Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Movies. Show all posts

Friday, May 10, 2013

Entertainment Roundup

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.

xkcd.com - of course


This weekend I really should
  • Get ahead on a few things for work by putting in about four hours at a desk getting things in line
  • Do all the laundry and find a place to put everything that is clean
  • Box up another set of things in anticipation of moving
  • Clean out the car
  • Enter receipts
  • Troll craigslist for free things

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Upcoming Entertainment

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 
Therefore Didn't Rate this Dunk Highly Enough

Enlightened
Sundays, 9:30 PM ET, HBO

Season 4 of Archer has begun!

Happy Endings
Tuesdays, 9:30 PM ET, ABC

Childrens Hospital
Thursdays, Comedy Central

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



Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing (June 7)
I'm not holding my breath in anticipation but I suppose I will give it a shot.

Christopher Priest’s The Adjacent (June 20)
Something for you fancy book readin' types.

So much win:


I want to lick the creators of this short film.

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.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Random Links to Check Out

Sites to Check in On:

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.


Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Adventure Stories

Adventure Stories

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.

Friday, March 18, 2011

Move Trailers

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/