Movie Reviews of 2005 #11 - The hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

DON'T PANIC!

JUST HAVE FUN! Which is something this film is. It is a movie that has been talked about for over 15 years, and finally got to go ahead to produce, & be released.

Just go & see

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

You will be entertained.

Just don't forget your towel.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

The dolphins

Movie Reviews of 2005 #10 - Kung Fu Hustle {aka Gong fu}

If you like the American action films that have come out recently. - You may be disappointed
If you have never seen a foreign film with subtitles. - You will be lost.
If you take life too seriously to enjoy a film for what it is worth. - Your fu[{ed in the head!

BUT: If you want to see an action packed, fun as hell movie with a buttload of cool gags & CGI EFX.

This is a movie you have GOT to see!

Many people on IMDB have commented on Gong Fu already, and it is one of few movies that have produced a large love/hate series of threads in the comments section. I however think this is the best action movie I have seen in over a year.

It took me a while to get used to the subtitles, but not long. If you are walking into the show without knowing that this is not an "American/Hollywood" produced movie, or that it has been out overseas for almost six months. {it surpassed Shaolin Soccer in Feb. to become the highest-grossing Hong Kong-made movie in Hong Kong}, or if you just plain walked into the wrong theatre, it will not take long for you to get into the movie & start enjoying what is going on in front of you.

The Plot:

Some have said there is no plot. I say BULLSHIT!
It is a simple line of a screwup of a kid is taught to defend the good of things, but ends up disappointed by his teachings supposedly failing him.
He grows up to be a punk & more of a screwup & wants to join the "Axe Gang" who are the worst of the worst, {read good going to "the dark side"}.
This goofball & his buddy go into an area that the gangs do not mess with because there is nothing to steal, so why bother. The only problem is they were posing as upper ranks of the Axe Gang, and got the snot kicked out of them, The Axe found out & showed up & kicked the bejesus out of tweedledee & tweedledum again. They then as a group of 50+ of the toughest people in the province, collectively get their asses handed to them by the "harmless" villagers.

And that is just the 1st act! I will not go on to spoil the rest of the movie for you.

Another thing I loved about this movie was that is was violent, but it was "clean violence". There is very little explosions of blood & unneeded gore. A lot of people die, and many people are seriously injured, yes. But very little is shown of the actual act of death or injury, leaving the viewers to create the images themselves. And sometimes that can be a helva lot worse than anything they could have done onscreen.

As for CGI. . . Imagine the people that did Matrix, Harry Potter, & Star Wars getting together at a kegger one night and someone said, "hey lets grab our laptops, have a LAN party, & see what kind of silliness we can throw together before the 2nd keg runs out! The CGI in this movie is FUN! Some think it was overdone & looks cheap. But if you are watching the movie to critique the FX you miss the whole point of the movie to begin with. My take is that the FX fit with the movie & if you are watching the movie & not its bits & pieces, you will not notice it unless it is meant to be noticed.

RATING: WOW! x3, 1/4 soda drank, & didn't even feel like taossing a wiz. {get it, taoss and not toss}

Blessed Be all, Dr. Strangelove

On a lighter note...

I was cruising around & found Jennicartoon.com. She used to work over @ JoeCartoon & now has her own site.

I think we need this on the jukebox @ Willys

Oh Pretty Beer

Then again . . . Maybe not.

Blessed Be, & remember to pee.

By the power of Greyskull, or ConEd

I saw this & went whoa!!!

ELECTRICAL MISADVENTURE

hopefully {yeah right}, the dumbass is OK.

Blessed Be, & leave the electrical shit to those of us that get paid to be stupid.

Dr. Strangelove

I like how these guys think with magnets. UPDATED!

I caught this thread from one of the newsgroups I follow about tech theatre, & the latest responses are pretty good thinking.

