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Posted on July 31st, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Entertainment, Movies.
Yeah I know, it was a pretty strange movie and most people don’t get the attraction but when I was a kid there were two movies that inspired computer geeks everywhere. One was Wargames and the other was Tron. Now comes this leaked footage of the long awaited Tron sequel TR2N from ComicCon. Notice, Jeff Bridges is back… also notice how damn cool the effects look! Hang in with the video, it clears up pretty nicely at about 39 seconds in. This is obviously footage from some geek’s handheld. Speaking of geeks, listen to the shouts of glee when it hits all of these nerds that this is TRON! I can’t laugh too hard… I was cheering at home!
Enjoy!
Posted on July 19th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Entertainment, Movies.
I couldn’t resist, I was going to hold out for Imax but the hype was just too great and I didn’t want to be spoiled as to plot details… so I had to see “The Dark Knight” this afternoon. Is it the greatest superhero movie ever made? Yes. Why? In a word, consequences. Sure there have been other superhero movies that have made attempts at the whole consequences thing, but none have ever dared to tread this deep. I know it sounds absurd considering we’re talking about a movie based on a comic book but the prices paid by the “heros” (not just Batman, but his less showy sidekicks like Gordon and Dent as well) are absolute. Their pursuit of justice at any cost bites back at them and exacts its toll.
Taking down a bunch of mob goons and a dope pushing Scarecrow is the order of business in Gotham when the movie starts and Batman and his merry band of accomplices have an easy time of it. They’re hitting the bad guys where it hurts, their wallets. Why engage in a life of crime if you’re not even going to get to enjoy the spoils? Eventhough the prosecution of the lead man of the crime syndicate goes south, it still seems like things are actually heading in a positive direction where it concerns Gotham. That is until the Joker shows up.
I cannot say enough good things about Ledger’s performance. The guy took the character and made it his own. The Joker is not cartoonish, he’s psychotic… but he’s anything but nuts. On the contrary he’s brilliant playing both the mob and law enforcement (Batman included) for chumps. He’s always a few steps ahead but his motives aren’t singular. He’s not just about beating you, he’s about making you give up every principle you’ve ever claimed to hold dear. To his credit, The Joker manages to bring everybody down to his level, including the noble Harvey Dent and Batman himself.
The action sequences are not overblown. For the most part you believe that a lot of the stuff happening in the movie could happen in a world only slightly darker than our own. What is it about the last two Batman movies, both have included some of the best chase scenes ever filmed. Still it’s all about the people in this movie and the scene where Batman interrogates The Joker is excellent. They are mirror images and that’s the thing that you have to understand to truly embrace the movie. The Joker is no more impressed with the mob than Batman is. He just has a different way of dealing with all of them, choosing to dismantle them from within. He’ll destroy them through the exploitation of their greed. He’s all about making losers of everybody and he manages that in the end. There are no winners when this thing ends and I think that might be the one thing that distinguishes this superhero movie from all of the others. There is no happy ending. In fact, like “No Country For Old Men” there really isn’t an ending at all. Heroes are made villains… and we’re left to wonder, what’s next?
I cannot wait for the next one. I don’t know how they’ll manage to dig themselves out of this hole they’ve all been put into. The saddest thing though is when the credits start to roll and you realize that Ledger is gone and we’ll never see him as The Joker again. It’s a damned shame.
The direction is great, the movie crisply shot. The writing is excellent with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing eventhough you know some of the characters are doomed from the start. The soundtrack continues where “Batman Begins” left off with additional themes for The Joker and Harvey Dent. I really liked the manic menace of The Jokers theme, “Why So Serious?”. It starts the entire movie off with a bang. Watch some footage and listen to a bit of the theme here:
I’m not just recommending this movie, I am demanding that you go and see it. Yes, it’s that good.
Posted on May 22nd, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Entertainment, Music, Television.
Nice. It didn’t matter what Simon, Randy or Paula thought. The audience voted for David Cook and he beat Archuleta by 12 million votes! This is great news and I am very happy for Cook, he deserved to win it!
Now I’m going to go into a corner and lick my wounds… as I simultaneously celebrate. It’s tough to feel bad about being wrong, when I wholly WANTED to be wrong. If you have to be wrong in life… I recommend this way of going about it! SWEET!
