51 Polly Wannacracker
52 Mel Anoma
53 Lou Kemia
54 Ann Heiserbush
55 Phil Harmonic
56 Mel O’dee
57 Phil A. Mingoin
58 Cy Cologist
59 Tom A. Toe
60 Evan Chully
61 Hal O’Ween
62 Rush Hashana
63 Dan Delion
64 Ann L. Secks
65 Phil A. Shio
66 Pearl Necklace
67 Janet Orr
68 Kerry Okie
69 Oral Secks
70 Pete Zahut
71 Eric Shaw
72 Shay Canbake
73 Arthur Itis
74 Rhoda Rooter
75 Bo Lingball

"Buuuuttt...he's gonna see... the big board!"

A short time ago I saw a post on Reddit lampooning a certain movie poster for being over the top, stupid and embarrassingly hilarious for whomever made it. Now, I’ve seen some weird shit on the internet and a link like the one described is nothing out of the ordinary for websites like Reddit. I clicked on it with a type of childish innocence rarely see in about-to-graduate college students.
I’m sure you’ll judge for yourself, but the poster to the left for the movie “The Day of the Dolphin” is pretty ridiculous.  It’s kind of got the Snakes on a Plane thing going for it in that the tagline (in this case) just gives you the short and sweet of a very stupid plot.  Hilarious. But no, it’s not, because this poster is for a movie starring one of the greatest actors of all time, Mr. George C. Scott, and he deserves some more respect.  To prove this, I’ve arranged my argument in a few bullet points, because you are most likely used to things being taught to you through Power Point, because you’re a simpleton.

Reason Number 1: Have you seen the movie Patton? If not, stop reading this. Its streaming on fucking Netflix for god’s sake, take 171 minutes and come out a man at the end.  Yeah, that’s right 171 minutes (3 hours, idiot), it takes that long to develop an actual narrative worth caring about, like say…fighting WWII.  If you can’t hack watching Patton than go eat a salad and enjoy Finding Nemo.

That being said, Patton is one of the most epic movies ever made, depicting the WWII biography of America’s most hardassed General who did whatever he wanted and never let anything (thousands of Nazi’s) get in the way.  For all intents and purposes George C. Scott and George S. Patton are practically the same person.

Reason Number 2: Dr. Strangelove. One of Stanley Kubrick’s many masterpieces; in it, Scott plays General Buck Turgidson.  His character is the completely over-the-top commander of the U.S. military during a possible nuclear attack in the 1964 black comedy.  For the record, it’s not a black comedy because it’s in black and white, it’s a satire (like the Daily Show), OK?  This movie was revolutionary, and Scott’s character provided the saber-rattling American foil to the Russian Ambassador’s Cold War paranoia and the stunningly ignorant and passive-aggressive American President (Peter Sellers).  On top of playing his character to a “T”, he was allegedly Kubrick’s equal at Chess, and I don’t think Stanley Kubrick likes anyone being his equal at anything.

Reason Number 3: He turned down the best actor Oscar for Patton.  That’s right, he turned down what is understood to be the biggest sign of achievement in the film industry, calling it a “meat parade.” What have you turned down? Maybe a second helping of dessert every once in a while? Maybe even you ladies have turned down a guy named Oscar.  No, not the same.

In closing, I hope you take your new-found respect for George C. into the world.  He was a badass guy, a great actor, and deserves far more respect than having his movie ridiculed on the internet. If not, don’t say I didn’t warn you when he rises from the grave and gives you the stiff talking-to that you deserve.

Steven Spielberg, on the set of a much better movie than Indiana Jones 4

I remember learning pretty early into my interest in filmmaking that the first shot of a movie is the most important. It’s like the thesis to the entire story.  I’ve since noticed that I actually find the opposite to be true: it is the last shot that’s the most important, at least to the viewer.  The ending shot of a movie, that final visual and the terminating dialogue is the summation of the entire adventure that you as the viewer just went on.  Whereas the first shot is seen in ignorance, since you as the viewer don’t really know what’s going on, the last shot is the opposite, and therefore you can get the full effect of its meaning.

ANYWAY, here is a, by no means exhaustive, list of my favorite final scenes and shots. (Spoilers… obviously).

The Bourne Ultimatum

These three movies comprised one of the strongest trilogies of the past few decades, and as someone who followed closely as they came out, I was excited to see the finale which was billed as “Bourne Comes Home“. Bourne’s story is pretty torturous and the dedicated viewers were along for the ride with him.  We’ve built a loyalty to his character, and the ending pays off for all the frantic searching over the time period of the three movies.

