8.31.2006

Top 10 Gaming Schools

Why do I see this as being something Sean Patrick looks at when he is 18 and trying to decide where to go to school?

"So, what is the connection like for my X-Box 22nd Century Edition and my new Nintendo machine? I also need it able to transer my film files around to my uncles, something about wanting daily coed shots?"

Keith Olbermann's Reaction to Rumsfeld

I just watched it and holy crap that was one of the finest rebuttals I have heard. We seem to be getting to one of those points where the media are having to actually look at their industry and figure out why they are here and where they hell they have been the last few years.

Also, sometimes it is nice to be in the post-apocalyptic. grim meat hook future New Orleans. At least we are being prepared for what one way of the future might look like. Watched Batman Begins tonight and the whole time I was thinking that is us right now only without the billionaire playboy to swoop in and save us. Our streets are patrolled by soldiers, and they along with the cops are outgunned and outdone. Murder and crime in general continues to rise. The government is not coming to help in any way from crime to rebuilding.

We have only ourselves to do anything about what is going on.

8.30.2006

WOW Opinion Piece

8.29.2006

CHUD Interview About the MPAA

Interview with the director of This Film is Not Yet Rated, a movie that looks at the MPAA and the ratings process. This just gives more dislike for the MPAA, Jack Valenti, and everyone else associated with it.

Labels:

Books in 2006, stripping Hiaasen

My Old Man and the Sea
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Tourist Season
Double Whammy
The Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup
Five Fists of Science
Scott Pilgrim, Vol 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
The Mind of the ModernMoviemaker
Batman Year 100
Stardust
Twelve Sharp
The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
Sanibel Flats
Maximum Bob
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Skin Tight
Native Tounge
Demon of the Waters
Conversations With Wilder
America's Victory
Hard Rain
Casion Royale
Fletch
Getting Stoned With Savages
Strip Tease

Labels:

Piece on supervillains

8.28.2006

Beer - Midwife of Civilization.

Tales of the Black Freighter

Watchmen is one of the best pieces of literature and storytelling. There is no denial of that.

Now someone has gone and put together the meta-comic from inside it's pages: Tals of the Black Freighter.

Labels:

Good Interview about Criminal

8.27.2006

Bookmark: Sinking of Andrea Doria

8.26.2006

Flip Flops

One of my favorite things from Getting Stoned With Savages is Troost's comment that he is a flip-flop kind of guy. There is something I can agree with, and why I will never be a true grup. I would rather wear flip-flops and boat shoes any day of the week than wear anything else.

DMZ #1 For Free

8.25.2006

Books in 2006, teh funny

My Old Man and the Sea
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Tourist Season
Double Whammy
The Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup
Five Fists of Science
Scott Pilgrim, Vol 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
The Mind of the ModernMoviemaker
Batman Year 100
Stardust
Twelve Sharp
The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
Sanibel Flats
Maximum Bob
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Skin Tight
Native Tounge
Demon of the Waters
Conversations With Wilder
America's Victory
Hard Rain
Casion Royale
Fletch
Getting Stoned With Savages


One of the funniest books I have read this year. Laugh out loud funny. On to some more Hiaasen since mom has bought the rest of the books.

Labels:

Penny-Arcade Video Game!!!

8.23.2006

When the Levees Broke Review

Spike Lee's meandering opus When the Levees Broke is a good documentary, but at the same time is a sad failure as a record of what happened in New Orleans during and after Katrina.

For those of us who were affected by the storm and know the geography of the city, there are many faces and stories that are not represented while watching the documentary. The sad part from people's reactions I have read is that most seem to think this is a great work which truly shows and represents what happened.

Watching When the Levees Broke might make you think the only people in the city of New Orleans were black and white. No Asians. No Hispanics. No one of any other race. And, the whites who are shown, for the most part, are upper class and seem to have not been affected that bad by the storm. One would also not realize there were any doctors or nurses in the area.

Lee disappoints because he knows better and he should know the makeup of the city after all the time he spent here after the storm making his documentary. He had only to ask what little local crew he used to find out the deeper story.

