A fun, weird project

Okay, this is definitely weird... so I'm definitely inclined to tell you about it!

For everyone whose been involved in Zombie Walks in the last year or two, you really need to be part of the 3D Zombie Puppet Musical. Go read the associated page and watch the video. You'll love it. You can be part of it!

A fun, weird project

Ads for the film "Devil"

There's a real push for this new movie called "Devil." I don't care for anything that I can see. The Babe's comment was "So, you get rid of the devil by saying an Ave Maria and you do it in Spanish??" Yeah, that looks like about the depth of plot on this.

I've been filled with inertia at the very ads. This has struck me from the word "go" as a really awful film. But I didn't know why until just 5 minutes ago (during which time, I got to see the ad yet another time).

The words "M. Night Shyamalan" just danced across the screen when they flashed the credits.

Do we need anything more to tell us how bad it's going to be? No wonder the ads look like shit. Like "The Last Airbender," the trailer may be the best part.

Ads for the film "Devil"

I feel old :(

On July 5, 1985, Dr. Emmett Brown set the flux capacitor clock in the Delorean 25 years into the future. Today is that day.

I feel old :(

How to make a schadenfreude pie

John Scalzi is a wonderful writer, the newly elected president of SFWA, and the man behind one of the oldest blogs in existence, Whatever. (He even has a book of selected blog posts and some really great responses entitled Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded.) 

A friend of mine (cackling over how The Last Airbender seems to be going down in 3-D flames), pointed out John Scalzi's illustrated recipe for a schadenfreude pie.

How to make a schadenfreude pie

The 50th Anniversary of "Psycho"

The original Psycho (and not the crappy 1998 remake) is one of the greatest films ever. It ranks #22 for the best films of all time on IMDB.

There's a fascinating piece of history about the shower scene revealed in this article from Salon. 

The 50th Anniversary of "Psycho"

Holy CRUD, I never knew this tidbit!

The 1980s film "Airplane" is actually a remake of the 1957 film "Zero Hour," frequently word for word! 

Here's a 7-minute video clip that shows a number of key scenes and characters from both films.  It's disturbing and funny.  I never knew this. 

Holy CRUD, I never knew this tidbit!

Big Lebowski in Little China

For fans of either movie, or even better, both, here's Big Lebowski in Little China.

Big Lebowski in Little China

"Black Sheep" -- coming this summer!

There was a link to this movie on a discussion forum. It's very silly and I wasn't entirely sure if the trailer wasn't simply another bogus trailers for YouTube-like silliness. Could've been, after all: a movie about sheep in New Zealand suddenly becoming massively aggressive and cannibalistic after black-helicopter-genetic-experiments have gone disastrously wrong? "Sounds might fishy to me, Bill."

But no!! This is a real movie! IMDB.com has a listing for Black Sheep. It even has a pretty decent rating and people think it's a good comedy/horror film.

Well, I think we all remember silliness like Night of the Lepus (which didn't fare nearly as well as the user rating for Black Sheep) and Piranha (which did fare okay) and other such oddments. This'll be on cable soon enough, I'm sure; paying to see it seems like a baaa-aaa-aaaad idea.

"Black Sheep" -- coming this summer!

The Omega Code drinking game

I caught up with my old friend Delta's blog today for the first time in weeks. She posted a drinking game for the movie, The Omega Code, which she was somehow talked into seeing again (Again? Delta, sweetie, I knew it was shit as soon as I heard about it... but you must like experiencing truly awful movies just for the value of wallowing in the horror of them.)

For those of you who have forgotten or who have successfully suppressed the memory, this movie from 1999 is one of the worst made in a decade, rivalling Battlefield Earth for sheer suckiness. It's the first movie made from Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series of novels written for the hard-of-thinking and terminally gullible, so it's an excellent model of "garbage in, garbage out."

Anyway, here's the Omega Code Drinking Game:

1) Drink until the movie is good.

2) Go to a hospital, because you're about to die of alcohol poisoning.

BTW, when I was getting the link for the movie from IMDB, I wanted to pass on the following great comment from one of the many people who spent a few moments to describe how awful the movie was:

Do not see this movie. If you are ever forced to at gunpoint, take your chances, if you live the bullet, will be far less painful than watching this piece of garbage. If you die, you can die never having seen the Omega Code, a feat I only wish I will be able to claim on my death bed.

