Sat, 03 Nov 2007
15:50
Me: Because everyone loves lesbians.
Me: Even cold, power-hungry, commie lizard queen lesbians.
Exchange in IM
Friend: You realize that Hillary's revelation as a carpet muncher will cinch her nomination and win her the Oval Office?
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15:27
Confirmed by anecdote
By far the most disgusting individual -- thank God I have never met him but boat crews do talk and I have had the lousy luck to be anchored next to him on the Riviera -- is Larry Ellison of Oracle fame, an unpleasant sociopath who has found the only sport where you can become a hero while others do the competing, the America's Cup. Unlike Ted Turner who won the Cup back in the early eighties by skippering his boat, Ellison is on board as ballast.
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Fri, 02 Nov 2007
13:24
What's Wrong With Music
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Tue, 09 Oct 2007
18:13
Public enemy number one
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Fri, 20 Apr 2007
17:53
Never Again, Again
Sun, 18 Feb 2007
15:51
Three unrelated links, no comment
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Tue, 14 Nov 2006
16:16
Love Borat or hate him, this is probably the funniest ironic reaction yet. From the Romanian village of Glod, where the opening and closing scenes were filmed:
Give me your tears, gypsy. Or I will take them!
And Salon's got the scoop on What's Real In 'Borat'. According to semi-official statistics, police were called ninety-one times during filming.
Honestly, I have to love any movie that includes credits like "Naked Fight Coordinator". Not to mention "Mr Baron Cohen's feces provided by".
Glorious
...when local vice-mayor Petre Buzea was asked whether the people felt offended by Baron Cohen's film, he replied: "They got paid so I am sure they are happy. These gipsies will even kill their own father for money."
Wed, 11 Oct 2006
01:15
The saga of Aleksey Vayner started funny, until people realized
he was serious:
Yes, Daniella Berman. And there is an even bigger difference between truth and lies. So riddle me this one simple question: Did Mr. Vayner tell the truth, or did he lie?
If your head explodes in the attempt to formulate a response, I'm not cleaning it up.
Lying Liars and the Morons Who Excuse Them
"There is a big difference between stretching the truth to show yourself in the
best possible light, which I think a lot of Yalies are guilty of and
[Undergraduate Career Services] even tells you to do, and on the other hand,
doing something
so extreme that you're manipulating other people..."
Thu, 21 Sep 2006
17:46
For a change, I've been too immersed enjoying life to bitch about it here.
Still perfectly content in my blissful, self-imposed bubble. Except people
keep frickin' sending me political shit, which I just smile and do my best
to ignore.
Though every once in a while, I get something decent:
Now I just need to work the phrase 'rum-sodden, Popish whoremonger' into
casual conversation.
Dusting off the cobwebs
"What can one say of Obediah Phineous, except that he is plainly a rum-sodden
Popish whoremonger who would sell his mother's honor to a gang of Turkish
sailors? Foul as the gusts of hell may be, they compare not to the pestilential
stench that roils the air when his name is spoken horses faint, the very fish
of the deep float dead to the surface, and the tender nature of any decent
woman who hears the fearful name suffers a shock of such grievous force her
womb seizes up, and becomes like granite upon which no seed may root. Obediah
Phineous -- wrong for America, wrong for Christendom, possibly Spanish, and
wrong for the proposed Potomac Canal. Trade not thine soul for a vote! Elect
Cyrus `Ol' Honest Dredger' Derrick, or forever turn in shame from the trusting
gaze of children and dogs. (This message brought to you by the Potomac Canal
Route Businessmen's Association.)"
Fri, 23 Jun 2006
01:21
If you haven't heard this modern masterpiece of mashup, here are
links to download and a list of the samples. This posting spurred on by finding an attempted equally
comprehensive breakdown of the final track, "Question" (my personal favorite).
A Night At the Hip-Hopera
Sat, 18 Feb 2006
15:48
"Puck gets all the ladies."
Birthday fairy fun
Not my birthday, but my wife's. Tonight we're going out to eat with her family
but last night we went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream. Last time I tried a public event with this many people, it didn't go well, but this time was fine: We had decent grand tier seats, not too many cellphones and coughing during the performance, and nobody looked at me like I was scum for dressing like a poor country boy surrounded by city slickers. Puck, traditionally the most annoying character, won me over; partly from being played by a cute woman (and well at that; nice delivery, very graceful movements), and partly the little touches that made the role. This lucky chick got to spank a girl fairy, a human female, a human male, and Titania herself, as well as receive a spank from Oberon.
