I Feel Like A Kid Again

I was skeptical that Toy Story 3 would suck. And let's face it, the original came out 14 years ago (!!!! We were so little!) and I have it on VHS. But the teaser, even though it's kind of grainy, looks pretty cute. And it's going to be in 3D, just like Up. Here's to hoping it's good.

My Inner Geek Must Be Fed

I absolutely must see Star Trek.

I would never classify myself as a Trekkie, because I never watched the old episodes (or the new ones). But I saw the preview and only one thought went through my mind:

I. Must. See. This.

Everyone I've talked to that saw it said it was amazing. And I kind of figured it would be. It took JJ Abrams to make my perfect summer movie. Action. Sci-Fi. Hot boys. Good storyline.

Really, I'm all for it. So who's with me?

Actual Conversation

Tucker: haha
Me: What?
Tucker: when gerard butler and the other spartans were training for the movie
Tucker: guess how many total reps they did?
Me: 300.
Tucker: exactly
Me: It boggles the mind.
Me: I have to go drop off a final.
Tucker: indeed
Tucker: i have to go drop off a deuce
Tucker: not really
Tucker: but it sounded like the right time to say it
Me: It was a nice segue.
Tucker: ooh, you spelled it correctly

Getting Animated

It's been a while since I posted (and by a while, I mean Monday), but i just got to KellyPaul's animation final screening and there's live music for one of the projects. How fun and trippy.

(Even more fun and trippy? This was posted from my cell phone during the animation show. I know!)

Morgan Pepper: Our #1 Source for Hot Male Nudity

But seriously, though.

Walking back from Soup Supper at chapel tonight, we somehow got to talking about movies that were good, and what defined good, which somehow got to talking about One Hour Photo. I think it was because Kristyne was creeping with her camera...

Anyway, once we were on the topic of One Hour Photo, I said I wanted to see it. Morgan says "It's really good. Michael Vartan is naked in it."

KellyPaul says "Morgan, you only think it's good because someone's naked in it."

Morgan replies, "Yeah, because it's Michael Vartan." Which...I am inclined to agree with. Yum.

Which got me to thinking. Morgan has said before that she wanted to see movies because hot boys got naked. She watched 17 Again for this guy from Weeds, and at any moment could tell you if a hot boy gets nude in a movie. This can only mean one thing.

Clearly, Morgan was meant to work for Flesh of the Stars.

Update!

Just got the real DVD.
Fox can suck it, they're not getting the original one back. It's going on my wall.

DVD Fail

DVD Special Features usually come with:
A) Deleted Scenes
B) Making Of Featurettes
C) Director Commentaries
D) None of the above, if it's my copy of Slumdog Millionaire.

As you can tell from this blog, there are few movies that I've been as obsessed about as Slumdog Millionaire. So when the opportunity came to own it, I was on it like white on rice.

My parents got to watch it first, and I decided to test the DVD out here on the laptop today. I had already seen the movie, so I decided to try the special features out (really, I wanted to hear the commentary with director Danny Boyle and actor Dev Patel. More on that later) and see if they were good.

So when I clicked on the Special Features bar, I was unpleasantly surprised to find that there were about 3 measly trailers for, like, The Secret Life of Bees, and nothing else. No commentaries, no deleted scenes, no blooper reels, nothing.

As it turns out, mine wasn't an isolated incident. FOX made a ton without special features to send to rental places like Blockbuster, but they accidentally made it out to the stores (like Wal-Mart, where I got mine). So I had to go on a website and register it so I could get a good copy in about 2-3 days. So if this happened to you, call 1-888-233-4FOX. Otherwise? Just laugh at people like me who got a piece of Oscar-winning DVD FAIL.

Oh Jeebus, it's SBC

So Bruno is getting an NC-17 rating at this point, might get cut down to an R. It's wildly crude and inappropriate. But I have a feeling that I must see this movie. And I have a feeling I'll be seeing it with Mariellen, Rob, Tucker, Emily, and Amanda.

So who's bringing the Chicken Nuggets this time?

Men vs. Women: Is Moulin Rouge Basically Rent?

