Plot Holes and Pizza Rolls

I've been meaning to post about RedLetterMedia's "Plinkett Reviews" for a while now. While the site has apparently been doing reviews of Star Trek films for a while now, it gained the most recognition for its review of Star Wars: Episode I, which clocks in at nearly half the length of the film itself. The latest review, of Episode II, takes things even further.

While the reviewer-as-serial-killer "subplot" (hard to explain until you see it for yourself) is hit or miss, the critiques of the storytelling and filmmaking are mostly spot on, and I found myself nodding in agreement with many of the insightful criticisms. As a taste, here is the site's (relatively short) review of Avatar, a film most of our faithful readers have probably seen:

Super Bowl Commercials 2009

One week later, here's my take on 2009's notable Super Bowl commercials.

The Good

• Audi — The Chase: Jason Statham helps Audi take a stab at its competitors, saying that while previous decades might have been owned by Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Lexus, it's now time for the four rings to shine. It doesn't hurt that the car itself is one slick beast.
• CareerBuilder.com — Tips: I agree with everyone who says that this ad got tiring after the first 30-45 seconds, but in terms of getting people talking, it was second to none. Watch twitter explode when it airs, in The New York Times' interactive tracker (click "Talking about ads").
• Cars.com — David Abernathy: This type of ad has been a trend recently (e.g., Dos Equis' "Most Interesting Man in the World" ads), but I can't argue with the result here, even if it was a bit disappointing, for some reason, to find out that it was for cars.com.
• Hulu — Alec in Huluwood: I love 30 Rock and I love Hulu, and I love 30 Rock on Hulu, and I don't love this ad, but I like it a lot.
• Monster — Double Take: Simple, well-crafted, and clever. It easily got a laugh out of me.

Honorable Mention

• Bud Light — Sweden: Conan O'Brien + Japandering in Sweden (Swedepandering?) is a great starting point for comedy, but Bud Light's typical frenetic editing left the overall commercial a bit lacking.
• Coca Cola — Avatar: You can always count on Coke to bring the harmless but fun branding ads. "Avatar" is a take on our increasingly virtual connectedness, and the power of physical contact. Also, pretty girls are gamers too!
• H&R Block — Death & Taxes: Something about the tax services provider's ad stood out to me over many other equally eligible candidates. It must be the Abe Vigoda.
• Miller High Life — 1 Second Ad: If this really aired during the broadcast, then I missed it, but it's a concept that always gets a response when I mention it to people. As expected, it's just one small (but expensive) part of a bigger overall campaign.
• Pepsi — Refresh Everything and Pepsuber: The Pepsuber ad (with Richard Dean Anderson) probably wasn't very funny unless you've been following the recurring MacGruber sketches on SNL (and even then, maybe not, for many people). Combined with the aspiring-to-be-anthemic "Refresh Everything" ad, though, it was a decent one-two punch for Pepsi. Still doesn't make up for the logo downgrade ...

The Bad

• Cash 4 Gold — Ed McMahon & MC Hammer: Setting aside the fact that the shady company is basically a scam, it was pretty sad to see the hard-for-cash Ed McMahon (fresh off a stint rapping for FreeCreditReport.com) and MC Hammer trying to make the funny, though there are chuckles to be found.
• Castrol — Grease Monkeys: There are worse ads that I could have put on my list (I'm glancing at you, Doritos). Indeed, the production values here aren't even that bad. It just seems like they took the path of least resistance. I kept waiting for the punchline, and all I got was a man-on-chimp smooch. That's not going to cut it, Castrol.
• GoDaddy.com — [all of them]: Scraping the bottom of the barrel again. I wonder what Danica Patrick gets paid for these ads.
• Jack in the Box — Hang in there Jack: On the whole, I'm a big fan of the long-running campaign featuring Jack Box. This one had some nice touches — did you notice the angel on the store window in the final shot? — but it and the associated viral campaign seem wholly unnecessary to me. Or, maybe I just can't stand the thought of Jack not making it!
• Sobe — Lizard Lake: It's the second year in a row that SoBe has wasted its money on these pointless dancing lizard ads. Adding 3-D, football players, and ballet only made it worse. Whenever I see these ads, I can just picture the marketing meeting from which this mish-mash of bad ideas emerged. The focus groups must dig it or something. On the other hand, I credit them for being way above GoDaddy.com's level.

