"PETER PAN?!?!?!"
Mar 15Yes, Cap’n Hook–Peter Pan. The Disney movie, and a REMARKABLE four-part posting of actual story notes from the film’s “sweatbox” go-round.
Good News/Bad News
Mar 14Which do you want first? Oh, fine, ya old softie.
Good News: Paul “Geoffrey Jellineck” Dinello is attached to direct a pilot for Fox entitled “Me & Lee?”
“Me & Lee?” a half-hour single-camera comedy, centers on a guy with chronic back pain who gets more than he bargained for when he undergoes “bionic” back surgery in a secret basement lab run by Lee Majors.
Bad News: Fucking Viacom is suing fucking Google and fucking YouTube for $1 billion over copyright infringement.
The rotting corpses of the Old Media cling with skeletal hands to the edges of their deeply-dug graves.
Black is the new pink. Beatboxing is the new DJ.
Mar 14I’m not sure when this emerging pattern of beatboxing began (and I mean the recent upswing in visibility, not its 80s roots – I miss The Fat Boys), but it’s about to reach a critical mass I think. I’m not prone to predictions, but I think within the next year, if not the next few months, beatboxing is about to blow up. Follow my train of thought, won’t you.
Most recently, as in today, Xeni at BoingBoing posts about a French boxer on their version of American Idol (wait, did American Idol come first?) – Joseph blew away the judges, but I’m not sure that he made it on the show. You have to sing, after all.
I found this amusing, as I’d just stumbled upon a boxer trying out for the Australian Idol show.
My journey from not-paying-attention to trading links with Xeni started a couple of months back when I discovered a YouTube video for Biz Markie’s Turn the Party Out. Song, fucking, rules. And I had to buy an expensive hip hop sampler CD to get a better version, but it was worth it.
BSG: Enjoying the Quiet
Mar 13We’re like six episodes behind on the latest season of Battlestar Galactica, and in an uncharacteristic show of restraint on my part, I’ve largely avoided detailed spoilers (although I THINK I know the big scary thing that happens in “Malestrom” just through some strange online osmosis).
So I’m in this weird position of enjoying the season, but anticipating the worst, because I sorta know things are gonna go bad in a major way, but I’m not totally sure how.
Anyway, I’m on episode two, and I’m pissed that Starbuck and Apollo don’t FINALLY hook up, cause Apollo does NOT love Dualla, I know it in my deepest of hearts. And Starbuck sure as FRAK don’t love her hunky Pyramid player.
But then, if the worst I’ve sensed does happen, the star-crossed lovers may…SPOILERS. Better stop writing, cause then I may read it, and then I may know.
300
Mar 12Visceral, violent, stirring, intense–these are words that describe 300.
Sensitive, feminist, complex, layered–these are words that describe films other than 300.
I love Frank Miller to little tiny scary pieces, but as I get older, I find his work tends to disturb me more and more. He’s at worst a virulent chauvinist who kinda hates women; at best, he’s simply ignorant of how to convey them with any level of understanding or sensitivity. The lone female in 300, King Leonidas’ wife Gorgo, has two major character beats: She is pseudo-raped by a mustache-twirling politician, and then she stabs that politician in the guts in front of the entire city council. In other words, her most delicate aspect is violently violated, and she responds with violence herself–as a man would in this distorted reality.
But of course, if you want reality, flip on MTV. If you want a heightened and madcap version of “reality,” go to the movies, where 300 delivers Gladiator on steroids. It’s a film almost completely defined by its images and action, pure cinema mainlined straight to your crotch. And that goes for the ladies as well as the gents–guys will respond to the amped-up battle sequences, gals will love the heavily-greased buff dudes in loincloths.
Whether male or female, a lack of squeamishness when confronted with absurd and graphic cartoon violence is required. I counted three heads lopped off bodies myself, but then I sorta stopped counting. I was too busy waiting for Gerard Butler as Leonidas to spit another movie tough-guy platitude at his troops, his enemies, or his wife.
Every line is shouted. Every sword and spear is true; every wound gushes CG blood all over the place. Yet nary a drop falls on the ground or the combatants. That’s the movies for ya–where else can you find a bloody bloodless war?
