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Monday, July 05, 2010

Better get some bloggin' done...

This is gonna be a wild and packed week ahead. Maybe even a surprise or two that I may be inclined to share. Just keep watching this space :-)

So while I was enjoying this Fourth of July weekend those industrious folks at Muppet Studios uploaded another new clip onto YouTube! It's der Swedish Chef in "Pöpcørn"...

I'd love to know if the Chef's hands are being operated by one Muppeteer or two. If it's two, that would make this clip even more impressive!

Friday, July 02, 2010

Taking off for the Fourth of July

I'm gonna step away from the blog for the next few days. Will return Monday. Perhaps then I'll even finally be caught up on my movies for this summer (if there might be anything good playing...)

In the meantime, have a great Independence Day weekend y'all! But don't let it be just about fireworks and hot dogs. Freedom, after all, is never free.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

A thought regarding politics...

Politics, like sex and death, is terribly over-rated.

Truth in advertising?

If a law firm's TV commercials boast that they "know the local judges", is that really code-speak for "We know how to grease the right palms"?

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Heang Uy: Biking across America

The above photo was taken on the coast of Oregon a few days ago by Heang Uy. Heang is a friend from my college days, who has been a bigger inspiration to me than I've ever been able to articulate. He's a true brother in the Lord, a great teacher, and an excellent coach at his school.

And this summer Heang is bicycling across the continental United States! Word has come down the wire that sometime this evening Heang should be entering the Mountain Time Zone, headed toward Idaho. If all goes well he'll be pedaling back into North Carolina in August. In the meantime Heang Uy is out there somewhere: exerting both mind and body in an epic odyssey that will have him living the landscape like few dare to experience.

Pretty neat, aye? :-)

Here's Heang's blog, where he's chronicling his journey (accompanied with photos from the trek). Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers as he perseveres toward the goal!

Full-sized Elite costume from HALO

I've seen many costumes inspired by video games, but this one has to top them all: a seven-foot tall fully-armored Elite from the Halo series!

Click on the above link for plenty more photos and a video of this getup. The guys who made this have also made a full-sized Master Chief costume.

Funniest thing I've read all week

"Twilight is like World Cup soccer. They run around for 2 hours, nobody scores, and a billion fans insist that 'you just don't understand'."

-- attributed to one "jayrunquist"

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO or STAR BLAZERS, whatever it is... here's the new trailer!

So I'm pretty sure that every man, woman, child and dumb animal on Earth has by now seen the staggeringly excellent trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Meanwhile, our friends in Japan have just unloaded something just as eyeball-blowing spectacular: a new trailer for the Space Battleship Yamato (better known as Star Blazers on this side of the pond) live action movie! There was a teaser released earlier this year, but this one shows us much more.

One thing I'm worried about: how is the story from Season 1 of the animated series going to be compressed into one motion picture? Maybe Space Battleship Yamato/Star Blazers could become a live-action TV adaptation with modern technology. Perhaps on HBO? Then they wouldn't have to pretend that Dr. Sane was drunk on "spring water", heh-heh...

Anyhoo, what glorious eye candy awaits us from the Land of the Rising Sun! Can't wait to see this.

Did y'all know that I have a Twitter feed?

Yes I do. And I use it for quite a bit of mirth and merriment!

(Okay seriously, for all of y'all going to see Eclipse tonight, hope you have fun :-)

I like TWILIGHT: ECLIPSE already

I'm very thankful for the Twilight movies, because never again will I get flack from my sister for going to see the Star Wars movies premiere at midnight.

'Nuff said.

Monday, June 28, 2010

"This is heavy!" BACK TO THE FUTURE Trilogy coming to Blu-ray!

I know at least two good friends who will without a doubt be buying this on the day it's released (and one of them would purchase it at midnight if he could, and you know who you are coughcoughEdcoughcough)...

This coming October 26th marks a quarter-century since Marty McFly hit 88 miles per hour and took his accidental journey to 1955. And to celebrate that milestone in movie history we're getting the Back To The Future 25th Anniversary Trilogy on Blu-ray!

GeekTyrant has posted a Mr. Fusion-full of details about the Blu-ray release of the Back To The Future movies, which is already one of the most loaded for any home release that I've ever seen.

If this set doesn't wind up on my shelf on October 26th, it will no doubt be on my list for December 25th!

On salvation and pride

It makes as much sense to declare that all the members of another religion are damned to Hell as it does to assert that all the members of your own religion are destined for Heaven.

Horse with no name: Equine-headed mystery lad appears on Google Streetview

People of Aberdeen, Scotland: the Horseboy is on the loose in your town!!

