... What I Listen To [podcasts]

I don't watch much TV really. I'll turn on the news (CNN or Fox) and Current TV every so often, and maybe some comedy central late at night if I'm bored, but for the most part I get most of my media and entertainment from the internet. And usually that's in the form of podcasts. So I thought I'd share the ginormous list of everything I normally listen to/watch, with a piffy description of each thing. I'll just do em in alphabetical order (discounting "the"s) because, why not!?

Diggnation - Video podcast. 2 guys sitting on a couch drinking beer (sometimes tea) talking about popular internet news items. It's based off of http://www.digg.com where users post cool stories, videos, pictures, etc, and then "digg" the things they like. Sometimes they discuss genuinely interesting things, sometimes ridiculous things, sometimes stupid things... pretty big variety. So this is a double plug - the website is awesome and the podcast is awesome.

The /Filmcast - Audio podcast. For the hard-core movie lovers only. The podcas normally runs between about 1 hour or 2 hours long and is just a few guys talking about movies. Each episode they start out with a synopsis of what each person has been watching over the past week. The second segment they discuss film news of the past week. And the final hour or so is spent doing a ridiculously in-depth review of one movie. One of my favorite things about it is that they don't like spoiling movies for people so they warn you in advance before saying anything big, and it's a cool podcast to find out about movies you may have missed or should check out in the future.

Film Riot - Video podcast. It's about 10 minutes of short-film sketches (hilarious sketches by the way) followed by a brief description of how they did some of the special effects in the sketches. They cover anything from special effects to lighting to sound, etc. It's a quick entertaining watch and you learn something too!

Hatecast - Audio podcats. Put on by The Onion, this little gem actually covers real stories and news items, not fake! However, they only talk about things that they hate, like if Paris Hilton buys another dog or something. It's about 20 minutes long, fairly amusing, definitely some dark humor.

Loaded - Video podcast. It's about 5 minutes of the biggest tech news of the day (or the day before). Pretty interesting. Need I say more?

Onion News Network - Video podcast. This only slightly qualifies as a podcast. It's just where they release those hilarious Onion News Network videos to download on itunes.

SModcast - Audio podcast. Definitely the crudest one on the list... quite R-rated. Kevin Smith (director of Clerks I, II, Dogma, Chasing Amy... ) and Scott Mosier (producer of a lot of those movies listed before) just talk about stuff for an hour or more. It's whatever they feel like talking about most of the time, and usually turns into them acting out various scenarios with each other. It's hilarious.

The Totally Rad Show - Video podcast. The podcast has a few segments, each one about 10 minutes long: Movie Review, Video Game Review. TV Show Review, Comic Review, Reading Letters, News, Random Segment. Usually each episode only takes a few of those segments listed above, doesn't cover all of them. But they pretty much always review at least 2 movies every episode, and each review is only about 5 minutes long. It's good, concise, and pretty funny in the process.

Review - 9

Okay, so this is officially the first movie from the list of Movies I Think Will Be Awesome that I was wrong on. See, I don't just review movies that are awesome!

9 is an animated film directed by Shane Acker (his first movie) set in an odd apocalyptic future where machines have wiped out humanity. Really really unique story, right? What made me want to see it though, and what put it on my radar of possibly being an awesome movie, was the short film it was based off of, found here: 9 Short Film

In the end, the movie didn't live up though. It was visually creative and interesting, and the action near the end was quite satisfying, but it lacked depth. There was almost zero character development at all. Only 3 of the characters (1, 5, and 9) had any sense of development at all and that was quite minimal. I wished the movie was about 20 minutes longer just to get me emotionally invested in the story... which I wasn't at all the whole movie.

As for the post apocalyptic setting - I really didn't understand it. The antagonist of the movie was a machine-brain that could make its own machines to kill humanity and such. However, the machine brain was only located in a smallish-factory in what looked to be Europe circa WWII. I really didn't believe at all the entire movie that all of humanity had been killed. Instead, I believed this cingular town had been destroyed by a mean robot. After all, how in the world could this robot in a small factory have spread across the whole world and destroyed everything and then decided to just stay in the small crappy dilapidated factory? The place wasn't even big enough to create enough of an army to take out anything. Dumb. Or maybe there's further back story that Acker decided not to tell us.

So there you go. Uninteresting story, no attachment to the characters, and only about 80 minutes long. The only good thing about 9 is its extraordinary creativity. Considering this is Acker's first feature-length movie, I'll let some of this slide and blame it on being a novice. I'm looking forward to what he comes up next simply because I find his creativity so intriguing, but if his next film isn't great either... hmm.

If you're interested in this movie, wait till it comes to Netflix or TV and watch it.

