Sunday on Jul 19, 2008 at 5:16 am
It’s that sad and wonderful time, meatbags, Act III and the final episode of Dr. Horrible. Go watch them all in succession before they are all gone tomorrow. Of course they’ll reappear for a fee, but all the world loves a free gleaming jelly.
Sunday on Jul 18, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Two movie posts in one day! I know, but it’s summer blockbuster time which means one thing: getting excited over what is coming out next year.
I’m not ashamed to defend my love of the Terminator franchise, and like any true love I can admit to its failings. The Sarah Connor Chronicles, for example - I’ve never seen a whole episode and while I like the concept, something in me just fails to get a nerd boner. I can wait until they come out on DVD, and even then I’m not going to be breathing heavy all over my Netflix waiting for the Saturday night clock to roll over to New On DVD day.
But imagine my temporary blackout when I learned that Christian Bale was set to not only be John Connor, but to star in a possible trilogy of post-apocalyptic machine-war movies. This! Is! Me! Hitting myself in the head with a nerdstick! There is bad news, as always: the producers have made it clear they want the franchise to become PG-13, unlike the first trilogy, to “broaden audiences.” I like the generous wording of “broaden audiences,” it sounds so much more respectable than “make more money” and “abandon integrity”. But there is also strange news: since The Governator cannot reprise his most famous role due to some conflict having to do with being a politician or something, they’ve hired Roland Kickinger, a Schwarzenegger look-alike. I can’t imagine that someone pretending to be Schwarzenegger pretending to be a robot could be any worse than the original, but time will tell I suppose.
All this aside, this is the story I’ve always wanted to see: the resistance, John Connor meeting his paradox-headache-inducing teenage father, Kyle Reese, GIANT MACHINE ARMIES. You know, the important things.
60-seconds of cruel, teasery cruelness.
Sunday on Jul 18, 2008 at 12:12 pm
This is going to be a hard one.
I’ve known it was coming. But the gulf between preparing one’s self and actually facing the music is a big one.
I’m talking, of course, about Watchmen movie.
Of all the comic book stories in all the world, this is the one that I feel most protective of. This is my giant fanboy experience and if they fuck this up I am going to fall out of love with Hollywood forever. And so it is with the timid, fragile, quivering heart of a teenager that I watch the now-available trailer for Watchmen and think, “It’s not perfect, but … could it be? Good?”
Good?
Break my heart?
Lightly Flashy offical Watchmen website, with trailer.
Sunday on Jul 2, 2008 at 9:03 am
I admit that I read celebrity blogs, but covertly and with that brand of defensive, proud shame that comes with most porn-viewing. I’m a grown-up, I can read about Naomi Campbell’s repeated arrests if I want to.
One line of regular interest is whether or not Will Smith and his wife Jada are Scientologists. Or rather, whether or not they are going to publicly admit it. Because the public accepts Smith as the next great American Action Actor, seeing past his skin and into his car-chase-sequencing, slang-crowing heart. Now run the same experiment, but with the Scientology parameter added. Result: possible microscopic drop in the hundreds-of-millions Smith might could make on a picture. And we can’t have that, can we?
The Smiths are regularly spotted chillin’ with Shorty McLoonytoons himself, Tom Cruise, which some might argue is not a solid indicator of one’s religious beliefs. However, I beg to differ: it is made clear both in Scientology reference material and in members’ actions that fraternization with non-Scientologists is strictly discouraged. Though it is oddly not spoken of, Cruise’s own divorce from Nicole Kidman was most certainly due to her long-malingering refusal to submit to Scientology in total. Neither party has spoken of this directly, but Kidman’s quiet assurances that she remains Catholic at heart are as close as she can probably get without finding herself accidentally sticking her head into a noose and then accidentally falling off a balcony. The internet abounds with testimonies of ex-Scientologists who were parted from their non-Scientoligist friends and family - even marriage partners, and sometimes forcibly. Classic cult tactics. For the Cruises to be seen repeatedly with the Smiths in public is a very, very strong indicator that the Smiths are at least superficially entertaining Xenu.
The Smiths, as you may or may not have heard, are behind a new private school called The New Village academy (set to open this September), a charitable, benign venture few people fussed over until this week when it was noticed at the school’s website the inclusion of certain Scientology terms.
The school’s spokesperson claims that yes, certain teaching methods at The New Village Academy were pioneered by L. Ron Hubbard, but no, the school was not a “Scientology school.” She also defended the confirmation of several Scientologist teachers by pointing out there were Christian, Muslim and Jewish teachers as well.
