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wakefresh

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Posts posted by wakefresh

  1. Posted

    yo what is our current white zombie. i personally cant wait to reminisce in 10 years about the quirky indie romantic comedies that all used folk songs where ppl shout Hey

     

    That British band that plays backwoods music. I forget their name but they had Ed Helms and Will Forte in one of their music videos.

     

    Another trope about quirky indie romantic comedies I find is the shot of fireworks launching into the night sky. There was one movie I saw with Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg where they were launching fireworks at a wedding! A WEDDING! I laughed out loud at that in the theater and I know it made other folks uncomfortable.

  2. Posted

     

    Really? I watched some clips at work and had no problem committing to McBride in a serious role. I was more thrown off by Franco's decision to cram in all kinds of weird split screen shots into the flick.

     

    Well, I only saw the trailer, so I can't comment on the whole film. But I've seen so many eps of Eastbound and Down, the Apatow movies, the fairy tale movie he and Franco made, that in my mind he's funny dude. I've type-cast him already.

     

    I remember when I went to go see an action movie and all of the characters are in a mission control-type room with lots of monitors, and one of the techs turns around...and its ED FUCKING O'NEIL! Me and everyone in the theater were like, "AL BUNDY!"

     

    Some people are cursed with too much success at one thing.

  3. Posted

    Oh, Mr. Tompkins was quite redeemed, I'd say. That's my vote! And Howard too. Heck, Kulap as well - everyone's redeemed! NO ONE is undeemed here on "Who Charted?" -- it's too good of a podcast to besmirch with some irredeemable antics.

     

    Also, good looking out, Ku-Ku! I totally forgot about the Dead Author's Podcast until you suggested it for the plug! I have some catching up to do! As per the will of the plugs section, I will also head to Youtube and

    some more. I saw one episode - with either Adam Scott or Ben Schwartz on it (I get those two confused for some reason) - liked it a lot, and subscribed to Paul's Youtube Channel. But the, "What to Watch" feed on my Youtube homepage buries it under updates for other channels.

     

    EDIT: rofl @ the Ben Franklin episode! Hot Saucerman knocked it out of the park! Clearly, he did his research on Ben Franklin before doing the show! "We're colonialists! We live in Boston, right? Or something? Hard to say... we live in Maine, or somewhere. I dunno. New England!" Hahahaha.

     

    The Speakeasy ep with Aziz Ansari is soo good because at the end, they totally go into suit talk -- they talk about tailors, brands they like, their particular styles, etc. At one point, Paul is like, "is anyone even still finding this interesting?" and Aziz says, "Fuck those people, because the suit talk stays in!"

    • Like 1

  5. Posted

    This does look sort of interesting, if only to see Franco franco-ing it up and doing stunts. Sidenote: Franco directed a film adaptation of "As I Lay Dying" and it has Danny McBride in it. I saw the trailer on TV and as soon as McBride's face is on screen, I burst out laughing. I don't think I could ever take him seriously in a dramatic movie.

    • Like 2

  7. Posted

    It's super boring and bananas, but never quite pays off in the way something like Birdemic or The Room does. I've tried several times but it is just boring; maybe if there was a Rifftrax commentary I could do it. The fact that it hasn't quite gained a cult reputation or really any degree of notoriety tells me that my reaction is probably correct.

     

    Boring? Did you see the passion that was expressed in the trailer? The passion and energy was so high that the guy had to talk real slow and throw books.

    • Like 1

  9. Posted

    I'm pretty sure I remember being a kid and there was this thing where your parents could take you to a fire station(?) and they would look though or scan your candy or something. And local news would always have tips like no homemade treats, no unpackaged candy, etc. Was there ever a single documented case of a kid getting a razor blade in an apple? Because that was totally a thing back in the day.

     

    Futher derailing: Do kids even trick or treat like they used to? I live in Portland and I see very few kids actually going door to door; it seems like they all go to the mall or local businesses or maybe their parents are driving them out to the suburbs. It kinda bums me out because one of the adult activities I always looked forward to was giving kids apples with razor blades in them.

     

    You and me both, man...you and me both.

     

    I do believe that some crazy person did do a switcheroo on a trick-or-treater at one time. I sort of remember a news story about someone getting pills in their bag instead of candy, but it could all be urban legend.

     

    Halloween was never a big deal in my family and my parents would just buy us a huge bag of candy and let us stay up late instead taking us trick or treating. And when my mom got into church, she would just take us to church on Halloween, where we would listen to gospel songs and eat a big bag of candy.

    • Like 1

  10. Posted

    Also at least Pete played along with everything and was game, there are plenty of first time guests on CBB who aren't

     

    For example for most of the Bill Hader/Bob Ducca ep this year Hader was flat out not playing along with things Scott was doing and was freaking checking his phone throughout. At least Pete was game 100% of the time and while he might not be everyone's cup of tea he was trying his hardest

     

    Have you forgotten the Jeff Garlin ep?

