Culturegeeks

Right here.

Scene 2

BELLA: It’s tough being the new kid in school! Especially when everyone is so friendly and helpful and interested in me. Why can’t they just leave me alone so I can sit in the corner and cut myself? 
CLASSMATE: You’re awesome, Bella!
BELLA: See what I have to put up with? Hey — who are those hot people over there?
CLASSMATE: Those are the Cullens. They avoid direct sunlight, they don’t eat food, they sleep in coffins in a graveyard, and holy water burns them. I think they’re Canadians.
BELLA: They sure are spectacularly gorgeous.
CLASSMATE: Yes, they are.
BELLA: I mean seriously, those people are BEAUTIFUL. Especially the one who keeps looking at me. Man alive, that guy is stunning. I mean, wow. He is hot buttered seduction on a stick. I’m not interested in him sexually, of course, because sex is dirty, but wow — LOOK AT HIM! Yee-ikes! Hubba hubba! If you don’t mind, I’d like to spend the next 75 pages talking exclusively about how attractive he is, and then bring it up again every paragraph or so for the remaining 400 pages. 
CLASSMATE: Knock yourself out.

I come to the new JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek as a longtime Trek fan.  I started watching Star Trek, The Original Series in elementary school.  I’d set the VCR to tape it from channel 2 and get up early enough to watch it before school.  I was geeky enough to keep a little log with which episode I’d watched, and what the stardate was on the show in question.  I’d feel ashamed about this, except that…well, a) look at our URL, and b) ask Mahar about his movie journal.

I gladly followed Trek into The Next Generation.  It started my first year of high school, and continued through college, and in hindsight, represented the peak of Trek.  Sure, the even numbered movies were also great, but could Khan, Whales, Russians and Cochran really make up for bald chicks, faux-Saavik, abomination-we-won’t-speak-of, little bit TOS, little bit TNG?

The last two movies mixed it up some.  Insurrection would have made a good double episode, and Nemesis should have been odd-numbered.  Regardless, I was always more of a Trek fan than of Star Wars.  There seemed to be more thought behind everything, and it seemed to actually be science fiction, instead of just an action movie set in space. 

Then, there was the downfall of the TV shows.  Deep Space 9, I have heard really good things about, but I bowed out after season 2.  I lasted one season of Voyager, and 2 episodes of Enterprise.  It wasn’t looking good, and Nemesis didn’t help.

So, I come to the new trailer with mixed feelings.  Above all, it looks like an action movie set in space.  I don’t like that.  Oddly enough, the Enterprise being built on earth bugs the crap out of me.  How the hell are they going to get a saucer and three cylinders connected by tissue paper out of earth’s gravity well?  Yeah, these are the stupid question trekkies think of.  But, I’m older, and I don’t have the conviction of my ways that I had in high school and college.  Mostly, at this point, I just want to see my old friends back on the screen, even if they’re completely different actors.  As it stands right now, I’m on board.  Simon Pegg can do little wrong, and dammit, the Enterprise is exciting you little British man!

Watchmen trailer looks good so far.

First, read this.

Next, tell Entertainment Weekly to fuck itself, and watch Demolition Man again.

I just downloaded it again, since I remember watching it fondly with Roby back in Boulder. As it turns out, it comes out not as dated as you’d expect.

Of course, it starts out with Los Angeles, in 1996, as a warzone with antiaircraft fire, shit blowing up all over the place, and just total chaos. So, yeah, not to dead-on there, but rarely can you ding a SciFi movie in the past for getting the time at which things go to hell off by a few decades.

To set the scene: Sly Stallone plays a cop who doesn’t care how much damage he causes to get his man. Wesley “Get me a real accountant” Snipes plays his man. Shit blows up. They both get frozen as a punishment. This was in ’93, which made this the inspiration for perhaps the slowest portion of the first Austin Powers movie.

Now, I’ll fully admit that the main reason I redownloaded this to watch it was the fact that all restaurants were Taco Bell. I have a well-publicized soft-spot for taco bell.

I figured that it had probably been over 5 years since watching it, and given that it was an early-90s action movie, I didn’t expect much. In fact, as I started watching, I started drawing comparisons between it and Last Action Hero. I had just seen LAH less than a year ago, and while not as bad as I remembered it it was…basically just not as bad as I remembered.

They were both (shallowly) deconstructions of action movies of the time, but everywhere that LAH failed, DM succeeded. I kept finding myself laughing at the background buzz every time someone sweared, the misspoken historical jargon (“You really licked his ass John Spartan!”), really most of it just worked.

So, yeah. Watch it again. Especially Roby.

A report out of Harvard Business School finds that people using services like Netflix rent DVDs that they think they should watch but that those lie around unwatched while they watch the DVDs that they actually want to watch.

I find that this is true at our house, but for a different reason. We watch the movies that James has chosen together, but the DVDs that I choose – often documentaries or independent/foreign films – have to wait until I’m home alone.

…a homemade stop-motion version of Tron!

Agreed.

Is it just me or does he pronounce his name “Uber-Ball”?

Although every weekend us Bend residents can just go down to Drake Park to watch ‘em go.  They appear to all be magic-less though, as everyone just seems to want to beat the crap out of each other.  Which I totally get.

Via

The fact that John Malkovich is willing to get in the tub with Craig Bierko and have his ears lovingly scrubbed as he repeats “Portugal” and “flamingo” over and over makes me love Malkovich even more than I already did.