Movies

Holiday Movie Contest 2009

Entertainment, Movies

Twice a year at my office the boss runs this movie contest. We all have to submit a list of what we think will be the top ten highest grossing movies of the “season”. We do one for the summer and one for the holidays. There’s a certain style in picking movies that you personally don’t want to see (ever!) but you think will perform well at the box office.

  1. Avatar – 350 million
  2. New Moon
  3. Princess and the Frog
  4. 2012
  5. Christmas Carol
  6. Planet 51
  7. Old Dogs
  8. Blindside
  9. Alvin and the Chipmunks 2
  10. Sherlock Holmes

I know there are some problems with my list. I’ve very influenced by a good trailer, I am such a sucker. I just finished watching the second trailer for Avatar and I’d watched Aliens the week before so I was on a bit of a James Cameron buzz. So I might have ranked Avatar a little high. The other problems are that I might have ranked Princess and the Frog a couple of spots higher than I should of. It’s a return the the classic Disney style of my childhood, which I’m very excited about, but I’m not sure what today’s kids are going to think of it. Do you remember when every animated movie was a musical? I didn’t even realize they stopped doing that until I saw this trailer. The third thing I missed is I should have ranked Alvin and Sherlock a little higher, the contest runs through the 20th of January… so they’re going to come in higher than 9 & 10… whoops. But you never know, some other movie could sneak in an bump them down, it’s pretty much a crapshoot.

My boss likes to do analysis of the picks and sends out weekly update emails. After searching on the web I’ve decided to post them here. This is an average office with most of the people between the ages of 30 and 50.

Breakdown of pics by movie

Breakdown of pics by movie

Current events

Entertainment, Movies

Ferris Bueller: Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, “I don’t believe in The Beatles, I just believe in me.” Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus but it still wouldn’t change the fact that I don’t own a car!

These aren't the nerds you're looking for.

Entertainment, Movies

galaxy_far_far_away_coverI’m watched “A Galaxy Far Far Away” and I’ve come to a realization… and it’s not a good one. I no longer consider myself a nerd. I’ve moved on to some higher plain, not quite hipster… but just south of normal. I would like to align myself with a new faction of subculture, perhaps the Art-Dorks would have me?

You can tell that this documentary is not produced by Lucasfilm in any way, there are no pretty girls, there are minimal celebrities, there are only Nerds… Pitiful creepy nerds. It’s just hard for me to align myself with these people… they are no longer my people. These are some epic specimens of Nerddom and looking at it 10 years in the future it makes these guys look even worse. They camped out in line for 45 days to see The Phantom Menace, one of the most disappointing movies of all time.

Maybe my vision is skewed because I almost was one of these people. I always liked Star Wars but I totally bought into all the hype surrounding this movie. I had a black t-shirt with the words “Episode One” embroidered on it. I recorded the trailer off tv and had it playing on a looped VHS tape in my bedroom for months before the movie came out. I thought this was going to be MY Gone with the Wind, MY Godfather, MY Star Wars. When it wasn’t all that I thought it could be, my nerd spirit was crushed.

I’ve never really bought into the hype ever since then. That made be realize that I can be swayed by a good trailer and some advanced hype. It could have been the fact that I was only 17 years old. But I think this happened to a lot of people older and smarter than I was. Now I’m sitting in my office looking into the face of a plastic tiki god and thinking, Man what a dork I used to be…

It would actually be nice to see a sequel to this movie that goes back and visits with these guys to see (sadly) where their lives have gone … and how much these toys are worth now… its like the end of the baseball card craze, when everyone thought that their Steve Avery, Tops stadium club card was going to buy them a car one day. I do have hope for some of them, in the interviews after the screening of the film some of them seem to share my views of “It’s only a movie.”

This is not the kind of nostalgic documentary that makes you want to be a kid again and buy toys and collect them. At least not for me. It makes me realize that there’s a difference between being a “Kid at Heart” and being the guy that lives with life size replicas of characters from a sci-fi movie. On some level I want to commend then for sticking with something that they love. But when it seems to be the only thing they care about and the only thing that makes them feel normal then I think it’s gone too far. Diversity is the key my friends, I love Star Wars… but it’s not the only thing I love.