    • Like 1

  12. Posted

    My biggest beef with this movie is that they didn't try to tie in any of the past Halloween movies with this story. I mean Warlocks building robots come on.I don't know anything about Wicca but I don't seem to ever recall hearing about witches and warlocks building robots. The guy goes to all this trouble to destroy the world by building a novelty company empire. only to made crappy Halloween masks out of bits of Stonehenge. Why not just buy a chocolate bar company and use magic to his bidding. Kids eat the candy at night and become possessed Michael Myers style deranged killers. Then you would have a tie into the past movies with the story someway. And maybe explain why Michael Myers is so hard to kill, there's more than one!

     

    Sure seems a lot easier of a plan than buying airtime on television and convincing all three major television networks to play your crappy mask show at the sametime. Hoping to hell all the kids are watching.

     

    The real question is why didn't they use the Michael Myers mask in the movie.

     

    Ooh, I like the idea of the candy turning the kids into killers. I remember growing up there were always these stories about people finding razor blades in apples. How great would it have been if a movie honed in on that fear that parents and kids sort of have about Halloween?

  13. Posted

    This is a movie made by someone who thinks that stuff about the Deep Web is true. There is a whole new breed of crazy that says the center of the Internet is an ancient Mesopotamian god who feeds off of electricity(?) and fiber optics(?). Who knows, but I do really want to see this movie.

  14. Posted

    Unfortunately, every time something makes it huge there are those neo-hipsters who claim that it's ruined now because it's popular. It happens a lot with the recent blast of Marvel movies, and even with director's like Joss Whedon, who was mainly a cult guy before Avengers raked in a billion dollars. You can expect more of the same next year if Guardians of the Galaxy makes it huge.

     

    I think many people like having the idea that they discovered something first, that it was special to them, and can't be that way for others. I definitely prickled a bit when the new Doctor Who became so popular because I was like "shit, Tom Baker and Lalla Ward have been my jam forever". Pop culture is a gigantic shared experience now -- and it actually always has been (100+ million people watched the final episode of M.A.S.H.) -- we just couldn't connect on the same level we do now. It can be disconcerting to realize that you're not a super special snowflake.

     

    But the thing that really baffles me is how that entitlement AND the niche-complex can both exist at once. Because if you're a die-hard Trek fan, you should probably realize that you're going to be harder to please; as your tastes become more refined, you enter into a contract with the media that says you're just not going to get as much of what you love, because you've already found what you really love. That came out of a particular time and place and set of expectations, and it's yours now... but it also means you can't keep going back to that same source and expecting it to happen again. On the other hand, if you're still on-board and you've accepted what it's gonna take to get some more content (in this case, something set in the same universe but with a wider appeal), then you have every right to feel entitled to an enjoyable experience. But that's where perspective comes in.

     

     

    Yes, to everything y'all are saying right now! A million times, "YES!"

     

    People are so without any sense of self that just mere act of enjoying a piece of content (music, movie, book, etc) is an integral part of how they see themselves. Just because you like X doesn't mean anything more than you like X. It does not bestow extra attributes to your personality and it doesn't make you special or unique for liking it.

     

    I think there is also this idea that people who consume the media now have "ownership" over it. I believe that some of the entitlement comes from that. Just like cat & beard said, people feel that them and only them were touched in a "special" way by this media and all others that come after are not as touched or as special. There is a book called "Jennifer Government" that sets up this dystopian world where people are so attached to brands and companies that they take on the company name as their surnames. I feel like that is the next step in all of this intense clinging to corporate media.

     

    I hope with all of my heart that the writers, directors, producers of the new Star Wars films don't listen to anything that any fanboy has to say. Those new Star Wars movies are not for anyone but teenagers and young kids of this era. If you're in your mid-20s, the Prequels is your version of Star Wars (sorry!). If you're older than that than you experienced the original trilogy either in the theaters or on TV. Step aside and let a new generation grow to love the story (or not), but we already had our introduction, and like rcavannah said, those circumstances can't be recreated.

  15. Posted

     

    I don't even...

     

    This is a problem. No offense, but with the amount of people saying stuff like this, it sounds like the viewing audience is a little kid who just now learned the meaning of "plot hole" and are waaaaay overflexing that muscle.

     

    I just don't get all the complaining about Star Trek, and I think I blame the internet. It's changed the way we view things. It's like something can't just be good, but people have to show how they're smarter than something that's perfectly fine. Think about it: Decades ago, people walked out of the theater after seeing a movie like, oh, I dunno... something good, like Mad Max 2, but not of legendary Spielbergian quality. Back then, lots of people walked out of that kind of movie saying "THAT WAS AWESOME!" and now for some reason we're calling foul on a massively enjoyable film with far fewer flaws.

