More actors need to do this

Just saw a brief video of Ralph Fiennes (in PJ’s!) reading aloud a bit of Voldemort/Harry Potter slash fan fic. Too funny!

Edit: Duh, perhaps I should have included a link????

Oh, Nicole.

Anyways: linkage

The greatest thing ever

This guy‘s two nights in Miami are just like The Hangover. Except without friends, Mike Tyson, an ill-advised marriage, or a pissed-off tiger. Also unlike that movie (I haven’t seen the second one, so let’s just pretend it doesn’t exist), the roofied shenanigans of famous-in-Philly meteorologist John Bolaris had actual consequences. AmEx ruined his credit, but then had to pay him damages; let’s put this one in the “Good” column. His job first suspended him, and then went ahead and fired him all the way; that would go in the “Not Good” column. This table is further developed below.

While this story added nothing to my life and just reminded me that I’m an awful person who will laugh at anything, I am grateful that I read this article, if only for the following words: “In Philly, weathermen and chefs are stars. John has been a huge star in Philly for years.” Sixth borough (are people still trying to make that one happen?), I love you so.

I feel like this is my fault

I knit (I may have mentioned this before), and I like to watch tv shows when I do. I prefer shows that have been on for several seasons, so I can just plow through the episodes, without having to wait a week for the next installment. Right now I’m watching Eureka, which I’d never heard of before another knitter told me about it last week. It’s a quirky little show whose low budget mostly-Canadian appeal warms my heart. I had been watching Psych while I knit, but it got too stupid for me to enjoy.

Although I do own far too many tv shows on dvd, I primarily watch my knitting-montony-relieving shows through Netflix’s streaming option. I currently have the 2-disc-a-month plan, and I always mean to watch the dvds that I order, but it almost never happens. On Saturday I went to the Netflix web site to see if I could switch to a streaming-only plan. To my surprise, they didn’t have any such thing! It seemed like offering the option just to stream content would be a no-brainer, but maybe the Netflix people had too much in the way of brains, because that wasn’t the case. Anyway, I switched to the 1-disc-a-month plan.

Imagine my surprise then when I saw in the newspaper today that, beginning December, Netflix will offer a streaming-only plan (that article said January, but the email that Netflix sent me said December). Yay! So I switched again. When I do want dvds, I can easily get them from the library, and even if they’re rentals, that cost plus the cost of my streaming Netflix subscription won’t equal what I paid for 2-discs-at-a-time (not that that was terribly expensive, either). Netflix is also raising the cost of all of its disc plans by a dollar. That’s not a ton, but I’m sure it hurts a bit. I know that to have all of this in place, the final decision about this had to have been made long before Saturday, but since I had just looked into this, I feel the tiniest bit responsible.

So, dear internet, I apologize for the increase in cost of your Netflix subscription. Unless, of course, you’ve moved to Streamland like me, in which case I welcome you to my broadband-dependent country.

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.