Trailer Watch

Burn After Reading - Coenific, looks like a U-turn from NCFOM back to their Raising Arizona slapstick days
The Mummy 3 - The resurrection of Brendon Fraisure in CGI B-movies is a bad, bad idea. No Rachel Weisz, kid ages two decades or so in a few years, franchise that one one really remembers. Can't see this working out.
The Clone Wars - CGI somewhere between Kung Fu Panda and the dancing baby viral video. Bad Lucas.
Australia - Don't see much of Luhrman's hyper kinetic filming so no real draw.
Hancock - Looks good, nice to see some original superhero IP (ahem, Incredible Hulk)
Tropic Thunder - Trailer not too funny, but Ben Stiller has a knack for cult comedies.
Ice Age 3 - Good teaser, crazy Looney Toonesque squirrel is the only memorable thing about those movies, though this one adds dinosaurs? What are we teaching today's keeds?
In other news, Don't Mess with the Zohan intrigues me. Can Sandler make a good satire? Probably not.

Summer Mix 08 CD

For controlling my rush hour road rage:
1. Touch Me - The Doors
2. Supernatural Superserious - R.E.M.
3. Living Well is the Best Revenge - R.E.M.
4. 1234 - Feist
5. I Feel It All - Feist
6. No One's Gonna Love You - Band of Horses
7. Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse - Of Montreal
8. Like A Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
9. 19-2000 - Gorillaz
10. New Soul - Yael Naim
11. Loose Lips - Kimya Dawson
12. Suck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues - Cat Power
13. Fourth Time Around - Yo La Tengo
14. I'm Not There - Sonic Youth
15. No Cars Go - The Arcade Fire
16. Black Waves/Bad Vibrations - The Arcade Fire
17. Wake Up (Live at Fashion Rocks) - The Arcade Fire & David Bowie
18. She Plays Guitar - Masters of the Hemisphere

Where Bush and I Agree/Disagree

Agree
-Vetoing 2008 farm bill

Disagree
-War in Iraq
-Abortion
-Stem cell research
-Kyoto Protocol
-Not talking with leaders of Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.
-Privatizing social security
-Medicare drug bill
-Tax cuts for the wealthy during war time
-Roberts and Alito appointments to Supreme Court
-Grammar
-Gun control
-Not pursuing Al Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan border region
-Exploitation of 9/11 fears
-Complicit in swift-boating Kerry
-Reading newspapers
-Implicitly comparing Obama/Carter to Nazi appeasers
-Appointing/hiring Aschroft, Rove, Rice, Rumsfield and other generally incompetent/evil people
-His love affair with Saudi Arabia
-Response to Katrina
-Ignoring Cindy Sheehan
-Ignoring summer 2001 memo "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States"
-Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage
-Faith based initiatives
-No Child Left Behind
-Clean Air Act
-Manipulating EPA and NASA reports on global warming
-ever saying that the science is still out on global warming
-misleading the American public on the cost and reasons for going to war with Iraq
-Bush speaking at Bob Jones University while they still disallowed interracial dating
-Stealing the 2000 election
-Announcing in state of the union speech that Iraq had sought uranium "from Africa" knowing the evidence was flimsy at best (and subsequently found to be false)
-not acting on Gonzalez's firing of judges for political purposes
-pardoning Scooter Libby
-Not intervening in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict
-Ruining America's image abroad
-Telling people to shop after 9/11 instead of making real change (use less oil!)
-Dick Cheney
-Taking more vacation days than any president in history
-No exit strategy for Iraq
-Endorsing torture
-Praising Putin
-Endorsing the production of corn-based ethanol in state of the union speech
-Abstinence only sex education
-Saying Iraq had anything to do with 9/11
-Givng memberes of the press corp. idiotic nicknames
-Condoning the teaching of intelligent design
-Announcing that he quit golf out of respect to soldiers serving in Iraq
-Cutting a fake turkey when visiting Iraq on Thanksgiving and any exploitative/misleading photo op (meeting with black children, My Pet Goat, standing in front of a tree on Earth Day)
-Allowing Halliburton/Blackwater to abuse their responsibilities
... and so much more

Early acting role for an Apatow alumn

Was watching I (heart) Huckabees and noticed Jonah Hill in an early film role (which imdb lists as his first). He gets a few more lines than Seth Rogen in Donnie Darko. Furthermore, he is in one of the best scenes of the film where Mark Wahlberg responds to the conservative, suburban stereotype who says Jesus is never mad at you as long as He is in your heart: "He is, he most definitely is" This film is more than worthy of additional viewings and is still funny and relevant. A movie combining philosophy, environmentalism, existentialism (yes, it does), and slap stick comedy can't fail. It offered a commentary on post-9/11 fears from a liberal perspective (If the past 7 years are any indication, 24 was more indicative of the Republican response).

made me laugh

all from the same episode:

Jack: ... mind grapes

Tracy: (to Conan O' Brian) I... am... a.... killing... robot

Jack: Eating a cookie mid-day Lemon?
Liz: I gave blood!
Jack: Does that burn calories?

Liz: Why are you wearing a tux?
Jack: It's after six, what am I, a farmer?

Tracy: Dr. SPACEMAN!

