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Super-spoilery alert.

Ten things we learn from the latest incarnation of the Terminator franchise “The Sarah Connor Chronicles“– an upcoming TV series that is supposed to take place after Terminator 2, and possibly in another reality altogether from Terminator 3:

1. Although the robots of the future may have better Terminator models (T-1000, anyone?), due to inflationary cost-cutting, they apparently prefer the original, cheaper T-101 series. (Seriously, do you think morphing mimetic polyalloy grows on trees?)
2. Fortunately, Terminators can get jobs as substitute teachers to supplement their meager income as killing machines.
3. They can also show up as hot young female high school students. (Portrayed by 26-year old Summer Glau)
4. No matter how many people see a totally gross guy with, like robot parts sticking out of his mangled flesh, the authorities won’t believe your “robots from the future” story.
5. In fifty years, people will be so smart that just one engineer can make a time machine with 60s-era spare parts.
6. Thus, sending that guy back to 1963 to leave stuff for you to use in 1999 is no big deal. And certainly makes a lot of sense plot-wise.
7. Banks will let you keep lots of futuristic equipment– like superguns and atomic-powered time-travel devices– in their safety deposit boxes for 35 years without question. You can even leave them turned on for free.
8. Traveling back to the future isn’t a problem either. You don’t even need a flux capacitor.
9. Suddenly emerging naked from a ball of lightning on the LA expressway will get you on the local news, who will refer to it as a “college prank.” Everyone you know will be watching the same channel, which kinda scraps your “nobody knows we’re here” notion.
10. And finally, even though you just left behind your retro-time machine and a blown up robot, still no one will believe your silly time-traveling androids fantasy.

Look for it on FOX in 2008. Or maybe not, depending on if the TV execs of the future can send back a Cancellator to kill it… before it’s too late.

Engrish in translation
Ocean’s Thirteen: pirated in Germany, subtitles added for Chinese and Korean street markets… and bizarrely in English.

Dig this scene, in which David Paymer (as a quality reviewer) tries to get a table at the casino’s Italian restaurant — it’s almost intelligible.

Shortly afterwards, the subs degrade into meaningless non-sequiturs, when the dialogue gets confusingly techspeaky during a telephone call between Brad Pitt (”Rusty Ryan”) and Don Cheadle (”Basher Tarr”):

Leastwise the translator got the gist of “cattled.”

FOX, in their rush to push out a copy of NBC’s karaoke gameshow Singing Bee has blurred the line between reality, and well, fiction.

The series Don’t Forget the Lyrics debuted on Wednesday with cuter-than-a-button “Katie Moeser of Escondido, California” (a distant suburb of LA) hopping and bopping out-of-key to the classics. One couldn’t help but be charmed by the self-proclaimed nerd who said she’s “currently getting her masters in biology… studying to be an entomologist.” But is that so? A Google of Ms. Moeser reveals a MySpace account that presents a contrary image.

Her current MySpace account says she’s an (ahem) 99-year old living in Sherman Oaks (another suburb of LA) with a long series of interests, including– as claimed on TV– insects, knitting as well as assorted other not-so-nerdy activities.

However, as recently as July 8 (shown by Google cache) just days before her appearance on DFTL, her profile showed her as a 29-year old from Santa Monica (yet another LA suburb), and listed among her wide variety of activities, “making out on tylenol PM”. But most telling, her original profile showed group membership in “Hollywood Assistants,” and her networking fields as being “Film - Marketing - Public Relations Publicity.”

All of these have been redacted in the current version, but the missing latter ones reveal the story about Ms. Moeser: The Hollywood Assistants Myspace group is a private LA group only for the slave class of Tinseltown. As stated in its description:

MySpace group for assistants in the film and TV business. Agent assistants, studio exec assistants, production assistants, etc. You don’t have to be in Hollywood but you do have to be working in the industry to join. The purpose of the group is to meet people at other studios, agencies etc. that you wouldn’t otherwise meet. It will also serve as a place to post news, opportunities, and the boss rantings that go with being an assistant in this business. If you send a request to join and you do not have your job listed on your page, please send me a message detailing your job. I am sorry for all the people I have had to deny but I must limit the group to people who are currently working.

This single item shows that rather being a seemingly just-off-the-streets karaoke hottie, Katie is in actuality, the reality show equivalent of a ringer: she’s an entertainment industry wannabe.

Who’s to blame? Clearly it’s not Katie; she was selected, prepped and moulded by the show’s producers to project just the right image for the supposed game-show’s potential TV audience. Just as with every other money-oriented reality series (such as, say, Survivor) DFTL is cast with an eye towards emotional resonance, personality and likeability– and if presenting someone as a cute bug-loving nerd might improve some Nielsen numbers, then the casting department is going to push the truth envelope. Expect to see more of the same from this show. As pointed out in Variety’s fluffy initial review, “The number of people on the casting staff far outnumbers any other department in the credits on “Lyrics”.

Addendum: Of course, I may be completely off-base: Kate may be exactly what she claims, a grad student in entomology. (In which case I humbly apologise for undue assumptions.) However, how would one explain the conveniently timed deletion of any hint that she might be working for The Industry; or the reported, and seemingly uncompleted undergraduate major in Communications (rather than biology); or this note, left to a friend on Myspace, during what would normally be considered a scholastic term:

Katie Moeser

Sep 28 2006 9:42P

call me pal!! I am up in LA every few weekends!! I actually have a job interview up there tomorrow. teehee…so I might be moving back soon!! xo