Some of the wonderful things rattling around in this full brain 'o mine. UPDATED EVERY TUESDAY AND THURSDAY (or at least twice a week)

Thursday, July 19, 2007

101 Greatest Simpsons Quotes

You know, running down through these quotes, it’s hilarious because I can still pretty much hear each one in my head, and for the most part, tell you which episodes they were from.

You know, I thought that the Simpsons Movie should have been made years ago…to take advantage of the huge popularity the show had in it’s first 6 or 7 seasons…now though, I think they did it the right way. Think about it, all those huge fans from 10 years ago, are older now…a lot of them have kids, that they’ll now take with them to the movie…that’s even MORE money that this movie will take in. I would have loved to have seen Harry Potter, Transformers, and the Simpsons open on the same weekend just to see who would take the cake. For my money, I think the Simpsons won’t beat Harry Potter’s opening weekend haul…but they’ll make a load of cash from this film.


Great quotes on here...

read more digg story

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

NBA Summer League and NBA Season Predictions

Weird off-season so far, definitely. Grant Hill walked to a contender for about 92mill less than his last contract. Rashard Lewis somehow became a max player. The draft was interesting. Randolph got traded from the TrailblazersI believe I called that one a while ago, but he didn’t go to the team I thought he would.

I actually got a chance to watch the Pistons Summer League team play on NBA TV. The kids look good. Afflalo looks to be very much in the Lindsey Hunter mode, and Stuckey looks great. I’m still concerned about that front-line for my Pistons though…oh well, I’m sure Joe will do something, or nothing…whatever.

Anyway, here’s my top 5 teams to watch next year (these being teams that won’t necessarily be good, but they’ll be fun to watch):
1. Portland Trailblazers: Oden’s going to be fun to watch along with the rest of a well put together team.
2. Memphis Grizzlies: Milicic will be good next to Gasol.
3. Toronto Raptors: The kids will just get better.
4. Boston Celtics: Allen’s going to help these kids grow up a little faster.
5. New York Knicks: Randolph and Curry in the same frontcourt….oh boy.


That being said, I’m predicting one of these following teams will win next year’s championship:
1. San Antonio Spurs: Did nothing, they don’t need to.
2. Dallas Mavericks: Still searching for Webber for Stevie Franchise…
3. Phoenix Suns: Adding G. Hill will solidify their locker-room.
4. Detroit Pistons: The kids will help the starters and push them enough.
5. Chicago Bulls: Another year of growing, Joe Smith helps.

Later Y’all! Time to look forward to college football season!

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon interview with screenwriter!

This is a pretty decent interview with David J. Stieve, who wrote "Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon." For those of you who haven't yet checked it out on DVD, it's the best horror film of the year. This interview gives good insight into where they're going next with the character, as well as how he got into screenwriting.

read more digg story


I had to digg the interview with David J. Stieve, but I figured I’d couple it with a short review / recommendation for those of you out there who are horror fans.

Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon will go down as one of the most original, cool, and funny films of it’s genre…a very close second behind Scream. I have to admit, I didn’t really know much of anything about the film going in. It was out earlier this year, and played for all of one week at a local theater. I saw a banner ad on Aintitcool and thought it looked interesting, and I knew it was a more local product, so I wanted to check it out.

Well, it turned out to be one of the best surprises I’ve had watching films in a long time. You know what I’m talking about, one of those films that just catches you completely by surprised. Somehow you go into the film knowing next to nothing about it, and it ends up being so great that it sticks with you for a long time. I’ve had a couple of those in my lifetime: The Matrix, Equilibrium, Memento, and now Behind the Mask. These are movies that are so incredibly original and well-executed that I forever hold them close to my heart.

I’m not going to go in depth on Behind the Mask, for that would do it an injustice. Suffice to say that the synopsis is of a documentary crew following around a would be killer as he readies for his big night. Go in with nothing more than that, and enjoy the movie.

I would be remiss though not to mention the lead: Nathan Baesel. He hits all the greatest notes, as he seamlessly rolls from comedy to incredibly intense and intimidating. I couldn’t help but explain with joy during the films how many times the main character is just completely and utterly insane…but in a way that is entirely realistic and entertaining.