Grats, David Cook!
Posted on May 21st, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Entertainment, Music, Television.
OK, I used to be very proud to announce that I was one of the three people across this country that did not watch ‘American Idol’. This season, I tuned in to watch the train wrecks called “auditions” and never stopped watching. It’s a pretty funny prospect given that this is supposedly the lowest rated season for Idol. I got onboard just in time for its decline.
I have always thought that the winners of Idol were all pretty suspect as talents. I don’t know that a popularity contest necessarily determines talent and my assessment seems to have been justified by this season. The two finalists are completely different artists. Cook is the pseudo rocker and Archuleta is the Manilow-like, easy listening format friendly, bland that seems to permeate music. Throughout the competition Cook has shown a willingness to take chances, to expand his boundaries and to pretty much create an identity for himself in a media circus that is all about punching artists from molds. Archuleta is white bread, safe and boring.
Last night, ’American Idol’ did its best to crown Archuleta the winner of the competition, even before the first vote was cast. With the way the tweens are lapping up this Archuleta kid, I think it was safe to assume he was going to win. It’s the lovesick girls that light up the phone lines, not the discriminating adults. Just in case that didn’t happen though, Simon, Randy and Paula were there to add their own insurance policy… crowning Archuleta the night’s winner. The problem I have with that is it ignores the entirety of the competition. For months Cook has been a consistent winner. Archuleta had a better night last night, but does that make him the Idol? I would hope not, but unfortunately… tonight will likely see the breathy, scrawny, mealy, Archuleta being declared the next big thing in music.
Ugh… and the industry wonders why they can’t SELL their wares anymore!
Posted on May 20th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Entertainment, Movies.
Ah, yes… ‘Highlander’, (one of my favorites) is being redone by the folks that brought us ‘Iron Man’. Nice!
Summit Entertainment is bringing back to the big screen the 1986 sci-fi cult hit “Highlander,” with “Iron Man” co-writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway on board to pen the reimagining.
The original “Highlander” starred Christopher Lambert, Sean Connery and Clancy Brown as immortal beings battling among humans, hunting down one another and collecting more power. Lambert played Scottish swordsman Connor MacLeod, Connery an Egyptian and Clancy a barbarian known as the Kurgan. “There can be only one” was a line repeated throughout the film. The movie spawned four sequels and three television series.
Summit acquired the rights to remake the cult classic from Davis/Panzer Prods. Peter Davis, one of the original producers of the 1986 film, also will produce the new film.
I’ve always loved the Highlander mythos, so I am totally onboard with a reboot. With today’s special effects and the right script I can see this movie being a huge hit. It’s still a great little date movie to this day! I hope that they’ll use Eilean Donan Castle once again, as it holds a special fondness in my heart. You can read the entire story, here.
Posted on May 15th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Entertainment, Just Dumb.
Howard Stern’s show often hacks up audio books and creates new sound bites that are usually vulgar but always hilarious. So I suppose somebody informed this old crone Parton, that he had done it to her book and likely played it for her. I guess Dolly is unfamiliar with recording technology (despite her 100 years in music) because to hear her speak on this, you would think that the show had employed some kind of mojo to make this happen. Lady, it’s called EDITING and nobody could mistake the disjointed speech that comes from it as anything else. Yesterday Stern spent the better part of the show playing similar clips from William Shatner’s latest autobiographical offering… while he was in to promote the book. It was funny and the stuff they did with Dolly’s book was also funny.
“I have never been so shocked, hurt and humiliated in all my life,” Parton said in a statement on Wednesday. “I cannot believe what Howard Stern has done to me. In a blue million years, I would never have such vulgar things come out of my mouth. They have done editing or some sort of trickery to make this horrible, horrible thing. Please accept my apology for them and certainly know I had nothing to do with this.”
She concluded: “If there was ever going to be a lawsuit, it’s going to be over this. Just wanted you to know that I am completely devastated by this.”
Dolly, I think your wig has been screwed on too tight. You made a name for yourself off of your enormous breasts. Lighten up.
Posted on May 12th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Editorials, Entertainment.
