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Simpson's Cast On Bravo This Sunday
droopus writes "So, what does Dan Castelleneta look like? (He's a kinda weasly looking bald guy.) See Dan, Hank, Harry, Yeardley, Julie, Nancy and the rest of the Simpsons cast this Sunday at 8PM (EST) on Inside the Actors Studio on Bravo.
According to the website:
"In anticipation of the landmark 300th episode of The Simpsons, James Lipton sat down with the series' accomplished ensemble to meet the actors behind the voices in order to discover how they have managed to create such a wealth of believable and beloved characters."
I saw a quick preview, and seeing that thin, weasly bald guy go "Aggggggh, donut" was alsolutely hilarious. Watching Nancy Cartwright morph effortlessly from Bart, to Nelson, to Ralph is waaaaay cool. My TiVo is set for this one.
One hitch: it's on at the same time as the usual new Sunday Simpsons episode, so Bravo has thoughtfully repeated the show at midnight so fans can record both."
I wonder if any of the writers will be on the show too. Most of the success has relied on excelelent writing. I think this is the first time ever the voice actors have been allowed to do their characters on a television show other than the cartoon itself. James Lipton sure knows how to negotiate for his guests!
Thats right... put a show about the Simpsons on at the same time FOX is showing the real thing...
For all things Simpsons, head over to http://www.snpp.com.
I think his impersonation of James Lipton is much more entertaining than Lipton himself.
Homer: ...but we're gonna miss Inside the Actors Studio. F. Murray Abraham's on, Marge. F. Murray Abraham!
Shame on Google.
Yeardley Smith (the voice of Lisa) is kinda cute in a geeky foreign way... I saw an interview of her a few years ago. Apparently more than a few guys have told her that it's their fantasy to make love to her while she screams the famous "More More More!" Lisa Simpson line.
Married With Children fans will remember him from the "Dance Show" episode, where Peg went dancing with Marcy and had a flirtation with a gay guy, whose husband (Castellaneta) went complaining to Al.
Incidentally, how stupid does Bravo have to be to put this on in that slot? Why not Sunday at 10 pm?
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
One halloween, a friend of mine got up green tube dress, white choker pearls and did her hair up like Marge. We went to a halloween party, and seriously I've never seen one girl get hit on so many times at a party. Nor have I heard so many attempted Homer-isms as pick up lines.
Of course Nancy Cartwright has no trouble shifting between different characters. According to her religion^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hcult, she's infested with the souls of dead people & aliens, many of whom were blown up 75 billion years ago by the Galactic Overlord Xenu in volcanoes by H-bombs.
Because of this, and other dirty deeds done by the cult of $cientology, I personally boycott The Simpsons, JAG, Dharma & Greg, South Park, and other TV shows and movies that employ $cientologists. (And yes, my local affiliates and the networks know why I don't watch their shows!)
Hello? Haven't any of you people seen the Tracey Ullman show? Nobody remembers Herman's Head?
Excuse me, I'm just going to sit here and yell at the kids to get off my lawn now.
yeah.. sure you did.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
That, and I don't believe we even have any existing technology to simply capture a collection of mixed radio signals and somehow (digitally or analog) store them...
;-) ) Real drives are of course smaller and many people have more then 70 channels.
Sounds like what radio telescopes do, and what SETI@Home analyses.
That said, the bandwidth is obscene (as you mentioned), the TiVo hasn't got the processor power to handle that much data (even the lowest scale cable subscription). I didn't do the calculations but I'm pretty confident that even if the TiVo did have the processor power, the hard drive would not be able to write more then five or ten channel's data at a time. And even if it could, the amount of data would overwhelm even a hacked TiVo with a hypothetical terabyte of hard drive space. (I don't think they've been hacked that high but I could be wrong.)
Guestimate such a drive at a thousand hours (1 Hr. = 1GB or so; it's not perfect but who cares?) and call the cable subscription about 70 channels at the least (that's what I get here w/ Basic Only), and you're looking at a whole 14 hours of storage. (Coincidentally that's how much my 1st-gen TiVo stores of just one channel...
You could certainly build a machine capable of doing this but I'm guestimating you're getting into the tens of thousands of dollars to aquire the processor power and the massive RAID-like array needed to compress the stream to a decent size, not to mention the price of the memory bus that can move that much data around. Again, radio telescopes do this stuff so I know it must exist somewhere... but if it's rare enough, the fees associated with the fact that it's a custom solution every time could start pushing you into the hundreds of thousands or millions+ to build a box that just eats the cable signals and stores some decent amount.
(You can shuffle some of the cost by changing the specs of the system, such as needing less processor power if you don't compress, but then you need to spend more on the drive array to up the throughput. If you're on a DirecTV service, all the data is already compressed but you're still going to spend a lot of money on that drive array.)
In conclusion, do not hold your breath expecting to see this in consumer electronics anytime soon.
I remember reading somewhere a few years ago that in their contracts, it restricts them from doing the character voices in public or on something televised. There was an episdoe of LA Law where Dan Castelleneta plays a character who works at an amusement park as Homer Simpson. Throughout the show you hear the Homer voice but only when he's in the costume. I thought that was a way of getting around their restriction in their contracts.
Anyone know if they actually had to get permission to do the voices for this ep of actors studio?
DirecTiVo owners can record both at the same time.
Simpsons producer Mike Reiss spoke at my school about the Simpsons among other things. He said that she's the reason they haven't really made fun of Scientology (if mention it at all?). Cartwright refuses to let them.
I happened to be on the sreet on opening night and was witness to what followed. There was a large rent-a-crowd of local Scientologists gathered in front of a stage setup on the street, with many more inside the theater they had rented for the evening, in addition the street was packed with the usual Friday night revelers who where all totally perplexed. All of a sudden the loudspeaker came on, and Bart Simpson's voice blared out "Hello, Sydney!" The the video hookup from inside went live and she appeared on the screen, welcoming everyone to the opening. Shortly after Kate Cebrano (tubby Aussie songstress and devout Scientologist) came on stage to annouce the big opening, blah blah blah to the bafflment of the most non-Scio crowd present, then she and the tuxedo wearing tanned yank Scio out from head office began the countdown to the "grand opening". Drums rolled, they hit one - I should mention at this point thaty it had been raining - nothing happend. these two fuckwits are standing on a damp stage in front of what looks like a two story paper mache science project while the only sound is the passing traffic and the noise of hundreds of cinema goes trying to push through the crowds of the faithful to get to their movies. After much running around, swearing and thumping the pyro guys get TWO roman candles to sputter to life as Cebrano and captain Dickhead from LA clap and go "woo.", and the local devotees clap wildly on queue. You know, with so may OT-III's and above present I'd have thought their Thetans could have put on a better lightshow - but what the fuck do I know, right?
Anyway, the point is: Nancy, you got busted going "Bart" to promote your "Church". Betcha thought no-one stateside would ever find out, huh?