Wed, 05 Oct 2005
23:24
You don't have to be a fan to become one. Joss Whedon has done a stellar job at the unenviable task of making fifteen hours of backstory immediately accessible to those completely unfamiliar with his universe and those who populate it. Coming in blind, knowing nothing of what's going on, only makes it more obvious that the film refuses to spell everything out as though you were a toddler, but does assume you have a brain and know how to use it, while avoiding the all too common sin of coming across as a pseudo-intellectual exercise in advertising the creators' cleverness a la The Matrix.
This is good family entertainment, and not just by "today's standards". Whedon's television background works for him in this area rather than against, but he's always known that making our brains work is far more effective than having everything laid out. Unless you view Disney productions as the be-all and end of family-safe viewing, this is a fine movie for even (smart, well-behaved) pre-teens with parental supervision. "Real" swearing isn't even in English, while time-worn Anglo-Saxon classics have new life breathed into them by being twisted into forms that more befit a Western ("gorram", "rutting"). While it's no compliment to say that most shows on television today have more sex and violence than Serenity, it is my pleasure to say that what is present is not shoved in one's face or pounded over one's head. The most stressful, nail-biting moments are so not because of overly explicit visuals, but by making the viewer care about the characters and creating a sense of real danger and unpredictability. Finally, in addition to fun it offers (what I consider) positive values and much meat for discussion of serious issues. Which leads us to the fact that:
Partisan politics have no place here. While it's true that Mr. Whedon used the L-word to describe the film's main protagonist, he's also made it explicitly clear that he is not his hero. Tim Minear, who helped Whedon create some of the best episodes of Angel and Firefly, has "come out" as libertarian and is even currently working on the screenplay for Heinlein's "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress" -- but Serenity is Whedon's baby through and through. People from all over the political spectrum can read any number of messages into the text, if they try hard enough, but that's nothing new. What's new is everyone from the Village Voice to National Review giving rave reviews. To some extent this is because of the parts that are simply beyond politics -- good characters, witty dialogue and the like. But it's also because despite Whedon's generally Hollywood-style modern-day liberalism, he understands the reality of politics as sausage grinder:
Reasons To Find "Serenity"
"Everything in America right now has a big line drawn down the middle, and you're either on one side or the other. This movie isn't that. It's not about one government being bad, or more or less government being the right thing. It's about how the machinations of politics affect the little guy."
Except where he's the wisecracking ship's pilot -- an average guy getting by with a big heart and an overdeveloped sense of humor -- Joss actually seems to veer closer in his personal philosophy to the villain of his piece. Like the unnamed Operative, he believes in a better world. But he also recognizes the evil and folly of utopian perfectionism driving all those who believes their vision trumps the rights of another.
If not truly transcendent, Serenity is definitely more than the sum of its parts. I believe it has something for almost everyone, that it is truly one of the few Hollywood productions worth seeing in the theater even at today's prices, and that every moment you spend in its universe will offer rich and lasting rewards.
See you in the world.
[/culture] [#permalink]Fri, 23 Sep 2005
15:02
From Usenet:
Routing around economic censorship
The foley work in the US version [of "Drunken Master 2"] ruined the Ken Lo
Fight. They removed the "Clackity Clack" sounds of the floor boards, and the
"Switch switch switch!" sounds of ken lows kicks... and of course all of the
wonderful screaming and small detailed sounds inbetween.
And:
It didnt suck ass but the sound work really turned me off. The end fight scene is so intense in the HK version. The US release version's end fight scene seems powerless in comparison. There is no audio rythym to it anymore. Punches no longer sound strong. Ken's leg doesnt seem fast or furrious.
And of course, the original soundtrack is far superior as well, with the American version sounding like an American desperately trying to make Asian music. All in all, a stunningly bad treatment of one of Jackie Chan's best works.
But one man, tired of complaining, actually DID something about it:
I took the video from the dvd of LODM ["Legend of the Drunken Master"] and tried matching it up with the sound from my VHS copy of DM2 ["Drunken Master 2"]. It is perfectly synced all the way up to the fight in the barn where there is a bit of extra slow motion effects in the LODM so that DM2 soundtrack ends up about 1 or 2 seconds faster. Once I compensated for that it stayed in sync untill he fights fishmonger Tan where they again put in some slow motion (I'm not exactly sure but it seems they did). Again, synced up the tape matches up until the layer switch on LODM when Wong Kei Ying is looking pathetic after telling Tso which way to go, which is BTW one of the more stupid looking layer switches I've ever seen. Why not just switch during the blackness between scenes rather than freeze framing Wong Kei Ying?? There is a small edit during Jackie's singing but after that the film is synced pretty much for the rest of the film.
