Link Dump

Yet more links from the depths of the internets:

• Batman Gazette – Hilarious posters spoofing the Nolan Batman films.
• A Critic’s Manifesto: The Intersection of Expertise and Taste – An interesting article on what it means to be a critic:
  

  For all criticism is based on that equation: KNOWLEDGE + TASTE = MEANINGFUL JUDGMENT. The key word here is meaningful. People who have strong reactions to a work—and most of us do—but don’t possess the wider erudition that can give an opinion heft, are not critics. (This is why a great deal of online reviewing by readers isn’t criticism proper.) Nor are those who have tremendous erudition but lack the taste or temperament that could give their judgment authority in the eyes of other people, people who are not experts. (This is why so many academic scholars are no good at reviewing for mainstream audiences.) Like any other kind of writing, criticism is a genre that one has to have a knack for, and the people who have a knack for it are those whose knowledge intersects interestingly and persuasively with their taste. In the end, the critic is someone who, when his knowledge, operated on by his taste in the presence of some new example of the genre he’s interested in—a new TV series, a movie, an opera or ballet or book—hungers to make sense of that new thing, to analyze it, interpret it, make it mean something.

  I may have more to say on this in the future, but to me, the general idea of criticism boils down to context (which, I suppose, could also be termed Knowledge). Critics put a given work of art in context, whether that being the context of the society in which it was produced/released, or the context of other films that have tackled the same themes, and so on…

• Stereotypical 80’s Movie Gangs – They’re only kinda scary. And bigoted.
• Star Wars Propaganda Posters – Have I issued a moratorium on Star Wars links yet? No? Good, then I can post this.
• The Dark Knight Rises Epilogue: Wayne Enterprises Fire Sale – Have I issued a moratorium on Batman links yet? No? Good, then I can post this.
• The Slow Death of Netflix – Shamus does a good job detailing what is bad about Netflix’s Watch Instantly feature. Namely, that nothing I ever want to watch is available on instant.
  

  I want to stress that I’m not cherry-picking here. I really am looking for a movie and I really am getting bupkis for every single attempt. There are good movies here, but not many, and I’ve pretty much seen them all by this point.

  I’ll go for a couple of weeks without checking Netflix. Then when I come back I’ll check out the “what’s new” lineup and find it almost unchanged. As far as I can tell, their library of streaming content is shrinking.

  I can think of exactly two occasions when I’ve decided that I wanted to watch a movie, checked Netflix, and found that it was actually available on streaming. One was Groundhog Day (which was actually unavailable for a while, but came back recently) and the other was Gambit, a movie that was specifically recommended because it was available, but which is no longer available at all (even on DVD). Of course, this ultimately has less to do with Netflix than it does with the Studios, who are so hellbent on defeating pirates that they don’t want to make movies conveniently available for anyone (thus creating more pirates). Someday, someone will figure out how to make streaming work with a wide selection, and it will be glorious. Alas, I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. Ten years? Maybe. But probably not.

That’s all for now…

Yet more links plumbed from the depths of the internets:

• An Author’s Sweet, Helpful Takedown Of A Kid Trying To Cheat On His Homework – Some kid didn’t feel like doing his assigned summer reading, so he turned to the paragon of truth and honor on the internet: Yahoo! Answers. At this point, it came to the attention of the author of the book, who actually wrote a pretty helpful response to said cheater. Sample awesome:
  

  I’m not going to sit here and act like I didn’t sometimes not read assigned books for class in high school. Even though it’s referenced once in my book, the book you’re avoiding reading, I’ve never actually read “The Scarlet Letter.” So I’m sympathetic to your plight. But I think you’ll find there’s a ton more sex, swearing, and drugs in my book than anything else you have been or will be assigned in high school, and I don’t mean in the way your teacher will tell you “You know, Shakespeare has more sex and violence than an R-rated movie!” I mean it’s all there, in terms you will readily understand without having to Google them. Plus not once to I refer to anything as a “bare bodkin” or anything like that.

  Heh.

• PigGoatBananaMantis! – From the idontknowwhatthefuckisgoingoninthisvideo tag of my delicious account. I could go for some gravity pickles right about now.
• Three Neal/Neils – A picture of Neal, Neil, and Neil.
• Bat Man of Shanghai – One of a series of Batman shorts set in a 1930’s era Shanghai, this clip is pretty darn awesome. Not sure if the Cartoon Network/DC Nation will be producing a lot of this, but it’s quite stylish and well produced…
• “Scary Smash” – Written By A Kid Ep 1 – So basically, these guys ask a 5 year old kid to tell them a story… which they then went ahead and filmed, getting Dave Foley and Joss Whedon to star in it. Fantastic.
• Some Boats in a Race – So some Irish dude took it upon himself to provide his own color commentary to the Olympic sailing race. I’d have posted this earlier, but the IOC keeps getting the videos taken down. This copy seems to have been up for a little while, but check this out and make sure you watch all the way until the end. There’s a twist!

That’s all for now…

I’m on vacation this week, so here we’ve got some links I slapped together on Sunday. Actually some good stuff here though.

