Uberfluff

This is actually courtesy of AnneArchy, who sent me the link, but I had to share the following video of the German trailer for the movie Convoy.  I should probably mention that you don't need to understand German to enjoy it--in fact it's probably better if you don't.  (I certainly can't understand a word of it.)  But there's something about the sternness of the German narrator contrasted with the goofy '70s vibe of the song and all the footage of trucks crashing through police barricades.  It's quite an effect.  And be sure to listen for the parts where the narrator mentions "Rubber Duck."  It more or less made my morning.

This is totally work-safe (at least as work-safe as watching non-work-related videos can be), and very cool.  It doesn't really need any explanation, but if you'd prefer to watch it slightly larger rather than embedded here, you might want to try this link.

You know, I find it a bit troubling that somewhere, some guy will look at this picture of Amy Winehouse and think, "Damn.  She's hot.  I would totally hit that."  I mean, it's difficult to fathom that anyone could feel that way.  I tend to think of her as anti-sexy--the kind of person who makes you want to take a vow of chastity and spend the evening eating ice cream and watching MASH re-runs.  (Other anti-sexy people include Andrew Dice Clay and Ruth Bader Ginsberg.)  But human taste being what it is, someone thinks Amy Winehouse is hot.  (I believe this picture was taken very recently, not long after the news broke that she was being charged with assault for hitting a female fan.  How very edgy of her.)  Oh, and by the way, when are we going to be done with the bouffant thing?  I let it go when she first got famous as a way of creating a persona, but I think the need to sport a hideous hairdo in order to stand out has passed.  Who needs hairspray when you have addiction?

On another note, the Watchmen movie comes out today, which is . . .well, not super-exciting, but still neat.  We'll go with moderately exciting.  I do have a quarrel with the advertising for it though.  I'm aware of the graphic novels and the basic story, but I'm not a fan by any means.  Still, I want to see the movie based on what I already know about it.  The commercials, however, haven't helped at all.  They pretend to give you character profiles, but if you're not already familiar with the character, all you really learn is what he/she looks like.  The central message of the ads is: Hey! It's a superhero movie with a dark world and a cool look! Please get excited about it!

Of course, I still want to see it.  I just wanted to be more eager about it.

So, it looks like it's finally going to happen.  For the unaware, there has been talk for a long time that the defunct Fox series, Arrested Development, would be made into a feature film.  Though since those rumors had been going around since it was clear that Fox planned to cancel the show, way back in 2006, it was hard to know how credible this all was.  Then again, I suppose that's Fox's "thing"--canceling awesome shows before their time, only to see them turn into cult classics and movies later (see Serenity/Firefly and our Imaginary Interview with a Fox Executive).

Anyway, while every other major cast member has long been a part of the movie project, Michael Cera was holding out for some unknown reason.  It's not like he was up for James Bond or anything.  Does the guy ever play anything other than awkward, geeky teenage boys?  So why not play an awkward geeky teenager with a better cast and a script that probably involves somewhat fewer semen jokes?  Anyway, this week, it was reported that Cera is now on board, and Ron Howard confirmed that they were moving forward with the movie--essentially, they're not giving out details anymore, which (while frustrating) is a good sign.

I have an ongoing argument with Gator6C about where Arrested Development fits among the best TV shows of all time.  He claims it's too new to judge yet, which is fair, but I maintain that if we're going purely by writing and acting quality (and not dragging in influence or popularity) that it's a definite top 10.  (It's actually top 3 on my personal list, but that's beside the point.)

Anyway in celebration, I give you this cool video I found of a guy doing a tribute to Gob at the 2008 annual Australian Society of Magician's competition.  (Apparently, he'd won the last 4 years running and was bored with success.)

If you play the audio clip above, you'll hear Christian Bale (best known for playing Batman in the Dark Knight series) going off on the Director of Photography on his latest movie for the heinous crime of walking on to the set.  Frankly, it's not all that surprising to learn that Bale is a bit of a dickhead.  He was way too good a fit for the yuppie killer in American Psycho for me, and I don't particularly warm up to him as Batman either.  (Good movie, but don't expect me to feel a bunch of warm fuzzies for a Bruce Wayne who spits out every line like a WASP princeling with a broom up his ass.  Though I did think that was on purpose.)  Heck, just trying to find a picture of him in a Google image search where he isn't giving the camera his best Blue Steel look is a challenge.