The Omega Code drinking game

"Stranger Than Fiction" -- who knew he could act so well?

We went out bowling last night... or at least we headed to the lanes to bowl, but we discovered that it was a league night. Well, a movie then? Sure! The girls and I went off to see Stranger Than Fiction, the new Will Ferrell movie.

I loved it. I mean, I know that Will Farrell does good comedy and has pretty good timing and that comedy is much harder than drama... but I found myself moved to tears on a couple of occasions. Emma Thompson was brilliant as a self-absorbed, rather depressive author, Dustin Hoffman made a great professor of English Lit., Maggie Gyllenhaal is scrumptious, and, hell, I'd totally follow Queen Latifah around just because she's so hot. But Will Farrell really has untapped talents as a good dramatic actor with the bulk to carry a leading role. It was much akin to the pleasure of seeing The Truman Show, discovering that Jim Carrey could turn in an effective and serious performance as well as do the same physical humor over and over again. But I think that Will Farrell may have more depth.

Interestingly, Jim Carrey is about to do a film called The Number 23, in which a man reads a book that appears to be based on his life, but the book ends with a murder that hasn't happened in real life... yet. Well, it's not the first time an idea was taken in two different directions by two contemporaneous films, and this could be good, too.

But in the meantime, everyone should go see Stranger Than Fiction.

"Stranger Than Fiction" -- who knew he could act so well?

A lovely day!

The Babe and I went out to the Emerald Lanes to see if her ball was done and to go bowling.  But when we got there, it turned out that there was a women's bowling tourney about to start so there was no bowling to be had.  However, Forrest did get her ball drilled and fitted--this took almost an hour as he had to do other things as well and it's not a trivial operation to get it drilled and adjusted.  I was worried that it wasn't going to be right, but he did a lovely job and it fit nicely.  We even got her initials in it.  :)  The Babe said that she'd done bowling league stuff from when she was 6 to after she graduated from high school and she'd never had a new ball.  She was pleased and I was very excited also. 

We went to another lane in town, Southtowne Lanes, to try it out.  It's not as good a lane as Emerald in our opinion but we did have a chance to see how her new ball felt.  (Perfect!)  I'm rather keen to figure out the weight I do best with so I can order a ball of my own.  (Yes, I'm going to go for that blue-and-gold "Scout" number.) 

We didn't want the fun to end, so we went out to see "Mrs. Henderson Presents" this evening.  Judi Dench is, as always, an amazing actress and I think that it's impossible for her not to look alive and beautiful and scrumptious.  (Yes, I'd probably run off with her if she asked, so it's just as well I don't know her. <G>)  Bob Hoskins is aging beautifully as well.  The two of them were amazing.  I'm interested in reading the two books that Vivian Van Damm and his daughter, Sheila, wrote about the theater and the happenings.  Both the Babe and I were very impressed at the quality of the casting: they had several dozen showgirls and they all looked like real, 1937 English women, with the chunky thighs and everything.  The costumes were delightfully authentic, too.  The whole film had that lovely "small" feeling that so many British films do and that most American films don't.  And it's really quite emotional to see the bombing of London and knowing that the war was going on for 6 years for Britain and that this was only the start of it. 

At one point, one of the characters flips off the German planes with the classic two-finger gesture Brits use.  It was only a few years ago that I finally made the connection between the gesture and Churchill's "V for Victory."  Yeah, it was a V, all right.  What a wonderful joke for flipping off the enemy.   <G>

A lovely day!

Sunday morning--it's later when you think

Went out to see Guess Who last night, a movie starring Bernie Mac, who I like, and Ashton Kutcher, who I'm surprised to find that I'd pay money to see, much less enjoy in anything other than "That 70's Show." But it was a really good movie, definitely worth the money.

As the tax paperwork gets more and more complete, the office is getting cleaner and cleaner. Stacks of paper that have accumulated since the start of the Firefox book are being whittled down, sifted, and filed or discarded. I'm even getting some dusting done. BTW, my former next-door-neighbor commented that "Firefox and Thunderbird Garage" sounds like the title of a Sherman Alexie novel.

I need to set a bunch of clocks forward today.

Sunday morning--it's later when you think