The other sad part of the documentary are the rumors left out in the open. The greatest of course is the idea that the levees were blown up. Does this means all the levees were blown up? Was just the 9th Ward targeted? Was the 17th Street Canal blown? The only evidence given is that people heard three loud bangs. Never mind the large barge which crashed through the levee, surely that could not have been the sound.

There is also a reference that the Coast Guard did not stop to help black people and was headed on its way to help the whites. Yet it was the Coast Guard and Navy helicopter pilots who were the first to start helping, even defying orders at times to keep saving lives.

There is also the story of the police on the bridge. It is said it was Jefferson Parish "police" who were on the bridge. The thing is we already know it was Gretna city police and not Jefferson Parish Sheriff's deputies on the bridge, yet this is never clarified.

Lee also includes interviews with a couple of victims from St. Bernard Parish and from the Coast. These diversions take away from the story he is trying to tell. The coast and the other parishes should be told separately since each suffered damage for different reasons.

And, instead of those stories, Lee should have included more interviews from Lakeview area. He has no problem showing the break at the 17th Street Canal repeatedly, but he only includes an interview with one person from Lakeview whereas there are several from the Ninth Ward. People in Lakeview suffered just as much as those in the Ninth Ward and now they are fighting to get fair value for their homes the government is trying to pay them a pittance for.

The main problem though I see for those who enjoy it and think this is the end-all, be-all of Katrina documentaries is that they didn't live it. Not living through it, not sitting around watching your city be destroyed and worrying over your loved ones and seeing how little the government cares for your fellow citizens, they can never truly appreciate how great a let down it is for a lot of us to watch Lee drop the ball and not tell the whole story.

I hope no one ever has to know those feelings and go through what New Orleans and the Gulf Coast did.

Labels:

8.22.2006

CHUD interview with Barry Eisler

8.21.2006

Books in 2006, plane reading

My Old Man and the Sea
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Tourist Season
Double Whammy
The Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup
Five Fists of Science
Scott Pilgrim, Vol 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
The Mind of the ModernMoviemaker
Batman Year 100
Stardust
Twelve Sharp
The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
Sanibel Flats
Maximum Bob
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Skin Tight
Native Tounge
Demon of the Waters
Conversations With Wilder
America's Victory
Hard Rain
Casion Royale
Fletch


Currently reading Getting Stoned with Savages which Bubba gave me. After that I have the rest of Hiaasen to get thoguth since Mom has now bought al the books.

Labels:

8.16.2006

Dave Walker Review of When the Levees Broke

In the Air

Thousands of New Orleanians will see the premiere of Spike Lee's Hurricane Katrina documentary tonight. T-P television critic Dave Walker got a sneak preview, and here's what he thinks.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Dave Walker


The word other critics likely will use most to describe Spike Lee's Hurricane Katrina documentary for HBO is "wrenching."

My word is "unfinished," even at four hours.

"When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts" locks in on the black Katrina experience, which should not come as a surprise to anybody who knows Lee's filmmaking career.

As such, "Levees" tells only half the story. Or, rather, 67.3 percent of it.

Frequently brilliantly, but still.

The tragic story of black New Orleans trapped in Katrina's path has found a supreme chronicler, but the flooded-out residents of Lakeview or Old Metairie who attend tonight's sold-out premiere at New Orleans Arena will spend all night sitting on a hard plastic chair and then wonder: Where am I in this?

Perhaps they'll be coming attractions. Lee has said he'd like to make "Levees" the first installment of a series of films about the ongoing battle to save New Orleans.

"Depending how this ends up, I would like to go back (and see) how the city ends up and not let this be the final statement on the Crescent City," Lee told TV critics last month in Los Angeles.

Those who were here know that, in virtually every way, Katrina was an indiscriminate storm that killed and destroyed without regard to ethnicity or economic condition. That is not the impression that the nation received watching coverage of the immediate aftermath of the storm, nor the one viewers will take away from Lee's documentary.

In one of his future installments, perhaps, will be the stories of Lakeview families whose losses were every bit as tragic as the stories told so movingly in this film.

Or the similar stories of the Asian families in eastern New Orleans, the Central American workers literally putting roofs over our heads again, the doctors and nurses who risked their lives to stay with patients in drowned hospitals, the tourists who suffered alongside locals in the Superdome and Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

Four hours seems like a down payment.

