July 2008Wow. Frickin' wow. Totally worthy of all the hype. Intense. It felt like two movies worth of experience, at least (in the best possible way). So dense. Heath Ledger is as amazing as everyone has been touting (or expecting). Not once was I pulled out of the movie by bad CG. Brutal without being graphically gory.
Though this movie obviously requires some suspension of disbelief, there was only really one thing that snapped my suspension of disbelief for a nanosecond but then I got over it and was back in this amazing film.
My one complaint, and it is oh so minor, Christian Bale's voice when he's batman and not Bruce Wayne. It's just too gruff and affected. It makes him hard to understand and sounds like he's desperately in need of a bat-lozenge for his throat. As one comedian put it after "Batman Begins", it's a little like cookie monster playing Batman.
"DO YOU HAVE A COOKIE FOR BATMAN?"
I WILL be seeing this movie again in the IMAX. It almost demands multiple viewings to process it all.
In another interesting twist, my acting career idol, Gary Oldman, plays probably the most boring, normal, plain part of his career. A part that's so not "Gary Oldmanesque". And yet, in a strange twist, it being so different in itself kind of makes it Gary Oldmanesque! Don't get me wrong, he does a great job and I love his character, he's just so normal, plain and kind of boring (the character, no Gary Oldman).
See this movie. Multiple times. Genius.
For quite some time now I've been looking at getting an iPhone. I am constantly at auditions and such where I need to know my availability and would have to say "I'll let you know when I get home and check my Google Calendar".
Now before you even say it, I don't want to carry around a good old paper calendar/notebook/whatever. I share calendar's with several people so we can easily see each other's availability and I don't want to have to document things in multiple places either.
Continue reading "The Quest for the iPhone"Joss Whedon's new online project, Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog is online in three installments for free until July 20. Catch it now, or pay for it later!
When I was a kid, I had the album "Chipmunk Punk". This was a 1980 album of Alvin and the Chipmunks doing 9 songs that were not really in any way, punk, but were pretty cool and influential to me. This album actually introduced me to a lot of songs that I would later come to really love. At the time, I had never heard of "The Knack" and I don't think I had heard of most of the other songs on the album either. I just knew I liked the Chipmunks as we had a cool clear red album of theirs from 1969.
Recently I was thinking back on this and realized just what a weird album this was. The track listing was:
Side A
Now the first thing I noticed is that one third of the songs are from The Knack. Now don't get me wrong, I love The Knack's debut album "Get The Knack" which spawned all three of these songs, but to have three of nine songs by The Knack, who I had never even heard of at that time, seems an odd choice. Were the producers friends with The Knack? Did they get a hellaciously good deal on song rights?
Secondly, though I remember very specific changes they made to the lyrics to make them more kid friendly, those three songs from The Knack are racy! They're all about trying to get laid. Sure they changed "Til she's sitting on your face" to "Til she's sitting in your place" but a few lyrical changes do not change the overall subject of the song.
I don't really remember realizing at the time what these songs were about, but again in hindsight, WHOA! How did this album get made?
"You thought you heard her saying 'Good Girls don't'...but she's been telling you 'Good girls don't but I do."
"Frustrated" is all about blue balls, basically. Some girl not putting out.
"My Sharona", all about lusting after this young teenage girl.
Again, I ask, HOW DID THIS ALBUM GET MADE AND RELEASED? All I know is I'm glad it did, because I played the hell out of it and was introduced to some awesome music. I own every one of those songs on CD by the original artists. Except for "How Do I Make You". I can't remember how that one goes but I remember I liked the Chipmunk's version of it. Somehow I listened to this album repeatedly without ever really realizing how inappropriate some of the songs probably were for a nine year old boy.
I had an experience a few weeks ago that made me realize just how lucky i am to live a fairly prejudice-free life. I am generally surrounded by non-prejudiced people in a fairly non-prejudiced town, at least to the point where something like this actually took me by surprise which is a good thing.
I was at a band gig when one of my band mates was talking about his family trip to Disneyworld. This individual is a very generous generally great guy but he's also an old country boy farmer. Sometimes these things just don't seem to go together, such as when him, his wife and their teenage daughter were talking about how they happened to be at Disneyworld for gay pride day. And, oh my goodness, they were surrounded by GAY PEOPLE! Shock! horror! And, I quote, "It was disgusting!"
I sat there kind of fuming trying to figure out exactly how to handle this. I had no idea what to say or do. I wanted to speak up but in a non-confrontational way that would hopefully reach them and make them think instead of just alienating them but I just couldn't think of anything to say. I ended up muttering sarcastically, "Oh no, gay people," but no one really heard and I didn't want to make a point by repeating it or whatever. I think the real shame is that their daughter, who is a bright, intelligent girl, is having this kind of thing put in her head.
There are so many people in the world and the vast majority of them are going to be different from you in at least some ways. Sometimes you have close friends who are good people and yet have some pretty major differences from you. Sometimes that can be really hard. I actually wondered, albeit only briefly, "Do I really want to be in a band with people like this?"
After seeing "Wall-e" (which, by the way is one of the best movies ever) my brain decided to start thinking about my favorite movie robots. So here's my top 10 favorite Movie/TV robots (not necessarily in any particular order):
I'm sure I'll probably think of a ton more that I'll wish I'd put on here as soon as I publish this, but those are the ones that first came to my head so that says something about them. Keep in mind these are MY favorite robots. The ones that for whatever reason made an impact on me. Many people may cry "Where's Johnny 5? Optimus Prime?" Etc., but there are many famous and iconic robots that just don't hold any personal value to me. I never saw "Short Circuit". I never watched "Transformers". Daleks and "Blade Runner" replicants aren't actually robots. So those are my picks. Feel free to add your own in the comments!
Random bonus tidbit:
I always thought "Gort" was cool too but I never actually saw "The Day the Earth Stood Still." In fact I think I first became aware of Gort on the cover of a Ringo Starr Album.
