SuperSatellite

YouTube MADNESS

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Entertainment, Life and Times, Movies, News

I’ve been busy molesting the YouTube lately, and have tossed up a few videos recently.  It’s been a while since I actually used YouTube, and I sorta hope I can find excuses to do it more (Steve, time to hunt down more energy drinks).  I figured that stuff, combined with some cool crap I saw recently, was worth making a post full of videos for you to waste 15 minutes on.

This weekend, Steve began his quest to find the most vile, awful energy drink on the market.  Naturally, I had to have my camera handy for the event.  Keep in mind, these things are only a buck a piece.  Popular drinks like Monster are about two and a half times that because… well… the actually care about important things like taste (sort of).  This first one was called Ol’ Glory.  Even though it had an aftertaste like homeless guy rubbed in orange peels, it was actually marginally tolerable.

Round two was a knock out punch though.  A couple days after the Ol’ Glory test, Steve decided to brave the blue can of death flavor of Steven Segal’s Lightning Bolt.  He had already tried the vile and disturbing Cherry Charge flavor a few weeks back.  That can had two things going for it: one was that it had a name that at least implied a flavor, and second was that it had some vague cherry Robitussin distillate overtone to try and cover the taste of your soul being burned away.  Asian Experience flavor had neither of these.  I’m pretty sure if you tried something that one might call a real Asian experience, it would not taste good, and probably leave you robbed and beaten in an alley, with untold STDs.  There is no logical path one can walk that would result in this concoction’s creation, where someone would try it and think, “Yes, this is absolutely marketable!” This must be what they give to prisoners at Gitmo to get them to talk.

I haven’t talked about any movies recently.  I will mention that Wanted wasn’t too bad, but I still haven’t caught Wall-E like I wanted.  Hancock is much more interesting to me now than when the first trailers came out.  And what I’m reading about The Dark Knight is beyond encouraging.  Then, out of the woodwork this morning came this redband trailer for Mirror, a remake of the Korean film Into the Mirror, and starring Kiefer Sutherland.  I know nothing about the original, and Alexandre Aja hasn’t endeared himself to me through his past work, but this trailer is certainly cut well, and implies a very good, creepy film.  Hopefully the movie itself is more than just the sum of the parts of the trailer.

Being a big Joss Whedon, NPH, and Nathan Fillion fan, I have no idea how Dr. Horrible managed to sneak under the radar and be missed by me until now.  But this looks plenty funny and entertaining, and I haven’t a clue what it’s really about, and I’m already planning on buying the DVD.  The matter is pretty cut and dry, really.  Joss does no wrong, except when he kills people.  Then I cry.  But they’re manly tears.  Don’t judge me.

Speaking of Joss, and having nothing to do with him, but everything to do with movies and awesome people, I am absolutely stoked about Repo! the Genetic Opera.  It looked quirky and interesting before.  I dig quirky and interesting.  Then the latest trailer came out, and it has moved from an oddity I wanted to see, to a top shelf, will-not-miss theater moment.  First off, the new trailer makes the flick look and sound badass.  Paris who?  I don’t even care.  The Repo Man is none other than Anthony Stewart Farking Head!  I had no idea he was even in it.  Then there’s also Bill Moseley.  So say what you will, I’m going, and you’ll miss out if you don’t.

Lastly, I was on TV last night!  Okay, so it’s not that big a deal, but hey, it’s exciting to me.  PSU got its single largest donation ever, a $10 million pledge to go towards building the oft delayed and much needed fine and performing arts center.  Being the only youngish theatre alum at the press conference, I was summoned to give some opinions.  Naturally, I DVR’d them and uploaded the two clips to YouTube, one from 6:00 and a different one at 10:00.  Apparently they also used me on the morning segment today.  I guess they were really short on interviewees.  In all fairness, this money totals about one third of the cost of the building, so we still have some time before we see ground broken, but this gets all the right gears in motion now.

Self Control and Addiction

// April 12th, 2008 // No Comments » // Entertainment, Movies

Addiction is an evil, nasty thing. It destroys relationships, eats away at your dignity, and leaves people helpless. It becomes a driving force in a person’s life, taking away a certain degree of free choice. And such is my curse. Forced to give in to unnatural desires and walk with an evil shadow over me.

I couldn’t help it. It’s hard when you have an enabler in your life. Especially one that offers a 40% off sale at your weakest moment (when you have 80 cool dollars burning a hole in your wallet). As a result, I walked out of Blockbuster today 11 movies heavier. Eleven. Only four of those were even on my current wishlist. At this rate, I will easily break 500 movies before the end of the year. That will be a dark day indeed.

