Around The Web - Sex and the City sucks, more upfront fun and Jesus, Jesus, Jesus

Catching up on some various things I found funny, interesting or appealing from the web...

- As regular readers know, I love Roger Ebert in a way that should be illegal for a man to love another man. Perhaps Tommy Heinsohn loves Walter McCarty and Rajon Rondo more; I don't know, and I really hope I don't ever have to complete a test to find out.

Ebert is at his best when he is ripping into a truly horrible movie, such as Sex and the City 2. Frankly, the first movie looked like excrement, and the second movie looks even more horrid with the totally cheap plot device of transporting the characters to some foreign locale. He is no fan, giving it one star out of four, and he savages it from the opening paragraph:

Some of these people make my skin crawl. The characters of "Sex and the City 2" are flyweight bubbleheads living in a world which rarely requires three sentences in a row. Their defining quality is consuming things. They gobble food, fashion, houses, husbands, children, vitamins and freebies. They must plan their wardrobes on the phone, so often do they appear in different basic colors, like the plugs you pound into a Playskool workbench.

As a wise man once said, ouch baby! I've seen about half an episode of Sex and the City, and I found it... well, repugnant. Then again, I find no problem with professional wrestling, so go figure. Like Jersey Shore, I just find Sex and the City to be the embodiment of thoughtless, ridiculous extravagance. I understand that it is probably escapist fun for many, but given how many people seem to actually emulate the show, I'm not a fan.

- Slate finished its series on upfronts by having Troy Patterson go to the CW's presentation. There are at least two reasons that I'm happy they had Katy Perry perform at their upfront. Apparently, she's some sort of singer! Strangely, I had never noticed that she sang.

Anyway, all of the CW shows sound horrible, but none of them are really aimed at me. Nikita sounds like it would have potential if it was on another network, but since it is on the CW, then she will probably be a part-time assassin, and a part-time fashion consultant. Plain Jane and Shedding for the Wedding sound like rehashes of shows. And California Gurls and Hellcats sound like the horrid, standard fare for the CW.

- And finally... This entire story from Slate about three guys claiming to be Jesus Christ who were forced to live together is pretty nuts. Enjoy! (And p.s., wasn't Dogma an underrated movie? I totally agree!)

The Katy Perry photo is from here.

Uncharmed

Short on talent, large on... something else.

The bad thing about the WB / UPN / CW / future Sucky Network is that their continual lack of programming means shows that are just OK survive for years, to the point where their crappy producers can then package up 100 episodes and spread their stink to TNT.

Please TNT, give me anything besides Charmed, which is like a second-rate cheesy magic show. Just splurge and buy Buffy (another show I'm not crazy about but clearly better than Charmed) or show more Law and Order. Yes, I realize they already show Law and Order two to four times a day, but they do have about 400 to chose from (about 22 per year for 18 years).

My two main critiques of Charmed would be 1) it arbitrarily makes up characters and rules and powers for its characters, even more so than normal for a show of its nature and 2) the characters have the personality of this chair I'm sitting on. Shannon Doherty was the lone interesting one, and she probably knifed someone backstage, explaining why she left. I would too if my co-stars' main "acting" abilities were the knee-jerk whine (Holly Marie Combs), and being short and hot (Alyssa Milano).