Nate the Dragon King

It is safe to say that my anticipation for the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's masterful novel The Road has reached fever pitch.  There's absolutely no other movie left on the 2009 Calendar that I'm looking forward to more.

The movie was supposed to come out over a year ago and though I usually hate delays, this time around I'm very glad it was postponed, as it gave me time to read the novel, which is amazing and heartbreaking.  With just a little over a week to go before it's release, here's the extended trailer which shows you just a bit more and reasures that it all points out to be as faithful an adaptation as fans of the novel were meant to have.

Something rather strange happened a few weeks ago when I saw The Box–which I still think is a very creepy, interesting, solid movie no matter how much people supposedly hated it. Hopefully it would find its audience on DVD.  But I digress….
After 15 minutes of preview after preview one thing glaringly stood out to me [...]

John & Edward (I know, I’m a day late but I was busy yesterday so chill!)continued (and extended) their reign as the UK’s favorite *telly* stars this past weekend by playfully-though not quite as genius as it should have been-living up their nickname.  As you know, “double scoop” comes from their resemblance to Vanilla Ice; they [...]

This first *teaser* trailer of Clash of the Titans bares very little resemblance to the original--which I have to rewatch again, it's been like 20 years? and I was 7? 8? I barely remember much past Medusa and the mechanical owl, which I believe I wanted as a toy for Xmas.

Of course with like with every remake nowadays, everything this time around is BIG! BIGGER! BIGGEST! and GRITTIER! DIRTIER! BLOODIER! which at this point I just go along with, but what  bothers me about this teaser, and what I hope is only just the way the trailer was put together and not the actual product, is that everything seems too chaotic, things are jumping out of focus, into view, all over the screen and you can't really make sense of anything.  I hope there's some plot somewhere in all this madness, otherwise this is just going to be a headache-inducing mess.

Ever since I posted P!nk's "I Don't Believe You" video a few days back, I've been gradually obsessing over B&W music videos, which is something that happens about once a year. As much as I love color, there's just something about B&W images that elevates the artistic merits of a video and it sort of really puts the focus on whatever subject, vision its creators are dealing with/were going for.  The lack of color somehow makes it more powerful.

Also, we are in November which is one of my fave months of the year and in a weird way, a sort of reflective, melancholic month for me (I'll have to consult with Freud about that one).  I haven't seen the sun in almost a week (that's not a complain) and it has been drizzling on and off for two days which can't help but add to the mood, which means there was no coincidence that I was drawn to P!nk's newest video.

On that spirit, I decided to go looking for other B&W music videos--I could only think of a few and thought, well there aren't many--and I ended up finding a ton of them.  Curious fact: most B&W videos I found were for rap artists.  Who would have thought they had a bit more of an artistic sensibility to color?  LL Cool J, Ghostface, Notorious BIG, even Puff Daddy have done B&W videos.

One I complete forgot about, which is funny since I highlighted as *video of the week* some months ago, was Smashing Pumpkins' "Stand Inside Your Love" which is an amazing video.  There's No Doubt's fun in the high seas "Hella Good," K.D Lang's yearnings on "Constant Craving," Madonna's stylish "Vogue," and steamy "Justify My Love," Red Hot Chilli Peppers' body paint shenanigans on "Give It Away," Jay Z's gritty "99 Problems," and an honorable mention goes to Aha's "Take On Me" which isn't completely B&W but the drawing panels sequences are just amazing.

To stay with the melancholic mood of November though, I'm sticking to highlighting only ballads about emotional turmoil.



Smashing Pumpkins "Disarm" prove

P!nk (another surefire candidate for artist of the decade) gives us yet again another amazing visual companion to another great single from her fith album "Funhouse."

"I Don't Believe You"  The song is spare and completely heartbreaking, one of P!nk's most emotive performances yet.  The video, like the song, is just as quiet and spare and beautifully shot in black and white.  Adding another unforgettable piece of visual to the her string of Funhouse hits.

Where to begin?
Stretching the Halloween celebration by an extra week, John and Edward decided to tackle the theme song to Ghostbusters to hilarious effects, eliciting audible cheers and booing from the audience and dividing the judges once again.  To the shock of many and no-one at the same time, they failed to get eliminated last [...]

National Treasure+Pirates of the Caribean+The Mummy+a pinch of Alexander=Prince of Persia.

Wow, you can REALLY tell when a movie is from Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer can you not?

Every part of the sets, locations, etc., look pristine even the "dirty" places, the trailer attacks us with so much relentless action that has 0% real violence or even danger for that matter, but 100% meet-cuteness and a buckload of fake heroism.  Also everything is so theme park ready that you can just see the merchandise a mile away.  Even if it is calculated commercialism, I won't mind it as long as it is fun.  So taking it from all the other franchises it has been concocted from, it has a 50/50 chance of landing on the side of enjoyable popcorn.  We'll see.

This is the movie that was going to be a vehicle for Tom Cruise and then rewritten for Angeline Jolie….. and we the public are the winners of this switch.  Gotta say though, I don’t blame Tom for dropping out if that was the case, I mean it does resembles his Minority Report a bit [...]

