Unlike most summer movies I’ve had the pleasure of viewing this summer, I absorbed Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest opus in a relatively empty theater with family instead of friends. In this sense, the mood may not have been right for me to appreciate the follow up to Cohen’s wildly successful feature length debut, Borat. I was fully aware that the type of shock and awe Brüno was capable of delivering should ideally be experienced with a large, packed theater where the awkward moments in between graphic dildo-based jokes would not seem quite as awkward. Instead, I took in the film with about 20 other people in the middle of the day in an empty theater in an area where the USA hats and t-shirts worn by Brüno’s victims hit closer to home than some other places in America. Consider that my disclaimer. Read the rest of this entry »
‘Revenge of The Fallen’ Only Manages to Transform Into a Shell of Its Former Self
June 25, 2009 by DJ Steve
The robots are back!
Hot babes with hot bods. Sick cars and huge bots. Mind melting visual effects and heart shaking soundscapes. Sun destroying ancient alien technology and Matrices of Leadership? Pause for a moment to imagine the sound I am about to make… Pffwhat? Tonight I attended an IMAX screening for three of the previous four reasons inherent in the Transformers canon, but one of these seems fairly foreign to me. What is a Matrix of Leadership? I didn’t know before I entered the theater and I’m still only half sure now. Yet this, along with countless other plot defying tricks, was the way the 2nd Transformers story was told and after 2.5 hours of head scratching and laughing out loud (at all the wrong times) I have to say I’m a bit shocked. At one point I laughed so loud at one of the many sharp turns the story took, that the teenager next to me looked at me like he must have looked as his father during the 1st movie: “What’s so funny, Dad?” Read the rest of this entry »
Haiku Review: ‘Drag Me To Hell’
June 23, 2009 by HenningEven though I’m practically a professional apologizer, I figured I’d dispense with my usual song and dance and just hop right to it. So let’s hop right to it!
I laughed, I screamed, I
Wet my pants a little bit.
That entertaining!
So Drag Me To Hell. The concept is pretty straightforward: ambitious loan officer Christine Brown (Alison Lohman) is determined to win a promotion at work and, trying to prove to her boss that she can “make the tough decisions” denies an old gypsy woman a third extension on her mortgage. Big mistake! Shamed and outraged, the woman places a curse on Christine – the curse of the Lamia, a powerful demon who will drag her to Hell in three days’ time. Boner kill! Along with her boyfriend, college professor Clay Dalton (Justin Long) (Editor’s note: I know!) and seer Rham Jas, she must find a way to dispel the curse. And that’s it. Drag Me To Hell is not a metaphor for sexual awakening, or a high-concept rumination on American foreign policy (I wish!). Nope, Hell delivers exactly what it sells: outlandish horror-comedy with no pretense toward anything but fun. In a box office crowded with indulgent, over-reaching tripe, that’s sort of awesome.
Drag yourself through the rest of this review, painful as that might be!
‘Away We Go’ Is A Great Example of Insightful Indie Film
June 15, 2009 by DJ Steve
I have to admit that after seeing the trailer for Away We Go before a couple of recent movies, I wasn’t entirely sold. While the trailer wasn’t awful, it certainly didn’t seem like anything more than a here-we-go-again indie movie featuring a pregnant chick and cartoon inspired graphics. Checking out the Full Cast and Crew page on IMDb revealed much more: top notch director Sam Mendes and a couple of other Michel Gondry film alums worth noting (i.e. cinematographer Ellen Kuras). After seeing the movie on a delightfully pleasant Sunday afternoon, I have to say I think the trailer sells the film short.
That’s why you never trust the trailer. ‘Year One’ anyone? Keep reading!
Your Name… or Your Life!
June 12, 2009 by DJ Steve
These 2 are not be related at all, but I tried to make an analogy.
Which is it going to be, sir? I know I’ve been watching a lot of HBO’s Deadwood lately and I know I must seem like I’m on some sort of digital persona kick, but on the eve of tonight’s online gold rush I just can’t help but post about this. Tonight is the dawn of a new era. In case you were living under a rock or you didn’t have the Internet, tonight is the night (at 12:01 AM EST) that Facebook will offer personalized addresses for individual profiles. Tired of just being a number on Facebook? Now’s your chance to differentiate yourself from the masses with a personal domain, i.e. facebook.com/DJSteve. (If you try to take this one, I will find you. And kill you.) However, if you surf in at a casual 12:03 AM you may find yourself on the short end of the stick. Don’t be surprised how many Richard Richardsons there are in the world. You may have thought you were the only Paul Clandestino in the universe but in fact there are 3, and both PClandestino and PaulC are already taken!
Best Weekend Ever!
June 8, 2009 by HenningWe adults have plenty to worry about. The economy, for one (this will never go out of style). Subway routes. Which interlocking media cabinet we’re buying from IKEA (the Flurfpurdst or the Smeltds-hun?). So many things. But if we paid attention even a little bit to the world outside our adult orbit, we’d see that right now… is actually a time of unbridled ecstasy. The signs are everywhere if you look hard enough: limos where there shouldn’t be limos; salons overbooked on Friday afternoons; empty classrooms; parents’ depleted wallets. Let’s not forget those beach town motel owners waking up this morning to vomit-stained carpets and condom surprises. (My bad!) Yes, it’s that time of year again, baby. It’s prom season.