As it is, Lee's epic-length film has a few significant flaws but packs an overall impact that will move anyone who invests the time to see it through.

It's not an easy task. Sadness and anger are the film's relentless themes, a sign of the project's emotional veracity.

For the next few weeks, we're counting on TV retrospectives just like this to tell and retell our story to the world.

Political ramifications

On that count, Lee picks his villains well. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are, in order, the bad guys in this catastrophe. To a lesser extent, the local, regional and national politicians who made this mess and then failed to save their fellow Americans from it also take ire.

I'll let others parse the political impact of "When the Levees Broke," but not without sharing this nugget from one habitually quotable politician: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin good-naturedly describes Air Force One as a "pimpmobile."

For those who can't make tonight's screening, HBO will premiere the film in two parts Monday and Tuesday at 8 p.m. All four hours will air in sequence on Aug. 29 at 7 p.m.

Act One watches the storm's approach and landfall, then the levee failures. Act Two is immediate aftermath. Act Three begins with the rescue diaspora, then circles back to catch up on some of the cultural history that makes the dispersal such an ongoing tragedy. Act Four examines recovery problems (FEMA, insurance companies) and solutions (wetlands restoration, improved levee protection).

The film is framed by Louis Armstrong's "Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?" at the beginning and a concluding second-line rendition of "I'll Fly Away."

The overall structure is chronological, but Lee takes jogs in time to make editorial points.

The filmmaker is occasionally heard asking off-camera questions, but there is no narrator, just the voices of various witnesses both well-known and not.

Of them, standouts include Herbert Freeman Jr., whose mother died in a wheelchair outside the convention center; author Michael Eric Dyson, who is ruthless in recounting Condoleezza Rice's New York City shoe-shopping-and-evening-at-the-theater getaway while Ethel Freeman sat dying in the heat; and WWL talk radio host Garland Robinette, whose emotions still roil a full year after he narrated Katrina's deadly fly-by live on the air.

Adding a light touch

Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, once of eastern New Orleans and now a FEMA trailer resident, is the personification of her city's eternal secret weapon in the face of despair: humor.

Recounting her survival year, she's profane and prosecutorial, as much of a thread throughout the movie as Terence Blanchard's deep-blue score.

A New Orleans native and frequent Lee collaborator, Blanchard himself takes an on-camera role in the third act, acting as his mother's guide on her first trip back to her ruined Gentilly home.

A similar sequence in the last act shows actor Wendell Pierce, star of HBO's "The Wire" and another favorite son succeeding so triumphantly in the wider world of the arts, retelling the devastation to his father's Pontchartrain Park home, but also the subsequent and related damage done to his father's soul by a heartless insurance company.

The heart of Act One is a sequence in which schoolboy Glenn Hall III plays "St. James Infirmary" on his horn to accompany footage of people wading out of their neighborhoods, then Wynton Marsalis sings it.

Act Two ends with a haunting montage of floating bodies, which you hope could be the film's lowest mood trough.

Then comes the drowned child's funeral that concludes Act Three.

"Wrenching" is right, in other words.

Letting rumors fly

But the film's most troubling passage has been anticipated since HBO announced that Lee would make it.

Early in the opening act, several witnesses swear they heard explosions before the Florida Avenue breach.

Refutations are made in follow-up sound bites, but the overall takeaway is that intentional levee destruction might've, could've, probably happened.

For both Katrina and Betsy.

There is value in exploring how such impressions are made and last, but absent any real evidence beyond inexpert testimony -- and there is no evidence introduced in the film -- such notions must be presented as folklore and nothing more.

Here, they're presented as likely fact, in a confusing sequence of quotes and clips that mix references to Katrina and Betsy with the one time there actually was an intentional levee destruction, during the Mississippi River flood of 1927. That breach inundated St. Bernard Parish.

"During Hurricane Betsy, there were rumors, and it became almost an article of faith with people in the community that the 9th Ward flooded because there was an intentional breach of the levees," former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial says to Lee's camera. "It was never investigated. It was neither proven nor disproven. In this case, for the government and others to sort of dismiss it without looking into all of it is not doing the people or the public a service."

In this context, the same could be said for statements just like that.

