Posts from — July 2008

Online video communities are chock full of digital videos of dancing babies. Parents + digital camcorders can sometimes turn into a dangerous situation.

They become totally addicted to filming their little bundles of joys (can ya blame them, tho?). A video of their first steps quickly turns into 500 clips of the kid dancing away to a leap frog fridge dj!

Good thing there are tons of affordable camcorders on the market, so all parents can learn how to capture family videos. If you know someone who is expecting and is in the market for a compact camcorder, I’d recommend any entry level flash memory camcorder by Panasonic, JVC, or Sony.

JVC Everio GZ-MG555 HDD Camcorder

Sony Handycam DCR-SR200 40GB HDD Camcorder

Panasonic Palmcorder SDR-H18 HDD/SD Camcorder

Flavorpill and Urban Experiment partnered together to create a new web series. They held a contest to find interesting urban city dwellers who would be tracked by a film crew as they explored small cities.

To my surprise, BWE’s Michelle Collins was the city gal having adventures in the Everglades, Florida. She went to an alligator farm, got snakes thrown onto her shoulders, and discovered the “nightlife”. Michelle is always entertaining as a blogger, but it was a treat to see her on-camera cracking the jokes.

Not sure what type of digital camcorder they employed for this series, but the camera work was quite nice. They captured the action of the speedboat navigating the everglades with pretty high resolution.

I’d guess that FP definitely sprung for professional camcorders.

The Day the Earth Stood Still, a science fiction classic, is being remade with Keanu Reeves as the alien messenger Klatu.

Trailer Check:

There’s still some robot Gort action, but the melodramatic seriousness of the trailer really turns me off. It conjures up memories of The Day After Tomorrow, a disaster movie overwrought with bad dialogue and special effects. I do think Jaden Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness) is adorable and using using his childlike POV of the situation may be an improvement over the original. And Jennifer Connolly is a talented actress, so here’s hoping her emoting skills aren’t squandered in this flick. I just hope they don’t muck it up with a stupid twist ending or bad pacing.

Find a comic-con breakdown of The Day the Earth Stood Still preview clips at /Film.

Assault allegations be damned, The Dark Knight continues to clean up at the box office with another 75 million to add to its total!

I don’t know what it is about the movie, but I can’t get enough of it. I listened to Kevin Smith and /Film ramble on and on about it during the filmcast last week for over an hour! And I loved every second of it. They go into great detail about the Tim Burton’s films, Nolan’s films, and how it all relates (or doesn’t) to the original comics. Yeah, it’s mostly fan boy blather, but it never hurts to get Kevin Smith in on the action.

As a requisite Batman and Christian Bale fan, I have plans to see this film again, which is probably why this movie is doing so well. Heath Ledger’s death may be boosting sales, but once you sit down, you forget all about that. He simply is the Joker, this insane anarchist who gives Batman a sufficient run for his money.

Source: Pajiba box office roundup (7/28/08)

Best Week Ever’s Michelle Collins wonderfully reminded me of this gem from 1995, Johnny Mnemonic based on the sci-fi novel by William Gibson.

It boggles my mind that she missed it in theaters! I was too young at the time to see it alone, it being rated R and all. I begged my older brother to take me (i.e. buy two tickets, walk me in and then leave) and being the cool guy that he is, he agreed.

The movie needless to say did not blow me away. But I liked it enough to buy it used on VHS in all it’s orange neon cassette tape glory. Keanu was a tad whiny and basically just made faces like his head hurt the whole time. The main reason I wanted to see it was for Henry Rollins (he’s the man, btw) and I thought the soundtrack was cool (Stabbing Westward, KMFDM, God Lives Underwater! So rad). Hey, I was in a industrial music phase at the time. Plus, it was junior high, everyone goes through one, right?

Watching the movie now though, you gotta laugh at how “high tech” the world was supposed to have become. Apparently in 2021, the internet will be done through virtual reality headsets and sensitive data will be shipped via human brain couriers (ergo, Johnny’s/Keanu’s head). Totally plausible, right? Not to mention, street gangs (i.e. the Lo-Teks, who are led by Ice-T) can hack into the television networks and broadcast video messages they make on their analog camcorders. Oh, and they’ve got an ex-navy seal/dolphin at their disposal to perform said hacks. Hahahaha, science fiction can get pretty silly sometimes.

Still, if you want a funny, unrealistic movie involving computers from the 90s (and you’ve already worn yourself out on Hackers), you should really check Johnny Mnemonic out.

Find 50 screenshots from the film at BWE that prove this movie is awesomely bad. All my favorites are of Dolph Lundren aka Jesus and Udo Keir.