Ender's Game is an excellent book about a boy who is chosen to be trained as the greatest military commander in the history of the world. The instructors who monitor Ender's progress refuse to help him. In fact, they prevent anyone from coming to Ender's rescue when a larger, older boy decides to fight Ender. Being the total badass that he is, Ender kills the larger boy with his bare hands and comes to the following realization:
Trailers for Current Movies I'm Still Looking Forward to Seeing
42
Pain and Gain
Mud
The Place Beyond the Pines
Ender's Game - the trailer is now available and there is an official site up for the movie!!!
Spring Breakers
Webcomics
Tom Gauld - His tumblr account is fantastic and his site contains even more good material.
Tonight at 4:00 p.m. is the NBA Dunk Contest! I have fond memories of Dwight Howard dunking with one hand while slapping a sticker of his own smiling face to the top of the backboard with his other hand. Here is the video:
I Don't Think the Judges Could See the Sticker and
Zero Hour (February 14)
Watching the first episode gave me the chance to crack wise about a lot of the material that was being covered.
Oz The Great And Powerful (March 8) It's got Sam Raimi as the director! The guy has the Midas-touch I tell you. The Last Of Us (May 7) A video game about zombies from the guy who did the excellent Uncharted trilogy
Of course most of the stuff listed above will probably turn out to be just slightly above par:
Now for something you'll really like:
I can't think of any possible downside to keeping a tiger in the backyard:
Shouts to Doobybrain.com for finding these videos. I have taken the initiative of culling the weaker videos from the doobybrain site to bring you only the best.
13 seconds in things start to get good
This video of a power plant being imploded in Chula Vista, CA gets a little loud:
Coming down from this high is not going to be fun for this jerk:
Fast-forward to 10:15 for the good stuff
For your gif needs, I sugges that you visit, giphy Recent Reading Recently, I read the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. I enjoyed the experience and recommend the book.
Making My Own Entertainment I taught myself HTML, CSS and JavaScript in the hope of growing rich. This has not really worked out for me so far. I do still have a dream of constantly creating a website that allows visitors to go on a free online adventure. That's right, my dream is to publish a free game that people play online. The game I have in mind presents the user with images I have captured from my own camera and allows the user to play through a series of story lines that are constantly being created.
The closest thing I have found to what I have in mind is The Kingdom of Loathing. My plan has always been to create something of a similar scale but to use photos instead of crude drawings because, if you look at the scribbles on this blog, I clearly should not be encouraged to draw anything myself. TL;DR: Above are links to sources of entertainment to put in your eye and ear holes.
AlexPrager.com - Thanks to this post from the fantastic The Reel Foto blog for bringing her photos to my attention in the first place.
TheAmazings - Try to see what you can make of these
FilmOnPaper - A collection of movie posters. This page has some fantastic artwork that I've never seen before.
Unfortunately, the older entries all seem to be the standard artwork I've seen before. Hopefully, the creator(s) of this site will add more movie posters in the future.
ListGeek.com - might be interesting to keep an eye on. I'm hoping that in the future there might be useful content on the site.
Ironclad, a 2011 film starring Paul Giamatti, has more on screen
violence and nudity than Braveheart and presents an look at a time in
history of which I was previously unaware. The film is set in the early 13th century and King
John of England (Giamatti) is pissed because he had to sign over a small amount
of power to the barons of England by putting his... well.. pre-John
Hancock on the Magna Carta.
The Sword is Actually Bigger in the Movie
Here are some of the comments I made while watching this film for the first time:
“Do the other side too just so they match” I said just before the drunk gets the wound on his shoulder cauterized.
"Ye olde scrolls for sale! Ye olde
scrolls for sale! Oh, is this not the renaissance faire?" I said when I caught a glace of the camp of King John's army.
"Iron wool!" I exclaimed when the film shows the heroic Templar Knight sharpening his sword.
Maybe you had to be there.
In any event, I highly recommend Ironclad to anyone who enjoys a bloody sword slashing movie.
The only downside to the movie is that it isn't a big budget film and I think it runs about 15 minutes too long. I would have liked to have some of the "that-person-is-lying-on-the-ground-and-not-moving-so-they-must-be-dead... oh-wait-they're-still-alive, yay!" moments and other tropes to have been cut.
Here is the link to where you can watch Ironclad instantly if you're hooked up with the whole Netflix streaming thing.
Overheard Conversation
"I tape it (Say Yes to the Dress) and watch it in the morning."
Really? Can you even still buy blank VHS tapes in the age of TiVo and the DVR?
VHS tapes are so old I don't even know how to draw them anymore.
One of the things that comes to my mind frequently are thoughts of narrative, writing and storytelling. The adventure genre has always been a favorite of mine. Here are some of the adventure stories and series that I think are worthy of being enshrined in the canon of adventure literature.
Indiana Jones Series
Remember kids, the inside of a refrigerator is a better place to hide than under the covers, especially to escape the effects of a nuclear blast.
Seriously, don't ever close yourself inside a refrigerator,
people really have died from doing this
Zork Grand Inquisitor
The Librarian Series
The blonde behind him in line is probably going
to need someone to console her after she finds
out she didn't get the job...
Or, perhaps, I just have a one track mind.
National Treasure Series
The first film and the first half of the second movie had a lot going for them in my opinion. These movies managed to blend American history and entertainment in a way that I enjoyed.
Pirates of the Caribbean
The way Johnny Depp plays Jack Sparrow in this entire series is fantastic:
"There should be a Captain in there somewhere"
The only thing I remember from the fourth movie in this series was Captain Jack Sparrow tripping over a bit of foliage, stumbling to his feet and using his sword to hack wildly at the plants that caused him to trip.
Early Days of Adventure Movies
Prior to all of these were the 1930s to 1950s serial films in which adventurers would go on... well... adventures, mainly, that would often end with the hero falling over a cliff or otherwise dying in some spectacular fashion. Of course, at the beginning of the next episode, it would be revealed that the hero had actually survived. The Indiana Jones films certainly drew from these serials as the produces noted in a documentary I recently watched on the making of Indiana Jones.
Books
Prior to the serials from the early days of film, there were travel narratives that date all the way back to Marco Polo. According to his biographers, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge read extensively from travel narratives, which allowed him to include detailed information about travel on the open ocean in the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner prior to his ever having been on board a ship at sea.
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Hopefully, I'll have more original content next time.
Alternative Reality Games Intrigue Me:
The Witness is an alternative reality game that uses specially designed iPhone software to display a film when viewers/ players are standing in the location where events of the narrative play out. Players/ viewers assumed the role of detectives and traveled to locations around Berlin to unlock additional videos in this choose your own adventure style game.
The video describes the experience far better than I do:
I think it would be cool if more experiences like this were available. Perhaps I'll create something similar.
Also, I think it would be cool if someone did something similar inside a haunted house or at several "haunted" locations around town in the month leading up to Halloween.
The trailers are always the best parts of the movies anyway- why not kick back with a bowl of microwavable popcorn and enjoy them right now: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/