Tucker: the movie
Tucker: it's basically rent
Me: What is, Moulin Rouge?
Tucker: yeah
Tucker: just a century earlier and in france
Tucker: (90 years to be exact, but i carries the same sentiment)
Me: Except for fewer people and no AIDS.
Tucker: no AIDS, yes
Tucker: but
Tucker: the consumption
Tucker: which was like the AIDS back in the day
Tucker: you've got the cross-dressers, the bohemians, the love songs, the youthful and artistic optimism at the turn of the century in a huge, artistic metropolitan city
Tucker: there's a tango song scene, a burlesque/stripper song scene
Tucker: and a black guy
Tucker: the rich guy trying to take from them what they really want
Me: ...I don't think they were going for that comparison.
Tucker: i certainly was
Tucker: only difference is
Tucker: i really like moulin rouge
Me: Because of the strippers?
Tucker: nah
Tucker: mostly because of the music
Tucker: the actors
Tucker: and the just ridiculous, over-the-top...well, everything
Tucker: really funny

Me: So Tucker says Moulin Rouge and Rent are basically the same. Your thoughts?
Brooke: um, no
Brooke: I haven't seen either, but I know that they are definitely not
Brooke: (my sis is a music major; nuff said)
Me: See, that's what I thought.
Brooke: rent is a bunch of poor gay people with aids --> moulin rouge is a guy trying to get with a sexy courtesan (right? or am I thinking wrong?)
Me: You're right.
Brooke: two words I like to hear
Brooke: Tucker. UR DOIN IT WRONG.

Coming Out of the Coffin

Here's the video, everyone. Be kind and rewind, show your friends, and please excuse the huge ass mark on my cheek (in a cut segment, I got punched in the face, that's supposed to be my bruise).

Better Than The Real Thing

When I started this blog, I started a list of things I really didn't want to talk about on it. That list eventually grew to encompass the vampire flick which shall not be named.

Twilight. There, I said it.

So when Kristyne and her friend from home Rachel heard about a contest to be in the next Twilight movie, they were all over it. The video had to be 1 minute, and really, it was intended to be more of a cheesy minute of interviewing about fangirls screaming about how hot Robert Pattinson is (which...ew).

Instead, they shot about an hour worth of footage of Rachel having vampire powers, including telling the future (me getting punched by Derek), having super strength (lifting Derek in one hand as he did a chin-up to the tree), reading minds (agreeing with Kristyne that I was ugly. I sense a theme, here), running super fast (with the aid of some slow shutter speed on the camera), and turning people to stone (with the aid of Derek's hat and a statue in the park). There's also the testimonials

The final cut is pretty damn funny, and I'll probably post that whenever Kristyne gets it to me. The directors' cut will be way funnier, but I always seem to have trouble uploading things to Blogger. So the one-minute cut will probably be the one you'll see. So stay tuned.

Should've Used Laundry View

I've never seen a show really nail laundry etiquette in the college sense, and really, it is a subject that should be discussed because so many people lack it. Tonight, ABC's new show (and a new favorite of mine) Castle decided to address it by having a dead body rolling around in the dryer.

The cops were talking about how the old lady found her in the dryer when she was going to take someone else's clothes out to put hers in, because someone else was being a jerk-off and left their clothes in the washer.

This brings up an interesting point: what is the appropriate grace period for commandeering a dryer? The old lady in this episode waited a full half hour for it, and then found the dead body (which one police man said served her right for going downstairs to grub through someone else's undies to use the dryer).

Now generally, I wait about 5 minutes until I go downstairs to pull someone else's laundry out of the dryer. It's rude, I understand. I really don't have much of an internal grace period because I firmly believe that when you're doing laundry, you should be there to take your stuff out. And if you're not, you should be able to deal with your clothes neatly piled on the table next to the machine. If you wait more than 5 minutes, people will take over the entire laundry room, using all 3 washers at once and being a laundry douche.

Furthermore, I don't take peoples' clothes out of the dryer until they are completely dry. I cannot stand when people take your clothes out of the dryer only 30 minutes in, because let's be honest: dryers on campus aren't that good. They do take the full hour to dry your clothes, and if you take them out halfway through, I can guarantee that your jeans and towels will still be damp to the touch. So for a woman to wait 30 minutes for someone to get their stuff out of the laundry in my eyes, is really effing polite.

This episode of Castle raises a few good questions about laundry. One, what amount of time is acceptable before someone takes over a dryer? Two, if Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson knew that illicit affairs in the laundry room could lead to murder, would Little Children ever be the same?

The Force Is Strong With Apple

Perhaps the most awesome yet pointless application ever for an iPhone or iTouch? The Lightsaber application.

