February 2005 Archives

Discuss.

Once again the influence of Andrew is felt far and wide, as those television programs which I require are finally being released on DVD.

Scrubs - Every month for the last three or four years I've checked for the release date of this set.

Greatest American Hero - More hotly demanded than you might imagine. There's been a bootleg DVD market for GAH (terrible acronym) episodes for years. I even downloaded the first season and burned my own DVDs. And made my own labels. I'm so handy.

But the official set also includes the unaired Greatest American Heroine pilot. So I bought it already.

Remington Steele - This show may well be awful, but I love it. I can't even tell for sure if it's bad. Its premise is pretty complicated, but individual episodes aren't hard to follow. Hmm.

See, it's about this female P.I. that nobody respects, because it's the 80s I guess. So she drums up business by pretending to be an assistant to a totally made-up detective named Steele, who conveniently is always busy elsewhere. Then Pierce Brosnan, a thief whose name we never learn, shows up and starts calling himself Steele. He pretends to be the boss, and takes all the credit for her detective work, while she attempts to deflect his Brosnan-like charms and find out his real name.

See, that's kind of complex for a TV show synopsis. It's no "he found a superhero suit but he doesn't know how to use it," or "they're a bunch of funny doctors."

Moonlighting - Why am I embarrassed to admit I've been waiting for this release? It's a smart show, and I can never find it in syndication. Well, there you are.

But my thirst for semi-obscure television is not quenched. Nay, not by a long shot.

Dark Shadows (1991) - A remake of a cult-popular soap opera about a vampire. It is awesome. Way better than the original, I say. And its pathetic 12-episode run will never, ever be released on DVD. (Luckily, I made my own out of the VHS copies! Bwahahaha. Hmm.)

Misfits of Science - I think there were only six episodes. It's about four kooky kids with super powers, solving mysteries or something. But one of them didn't have super powers. And now they're all dead.

Hey, ever notice how the one girl on the superhero team gets saddled with psychic powers that make her faint or give her nosebleeds if she uses them too much? Like Invisible Girl, Marvel Girl, Saturn Girl, what have you. Well, in this show, Courtney Cox has telekinetic powers, but using those powers causes headaches. Meanwhile there's a dude who can shoot lightning bolts at people without any negative effect. Yeah, that's fair.

The Flash - Don't ask. Flash is one of those superheroes, like Aquaman, where there's always some loser who feels the need to point out how stupid his superpower is. "Oooh, all he can do is run really fast! That's lame!" Puh-lease. Flash must be one of the most powerful superheroes in the Justice League because of how fast he moves. And Aquaman is third in strength after Superman and Wonder Woman, so no, he doesn't just "talk to fish." Jerk.

No contest.

The "campusmoviefest" show was last night. We were told they would be showing the 10 best films. They did. As expected, we saw ten horrible, horrible student films, complete with stupid-looking effects, inaudible dialogue, bad lighting and framing, and not a plot among them. Oh -- and none of them was ours.

Oh, but wait! The show's not over. There are four more, award-winning films left. (I assumed as much; there's no way they'd show all that crap and not show our film.)

Then they showed four more films. None of which were ours.

So there you have it: Fruitless is worse than fourteen terrible, terrible movies. Deeply depressing.

Positive spin: We knew the judging criteria, and deliberately ignored it. In our defense, we had been told the wrong theme (a theme to which most of the movies shown tried desperately to pander); not in our defense, we never even planned to incorporate the theme we thought it was going to be. Another criteria is how well effects are used, and since effects are stupid-looking, we didn't.

Negative spin: Fourteen? Fourteen? I just applied to a bunch of film schools. What the hell was I thinking? I have no future.

TV gets such a bad rap sometimes. How could you hate an invention which has produced shows so unintentionally hilarious, there's no way anything intentionally funny could compete?

Just the crazy-buddy-cop shows alone send me into fits of laughter. Some examples:

Future Cop - Ernest Borgnine and his cyborg partner fight crime as cops.

Tag Team - Jesse Ventura and Rowdy Roddy Piper, um... fight crime. As cops.

And then there's my favorite example:

Tequila and Bonetti. Take Jack Scalia. Pair him with a talking dog (!). Watch them fight crime as cops.

It would be funny enough with just the talking dog, but when you throw in Jack Scalia, who, while filming a scene for a different show at Andrew's high school gym, famously yelled at Andrew's friend for "laughin' while I was tawlkin'"... well, I don't see how anybody could purposely come up with something funnier than Tequila and Bonetti. They even remade it as an Italian show years later. Hilarious.

Speaking of unintentional hilarity, don't forget there's a lot of buzz around Son of the Mask, which comes out tomorrow. As I write this, the Rotten Tomatoes meter stands at a favorable review rating of 0 percent. The prospect of making back that $100 million is not looking so good.

We are so going to lose tomorrow.

(For those of you who don't remember, I'm talking about how our movie is going to lose campusmoviefest.)

There are two major reasons why we are doomed. In reverse order:

2. We didn't use any stupid effects.

One of the judging criteria is actually how well you use iMovie's special effects features, which are, by the way, awful. Last year's winner from Emory was a "parody" of The Ring (in quotes because it wasn't at all "funny") that extensively used iMovie's revolutionary ability to speed up motion. Second place was a movie so boring that I only saw the first 45 seconds, but in that amount of time they managed to work in sepia tone.

And our movie? Well, we played around with lighting a little, but nothing anyone would notice. (There is that school of thought that editing shouldn't draw attention to itself.) In other words, as people who have made movies before, we edited it well instead of using all of iMovie's bells and whistles, and for that we will surely suffer.

1. Corporate sponsorship.

Each year, this contest has a new "theme." Submitted films are asked to conform to the theme, no matter how loosely. Our team, hilariously, was told the wrong theme. Even when we found out the right one, though, we had no idea how to work it in. The theme is "Good comes around." We had already decided on the cat thing, in which there is no good, either coming or going. We decided to ignore the theme.

Come to find out that Delta, the festival's major sponsor, has a new slogan, "Good goes around," which, well, I have no idea what it means. But that's beyond the point -- this can't possibly be a coincidence. In other words, we should have done a movie about the convenience and affordability of air travel -- or at least something that a company can use to show off what great things it's funding. Robert, you were right about one thing: my Hitler & Stalin! idea would not have worked out. But the cat idea is definitely no better.

In short, tomorrow's winner will:
* be effects-heavy, with sped-up motion, over-use of the "gong" sound effect, and star wipe.
* be entirely toothless.
* suck.
* not be our movie.

RM has fixed his broken-ass website. You can now watch our movie.

See how the passage of time is marked by me needing a shave? Movie magic.

As James has hinted, I haven't been a good blogger lately because I've been focusing on movie-making. I recently made the rotten mistake of applying to film schools, which involves a lot of waiting around and nail-biting, so actually making a movie was good both for distracting me, and for bolstering my chances when I have to reapply next year because nobody wants me.

Andrew is busy making his latest video-film opus, and Kimberly and I are both sick. Today I re-discovered one of the joys of staying home sick from work: lying on the couch and watching The Price Is Right.

Meanwhile, TiVo decided I really wanted to watch Lassie. I had no idea that Lassie ran for 20 seasons (!), but it did. This particular episode from 1967 was even in color, and for some reason Lassie is apparently in the care of a park ranger. They run into a cute bouncy young girl with pigtails who has nicknamed herself "Walden". (And I'm now the only member of the Hilarie Thompson fan club.) Little Miss Thoreau has decided to move to the forest full-time, and of course, is trapped by a cave-in that requires rescue by a certain collie.

But it was the advertisement at the end that really caught my eye. I have five words for you that will change your life.

Deion Sanders' Hot Dog Cooker.

Stick that in your pipe, George Foreman. Is there nothing Deion can't do? He can cook hot dogs, he can throw a bucket o' water on Tim McCarver... he has certainly had a full life.

Click here to watch the ad.

The only ads I really liked were the FedEx/Kinko's one with Burt Reynolds (keys to a Super Bowl commercial: has-been celebrity, talking/dancing animal, and "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey), and the careerbuilder.com series where a guy has monkey co-workers.

Hey wait, I see a connection here, to... wait for it... Cannonball Run II, which starred both Burt Reynolds and a monkey! Thus further proving my theory that all comedy has its base in Cannonball Run II.

Also a recurring theme: MC Hammer became famous, and then lost that fame. I guess I can't complain about them using that joke.

I can't find a good video link to the ads. (You have to pay for adcritic now? What is that?) Somebody probably has video of them. At any rate, here's the annual Slate review article.

Yeah, yeah. Blogging is so last year. Now, not blogging... that's got some legs. Not blogging is the new blogging.

Not buying it? All right, then, how about some sound file downloads? Here you go. It's not what you necessarily might want, though. First, nostalgia trip! Three television shows from 1983 that only I watched. One, two, three. Good luck Googling those.

Next, the old theme music from the ABC Movie of the Week. That will get you pumped up and ready for a movie like nothing else will. I prefer to play it before watching Superman II.

What else do I have... oh yeah, this is cool. In Europe, even the news show themes have beats. Pup would approve.

Finally, it's strange how the best Saturday Night Live sketches are the ones that come on at 12:55 a.m. Time Travelling Scott Joplin's Tennis Talk, for example (sorry, that's not an audio link). I think my favorite example is Stevie Nicks' Fajita Roundup, as performed by Lucy Lawless. (That one is an audio link.)

"He placed an order, I wrote it down.
Three enchiladas, the best in town.
Then I saw my reflection in a big pile of nachos.
'Til a landslide brought in down."

I love Pringles. They are crispy and delicious, and serve as a delectable vessel for inhalable not-found-in-nature flavors. What they also are good for conveying, apparently, are bits of NASCAR trivia, actually PRINTED ON THE CHIP. Brilliant.

In order to stay one step ahead of the marketing geniuses at Procter & Gamble, I would like to suggest the following product-placements that could also be used to make me a smarter, more informed consumer.

? Ivory soap and US, Weekly As you scrub, learn what Hollywood couple was caught having sex in the fitting rooms at Bloomingdale's!

? Luvs diapers and Murder Inc. How long did it take for Ashanti's debut album to go platinum? Why, the answer is right here, on my baby's bum!

? Bounce dryer sheets and DHS Each sheet contains one step in a set of instructions on how to make your own dirty bomb. Collect all 423! (Shoppers with Preferred Customer cards only, for easier government monitoring.)

? Tampax Tampons and Kraft Cheese Easy recipes for party snacks everyone will love. Perfect for the Big Game! (What "Big Game," you ask? Well, I'm not really allowed to say.)

I'm open to other suggestions. Perhaps nanites could be used to pass information to me through my Head & Shoulders?