I don't really get all excited about Dreamworks animated movies. For every 10 movies they put out, I like probably 3 or 4, and though this one could go either way, I'm more inclined to give it a chance because it features........ Dragons!!  Ha! And you know I can't resist.

Fire ring! Motorcycles! Leather galore! Sexy dancers! Eyeshadow! Mascara! Dr. Frankenstein hairdos! Queen’s music! Butchering of lyrics! Freddy Mercury rolling in his grave! John & Edward will rock you!
If you thought for one second that a monday was going to go by without me posting the latest trainwreck tour de force performance by John & Edward (Double Scoop) [...]

I saw this last week also (apparently today is *catching up with* day) and I thought it was pretty funny. Not LMAO funny but funny nonetheless.  Check it out:

And the saga of Double Scoop aka The Double Divas from Dublin and their attack on entertainment continues!  These two kids are killing me! Someone needs to give them their own show after X-Factor is over I tell ya.

How could they top their MC take on Robbie Williams and their shamelessly entertaining lizard take on porny pop Britney Spears?  Well you dust off your latin lover shoes, cover the stage in neon colors and redo Ricky Martin's awesomely bad "She Bangs."  John and Edward are geniuses!  Pure, calculated, genius entertainment.

After repeated viewings of the now super infamous rendition of Britney Spears' "Oops! I Did It Again" in the hands of the UK's X-Factor duo John & Edward aka Double Scoop, I had to search youtube for more awesomely bad yet supremely entertaining train-wrecks stunts by them.  It turns out that two weeks ago they performed Robbie Williams' "Rock DJ" and I gotta say, they did slightly better on this one, but still a stage mess full of dancers, questionable choreography, and some rope action.  Justin Timberlake better watch his back!

I usually wouldn’t give a donkey’s behind about this sort o attention-grabbing stunts.  I after all, have never, ever watched a single episode of American Idol or anything resembling its evil hold on couch drones across countries BUT this performance by X-Factor’s identical twins John and Edward, the “double divas from Dublin” as one of [...]

I know, I know, you don't have to say it: this New York obsession part honeymoon of mine is getting to the point that even I am gonna barf at how sickly and eye-rolling annoying is getting. It's all I can seem to talk about! It's even worse because I used to make fun of people like this!  But you don't understand, once you are here the city takes over you and you can't help but love everything about it. It is obsessive.

I still am gonna barf if I don't dial it down a bit though.

But before we get to that, I couldn't decided about which of these two songs to post.  Mind you, I was looking for a song that talked about how one's love for New York derives specifically from the cold fall/winter weather but apparently I'm the only person in the whole city who actually loves the cold.  Everybody else gives me dirty looks when I talk about how awesome it is outside right now; some bartender didn't even want to serve me my drink!  Fuck them, I love the freezing temperatures we are having right now and to think that it is only the beginning....... my heart gets all fuzzy and warm just thinking about it :)

Anyhow, enjoy Ryan Adam's folky, understated love letter and Madonna's electro-punk ode to the city of my cylon, metal-heart.

A friend of mine who is obsess with the evil of Disney World (I don't understand it!) show me one of this videos today, the one about Hitler going to Epcot, and told me there were many many more but he didn't bother because the Epcot one was the best.......even though he's never seen the others? Fool. (Yes Joe, I just called you a Fool).

The one about going to Disney is way funnier than the Epcot one.

I don't know who the person(s) who created the videos is/are but he/she/them is/are genius!  Oh and the best part is that all the videos used the same scene from "Downfall" (Der Untergang) a German-Austrian film about the last days of Hitler while in his bunker.

I'm posting here the Epcot and the Going To Disney videos for you to be the judge and get over to 7heRedx's channel to check all the other ones, there's tons of them.

Or should I say, especially in the military? I mean because of the hardship or confinement of the situation, they are basically force to find ways to amuse themselves and pass time right? Well, at least the British are, though I'm sure the Americans do too.  I know I would if was enrolled and living far away from my home or the comfort of the modern world.

These videos: the world's introduction to the latest military craze: "Air Bumming" are silly but freaking hilarious which is the whole point of it.

the first one via wOzza1031 youtube channel, the second and third via the actual airbumming youtube channel and the fourth one via the Ben23fleet youtube channel.

I saw the trailer for this wild romp of blaxploitation yesterday while watching "Bronson" and I just knew I had to share the trailer with y'all cuz this shit is funny!!

In celebration of the news that Damien Rice is finally putting out some follow up music to 2006's "9" album (about bloody fucking time!) I've decided to pick one of his videos for this week.  The man has a penchant for odd videos and this isn't a depart from it, but I find the video for "9 crimes" (arguably the titled track of the album) to be my fave of him and at once: poignant, disturbing and heartbreaking.  The song itself is one of his very best and strongest offerings, capturing in little more than 3 minutes the pain of a failing relationship and the fallout of cheating, getting caught and blaming each other instead of owning up to it.  Very heavy stuff and the video, in a bizarre way, captures all of that.