Thursday, January 10, 2019

THE 2018 TOOBITS AWARDS PART FOUR


2018 TOOBITS AWARDS

BEST LINE
REALITY TV

“’No’ is not a boundary.  I can reach the skies.” – Sawyer Stewart, ‘CBS Evening News’

SKITLANDIA
"Look, you read it, right? And you liked it; you had fun? Then what's the problem? You got the gist, so shut up. Even the stuff that's not true: It's true." – “Michael Wolff”, ‘Saturday Night Live’

BEST USE OF AN HISTORICAL QUOTE:
“He who controls the past controls the future.” – George Orwell, as quoted by Reggie Something in ‘The X-Files’
  
BEST SPEECH
Comedy

“Why the fuck do we need two Dakotas? Are they really that different?  I don't think so!  Combine these two states with a total population of 1.6 million get four senators.   California, with a total population of 'Have you seen the 405?', gets two. There are more people in California named Dakota than there are in the Dakotas!” – Bill Maher, ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’

Drama
Cigarette Smoking Man:
My name is Carl Gerhard Busch. But I've been known by many aliases during my long career with the U.S. government. It's been a humbling job, though I'm hardly known as a humble man. I've been a witness to history, much of it violent, much of it an abomination of the values Americans hold dear. I've had a privileged seat at the centers of power, held the reins of that power, making sacrifices few are capable of, of which even fewer are willing. If people knew the truth, they'd riot in the streets. Too much is made of the will to power, as if our will is free, our choices our own. Our destinies are forged in our bones, made real by a raging impulse to self-destruct. I'm not a bad man, more a practical man. I've taken certain gifts I was given and made good men great. It is my greatness. I'm a father to two men who have figured more in the future than they might ever know. Both would end up working for the FBI, both complex but dedicated men who sacrificed dearly, and in their dogged pursuits would end up paying a terrible price, searching for truths as I parceled them out, truths held only by the few who knew the levers of power and the invisible hand controlling them. Is there life out there? Good heavens. To doubt it is a failure of more than the imagination. It is a failure to recognize the limits of our own stupidity, the nascency of our science, the rudiment of our tools. We listen, we search. We hope for a sign, as if our eyes and ears are good enough, our brains large enough, our egos small enough. I'm an old man now. I will leave my own mark upon history, more than presidents or tyrants. I don't ask for loyalty and trust, the fleeting bonds of men. I ask only for the years to show my sons and their sons I was right. What their father did, had to be done.  

BEST ZONK LINE:

“Confuse The Twilight Zone with The Outer Limits?! Do you even KNOW ME?!?!” – Fox Mulder, ‘The X-Files’
  
BEST NEW COINED WORD
“COLUMNI” – meaning those actors who appeared in ‘Columbo’ episodes.  This was coined by Jennifer Robinson in the excellent FB page Columbo-TV.
  
TV COMMERCIAL MUSIC:
“Good Morning!” by Max Frost used for Bubly soft drink
Quite an infectious song from a genre I’m not a fan of.  But still I find myself playing the video by Max Frost whenever I need a pick-me-up.
 
BEST MUSICAL MOMENT
Sophia and her Stuffed Animals – ‘Life In Pieces’
This was a break from the show’s near-reality in which Sophia and her stuffed animals sang for their survival to keep her mother giving them away to Goodwill.  The music was engaging and the lyrics very engaging.  The highlight was the reason as to why One-Eyed Bear lost his other eye.  As I write this back in May, you can find the video on YouTube.  (Just checked again in January and it’s only part of the song now.)


BEST COMMERCIAL MUSICAL MOMENT
Eli Manning and Odell Beckham, Jr. “dirty dancing” for the NFL Super Bowl commercial.

BEST DREAM SEQUENCE
‘Happy!’

Straight off from the series opening, Nick Sax had a daydream In which he shot himself in the head and his spewing fountain of blood became the center of attention at a disco.
 
BEST NEW FICTIONAL LOCATION IN THE WORLD
Weld, New Zealand – ‘800 Words’

What a great name for the town – it shows that the creators of the series rooted much of the show in a real world believability.  The town got its name from the Premier of New Zealand in the 19th Century, Frederich Aloysius Weld (who was seen in the show as a cosplay character and the town’s sometimes headless statue.

BEST NEW FICTIONAL LOCATION IN THE USA
Eastwood, Connecticut – ‘The X-Files’

Can’t deny my bias.  You set a TV show in my home state, you’ve already done most of the heavy lifting in winning me over.
 
BEST NEW ALIEN LOCATION
Since we already celebrated Solitract as a character, we’ll spread the love to another location from ‘Doctor Who’ - The Planet Desolation, used as a testing place for the Stenza’s scientific experiments meant for war and death.
 
BEST FIGHT SCENE
‘Happy!’

Sax vs. Chinatown triads


It escalated from there.

BEST NEW FICTIONAL BOOK
“Grimoire of the Eastwood Witch” – ‘The X-Files’

The source of all the trouble in the episode “Familiar” 
 
BEST NEW FICTIONAL TV SHOW
‘The Dusky Realm’ from ‘The X-Files’

This TV show was a cheap rip-off of ‘The Twilight Zone’.  The episode “The Lost Martian” was misremembered as being an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone’.

BEST ADAPTATIONS FROM ANOTHER UNIVERSE (aka MEDIUM)

THEATER TO TV

“Jesus Christ Superstar”

MOVIE TO TV
“The Karate Kid” to ‘Cobra Kai’

One of the first forays by YouTube Red into becoming a premium platform.

TV TO MOVIE
 “The Equalizer 2”

Big reason I chose this?  I’m a big fan of Orson Bean, ever since I was a little kid.
 
BOOK TO TV
‘The Alienist’

Being big on the Victorian Age because of my interest in Sherlockiana.  So when the novel by Caleb Carr came out in paperback, I picked it up and read it voraciously – despite the really disturbing passages. And the show has not shied away from those grisly aspects.  The best part is that the three main characters who are not readily recognizable to the general public, perhaps at best by name they are known (with regards to Luke Evans and Dakota Fanning.)  And filming in Hungary helped to evoke the period with the locations. 

COMIC BOOK to TV
‘Happy!’

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