I give Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon a solid 5 out of 5 *’s. It’s one of the most entertaining and original horror films in years, and would be a solid addition to anyone’s DVD shelf.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Guy plays WoW on iPhone, Universe Explodes

Just a hack to see himself playing the game on his Iphone....but boy, I know some people who's heads would explode if this were real...Of course, a true gaming phone would be the next step in the evolutionary scale for personal devices.

read more digg story

In fact, I don’t know why this hasn’t been a bigger and more sought after idea from phone companies, what with the success of the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP for their short-range WiFi connection capabilities to play games against friends across a network. With the iPhone’s computing power, and once it gets on a better and faster network, you could literally play games like World of Warcraft everywhere you could get a signal. That would effectively end the lives of some people I know, but it would definitely provide a boost to whomever manufactured said phone.

Of course, maybe iPhone should just focus on making the best iPhone they can make before we start taking quantum steps to including everything on a phone including gaming, camera, video camera, blogger, drink cooler, making julien fries, dish cleaner, NES emulator, and such...

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Transformers – Another failed opportunity…

You know, I didn’t know what to expect going into Transformers the movie. I wouldn’t call myself a die-hard fan of the original cartoon or anything. I know some of the mythology. I loved the toys though. That was the draw…at least for me. I like Michael Bay’s movies…for the most part. I just…really didn’t know what to expect from him crossing over into fanboy range though…

Well, I went on Tuesday night. The Girlfriend was nice enough to stop on her way home from work and get tickets for us and a bunch of her work friends to a 7pm show on the IMAX screen no less. Not to say that Transformers is an IMAX movie, but for larger “event” movies, they’ll take it and show some shows on the IMAX screen. The sound is just as good, if not better. And even though it doesn’t up-convert any of the images, in fact if anything it makes the movie look worse (because it looks like the shutter belt is going to break any second), it’s still on this gigantic screen. I thought it’d be cool.

I’m not going to do a review. I’m going to point you to a review that I mostly agree with. If I had to nail it down to a rating, I’d rate it 2 *’s out of a possible 5. It’s one of those movies you should only go see if you’re a fan of the original source material…although if you ARE a fan of that original source material you’re probably going to find enough to annoy you into liking it less than me. Make sense?

Anyway, I’m going to quote some particular parts of a review from Aintitcool, in particular Vern’s review. For those of you who don’t know who Vern is…here’s his site…it’s got a lot of good reading so take the time and check it out.

Here are the parts of his reviews that hit home after I saw the film….

‘Three words for you about TRANSFORMERS: Ho. Lee. Shit. Not as in "Holy shit, I was blown away, it was a blast as well as AWESOME!" but as in "Holy shit, society really is on the brink of collapse."’ - With this, I get where he’s coming from. Most reviews had Transformers pegged as the best movie of the summer…at worst some had it pegged on par with Spider-man 3…which yes I didn’t love, but liked.


“This painful first hour shows that the movie's main problem is the same one as BAD BOYS 2: constant, embarrassingly unfunny jokes.”Yes, there are far far too many grown worthy lines…even excluding Optimus’ “My Bad.”


“For a movie produced by Spielberg it's surprisingly low on awe. People are supposed to be surprised to see robots, but they always turn it into jokes. There's not one second in the movie where you believe people are really reacting to seeing robots.”Yes, 100% yes. I kept hearing before I saw the film that Shia Lebeouf was to Transformers like Jeff Goldblum was to Jurassic Park….no F’n way. Shia was trying, you could tell he was…but he was too hampered by the script and directing.


“but it's bad in a more fascinating way, like a $200 million version of that tv show "Power Rangers." After a good hour fifteen of failed jokes, the probably-meant-to-be-serious introduction of the good guy Transformers is finally laugh out loud hilarious. They just look so fucking silly posing and saying their names and they talk in voices just like the old cartoons, so it almost seems like one of those meta-ironical type movies like FAT ALBERT or THE BRADY BUNCH where TV characters come to life in the "real" world to show how goofy they are. And this is one of the great "did I really just see that?" moments when one of the robots says something along the lines of "Yo yo yo wussssUUUUUUPPPP Autobots REPRESENT!" and I don't think he was eating robotic chicken or watermelon but I swear to you on my mother's grave that he started breakdancing.”I swear to God, I cheered inside when Megatron ripped Jazz apart. He was useless. Most of the Autobots outside of Prime and Bumblebee were. They could have killed every single one leaving just Prime and Bumblebee and I wouldn’t have cared one iota.


