mgroves

Posts Tagged ‘movies’

Movie genres often develop their own ethical rules. In slasher films, the teenage girl is safe until she fornicates; and in Spiderman films, super-humans are good as long as they didn’t choose to be super-human in the first place.

• Spiderman: Unwilling
  Our main man, Peter Parker, was bitten by a genetically-modified spider. Status: Redeemable Victim
• Green Goblin I: Willing
  When the military cancels their contract with him, Norman Osborn, fearing personal and financial failure, uses himself as a guinea pig, testing his unstable super-strength drug. Status: Irredeemable Villain
• Doctor Octopus: Unwilling
  Otto Octavius’s fusion experiment gets out of control, killing his wife, and fusing him with a set of robotic tentacles. Status: Redeemable Victim
• Sandman: Unwilling
  On the run from the law, Flint Marko stumbles into a particle accelerator, and finds himself molecularly-bonded with the sand mound he stood on. Status: Redeemable Victim
• Venom: Willing
  Finding a common hatred of Peter Parker, Eddie Brock joins with an alien symbiote. Status: Irredeemable – Villain
• Green Goblin II: Unwilling/Willing
  This one is a bit more complicated. Although Harry Osborn chose to take the same drug his father took, I’d argue his path was forced upon him by heroic intentions. After all, he was under the impression that Spiderman was the bad guy. Status: Redeemable Villain?

Intention seems to make all the difference in the world. If someone accidentally runs over a child with their car, we can pity their mistake. If they intentionally run over the child, we give them no mercy. But in either case, they must take responsibility for their crime.

Whether it be accident vs. choice, or nature vs. nurture, our character may be redeemable but our actions have consequences and we should be accountable for them. Whether daddy didn’t love you enough, or the other kids picked on you, or your uncle molested you; you succeed or fail in life by your own devices.

So, did you read The Top 15 Han Solo Quotes You Need to Use in Regular Conversation? If not, go ahead and read ‘em–they’re all good.

As a total Star Wars nerd and fanboy, I try to work in Star Wars quotes as often as possible into regular conversation, so any list like this is always helpful.

“What an incredible smell you’ve discovered.” This is a quote that I use all the time, but seems to go unheeded by those I quote it too. Or maybe it’s such good dialog that no one realizes it’s from a movie.

One quote that was surprisingly left off: “Sorry about the mess.” This is the quote right after “Yeah, I’ll bet you have,” when Han leaves Greedo’s corpse slumped over a table. He then tosses the bartender some coins as an additional apology. This is a great quote to use when you have biffed something royally. Yes, I said “biffed.”

And now, some racial humor, in memory of Don Imus, who isn’t dead.

Stewardess: Would you gentlemen care to order your dinners?

Jive dude: Bet, babe. Slide a piece o’ da’ porter. Drink side, run da’ java.

Jive man: Hey lookie here. I can dig grease ‘n chompin’ on some butter and draggin’ through the garden.

This is a video about the most famous scream in the world, still leading the famous Howard Dean “YEEARRGH!” by a large margin.

Even if you’ve never heard of the “Wilhelm scream” before, I guarantee that you’ve heard it. And much like the FedEx arrow, once you hear it, you can’t unhear it. So, beware, because I’m sure you’ll hear it when you least expect it in movies (and TV) for years to come.

My favorite by far is Batman Returns, which almost seemed like a tribute to the Wilhelm scream.

The scream is probably most famous because it’s used so much in George Lucas movies that you could almost call it the Lucas scream.

Also, how crappy would it be to have your last words be, “Yeah, I’ll just fill my pipe! AAYYAAHHHGGG!”

A direct-to-DVD Battlestar Galactica movie was confirmed by the SciFi Channel’s Adam Stotsky.

The new Battlestar brand is really taking off with SciFi fans, and is fast becoming one of the contemporary staples of SciFi. Ironic, considering that its roots are more in line with the opportunistic knock-off part of the genre.

I, for one, welcome our new Cylon overlords.

This is so ridiculous that I just had to post it. It’s the ending space battle sequence from Star Wars: A New Hope, acted out….entirely with hands.

It’s so absurd, but it’s some of the finest…hand work…I’ve ever seen.

Hat tip to x daveman x, which is fast becoming one of my favorite blogs.

I received an interesting email today. A Beta invite for the upcoming Lord Of The Rings MMORPG.

Awesome. Is it a chance to test and give the creators an idea how their servers can handle more players, or an attempt to pull me away from World Of Warcraft?

“Ready to get involved in the most exciting Beta of 2007? You have been chosen to join us for this weekend’s The Lord of the Rings Online(tm): Shadows of Angmar(tm) Stress Test Event! This is your chance to try the most recent Beta version of the game for a weekend, and possibly win great prizes. Please read this entire e-mail and visit http://www.lotro.com/stresstest for full details about the Stress Test Event and how to get started.”