It all started with this question:

Hi all,
I'm going to be starting work on a community theater musical production in a couple months. One of the things the director has been asking for is a set of stairs in which each individual step lights up as an actor walks up & down. I could easily handle wiring in some lights under plexiglass steps and doing a regular chase. How would you suggest designing steps that will light as they're stepped on instead of a regular chase? Having push-buttons that the plexiglass steps rest on is my first thought but I wonder just how safe/reliable such a system wouldbe...

After many serious responses, it finally went downhill to this:

=You might be able to use a proximity sensor of some sort...
=Shoot a burglar beam across the stair just above each tread...
=Cue the lights with the director and choroegrapher and make the dancers hit their marks on time.

By putting large electro magnets in the steps and huge neodymium magnets in the actors shoes, you could make them walk up the steps automatically on cue. By pulsing the magnets you could also make them tap dance in a forceful and exaggerated manner at speeds approaching 60Hz.

== 2 of 5 ==
= huge neodymium magnets
Overkill, surely. Ferrite clogs ought to be ok. :)

== 3 of 5 ==
Hey, great! I'll mention this to the director so that he knows he doesn't have to hire actors who actually know how to dance! ;-)

== 4 of 5 ==
Bear in mind that actors fitted with magnetic boots aren't just limited to stair dancing. With coils laid into the stage you can create high speed linear motion thespians. We can slide an actor from one side of a 50' stage to the other in about half a second.

For audience interaction you can also levitate the actors by passing highly bodacious currents through the existing deaf loop system. It's best to remove all the old ladies hearing aids first though, since they tend to make loud parping noises and fly out their ears with a pop when you energise the loop.

== 5 of 5 ==
I just like to play safe. I've also found that ferrite clogs don't quite have the same crisp response at the higher frequencies that neodymium winkle pickers offer.

4/20/05 - - AND AN UPDATE:
I REALY liked this one:

Not to mention, you can pull the actor to his/her mark and keep them there when speaking. This would be very useful for the actors I know who manage to stand half in and half out of their specials when delivering the most important speech in the play. For the actors who still insist on being in the dark by leaning out of their light even though their feet are properly fixed in place, they could be levitated to grid height, inverted by switching the field to the grid, and then dropped on their head by turning the field off. Could Davie come and do the install for us? Our insurance would probably cover any unanticipated sequelae (explosions, fires, toxic fume emissions, thermonuclear incidents etc.) of his work :-)

WHAT THE F^[{?

I, as well as others know what the translation of the subject line actually means. Or what I was ment to be saying. If you as a reader do not, you are probably one of the 35% that come here that are still using IE as a browser. Out numbered by those 63% using MOZILLA & Netscape offshoots.

Opera & Safari make up the remaining 2%, thus an interesting worldwide group that have realized freedom, and have bursted from the 'gates' of browser hell.

ANYWAY. . . .

I came across a neat little definition of the history of the word F^{K at one of my fav. sites of silly reference, The Straight Dope. This is a offshoot of the column that runs in the Chicago Reader, and a great place to find an answer to some of the questions of life that have been bugging you. And if need be, you can send a question to uncle Cecil yourself.

BUTTFOR {go ahead ask me what is a buttfor, I dare you},

Click HERE:What's the origin of the "F" word?to find out the meaning, or something like the meaning.

And no, it has nothing to do with Monty Python.

Blessed Be, Dr. Stretchglove

Some things to think about in Our Global Village

I found this blog-post & wanted to link to it to help spread its words around.

Read it & think about what you could have done, and what you actually did, in many situations to help your fellow people around you. Both locally, and globally.

Click here to read: Join the Party

If you can't leave a comment there, leave it here & I will get it forwarded to the author. I know she will enjoy hearing feedback & comments.

Blessed Be all,
Dr. Strangelove

Peas, & just us, part deux

I am finally able to post again here after what had happened.

If it happens again . . . . . . . To quote the Cartright Bros.,

HELL NO, I AIN'T EATIN' NO PEAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

Good cause + Bad email + documents {I have waited for over 7 months to get} that will take me ANOTHER FUCKING SEVEN FUCKING MONTHS TO REORDER AT MINIMUM!, lockups that I lost count @ 16 on two totally separate systems. = One pissed off dude

Just because pigs stink, & the pay is bad on the Res.

