Gods, not that!

A line of dialogue I, for one, want to hear: Reboot the Kraken!

 

via utk.edu

 

Posted via web from Poor Poor Thing

The past as it shapes the present

Another Kickstarter project under way, a feature-length film by someone whose family is from Iran.
Update: the project successfully met the creator's funding goal.

The dark side

Alternate movie title: The Moon is New

via flickr.com

 

The thing that seems to be missing from the advertising blitz for the film coming out this week is a depiction of the celestial body of the title, which as all skywatchers know would be one off of which the sun's rays fail to reflect. This is the closest I could find.

I am looking forward to analogous images for Eclipse and especially Breaking Dawn.

 

Posted via web from Poor Poor Thing

In two decades we'll know what they've done

The Disney company has had to eat some considerable amount of crow with regard to the Baby Einstein product line they acquired a while back, which seems not to do what it was touted as doing. All this infant video watching might have some other effect however, perhaps inspiring some to craft tightly-written family dramas, others to spectacular documentaries, and still others to agonizing historical montages we can only dream of now. Or they could grow to like CGI the way I have not.

My question is: where did I leave the top of my skull?

Horror movie title: The Previously Dead

via dreamstime.com

I have been served brains before, and enjoyed them, insofar as one can enjoy something so similar to hard-boiled egg whites without benefit of deviled egg filling. This was long before people had worries about BSE or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and I think I have suffered no ill effect from the experience. Nor any especially potent beneficial effect, along the lines of "the best brain food should be brains," since after all it was a matter of consuming them, not acquiring a transplant or anything.

I notice that it is possible to buy a brain hat but they really should put on a warning that it intended only for those with short or no hair, which would be bound to spoil the effect. It is just the sort of thing one might wear to see a zombie movie hoping to score a reduced price ticket.

Posted via web from Poor Poor Thing

There's a sequel

Hitchcockian novel set in the South of France: Window Derrière

via iranian.com

I think the teal lady-silhouette ought to be worried about getting soiled.

Posted via web from Poor Poor Thing

Everyone knows midichlorians are orange

Bad Guy: Darth Gourd (his subordinates would address him as "Lord Gourd")

They probably look even better when they're slightly moldy.

Pretty soon it will be time purchase the raw materials needed for the year's Halloween creation. I always favor interesting shape and texture versus brute size.

Posted via email from Poor Poor Thing

Tissue-thin

The extreme skinniness of the shadow of the rings against Saturn's cloud top settles once and for all the extreme silliness of film depictions of spaceships flying through huge debris fields when passing through planetary rings. You can't even see it in the thumbnail, so thin the region is, so the pilot and navigator would have to be aiming for that razor's edge to be in the right place for it to be a problem.

Plus I'm pretty sure the contents of these ring systems is much smaller than the huge boulders the CGI team likes to toss around.

My God, it's full of floor wax

Glide Path,
originally uploaded by The Devil in the Detail.

Acid colors are so '60s. Here in the real 21st century we know the value of a palette of earth tones.

Spot the warped, frustrated old man

When pondering the image of Dick Cheney in a wheelchair, this tableau sprang to mind.Original here

I hate earworms

"Indiana Jones" movie poster in Italian,
originally uploaded by kubacheck.

Maybe this is a couple of months late, or maybe a bit early, but I've been troubled by this every time they play the theme to that movie for years now. Either my Google-fu is weak or I'm the only one who hears it though.
Link (MIDI file)

I want to be relieved

Ten things I gleaned from the second X-Files film:

1. Despite a lifetime of medical training, it is legitimate to believe hallucinations can come from Satan.


2. West Virginia is about 15 minutes from Washington, DC.


3. When abducting the victim of a motor vehicle accident, it is okay to punch out the side window and drag the victim 100 yards - no one will notice.


4. Parents' wishes don't matter in the care of a minor child; whatever the attending physician decides is enough.


5. During a footchase of an elusive, homicidal suspect in an ill-lit, unfamiliar area, keep in touch with your partner by screaming at the top of your voice.


6. When you work for the FBI, they won't give you a handgun, even if you're a young female living alone in a rural area.


7. Unless you're an Assistant Director.


8. Speaking of rural areas, you will find that in West Virginia, dogs are uncommon.


9. When guarding your evil clinic, plan on having no more than a single attack dog in the pack.


10. You are advised to hate and fear the Roman Catholic Church, and all the creepy priests, and all her empty promises.

What passes for a movie review

I was IM'ing with my buddy D the other day and this transpired:

(6:23:58 PM) me: I did go to see Iron Man this weekend tho

(6:24:04 PM) D: How was it?

(6:24:38 PM) D: The comment I heard was that, unlike many superhero movies, the lead character is not a teenager/young adult trying to fit in.

(6:24:45 PM) me: Worth a matinee price. Robert Downey Jr: good. Jeff Bridges: pretty good. Mrs. Coldplay: did not have much to work with.

(6:24:58 PM) me: No, he's a CEO.

(6:26:01 PM) D: We definitely need more entertainment that helps boost the self-esteem of insecure CEOs.

(6:27:02 PM) me: I kept wondering whether it will get released in Germany under the name Eisenmensch

(6:27:18 PM) D: Everything sounds more sinister in German.

(6:27:23 PM) me: Eisenmann sounds like a person of the Jewish faith.

(6:27:41 PM) me: But he does turn into a mensch in the 2nd half

(6:27:56 PM) D: Is mensch German, or Yiddish?

(6:28:04 PM) me: Probably the latter.

