Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Welcome back Spike Jonze, it's been too long.


From the visuals and the animatronics, to the David Eggars screenplay, all the way down to the Arcade Fire song, this trailer is pretty much pitch-perfect.



Jonze's last movie was the great Adaptation, way back in 2002 (!). There have been some rumblings that the studio was unhappy with the tone of film and made Jonze re-cut and re-shoot much of this 80 million + film, which is always a bad sign. Lets hope they didn't tinker too much.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Quote of the Day



From Steve Baer, prominent American inventor and solar designer:

"You don't need to know that much
you just need to go ahead
and try and it out.
But then you have to do
other things."

Monday, March 23, 2009

How to scar a poor kid for life (Numbers 7 and 6)


[ I feel your pain little buddy ]

7. The X-Files (death by dude coming out of a toilet episode)


My older brother has seven years on me. I guess then that my childhood subjection to adult-themed television can be seen as somewhat natural. I do, however, think that watching The X-Files as a nine-year old was probably, in retrospect, a bad call. The X-Files was one of the first shows to perfect the monster-of-the-week (MOW) plot device, and to this day it still manages to get a rise out of people (aka me). And yes, I’m looking at you episode with the house full of inbred, genetically mutated hicks, who have sex with their mother (who, fyi, lives on trolley underneath a bed) and gruesomely murder unsuspecting passer-bys. In this case, the episode of special note is Squeeze (sorry murdering inbreeds, you come in a close second). The premise is simple. Tooms (our illustrious MOW) is somehow able to stretch and contort his body. He resides in cave, where he hibernates between killings (surrounded by his own bile), and every once and a while he’ll go out, do some creepy stretching, and murder people. For good measure he also steals their livers and eats them (who doesn't love some good human foie gras every once in a while?). Pretty terrifying. Especially mortifying is a scene where the motherfucker (in this case, Tooms) comes up out of a toilet with his stretchy-hand and long, gangly fingers, and kills a dude. THROUGH A TOILET. WHEN THE GUY WAS TRYING TO TAKE A DUMP. I was nine. I already didn’t like toilets all that much. Fuck you X-Files.


6. Terminator 2: Terminating Little Kids Ability to Sleep Peacefully


Dear Dad,

Thanks for ignoring Mom when she said it was probably a bad idea to take an eight-year old to an R-rated movie. I really appreciate it. You know what else I really appreciated? The scene where the TX-1000 poses as John Connor’s foster mom and proceeds to stab John’s foster dad (with a liquid-metal sword-hand no less!) through a carton of milk, piercing the dude’s throat, and popping out the top of his bald head. Totally cool.

“Your foster parents are dead” - Arnold Schwarzenegger, Captain Obvious

Why the fuck do you think I never drank straight from the carton? I’ll give you one hint, and it has nothing to do with anything my parents ever told me.

Zac and Miri Make a Porno wasn't all that funny, but...



...Justin Long managed to steal the entire movie with four minutes of screen time. Crazy how that works sometimes.

Watch the entire scene here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lL2F6mw9pk

Good job Apple Guy! One more step on the path of redemption for Herbie: Fully Loaded (which, incidentally, sounds like a porno).