“Imagine you took apart a whole bunch of cars, mixed the parts up and welded them all together into a giant ball maybe 15 or 20 feet in diameter, then rolled it down a hill. Shoot that in closeup and you got every fight scene in this movie. I'm sure the Michael Bay style is a huge contributing factor, but I'm pretty sure you could've shot these fights with a stationary camera like a boxing match and I still would have no clue what the fuck was going on. I am no expert on robotics but to my untrained eye, these robots look like shit. Their designs are so overly complicated you can't tell which part is which. One robot (I think a bad guy robot, but not sure) goes flipping through the air in slow motion and while staring at it I was not entirely sure which end was up. There are scenes that are close on Optimus's face while he's talking where I could not even make out a face. I never knew which robot was which or who was a good guy or bad guy or what vehicle was what robot. Luckily Optimus has a shiny blue part on him, occasionally I would see shiny blue and know that hey, that's Optimus! I spotted one!”Here is my main problem with the movie. They spent millions of dollars on ILM doing effects for this movie. They, above all else, wanted realism in the designs…well, in doing so they made everything so overly complicated that’s it’s ridiculous. Seriously. I mean, we’re already there to see friggin robots that turn into vehicles…simplifying the designs a little bit to make them a little easier to see on all the high-speed action would have helped so incredibly much, it’s not even funny. The only good scenes involving the robots are the ones where they show them from far enough away that you can actually tell what they are doing. Unfortunately, I can only think of 5 or so scenes where that actually happens, and the rest of the time I feel like I’m watching fight scenes from Batman Begins, and the Bourne film series…everything is shot as if you’re directly right in the middle of it, thus making it so you can ultimately see nothing. They would have been better off showing the robots tumbling behind buildings, and going completely with sound effects to represent almost every fight in here, and it would have been better.


“The best "characters" in the movie are the robots during the 5 or 10 minutes when they're trying to be serious, and those scenes come off campier than SHOWGIRLS.”Unfortunately this is too true.


To sum up:
The movie’s unnecessarily long, it’s boring for some of it, there are some scenes of pure gold, but just like Ghost Rider, two or three good scenes do not balance out an entire film of missed opportunities. This film is laugh out loud funny, but not in a good way. Like I said in the beginning, this film is pretty much made for those die-hard fans, but Bay has included enough “F U’s” in it that it should effectively alienate most of them same rabid fans ala Batman and Robin.

Go read Vern’s review up now at Aintitcool. Please for the love of all things 80’s, do yourself a favor and don’t go see this movie. I’m sure it’ll do great opening weekend business, but after that it should die down. Someone’s got to get across to the studios that stuff like this ISN’T ok when dealing with our fanboy mythology. Keep in mind Voltron and Thundercats are just down the road. Do you want them messed up as bad as this?

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

7-Elevens become Simpsons "Kwik-E-Marts"

Over the weekend, 7-Eleven Inc. turned a dozen stores into Kwik-E-Marts, the fictional convenience stores of "The Simpsons" fame, in the latest example of marketers making life imitate art. Now you can get Buzz Cola, KrustyO's and Squishees.

read more digg story

With my un-abashed love of movie marketing, I had to put these articles up….

This one, and then this one. Both from digg.

I was going to go see the Simpson’s movie anyway when it came out, but now it looks like I’ll have to take the girlfriend and make a trip to visit her friend in Burbank so’s we can seek out this fabled Kwik-E-Mart and take some serious pictures.

“The U.S. locations where a 7-Eleven store was transformed into a Kwik-E-Mart are New York City; Chicago; Dallas; Denver; Burbank, Calif.; Los Angeles; Henderson, Nev.; Orlando, Fla.; Mountain View, Calif.; Seattle; and Bladensburg, Md.”

The only thing that would be better would be if the “Sunny Mart’s” around Kalamazoo, already packed with Apu-type employees would also join in the fun…

7-Eleven = Kwik-E-Marts!!! (GREAT PICS)

It's all part of a campaign to hype the July 27 opening of "The Simpsons Movie"

read more | digg story