Potential Based on Preview: 8.5/10
Actual Movie: 5.5/10

New Vid - Wonderful Things of UAH

So school has started back and with it a bunch of school work and Crusade stuff. Here's a fun video I made for last week's CRU, showing off some of the ridiculous/silly/funny/stupid things about UAH. We had a lot more ideas than the ones used, but meh, maybe we'll do another one later! I'll try to keep this blog up to date with videos from the semester as I do em. Here ya go!

Review - Inglorious Basterds

[Don't worry, no important spoilers below]
Inglorious Basterds is the 7th film from Quentin Tarantino. He's slightly twisted, undoubtedly, but he's one of my favorite directors (alongside Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, and Danny Boyle). He's the man behind two of my favorite films, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. The only movies he's really directed with any or much action them in at all were Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and the action in those movies was absolutely insane... in an extraordinarily exaggerated good way. In Tarantion's other movies, the primary source of action comes from his incredibly witty, obscure, and drawn out sequences of dialogue. Let me emphasize the drawn out and obscure part of that last sentence. In fact, all Reservoir Dogs is for the most part is people talking to each other in the exact same room, with the suspense of possible action lingering at all moments.

So what kind of film is Inglorious Basterds? Definitely the dialogue end of the spectrum. The entire first scene is about a 10-15 minute conversation between a French dairy farmer and a Nazi soldier. The key though is that it doesn't feel like a conversation - it feels like a battle. They aren't even talking about anything of much substance either! Yet somehow, the very fact that they aren't talking about anything of much substance, and the fact that it does feel so casual, is the reason you as the viewer are so concerned about where the situation may be heading. The entire movie is filled with scenes like this, and it works, wonderfully.

So if it's all a lot of dialogue, then why does the trailer make it look like such an action film? Well, because Brad Pitt is incredibly marketable, and because action and killing Nazis sells. But in reality, Brad Pitt and his team, The Basterds, are a very very small portion of the movie. In fact, they are only heavily featured in 1/5 of the movie, and then just moderately featured in the last 2/5 of the movie. I can say use a measurement out of 5 pretty accurately because like his other movies, Tarantino set up Inglorious Basterds into 5 distinct chapters. They start of pretty separated and unrelated to each other, up until the last chapter when the stories converge.

The primary story covers a Jewish girl who escapes from being killed by Nazis, changes identities, and ends up owning a movie theater in Paris. It's her tale of revenge. And let me say, revenge is oh so sweet. Like... amazingly sweet. I'll admit, I only slightly enjoyed myself most of the film. The dialogue was fun and each chapter had its own thing that pulled me in, but overall I was feeling confused and really wondering how it was all going to wrap up. Well, the wrap up is by far the best part of the movie, and I can't say it would have been as good without everything else before it.

The best part about this film, and I won't go into details because I don't want to spoil it, but the best part is that Inglorious Basterds is in no way historically accurate. That's really what makes it so amazing. It couldn't have been a very good movie if it stuck too strongly to history. Luckily it didn't.

One last thing, just to reinforce stuff for you. Brad Pitt and the Basterds are not the focus of this movie, and their exploits are barely explored. Hitler is only slightly in the movie. The trailer makes it out to be a gang of Jews whose goal is to kill Hitler. No. Not at all the case. So throw all of that out of your brain before you go into the movie.

So what's the verdict on Inglorious Basterds? It's better than Jackie Brown, Kill Bill 1/2, and Death Proof... I'd put it on par if not better than Pulp Fiction. Reservoir Dogs is still my favorite Tarantino film, however. If you've seen other Tarantino movies and like them, you WILL like this. But if you basically dislike all his other movies, this movie will not change your opinion on his film making abilities.

Potential based on Preview: Can't say considering how different the film is from the preview.
Actual Movie: 9/10

More Reasons to Love (500) Days

More reasons to love (500) Days of Summer? Indeed! Some if not all of these are better if you've seen the movie... but all are pretty awesome.

Firstly, you may understand this one if you've even just seen the trailer. It's based off the "Sid and Nancy" dialogue that appears in the movie and trailer, and is pretty hilarious.:


<br/><a href="http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?mkt=en-US&vid=5db01b36-af64-41f0-91b8-ef86e818f69b" target="_new" title="Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt Cinemash "Sid and Nancy"">Video: Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt Cinemash "Sid and Nancy"</a>

Secondly, a music video Marc Webb directed w/ Zooey and Joseph after finishing (500) Days. The video is for a song that Zooey actually performs, by "She and Him.":

And finally... one of the best scenes in the movie, right after Tom (JGL) sees his relationship with Summer actually go somewhere... in no uncertain terms. It's a little shortened from the film's version, but you get the idea:

The Beginning of the End

So I've been treating this blog a bit like a film blog as of late... and for good reason. Movies are awesome and my opinions on movies are awesome. Hah, okay, last part is debatable. But ever since summer classes let out I've been able to appreciate a torrent of films (mostly awesome)... and this has been the place for me to let loose about them. I don't really have any immediate friends in Huntsville that share the love of film as deeply as I do. Some people I know love movies but it's more on a casual level, or we have very different taste, stuff like that. So the internet becomes my outlet, even if it is yelling into an empty void - or probably more like yelling out an opinion in a really loud stadium.