(6:28:59 PM) me: Someone pointed out that Puccini's Madama Butterfly seems completely different if you refer to it as Frau Schimmerling instead

(6:29:00 PM) D: Superman was Ubermensch in Niezsche. He wasn't Jewish.

(6:29:09 PM) me: Oh, that's right.

Not in Kansas any more

Via www.commentbaby.com

See also the Wikipedia entry on the phrase.

A small request

Midtown Shadow,
originally uploaded by Automatt.

This weekend's release of Cloverfield reminds me of a little peeve I've had for the past couple of years, echoed by this article: haven't we had enough destruction of New York City up on the screen by now? So, we're still broken up by the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, sure, but there were other places devastated that day, not to mention all the other worthy places which have been visited with catastrophe and at least as photogenic as New York. I'm just asking for a bit of a moratorium, during which time I ask that the screenwriters of Hollywood incorporate a little more variety in their plots, a change of venue, or perhaps a plot where the metropolis is menaced but escapes disaster. (Right after the Writers Guild settles, that is.)

At least Steven Spielberg's H. G. Welles's remake only busted up Bayonne, over on this side of the river.

Oh, and while you're at it, could you maybe leave Ms. Liberty alone? Please?

True, the city in question has some things to answer for (such as the mayor, the former mayor, the crazy team owner, and the mogul), but that doesn't mean you have to keep dropping rocks and other unpleasant objects on the place so regularly.

I don't even get into NYC that often myself, but it's always out there on my horizon, and I know my wife has twinges of worry now and again about making her way back and forth every day. It would make it easier to conduct negotiations on what movies we'd like to go see, that's certain.

I'd like to teach the world to whine

We went on a lightning holiday to western Massachusetts and I came back with threetwo tiny little issues to carp about.

1. I thought I'd be prudent and rotate out the Sprint phone card that I kept with the jump bag I prepared last summer. The idea was to use it to call my parents in California and avoid the extortionate rates commonly charged by the motel we were staying at. Neither the card nor the folder it was attached to had any date on it, but deep in the fine print was a line about how the card expires "15 months from the date of purchase/activation." When I input the number on the card, a synthesized voice informed me that the account I used was "invalid," so I called up the Customer Service number about this. I was prepared to pay some kind of fee or other in order to recoup some of the minutes I thought I'd bought, or at least be told how I could recharge the thing with more minutes, even at a rate just about as exorbitant as the room phone rate. Instead, I got the voice of a rep nearly as cold as the computer voice, informing me that the number was not in the computer and there was no provision for refund.
   I know the Nextel merger was a costly one, but would it really have been too much to expect them to keep the number on record a month or two longer, if only in hopes of extracting more money out of your consumer? Was it so important to take my $20 and run with it with such unseemly haste? Doesn't it actually make good business sense to put an expiration date on the product if only to encourage a repeat sale when the time draws near? But no, the unfeeling telecom sees fit to do none of these things, and for that they deserve my scorn and rancor, now and for a long time to come.
   In the same vein, only with regard to gift cards, I point out the public service announcement: Don't Give Your Friends Fees this Holiday Season!


2. We went out to the movies Thanksgiving evening, and as our group could not reach a consensus choice, split according to gender, the ladies seeing the latest Disney movie and us guys opting for medieval fare.
   Please note, kids, the book is different.
   I give the moviemakers credit for including the side stories about Beowulf's swimming-race early on (gory though the depiction of it was), and didn't even find too much to object to with regard to the repurposing of Grendel's mom which made the final climactic battle a struggle between father and son. The thing I did not much care for was the way Zemeckis mistrusted the audience to pick up the bit of foreshadowing regarding the proper way to dispatch a dragon: the B-man is helped out by having the weak spot picked out in vivid color, as if it were made of the stuff of mood rings perhaps, a "plot point" which by all rights ought to have been labeled "break glass in case of dramatic climax," then having the old hero reach in to fool with his offspring's viscera in a way that reminded me to much of this:
   
   
   
   So actually, that part's not like the original poem. But maybe if this does well at the box office, they'll do a cinematic version of The Elder Edda.
   
   Edited to add: I think this happy fellow has the right idea - don't go into battle with a sword that's too damn short.

My rebus won!

David of Ironic Sans had two Joost invitations to give away, so he set up a two part contest for his readers. I posted my movie-themed rebus and won part II! (Mouseover the link if you need a hint on what it means.)

Have a rebus to share? Post a link to it in the comments. Maybe I'll do the same. Just don't put anything up that looks like you're sending encoded messages to a terrorist cell which might attract unwanted attention by the authorities. (Hmmm.)

I shall give Joost video-on-demand beta a whirl and post something here about my impressions. You can find out a little more about Joost over at Ironic Sans or by doing a search. And if I need to give away any invitations, you'll find out about it here on the blog.

Don't let them get me!

When I was a kid there were are few movies which would sometimes get me scared at night, with the common old fear of the thing lurking under the bed. This crafter has created a monster under the bed plushie which I feel deserves to be popularized, as a way to help children (and others) get over their night frights maybe. Maybe some purple electric tentacles and slime glands would be nice accessories to add - I'm willing to act as consultant!
(Image not available)

Tearjerkers for guys

Women often report enjoying going to the movies to have a good cry, so maybe men (and I'm talking about conventionally straight men) could benefit from similar stories with them in mind. Unfortunately, it is surprisingly difficult to come up with much in the way of ideas of film stories which have a high likelihood of making your average guy really weepy, rather than enraged or just quietly humiliated. But maybe if the special effects are really good, a big Hollywood studio could clear that obstacle.
Droplets (broken link),
originally uploaded by whyizit.