Well, it’s official. You can click the logo for a larger version, but… blech.
This title does NOTHING for me. I understand the whole “serial adventure” motif of the series, but this title is just too lengthy and unwieldy to say.
I love everyone involved with this project, but it’s just seeming a more and more desperate grab for cash & glory as time passes. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was a good send off, why couldn’t they have just left it alone?
I know you would think that my 100 item list would have covered everything, but then you would be wrong.
1. List seven habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
2. Tag seven people to do the same. (which I’m not going to do)
1. Anytime I change the time on my alarm clock, I have to say “alarm, alarm, alarm” to make sure I don’t forget I set it.
2. In general, people annoy me, but yet I work in retail. Go figure.
3. I always flip to the end of a book first. I know, I suck.
4. I go to sleep every night listening to my iPod via earphones, and I’m rarely awake for more than one song.
5. The sound of a metal knife scraping on a dinner plate makes me cringe in horror.
6. I can not stand being poked. Slap me, smack me, even slug me… but don’t poke me.
7. I once got lost in Shinjuku, Tokyo for 2 & 1/2 hours… and I really didn’t mind.
If you live in Missouri, you just went “Mmhmm… damned things!” to the subject line. Those that don’t live in Missouri just went “A wha…?!?”.
Lucky devils.
The creature to the left (a picture lifted from the Missouri Department of Conservation) is an image of a “chigger” enlarged 1500 times. The chigger, a bastardization of the word chigoe, is the larval form of the Harvest Mite. You tend to find them in tall grass and you learn to try to avoid it like the plague.
Why do I bring this up?
Well, it appears that if Cocker Spaniels run through a nest of them, get them on their paws, and then place said paws on your back, you can get the Chiggers transfered to your back. Once they are there, they inject you with a powerful digestive saliva, liquefy your skin cells and drink them. You are then left with days or weeks worth of the worst itching you have ever experienced. The MDC has a great description of it:
Savage scratching begins. Every welt becomes a persistent, exquisitely itching preoccupation that continues to irritate for days and even weeks. You probably recognize these symptoms of chigger bites. Yet we never see the culprits responsible for this summertime agony.
My father was the lucky person to get hit, and I would take a picture of his back, but believe me, you don’t want to see it. Just believe me he looks like hell and wants to scratch like no one’s business. All of this made me realize though how few of my readers have ever had this distinct pleasure.
I have had them only once, years ago, when we visited an old, rural cemetery to find some family. They got both my ankles and I had the marks for weeks. So much fun.
So, if you ever find yourself in Missouri… avoid the tall grass.
“Boo hoo, I want my mommy to kiss the boo boo and make it all better!”
Steve Jobs gave in to the whining iPhone customers, and I just don’t get it. He issues an open letter explaining that they could have a $100 credit, but he summed it up best in one point:
Second, being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you’ll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of useful and satisfying service from them even as newer models are introduced.
And that’s exactly it. If you are an early adopter of technology, you’re going to have to expect things like that to happen. By giving in he has set a dangerous precedent for all gadget makers that if the customers whine enough, they can get money back.
There’s no denying I think he did the price cut too early, only 66 days in to the product’s life cycle, but that is Apple’s right to do so. To those who whined, get over it and welcome to the gadget game… there’s the door, because believe me, this isn’t the last time it will happen to you.
I can’t go into much detail because I already covered this professionally for BLORGE, but I do have some thoughts.
iPod Shuffle – Really… some people still buy these? Well, they got new colors, so yippee for those who want them. I have to say $79 makes no sense to me.
iPod Nano – Video and games have been added, new form factor, it sounds like a shrunken down iPod 5.5 Generation to me. Good prices though at $149 for 4GB and $199 for 8GB. I’m not sure about the form though. To just see it by itself, it looks too much like it’s current nickname, “the Fatty”. I just don’t know about this one. They are saying it’s the most pixel dense screen they’ve ever shipped, so it could either be gorgeous, or have an awful lot of dead pixels to annoy you with.
iPod Classic – Finally, not only did Steve Jobs break the 100GB barrier, he went to 160GB. This is the new one I’m getting as I currently have 120GB of music. Sure it’s the same style they’ve had for ages, hence the name, but I’m all about the capacity. Considering I currently have 60GB, I’m thrilled beyond belief to go up to this one. (and, since Amazon
iPod Touch – Oddly, this may be what my mom gets. She has wanted a mobile web device like this for ages, and it has everything she wants, so even she was excited about a new iPod.
It is exactly what I had dreamed of: An iPhone without the phone. Sadly, the capacity is just too low for me. Only 8GB or 16GB is just not a size I can go with. And the price is a bit restrictive at $299 and $399 respectively.
iPhone – A $200 price cut this soon? They’re going to be some ANGRY early adopters.
I’m fairly new to LinkedIn, but something is really annoying me about it: The lack of ability to finish my profile because I didn’t go to college.
As you can see from the image to the left, I can only “complete” my profile if I fill in my educational history. And, yes, I see that would only take me to 80%, but as this is done in steps, I have no clue what is after the educational part because I can’t fill it in.
I have mentioned in the past I attempted college, found it wasn’t for me, and I left. I fully believe college is NOT for everyone, and my problem was I already had a business by the time I went, trying to learn business “theory” was driving me mad. I have spoken with a lot of my friends about this who are nurses, in law school, and so on, and all agree, I doomed myself by going for a business degree, but oh well. It’s what I wanted to study, it didn’t work out, I got on with my life, and I think I do pretty well for someone without a formal degree.