With a strong written ending, the last shot is just as strong.  If you remember, the first shot of the first movie is essentially the same shot: Bourne floats motionless in the ocean, shot at a high angle.  We see his lifeless body bobbing after a possible bullet hit, but the voice over of the news report informs us his body was never found.  Then we, the viewers and his fans, get to see our intrepid and seemingly invincible protagonist come alive again.  He’s alive, and he got the redemption he was seeking for. How nice.

Revolutionary Road

And I thought the last ship sank slowly.

Man, was this movie agonizing. I had really high hopes, after director Sam Mendes’ earlier work American Beauty, The Road to Perdition, and Jarhead, all of which I love.  This movie, instead of making people fascinated about the dark side of life in the often glamorized 50’s and early 60’s, threw us into the downward spiral along with the characters.  I don’t know about you, but I pretty much hated everyone in the movie.

But, the last shot gave me solace that my $10 wasn’t totally wasted.  In it, Howard Givings, who is Mrs. Givings’ (Kathy Bates) husband, sits in a chair as his wife rambles on about the tragedy that occurs in the movie and how the Wheelers didn’t fit in in the neighborhood.  As she yammers on, the shot sits on his upper body, where we see him subtlety turn off his hearing aid.  I felt his pain, and I was happy that I wasn’t the only one that just couldn’t take it anymore.

Inglourious Basterds

The Dead Man's Angle

Typing this name when referring to the movie has gotten increasingly annoying due to Tarantino’s inability to spell, and spellcheck’s inability to not care. But I had to put this in, especially now that the film seems to be a front-runner for Best Picture.  After the long journey the actual screenplay for this movie took, as first a fantasy of the director, to a slow development, followed by a totally sped up writing process and shooting, all the way to its release and recognition, the movies last words are great.  Tarantino applies a shot he essentially coined, which is the POV of a dead body.  Now, I know Landa isn’t dead, but that’s not the point, the angle is one of his trademarks.  And with the dialogue, Tarantino essentially talks to himself saying: “this may be my masterpiece.”

The Usual Suspects

Ohhh, now way.

The ending is pretty much agreed on as one of the best twists in the history of modern cinema, and the terminating shot pretty much leaves your jaw on the floor if someone didn’t ruin it for you.  The single tracking shot follows Verbal, as he reveals to us who he really is.  And as a bonus we get to see that Mr. Kobayashi is actually real.

Raiders of the Lost Ark

Top Men...

The last shot of Raiders has probably become my favorite, and is the one on this list that I’ve seen the most times.  When I was a kid I didn’t quite get it, but once I wrapped my mind around what the shot actually illustrates, it’s pretty great.  This huge adventure, that we the viewer had been on for the past two hours was essentially relegated to the back of some secret warehouse.  I guess there’s a few ways to look at it, but I choose to see it as there being a whole wealth of fantastical secret shit sitting around, and the Ark of the Covenant is now part of that library.  The journey we just went on is merely one of thousands.  It really opens the imagination to what’s in the rest of those crates…. Whatever you do, just don’t see the most recent Indian Jones installment.

A friend of mine sent me a text the other day, the text read “Heidi Montag’s album, Superficial, sold 658 copies this week”. Six. Five. Eight. This is un-fucking-believable… and at the same time the single most self-validating thing to ever happen to me. This statistic renews my faith in humanity. As an aspiring audio engineer and music fanatic I have always (naturally) been opposed to b-list celebrities thinking they have any talent whatsoever and releasing albums.

Over the years, geniuses like Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff and Eddie Murphy have gotten it into their over inflated noggins that they have something relevant to say and it must be shared with the world through song. This infuriates me. So when reality star Heidi Montag of The Hills fame started feeling that itch that so many stars of the tabloid circuit have felt before, to record an album, I assumed we were in for more of the same. The same being about 50,000 albums sold, various appearances on early morning programing, a teen choice award and thousands of tweens screaming their faces off (as soon as they get their voices back from the JoBros concert). But then this happened. This is divine intervention, like in the movies when the clouds part and God speaks down to the main character, telling him to have no fear, everything will be alright. Well, everything isn’t going to be alright (by Joe Rotondi), but I guess it’s gonna be just a little better than I thought.

