Allen August 23rd, 2005
I was filling out paperwork last night for insurance and happened to catch One Hour Photo.
It is a creepy and eerie movie where Robin Williams plays a photo technician at a super center photo processing center. He "stalks" a family who he sees as the embodiment of a perfect life. When that life is shattered by the infidelity of the husband, it is more than Robin can take.
The last half of the movie revolves around Robin procuring the tools he needs to confront and torture most gruesomely the husband and his lover.
Now I don’t want to give away the ending of the movie, but the rest is simply too shocking to not talk about.
Still with me?
OK. I was really horrified when, at the end, Robin bursts into the room and screams, "Oh NO!! My dog isn’t nearly as shaggy as that!!!"
Allen August 2nd, 2005
That’s an amalgamation of "Gigi", "Ishtar" and "Stealth".
From The Science of Stealth - Popular Science.
Set in the near future, Stealth follows three young Navy pilots played by Josh Lucas, Jessica Biel and Jamie Foxx who are, evidently, the only pilots capable of handling the Navy’s newest weapon: the ultrafast, ultra-deadly, ultra-sleek Talon fighter jet. The fourth star is Extreme Deep Invader, or EDI, a fully autonomous UCAV. As EDI returns from its first mission, things go downhill fast. It gets blasted by a lightening bolt, which rewires its artificial intelligence, contained in a very cool-looking but highly unlikely glowing sphere inside the cockpit. (Cockpit in an unmanned vehicle? We’ll get to that in a minute.) Now the vehicle suddenly has an alarming propensity to play indie-rock bootlegs illegally pirated from the Internet. Yes, moviegoers, the plane has turned evil so evil that it illegally downloads music.
Here’s a thought! Just print out the following picture twice on clear acetate.
Now just tape/glue those puppies onto a pair of glasses and you are ready to riff and enjoy any movie (well, almost any movie) that Hollywood is ready to throw at you.
Allen June 24th, 2005
makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
Somehow it’s not as chilling in the era of cut-and-paste word processors.
Allen December 14th, 2004
The folks over at Angry Alien have released another 30 second bunny adventure. This time, they remake It’s a Wonderful Life. As with all their productions, its done with bunnies and performed in under 30 seconds.
Be sure to click on the bunny outlines at the end for bonus features.
[Note: Still swamped at work and home. More extensive blogging will resume shortly.]
Allen October 31st, 2004
Still have lots to get done, but I wanted to blog this before I forgot about it. Database problems at work are still pressing, but the family is watching The Nightmare Before Christmas, a family tradition, and I thought I would write about this while we are watching.
Bravo TV recently ran a series of documentaries about the 100 Scariest Movie Moments. I’ve never been a big fan of the ‘gruesome gore’ style of scary movies, I found out that I have seen quite a few more than I realized.
So from the accompanying website, I present my selection from their list, some from their list I would like to see that I have yet to see as well as some other favorites.
100. 28 Days Later Haven’t seen this one yet, but it sounds like a good one.
99. Creepshow Never did like that one, but the final sequence with E. G. Marshall is a classic scene. Still bugs me.
96. The Birds One of Hitchcock’s weakest feature movies, still pretty good for a thrill.
95. Jurassic Park Excellent movie with excellent special effects. Wished they would have stopped with this one.
88. Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I don’t remember if they highlighted the remake or the original. Most film critics like the original while I’ve seen the remake.
80. Poltergeist Excellent movie with some classic scary scenes.
79. Dracula They highlighted the old, classic version with Bela Lugosi. Scared the pants off me when I was young. I also like the version with Frank Langella. I would like to see Fracis Ford Coppola’s version.
77. Signs Fairly good M. Night Shyamalan movie, but I wouldn’t call it a scary one. Creepy perhaps.
74. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory Freaky during the tunnel scene, but not scary.
71. The Sixth Sense Now that was a scary movie. This one is probably one of Shyamalan’s best.
65. Marathon Man Is it safe? Still get shudders from that drill and being asked a question you can’t answer.
59. Fatal Attraction While some of the critics sited the ending as what they loved the best, for me it turned a psychological thriller into a boogie man movie — one step down in my estimation. I’m more frightened of what could happen than what can’t happen.
50. The Last House on the Left I remember hearing about it when I was young and was simply frightened by the thought of this movie. I’m still not sure if I ever want to see it, but the scene that I sampled didn’t look too appealing. Of course, if it did seem appealing, I might need to check myself into a mental hospital.
48. The Thing The John Carpenter remake. Excellent film with great special effects.
47. Nosferatu Still haven’t seen it, but I’ve seen samples from it. I think this might be one of those films that I would like to have seen, but not sure I want to see it. Kind of like a classic book — you want to have read it, but don’t want to read it.
42. American Werewolf in London Love the movie, but I keep expecting the main character to break into a Dr. Pepper song.
39. Dawn of the Dead Great movie, but my wife hates it. We went to see it before we started dating with a group. She kept diving into my arms — perhaps one of the reasons I’ve always liked it.
35. Aliens Never seen it all the way through. Would like to some day.
34. The Hitcher Looks to be a good psycho-type movie.
33. The Fly The remake with Jeff Goldblum. Again, I’ve never seen it all the way through. Not from lack of trying, but it just never seems to happen.