Star Wars geeks, rejoice.

With a few downloads to your iWeapon of Choice, you can choose what character you want to be, you can make your own lightsaber, and then plug in your headphones.

You swish your wrist around a little bit, and bam! All the noises and music that go with the lightsaber. The swooshes, the smacks, everything. It's kind of epic. So go forth and download, dear nerds.

I Watched the Watchmen

I proudly admit that I'm a geek.

I've seen all of the Star Wars movies (including the shitty new ones). I went to a math and science high schools. I love action movies. I think math jokes are funny. I like deep movies. I go see movies at midnight because I can.

That said, I have not seen Lord of the Rings. I have not read any of the Harry Potter books. I have not seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show more than 200 times (although I have seen it far more times than it deserves). And I did not read Watchmen.

I did go see the movie, and I thought it was a visually beautiful action movie. Nothing more, nothing less. There were parts that I didn't understand (towards the end, the whole "on Mars" bit was ridiculous), but I thought it was awesome. The sex scene was a little gratuitious.

I probably wouldn't have minded if Patrick Wilson had looked like this rather than this. Nice ass, for sure. But the hair wasn't doing it for me in this movie.

I actually liked Watchmen.

I'm Not A Techie

I've been trying to upload a video since 12:30 PM this afternoon, and it doesn't seem to be happening. So here's to hoping it loads sometime before 11:30 AM on Saturday morning when I'll be packing myself up.

In case it does load, it's a pretty damn funny video of Kristyne that I made.

Evening the Score

Today's News I viewing of Wall-E got me to thinking about a few things. First of all, I couldn't believe that we convinced our professor to watch the whole movie based on the importance of tone of voice. Your tuition at work, parents!

Second (and more significantly), I think that Wall-E really got robbed for best score. Hear me out.

This is nothing against Slumdog Millionaire and A.R. Rahman. The movie and the score were divine, and regular readers/skimmers of this blog already know that I gave it much praise and respect. The score is brilliant to that movie, and really enhances the story and enriches the cultural viewing portion of it.

But without the score, Wall-E would fall flat. The story (which should have been nominated for Best Picture overall, not just Best Animated Picture) has virtually no dialogue, and the first verbal interaction is almost 40 minutes into the movie. Would it really be the same without music? I think not.

So here's to the Oscars re-evaluating what a score means to a movie. Slumdog Millionaire was brilliant and deserves all of its awards. Except for this one, in which Thomas Newman and Peter Gabriel got robbed. Come on, how can you resist those little robotic eyes?

Slaughter Beach: The Movie?

I happened to stumble upon the Horror Movie's FAQ (no, legit, it came up from the StumbleUpon button on my toolbar). And it got me to thinking: what ever happened to that horror movie we joked about making in high school? We had the perfect plot and the perfect location!

Delaware, in case you didn't know, has some pretty awesome beaches, especially if you're gay. One of them happens to be named Slaughter Beach, after postmaster William Slaughter. Now, it's all well and good that it's named for the postmaster. But doesn't this just sound like a really terrible horror movie waiting to be made?

(Seriously, Dan Heffner, get on this!)

The idea was to have it after prom, and have the usual assortment of dumb teenagers and sluts on the beach celebrating their senior year or whatever, and have them all just brutally die on Slaughter Beach, because of some sort of legend of murder there. Rob was going to film it, and it just kind of never happened.

I'm just putting the idea out there. If someone uses it, I would like credit.

Well, 3 out of 5 Ain't Bad.

As some may know, I've made it something of a goal of mine to see as many Oscar-recognized movies this year as I can get to and pay for (...or not). It's not because I'm a pretentious film buff, really. The roots of this mission are a little bit deeper than that.

For all who don't know my living situation, it's this: I live on a floor of film buffs. The majority of the people I live with (including my roommate) are cinema and photography majors - emphasis on the cinema part. And every year, I watch the Oscars and wonder: Do these movies really deserve the awards they win?

Most of the movies fall into a gray area where some people know the movies - usually those living in a city lucky enough to get all the limited release films that always get nominated - and where most people (average popcorn movie-goers like me) don't. So when the lists for the awards shows made it out this year - first the Golden Globes, then the SAGs and Critics' Choice, and then finally the Oscars - I made it a mission to see if these films were actually worth the praise they receive.

I figured I'd go category-by-category in the next few days to say who I think WILL win and who may DESERVE to win.