Is anyone’s prom really like this? I mean, I get they’re rarely held in pastel-colored ghost towns and that most frown upon driving yourself, but prom to me has always been a New Year’s caliber event: rarely as good as you imagine it to be. Who can hit the Saturn Ion standard? Though a good buffet and clever shot glass door prize can more than make up for a dearth of longing gazes…
Happy Prom, seniors!
Thoughts on Digital Identity in an Increasingly Transparent Future
June 5, 2009 by DJ Steve
An example of an individual who has mapped out his digital identity
How many tweets have you deleted so far in your life? How many photos have you de-tagged since you joined Facebook? If you’re like me, over the years you’ve determined that all Facebook photos and ill-timed tweets are not created equal and are not all fit to print. As I’m sure many people have realized, social networking sites thrive on the evaporation of a wall of privacy that didn’t even exist 10 years ago. Contact information, personal photographs, and self expression have exploded on the internet, all under the guise of “privacy” in the form of marking a check box to disallow certain people access to your digital life. Ten years ago (or about that time) I remember having my grandfather over for dinner. It was the night we decided to show him the Internet. We determined the best way to simultaneously blow his mind and sufficiently freak him out was to show him that his personal information was available without much searching. When we hit up whatever yellow pages site was popular at the time, we quickly located him and showed him that his address was available for anyone to see. We took it a step further by showing him how we could get directions to his house using that address. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t terrified. The best way I could describe his reaction would be to call him mystified. I’ll never forget what he said after his jaw finally un-dropped: “If I didn’t put that stuff on there, then how did it get there?” We all had a good laugh about the whole thing, but part of me always ruminated on what he said. Much like a child can often see through something and arrive at a very simple explanation for something immensely complicated, my grandfather had showed me something increasingly alarming about the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »
“Up” Tackles Issues of Life, Death, and Fufillment With Animated Majesty
June 2, 2009 by DJ Steve
The definition of majesty (according to my Mac dictionary) is this: 1. impressive stateliness, dignity, or beauty. Without knowing the specific definition of the word, my use of “majesty” to describe Pixar’s latest installment Up couldn’t have been a better choice (besides scrumtrulescent). My enjoyment of the film should be fairly self-evident, but what may not be is the lengths to which Up displayed supreme artistry and storytelling throughout. Helmed by first time director, but former Pixar writer, Pete Docter, Up may not serve as a typical example of Pixar’s silver screen magic formula. Going into the movie, I had little knowledge of the story and its characters beyond the few scenes I had seen in the trailers/teasers. Walking out of the movie, I was surprised to discover how little actually transpired over the hour and a half adventure epic. However, so much occurred on an emotional level, that it’s hard to say that it wasn’t as big of an adventure as Finding Nemo or Wall-e.
I’ve Missed You!*
June 1, 2009 by Henning
So it’s June. Yikes! The last time we saw each other I was still a sprightly 22, Kris Allen had not yet struck a major blow for traditional family values, and our friends in the class of 2009 had not yet graduated (congrats!) to a world of financial instability and worry (oops!). Forever ago, lover. But like herpes the Terminator, I’m back – ready to assault your RSS feed with robotic efficiency and writing that can only be described as “human-like.” Keep reading if you want to live.
So not only is it June, it’s also Monday… which means I can get away with an easy “Mondaze” post to kick off the week. More polished Lifting Fog cultural analysis to follow, naturally, but first (after the jump) a YouTube clip that will offend absolutely no one.
MovieStinger Will Save You Minutes of Embarrassment From Your Geek Friends
May 28, 2009 by DJ Steve
If you’re like me, all your friends are geeks. But like most things today, the range of the geek spectrum is so wide that the whole insult can be broken down into hundreds of niche (is it neech or nish?) categories. You’ve got your classic stand-by, the comic book geek who can tell you the backstories of all the characters (extras included) you see in the Xavier Mansion in X2. There’s the sci-fi geek who’s read every Robert Heinlein book, can summarize the plotlines of both new and old series of Battlestar Galactica, and can give you a rundown of the military classes of the Galactic Empire from the Emperor’s Royal Guard (red guys) down to the camouflaged peons patrolling the forest moon of Endor. Then you’ve got your techno-geeks; the kind of people that hang on every loaded word uttered by Michael Arrington, have 3 cell phones all with different service providers, and who jail-broke their iPhones on the 1.1.2 software release. These people thrive on a superiority complex. They are who my friends are of course, certainly not me in any capacity.
But regardless of your class of geek, there is one all encompassing tell that will always reveal a geek’s true colors: intricate knowledge about the movie scenes (aptly called Stingers) that take place after the credits have rolled. For your consideration, one of the classic Stingers from last summer:
Until recently these scenes were only made apparent by word of mouth and internet forum arguments. A great new site called MovieStinger, introduced to me by one of my geek friends Kyle, does all the work for you, giving you a list of every movie (past and present) that features some kind of post-credits Easter egg and letting you rate how important the scene actually is.
