(Ed. Note - Tess' Birthday Party Friend brings us a weekly look at
movies, music, technology and beyond. He's high maintenance and hard to please, as you'll see. Any ladies interested in him should email thewhiff@gmail.com)
What's the deal, TBPF here. Here's what to expect:
1. As a self proclaimed music and movie elitist, possibly a small
review of a recent release, or maybe a piece on something in Pop
Culture that I think shames the medium (for an accessible example, see Nickelback).
2. As resident techie and general quasi-nerd, some recent science
and tech news that you might care about. Or not. Probably just things I found funny. Or not.
3. Definitely a video game or movie reference, probably a one-percenter.
4. Intermittent disgruntled comments concerning the American lack
of interest in professional hockey (personally, I blame the continued
omission of the 1996 All-Star game FoxTrax glow puck).
5. Periodic possible addendum to Kutler's rant, as our hate is
usually complementary. And correct.
6. Whatever I feel like, get off my case.
Here's the box office earnings for this past weekend, for the simple
reason that sometimes you just have to look at the box office earnings for the weekend.
1. Meet the Spartans - $18.7 million
2. Rambo - $18.2 million.
3. 27 Dresses - $13.6 million
4. Cloverfield - $12.7 million
5. Untraceable - $11.2 million
A few words:
1. Although $18.7 million for Meet The Spartans isn't a huge opening
weekend by any means, it is still about $18.69 million more than any
reasonable race of intelligent beings should allow. This is getting
serious now. And I know Kevin Sorbo is in it, but the man can't save
EVERYTHING.
2. I haven't seen Rambo yet, but I will, and it will be awesome.
I've read reviews about it which rag on the fact that it is an hour
and a half of insanely gratuitous violence, one dimensional
characters, and quotes I'll be saying for years every time someone
asks me what I'm going to "do about" something. I know. Wait, isn't
this Rambo 4? Sorry, I thought I was walking into a re-release of The
China Syndrome. Come off it, I may be a movie elitist, but I am also
a man. A man who would watch Stallone fire an explosive arrow into his mother.
3. I really can't say enough about the "let's push young women into
being jealous that all their friends are getting married and they
aren't, inaccurately using a beautiful, good-hearted, likeable girl
for the part, instead of empowering these young women with the
confidence to be happy without marriage and not jump on the first guy who shows interest in them only to get burned because he was actually a jackass" genre. Was that too preachy/harsh? Wait 'til you read my piece about Cloverfield.
4. It was awesome.
5. Ok, I understand that the generation our parents are cohorts of
have an inexplicable lack of comprehension about how technology and
information systems work, but if that's all you're going for, then
release it direct-to-VHS. An untraceable server with a distinct
location that is wired into a device that injects someone with poison?
No. Us young whippersnappers know you can't do that, so who is
seeing this movie? I guess the writers strike and lack of CSI
episodes got those baby boomers to pay 11 bucks a pop to ask their
kids, "Wait, could that really happen? Oh, and can you turn on the
computer for me, I'm still learning." P.S. Diane Lane is still a fox,
and I'll probably watch Untraceable on HBO for the consistent 68%
chance that she will take off her clothes in a movie.
Addendum: I did actually think that Cloverfield was awesome, except
for the last 10 minutes when the characters survive equivalents of
being tag-teamed, unsupervised, by Earthquake and Typhoon, The Natural Disasters. Don't worry, I didn't spoil anything, Earthquake and Typhoon aren't even in the movie.
In other movie news, seven movie studios will be restarting the
tradition of big movie trailers during the Super Bowl this year, after
basically being absent from the whole ordeal in 2007. One of these
will be Will Smith's next blockbuster, "Hancock," about a bum with
superpowers presumably spun-off from Bill Cosby's character Marvin in The Meteor Man.
I have this movie still framed above my bed.
In a feeble attempt to cut into HBO's dominance over the
premium-channel-original-series realm, Starz! (I don't know if the
exclamation point is part of the name, but I'm going with it) is
creating a 13 episode drama based on 2004's Best Picture Oscar winner "Crash." Paul Haggis, who wrote and directed the movie, will be writing the show as well, which is not his first foray into the television scene. Many may not be aware of this, but Haggis has
written for a number of very notable shows, including "The Love Boat," "Diff'rent Strokes," "The Facts of Life," and "Who's The Boss;" he also CREATED "Walker: Texas Ranger." I can't wait until he starts getting confused about what show he is writing for, and we get an
episode on a cruise ship where a small African-american boy accuses his older caucasian housemother of offering him fried chicken "because he's black," after which he hits her with a flying roundhouse kick, stands over her and says, "who's the boss now?" Ok that was a little
much.
Scienterrific American and The Tech-Shack Shooters
Not much interesting stuff in this realm recently, although a few
tidbits for your "GYUHH" pleasure (cue pushing up of glasses):
At the CES (Consumer Electronics Show, GYUHHH) in Vegas recently,
Mitsubishi showed off their models of the world's first laser
televisions, in an attempt to gain a foothold in the "I DEFINITELY
need a 65 inch TV" market. Lasers, popularized by Blofeld in 1971's
"Diamonds Are Forever," are said to offer much better color and
sharpness than we are blah blah blah, we'll all have them in 5 years.
