Cool Shit 4/10

We're becoming the "all things Alec Baldwin" blog! Today's news: NBC might be considering him for late night television.

Aside from the effects, I thought District 9 was overrated. It's smash you in the face racism analogies didn't leave any room for nuances, and the second half of it played more like a bad Rambo sequel. So I don't have too much hope for Neil Blomkamp's new one, Elysium. But I'm sure there are people out there who are...



A look at what made Cheers arguably the greatest sit com of all time, and 10 episodes that prove it.

I bet a guy with a horrible personality but a big penis funded this study.

Listen, we all have our sexual quirks. Some people like physically toned women. Some like masturbating to women while driving at 90 miles an hour with their penis out the window. Who am I to judge?

Links of Interest 12/28

Why do we celebrate New Years at midnight?

Like or hate the CEO of Whole Foods, you have to at least find him interesting.

This is a pretty good wrap up of the viral videos of the decade.

Stuff to get excited about in 2010.

Don’t think much can get done in a minute?

A history of Ms. Pacman you might not have known.

A detailed look at what went in to creating the special effects for District 9.

A 1966 profile on Frank Sinatra that changed the game in magazine writing.

A closer look at the world of Michael Cera.

The interesting man behind bars.

From the Big Picture – scenes from the snow.

Links of Interest 8/12

The director of District 9, Neil Blomkamp, is interviewed.

Well I’m certainly interested when Mitch Hurwitz and Will Arnett talk new project.

Sometimes when there’s an app for that, Apple wigs out.

How a black box in a crash can tell the story of what went wrong.

The food industry is evil. More evil than you even think.

V is coming back!

Beck interviews Will Ferrell. Of course.

Rainn Wilson speaks to Vanity Fair.

Why Letterman is better than Conan.

4chan. The website that can’t clearly be defined, but might just represent that last pure form of the Internet.

Links of Interest 7/13

A look at Paul Giamatti.

Can data explain why, as a nation, we’re fat.

Is Ikea really as awesome as you think?

The movie District 9 – cool or stupid?

A list of live shows a pretentious magazine says you should see.

Of elevators and men.

Some lovely examples of taxidermy.

I have to imagine I would be good at this. ‘Tubing.

These cities are old.

Celebrity cameos when they play themselves.

Movie Trailer Reviews

Every so often, I take a look at upcoming movies, choose some of the more interesting ones, and decide whether it will be any good based on its trailer. Fair? Of course not! But this is the Internet - where the young bucks can do and say what they want, and the old folk can call us fools and say we live in our mother's basement. And the wheel in the sky keeps on turning. So let's get started, shall we?










Shutter Island



You don't fool me Martin Scorsese. I saw Session 9 too (What's with the #9 these days? You'll see one pop up later as well). Actually, this almost feels like the prequel to Session 9, being that it's based in a creepy New England insane asylum where no one seems to know what is real and what isn't.

Has Scorsese done a movie like this before? I assume there aren't any supernatural elements (contrary to what the trailer is representing) and his name alone is probably going to get people to the theater, but aside from the big names in this, it kinda feels like a run-of-the-mill thriller. Ben Kingsley acting slimey; Patricia Clarkson acting crazy; Max Von Sydow acting creepy. If it wasn't for the gore I'd suggest we might see something like this on Lifetime with Michael Gross as the director of the facility, Meredith Baxter (Birney still? She got divorced - did she change her name) as the crazy woman and Mark Ruffalo as the agent in over his head (the Leo role. Obviously, it doesn't take a sleuth to figure out Ruffalo meets his untimely demise in this movie, based on the fact he's in it for about 8 seconds - and that's not a spoiler. I have no actual knowledge, and hope he lives through this terror. I just have a pretty bad feeling.).

Scorsese gets me in the door, but here's to hoping he's not coasting after the uneven and overrated The Departed.

Sherlock Holmes



Wow - this trailer starts out great. Gritty, ominous, complex...and then we turn the lights on and the true colors reveal...it's a Guy Ritchie template all over again. Right down to guys shirtless and punching each other.

I want to create a new category of movie; the "clever" action/adventure film. It's the type of movie you'll watch and realize you're always watching a movie. Let me try to make that clearer. When I watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, I get nervous for Indy during the truck chase, even though I've seen it roughly eleventy billion times. Why? Because I get caught up in the whole yarn. It's almost impossible not to. Now, when I watch The Mummy, never for a second do I fear for Brendan Fraser. Because I know it's Brendan Frasier and it's a movie. Competently made, at no point however do I ever lose myself in the story or care about the characters. And yes, I know that my age may have something to do with that, but seriously, mentally I'm still about 10.

And I'm afraid Sherlock Holmes will fall into the latter category.

I want Guy Ritchie to choose a tone and stick with it here. Make it humorous or realistic and stick with that. I think making that choice early would help the film immensely. But as it stands now, the humor weakens the peril, and vice versa, leaving us with a watered down movie, which includes a bare knuckle fight. Is there something you want to tell us Mr. Ritchie?

District 9



Blair Witch, V, and World War Z influences are certainly going to get me interested. I didn't find much information on District 9 (my crack research being to wiki it) but what I did find seems pretty cool. Based on a short film by the same director, the movie is about aliens coming to Earth (South Africa to be exact) and immediately being quarrantined. Less to do with the violence something like this would cause (at least from the trailer) the movie delves into the social issues of the visitation. Obviously an allegory for racism, it has a cool viral campaign to go along with it.

Hopefully, it expounds on more than just the "concrentration camp" mentallity the trailer hangs its hat on (seriously - read World War Z for an awesome account of what a society would do when confronted with a global issue similar to aliens) and evolves into something more than Alien Nation (which is a movie near and dear to my heart).