Blue Glow

Spider

2008-05-05T11:11:00.001-07:00

Saw this short at the Marfa Film Fest this past weekend -- I particularly like the Ione Skye song at the end.

Goodbye to the Normals

2008-04-29T09:30:00.001-07:00

This little short is brilliant -- four minutes of pure comedy. Strange that it only played a handful of festivals. Oh well, now it's on YouTube for your enjoyment.

Forsooth.

2008-04-24T20:42:00.001-07:00

Best reason to use NetNewsWire ever

2008-04-22T17:43:00.001-07:00

My schedule hasn't allowed me to do much casual blog-surfing lately; I've been restricted to hitting Daring Fireball about once a day and reading 2 or 3 of the more important industry news blogs at work. The authors of my varied RSS feeds, meanwhile, have been dutifully pumping information and entertainment into the blogosphere, which NetNewsWire collects for me.

The difference between NetNewsWire and a reader like Bloglines or Google Reader, however, is that NetNewsWire keeps all that info cached on my laptop. (NNW syncs with NewsGator, so if I want to read on the web or on my iPhone, I can do that too.) When I'm thirty thousand feet in the air and completely cut off from the net, I can still catch up on my blog reading. And since I'm out of phone and email range, I really don't have anything better to do. Sheer bliss.

Gasoline vs Ethanol commercial

2008-04-21T17:43:00.001-07:00

My friend Glenn entered an advertising competition called "Fuel the Change."

Rate my video in this contest!

Submit entry

Contest details

Check out the rest of the commercials but I think Glenn's is the best I've seen. Please vote!

Wacky divorce video on YouTube

2008-04-16T09:16:00.001-07:00

This is apparently really, really big news.

I don't doubt it has divorce lawyers alternately licking their chops or gasping in horror, but I'm pretty sure Andy Warhol is somewhere out there, laughing.

Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back - Response to Monster Cable � Audioholics Home Theater Reviews and News

2008-04-15T18:00:00.001-07:00

This response to a cease and desist letter from Monster Cable makes me want to spend money with Blue Jeans Cable -- and I don't even need any home stereo cabling right now. Never has a company been more aptly named: Monster has been ripping people off with grossly overpriced cabling for years and threatening capricious legal action against their competitors. What they didn't know is that Kurt Denke, the president of Blue Jeans, is a former attorney. Here's my favorite passage from the letter he wrote back to Monster.

I am "uncompromising" in the most literal sense of the word. If Monster Cable proceeds with litigation against me I will pursue the same merits-driven approach; I do not compromise with bullies and I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defense than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds. As for signing a licensing agreement for intellectual property which I have not infringed: that will not happen, under any circumstances, whether it makes economic sense or not.

In context of the entire letter's it is easy to see that Denke is a reasonable person, and that (at the very least) Monster is half-assing their cease-and-desist efforts. Read the entire letter ("Blue Jeans Cable Strikes Back") over at Audioholics, it's a hoot.

(Via Daring Fireball.)

M.C.????????????????????????????

2008-04-08T12:40:00.001-07:00

No clue what the title says but the video speaks for itself.

Uwe Boll will stop directing if 1 million people ask him to.

2008-04-07T16:35:00.001-07:00

Or so he says.

Sign the petition here - almost 73,000 signatures as of this writing.

Battlestar Galactica complete recap thus far

2008-04-04T13:39:00.001-07:00

I saw this on my Tivo last night and was pretty much intending to download it to DVD for my own nefarious purposes, but now I don't have to. Thank you, intertubes!

The fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica starts tonight.

Mr. T performs miracle revival of comatose boy

2008-04-02T06:06:00.001-07:00

He tells Britain's Empire magazine, "His family put toys around him and one of them was a Mr. T doll. And whenever my name came up, the boy moved his arm."

"Somebody told the doctors I was in town, so they called me down there. I closed the curtains and prayed. Then, as I was walking down the hall, the kid suddenly came out of the coma and hollered out."

"That was my supernatural moment."

Read Mr. T brought boy out of coma.