• Trading Places: How Winthorpe and Valentine Pulled It Off – Trading Places is one of my favorite movies of all time, but I never quite understood what the heck was going on at the end of the movie. Of course, it works well enough, but my nerdy mind is constantly trying to figure out the exact mechanisms that were driving the price of FCOJ up or down. I never quite understood how Winthorpe and Valentine were selling at the beginning of the session, but buying later on. It’s sorta the opposite of the buy low, sell high paradigm we’re all familiar with. As the linked post explains, it turns out that they’re selling short – selling contracts they don’t yet hold. This would be risky, as they have to buy contracts later on to fulfill their short sell obligations… but since they knew the crop report, they knew the price would be significantly lower, so they made out like bandits. It’s estimated that they made $250 million. Interesting stuff, and of course, there’s a bit of Hollywood exaggeration going on here, but it’s still nice to know what’s going on at the end of the movie.
• If The Movie “Inception” Happened In Actual Dreams – One of the big complaints about Inception is that the dreams don’t really feel like real dreams. I never really cared about that – real dreams get kinda boring pretty quickly – but this comic is a pretty great parody of the concept.
• Manos: The Hands of Fate Video Game – The worst movie of all time made into a 8-bit video game? Sure, why not. This is apparently real, and will be coming to the iOS and presumably other devices soon. It actually looks about a billion times better than the movie.
• Amazon Yesterday Shipping – A hilarious parody of Amazon’s recent drive towards same day delivery (which will be a game changing development if Amazon can pull it off… retailers are quaking in their boots about this).

That’s all for now!

It’s actually been quite a while since the last link dump, so here’s a few things I’ve found interesting on the internets recently:

• Science Fiction Movie Classics as Pulp Novels – Artist Tim Anderson has created a trio of fake book covers for classic science fiction movies, and he has absolutely nailed it. Each cover is evocative of both the movie and cheap pulp novels, something that would be easy to screw up, but it’s perfect here. Don’t you just wish there really were a series of Rick Deckard novels?
• Front Page Films’ Batman Series – Some of the Batman parody videos are old and you’ve no doubt seen them, but they’ve been releasing new ones in the leadup to the new movie, and they’re all fantastic. In essence, they make Batman out to be a total moron who infuriates and confuses his opponents into losing. To my mind, though, nothing beats the Riddler video.
• 40 MORE Of The Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings – A follow-up to that amazing article ridiculing Rob Liefeld’s comic book art from a few years ago, this one’s almost as good. As usual, Liefeld seems to have trouble drawing feet. Heh.
• Lois interviews Miles – For all, uh, one of you that have read Bujold’s Vorkosigan books, here’s a dialogue between the author and her character (originally done in preparation for Cryoburn).
• To be a face – I have absolutely no knowledge or interest in professional wrestling, but MGK actually manages to make it interesting in this quick post on the face/heel dichotomy.

That’s all for now. With luck, I may return on Friday for some Dark Knight Returns thoughts (if not Friday, then Sunday)…

Yet more interesting stuff from the depths of the internets:

• Reset Your Password – Poor usability conquered through persistence. Unfortunately for those of us who work in the industry, none of our users will be so persistent. “Your password can not contain any references to jazz slang.” Heh.
• Lord of the Rings Movie of 1940 – A pitch perfect parody of both 40s film noir and LotR. Long, but very well done.
• Movie Simpsons – A tumblr consisting of comparative screenshots from movie references in The Simpsons. The current post is actually one of my favorite references of all time – the picture above the bed is such a bizarre detail from the original movie that I love how they parodied it in The Shinning.
• FunnyJunk is threatening to file a federal lawsuit against me unless I pay $20,000 in damages – So we all know The Oatmeal, right? Well he’s being sued because… well, quite frankly, I can’t really figure out how the person threatening the lawsuit thinks they deserve anything. Read the post for the full story, but the response is beautiful. Rather than pay the $20,000, he set up a charity link to raise $20,000 for donation to the National Wildlife Federation and American Cancer Society. So far, he’s raised $157,000. Oh, and the asshat that was threatening to sue him is now trying to get the charity post disabled while contemplating how to sue fans of The Oatmeal for calling him out on his asshattery. Putz.
• Mark Malkoff’s Netflix Challenge – This guy wanted to get the best possible value out of his Netflix subscription… so he watched over 250 movies in a month. He even gets celebrities to show up and do live commentary for their movies (which does bring up one issue with the current streaming situation – no special features!)

That’s all for now!