As you can probably guess, the logic starts to fall apart pretty quickly. For starters, there are no Jesus or Mohammad methods of teaching at the school as there are L. Ron Hubbard methods. A tiny bit of digging also reveals that the method The New Village Academy will be employing, called “Study Tech,” is in itself a method of converting/reinforcing Scientology beliefs. In other words, it is like saying that a school will have bible study, but that the school in not religious in nature.
A good breakdown of what a Scientology school is structured like can be found at the Ex-Scientology Kids website. Take special note of the section titled “What are the differences between a Scientology school and a public school / regular school?” It takes some reading through, but once you start to spot the typical “Study Tech” weirdnesses, you can see them worded differently or renamed in The New Village Academy’s website. And example of this is the Scientology method of the “clay demo,” or being able to demonstrate understanding of an idea as a 3D piece of clay (the idea being that the spirit learns based on physical, 3D events - this all goes back to space aliens, trust me). At The New Village Academy, it is referred to as:
Mastery can be tested traditionally with pen and paper, but often we prefer to have children demonstrate their understanding by creating models.
I’ll leave it to you to determine how a student might demonstrate their understanding of spelling or long-division by creating a model.
The New Village Academy website.
“Scientology is focus of flap over Will Smith’s new school,” at The LA Times.
Sunday on Jun 18, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Three weeks ago it was popular to comment on the new Indiana Jones movie, and because I like to pretend I’m not a follower, I am just now getting around to jumping off that particular bridge. Because I am in truth a lazy follower. And because I despise it when people spoil things even years afterwards, we’re going to do a jump.
Leesa on May 11, 2008 at 2:52 pm
When you grow weary from the perpetual hyperdrive induced gray blur visible outside the portals, you might wander down to the Gmu Meditational Hall to view the works displayed there. Let them ease the space madness and bring about a magical state of calm wonderment.
No words.
From the collection:
Sunday on Apr 25, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Remember the first time you saw Akira and loved it, and it was fucking awesome, and when it was over you had no idea what the hell happened?
Welcome to Casshern! There are no spoiler warnings for this review because I can’t explain anything that occurs in the movie.
Casshern is based on a 70’s Japanese anime series (Shinzō Ningen Kyashān), but seeing the show won’t help you make any sense of what you’re watching. By the time it was over I felt like I’d been beaten senseless by a robot with a bejeweled peppermint stick and then shocked back into reality with bucket of ice cold whiskey poured over my head.
It helps if you know that the movie was filmed entirely on a green screen, making for what are mostly real actors moving through some very realistic anime. Now add some Cold War propaganda. And some Blade Runner. And some Brazil. And a healthy shake of beautiful Japanese people. And an equal part of battle-bots. Sprinkle with classic anime movement, framing and sound effects. Now, carefully, skim off any non-chaotic character motivation.
In the event that you think it would be ‘cool’ to smoke some Old Took and watch Casshern I say NO. It would be like eating some acid and then going to a clown festival. They are two diametrically opposed events. Be sober during the movie and then drink four gallons of beer after. This is the approved method.
And don’t confuse my blustering with negativity - I adore Casshern. It was fantastic. Poking around the internet, anyone with a single geek hair on their backs was gushing eternal confused love to this movie, and for good reason - sometimes you want someone to put every single great scifi trope into one bowl, stir it all up, and then cook it to see what happens. Out the other end comes a baffling fruitcake, delicious, strange, and impossible to describe. Done without pretense, it can be transformative. Done wrong, you get unwatchable Matrix sequels.
Link to one of many fantastically ridiculous action sequences delivered in classically awful YouTube quality. Note that the video’s poster says “the rest of the movie is pretty boring.” This person has clearly blacked out during major segments of the film.
Sunday on Apr 25, 2008 at 12:45 pm
I won’t wax too poetic about my enduring hatred for torture-porn director Eli Roth (okay, just a little - this turd actually tried to blame the box office mediocrity of his last film on movie pirating, for god’s sake), but now the maggot is crawling into my territory. Says Reuters:
Roth told reporters on Wednesday he is two weeks away from finishing a script for a science-fiction action film inspired by the mainstream hits “Cloverfield” and “Transformers.”
Here’s a douche-to-English translation for you:
Roth told reporters on Wednesday that he is two weeks away from finishing a script for a science-fiction action film inspired by the epic money-making achieved by mainstream hits such as “Cloverfield” and “Transformers.” “I don’t really care what genre I work in,” says Roth, “I’d just like to masturbate into a pile of hundred dollar bills every day and not worry about the cost of it.”
Eli Roth is going PG-13 via Seriously? OMG! WTF? (warning: almost unbearable photo of aforementioned douchebag might send you into berserker rage)