(Via John Merriman.)

You will be compelled to the edge of sight and sound.

2008-04-01T22:23:00.001-07:00

Guess who went to Trailerthon tonight?

Conan O'Brien on the Jon Stewart Show

2008-04-01T07:53:00.001-07:00

As excerpted on the Colbert Report back in January.

Top Ten Reasons to Watch the New Season of Battlestar Galactica

2008-03-31T08:51:00.001-07:00

Battlestar Galactica's new season begins this Friday on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Google turns out the lights

2008-03-29T18:08:00.001-07:00

Google draws attention to "Earth Hour" by darkening its home page for a day.

On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour � from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation.

Sprint pay incentives aim to slow cancellations

2008-03-27T00:20:00.001-07:00

Mobile phone company Sprint Nextel, fighting to retain customers, is changing employee bonus plans to double the importance of stopping cancellations, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission showed on Tuesday.

Sprint treated me so badly that I paid a good amount of money just to be rid of them. Comparatively, AT&T (whose corporate logo used to be called the Death Star as a joking reference to their monolithic presence and evil customer service) has been a dream. Their cell service and their customer service are miles better than Sprint, so I'm not at all surprised that customers are kicking Sprint to the curb in droves. They deserve it.

Read Sprint pay incentives aim to slow cancellations | Tech News on ZDNet.

Good Gear: SkullCandy Ink'd Earbuds

2008-03-20T15:12:00.001-07:00

I have traditionally eschewed earbuds for over-the-ear headphones. Earbuds never seem to fit my ears and I spend half my time repositioning the damn things when they fall out. Headphones, on the other hand, are awkward to carry around, can be uncomfortable in Texas heat, and never provide quite the sound isolation I'm looking for in a pair of really good earbuds. Not wanting to shell out a hundred bucks or more for high end earbuds, however, I opted to suffer in headphone land. Until now.

I'm not sure why I thought these SkullCandy Ink'd earbuds might work for me, but I was attracted by the shiny metal accents and the iPhone-compatible jack connector. (One of the great frustrations of owning an iPhone is that it is incompatible with 99% of the headphone/earbud products on the market by dint of its recessed input jack.) The price ($15) seemed right, though, so I took a gamble. It was only after opening the packaging that I realized the genius inherent in these deceptively stylish earbuds. The silicone earpieces are replaceable and come in several sizes. I'd seen similar adjustable earbuds in the Jabra line of telephone headsets and in high-end stereo products, but not in discount earbuds.

So I thought to myself -- am I a large? a medium? a small? And then I realized -- my ears could be different sizes, and that's why no one set of earbuds ever seemed to fit right.

Sure enough, my left ear snugly fits a small earpiece, and my right ear takes a medium. Now I have a great fitting pair of earbuds that completely block out exterior noise (just ask my office mate) and deliver great sound at a ridiculously low price. I'm going to by a few more pairs to guard against loss or damage. Products this good tend to disappear, so git while the gittin's good is my thinking.

I'm fully aware that I could be completely unaware of similarly great products, so check out Ink'd Earbuds on Amazon and tell me about your favorite headphones/earbuds in the comments.

SxSW MADNESS!

2008-03-10T19:36:00.001-07:00

If things have been a little quiet, it's because I'm swept up in the South By Southwest film festival. Check out the coverage over at Slackerwood and, for you filmmakers in the crowd, Film Festival Secrets.

Cult Movies Podcast Episode 51

2008-03-06T21:44:00.001-08:00

"All The Glamour Hollywoood Can Muster." In this episode we talk about the Oscars, why we hate the Razzies, some summer movies, and the death of HD-DVD.

100 days, 100 movies and Film Festival Secrets.

2008-03-04T23:09:00.001-08:00

As you probably know, Stomp Tokyo is currently in hibernation while Scott and I recharge our mental batteries. Back in November we decided it was time to formally acknowledge the fact that we were on a break from the b-movie biz and pursue the other projects on our plates.

