How to be alone
Here’s a great short film about how to be on your own. I love my own company, and I can’t always stand to be around other people. A lot of people I know can’t do anything on their own, which I think is sad, but the next time somebody asks me why I like to go off on my own, I’m going to show him or her this video.
Anything can be turned into a horror film
Simply by changing the order in which events occurred, redirectig the focus, and adding some ominous music, Office Space becomes a thriller.
This post is just an excuse to post a photo of Tom Selleck…
:: swoon ::
but is educational nonetheless. I don’t feel strongly about any of these ill-fated actor/role combos, but am always interested in stories of what might have been.
Also, in case you somehow missed it, Selleck Waterfall Sandwich. You’re welcome.
Kill it with fire (or a stake, or decapitation)…
Just when I think that the actions of the TwiMoms, the most frightening segment of Twilight fandom (although there’s pretty stiff competition for that title) have gone too far, one of them has to go ahead and do something even creepier. This time: Etsy seller Twimom (yes, she got the actual name; does that make her their leader??) presents Cullen-ize Me. For only $10, you can see what you’d look like if you were all undead and sparkly. Jesus.
Forget the cowbell, how about more Taylor Lautner?
This LOLcats rendition of New Moon is pretty entertaining, and surpasses the original in every sense except one: it lacks any hint of Taylor Lautner shirtless pics. If the author could just go back and put some in, it would be perfect!
Here’s my contribution:
Let's pretend he wasn't born in 1992.
Damn, Manohla
I had no intention of seeing the new movie Ameila anyway, but Manohla Dargis’s brutal review of it is 1) the funniest thing I’ve read lately and 2) incentive enough not to pay to see that.
There’s no substitute for good film-making
I saw The Surrogates yesterday, and I really wanted to like it. The premise is interesting: what would happen if everybody in the world could use an idealized representation of him or herself to interact with others? Also, the awesome Rosamund Pike (who will forever be for me Jane Bennett) somehow agreed to be in it, which I thought spoke highly of the film. I forgot, though, that even serious actors need to eat.
Anyway, It seemed like this could be a good movie. The rating at Rotten Tomatoes was 37%, but I don’t ALWAYS agree with the reviewers there. Elizabeth Banks and her husband, Max Handelman, who, based on nothing but their twitter feeds, seem like cool people, produced this movie, so I hoped it would be awesome.
It was not. Seriously. If I had a surrogate, I would have used it to see this movie, so that when I started to bang my head on the wall immediately upon exiting the theater, I would have suffered no lasting effects. The more you think about this movie, the less it makes sense. The intro laughingly suggests that such technology would cure communicable diseases and racism immediately. Riiiight. So because you don’t know whether the black surrogate you’re talking to is actually a black person, you suddenly begin to love black people, because they secretly might be white? Doubtful. How can EVERYBODY afford a surrogate? What happens to the poor people who can’t? If surrogates need to charge, what are the operators doing in that time. Does nobody go out at all? What happened to all the gyms? How can people have medication, if they don’t go out? The surrogates can’t be checked for conditions, so what gives? Are doctors now making house calls? And the big one – SPOILER – Why does one measly control station somewhere in the US have access to the surrogate network for the entire world? WHO THOUGHT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA????
A relevant review from Rotten Tomatoes:
The script is by the team that gave us “Catwoman” and the last two “Terminator” movies, which tells you all you need to know. The direction is by Jonathan Mostow, who did a couple of good genre movies early on, and then went off the rails with “Terminator 3.”
“Surrogates” continues the slide. — Stephen Whitty, Newark Star Ledger (full review)
Also, when I checked this morning, the movie was down to 35% fresh. Exactly.
Julie & Julia
I saw this movie over the weekend and really enjoyed it. I think that Amy Adams is awesome, but the real star of this movie is Meryl Streep, who is delightful as Julia Child. And Stanley Tucci! This is probably the first time I saw him in a role where he did not give me the heeby-jeebies. Warning: watching this movie will probably leave you very hungry.
Relevant review:
A consummate entertainment that echoes the rhythms and attitudes of classic Hollywood, it’s a satisfying throwback to those old-fashioned movie fantasies where impossible dreams do come true. – Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times
That was unexpected
Thursday was a friend’s birthday, and so last night I treated him to dinner and a movie. I told him that he could pick whatever movie he wanted to see, and I wouldn’t make any sort of jokes about it or be a bad sport at all, but despite having been given carte blanche, his first choice, 500 Days of Summer, was something that I would really have enjoyed seeing. Unfortunately, it isn’t playing anywhere in NJ, so he had to pick another movie. He said he wanted to see I Love You Beth Cooper, but that he couldn’t do that to me. Since I still don’t really have any idea what that is, I was sort of like, “Whatever, thanks,” but it really can’t be worse than some of the other movies he’s gotten me to see, such as Hot Rod. Two years later, and I still shudder when I think of that horrible excuse for a film.
He decided that he wanted to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I’ve never read the books, but I have seen the whole or parts of the previous movies in this series, and have have never really minded the experience. I wasn’t expecting much, but I quite enjoyed the movie. I haven’t seen the previous movies recently, but this was much, much better. The was believable teen-romance angst, and a level of violence that I had not anticipated at all. The only thing that kept bugging me was how easily Harry & Co. gave up searching for the identity of the Half-Blood Prince or the meaning of his name. I think that I am eventually going to read the books, so I’ll check to see if this part of the story plays out the same way in the novels. To revive an old tradition of mine, here’s an excerpt from a couple of reviews that most closely mirror my thoughts on this film.
The strangest thing about the new Harry Potter movie is not that it’s unusually good, which it is, but that it unequivocally illustrates just how poorly we’ve been served by the previous five instalments in the franchise. — Kevin Maher, The Times Online
Harry Potter is getting darker, angrier, distinctly more wicked. It has an edge. Scary Potter? — Gary Wolcott, Tri-City Herald
Things I should have known
I was searching the library’s catalog for dvds of the A-Team, (which I surprisingly cannot find) when I discovered that George Peppard of the A-Team was also in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Color me surprised. I know that a few decades had passed between that movie and the tv series, but you’d think that I would have recognized him. In my own defense, 1) I hardly know the names of any male actors from before I was born and 2) he did change a bit.
