| Movie: Glen or Glenda |
[Mon | 120709 | 1406] |
i knew i'd watched another movie, but couldn't remember what it was...
Ed Wood's semi-autobiographical drama/pseudo documentary Glen or Glenda. this movie is an incredible, bizarre mess. you would almost instantly know it was an Ed Wood just by watching it, even if you knew nothing of Ed Wood. Bela Lugosi plays a mysterious old man who doesn't seem to be in the right movie. a doctor explains that baldness is caused by hats, and that 7 out of 10 men are bald. Ed Wood looks at dresses in a store window and contemplates revealing his dark secret to his fiancee. footage of a bison stampede appears for no apparent reason.
Ed Wood is one of my favourite film makers. i think that he was born about 60 years too soon, and would be an internet sensation today, rather than a dead cult icon, had he known about youtube.
Glen or Glenda runs about an hour, but you may want to watch it a couple of times in a futile attempt to make sense of it.
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| Review: A Group of Reviews |
[Mon | 120709 | 1241] |
Fantastic Mr. Fox: i've already said this movie is great. that's about it for a review, since i have trouble reviewing things i like. it's less fun to talk about how great something is than it is to complain about how crappy something is. this movie is well done, with lots of quotable lines. excellent dialogue. see it.
Blobermouth: this one is from way back in 1990. it's a redubbing of the original The Blob. some of the jokes are hit and miss, but the hits make it worthwhile, i think. i laughed too much, and the jokes that fell flat were actually kind of nice, since they gave me time to breathe. i love that Steve McQueen played a teenager in this movie, since he looks like he's 40. In Blobermouth, the Blob has come from space to horn in on Steve's upcoming one man comedy show with its terrible jokes. every voice has been redone, and the lip sync is pretty spot on in places. the movie falls in at under 90 minutes, so even if you never laugh once, you haven't wasted much of your time. double your chances of laughing by getting drunk first, or perhaps Green Greens if that's your scene, just in case.
Monster Camp: a documentary following the players of New England Role Playing Organization (NERO) in Seattle, Washington. New England ... Seattle... a live action role playing game. fun to watch. people in costumes hitting each other with foam weapons while exclaiming "+2, +2!!" and "Ice!" you'll meet people in their 4th year of being a highschool senior, a guy who grew an actual dwarf beard that looks incredibly silly, a single dad who plays World of Warcraft rather than spending time with his young daughter, another guy who logs 40 hours a week in World of Warcraft (5th year highschool senior, if i remember right), and various other people who radiate a sort of depression that's almost literally tangible. many of these people seem genuinely sad inside. Monster Camp is often funny at the player's expense- but not because the film makers set it up that way. it's the people themselves, and their apparent lack of a lust for life, a lack of
real motivation to do anything but pretend. additionally, Fern's mom/home life is a little disconcerting.
Welcome to the Dollhouse: i only just saw this. is like a dark precursor to Napoleon Dynamite. since it's a pretty good movie, that's all i'm going to say about it.
Lastly: while i know it's virtually an impossibility that Doc Hammer would ever see this, i want to say that last night's episode of Venture Bros., The Better Man, was especially well-written. excellent episode, great job.
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[Mon | 120709 | 0604] |
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[Sun | 120609 | 0603] |
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| Movie: Fantastic Mr. Fox |
[Sat | 120509 | 1717] |
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livejournal is being really crappy right now, and not letting me reply to comments
so, real quick, before this doesn't post, i saw Fantastic Mr. Fox last night and highly, highly recommend it. totally great movie.
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[Sat | 120509 | 0603] |
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| Perception: Hands |
[Fri | 120409 | 1331] |
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sometimes, looking at my hands feels really surreal.
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| Movies: Surf Nazis Must Die |
[Fri | 120409 | 1153] |
yesterday, i watched the Troma movie Surf Nazis Must Die. it's disappointing that there aren't more movies like this. it has most of my favourite cinematic elements: a ridiculous plot, violence, and sub-par acting (good bad, not bad bad MEGAN FOX). plus it runs under 90 minutes, so even if you feel like it's running too long, it's not (unlike Inland Empire).
after an earthquake ravages California in the near future, the beaches are now under the control of gangs. surfing gangs. there are samurai surfers, Miami Vice-looking surfers, &c.
then there are the surf nazis, lead by Adolf. Adolf wants to unite all of the gangs, so they can do united gang stuff. check out the cover art- that surfboard never even appeared in the movie. it's great.
things go awry when the nazis kill a black guy. the black guy's mom picks up a walther p38 and some grenades and sets out to get revenge. you can't make this stuff up. when Surf Nazis originally played at Cannes, Roger Ebert apparently walked out after 30 minutes. but he sat through all of Speed 2?
ultimately, this is a Troma movie. it is what is is. there's your review.
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[Fri | 120409 | 0603] |
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| COME TO ME, MY LITTLE ONES... |
[Thu | 120309 | 1652] |
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http://scfire-mtc-aa02.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1047 |
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GEEK QUIZ TIME.
WHICH IS SCARIER? --OR--
 THERE IS NO RIGHT ANSWER.* *lie
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| Comment: The War on X-Mas |
[Thu | 120309 | 1537] |
so, there's this war on christmas because christians are a persecuted minority.
but christmas is just about buying shit and spending gobs of money.
and before that, it was a pagan holiday.