Scott has reverted to type and is passing the time on his blog with a concept that is, admittedly, 100% Awesome: 100 days, 100 movies. In his own words:

My plan is to watch a movie a day for at least the next 100 days, and write something, however brief, on each one of them. Movie will mostly be on DVD, though I imagine I�ll get out to theater every now and again. There will also be a few digital download movies in there too.

For my part, I'm doing a bunch of writing on the small corner of the film world that has become my professional life: film festivals. After talking with hundreds of festival directors and staffers, I realized that every day they receive a deluge of questions from filmmakers -- the same questions, over and over again. And so I started the Film Festival Secrets blog with an eye towards answering those questions, eventually in the form of a book.

So now you're caught up on what we're up to at the moment. Look out, world -- it's gettin' crazy up in here.

Podcast Catch-up - new episodes

2008-03-04T08:19:00.001-08:00

The last time I posted here about a new episode of Stomp Tokyo - the Cult Movies Podcast, it was November. If you don't subscribe to the podcast with an RSS reader you could be forgiven for thinking that Scott and I hadn't recorded anything since then. But how wrong you'd be! Here's a recap of the episodes since then:

Stomp Tokyo Podcast #47 - In another catch-up episode, we talk about HD DVD and new theater experiences, as well as No Country for Old Men and Cat O'Nine Tails.

Stomp Tokyo Podcast #48 - In this episode we discuss the WGA strike, HD-DVD, and Rambo. Featuring special guest and occasional Peter Cushing impersonator Freeman Williams.

Stomp Tokyo Podcast #49 - Subjects this time include Cloverfield, Slamdance, and B-Fest.

Stomp Tokyo Podcast #50 - We Always Shoot With a Steady Cam. Subjects include documentaries, Cloverfield, and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.

And there's another episode on the way, we're just editing it together. Enjoy!

The B-Masters Cabal Roundtable #25: The Ottoman Empire Strikes Back

2008-03-02T05:54:00.001-08:00

The B-Masters are back with another roundtable, this time centered around Turkish ripoff cinema. I've long been in love with any movie prefaced by the words "The Turkish," so I'm sorry I missed participation in this particular roundtable.

Fortunately Scott was there to pick up the slack, even during Stomp Tokyo's sabbatical. His review of Badi (the Turkish version of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial) stands proud (?) with the other reviews from the industrious members of the B-Masters Cabal -- watching crap so you don't have to.

Read The B-Masters Cabal � 25: The Ottoman Empire Strikes Back.

Barack OBollywood

2008-03-01T19:29:00.001-08:00

If YouTube videos were delegates in the electoral college, Barack Obama would be president. Here's my favorite ObamaTube so far.

Just one more reason to love Diablo Cody

2008-02-28T19:56:00.001-08:00

Diablo Cody, screenwriter of Juno, posted this pic to her blog the other day. (Click to reveal.)

That blog, by the way, is over at MySpace.

Don't miss the other photos she's posted recently, particularly the one of her and Ron Jeremy hanging out at a... disco?

I know people who were really disappointed by this particular win, but I say it was just right. And the tearful speech by Cody thanking her family was very sweet. In fact, I'm pretty happy about the way the Oscars went overall this year. It seemed really low-key and without a lot of the BS that makes them usually so intolerable.

Of course, the musical numbers were as un-entertaining as usual, but at least I got to see Amy Adams and Kristen Chenoweth perform. An unusual display of taste in picking the performers, but the performances themselves were uninspired.

But hey! The Coens and Diablo Cody honored in a big way. I'm happy.

Time to Pretend

2008-02-28T05:49:00.001-08:00

Blake over at Cinema is Dope sent me a link to this trippy video from an unidentified band. (Unidentified to me, anyway. Feel free to clue me in. Update: if I had been paying attention to the first few frames of the video, I would have learned that the band is called MGMT.) It comes from Court 13, the production company that made Death to the Tinman.

It reminds me a lot of those wacky musical numbers that Raquel Welch did for her self-titled bio-film, Raquel!, but with more video effects and less John Wayne.

Watch Time to Pretend.