Morial is a frequently recurring character in early parts of this film, and his righteous indignation at how seared he was by watching his fellow New Orleanians suffer in the toxic water is leavened by the fact that he had eight years to plan and practice an evacuation that might've better served his city.

Later, a pastor from New York states as fact that "a master plan" has been put in place by "Trump land-grabbers" to "bulldoze down the 9th Ward."

A quote from Nagin denying that possibility comes just a few seconds after, but again, someone is allowed to make an explosive charge for which no evidence is evident.

In a flash-forward at the very opening of the story, while Katrina still spins in the Gulf, Lee jumps to a December congressional hearing at which Nagin says, "We come to you with facts."

It's intended as a setup device for the four hours to come, and it's largely backed up thereafter.

But the allies of New Orleans' enemies will obsess over the few sequences that forgo known facts, allowing them to too easily overlook the sweetness and sadness in Wendell Pierce's eyes when he talks about how his father paid insurance on that little house for 50 years and got nothing.

Awful anniversary

Among just a few other lapses, the levee section of "Levees" diminishes what could've been a profoundly compelling history of the most scarring unnatural disaster in recent American history.

Still, millions will watch and be hurt and angered, again, by what happened here and at points elsewhere on Katrina's track.

And that's a good thing, because here at K+1, New Orleans needs all of the sympathetic and accurately informed allies it can get.

. . . . . . .

TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3429.

Labels:

Pirate Jenny Lyrics

Nina Simone sang this song written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Sorta of reminds me of a certain film which came out about a cursed pirate ship:

You people can watch while I'm scrubbing these floors
And I'm scrubbin' the floors while you're gawking
Maybe once ya tip me and it makes ya feel swell
In this crummy Southern town
In this crummy old hotel
But you'll never guess to who you're talkin'.
No. You couldn't ever guess to who you're talkin'.

Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you'll wonder who could that have been
And you see me kinda grinnin' while I'm scrubbin'
And you say, "What's she got to grin?"
I'll tell you.

There's a ship
The Black Freighter
with a skull on its masthead
will be coming in

You gentlemen can say, "Hey gal, finish them floors!
Get upstairs! What's wrong with you! Earn your keep here!
You toss me your tips
and look out to the ships
But I'm counting your heads
as I'm making the beds
Cuz there's nobody gonna sleep here, honey
Nobody
Nobody!

Then one night there's a scream in the night
And you say, "Who's that kicking up a row?"
And ya see me kinda starin' out the winda
And you say, "What's she got to stare at now?"
I'll tell ya.

There's a ship
The Black Freighter
turns around in the harbor
shootin' guns from her bow

Now
You gentlemen can wipe off that smile off your face
Cause every building in town is a flat one
This whole frickin' place will be down to the ground
Only this cheap hotel standing up safe and sound
And you yell, "Why do they spare that one?"
Yes.
That's what you say.
"Why do they spare that one?"

All the night through, through the noise and to-do
You wonder who is that person that lives up there?
And you see me stepping out in the morning
Looking nice with a ribbon in my hair

And the ship
The Black Freighter
runs a flag up its masthead
and a cheer rings the air

By noontime the dock
is a-swarmin' with men
comin' out from the ghostly freighter
They move in the shadows
where no one can see
And they're chainin' up people
and they're bringin' em to me
askin' me,
"Kill them NOW, or LATER?"
Askin' ME!
"Kill them now, or later?"

Noon by the clock
and so still by the dock
You can hear a foghorn miles away
And in that quiet of death
I'll say, "Right now.
Right now!"

Then they'll pile up the bodies
And I'll say,
"That'll learn ya!"

And the ship
The Black Freighter
disappears out to sea
And
on
it
is
me

Labels:

8.15.2006

Books in 2006, growing and growing

My Old Man and the Sea
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Tourist Season
Double Whammy
The Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup
Five Fists of Science
Scott Pilgrim, Vol 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
The Mind of the ModernMoviemaker
Batman Year 100
Stardust
Twelve Sharp
The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
Sanibel Flats
Maximum Bob
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Skin Tight
Native Tounge
Demon of the Waters
Conversations With Wilder
America's Victory
Hard Rain

Labels:

The Return of TECH TV?

From Wired:

TechTV is back. Sort of.