     

    Something's just off here. It's not about entitlement to opinions, but just plain ol' entitlement... and it's not actually about plot issues, because people have dealt with those for ages. it's about some weird hive-mind perspective shift in the audience. I'd say it's a sign of increased intellect, but I think it's more accurately a sign of decreased perspective.

     

    I wish I could like this 1,000 times! I agree that it is a matter of decreased perspective, but not of movies, but of a person's place in history and time. Star Trek is a very popular sci-fi franchise that has been made for "the masses" (more on the usage of that term in a minute) in many different mediums -- cartoons, tv shows, movies, comic books, novels, etc. There is a big backlash to the Abrams Star Trek films because Abrams has said explicitly that he wanted to make the movies appeal to more than die-hard Star Trek fans. And so now, you have people -- people who mistakenly believe that Star Trek is a niche subculture instead of a 50+ year old corporate entertainment franchise -- nitpick everything that they believe is "dumbing down" Star Trek for "the masses." They nitpicked the casting choices ("they're just models in space"); they nitpicked that old cast didn't get major roles; they nitpicked how the ship looked; they nitpicked the science (which is fucking strange since the bedrock of Star Trek is the warp engine and transporter, neither which exist in reality).

     

    The lack of perspective extends even further when you see people use phrases like "the masses" when describing people who they feel are "bringing down" the franchise. Like I said before, Star Trek is a fucking 50+ year franchise. Several generations have grown up seeing either a movie or a TV show set inside of this world. They are not ignorant to its existence. They get the general gist of what is going on and the characters. But there is this weird winnowing of what defines a "true" Star Trek fan and that "small" group( remember its a 50+ year old franchise) should be able to dictate how everyone else gets to consume, feel, and say about the movie so that the "masses" (the same fucking people who have been exposed to the story for 50+ years) properly "get it."

     

    Hearing "nerds" go on about how X is getting "dumbed down for the masses" is like listening to a fundamental Christian talk about the "war on Christmas" and how Christians are prosecuted in the United States. In both instances, both groups lack a perspective to see that they are the majority, have ever shifting standards of what define a "true" member, and feel that they should be allowed to dictate how others digest a popular aspect of culture.

    • Like 4

  16. Posted

    Yeah they got pretty campy in the last couple of films. Also remember the childless carnival in that movie that had Roseanne and Tom Arnold as crazy parents? What's even creepier is in the sequel comic series to Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash, that daughter has developed an incestuous relationship with Freddy.

     

    I screamed in my apartment when I saw them in that movie!

     

    "Roseanne?!!!! What the hell are you doing here?!!!"

  17. Posted

     

    The very first Nightmare had some legit scares, but then came the uber campy Part 2 and all the messes that followed and it just turned into a joke. Though I am a big fan of Wes Craven's New Nightmare, not because it's scary necessarily (though parts of it are definitely unsettling) but because it's just a more interesting concept.

     

    But that eventual decline into self-parody seems to happen to all these horror franchises. Both Craven and Carpenter kind of hated the idea of sequels, and it's too bad the studios didn't listen to those instincts.

     

    Oh man, the one where Freddy is killed by his long-lost daughter is crazy campy. He turns one of his claw gloves into a version of the Nintendo Power Glove so that he can play a video game that will eventually kill one of the characters.

    • Like 1

  21. Posted

    They are running these non stop on AMC right now, and as an adult, I am amazed that I ever found any of this shit scary at all. Like they showed all of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and watching them as an adult, they were not scary or frightening -- but they were rather gruesome, slapstick horror live-action cartoons.

     

    The Chucky movies are even more perplexing because it is just a doll. Why not just burn the doll? Why not break the doll? Are they not stronger than a plastic doll? And what happens at the end of those movies -- who gets the blame for all of those deaths? Do you tell the authorities that a doll came to life and killed everyone?

    • Like 2

  23. Posted

    I don't know what you're talking about, he always makes complete sense to me.

     

    Radiohead for me is like the Beatles; I have never owned an album and never actively sought them out because everyone else around is listening to them or they're on some radio/karaoke/whatever. I'm not super into Radiohead; their arc is kind of like Pink Floyd: basic kinda weird rock to concept freak psych rock to formula. I dig that they've brought some interesting elements into popular music, though.

     

    I just like the videos for Karma Police and Paranoid Andriod. Other than that I have no idea about any other songs they have done. What do elements do you think others have used from them?

  25. Posted

    I'll agree with Paul about Radiohead. They had some of the best albums of a generation with The Bends, OK Computer, and Kid A, and they had a solid one with Hail to the Thief. Then they just got really scrambled with one other's direction and started doing really experimental stuff that you could take or leave. Their albums aren't as solid as they used to be because of it.

     

    Then Howard started talking about one of them getting shot and I was like WTF.

     

    There were a couple of things that Howard said in this ep that I was like, "huh?"

    • Like 1
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