Archive for the ‘Film’ Category

Here’s the trailer to the classic film, Cheech & Chong’s Up in Smoke

And here’s Cheech and Chong on Geraldo talking about legalization with some evil harpy.

Yesterday was Cinco de Mayo, a minor holiday in Mexico turned into an excuse to binge drink tequila and watery beer with a lime wedge here in the States. I never even heard of it until I heard Buenos Tardes Amigo by Ween (youtube of Ween doing it live, shot by yours truly, a long long time ago). So some high schoolers in Morgan Hill, CA thought it would be a neat idea to all wear the stars and stripes on shirts and bandanas, presumably as a response to this big Mexican celebration which is about as important in Mexico as Arbor Day is here in the states and has been turned into something that it’s not, in order for the booze companies to sell more booze.

Some students were offended by this showing. Instead of just getting over it, they complained, and it wound up that the school principal gave the flag kids the option of turning their shirts inside out or being sent home to become martyrs for the teabagger crowd. Guess which they chose.

See, this is one of those stories where everybody involved is an asshole. The flag kids were assholes for thinking that this would be some great big statement. The kids who were offended are assholes for getting their panties in a bunch over a lame stunt perpetrated by assholes. The principal is neither a prince or a pal (I’ve been wanting an excuse to say that ever since Xander said it to Principal Snider on Buffy way back when),  but instead is an asshole for not telling the offended kids to man up and stop being such a bunch of oversensitive whiney assholes, and for turning a lame stunt into a potential rallying cry for the real racists (who happen to be enormous assholes). The media are assholes for covering this ridiculous story about a bunch of assholes. The teabaggers who will no doubt make this about how they’re all victims of this and that are all a bunch of assholes. And I’m an asshole for keeping it going on my blog which I keep saying isn’t going to be political while taking tiny little pot shots at the teabaggers here and there like some kind of asshole.

So if you want to waste another second on this, here’s the story and here’s a better comment thread about it than this barely-read blog could ever produce.

And now, if you’ve made it this far into this godawful post, here’s your reward… the new trailer for Robert Rodriguez’ upcoming film, Machete!

So forget about getting anything done today. I just found a repository of interviews with character actors from the Onion’s A/V Club! These are the kind of people you see in just about everything but don’t necessarily know their names. Hey, it’s that guy/girl from that movie! Of course, some of them started out being very famous and have since gone on to play character roles. And some of them have done so many parts that they get name recognition decades into their careers. And many of them are still “that guy” or “that woman” from “that movie” or “that show.”

So, you can wade in to the whole list here, or go with some of my personal favorites like Danny Trejo, Illeana Douglas, Luis Guzman, Kevin Corrigan, and Olivia Williams.

As of this posting there are 87 interviews, all of them lengthy, in depth and insider-y. If you enjoy film like I do, get set to spend a good chunk of your time with these interviews.

One of the cool things about starting my blog fresh after many years is that I can re-run some of my favorite old content. A few weeks ago I was talking with a video production company about being a second camera at some wedding shoots for her, and I sent some of my favorite videos to check out. While going through some of my stuff, I remembered how much I really liked this one and how much fun it was to shoot, mostly in a single take with lots of great improv.

During the TV writers strike a few years ago, I was inspired to do a short about it under the premise that the producers of The Office would hire some bad fan fiction writers as scabs and I shot this in a couple of hours with some friends. YouTube pulled it due to a copyright complaint from Sony which I cannot for the life of me figure out since there is no music and the characters talk about characters on other shows which is well within any kind of fair use. Corporate types, go figure! I think they didn’t like how they were portrayed.

So, without further ado, The Writers Room…

Ten minutes. That is how long my wife and I made it through Twilight: New Moon before we both decided it was not worthy of our time. I was fully prepared to ignore this whole series of books and films just on the knowledge that it was all about emo teenage vampires. But my wife wanted me to download the first one just so we could see what they hype was about and it wasn’t horrible. Yeah, instead of bursting into flames like any halfway respectable vampires, these vampires sparkle in the sun (bullshit!!!). And yeah, they’re moody and whiny and not really all that evil (like some of the Anne Rice vamps only even wussier). But as far as dumbed down teenybopper supernatural stuff goes, it didn’t suck (until the way too emo ending).

So we sat through moody ass whatzerface waking up from a dream where she’s an old lady while Edward is the same age (insert Matthew McConnauhey in Dazed and Confused reference here)  and with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer she’s being all moody about it being her birthday, then  slow-mo shots of Edward walking toward her in the parking lot, and then the awkward bit with the werewolf guy, and then back to Edward reciting Shakespeare in class. After a failed birthday party at casa de vamp where her paper cut almost set off a feeding frenzy, she starts whining to Edward about wanting to be a vampire and he starts going into some boring bit about who knows what and we just shut it off right there and watched some Community reruns instead.

True Blood can’t come back soon enough to wash away the taste of lame vampires. In the meantime, I’m probably going to have to see From Dusk Till Dawn, or Near Dark, or any Dracula movie with Christopher Lee from the 70′s, or even Blackula or Love at First Bite.