Foodie Movie

From Cebu Osani Films: Eye What You Eat

Rather cool short films/recipes. Dig it.

Potage from erik shirai on Vimeo.

Visit Eye What You Eat here and thanks to Anthony Bourdain for finding this. (We're best friends)

By a Nose....

Last week when I was about 5 glasses of pinot grigio deep, I inadvertently came up with a fascinating hypothesis. Now before the comments come flying in (read: my brother might write a comment if he's not working) this not a proven theory. There are many exceptions to this "rule".

Hypothesis: Caliber of acting is directly linked to the size of an actor's nose. To demonstrate, I've compiled a group of male actors.

Case in point: Check out the Schnoz on That Guy

From top left: Al Pacino, Peter Sellers, Adrien Brody, Ian McKellen, Daniel Day Lewis, Robert Deniro

Mostly dramatic but each has proven capable of having strong comedic value or vice versa. All are well-rounded and well-established actors. One of these actors also had a full breakdown on stage while performing Hamlet when he actually saw the ghost of his real dead father. That is commitment and that is craft.

Case in counterpoint: Carefully Styled Hair Won't Help You

From top left: David Hasselhoff, Ryan Reynolds, Leonardo DiCaprio, Keanu Reeves, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vanilla Ice

All of these actors play every role they touch the same way. Ryan Reynolds? Funny and sarcastic. Keanu Reeves? Emotes with the same amount of his Matrix action figures.

There are two examples that are more subtle and require explanation. Leo had only one role where he truly acted and that was What's Eating Gilbert Grape?. The other equally controversial choice is Vanilla Ice. I've seen Cool As Ice three times, it pains me to say this brilliant MC should stick to music.

You may have noticed that this list does not include younger actors. Acting is sometimes like those 8 glasses of delicious pinot grigio: They get better with age. If the hypothesis does hold true we can expect great things from:


And again, since this is not a proven theory there are always exceptions:


Thoughts?

Bruce Wayne: Mentally unstable, at best

Above: A pretty well-done fan creation depicting Christian Bale as a mental patient with delusions of grandeur.  Which, now that I think about, might not be fan fiction at all... perhaps the man's actually batshit insane?

(Did you see that?  See what I did there?)

No, but seriously this is a pretty awesome trailer.  And I'd pay real money to drink my way through this movie in Lux level. 

Below: A link to the wired.com article where I spotted it:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/04/batman-complex

Pulp Muppets

Just something silly for a Wednesday morning.

I think Beaker is my favorite, but watch out for special guest Alf at about 1:10 - it's quick!

The Great Pop Culture Implosion

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/12/ff_angrynerd_geekculture/all/1

I just found a pretty great article (by comedian/writer/actor Patton Oswalt) that deeply explores the rapid expansion of popular culture through the exploitation of geek culture.  I’m pretty sure this is what the esteemed Dr. Ian Malcolm was talking about when he famously stated, “What you call progress, I call the rape of the natural world.”

The video above is kind of a lite version of the story he’s telling, but Patton’s full article is definitely worth reading.  Although the constant barrage of nerdlore reference gives this thing a Clockwork Orange–esque linguistic learning curve (consider this blog post a warm-up), if you can get past that it’s chock-full of interesting ideas.  The highlights being:

• the “otaku-fication” of America and its weak and temperamental obsessions…
  
  
• the assimilation of nerd culture into widely-consumed media (“The Lord of the Rings used to be ours and only ours simply because of the sheer goddamn thickness of the books”)…
  
  
• how having “Everything That Ever Was—Available Forever” (or “Etewaf”) via the internet does not bode well for the creative process, and
  
  
•  the concept that “before we can start to rebuild geek culture, we first have to destroy it” as he maniacally proposes a Mad Max-style do-over.

Although to be honest, the man might just be remembering the 80’s a little too fondly.  My buddy Lion-O and I talk about that all the time.  

2010 Movie Mash up!

Usually I am not a fan of mash up's, but this one is done extremely well, especially since it includes 270 movies. All from 2010.

Check out this link to view all of the movies in order of appearance:
http://tinyurl.com/2g3p6bs

Accurate yet misleading...

Came across a wonderfully funny blog post by Mr. John Scalzi talking about movie descriptions that are technically correct, but completely miss the real meaning of the story.

Since yesterday, I've spent the better part of my day trying to come up with my own examples. So far these are my favorite:
Annie:
Young girl cons millionaire into taking her in. All of New York grinds to a halt as she hoodwinks him into searching for her make-believe parents.

Braveheart:
After witnessing the brutal murder of his father, a man with manic-depressive tendencies entices a riot to claim the crown.

Go here to see the full post.

A remarkably informative interview

Some Between Two Ferns-style turning of the tables on Mr. Galifianakis.

Sometimes the simplest solution ...

... is the most sophisticated.  To that end, see "10 Movie Posters Inspired by Men's Style". 

(Although I'm calling shenanigans on "The Shining" poster, as far as "inspired by men's style" goes.)

Pushing the internet to even greater heights

I'm an admitted fan of mash-ups. And while in many cases the end result of combining two turds is simply a larger, grosser turd, sometimes rearranging things in unexpected ways can make magic.

Take Tube Dubber, for instance.  A mash-up tool that amazingly takes YouTube to an even stranger place.  It allows you to combine the video track of any YouTube clip with the audio track of another. 

How is this helpful, you might ask?  Well, I mentioned magic earlier.  What happens if I combine a popular movie about magic with the preeminent song about magic?  Even more magic, right?  The answer: some surprisingly badass yet expectedly stupid teen wizards.  So yes – it’s more magical.  

I’ve also discovered that Tube Dubber is capable of cranking the crazy level of YouTube upwards, past 11, and screaming into to the lower stratosphere.  By combining two elements commonly accepted as nuts – Japanese games shows and William Shatner – I created something so insane that it appears almost normal.  It may in fact have gone full circle through our plane of reality, rendering its components sane while leaving us mentally shattered.

The possibilities are endless.  I can combine two things at random – say, two suave dudes like Don Draper and Bruce Campbell – and create something even more suaver than the sum of its parts.  Or I can take an awesome movie trailer – like “9” – and use it to enhance another movie that needs some help being more awesome.   This thing is literally an “awesome enhancer”. 

Again, most times crap + crap = more crap.  But sometimes there is beauty in the juxtaposition of random things.  A whimsy in the gestalt.

Or, we could all just be going batshit insane. 

Gives Me Hope for Movie Making

Before we get to the video, let me quickly explain the website:

hitRECord.org, founded by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is a place where artists all over the world can submit their own music, narration, animation, or what have you for the general use of all hitRECord members. Subsequently, anything uploaded can be grabbed by another person to be recut into something new or members can get together to create a project like the video below. Gordon-Levitt will then take something that he feels is a great piece of work and distribute it.

After that, any profits made from the film only half of goes back into the keeping up the site and the other half is distributed amoung the collaborators. You can check out some forums there to see how money distribution is posted and discussed for fairness.

Cool, huh? No studios, no bullsh*t. Just fun and original film making.

Morgan M Morgansen's Date with Destiny was shown at the 2010 Sundance Festival and was one of first collaborations to come out of hitREcord.org.

Why 'Back to the Future' Is Secretly Horrifying

I like the premise of this discussion... but I think I like the "after work coffee shop" setup just as much.

Also, I never knew Robert Zemeckis was a racist. Or that black people invented hoverboards.

There have always been factions.

Al Qaeda Calls Off Attack On Nation's Capitol To Spare Life Of 'Twilight' Author

The themes, people... are universal. Let's give Peace and Twilight a chance.

I knew 12 Angry Men was simplistic