unacceptable

UFC spoof. Some lines are pretty funny and characterize the UFC archetype...

for the working man

I guess we all hustle. Kat Williams + Rick Ross...



Too bad he didn't do it for someone sitting at a computer all day.

Toughest Terminator Breakdown

I've had this conversation with many people many times over the years. Here's Popular Mechanics' take on the situation.

Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer died earlier this week. His genius in the realm of chess is not in much dispute, but his actions outside of the ranks and files have won him many enemies. I'm interested to see what people will write about him now that he's passed.

The Atlantic ran a long profile of Fischer in 2002, which covers many of the bases.

Why he stopped playing tournaments, and how his life unraveled so pathetically, is a story one can learn only by seeking out those who actually know Fischer. There are surprisingly few such people—and fewer yet are willing to talk. Fischer doesn't tolerate friends who give interviews. His address book is a graveyard of crossed-out names of people who have been quoted in articles about him. But some formerly loyal Fischer associates, appalled at his recent behavior, are finally talking about him. They reveal that Fischer's story doesn't follow the usual celebrity-gone-to-seed arc. He has not been brought low by drugs or alcohol, by sex scandals or profligate spending. Instead he is a victim of his own mind—and of the inordinate attention that the world has given it.

In the days after his death, The New York Times had not just one ...

Bobby Fischer — the rebel, the enfant terrible, the uncompromising savage of the chess board — had captured the imagination of the world. Because of him, for the first time in the United States, the game, with all its arcana and intimations of nerdiness, was cool.

... but two pieces about Fischer.

A child’s gifts in such realms can seem otherworldly, the achievements effortlessly magical. But as Bobby Fischer’s death on Thursday might remind us, even abstract gifts can exact a terrible price.

Slate chimes in ...

His triumphs and the prize money he demanded helped transform what had been considered an obsession of "shadowy, unhappy, unreal-looking men" (as H.G. Wells put it) into an alluring form of mental recreation in the 1970s.

... as does TIME, with a photoessay.

Hot Rod

I've seen some amazing and critically-acclaimed films recently, like No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, as well as some not-as-amazing but still critically-acclaimed films like Juno and American Gangster. But the film I'm going to bless with a review on this blog is ... Hot Rod. Why Hot Rod? Because it's the film you are least likely to have seen. My review might not change that.

I had put Hot Rod on my Netflix queue, and it hit the top spot recently, so I gave it a chance to make me find it funny (a chance all comedies deserve). What I got was like a series of high-production-value Lonely Island videos played back-to-back, but not all ones that I like. It has the same quirky, 1980s-meets-internet-age vibe as Napoleon Dynamite, and many other similarities too, but I can see why Napoleon found more of an audience, before people became tired of quirk in general.

Of course, there are parts that I found funny — when Rod introduces his "crew" to the girl-next-door (literally), and they don't quite understand how to say a few words about themselves; the first jump, on the non-reinforced ramp; Will Arnett. Other things just didn't do it for me — Rod's enthusiastic fan, who loves to dance (it's funny because he's Asian!); Rod's "2 Legit 2 Quit" speech and subsequent crosswalk accident; the behind-the-scenes DVD extra that kind of made me want to punch people in the face. Many gags were so unrelated to the plot or tried to wring humor out of being so drawn out — Rod falling down a hill; an impromptu "cool beans" musical number; Ebenezer Scrooge. Family Guy has really played that out already.

As an example of where this film went wrong, for me, consider a scene in which Rod is telling someone about his biological father's death. Rod describes a series of gruesome injuries that his dad incurs during his last attempted stunt and ends with: "he died instantly". That's already funny, because it's comically redundant after what we hear the bike did to its rider, right? No. Too highbrow, apparently; Rod has to add: "... the next day". I un-laughed. The line that I found so disappointing is now listed as a "favorite quote" on many a MySpace page, though, so what do I really know about comedy?

I'm not surprised that they had to test-screen the movie to death, or that the same scene would be listed as both an audience's favorite and least favorite. Every joke is hit-or-miss. I watched all of the deleted scenes and outtakes, and I think I could edit together a version of the film that I would find at least 10x funnier (especially using some of Danny R. McBride's ad-libs or some of Will Arnett's alternate dialogue). The problem is that your funnier version might need different discarded clips, or clips from another movie.

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security

I stumbled upon this site when I was reading the discussion of the following article on Ars Technica.  It's a pretty interesting read.

2007 Screenplays

It's awards season in Hollywood, and that means "For Your Consideration" websites from the studios, with downloadable PDFs of screenplays. Here's what I could find; get 'em while they're up:

• Fox Searchlight — The Darjeeling Limited, Juno, The Namesake, Once, The Savages, Waitress
• Universal — American Gangster, The Bourne Ultimatum, Breach, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Kingdom, Knocked Up
• Paramount Vantage (Flash link) — A Mighty Heart, Into The Wild, The Kite Runner, Margot At The Wedding, There Will Be Blood
• Miramax — No Country For Old Men, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly, Gone Baby Gone, Hoax

You might have to click posters and "screenplay" or "script" links at each website.

It's interesting to see how the final film differs from what's on the page. The PDFs are all "shooting scripts" — basically final drafts — so they don't show how the screenplay may have evolved from what the studio or filmmakers originally saw. What you can see, though, is what was changed on-set, ad-libbed, or edited out after filming.

I skimmed through Juno's screenplay, since it was still fresh in my mind from having seen it a couple of weeks ago. What you see on the screen is mostly there on the page. Contrast that with a comedy like Knocked Up where certain scenes are edited together from the actors' ad-libbed riffs. Diablo Cody's script supposedly improved compared to early drafts, and there were a number of lines cut from the shooting script too. It was clear that leaving those lines in would have pointlessly extended some scenes and disrupted the overall flow of the film, just to squeeze in a few more bits of quirky dialogue. The pair of shots from Juno's POV as she walks through the masses of students at her school, which visually depict her transition from unnoticed to "cautionary whale", are also notably present on the page — I thought those might be a contribution of director Jason Reitman, who Cody credited in an AP article with the "tone" of the picture.

Next up for me is probably There Will Be Blood, which alliesglove and I saw last night, and which I will need to delve into to help me process everything that happened in that epic film. I've already noticed some differences in the ending. Apparently there are also some lines in the script that spell out some of Daniel Plainview's motivating issues (Spoilers!). Most likely, I will be happy that those lines were left unsaid in the final picture.

Wheel of Lunch

ECK pointed this out to me today.  If ever we were stuck on deciding for a place to go to lunch, this nifty web applet can help out.