amount of TV I watch, I'd be remiss if I didn't give special mention to:
Drop Dead Diva, for being better than it had any right to be.
Nathan Fillion, for making Castle better than it had any right to be.
30 Rock. You know it's funny, I know it's funny. It's cliche to say anything more.
How I Met Your Mother, for continuing to fuel my burning love for New York City.
The Real World: Brooklyn for getting me to watch it.
Lindsey Shaw, from 10 Things I Hate About You, upon whom I have a massive girl crush.

Bring it on, 2010.