With that being said, apparently LinkedIn feels you are nothing without one. I did graduate high school, but they do not offer those as an answer for the educational portion. Is it just me or is this a form of educational discrimination? There have been lots of people in the world who have gone on to be professionals without ever going to college, but for some reason, LinkedIn, does not feel we are worthy of completing their little profiles.
I am going to leave my membership there, but I can’t say I exactly have a warm place in my heart for them.
At last, I think someone finally told Christopher Guest that his mockumentry style films were growing stale!
For Your Consideration
While I’ve enjoyed all the previous films in this “pseudo-series”, they were stating to feel a bit stale with Best In Show and picked up slightly in A Mighty Wind, but still wasn’t up to the par of the first two. Considering this film had all the same cast and crew, with a few additions, it speaks to the fact it was the format and not the considerable talents involved in these productions.
This time around, the story follows the production of a film named “Home For Purim” that no one believes in and is filled with washed-up actors. After a movie rumor site starts saying that one of the actors, Marilyn Hack (played brilliantly by Catherine O’Hara), will be getting an Oscar nomination, the buzz around the film snowballs to out-of-control proportions. Soon everyone is “rumored” to be getting an Academy nod, egos explode, the production spirals out of control and… I won’t ruin it.
I’m not 100% sure why this one worked so much better than the last two efforts, but it did. As I said earlier, I think it was the format was just growing stale, and the cast really sank their teeth into this one, playing archetypes they probably have all encountered in Hollywood at one time or another.
As a stand-alone film, it’s a fun time if you’re in to films, but it may not be for everyone. As a part of the Christopher Guest series of films with this cast, he got his stride back.
4 out of 5 stars.
The Film Crew is the successor to the cult classic television series, Mystery Science Theater 3000 that features three of the alumni from that series: Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. Hollywood After Dark
I was a big fan of MST3K, even to the point of geeking out and going to their second convention in Minneapolis in 1996, so I was understandably sad when the series got canceled. I followed the cast over the years as they worked on various projects and got quite excited when the three afore mentioned members announced their intent to get back to doing movie tracks, albeit in a slightly different format.
It doesn’t work.
For those of you who don’t know how MST3K worked, I won’t bore you with the entire premise, just know that during the movie there was a silhouette at the bottom of the screen of the host (first Joel Hodgson and then Mike Nelson) and his two robot friends Tom Servo (Kevin Murphy) and Crow T. Robot (first Trace Beaulieu and then Bill Corbett). They would sit at the bottom of the screen and mock the movie, moving around, pointing at things, and it was just general fun.
Now they skip the silhouette and it just sounds like a DVD commentary track. I really boring, lackluster, commentary track.
Without the silhouette, the humor is broader and harder to follow. Where the old format allowed them to point at finer points in the frame to mock, the new way has to be more obvious since all you hear is their voices.
You can also tell the writing staff is missing some people. The old staff consisted of the three in the new version, and Paul Chaplin, Mary Jo Pehl, and Bridget Jones. The cutting of the writing staff by half is noticeable in the fact the jokes are more repetitive inside the same film. (Enough with the Biography jokes in Killers From Space!)
I can’t believe how disappointed I was with these efforts. The magic is gone, and I guess I should have expected some of that with age, but it almost feels like an insult to the memory of MST3K with this desperate grab to recapture those glory days of when you had a pop culture phenomenon to your name.
I can’t even bring myself to give these a rating I’m so let down.
Based on the novel of the same name
The original novel was written by Nick Hornby, also known for both the book
When I heard there was a movie (I only read the book last summer), I couldn’t quite picture how they were going to pull it off, but they did a wonderful job. It is just another quiet, little English movie about life, something they do so amned well.
While the idea of it only being about soccer may turn some people off, it is more about passion for anything, and how true passion can be infectious. Paul’s life is filled with people who don’t “get” his undying love of the club, or what it means to him on a multitude of levels. This movie could have just as well been about cars, or stamp collecting, because the object of the passion isn’t the point, it’s the emotion of the passion that is.
By the way, ignore the image, that’s an old DVD cover and appears nowhere in the film.
4 out of 5 stars for just being quiet and charming.
It’s Labor day weekend again, and as with last year, I’m burning through the DVDs. Due to writing though, I won’t hit last years total of 18, but I still will get a good number knocked out.
First up, Jesus Camp
Why was it nominated? Honestly, this is one of the most slap-dash docs I think I’ve ever watched.
The premise is seemingly simple: Follow a group of Christian children to their Fundamentalist summer camp, where they will learn how to become soldiers for the Lord. Not gun carrying soldiers mind you, though the comparison is made, but just children that will speak the word of the Lord.
Fine, it sounds interesting, I was ready to go, but alas, this movie is so scattered, you don’t feel like you truly learn anything. Why these particular kids? Why this particular camp? Why do you keep showing a talk radio host who isn’t even talking about the camp, but fundamentalism in general? Why is the last third of the movie months later with no explanation of why we jumped forward? Why does Levi (the mullet-sporting 11 year old wanna be preacher) suddenly in Colorado going to Ted Haggard’s church service, and in the very next scene he’s in Washington D.C. for a protest?
For a documentary, it’s just too scattershot. For instance, when the kids are all being introduced at the beginning, we spend sometime getting to know Tory, a 10 year old girl who feels you should dance for the lord, but not the flesh, and sometimes she makes the mistake. Okay, fine… why did we meet her? The movie focuses almost entirely on Levi, and somewhat on Rachael, Tory never really factors in, so why did we waste the time meeting her?
I think this is a case of the filmmakers had too much to say, and no clue how to string it together into a cohesive narrative. Docs do follow different rules than a standard film, I get that, but it should still feel like each scene is part of the same story, and 2 or 3 different ones.
3 out of 5 stars only because I liked the base subject matter.