If you’ve ever seen the flicks–and at this point who hasn’t–you can imagine how cool it would be to play an rpg type game with thousands of real players.

I’ll keep you guys updated as I play with some screenshots and first impressions. An mgroves.com exclusive, if you will.

If you’ve ever seen the original Willy Wonka you no doubt saw the part where Mike Teevee was sent across the television waves and put back together. How far are we from this in real life?

(Notice: I don’t want to get in a nerd war with you guys over the logistics of this post, just take it in stride.)

I have a Wireless B router that can send a XBox game to any computer in the house in a matter of minutes. Wireless G and N is even faster.

Are we close to sending man across a wireless signal to any computer connected to our network? Could this totally change travel making transportation meaningless?

Alright, give me the facts, nerds. I look foward to some quality comments.

So I just watched Idiocracy, the film that the Nazis at Fox didn’t want you to see, maaan!

I like the premise, and I like Mike Judge, but it seems to me as if this movie is being co-opted as some sort of political lesson, instead of a general satirical warning about pop-culture garbage and over-privatization and sponsorship.

However, I don’t think Mike Judge is trying to say that “Flavor of Love” is going to be the cause of a new dark age, and that Gatorade is literally going to replace water, but to demonstrate the absurd using absurdity and carrying out a hypothetical what-if, much like his masterpiece, Office Space.

Mike Judge’s strength in story-telling is realism. Beavis & Butthead, Office Space, King of the Hill (even though I’m not a fan of the latter) are all brilliant in their absurdity because of just the right dollop of realism to make a point.

The movie was far from being overtly political. If Judge is trying to make any political statement, it is likely this: how come so much garbage gets the green light into production when the good, intelligent stuff doesn’t? Well, if everyone had $10 million, would everyone be rich? No, because everyone has $10 million. If everyone watched the Discovery channel and read books instead of “I Love New York” and “Little Man”, what value would there be in it? The fact is, intelligent stuff does get the green light all the time, just not as much as the (more popular) less intelligent stuff. If everyone was smart, no one would be smart.

Anyway, there is no chance that this movie was “buried” by Fox for political/conspiracy reasons. There is a very brief moment of making fun of Fox News, but come on: some of Fox’s most popular shows make fun of their own network regularly.

No, I imagine the real reasons (and there are many) are much less sinister. Firstly, the film is chock full of references to actual companies (or very, very thinly veiled parodies). Besides making these companies look bad, there could be all kinds of legal problems in using their actual names. A low-key DVD release could avoid that while still making some money. This could have been completely avoided, but would have taken some of the bite out of the satire.

Second, Luke Wilson is a terrible actor. Actually, he might just be a terrible leading actor. Watching his character struggle with explaining time paradox almost made me turn off the movie. Maya Rudolph is completely mis-cast, and I’ve never found her particularly entertaining to begin with. She did look pretty good in the sponsor-dress. The rest of the cast just acts dumb, which is funny for about 2 jokes.

Third, and probably most important, is that this movie probably wouldn’t do that well in wide release. In its satire, it makes fun of everyone, including the self-important yuppy intellectuals, which just happen to be the type of people who this movie would most appeal to. While the movie is full of extremely clever, subtle references, the main thrust of the comedy is very weak and blunt, and just doesn’t quite get the job done. Don’t forget that Office Space did poorly in the theaters.

Things I liked about this movie:

• Stephen Root, aka Milton, makes an appearance.
• The sequence leading up to the freezing is classic. Michael McCafferty’s scene was, to me, the peak of the comedy in the movie. You see gentlemen, a pimp’s love is very different than a square’s.
• Tons of very subtle references in the background. What does that say about the acting that I find jokes in the background more entertaining?

Thing I didn’t like about the movie:

• Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph. Bleh.
• The completely obvious “Time Machine” payoff. I’m not saying I knew it was a ride, but it was pretty obvious that there was no real time machine. The ride was also very similar to the “whalers on the moon” ride from Futurama, by the way.
• Symptoms of dystopia in the future: over-privatization. Ha, that’s a laugh!

I guess they can’t all be winners. Idiocracy appears to be Mike Judge’s Club Dread. Let’s just hope his next movie isn’t a Beerfest. Personally, I’ll stick with the Futurama episode, “The Day the Earth Stood Stupid”. As far as stupid futures go, it is the GREETEST for many RAISINS. Also, it might be worth checking out
Cyril Kornbluth’s “Marching Morons”, which appears to be the inspiration for this film.

P.S. Speaking of Kornbluth and Office Space, you should definitely check out Josh and Jacob Kornbluth’s Haiku Tunnel.

I’ve posted about the Star Wars Holiday Special before, but I thought with Christmas coming up and all that it might be good to post about it again. Plus, the YouTube video from before was removed, so I’ve posted a fresh one below.

That’s just Part 1. If you really want to see the rest of the show, you can just start here at YouTube.