A recent study found that those Ionic Air Purifiers that nobody has
can actually contribute to ozone gases, which is just as bad as
destroying, supposedly. So far, there are no reported glacial melts
in residential homes, but we'll just have to wait and see. Do you
hear that? That's the sound of every Sharper Image in the country
turning on their Roombas.
In Big Brother news, San Francisco's $900,000 crime-prevention
surveillance system has been found to be, quote, "suck ass," running
at a blistering one frame per two seconds. What this means for us is
that, potentially, they could have filmed the entire run of Tough
Crowd with Colin Quinn there without anyone knowing about it. The
system will be looked into being revamped, but in the meantime,
authorities are on constant lookout for kids with bats and stopwatches beating up bums because their mom "caught them."
A large asteroid, about 600 feet long, just passed by the Earth at
just beyond the Moon's orbit, no thanks to the efforts of Bruce Willis
and Aerosmith. NASA stressed, very seriously, that rather than use an Armageddon approach, we should gently coerce an asteroid that is headed for Earth into veering off. Blueprints are in the works for a giant battery-operated bubble machine on the Moon. Even if we don't
have to use it, we got giant Space Bubbles! Rock!
Scientists have found that each cell in the body has its own little
"clock," and the speed of those "clocks" actually correlates with
whether someone is an early riser, or the ever-popular "night owl."
Now they just have to figure out how to translate these "clocks" to
our time and make them readable to us, eliminating the human race's
dependency on watches and Big Ben. Also, I won't have to feel
embarrassed about still wearing that digital watch I got from a 1994
Cocoa Puffs mail-in offer.
And to finish up this weeks inaugural column, a comment on Kutler's
recent rant: I have three regular words and one hyphenated word for
you: Fox's Warm-up Football Robot. That is all.
Yea, I just used two colons in one sentence. We're just getting
warmed up. Join us next time when we reveal more astounding truths
about life, love, and hotdogs. Oh yea, I love hotdogs.
creating a 13 episode drama based on 2004's Best Picture Oscar winner "Crash." Paul Haggis, who wrote and directed the movie, will be writing the show as well, which is not his first foray into the television scene. Many may not be aware of this, but Haggis has
written for a number of very notable shows, including "The Love Boat," "Diff'rent Strokes," "The Facts of Life," and "Who's The Boss;" he also CREATED "Walker: Texas Ranger." I can't wait until he starts getting confused about what show he is writing for, and we get an
episode on a cruise ship where a small African-american boy accuses his older caucasian housemother of offering him fried chicken "because he's black," after which he hits her with a flying roundhouse kick, stands over her and says, "who's the boss now?" Ok that was a little
much.
Scienterrific American and The Tech-Shack Shooters
Not much interesting stuff in this realm recently, although a few
tidbits for your "GYUHH" pleasure (cue pushing up of glasses):
At the CES (Consumer Electronics Show, GYUHHH) in Vegas recently,
Mitsubishi showed off their models of the world's first laser
televisions, in an attempt to gain a foothold in the "I DEFINITELY
need a 65 inch TV" market. Lasers, popularized by Blofeld in 1971's
"Diamonds Are Forever," are said to offer much better color and
sharpness than we are blah blah blah, we'll all have them in 5 years.
A recent study found that those Ionic Air Purifiers that nobody has
can actually contribute to ozone gases, which is just as bad as
destroying, supposedly. So far, there are no reported glacial melts
in residential homes, but we'll just have to wait and see. Do you
hear that? That's the sound of every Sharper Image in the country
turning on their Roombas.
In Big Brother news, San Francisco's $900,000 crime-prevention
surveillance system has been found to be, quote, "suck ass," running
at a blistering one frame per two seconds. What this means for us is
that, potentially, they could have filmed the entire run of Tough
Crowd with Colin Quinn there without anyone knowing about it. The
system will be looked into being revamped, but in the meantime,
authorities are on constant lookout for kids with bats and stopwatches beating up bums because their mom "caught them."
A large asteroid, about 600 feet long, just passed by the Earth at
just beyond the Moon's orbit, no thanks to the efforts of Bruce Willis
and Aerosmith. NASA stressed, very seriously, that rather than use an Armageddon approach, we should gently coerce an asteroid that is headed for Earth into veering off. Blueprints are in the works for a giant battery-operated bubble machine on the Moon. Even if we don't
have to use it, we got giant Space Bubbles! Rock!
Scientists have found that each cell in the body has its own little
"clock," and the speed of those "clocks" actually correlates with
whether someone is an early riser, or the ever-popular "night owl."
Now they just have to figure out how to translate these "clocks" to
our time and make them readable to us, eliminating the human race's
dependency on watches and Big Ben. Also, I won't have to feel
embarrassed about still wearing that digital watch I got from a 1994
Cocoa Puffs mail-in offer.
And to finish up this weeks inaugural column, a comment on Kutler's
recent rant: I have three regular words and one hyphenated word for
you: Fox's Warm-up Football Robot. That is all.
Yea, I just used two colons in one sentence. We're just getting
warmed up. Join us next time when we reveal more astounding truths
about life, love, and hotdogs. Oh yea, I love hotdogs.
1 comment:
Bravo!
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