Two former show hosts at the defunct cable and satellite channel, Chris Pirillo and Leo Laporte, recently floated the idea of a TechTV Reunion that would let alumni of the popular (to geeks anyway) station post new video clips at a centralized location. The idea drew raves on the popular web news site Digg, launched by TechTV alum Kevin Rose.

Now a new website is the wings that would do just that: UndoTV. Pirillo announced late Monday that he has registered UndoTV.com and several other variations as the lynchpin of an experimental show using the web to share video clips produced by the once-thriving TechTV community.

"We're undoing TechTV's untimely and unwarranted demise," Pirillo wrote in an e-mail to Wired News.

8.14.2006

Frank Darabont Loves Pan's Labyrinth

Found this through the CHUD discussion thread of the film:

PAN’S LABYRINTH is a return to the notion of film as art—one man’s vision, from the heart, the gonads, and the gut. It's gorgeous and unique and very moving. As a filmmaker, I found it both humbling and inspiring—humbling because it sets the bar so high; inspiring because it shows what passionate filmmaking can and should be. It is a gauntlet thrown down, a declaration that movies should count for more than just opening weekend grosses, that “Ars Gratia Artis” shouldn’t just be a forgotten slogan in a dead language decorating a roaring lion logo.

I’ve seldom seen a movie more in love with film—with the very idea of film. It rolls around in its love of cinema like a dog in grass. Every frame exudes a love of movies…but not the easy, referential kind that recycles other films in the guise of “hip homage.” This is a purer love born of a filmmaker’s desire to be daring, original, to take chances. It is Guillermo’s gift to anybody who ever had their breath taken away the first time they saw a Kubrick or a Scorsese or a Spielberg bust a new move in cinema. It reeks of classicism—the way it’s shot, paced, edited, scored. It’ll feel old-fashioned to some—but that is one of its greatest strengths: there isn’t a whiff of MTV-era filmmaking about it.

Letting my personal feelings sneak back in for a moment, can I just tell you what a thrill it is to see a friend as deserving as Guillermo hit his artistic stride?

Is it a huge film? A blockbuster? The next LORD OF THE RINGS? No. The only things epic about PAN’S LABYRINTH are its emotional landscape and the power of its imagination—otherwise it’s intensely personal and intimate, small enough to hold in the palm of your hand. Though it has its share of thrilling moments, it’s not a thrill ride…it’s a rumination, a meditation, a journey through fairy tale magic and gut-wrenching realism. That it blends these things at all is ambitious, that it blends them perfectly is a miracle. Stephen King, who just saw the movie yesterday and loved it, wrote me an email calling it “an R-rated fairy tale,” and that’s as accurate a description as you can get.

Labels:

8.13.2006

Barry Eisler

I am reading the second John Rain book, Hard Rain. The series is about an assassin who specializes in making his hits look like they were natural causes or accidents. Eisler's site is pretty damn good with lots of links and info that give depth to the character and how he composes him.

More authors should have sites like Eisler, especially aithors who write thriller books. One of the best things about reading Warren Ellis is that you can trace where he gets his information from.

Chris Nolan to Direct The Prisoner

From AintItCoolNews:

This is THE PRISONER. This is the best TV show ever made. And, oh yeah, it is. It seriously is. I’m not even kidding around. It really is.

I’ve got the new A&E PRISONER 40TH ANNIVERSARY MEGASET sitting on my desk right now. I’m sure Nolan’s got one sitting on his desk, and I’m sure the Peoples have it in their home, and so do the execs at Universal. I’m sure everyone involved with this announcement this morning is probably watching, just watched, or is about to watch the original series. It's the best source material you could ask for. Rich and smart and accessible and flexible. You can do almost anything with it, as long as you take a certain tone. As long as you respect a certain bent reality. Nolan's a really good choice, the right sort of emotional stylist for the material. Could we really be looking at the right reinvention of something so tricky?

See, I want to believe. I look at that combination of talent assembled to make this film happen, and I really, really want to believe. That’s what being a film geek is to me. It’s picking these projects that you want to have faith in. It’s seeing films that renew your faith. It’s constantly watching films hoping to find some new gem you’ve never seen before. That’s the way I approach moviegoing. That’s the beauty of what is happening for film geeks these days. We’re the guys making the movies now.