In other words, a phantom edit.
I'm rather surprised someone hasn't done this using DVD's of both. If I stay caught up on everything, I may give it a try myself.
[/culture] [#permalink]Thu, 22 Sep 2005
06:09
Yet another thing I'm noting here so I don't lose track of it: The lyrics to the song
Sarah Silverman sings in the trailer for
Jesus Is Magic.
Because I was too much of a 'tard to figure out that damn second to last line, but
after a few listens my wife figured it out. Yet another reason she's a genius and I
love her.
I love you more than Jews love money
I love you more than Asians are good at math
I love you even if it's not hip
I love you more than black people don't tip
I love you like Gary Busey
I love you more than dykes love pussy (*)
I love you more than my after-show monster bong hit
But maybe it's Patty Hearst siding with her kidnappers
Maybe it's South African miners killing diamond-wearing gangster rappers
Maybe it's like when black guys call each other niggers
Notes to myself
I love you more than bears love honey
(*)Some site has an extra line for the song after this, "I love you more than Puerto Ricans and Mexicans eat bats". Not in the trailer, so don't know the source/authentitsity.)
Cha cha cha.
[/culture] [#permalink]Mon, 19 Sep 2005
23:59
Gotta have some good news, to balance the bad earlier.
While Googling for Predator in my ongoing effort to discover why I love this
movie so much, I found
Predator: A Shaman's View.
The first thing that grabbed my eye about the page was an
NLP Techniques
link on the side, since I actually read
Bandler and Grinder
both at a tender age and again recently. The article itself
referenced above is quite good, semi-Objectivist in some spots, and while not
approaching the subject from a cinematic perspective (e.g., how things like
sound and editing contribute to mood), it clarifies a lot of my previously
less-coherent thoughts as to this movie's enduring appeal.
Predator: The Shaman's Journey
"In India it is also one [of] the most popular movies that ever played. The
distributors regularly re-release the movie and there is always an audience for
it many years after it was first released and also after it has been shown to
death on cable TV. This popularity cannot be explained only by the fact that it
is a very exciting movie. People who do not even know the language go in to see
it many times over. There is something else at work here and this essay is an
attempt to uncover the subliminal context of the Predator film."
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Tue, 30 Aug 2005
19:40
All you wankerous movie fanboys who blindly bleat
OMG AMERIKA IS SEXUALLY REPRESSED AND VIOLENT as if it were the least bit original, or true. It's neither, so get the fuck off your high horses. But do let me know if you're ever willing to look past your ridiculous preconceptions and collectivizations.
I ain't holdin' my breath.
More people who need to die
Mon, 22 Aug 2005
17:03
Film Threat finally got around to reviewing
my favorite zombie movie ever.
Although Shaun of the Dead comes pretty damn close.
My favorite zombie movie
17:03
Commenter on Vox Popoli:
Everyone needs a nigger
I don't think there's anything wrong with the city folk/country folk divide. Both sides get to have an easy target for jokes and both get to feel superior. Each side gets to think, "Well the other side is dumb and stupid because they prefer to live a different way than I do." Each side portrays the other as comically ignorant. Everyone wins, as far as I can tell.
As far as I can tell, in that scenario, everyone loses.
[/culture] [#permalink]Tue, 09 Aug 2005
19:27
Tim Minear, on writing
the script for THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS:
A thin ray of hope
"...this is about a revolution. It's big and it has a lot of really complex
political ideas. It's hard in that respect. How do you personalize this?
There's a lot of talking in the book - theoretical talking about Libertarian
ideals and political structure and that sort of thing - how do you take that
and make it immediate and dramatic and emotional? How do you say that stuff
through scenes and action, as opposed to characters sitting around and having a
conversation? That's difficult. The other thing that is difficult is that there
is also a certain amount of psychological pressure that I am trying to remove
from myself when you're adapting something like Heinlein. This book is so
important to so many people and you don't want to fuck it up. So there's that.
You want to keep true to spirit of it, and you want to take this enormously
long book, that takes place over a long period of time and try to do a version
of it that will play for two hours on a movie screen. The other thing is to
make sure the powers that be in Hollywood don't force you to turn it into some
Marxist screed on socialism, when Heinlein was a Libertarian and it's about
free-market capitalism. You want to try and not make it about an evil
corporation. That's the trick."
Every once in a great while, you think there's a chance.
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15:31
Because truth is stranger, and
parodies are better.
Reason #9457825 I stopped reading fiction
