Shameless Self Promotion
Hey kids! I just started producing a new podcast for Vilification Tennis!
The first episode went live this morning on the Vilification Tennis website. Please listen and tell us what you think.
I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. As our first podcast, there are definitely kinks to work out but the overall result is very promising. I’m looking forward to producing the next one.
Keep in mind, Vilification Tennis is a show that focuses on offensive and insult humor and the podcast is the same. If that is not your kind of humor, don’t listen.
Alphabetical Movie – Hot Fuzz
What is the difference between movies like Hot Fuzz and Young Frankenstein and the Scary Movie franchise? Aside from the fact that ten years from now, those two films will still be funny and the Scary Movie films still won’t?
I mean, the Scary Movie films come from what I would consider to be a great pedigree of screwball comedies like Airplane, Hot Shots and Top Secret. Yet they are – and I’m sorry if you like those movies – absolutely horrible. They fail at satire, they fail at comedy, they fail at titilation. Their only success is that they can be made so cheaply that they make money in spite of themselves.
Alphabetical Movie – Home Fries
The reason I own Home Fries has nothing to do with how much I enjoy the film. The first time I watched it, I enjoyed it a lot. Subsequent viewings have not been so kind.
One thing about the film does hold up and it’s the reason I keep it around. I own this film because of Catherine O’Hara.
Don’t buy gas because…um….what?
I can do math. That skill can be a problem when confronted with something like this:
Don’t pump gas on April 15th, 2012
I’ll do it! If running low, just get your gas the day before, on April 14th or the day after, on April 16th.
…
If all users did not go to the pump on April 15th, it would take…almost 3 billion out the oil companies pockets for just one day.
Alphabetical Movie – Home Alone
My friends, I submit to you that Home Alone is not a lighthearted romp about an eight year old boy who defends his home from burglars when he is left alone.
The film, is in fact, a display of the worst conceivable parenting known to humankind or, possibly, something much more sinister.
Statistics about Gas Prices (See Also – Damn Lies about Gas Prices)
In reading the news while unable to sleep, I came across this article where Mitt Romney is blaming President Obama for rising gas prices. To be fair, he is saying that Obama should fire some advisors who have given him advice resulting in higher gas prices.
Such a statement is bullshit because no administration can have much of an effect on gas prices and it is simply being used to convince people that they should ignore the fact that Romney is an auton.
Shit that pissed me off this week – 3/2
Forgive the absence of my weekly bitch session – I’ve been on vacation for the last two weeks. Some of this stuff is a little old but I wanted to bitch about it anyway.
Alphabetical Movie – Hidden Fortress
Hidden Fortress came to my house in a Kurosawa Samurai 4 pack that also included The Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and Sanjuro. In geek circles, it is probably the most famous Kurosawa film simply because George Lucas has said that Star Wars was influenced by some aspects of Hidden Fortress.
Before I watched the movie for the first time, I told a friend I was looking forward to seeing it and she told me it wasn’t very good. She’d rented it specifically because of the Star Wars connection and had been disappointed. In fact, she had rented it on VHS and said you could see the points at which previous renters had given up on the film and hit rewind.
Alphabetical movie – Hatari!
Hatari! (the explanation point is part of the name) plays more like a African Safari version of How the West Was Won than it does a movie that has crazy things like “characters” and “plot.” Through a series of vignettes, we meet several people of varying nationalities who spend their lives catching animals in Africa. Don’t worry – they aren’t poachers. The animals are being caught to put in zoos.
Much of the film involves long sequences of these characters trying to catch animals on the savannah and it must have looked awesome projected on the big screen. The story, such as it is, involves some romantic entanglements between a few of the characters but it is nearly 100% irrelevant. The attraction is the setting, not the story.
Alphabetical Movie – Harvey
One of my favorite lines from Harvey is: “In this world you need to be oh so smart or oh so pleasant. Well for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.”
Yes, I condensed the line a little. I believe the sentiment remains.
It is a great line because it defines Elwood P. Dowd in the most precise terms. We understand who he was, why he was unhappy and why he is now (possibly) a little crazy.
Grail Diary 