IT manager Russell Moffatt was using Google's Streetview feature to locate an optician's shop so he could get his eyeglasses repaired. But while doing the search he found something else: a person, apparently male, wearing a horse's head mask along with a purple shirt, standing on the side of a street in Aberdeen.

This mystery individual has quickly become known as "Horseboy" and as such things go on the Intertubes, has quickly acquired a herd of fans and well-wishers.

Horseboy is just the latest in a string of odd sights found by users of Google Streetview. Among other things people dressed as Japanese warriors, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Emmett Brown have been picked out of Streetview's data.

If I knew when a Google Streetview car would be coming past my house, I'd probably be waiting outside in my Jedi Knight costume :-)

Rest in peace Senator Robert Byrd

There's not a town in West Virginia that doesn't already have a bridge or a horse trough named after him... so how are they going to memorialize Robert Byrd?

His propensity toward pork barrel spending always irked me. And he was in the Senate way, way too long: nobody has any bidness holding the same elected office for 52 years.

But I must admit: I did have some admiration for Robert Byrd. He was certainly one of the better-read and more eloquent holder of high office in the past century of American history.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family and the people of West Virginia today.

Supreme Court rules on what most of us already knew...

...and decided that the Second Amendment really DOES apply to EVERY part of the United States. In other words, it affirmed that citizens do have a basic right to keep and bear arms for purposes of self defense (and, I dare say, as an incentive against government getting too big for its britches).

Glad to see the Supremes finally nodding toward something that's been public knowledge only since the Bill of Rights was ratified.

But in any case, this is a major victory for gun rights. Perhaps the tide is turning after all in this land.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

TUCKER & DALE VS. EVIL: A movie SCREAMING for distribution and NOW!

Awright, I'm finally sick and tired and fed up with this. So once more I am feeling morally obligated to use this blog for a cause greater than myself. Maybe lightning will strike again as it has done a few times already with The Knight Shift.

I am speaking about Tucker & Dale vs. Evil.

And ya wanna know why I'm writing about this, here and now? Two reasons. First of all, THIS MOVIE IS CRAZY AWESOME!! I first saw it at ActionFest in April. It was midnight on a Friday night and the theater was packed and everyone was laughing and lapping it up and begging for more! I had to leave later the following day but my filmmaking partner "Weird" Ed saw it again at midnight that evening and he reported that not only was the screening once more full but he himself enjoyed it even more the second time around!

And I would love few things more right now than to be able to drive over to the neighborhood cinema and see Tucker & Dale vs. Evil again but for some reason beyond my comprehension (and I can comprehend an awful, awful lot) this movie has still yet to find a distributor!

Which draws me to my second reason for writing this: that Tucker & Dale vs. Evil would be an immensely successful and quite welcome entry into the slate of films for the summer of 2010... if it can land a distributor RIGHT NOW. Let's face it: this summer so far at the box office has been a bit of a letdown. The past couple of years were better than usual but now there's quite a bit of a lull in the amount of "must-see" movies. Tucker & Dale vs. Evil would be something that we don't get to enjoy nearly enough of: a bona-fide "sleeper" hit movie that people go to see and tell their friends about how great it is. First-time director Eli Craig has crafted a perfectly balanced mix of slasher-style horror and campy satire that would be like ambrosia for those starving for good cinema this season. And with Alan Tudyk and Tyler Labine headlining a great cast, I can easily see where people would be demanding more Tucker and Dale movies to get made. This really does stand to be a whole lucrative franchise waiting to happen. But even if it doesn't, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil as a standalone would earn some serious coin at the box office before fall arrives.

As I said though: this movie needs, nay, deserves a distributor... and it should have had one yesterday.

If anybody in the industry is reading this and wants to pick up what is one of the best-kept secrets in film right now, then do yourself a favor and become the distributor for Tucker & Dale vs. Evil. I bet if this can come out in August, it would rake in at least $75 million... if not much, much more.

World's scariest swimming pool...

...will make you think you're swimming over the edge of the world itself:


55 stories above the streets of Singapore, the Sands Skypark in Singapore provides a swimming pool, casino and greenway held aloft by three skyscrapers. The skypark is almost 1,250 feet long and the pool itself is 500 feet long.

What happens if you go over the side of the pool? You and the water get safely dumped into a basin that pumps the water back up to the pool. You, presumably, will have to walk up stairs or take an elevator back up to swimming altitude.

Click on the link at designboom for more information about the Sands Skypark and its swimming pool in the sky!