I’ll finish this when they have posted 31-1 films. They didn’t have on (as far as I can tell): Interview with a Vampire (the scene in the sun chamber and the feast are excellent) and Rear Window. I’ll think of others when I finish up.
Allen October 24th, 2004
I’ve seen the new When the Man Comes Around animation featuring the Johnny Cash song of the same name.
While I do support George Bush in the upcoming election, I want to make one thing clear. George Bush is not the person that Johnny Cash is singing about in the song. Yes, yes, I know that everyone realizes this, but I do want to make sure.
So everyone, let’s all say this together: George Bush is not Jesus. Johnny was singing about Jesus, not George.
I realize some of George’s more ardent supporters might blend these two, but they’re not the same.
Just so we’re clear, OK?
Allen July 20th, 2004
Our family went to see Spiderman 2 the other night. Everyone enjoyed the movie (mini-review: good plot line, good fx, good acting, obvious sequel) and I shared my experiences with some friends. One person noted that they had the film via a P2P network the day after it was released, but they hadn’t seen it yet. Another person mentioned that they saw “I, Robot” with again the same response by the pirate — have it, haven’t seen it.
Discussing it with my son that evening, I noted that, for at least some people, having the movie while it is still in release is the equivalent of have a deer head on your wall.
“Yep, got this whiltetail after crawling on my belly for 300 yards. Then I got home and bagged the new Hobbit film by that guy that did the Lord of the Rings. Yep, grabbed it even before it went into production.”
Allen July 12th, 2004
Find out at a cool site The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations.
Well, it doesn’t say, but I do know that a lot of it was not shot in Oklahoma — too many telephone wires — supposedly.
But what films were shot in Oklahoma (at least in part):
According to the site:
AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
THE OUTSIDERS
RAIN MAN
RUMBLE FISH
TWISTER
I did see part of the filming of Twister back when my son was little. We were traveling down I35 south from visiting my parents in OKC. We kept seeing flashes of lightning but the sky was clear. Pulled into Max Westheimer field just as they were finishing the shoot of a night-time storm scene.
Allen June 28th, 2004
Dr. Ergun Mehmet Caner rips into Michael Moore and his latest film in ‘Hatriotism’ & Michael Moore: Turkish Muslim says ‘Fahrenheit 911′ wrong on liberation of Iraq.
“HATE-RIOTISM” describes the new breeze blowing through the American media. It is now “cool” and “relevant” to mock everything for which our soldiers are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Criticizing democracy and America has long been in vogue in continental Europe from those who look with disdain at American “naivete,” while still lamenting the Islamic onslaught.
Now imported to our shores, hatriotism is the simplest way to get the growing contingent of professional protestors who populate television audiences to cheer: Mock America. Mock our involvement in Iraq. Mock President Bush … and get rousing applause.
The only problem is … America has freed my kinsmen.
I am a Persian Turkish immigrant raised as a Sunni Muslim, and in the interest of full disclosure, I must state that I left Islam in 1982, and became an American citizen. Yet, as I survey the current cultural landscape, I cannot help but be less than enthused when Michael Moore states that his film is a call to true patriotism.
The present conflict is not a war against Islam, and neither is it a “war for oil.” In the previous six military endeavors, American troops sided with Muslims who were under attack, and there are much less extreme methods of garnering oil. This is a war of ideologies, and with “Fahrenheit 911,” Moore clearly shows his.
His visual narrative of Lila Lipscombe, a Flint, Mich., mother who sent her sons to the military and “lives to regret it,” as Roger Friedman of FOX News notes, is “unexpectedly poignant.”
I wonder – was Moore equally moved when he heard of the honor killings which daily threatened the lives of Muslim women in Afghanistan? Was he equally as outraged at the female circumcision practices in my countrymen’s lands, because it lessens the threat of adultery?
In fact, I wonder … where were all the “hatriots” when our soldiers freed all the women of Afghanistan from the Taliban? Where were the feminists when our soldiers liberated the Afghan women to be educated for the first time in years?
The irony is, for all of their false bravado behind the First Amendment and their right to “free speech,” the hatriots are exercising this right because American men and women shed their blood to afford them this right against those who would seek to oppress it. I would invite Michael Moore to my homeland to make a movie criticizing Turkish oppression and see what happens. The freedom he enjoys now was purchased with a dear price.
Like Chis at JunkYardBlog, I too like the gist of the word “Hatriot” and plan to use it more often.
[Via JunkYardBlog]
Allen June 23rd, 2004
Just as Rush has his “dittoheads”, I would suggest that Michael has his Farenheads — knee-jerk liberals who swallow Michael’s bilge without batting an eye. From what I can gather from Christopher Hitchens’s article Unfairenheit 9/11, Christopher is not a Farenhead.
The concluding remarks from the article are classic (one of many such passages in the article):
Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (…) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …
And that’s just from Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it’s highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It’s also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.
If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.
Hitchens calls his column at Slate Fighting Words. I see Christopher as a liberal neo-conservative curmudgeon — someone willing and wanting to speak their mind about topics of the day without regard to the consequences. Several of his recent articles ripped into Ronald Regan and the Abu Ghraib scandal.
You can read interviews with Christopher Hitchens about Mother Theresa (not a big fan) as well as a highly recommended interview with Frontpagemag.com.
[Via Allah Is In the House]