It’s that time again, here are some interesting things I’ve seen on teh internets recently:

• Leeroy Jenkins: Reimagined as a Short Film – This is actually pretty awesome. Someone took the Leeroy Jenkins clip and did a live-action remake in the form of a botched heist short film. Not sure if it captures the true amazingness of the original Leeroy Jenkins clip, but it’s still worthwhile in its own right.
• Super Powers – Silly little video of a man using his “super” powers to torment a random passer by. Funny.
• Drunk Florida Man Tries to Use Taco as ID After His Car Catches Fire at Taco Bell – Really just for the headline alone. I mean, look at that thing. Sheer brilliance.
• Darth Vader In A Kilt On A Unicycle Playing Bagpipes – From the idontknowwhatthefuckisgoingoninthisvideo tag archives of my delicious bookmarks. Though I must say, the title does provide an accurate description of what’s going on in the video…
• PKD in OC – Gregory Beneford has some remembrances of Phillip K. Dick that are pretty awesome:
  

  I met Philip K. Dick in 1964, and it struck me how funny he was. I had just read The Man in the High Castle, and expected a rather dour sort. He had a way of comically falling out of a chair. At dinner he smoked a cigar and ate spaghetti simultaneously.

  Heh.

That’s all for now…

So now that I’ve more or less exhausted the archives of my other recent discoveries, I’m looking for some new blood. Here’s a few that I’ve checked out recently, though I’m pretty sure only one or two will become part of the regular rotation:

• Hollywood Babble-On – One of Kevin Smith’s Smodcast network shows. I long ago lost interest in the general Smodcast (around the time Smith started smoking pot a lot and refused to talk about Zack and Miri Make a Porno) because it was a little too meandering and often boring. It sounded like this one had a little more structure though, so I thought I’d check it out. Unfortunately, it made a horrible first impression. I feel like the entire first half of the show (40 minutes or so) was devoted to reading fan letters, which was excruciating. It’s also a show that’s recorded before a live audience, and it’s pretty clear that they’re playing to that audience and not the podcast. Once the show starts, it gets a little more interesting. I’ll probably give this another chance, but I’m guessing it won’t be something I look forward to every week.
• Doug Loves Movies – This is a podcast from comedian Doug Benson (of Super High Me fame) and is also a little on the meandering side, especially at the beginning. Oddly, it’s another show that is recorded with a live audience, and that shows through at the beginning of the show. Fortunately, that doesn’t last 40 minutes, and Benson does have some defined segments, most notably including the The Leonard Maltin Game, which is awesome and a lot of fun. He also seems to be pretty good at getting solid guests to appear (I really enjoyed the Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg, and Kate Micucci episode, for example). I’ve only listened to a few episodes, but this could be something I grow into.
• NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour – This is very much like the Slate Culture Gabfest, so if you like that, you’ll probably like this. It’s basically the same format: the hosts talk about two major topics of recent pop culture, then talk about their favorite things of the week. Again, I’ve only listened to a few episodes, but I can already tell that I’m going to burn through these archives rather quickly and make this into a weekly listen.
• How Did This Get Made? – Another comedian show (notably lead by Paul Scheer), this one is pretty interesting. It basically revels in the glory of bad movies, which is something I actually find endearing and fun… but only really when I’ve also seen the movie they’re talking about. Fortunately, I’m a huge movie nerd and have actually seen a reasonable portion of the bad movies they’re talking about. Some of the stuff they pick on is mainstream, but there’s also some real obscure gems and Weird Movie of the Week caliber films they talk about too. Fun stuff, but not something I can really rely on…

And that’s all for now. At this point, I’ve actually got a pretty good stable of reliable podcasts to look forward to every week:

• Extra Hot Great
• The /Filmcast
• Filmspotting
• The Jeff Rubin Jeff Rubin Show
• Slate’s Culture Gabfest
• Onion AV Club Reasonable Discussions

And there are a few others that I hit up every now and again. Still, every so often, I find myself out of compelling stuff to listen to, so I’m always on the lookout for new stuff.

Apologies for the extended absence from the blog, but there were technical difficulties that have since been resolved and tonight was a busy one, so here are some fun links I’ve run across recently:

• 15 Thought-Provoking Discussion Questions Every Book Club Should Ask Themselves – I’m totally going to steal some of these for my next book club meeting at work. Sample awesome:
  

  Do you think it signifies a lack of imagination to picture characters as popular film and television actors? Sometimes there are a lot of characters to keep track of, or you’re really tired from a long day of tax law, and can’t picture one in your head so you just go, “Okay, Sir James is Tom Hardy.” And then later when they describe Sir James as tall, with flaxen hair, aren’t you like “Noooooo, ignoring! Tom Hardy” ?

  Heh.

• Pixar Studio Stories – Apparently some of the recent Pixar blu-ray releases have had these awesome anecdotal stories from pixar on them, and they really are wonderful stories. Well worth your time.
• Pentagon Declines to Loan Joss Whedon a Fighter Jet – Apparently Whedon wanted to get some military assistance for the Avengers, but the Military had some questions: ““To whom did S.H.I.E.L.D. answer? Did we work for S.H.I.E.L.D.? We hit that roadblock and decided we couldn’t do anything…” Seems fair, but as Josh Gross puts it: “And any comic fan will tell you, that’s a dumb reason with an obvious answer. S.H.I.E.L.D. answers to Nick Fury, and Nick Fury answers only to his optometrist. Duh.” Brilliant.
• How To Survive A Robot Uprising – Handy guide.

That’s all for now…