This is nothing new. I’ve mentioned it many times, my collecting problem. I just never cease to amaze myself with how quickly I will just grab and pile up movies. I’m back to stacking them on the floor too, having ran out of shelf space yet again. I’m smart about it at least. I always buy previewed, and when there’s a sale. Using today’s sample as an example, I usually end up spend around $7.00 per movie, give or take. I have found that pretty true across the board. Based on that average, spanning 479 titles, that’s $3353.00 in movies, not counting tax (which would bring it up to nearly $3600). I wonder if I should itemize this stuff for insurance purposes…

And, much like a heroin junkie who needs increasing amounts to be satisfied, I keep buying more. I can stand at my shelves endlessly at times, not able to find anything that sounds like it is worth watching. That’s pretty insane when you consider how indiscriminately I purchase movies. Oh, and my wishlist is still about a hundred strong. In fact, it hasn’t shrank really at all over the past couple of years.

The only solution? Hollywood must stop making movies. Then I’d have nothing to buy. Simple, elegant.

In all seriousness, I look forward to having the opportunity to build a home theatre.  I big one.  My dad has built a few for people over the past couple years, and they’re awesome.  You’d never want to watch a normal TV again.  Can’t really do it here though, because my house doesn’t have room for it…yet…Just wait.  I have…ideas.

Johnny #5…EXTREME!

// April 4th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // Entertainment, Movies

Here’s some movie news I didn’t really see coming (courtesy of FirstShowing.net, thanks guys!). Apparently the Weinstein Company has bought the rights to the Short Circuit franchise and is planning a remake of the original movie. As a bonus, S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, the original creators, are back on board. All told, this is not a terrible formula for a remake (especially compared to other remakes that have come out of Hollywood recently). It’s actually kind of a comfort to know that the guys who started it are on board; who better to protect an image than the people who made it?

But. There has to be a “but.” See, Short Circuit is one of my personal, all time, favorite 80s movies. It’s up there with Ghostbusters, Back to the Future, Wargames, Gremlins, and some others. While a modern Johnny #5 is a neat idea, I’m not sure that it will work. 80s movies in this genre, at least ones not directed by James Cameron and Steven Spielberg, just have an interesting 1980’s campy patina to them. That’s the best way I can describe it I think. In an effort to make a good, high quality film on a relatively low (by today’s standards) budget, movies like this found their own kind of quality. Think about Innerspace, or Batteries Not Included, for instance. They made by the best they could, and without the ability for heavy CG reinforcement, they got a movie that had an almost “believable” feel to it. This was partly because when it came to things like the robot, they really scrounged up parts and made a damn robot. And as far as robots go, they don’t get much cooler than Johnny 5 was. I’d go so far as to say it was the most “emotional” and best “acting” robot Hollywood has ever seen (sorry Terminator).

The original film is about a military robot called Number 5 that runs away from the government after it’s struck by lightning and develops a conscience and a personality. With the help of a young woman, Number 5 tries to evade capture and convince his creator that he has truly become alive. As Peter at SlashFilm points out, Bob Weinstein probably noticed all of the discussion comparing Wall-E and Johnny 5 and thought that they could capitalize on the renewed interest. Unfortunately I don’t think that’s going to help turn this into anything good.

You know, one of the reasons that this remake is a little scary is that movies of this kind simply aren’t made anymore. This quasi-fantasy family film genre. It’s all about Narnia, or Harry Potter, or other high value, CG saturated, gimmick films. There is no “simple” anymore, which is where movies like Short Circuit would fall. And updating it would more than likely destroy what makes it great. You can’t replicate what made movies of that era good, it was simply a function of the environment, time, and technology. One of the tenets of film remaking is that you don’t just replicate it, you have to improve it. But I’m not convinced you can improve it. Like I said, a modernized Johnny 5 is a cool thought, it’s just that in bringing everything else up to speed you will lose everything that made it classic.

Be careful boys. This may not be some super beloved franchise, or one that tops millions of people’s top 10 lists, but I love it. And in the end, that’s all that matters, right?

I Am (A Better) Legend

// March 5th, 2008 // 8 Comments » // Entertainment, Movies

Remember that movie I Am Legend that came out over the holidays? Remember how angry I was at it? Obviously there’s no need for me to rehash the pain and suffering that the ending of that movie caused me. It was a good movie through the first half, acceptable in the third quarter, and viciously worthless in the last quarter.

Really, it was a movie that I think would have benefited greatly the closer it stuck to the original plot, modernization not withstanding. It had a great setting, spectacular acting (why wasn’t Will Smith nominated for Best Actor at the Oscar’s?), and a good feel to it (though I question the quality of the vampires’ CG). The framework Matheson provided was perfect. And they screwed it up. End of story.