Even more disturbing than the revelation that Bale is a jackass to his coworkers is the fact that this occurred during filiming for Terminator Salvation, which fits God-knows-where in the ragged patchwork of the Terminator timeline and is directed by McG.  Apparently Bale is playing John Conner during the "working his way up to the savior of mankind" period.  Considering how truly wretched the last Terminator movie was, I was hoping that we could be done with this, but I suppose as long as their is a penny to wring out of the franchise, we're going to be dealing with theses sequels.  Incidentally, Helena Bonham Carter is playing the lead villain in the movie.  Yes, cower in fear humans.  Lucy Honeychurch is planning your demise.

Ok, so I have a bit of a fascination with GI Joe.  (Which explains why today's Daily Fluff is about Scarlett and Lady Jay's romantic options.)  To explain: I used to watch it in the morning while getting ready for school, because (as morning cartoons went) is was definitely above average.  Right up to the introduction of Serpentor, it had some interesting and creative plotlines and was generally good fun.  Sure, it had its silly points--no one ever gets hurt, they just parachute out of their planes; no one was ever allowed to change their uniform identity to fit in with weather or geography, so that poor Snowjob is running around New York in the summer still in his Artic jacket--but still a good show.

So when news came down that they were making a live action movie, I didn't immediately decide that it would be a lazy, p.c., formulaic piece of crap.  And granted, it hasn't come out yet, but there have been omminous signs.  Apparently the initial plan to make the Joes part of an international counterterrorist group working out of Brussels (Brussels??!!!!!) has been shelved in response to a, "strongly negative reaction."  Interesting, because my own strongly negative reaction was something along the lines of, "that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard."  What part of, "a real American hero," suggests, "Belgian-based ops team?"

And, of course, there's the questions of casting and which Joes are going to be included in the movie.  The presence of Stormshadow, General Hawk, Snake Eyes, Duke, and Destro are all positive.  On the other hand, everything is thrown into question by the fact that Marlon Wayons has one of the major roles (as Ripcord).  This isn't a problem because Ripcord was white in the cartoon--who cares about that?  I'm not even all that worked up because Ripcord is being given a major role--he wasn't ever one of my favorites, but I suppose the whole point of having so many Joes is so that you different people can have different favorites.  It's a problem because Marlon Wayons has yet to be in an even halfway decent movie.  The fact that someone thought that he could convincingly portray a badass special ops guy points to a tragic flaw in the thinking behind this movie.  As do the slick black leather/vinyl/whatever fetish-wear that seems to be the new GI Joe uniform.  They look like mutant vampire hunters.

I'm trying to hold out hope that it won't totally suck, but there are limits to even my optimism.  So now I know that there's a good chance that the whole thing is going to be more over-produced, under-written, timid Hollywood bombast.  (How can it be timid and over-the-top at the same time?  Have you ever seen anything by Michael Bay?)  And knowing is half the battle.

Some affirmation in the form of Oscar nominations for Snickers and his favorite movies of 2008.  It appears that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button got 13 Oscar nominations--including one for Brad Pitt as Best Actor.  Also receiving recognition are Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler (other favorites from Snickers' list).

As expected, Heath Ledger got the Supporting Actor nomination for The Dark Knight, and I was happy to see that Robert Downey, Jr. got a Supporting Actor nod for Tropic Thunder.  This actually raises a difficult question for me--who deserves the Oscar more--Ledger or Downey?  This is a different question from who's going to win it.  Under the circumstances, I'd be shocked if Ledger didn't.  And I certainly think he made the movie and redefined the role of the Joker.  On the other hand, I think comedies don't get the recognition that they deserve, and arguably Robert Downey Jr. transformed his role in Tropic Thunder from an ordinary comic role to something special.  And he makes you forget that he's not black.  And not Australian.  In a sense, I think that Robert Downey Jr. had the harder job, as in the hands of a lesser actor, his character could have been a disaster, whereas in the hands of a lesser actor, the Joker would just have been moderately less frightening.  So I suppose I think that Downey earned it a bit more, but I can't really complain if Ledger gets the win.

So, yesterday's discussion of movies had me thinking about the wonderful world of movie tie-in products--you know, the action figures, special fast food cups, and so on.  Most of the time, I have no problem with movie tie-ins, advertising, or cross-promotion.  Though I will concede that I was always bothered a bit by the Reese's Pieces thing in ET--mostly because I don't understand why anyone would ever choose a Reese's Pieces over an M&M if given the choice.  Even an alien.  But every once in awhile, you get something that seems truly bizarre.