Funny moments

On the first season of 30 Rock Tina Fey is walking and talking with a member of TGS. At the end of the walk Fey notes that all they did was walk in a circle. Sly jab at Studio 60?
On a recent episode of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me the answer to a question was 'Darth Vader.' A cast member answered 'storm trooper' and felt he should get credit since darth vader is a super storm trooper. Peter Segel does not give him credit and responds that darth vader is a fallen jedi and storm troopers are clones to applause. This guy knows his stuff and displays the erudition of NPR programming,

Where Cloverfield Went Wrong

The concept behind Cloverfield is great; lets make a big budget version of the Blair Witch Project. Take the disaster movie genre and shoot it from a pedestrians perspective. The teasers for Cloverfield were promising. What made The Blair Witch project scary was the realism; shooting in a home movie style. Unfortunately, Cloverfield sticks with the Hollywood conventions. Here is where it went wrong.
SPOILERS!
1.) The movie begins with about 10-15 minutes of dialogue between the main characters, setting up their backgrounds. Home movies are never this informative. I would accept this if all the characters were not so unlikeable. This further distances itself from the believability that we are watching someones candid home movie. (Also, the title begins by informing us this video was found by the military, and it is a piece of classified intelligence. Why would the military keep 15 minutes of character background bios?)
2.) The next piece that kept Blair Witch scary was never actually showing the monster. Half the thrills come from not knowing what it is. The Village, a generally mediocre horror film, kept the thrills by showing snippets of the monster, usually a quick blur or unfocused in the background. Judging by the trailers, you would think you would never actually see the monster in Cloverfield. On the contrary, you get multiple clear shots of the monster, even an ending climax where the camera man is standing underneath it and gets a nice, long, smooth shot of it (the whole film he is shaking and this is the time he finds calmn?)
3.) The monster bite causes you to explode. This might have been a cool surprise, a la Alien, except that it was shown in the commercials. Again, this takes away from the realism and takes it into B movie territory.
4.) Why can't it just be a story of a few people trying to escape from New York instead of some over the top rescue mission?
5.) A disaster movie set in New York is going to have its share of 9/11 references but this one is basically non-stop (people covered in dust, cgi paper falling from the sky). War of the Worlds did this far with far more subtleness. For that matter, War of the Worlds did this entire concept better. Speilberg made a believable, terrifying experience without the need of the hand-held movie ploy. Cloverfield at its core is a disaster movie like any other. It is basically Godzilla but shot in nauseating handy cam video. What is wrong with Cloverfield can be summed up in the one scene where the head of the statue of liberty is thrown down a street. This took anyway any sense of realism, which is the sole source of terror and suspense. WotW doesn't resort to this Independence Day-esque ploy and keeps the perspective solely on one family and believably portrays what would happen in basically any disaster. In conclusion, WotW = best disaster movie ever, Cloverfield = Godzilla san Matthew Broderick.

Carbon Credits are not Indulgences

Since carbon credits have gotten some media attention, pundits love to compare them to Catholic indulgences. It is an easy analogy to make; however, there is one clear difference. Indulgences could not and did not buy away your sins whereas carbon credits potentially could offset carbon emissions. Until our government gets its act together, this is really the only practical option beyond the usual stuff (greater efficiency, less energy use) to help the environment. The analogy with indulgences does ring true if these carbon credits do not in fact off set carbon emissions and solely exist to give us peace of mind. Since these carbon credit companies are not regulated and privately owned, this is true to some degree. If it is implemented properly though, people should be able to purchase credits that go towards planting trees and investing in alternative energy sources that are not economically competitive with coal and petroleum.
This does raise the argument of who should pay for the green future (assuming it happens). Should the wealthy be able to fly private jets as long as they offset that with carbon credits? This runs the risk of becoming of a regressive tax and something the conservative pundits love to say (or our "president" saying Al Gore cares more about owls than working people in 2000). The cost of reducing our carbon emissions to 1990 levels is something like 1% of our GDP, which should be fairly imposed on the population based on income. Conservatives love to say this will ruin our economy but global warming will have exponentially greater cost. The only real solution will come from the government that will subsidize the green movement and force manufacturers to produce green products.

Cute or anti-Semitic?

I saw this spray painted on the wall while playing Team Fortress 2. I always thought of Airdales as the Jewish dog. I want one!

Ben Stein's Expelled

I saw a commercial for Ben Stein's anti-evolution documentary Expelled. In the commercial, we are at some prep school as a crazy, bearded teacher explains evolution. Ben Stein raises his hand asking, "How did life begin in the first place... dude?" to which the teacher starts shaking angrily. Apparently, this lands Ben Stein in the principle's office. I am not sure why Ben Stein would be sent to the principle's office for asking a valid question for anyone ignorant of the concept of evolution. The theory of evolution states that whatever is most fit to survive and reproduce will proliferate. This includes non-life forms too, like viruses and organic molecules. Experiments have been done simulating the conditions on early earth and were able to spontaneously create amino acids, the building blocks of protein. It is not too hard to imagine then over the course of billions of years these molecules start reacting and forming something that is self-replicating. Of course every detail of this has not been explained, but there is far more scientific evidence for the theory of evolution (in that it has some evidence) than the thought experiment that is intelligent design.

Best Flight of the Conchords music vids

1:20- best part



3:04

My favorite

Trailer News

-The New Incredible Hulk slightly improves on the first. The CGI hasn't noticeably changed since Ang Lee's pic. At least this one should have a better villian and no monster poodles.
-The Strangers looks uncomfortably scary. Minimalist masks unfocuesed in the background are always terrifying. Maybe this is a return to slasher pics and the ending of torture porn. I can only hope.
-Blindness looks like Children of Men redux. Can't think of a more awesome movie worthy of imitation.
- War, Inc. is laying on the social commentary a little too thick but we certainly need some satire of the war since they usually fail (I am looking at you Southland Tales)
-Finally, I rewatched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and was reminded why this is one of the best films of all time and one of the few awesome trailers to live up to the film.


And of course, Wall-E. If this has some sort of A.I. styled ending I don't think I could handle it.

WALL-E v/s Hula Hoop
by DrMalo