From CHUD:

Some time after he’s done telling the next chapter in the saga of The Dark Knight (which I still say should be titled Batman Persists or Batman Keeps On Keepin’ On), Nolan will become the latest in a long line of Hollywood people striving to bring the goddamn brilliant 60s BBC TV show to theaters. Nolan, who already imparted a cinematic mindjob with Memento, has writers David and Janet Peoples (12 Monkeys) assisting with this new version for Universal.

For those who haven't seen the ingenious original show (and shame on you), it starred the sublimely brusque Patrick McGoohan as a secret agent who, upon handing in his resignation, is abducted and relocated to a strange isolated township known as "the Village". Referred to only as "Number 6", he’s given a house and some smart threads, and then gets chased by big white bouncing spheres as he tries to figure out just what the hell he's doing there, never receiving any satisfactory answers.


From Collide
r:

On the topic of a Hollywood rendition of George Markstein’s and Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner, I have been resolute. Don’t do it. Ever. When Simon West, director of the gloriously stupid Con Air, threatened at the turn of the millennium to use his ill-earned studio clout to helm that which should never go before cameras because it was so intensely cerebral and unapologetically oblique… I suddenly found myself reading Soldier of Fortune’s classifieds with a heretofore unexpressed vigor. To studio execs, The Prisoner is just a property; to those who loved the show, it’s nothing short of religion, and to be kept from the fumbling fingers of a barely competent schlock merchant like West. Hell, even if a sharp cat like Christopher Nolan were to somehow evince enthusiasm for the project, I’d still be leery. The only way the material could potentially be shaped into something distinct, yet still faithful to the personality of the show – and this is total pie-in-the-sky nonsense – would be if the egghead duo of David and Janet Peoples were to miraculously materialize from their almost decade-long sabbatical to take on the screenwriting duos. Yeah, that’d do it. And when that goes down, please feel free to interrupt my honeymoon with Rachel Bilson on Fuck Island to give me the good news.

Looks like my only misgiving now is to not be laying the pipe to Adam Brody’s girl on Marlon Brando’s Tahitian atoll (which, thanks to a minor dustup with the French Polynesian Assembly, I’m only now in the process of purchasing and rechristening “Fuck Island”). Other than that, it feels kinda like Christmas in mid-August around these parts. Though I’ve been lukewarm to the idea of Nolan returning to the Batman franchise sans assurances that he’s learned how to orchestrate a major action sequence, I now just want him to hurry up and direct the damn thing ‘cuz it’s currently all that stands between the director and The Prisoner. (Well, that and approval of David and Janet Peoples’ script, which shouldn’t be a problem since Nolan’s not a table-leg-gnawing moron like Paul W.S. Anderson.) This is so much more Nolan’s speed: the narrative is elliptical, the action is minimal and the goal is to confuse the audience rather than clarify everything through onerous exposition. How in the hell did this happen again?

Labels: ,

Jack Kirby's The Prisoner

A Collection of Bond Links

Well, it started last night and I could feel it then, but woke up this morning feeling like crap. I have nasty sinus drainage which is making my throat hurt; and my stomach is killing me.

And since I spent last night watching the podcasts from Casino Royale, today I am looking up Bond links. So here are a few:

Bondian
- a literary site with lots of images from the different covers of Bond books.

Commander Bond
- a good general reference and resource site. Lots of news and articles collected in one place.

MI6 - another general info and news site dedicated to Bond.

Casino Royale - official site for the next Bond movie comeing out in September.

Anyway, that should be more than enough for some people to waste time on.

Labels: ,

8.11.2006

CHUD interview with Del Toro

8.10.2006

Beerfest

This my latest film I am dying to see. Everytime I see the trailers I laugh. And then I go to the fridge and grab a beer. The beer industry should send a massive donation to the Broken Lizard guys.

Labels:

Global Frequency T-shirt

Damn you terrorists!

Do you realize what today's news means?!?!?!

It means I cannot bring a flask, or two, with bourbon on my flight to Vegas. So unlike some people who are flying first class and get their drinks for free, I will be forced to sit there and stew while drinking coffee.

Next time someone asks you what the hell the war on terror is about, you tell them it is so Casey can have his supply of bourbon neverending.