I’m a talk show junky. I listen to quite a few of them. Not all of them are political (I’ve even started listening to Stern again), and I don’t really discriminate right or left. I like to get a taste of opinion from all sides. The other day though, I was struck by something that Sean Hannity did, and it seemed just a wee bit ironic. A gentleman called in to say that his cousin had been killed in Iraq. He was calling in to say something about the war… but he didn’t get to say much. Sean was quickly trying to move things along to his “do good” moment. While the guy was trying to make his point, Sean was asking if the soldier was married. His cousin on the line said, no he was only 18. Hannity asked if he had family, as in a mother and a father. Yes came the reply. Then came the part of the call that seemed so ironic and so tacky (at least in my opinion)… Sean told him that he was going to send him a $2500 gas card to give to the parents of his dead cousin, making sure to give proper credit to the sponsor who had provided the gift.
Now I know that I am a cynic, and that maybe I was the only listener out there that cringed when he did this, but it’s stuck with me all weekend. There was just something so illustrative about it all. While I understand that Sean was just trying to help out, it seemed like such a metaphor. People have been screaming about war for oil in Iraq, and here’s Sean giving a dead soldier’s family a gas card.
I would have liked to have heard what the cousin of the dead soldier had to say. Unfortunately, after being told that he would be getting this gas card the guy just kind of stammered through whatever his point was. I think he was just trying to say that while he’d been angry about the death, he’d come to understand that we had to fight “them” there, so that we didn’t have to fight, “them” here. I’m not sure about that, but it’s kinda where I thought he was going… but I think he had more to say about how he’d come to that viewpoint but of course we were too busy fitting the “plug” in, while making this tacky, if well meaning offering.
Ugh.
Posted on May 11th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Entertainment, Just Dumb, Music, Television.
Need I say more? If this kid wins “American Idol”, I’ll toss my cookies. I dub this kid… annoying.
Posted on May 10th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Entertainment, Television.
For a while, “Lost”, lost me. The episodes became annoying. Plot was nothing but a plodding bore. It seemed as if the producers knowing that the premise of the show was a wee bit thin, decided to “flesh things out”, by writing all kinds of filler episodes. While I can appreciate the need to define characters, there was a whole lot of nothing going on for what seemed like seasons. Season 3 picked it up a bit and with the end of “Lost” now well in sight, things have moved along at a more frantic pace.
Whether plodding or racing along, one of the always interesting elements of the show comes in the form of Benjamin Linus, played to subtle perfection by Michael Emerson. Is there a cooler character on the wee box these days? Uh, no. It doesn’t matter what the guy is doing, he commands attention. Responsible for a laundry list of murders and mayhem you can’t help but feel like the guy has his reasons and they don’t all seem so horribly corrupt. Over the last two seasons we’ve seen Ben go from arch villain to ally. Who would have thought that we’d all be rooting for this guy? At the same time, you just know he seems destined to once again turn. Like the scorpion and the turtle you can’t help but wonder when Ben is going to revert to his familiar nature… but then has he ever truly strayed far from it? He’s made a deal with the survivors in order to further his goals and sooner or later, should they prevail… it’ll be game on again. “Lost” has recaptured its mojo… and a lot of the credit rests with Michael Emerson and the character of Ben. I really hope they don’t end up whacking him!
As for those wondering about what exactly is going on… I can only say for me it all boils down to something along the lines of, “he who controls the past, controls the future”.
Posted on May 10th, 2008 by Mark.
Categories: Entertainment.
It seems that Anchorman 2 is set to become a reality! Woot! I love that movie… and I don’t know why. It’s a funny flick and the cameos are all excellent. I defy you not to laugh during the “rumble of the newscasts” portion of the film.
Here’s a little something about it from collider.com… they talk to director Adam McKay about the project:
Collider: What did you just say?
Adam McKay: I’m looking to do another movie, I might do this other movie called Channel 3 Billion which is kind of this science fiction/Brazil type comedy. Then after that, Will and I are like let’s do Anchorman 2…so you’re talking like 2 years maybe we’ll do it. But we’re going to do it, for sure.
Collider: That’s like 100%?
Adam McKay: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re dying to do it. Unless we can’t get the cast together, which is always kind of a tricky thing. But, I think, with that cast we’re all friends, so yeah, we want to do it.
Awwwww, yeah! Makes me want to go do the no pants dance!
