This is just too glorious.
Da Do Run Run Right to Jail
April 14th, 2009 § 0
Hi. I’m Phil Spector. I’m going to jail. Finally.
He almost pulled an OJ. Almost.
Check out some of Phil’s better days:
Happy Easter
April 11th, 2009 § 0
Yeah, that’s Jesus with Disney’s Mickey and Communism’s Lenin.
He loves everyone.
Even commies.
Guys… Guys… TRON 2 photos!
April 11th, 2009 § 0
I have to admit something up front here. I never liked Tron growing up. And, I respect Jeff Bridges too much these days to go back and look at him in one of those ’80s pre-Internet jump suits. But I’m curious about this new Tron 2 that’s being pumped out right now.
And, with leaked set photos like this one making the rounds on all the movie blogs, how could we be anything but curiously excited.
That’s right, the first representation of Tron 2 in popular media? An extra in a speed suit.
Trump — working for good
April 10th, 2009 § 0
What can really be said about Celebrity Apprentice? It’s amazing reality television, preserving C-lister careers.
Dennis Rodman, who somehow survived to mid-season, was the center of one of the most falsely emotional moments in TV history. The Celebrity Apprentice: Intervention:
If music cues alone could do all the emotional work, this show would let them. What raw power. It’s interesting though, especially when Jesse James talks about celebrities’ social responsibility to live up to civilian expectations.
The problem with reality TV stems from its inability to be profound due to an overindulgence in emotive rhetorical techniques. When editing is used to create narrative from a number of out-of-context clips, the rhetoric has no structure. It relies on hitting the audience over the head with the message to make sure the clips can fit the desired storyline. It breaks. Then the show attempts to cover the holes with sappy music, falsely tense commercial break points and other “magic.” Smoke and mirrors.
A nerd moment
April 10th, 2009 § 0
Allow me to have a nerd moment. I’ve been reading comic books lately, a phase I seem to go through every few years. I think it’s connected to all the heavy theory I’m reading. I need some escape.
I’m working through Grant Morrison’s run on X-Men right now, and I’d recommend most anything Morrison wites to anyone who wants to get into comics. He’s a character writer, and he’s got a great accent:
Derrida on Ghosts
April 9th, 2009 § 0
Not a man to answer a question directly, here’s Derrida on ghosts from the 1983 film Ghost Dance.
Not sure that I’m 100 percent tracking with him on this one. Derrida’s answering a fundamentally spiritual question with a literal, yet metaphoric, theory of human memory. And then somehow, he ties that to the physical world, not to mention the American on the phone. I understand when he ties an evoked memory — or even the girl’s sexuality — to phantasmal auras. But, that’s metaphor. Sorry JD, not there yet. Maybe I need to watch some more of the movie.
Overused (afetr)effects
April 9th, 2009 § 0
This is quickly turning into a video blog. Sorry gang, I’ll have some other content later. I really hope you took the 15 minutes it takes to watch the previously posted Billy Bob Thornton interview, as it’s pretty spectacular.
Anyway, I’m in the video lab, working on what’s turning out to be a pretty standard vacation slideshow. It’s for my production class, and the point is learning how to use Final Cut Pro, which is going just fine. (Like second nature to any apple user.)
As part of the class, we’ve been talking about overused effects. You know, things that after effects and final cut have built in. Mostly, we’ve been talking about dissolves and star wipes and the such. But a more advanced overused effect is the lightsaber rotoscope.
I grew up in the late ’80s. It was always a boyhood dream to fight with a lightsaber, and like the rest of Star Wars, it’s been completely overdone to the point of digust. Any nerd with a computer and stolen software can make it happen.
For instance, this little battle that sullies both the lightsaber and Princess Bride. Leave it be people, leave it be.
Would you say that to Tom Petty?
April 8th, 2009 § 0
I used to interview bands for college radio, and even on a small scale, it’s a hard job. Here’s two reasons why.
This is Billy Bob Thornton — and his band — in the worst interview ever:
I think Thornton is being overly difficult, but not totally without reason. “I grew up as pretty much a music historian. So, yeah.”
Seeing that crazy interview reminded me of this older NPR interview by one of my all-time favorite bands, Sigur Ros:
As awkward as this interview is, it makes me love the band even more.
“Do you think you will ever start to use more standard words?”
“Uh. I don’t know.”
Which leads me to the obligatory Sigur Ros video, here live with Bjork:
It’s a shame their country’s economy crashed like Sully into the Hudson.
Oh, and I wanted to post a video for Billy Bob’s Boxmasters, but they only have poorly shot live videos. And the band is overall pretty terrible, too.
Tom Petty is the man Billy Bob instantly compares himself to?