Well, it turns out there was an alternate ending. Firstshowing.net mentioned it this morning. Turns out, it actually is better (and blog chatter seems to agree with that across the board). Here, watch, and then continue reading:

Better, no? Better, but not as good as it could have been. It still ignores the key point that (spoiler, highlight to read) Neville was the last man on earth. That was the whole friggin’ point. But at least that alternate ending attempted to give the vampires some additional organized creepy feel. In the book, the vampires were much more humanized, and in the end you almost sympathize with them. The movie had none of that. And this alternate dropped that cheesy as all hell ending where the woman and kid find the town full of people, which was about the most cookie cutter, generic, bad Hollywood ending I have ever seen in a movie. It didn’t even feel remotely natural, more like some random producer just thought it’d be fun to screw up the movie.

Too bad they hadn’t gone with this ending in the first place. I am vaguely reminded of the director’s cut of Independence Day, where the theatrical version was better, because what was in the director’s cut was pretty much trash. It’s like that, only backwards. The stuff they left in I Am Legend is all the stuff that would have been better off out. My question is, what happens next? Should I buy the DVD anyway? It’d be nice if you could watch it with the alternate ending instead, as some DVDs do. That’d be okay I guess. I wonder if Warner Bros. pays attention to any of the blog chatter on matters such as this.

Failing at Movies: Hot Rod

// January 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Entertainment, Movies, Reviews

Akiva Schaffer, you are officially fired. Fired. Go to your office, pack your bags, and GTFO. Pam Brady, you too. Don’t even think about it, just leave. You both fail at movies. I watched Hot Rod yesterday, and it was the kind of bad that legends are made of. Not the good legends, but like the bad ones, ones no one remembers because thinking about it makes your brain hurt. They don’t have names for the evil that lurks in people’s souls that brings crap like this out.

I wish I could tell you Akiva Schaffer is known for some good movies in his past. He’s not, so just give up that hope right now. Like the Easter Bunny, the Holy Grail, or Will Farrell’s talent, it does not exist. He’s directed some Saturday Night Live. Oh, and a segment on some show called Channel 101. That’s it. After this movie, you can bet he won’t be lighting up the silver screen with new gems any time soon. Brady has written some South Park and other misc. TV shows. “How could this not turn in to Hollywood gold?!” you might be screaming in question at an unreasonable volume at your computer screen while sitting there in your underwear (…mmm….underwear readers…). Well, let me tell you, that particular equation actually comes out to epic fail.

The film truly had but one redeeming quality, and that is Isla Fisher, the cute starlet who is inexplicably married to Sacha Baron Cohen. But even that isn’t enough to justify spending a single dime on the film. It’s crazy, because I can normally pick crap out from trailers, but this film’s trailer made it look funny. I was fooled. That is a cruel and unfunny joke, however. Beneath the humorous trailer is a film made from anti-funny. Like matter and anti-matter, funny and anti-funny might appear similar at first glance, but they annihilate everything when they come in to contact.

Leading man Andy Samberg was painful in his portrayal of Rod Kimble. He was many things in the film: stale, dumb, unmotivated, uninspired. Things he wasn’t include: funny, creative, or engaged. Of course, what can you expect from a man who’s career highlight reel is capped with the Dick in a Box song. In fact, there isn’t a good character in the entire film. Isla Fisher is cute, yes, but the Denise character makes zero sense. All this is due to bad directing, and the worst writing I’ve heard in years. Example: The plot is driven by Rod, who gets into fights with his step dad to prove that he’s a man. Except he never wins, and the step dad’s heart starts failing, so Rod decides to do a stunt and raise the money to get him the heart transplant. So that he can beat him up. And prove his manhood. And the crazy part is, it plays out ten times worse than it even sounds.

There was hope in the plot. I am convinced that the right actors and writing can make any concept funny, and as dumb as it sounds, you see moments of potential here and there. Rather than take advantage of it, I genuinely believe the producers sat down and calculated ways to crush any chance whatsoever of anything being done right in the film. It’s so bad, it can’t be on accident. Somewhere, someone is having a good laugh over the whole thing, like it’s some stupid inside joke funny only to them, at the cost of millions of dollars.

FirstShowing.net terribly disappointed me here, giving it a 9 out of 10, and praising the very things that makes it awful. All I can imagine is that their reviewer was stoned, drunk, or confused with when April Fool’s Day is. Or maybe their review scale was flipped, and 10 would be like evilcarnagehitlerpornbad. In which case 9 is just really, really bad.

And that’s all I have to say on the matter. Don’t see it. Don’t think about seeing it. Don’t even talk to people who have seen it. Including me. I am poison now.