Million Dollar Baby was on AMCHD today. With nothing better to do, and despite seeing the movie a couple years ago, I hazarded another watch.
This film is perfect. Outstanding performances by everyone in the cast. Clint Eastwood and Hillary Swank don't need to be in any more films, they've set up a hard act to follow.
I don't have anything meaningful or intelligent to add to the plethora of reviews and opinions out there, I just recommend that you check out this film if you haven't seen it—or watch it again if you have. Just be prepared to feel depressed afterward.
Due to a small travel hiatus at work I've had the time to watch a little television. Occasionally I'll flip on TBS because they tend to play a lot of Family Guy. Over the past couple of months I've noticed that they have two new completely heinous advertising techniques.
Technique the first
I'm half way through Family Guy, which is only about 22 minutes long as it is thanks to advertising and I notice Bill fucking Engvall start waltzing across the bottom of the screen. I hold my extended index finger in front of my face to cover up his cousin-marrying (speculation) ass; I am appeased for about three seconds. I holster my Bill-erasing finger and notice that he has picked up a little remote and he's pointing it squarely at the Griffin family. What's he going to do now?
Oh. No. He. Did. Not. Getoutofhere.
The little weasel paused Family Guy! And now he's talking about jerking off a cow or whatever his next episode is about. TBS and Bill, are you guys kidding? Is this a joke? Is this how desperate you idiots are for viewers? This is completely unacceptable. Commercial breaks used to seem like a horrible interruption, this is fathoms worse. I am actually measuring things in fathoms it is so bad.
Technique the second
I'm watching Family Guy again it goes to commercial break. Nothing unusual here. TBS has some doofus doing stand up, maybe advertising for some special they have coming up. I start listening to the guy's joke and he's saying something to the extent of "And yeah, Suzy, that slimy bitch, she starts eating some pizza at Cecil's. That cow can really throw down some food. FUCK BITCH LOVES SOME CECIL'S BRAND PIZZA AND SO SHOULD YOU HA. HA. HA. HA. IT'S SO GOOD. Can I have my check now?"
Seriously, that's not embellished. This freaking douche-nozzle is actually pimping pizza under the guise of stand up comedy. There are multiple of these ads.
TBS does not disclose at any point that you are watching an advertisement. Apparently their target demographic with these ads is the 18 - Snorts-Draino group. Does anyone really fall for this nonsense? It's awfully convenient that a handful of comedians have jokes centered around national retail brands and services.
Stop it
I'm really not sure what spurred these disasters of ad campaigns, but if I had to take a guess I'd bet it's all the hype around that new "internets" and how all the youngsters are watching their youtubes and holo's and raking in all that ad revenue. So this is TBS's counter-attack? Not in a million years will this work. Unless they're shooting for more pirated shows (since they pretty much syndicate 90% of their content as it is) they should probably go ahead and knock it the hell off.
I actually kind of like their show My Boys for some reason. There's some vaguely natural about it. Something that can't be said for their other terrible shows. That's about the only thing keeping me coming back to TBS at this point, and I'm really considering just cutting it off entirely.
Volkwagen 2028 is a really interesting site set up to showcase my favorite German automaker's opinion on cars and driving in general 20 years from now. It's interesting to see speculation from someone that actually has impact for a change (read: VW > Digg)
There's a cute mini-film to get you started. Not everything is ground breaking, a lot of the concepts we have been hearing about for a few years are presented, but there are definitely some new ideas sprinkled about.
Note: The site slowed my computer to a halt, your mileage (see what I did there?) may vary.
I'm a bit late to the game on this one, but I finally got around to seeing Pixar's Disney's WALL-E. I had high expectations because of the Pixar association and certainly was not let down. Pixar does an absolutely fantastic job of appealing to both younger audiences and older audiences, which is something I'm continually impressed with.
I think WALL-E is a successful film—despite being a Disney endeavor—for a number of reasons, the most powerful of these being the lack of dialogue. It's unbelievable how skilled Pixar has become at getting the emotion they want out of the audience, and it's exponentially more impressive without character's conversing.
WALL-E is cute, it's hilarious, and it's worthy of admiration. I appreciate that we have something truly artistic in the main stream that people actually enjoy, even if they can't speak to why it is art.
As a side note I really enjoyed the homages throughout the film: HAL, Jonathan Ives' design (though he actually consulted with Pixar), Johnny 5, Ben Burtt (R2-D2 "voice"), and I'm sure many more.
My knee hurts so unfortunately I can't be out doing anything other than this, but hey, here's a time lapse video of my ugly mug. A shot was taken every six seconds for an hour and apparently I thought chewing gum while doing this was a good idea (hint: it was not a good idea). Also I am not that pale. Also I got a bad haircut today.