More random crap later today. So pissed right now.

8.09.2006

BBC America Wallpapers

HALO Director

8.08.2006

Books in 2006, another re-read

My Old Man and the Sea
Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea
Tourist Season
Double Whammy
The Thinking Fans Guide to the World Cup
Five Fists of Science
Scott Pilgrim, Vol 1: Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life
The Mind of the ModernMoviemaker
Batman Year 100
Stardust
Twelve Sharp
The Deep Blue Good-By
Nightmare in Pink
A Purple Place for Dying
Sanibel Flats
Maximum Bob
Hitchcock/Truffaut
Skin Tight
Native Tounge
Demon of the Waters
Conversations With Wilder

Labels:

8.07.2006

More Buckaroo Bonzai

The Moonstone Books page for Buckaroo Banzai. I really wish they had just done the sequel Buckaroo Banzai Versus the World Crime League. Or maybe they could have done some of the scripts which were going to be eps for the BB show Ancient Secrets and New Mysteries. Doing a sequel which references the movie does nothing for long time fans.

Of course, I am just being a whiny fanboy when it comes to this property. Really, when I win the lottery or get to a positionof some power, I am going to get the right to this property.

Labels:

8.06.2006

Lagering temperature

Sailing article from Wired

Michael Mann Book

8.05.2006

Spike Lee to Present all of Documentary

Times-Picayune announced today that all of When the Levees Broke will be premiering here in New Orleans on August, 16th:

On The Air

A Requiem in Four Acts.


Saturday, August 05, 2006
Dave Walker

Sheila Nevins, head of HBO's documentary division, said Thursday that the expansion was Lee's idea.

"It's a long night, but it's their night," she said of local attendees. "It belongs to that audience. They all suffered for more than four hours.

"When you talk about length, it's all relative.

"I think Spike's talent deserves the full placement."

Lee is expected to attend the New Orleans screening.

The film will debut on HBO over two nights, Aug. 21 and 22, at 8 p.m.

All four hours will air in sequence Aug. 29 beginning at 7 p.m., the one-year anniversary of Katrina's landfall.

According to Mark Arata, manager of the Arena box office, most of the original allotment of 10,000 seats for the local premiere were snapped up in just two days, at which time the stage-and-screen configuration was changed to add extra seats.

The event's seating capacity, 12,000, was reached July 19, less than a week after ticket distribution began.

A total of 11,353 free tickets were distributed through the Arena box office and Ticketmaster. Lee and HBO have distributed the remainder.

Arata added that ZIP code tracking showed that significant numbers of tickets were reserved by people in Lafayette, Atlanta and other cities known to be destinations for displaced New Orleanians.

"I was excited that there was such an interest," Nevins said. "The interest also encouraged the four-hour decision. It seemed like (local citizens) were ahead of us in wanting to see this."

Show time on Aug. 16 is 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 6 p.m.

. . . . . . .

TV columnist Dave Walker can be reached at dwalker@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3429.

Labels:

8.04.2006

By the way

I want my sequel to BB, Buckaroo Banzai versus the World Crime League.

Labels:

Hellboy 2 Announced

Well good news today for those of us who dig Hellboy, the sequel was announced. Looks like Guillermo Del Toro has got Universal to greenlight the movie.

Here is the AintItCoolNews.com take on the news
.

Here is the CHUD.com take on the news.


Hellboy is probably one of my favorite movies in recent years. Nice combination of adventure, horror, and comedy. I hope Del Toro cranks it up a few notches for his second outing with Hellboy and brings some of the weight of his films The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth (which is supposed to be one of the best movies of the year). The first Hellboy is a notch down from Indy, but I really think if Del Toro adds some of the gravitas and has the budget he could make something as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Labels: ,

Real Genius T-Shirts

Yes, really, really bored today. Some t-shirts from/inspired by Real Genius.

Labels:

Buckaroo Banzai T-Shirts

Yeah I am bored today. Saving these for when I get a new gig (of course I will have to clean out my t-shirt drawers, but that is long overdue anyway):

http://www.starland.com/bb/tsz.html

http://www.awit.com/tsBanzai.htm?s=1

http://www.starbase21ok.com/buckaroo__banzai__t.htm

Labels: