August 2006 Archives

I just saw Little Caesar, a 1931 gangster picture starring Edward G. Robinson, see? The movie was good, but the DVD had a really fun feature. I know I'm probably the last DVD fan to discover this.

It's "Warner Night at the Movies," with an optional and pointless introduction from the late Gene Siskel. (He's the dead one, right? Probably.) Anyway, this feature plays the movie after a preview, a newsreel, one or two shorts, and a cartoon. The full old-timey experience. It's a lot of fun...especially projected...

We've found it at last: the holy grail of movies. Austin Powers in Goldmember.

Whoa there, friend. I'm not saying that Goldmember is anything more than the worst movie I've seen in recent memory. Because it is, in fact, the worst movie I've seen in recent memory.

But it does have a Smashmouth song on the soundtrack...

...and it does, indeed, feature "the robot."

Long time Furdell.com readers know that, by scrolling down the page and looking to the left, you can find two movie lists. The first lists movies, always comedies and often starring Adam Sandler, in which a character does the robot -- that breakdancing technique that is the Hollywood equivalent of laff trak, because it tells you when to laugh without actually being funny.

The second list attempts to document the millions of films for which approximately $2.50 was shelled out to secure the rights to any given song by Smashmouth, especially "All Star."

We have tirelessly pursued that holy grail of movies that has a Smashmouth song AND robot dancing...until today. And thank god somebody else made it so we don't have to.

I'm going to assume that it took us four years to discover that Goldmember had robot dancing only because nobody watched Goldmember, until last night when I took one for the team. But I know there are more robot dance movies out there. Stay alert, faithful reader.

To find the robot scene in Goldmember, just go to the part right before the most racist scene.

is Sesame Street.

Here's a description of James Woods's new CBS drama "Shark":

Multiple Academy Award nominee and Emmy Award winner James Woods stars as Sebastian Stark, a charismatic, supremely self-confident defense attorney who, after a shocking outcome in one of his cases and a personal epiphany, brings his cutthroat tactics to the prosecutor's office. Though Stark is seeking to redeem himself, he has no intention of cooling his underhanded approach to cases just because he's now working for the "good guys."

I just saw The Devil's Advocate, which made an even more literal claim that working as a defense attorney rather than a prosecutor is the equivalent of selling your soul, both because the pay is better and because your clients are always 100% guilty child rapists. Gee, good thing the system works so well, or we might try to convict innocent people!

I started working in local TV in Eugene back in late October. In under ten months, I've been promoted twice, from part time to full time technical director, and then from technical director to director.

I had been directing the weekend news shows -- the simplest and least watched news shows, where they put all the newbies like me -- for only a month or so when the possibility of another promotion reared its head. A higher-up director, the guy who hired me in fact, moved to Spokane.

It's not clear if I'll get promoted to the weekday 5 and 11 o' clock directing spots, and if I had to guess I'd say the odds were against me from the start because of my relative inexperience. But, in the interim while the people upstairs figure out what to do, I've been filling in on the 5 o' clock show, which is about 10 times more complex than the weekend shows I'm used to, and it has been awesome.

That's the setup. Now you're ready to read about yesterday. Press on, true believer.

I just came up with a great idea for a game you can play at home! All you need is a cell phone, a high school education, and a group of drunk friends. Here's how it works...

Think of someone you knew at least 10 years ago, either in high school or college, but that you lost touch with completely after graduation, and so did (probably) everyone you still keep in touch with.

Starting with only the numbers currently in your cell phone -- no fair using outside sources like the internet -- call one of those friends you're still in touch with. You're only allowed to ask them for a phone number from their cell phone.

(Note: If you're too old to own a cell phone, I guess you can use your address book or rolodex or whatever old people have.)

You have one hour, during which you'll phone people you haven't spoken to or thought about in a decade, to find the person you had in mind in the first place. And you're not allowed to tell anyone why you're looking for this person, either.

If, within the allotted hour, you do manage to get this person's phone number, then you must call them and keep them on the phone for 15 minutes while you catch up in front of all your drunken friends, who watch in rapt attention as a completely awkward moment unfolds before them.

Well, now that I'm writing it out it doesn't sound so awesome.

Recently, VH1 Classic aired the first day of MTV programming in celebration of that channel's 25th Anniversary. I've just finished the first six hours. Here's what I've learned...

• The station-opening sequence, in which a spaceship takes freaking forever to launch, takes freaking forever. I can't imagine anyone enjoyed watching that.
• A good 30% of the videos in the first six hours are either Rod Stewart or the Pretenders. Especially Rod Stewart, who plays at least twice per hour. And the Pretenders songs are all pretty obscure.
• One of the videos, Thank You For Being a Friend, was probably an awesome hit to rock out to until seven years later when it became the Golden Girls theme.
• Speaking of Golden Girls, check out Boys Keep Swinging by David Bowie, which ends in a truly creepy runway show featuring middle-aged rockers dressed like old women.?
• I totally forgot how great the video for "Once in a Lifetime" by the Talking Heads was. Extremely great, that's how great.
• Watching a lot of 1981 videos in a row reminds you that they only had like three video effects back then. Extremely popular: the chromakey (blue/green screen) effect. Leo Sayer's More Than I Can Say probably blew some minds back then. (The good stuff is towards the end.)
• Carly Simon makes an appearance with a completely awful song called Vengeance, which ends with a hilarious freeze frame of Carly rocking out.
• We've established that 30% of the videos are Rod Stewart or the Pretenders. About 50% are super boring concert videos of bands like REO Speedwagon, .38 Special, and The Who; and another 15% are songs and/or artists I've never heard of. Who the hell is Split Enz, and why do they have three videos in the first six hours?