Later!

This is the coolest Total Recall poster ever.

Entertainment, Movies

Total Recall

When I find awesome things ont he internet they are usually horribly expensive. But unfortunatley for my ba nk account this one is only $30… how could I NOT buy it at that price. I know we don’t really have any more wall space… and I just bought a bunch of prints while we were at ALL GOOD… but look at it.

JUST LOOK AT IT DAMMIT

It might be the perfect combination of illustration/nostalgia/printmaking/poster/kitsch… and don’t forget awesome. So now it’s on the way to my house. I’ll have to decide what Kevin Smith poster gets put in storage in favor of this one.

BRAWNDO IS REAL!

Entertainment, Movies, The Interweb

IT’S LIKE DRIVING AN ICE CREAM TRUCK FULL OF BEES!

genius.

I’ll defend Idiocracy until the end of time, it’s so difficult to make a good satire and I think on repeat viewings the movie gets better and better. It’s weird that the movie came out (what seems like) 2 years ago and now the tie in products are hitting the internet. Could be a shrewd marketing move though. Also the only thing better than actually making funny products from movies is hiring guys from internet memes to write the commercials. The Powerthirst videos were the most awesome use of the internet evar.

“Kick em in the face with your POWER LEGS!”

…in other news you can also buy SEX PANTHER

Dr. Boxlove or how I learned to stop worrying and go digital. part one.

Entertainment, Movies, Projects, Stuff and Things

I’m pretty savvy in the digital world. I’ve had an mp3 player since 2001 and I haven’t bought a physical CD since High School. But I’ve just realized that there’s just something scary about getting rid of physical media. It might be that I’ve moved past the time in my life where I want to have all the movies I like out on display. That is a very geeky thing to do, be defined my our choices in movies. It’s the first time that I’ve ever really felt like I’m growing up… get off my lawn kids!

This project started a few months ago when I hooked up a modded Xbox running XBMC in the living room and networked it to a file server running Linux in the other room.  suddenly it was very easy to play all the media files that I had *cough* acquired *cough* in college.  This and the introduction and acceptance of the Blu-ray format caused me to question the value of the 100’s of DVDs that I had collected over the years. I suddenly felt like a guy who had closets full of VHS tapes that were now worthless.  Well, they’re not as worthless as VHS, they wont fade over time and they take up less room. But in the coming resolution wars (lazer 3d quad HD TVs) what good is something that’s only 480p? Suddenly the “Ultimate Collectors Edition” has become no better than a Chinatown bootleg.  Couple that with the news that a co-worker at the office got rid of all of his DVDs online and made about $140 bucks and I was sold on the idea of going digital.

I’ve decided to keep some of the discs, I cannot get rid of any signed Kevin Smith movie and I think the people who design the boxes for Futurama should get some kind of award. So I developed an informal ranking system based on my love for the movie, the quality of the box, and the price I can sell it for. I have 4 ranks…

  1. Keep the DVD.
  2. Copy the DVD to DVD-R and sell the DVD.
  3. Rip the DVD to 700mb file and sell the DVD.
  4. Just Sell it.

I’m in the middle of this process now and I’ve noticed something, I really like physical media. I mean I haven’t watched some of these movies in years but I like being able to pick up the box and look through the materials.  I’m sure it’s not just me, I think it’s a geeky thing, but I appreciate a well designed box.  I’ve found myself setting aside some of the movies that I was going to sell because they had great packaging.  I never thought I’d be the guy to hang on to the media he grew up with. My brother in law has literally hundreds of cassette tapes and I thought he was crazy for keeping them.  I’ve told people before that I was going to sit out this round of media (Blu-ray) and wait for the digital revolution to come and based on the size of the Blu-ray market, I’m not the only one.  But I’m here to tell you that it is going to be hard to transition.

Also you should know that the three disc “Ace Ventura” collection has a lovely box.

Later!