DUH!

Me & Mama Cass are going to hit every deli from here to the east coast. {sidebar: the best ham in the Chicago area comes from here in SFSD.}, and she will show the tastiness of SD pork, shortly followed by my 'performance du-heimlich'

People
Eat
Tastie
Animals

Basted Be, with a spicy glaze, Dr. S

Peas, & just us, IT'S STILL SPAM!

OK, most people that read my rants & raves are not web-"virgins"

I know this because 68% of the visits to this site use either Mozilla or Firefox.

So . . . . WHY THE FUCK WOULD SOMEONE EVEN FUCKING THINK ABOUT SENDING A FUCKING 3.1 MEG PHOTO ATTACHED TO A FUCKING EMAIL, GOING TO A MOTHERFUCKING WEB-BASED EMAIL ACCOUNT HELD BY SOMEONE THAT IS ON A DIALUP SERVICE?????????

JUST FUCKING TELL ME, OK?

I REALLY WANNA KNOW . . . .

SAID EMAIL/ATTACHMENT {sorry done screaming for now}, came from a grassroots org. that of the few people that have email, 90% are on dialup in rural areas. And the sender is not a dummy, {or so I thought}, about simple, basic netiquette.

This would not be so bad if it was not for the fact, THE FUCKING THING WAS A DOWNLOAD OF AN EXSISTING PHOTO FROM A GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING NEWS SERVICE SO YOU KNOW THE BIG TURD AIN'T GOING ANYWHERE, WHY NOT SEND THE TINY LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT 26 CHARACTER LONG FUCKING "CLICK HERE" SHIT-ASSED LINK????? hUh?????

OK, I am fine now. I'm just under a ton of stress from mounting a theatrical showcase of new artists @ a place that formerly had horses. No space, no power, as of last night reeked of burning cars, {had one blow up across the street before yesterdays rehersal with 20-30mph winds blowing smoke straight at us}.

I forwarded the bloated piece of "email-plasm" to my ISP acct. shortly before my post. So I could clearout & be able to use my Netzero acct. again.
I started @ 8:57.

It is now 9:32 and it is still not done.

Peace & Justice my ass!

Blessed Be, Dr. Strangelove

Movie Reviews of 2005 #09 - Sin City

WOW!



I was extremely surprised by this one.
Because of the storyline I cannot get into the details of the movie, but what I can say . . . .

From the get go, the movie is visually stunning. Typical of Robert Rodriguez & some of his style mixed with the others participating in the directors seat, it gets you stuck to the seat {and later on in more ways than one}. Others have bitched about the effects & foley tracks being overpowering. My response is BULSHIT! The sound design & layering flows with what is on screen & does not detract from the overall show in any way. Those who disagree need to be reminded that this is a production based on what is in essence a comic book. EVERYTHING IS OVERPOWERING !

When you goto see Sin City, make sure to hit the rest room first, {it is over 2 hours long}, and do not plan to chat with others. Take heed of this since you will not want to miss anything, and neither will those sitting around you. Chatting people may end up like one of the bloody mutilated characters on the screen.

OHHH! I HAVEN'T GOTTEN TO THE GORE YET!

Yeah there is blood, and a ton of T & A {extremely NICE T & A too ;-}, and many, many, and even more scenes ranging from a simple gunshot injury to things I would not wish on my worst enemies. In short, if you are squeamish, cannot stand blood, {mostly not red, but blood all the same}, and take offence of the exposed flesh of 'women of the night'. Go see a fucking Disney movie because this show is not for you.

The rating scale: 1/2 soda, no smoke break, no pee break. And add on that all of us thought it was overall one of the best flicks we have seen in a LONG time. And when you have people who work @ a theatre & literally see every movie {whether we want to or not}.

That says a lot.

Blessed Be, and don't forget to reset your clocks this weekend.

Dr. Strangelove