^---- these three lines are far from anything new.
but goddamnit. i hate people. i wouldn't hate so much if people at least sort of made sense, rather than being total slaves about everything.
people are going to be punching each other in the face trying to get Zu Zu pets for their fucking idiot kids so their kids can grow up and have their own idiot kids. we're fighting over Zu Zu pets, looking for water on the Moon, and arguing over "merry christmas" vs. "happy holidays"... but, you know, that's just fine. Wonderful. congratulations. i hope you all get Zu Zu pets. the company is based in the US and you can buy them at Wal-Mart, so there's nothing more Amerikan than that.
i consider myself lucky that the people i know who are reading this, though few in number, aren't in the ridiculous majority. that there's at least some sunlight shining through the thick, dark clouds and smog.
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| Movies: Gozu |
[Thu | 120309 | 1513] |
a couple of months ago, i watched the Takashi Miike film Gozu. but i can't remember if i wrote about it. the whole thing reminded me a bit of Lost Highway (which is what i call one of David Lynch's "good films"), and elements tied in with the social interactions recalled Twin Peaks or Blue Velvet.
Miike says: "If you were a child and rode on a bike to a place you've never been, you'd feel like it's real but not really real. Gozu is like that. You go to a place you've never been but you don't have to make any sense as to why or how you are there."
this is probably fairly accurate. the movie is full of dreamlike encounters, absurdities, and mythology. since Miike already summed it up, this is all you get from me. if you like Lost Highway and/or Mulholland Drive, if you like Miike, you may as well watch this. it's worth it for the Gozu scene and the ending alone.
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[Thu | 120309 | 0602] |
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| Turn of Phrase: Monkey Cheese |
[Wed | 120209 | 1628] |
i googled Monkey Cheese, and it's apparently an established thing already. the definition is pretty close to the one i'd been using, and it's got a listing on Urban Dictionary. it is also, apparently, a delicacy made from the fat of boiled monkeys.
i wonder about the people who decided to boil a monkey and eat its fat.
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[Wed | 120209 | 0603] |
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| Other People's Children: Nightcat |
[Tue | 120109 | 1409] |
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i had to buy child-proofing latches for the kitchen cabinets because Nightcat has learned to open them. Nightcat really likes attention, and if no one is around to pay attention to him, he will do things he knows he's not supposed to do because then, he knows, someone will chase him or yell at him while chasing him or some other form of attention. this now includes opening cabinets. it's like having a haunted house- you come in and all your cabinet doors are open. oh, it's Nightcat. great.
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[Tue | 120109 | 0603] |
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| Games: Assassin's Creed 2 |
[Mon | 113009 | 1146] |
i finished AC2 over a week ago, then Mrs. Rat started playing, and then Netflix happened. now it's almost December.
the game itself is pretty good, fixing a lot of the issues we had with the first one. Ezio is a better character that Altair, with a cooler looking outfit. there are still a few issues with getting your Assassin to jump where you want him to from time to time, and semi-stupid AI. an example of the AI's intelligence would be when you're escorting some guys across a rooftop and they start pushing each other off of the rope between two roof tops- since Ezio is the only man in Italy capable of swimming, your party of 12 suddenly becomes a party of 7.
additions to the game, such as a notoriety level, are pretty cool, but the Wanted Posters that broadcast your notoriety are placed in such ridiculous locations that a Wanted Level seems unlikely. most of the ones i found and tore down were in places only Ezio would go, viz., you would need to be a parkour expert to see them.
dual hidden blades are very cool, and the only downside is that the game tends to freeze if you use a smoke bomb, then dual kill some guards. also, smoke bombs are cool. Leonardo da Vinci is your friend, and that's cool. a pistol installed by your hidden blade is cool. it needs a silencer, though, so hopefully Desmond will have one of those in the next game.
conspiracy theories, 2012, human origins, Templars- all good.
something i'd like to see in the game is the ability to actually sneak around, a little like Metal Gear... at least be able hug walls and peek around corners (i think even agent 47 can do that), and maybe a few more interiour locations. sneaking around outside in a crowded market would obviously look pretty suspicious... but the guys at Ubisoft have a couple of years to figure all of that out.
there was one character relationship i expected to develop more than it did, but the character in question shows up less and less, and nothing really comes of it.
overall, the game is good enough that, once the alleged trilogy is wrapped up, i hope they find a way to keep the franchise going. i need to kill people, and with Agent 47 on ridiculous hiatus, i'm not really filling my quota.
i give it a 9/10
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| Holy shit yeah. |
[Mon | 113009 | 1008] |
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KCRW World News - http://scfire-mtc-aa02.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1047 |
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It's a bit of a kick in the creative pants when one of your friends is turning a story of yours into a comic and it's looking better than it did in your head when you were writing it.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) grafunkel totally did that to me.
The story is a Sir Reginald piece that you can read right here. But for now just enjoy his awesome.
Well done, Belgian Van den Belgian--IF THAT IS YOUR REAL NAME. Fucking nice one. Can't wait to see the rest.
Happy Barbadian Independence Day!
benjamin
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[Mon | 113009 | 0602] |
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[Sun | 112909 | 0602] |
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| Where I've Been: Netflix |
[Sat | 112809 | 1711] |
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mood |
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curious |
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that song from the bar in Star Wars |
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i have Netflix through my PS3 now.
it is both great and terrible. lots of documentaries. lots of movies. too many, maybe.
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[Sat | 112809 | 0602] |
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