Now you've heard from me. What's on your list?

Cuil

A new search engine named Cuil (pronounced "cool") debuted last week, to much fanfare, with articles heralding its launch from the AP, Reuters, Time, Newsweek, BBC News, The New York Times, and more. (Someone give that PR person a raise!)

Cuil claims the to have largest index and most relevant results, and boasts a team of search industry veterans with impressive resumes, including two former technical leads at Google, the founding CTO of AltaVista, and the original developer of IBM's WebFountain. Of note to privacy enthusiasts, it does not log any IP addresses or keep any users' search histories.

I decided to try it out on its launch day to see how it stacked up against my — and millions of others' — go-to search engine, Google.

I first "cuiled" (doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "Googled") my own name, being the self-centered egomaniac that I am. While Cuil did return one relevant result, the rest of the results had nothing to do with me. It did not find, for example, the site with my name in the domain name. Google, on the other hand, not only finds all of my personal websites, but finds a number of sites that mention me and my similarly-monikered brethren.

Maybe my first test was too difficult. I next decided to search for something much more popular. To my surprise, my query for "iPhone" turned up — wait for it — the Linksys iPhone!

Cuil was helpful enough to know that I might be looking for "Apple iPhone", but when I chose that tab, none of the results on the first page were from Apple's official site, and most were spammy links that weren't useful at all.

I then tried another popular search of the moment: "The Dark Knight". Finally, Cuil returned very relevant results on the first page, including links to the film's official sites (U.S. and Canadian), its Wikipedia entry, and some of its viral marketing sites (Why So Serious?). It also provided a good example of the "Explore by Category" box:

A few more searches of popular terms turned up similarly relevant results on the first page, though there were enough shady sites alongside them to make me suspicious.

Again, though, despite its claims about index size, I found Cuil's depth to be lacking. For example, my search for something at which I couldn't stop laughing that day, "horse backflip":

Google, for the same query, turns up over a million results, including direct links to corresponding online videos, and not just those from YouTube.

I can imagine that a decent percentage of web searches are for Warez and pr0n, and while I didn't really delve into this area, I've (ahem) heard that, there too, Cuil comes up short (har har).

Perhaps the most accurate result returned by Cuil during my testing (since fixed), is for the word "cuil" itself:

At least Cuil, the search engine, was honest enough to know that it isn't yet relevant.

Anything Can Be Funny

Roger Ebert, in his Step Brothers review:

Is this funny? Anything can be funny. Let me provide an example. I am thinking of a particular anatomical act. It is described in explicit detail in two 2008 movies, "Step Brothers" and the forthcoming "Tropic Thunder." In "Step Brothers," it sounds dirty and disgusting. In "Tropic Thunder," described by Jack Black while he is tied to a tree and undergoing heroin withdrawal, it's funny.

Same act, similar descriptions. What's the difference? It involves the mechanism of comedy, I think. The Jack Black character is desperately motivated. He will offer to do anything to be released. In "Step Brothers," the language is simply showing off by talking dirty. It serves no comic function, and just sort of sits there in the air, making me cringe.

[...]

I'm sure I've seen movies with more extreme language than "Step Brothers," but here it seems to serve no purpose other than simply to exist.

This is exactly the way I feel about a few of the Apatow productions I've seen. It's like when you go hang out with a group of people you don't know very well, and they're all joking around and laughing, but you can only manage a smile because you're just not one of them. Maybe the idea is to make so many movies with Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and the rest of the gang, that they do start to feel like friends and you can start laughing at their everyday conversations.

(BTW, I need to lower my expectations for Tropic Thunder if I still want to enjoy it. Even Roger Ebert is getting me pumped up for that movie!)

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.

Lair - A Game Review

Bottom line: Don't buy or even rent this crap game. I don't know why I rented this game even though everyone said that the game was crap. The controls are too clunky; it uses the Sixaxis control scheme, which can be very annoying since your arms can get tired. The gameplay is weird, almost as if it is trying to be a free roaming version of Panzer Dragoon. Can't really comment on the story since the gameplay is sucktastic. Production values are high for the cutscenes, but sadly, this doesn't translate into anything worthwhile for the game.