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FOX’s “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” Un-Reality
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:
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
Shadow Puppets: The Cube meets Lost
The world of low-budget sci-fi thrillers is littered with countless cliched plots, lackluster performances and cheesy special effects. For every successful indie production that breaks the mold, rising beyond its limited means to gain acclaim and cult status, there are those that try to copy the formula and fail. Such is unfortunately the case with Shadow Puppets, a new thriller in limited first-run release in LA, before showing up on DVD on July 24.
The premise is this: eight people wake up in a seemingly abandoned and locked-down asylum with no memory of how they got there, and are forced to work together to try to get out. Think The Cube meets last year’s mainstream flick Unknown with a side of Lost (heck, the main characters are even called Jack and Kate.)
Apparently, in order to save on Shadow Puppet’s minuscule $2 million budget, the entire wardrobe department was cut– which, on the plus side, means Jolene Blalock is running around in her underwear for most of the movie. (I suspect that this may have been the whole point of the production.) For the ladies, James Marsters is likewise under-dressed. These two make the best of the silly dialog they’re burdened with. Blalock actually seems to stretch some acting muscles, when she’s not sounding like T’pol investigating the disappearance of some red-shirts on mystery derelict spaceship X.
Marsters doesn’t disappoint, although his role loses any sense of credibility by the end. One hopes that better acting gigs are in his future; but if he takes more straight-to-DVD work, he may have trouble being taken seriously (think Ian Ziering’s career). The always-great Tony Todd shows up to chew scenery and scare up some real menace. The other performances are less-than-stellar, with writer/director Michael Winnick casting his younger brother Marc in a role beyond his limited abilities (which, sadly, isn’t saying much.)
For the first half of the movie, the suspense does ramp up nicely, with moody incidental music and a claustrophobic setting. But soon, the huh? monster gets revealed, the bad guy gets I.D.ed, and the story peters out, after running roughshod over any sort of suspension of disbelief.
I give it 2.5 stars out of five, for the first half.
See the movie’s Myspace page for more info: http://www.myspace.com/shadowpuppetsmovie