Case in point: The Dark Knight.  Now, I know that I was just talking yesterday about what a great movie it was, and I stand by my point.  It was brilliant--and for precisely the same reasons that make it a very strange choice for spin-off products.  It was gritty, dark, and occasionally brutal.  And yet, while shopping for Christmas this year (ok, technically last year, but you get the point), I couldn't help but notice that there are a whole lot of Dark Knight tie-in toys.  And these aren't those adult fanboy oriented action figures--like the figurine of Spawn that seems to permanently live by the counter of every Gamestop in America.  These are actually meant for kids.  And I can't imagine taking anyone under the age of 15 (well past the action figure prime) to see this movie.  I get that it can still be fun to play Batman with them, and they have cool accessories and stuff, but it's still very weird to me.  I mean, does The Joker figure come with a little pencil that you can use to impale people's eyes?  Is there a little playset that includes a boat of regular people and a boat of convicts, so that your 6-year-old can play "moral dilemma and murder?"  And I didn't really notice whether or not there was a Two-Face/Harvey Dent figure that let's you recreate the moment when half of his face gets burned off.

However, I will admit that I really love the Hulk Hands.  No, I can't really explain the difference, other than the satisfaction of being able to punch things and hear "Hulk Smash!"  It's possible that I'm just a wee bit insconsistent.  Though I think the general point still stands.

 

Alas, I don't get to the movies as often as I'd like, for reasons that are too boring to get into here.  (Though, for the record, it's not from any pretentious, "they don't make them like the used to," feeling--after all, I once paid actual money to see Dude, Where's My Car?  And, to make matters worse, I enjoyed it.)

Anyway, I've been enjoying Snickers' new article on his Top Ten Movies of 2008--though for me, it's as much a list of things that I should go check out as things I've seen.  I will say that I was surprised to see Benjamin Button make the top spot.  I haven't seen it, so the surprise isn't so much based on quality as what one expects from the advertising.  And the advertising makes it look like one of those soppy Oscar nomination efforts.  So now, I confess, I'm a bit intrigued.

I was not surprised to see The Dark Knight make the list, as almost everyone I've spoken to who has seen it (and it was one of the few movies I saw this year) really loved it.  And yes, Heath Ledger was amazing.  I think the villains in Batman movies always have a bit of an advantage anyway, since their characters are fundamentally more interesting than the hero, but Ledger took it to a new level.  He actually made the Joker seem real and frightening.  I'll be shocked if he doesn't get an Oscar for his performance.

This didn't make Snickers' list, but if there was one movie I really enjoyed this year (aside from Dark Knight), it would have to be Tropic Thunder.  Between the infamous "full retard" speech, the incredible Tom Cruise cameo, and the fake preview for Satan's Alley (the monk love story), it was the rare movie that actually had me laughing out loud in the theater.  Like most comedies, it lost focus towards the end, but it was still pretty great.  Notoriously, the Academy rarely recognizes performances in a comedy (and I doubt anyone has a chance against Ledger this year), but I really think that Robert Downey Jr. deserves at least a nomination for his role as Kirk Lazarus.  Not only does he manage to successfully do a turn in modern blackface (talk about a potential minefield), but even when I remembered that he's not black (his character in the movie is an Australian character actor who goes through a medical procedure to darken his skin for the role), I forgot that he's not Australian.

So what are your best movies of 2008?

If you missed the link above, click here to see Snickers' Top 10 List.

So last night was the last episode of Heroes until February, and we got a hint that the next season is going to be about the government rounding up everyone with special powers and locking them away.  (It's not mentioned, but I presume that they will either be studied by scientists, inducted into some kind of secret army thing, or both.)

In and of itself, I don't have a problem with the theme.  It makes sense that if there were randomly mutated people with special powers, then the government would eventually become interested in this fact.  It just kind of bothers me in these movies/stories/tv shows that the government manages to round up and indefinitely jail huge numbers of American citizens without anyone so much as blinking an eye.   First off, it's always a really heavy-handed allusion to something political that's not a relevent match.  (E.g. I know that the government rounded up Japanese citizens in WW2, but that's been pretty univerally criticized and declared unconstitutional, and these stories always take place in the modern era.  Or they're trying to say something about modern political prisoners that doesn't necessarily track with the fact that the mutants really didn't do anything, whereas only nutbags really believe that Leonard Peltier didn't kill someone.)  In short, there's a tendecy to get really preachy about things, and I hope Heroes doesn't fall into the trap.  And I just don't buy that in the modern era, you could imprison a large number of American citizens without probable cause and not have it turn into a huge (losing) legal case.

And one other thing.  It took the government 3 X-Men movies before they equipped their troops with plastic guns that Magneto couldn't just sweep away with an eyebrow twitch.  And then they still give them metal-based ammunition.  I know that bad guys tend to be retarded (and I have issues with the bad guy allocations in those movies anyway, what with the massive loss of life among ordinary Army soldiers in the Magneto battles), but this is so profoundly stupid that it could only have come from the mind of someone envisioning a cool CGI battle.