Posts filed under ‘Pop-culture’
The Best Web Comic Now
Is Garfield… Without Garfield. The regular Garfield comic jumped the shark… 15 years ago, and is just horrible, but once you remove Garfield, you get a sad, angst-filled story that is also extremely funny. Have a look at:
Gammalt Mediajox: Radiomedverkan
Ibland får jag vara med på radio, vilket är skoj!
(Inte jag som gjort bilden, jag fick den faktiskt mailad till mig av en lyssnare…)
Finns två inslag att lyssna på här:
Gammalt Mediajox: Ett boktips på TV4
Jag blev inbjuden att tipsa om böcker på TV4 för något år sedan. Jag valde att tipsa om Pullmans fantastiska Mörka Materie-trilogi. För den intresserade finns klippet på youtube nu!
One Of The Funniest Star Wars Parodies Ever
I love this clip from Robot Chickens Star Wars Special.
Movie Review: Oceans 13
“So… We’ll put a bunch of really famous guys (yeah, this is a guy-movie, the female lead is nowhere NEAR as famous as the male leads) and another bunch of kind-of-famous actors. And we’ll let them wear a bunch of designer clothes, cool gizmos and set it all in Las Vegas. And the rest will solve itself.”
“Don’t you need a script, Mr Rich & Crazy Producer, sorry, Mr Weintraub?”
“Quiet, you! The rest will solve itself!!!”
“Still, Sir, won’t the public demand an understandable story, some action, some romance, some comedy or even some excitement?”
“They didn’t demand any of those things in the previous movies, did they? As the normal audience is to dumb to understand even the most basic movie, it’s no use even to try to write a logic and understandable story”.
“But… what about the reviewers? Won’t they spot this obvious lame attempt at just earning money from celebrities?”
“No, and even if they do, we’ll make it blatantly obvious that we would like to bribe them, in fact, let’s make the suffering and later rich rewards of the reviewer an entire story arc!”
“You are brilliant, Sir!”
“Let’s get high and drive while intoxicated to celebrate my brilliance, the Hollywood way!”
Now, to be honest, I MIGHT have made up the conversation above. At least the last quite about brilliance and driving. But I have a feeling that the something along those lines must have been uttered at some time during the process of making Oceans 13. It is a horrible movie. To long, to dumb, to far from being even slightly reasonable. And such a HUGE cock-fest (I am referring to roosters, stop having such a dirty mind) that it is simply amazing that this kind of crap gets made at all, let alone on a major release.
Verdict: Don’t see. Seriously.
Movie Review: Hot Fuzz
Hot Fuzz is a parodic movie, made by the same gang that made the wonderful Shaun of the Dead, and not to forget, “Spaced”, one of the better sit-coms in a long, long time. I was, however, more impressed with Shaun than this movie, even though it is a brilliant movie. While I do enjoy Simon Peggs performance, he isn’t really convincing as a top-cop, sadly. What is really brilliant is the sudden, and actually unexpected, turn into wonderful, violent mayhem that occurs a bit into the movie. There are some nice splatter-moments, to be sure, and a lot of parodic scenes, of course. All in all, a very good movie, but not quite up to what I expected.
Verdict: Must See
Movie Review: Breach
Breach is a very good spy-movie. That’s about it, actually, but you’ll probably want me to elaborate a bit? Well, ok… First of, it is well acted. Ryan Phillippe is starting to become a really good actor, but the real master here is the awesome Chris Cooper who really steals the show. This is Oscar material performance, if there ever was one. If it is possible to get an Oscar for playing one of the worst traitors to America, ever, and making him kind of likable. What makes this movie so good, however, is that it is slow, but still tight. It doesn’t concern itself (mostly) with actions and guns, but rather on the development relationships, and the depth of personalities. And it does this really good, in contrast to, for instance, the rather poor The Good Shepherd, that aimed for pretty much the same feeling, but failed so miserably by being boring. This movie, however, is far from boring, especially since one knows it is based on actual events.
Verdict: Must See
Movie Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is a strange movie. Action-packed, ridiculously violent (although there’s not a single drop of blood, all to please the people setting the age limits. Disney have a strange way of making kid movies filled with violence). The story is quite simple, but still leads to an amazingly complicated end battle. Yes, it is a fun flick, and well worth seeing, but it is a far cry from the first movie. It is a bit too much over the top for my taste, and at 2 hours 40 minutes I kind of doubt that the kids can keep their attention up.
Oh, and yes, it is interesting that the movie so obviously likes pirates, and claims that they are the heroes (although they kind of live by killing and pillaging) by claiming that they fight for freedom… While at the same time the studios are battling so fiercely against piracy (of movies and music) by trying to limit the freedom om customers (by DRM). Perhaps we’ll see a movie in 200 years detailing the struggles of the movie pirates against the evil cooperations that want to enslave them? Perhaps, but probably not done by Disney…
Verdict: See
Todays Most Useless Product
Ok, so we buy a lot of bottled water. And, yes, I buy them too, even if we have some of the best water in the world here. As the market is just insanely profitable, there are new actors entering the market constantly. And they all strive towards finding new products. This, however, is kind of the ultimate “screw you”-product. They sell bottled water. Now with more oxygen! Something you have available almost for free, and something you get for free, are now bottled into something expensive! Yay!
Movie Review: Spider-Man 3
Spider-Man 3 is supposedly one of the most expensive films ever. And it shows. So, it is impossible to not recommend seeing it, if nothing else just to see what kind of movie you get for unlimited funding. You do get an impressive movie. But not necessarily a good movie. The qualities of SM3 are obvious. It looks and sounds great. There are a lot of awesome action scenes. Bruce Campell has a small part. Yay for Bruce! Venom is in the movie! Spider-Man wears his black suite/parasite. So it should be just amazing, right? Wrong. Where the first two movies, and especially the second, managed to capture the dilemma of being spider-man, the hopelessness and the problems, this movie focuses too much of Parkers love for MJ, mechanically played by snaggle-tooth herself, Kirsten Dunst. The addition of Gwen Stacy does not really upset the balance either, and Bryce Dallas Howard doesn’t manage to capture the allure of Gwen anyhow. She just doesn’t fit the part. Topher Grace plays the bad guy much like McDonalds make gourmet food; it is hard to forget where they come from. Topher barely works in a sit-com, but not here. Tobey goes on auto pilot, and manages to do a decent spider-man. The fact that he looks like a complete fool when trying to be cool is certainly a well thought out plan.
The good stuff? Thomas Haden Church is very, very good. Bruce Campbell is always entertaining. The story is kind of weak, but that is expected, this is a movie based on a comic book. There are ample betrayal, action, things flying around, honesty, bravery and romance. And an ugly moped.
So where did the movie go wrong then? I think it gave up on the characters. One of the things that attracted me to the comic books (yes, I am a comic book fan) is the variety of the stories, and the depth of the characters. And, yes, the development. Here the way the characters develops are given from the beginning, no surprises, and really just a distance to travel between the action scenes. In short: Everyone loves spider-man in this movie. His life is working well. No big problems at home, no apparent financial problems. Kind of… the opposite of the spider-man we love from the comics, and the previous films. Sad, really.
Verdict: See (obviously you should see the movie anyhow, even if it isn’t good. It is, after all, ridiculously expensive).
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