Anyways, here's another opinion: 20th Century Fox, you SUCK. You're miserable. Why? You're having this little thing called "Avatar Day" on the 21st of this month (Friday). On this day, at 70 IMAX theaters across the US, you're showing 15 minutes of the movie in order to get people pumped up. This is a positive mood, this makes me happy. But why in the world would you NOT include Huntsville, Alabama on your list? California alone has like 30 different theaters, some cities in other states are showing it in multiple locations in the same cities... this is just mad. Especially considering a lot of the IMAX theaters showing it aren't true IMAX theaters. So why would you avoid showing it on one of the few REAL IMAX THEATERS!?!?!?!?! The movie you're promoting is a Sci-Fi Epic in space on a distant planet! This is HUNTSVILLE ALABAMA. As in, home of Wernher von Braun, Space Camp, NASA... we're called "Rocket City" and have a Saturn V rocket right outside the entrance to our city. Oh, we probably wouldn't appreciate 15 minutes of a crazy special effects space movie even though we actually have a real IMAX. Yeah... sure... Fox, you're terrible, and I'm frustrated at you. Plus you killed Firefly.

If you don't live in Huntsville though, I suppose you should check out http://www.avatarmovie.com/ticketing/ to see if you can get a ticket for your free 15 minute screening. I give that link to you very bitterly. At least the trailer is coming out this week so I'll still be able to see that.

Okay, so on to the title of the post... beginning of the end. My first day of my last year of college was today. And I'm absolutely ridiculously tired. For Senior Design at UAHuntsville we're going to be working with real companies, doing 6sigma/LEAN kind of stuff, and in order to work in those companies we need to get some certifications. So this entire week, 8am-5pm, we have to go through this training stuff. This means I'm missing my entire first week of classes. Blah. It was somewhat interesting today, but man, waking up at 7am is tough. However, in celebration of this being the beginning of the end, here's a pic of a Praying Mantis that I took on Saturday. I think it's praying that I graduate in May 2010.

Review - (500) Days of Summer

I'll start bold. (500) Days of Summer is the best movie I've seen all year. Okay, so every movie I review on here I seem to be praising. This is true, blah blah, I should review crappy movies also. But to be honest, I've only seen about 2 genuinely crappy movies this whole year: Transformers 2 and Wolverine. The rest I've liked on some level or another. Does that mean I have really low standards? No, it means I have really high standards for which movies I actually pay money for. I research things months ahead of time and pick and choose pretty far in advance based on my knowledge of the directors, rumors I hear from various movie websites and blogs, and my own personal instinct of what I know I like. Now, onto the review...

(500) Days of Summer (hence forth just called 500DOS because I'm lazy) is the movie I've been looking forward to more than any other movie since I heard about it. Absolute top of my list. The first preview absolutely grabbed me. Add to that my favorite actress, Zooey Deschanel, plays the female lead. Throw in a phenomenal soundtrack and very music video-esque direction (by a music video director no less)... yeah, I couldn't help but look forward to it. Now I know my expectations were not disappointed, they were exceeded.

500DOS is truly not a love story. It's a guys' overly romanticized vision of a past relationship and it's about that guy (Tom) trying to deal with that deep heartfelt somewhat-irrational love for Summer. It's the story of the love of his life, Summer, from the perspective of memories. That's about the best description I can give without giving anything in the story away.

Acting? Incredible. Story? Fantastic. Music? One of the best soundtracks since Garden State. The dialogue is very very realistic, sometimes awkwardly so, but that's really what cracks me up about the movie. Everything about the movie is just real... real in the sense that it's exactly how we build things up in our brain and change things and have expectations that aren't met. I and I'm guessing most guys (and maybe even a lot of girls) can probably totally relate to some of the feelings and situations and expectations that Tom has. That's really what makes this movie shine. It's a nearly flawless interpretation of what goes on in our heads.

Okay, I'm about to fall asleep when I'm writing this. But I implore you, go see 500 Days of Summer if you get a chance. Most places across the country don't have it in theaters, but Huntsville just now got it. Monaco and the Rave are both playing it. Go see this movie. Go. Now. Why aren't you watching it yet? GO.

Potential Based on Preview: 10/10
Actual Movie: 10/10