People don’t completely feed into all of this! They don’t open wide and receive every bit of horse shit that is spoon fed to them by the so-called media. This is my first (and most likely last) salute to the American populous. Job well done. Way to see through the bullshit that is Heidi Montag and answer to your own musical taste as oppose to what you’re being told to listen to. The Times had a funny little article on the topic where they actually sought out a few of those six hundred and fifty-eight buyers of Superficial and interviewed/profiled them. A truly hilarious read.

On a related note, I’m sure that Heidi meant for the album title to be an indictment on the Hollywood scene, but in light of her recent “upgrades” doesn’t it seem just a little more fitting? Maybe it should’ve been called Artificial? Yeah, I like that.

On a slightly off topic, but related, note, here is the video from a particular celebrity that deserved all of his praise but clearly took it too far back in 1998 when he released this single. (More to come on Pesci, I feel an entire post’s worth of emotions when watching this video)

26 Hank Yurchif
27 Al Kerzeltzer
28 Tim Burland
29 Marty Graw
30 Mary Gorownd
31 Frank Sanbeans
32 Jack Encoke
33 Al Kaholic
34 Harry Ballzac
35 Sue Perman
36 Stan Dingonlie
37 Hugh Manatie
38 Art Zancrafts
39 Diane Tamicha
40 Phil Meyup
41 Sue Pyturds
42 Ty Linall
43 Ty Yurshu
44 Jen Durbendur
45 Sal Menilla
46 Joyce Tic
47 Minnie Van
48 Colin Sik
49 Ron Dayvou
50 Will Powers

One of the greatest achievements in recent archeological history has occurred this past week, and it would be a travesty for us not to acknowledge it. After all, it’s in our mission statement. What I’m talking about is the recovery of five crates of Mackinlay Scotch and Brandy from over 100 years worth of ice near the South Pole. That’s right. There are those who would think that the valuable skills of the world’s best archeologists and scientists should be put to use solving problems like global warming and gas shortages… but no! We need to get hammered so as to forget those minor issues.

The five cases were abandoned all the way back in 1908 by Anglo-Irish explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton when his expedition to the South Pole ran short of supplies and had to turn back. Though, I don’t really see what the problem was if they had five cases of whiskey left. The real bonus for all of us whiskey lovers is that the recipe for this particular blend of scotch is no longer in existence, and once the bottles have been thawed out and analyzed the long extinct blend can be reproduced. Beautiful. Now we can only hope that they will put some of these bottles up for sale, at which point I will promptly rob a bank and purchase a bottle. Here’s to science finally coming through for us, especially after all those broken promises.

Check out a legitimate article documenting this wondrous occasion here.

Abe Vigota is not fucking amused.

For the first time in a while the two teams in the big game were number one seeds, and as far as I’m concerned, for the second year in a row the vast majority of civilized America didn’t care at all about who won.  What we do care about is getting more stuff. And how do we learn about stuff so we can get it after the game? Commercials, that’s how! So, lets recap some of my favorite commercials, and also a few that I completely disprove of (I got your back Abe).

So, one popular theme that seemed to be prevalent this year is cartoonish violence. More than ever advertisers are showing that simply by showing the viewer something that is stupidly funny for 30 seconds and affixing their clients logo to the end of it that you will buy their product.  Its sad really, and some of the commercials were just bizarre and kind of cruel.  However, one that I found particularly funny was the VW punch-buggy commercial.  VW has the serendipitous honor of having a stupidly violent name attached to their brand, so its OK for them to have a spot pretty much focused on people hitting people. On top of that, we’ve got a little Stevie-Wonder-is-blind humor and that never gets old. Throw in Brian Fellows for good measure and you’ve got yourself some good television.

The Superbowl is also a huge platform for movies and TV shows to advertise.  There were two huge trailers and a few forgettable ones this year.  Specifically, the trailer for the HBO Miniseries The Pacific, which is a spinoff of Band of Brothers has been pretty quiet during its long and expensive production. We got to see a peak last night and it doesn’t look like its going to disappoint.

There were a slew of car commercials, as is expected every year.  One of my personal favorites was Kia’s robots spot, depicting a group of life-sized toys going all out in Vegas Hangover style. I won’t ruin the ending, but it has just enough sentimentality to be fun and not too much to be cheesy.
Dodge also threw in for a minute long spot hearkening back to Burger King’s Manthem campaign a year ago.  I cant decide if this commercial is so manly its kind of insulting, but the Charger is a pretty cool car, and I have nothing bad to say about anything that Dexter voices.

And now, on to the black sheep.  These people shelled out millions of dollars to talk to people who either didn’t want to listen, or are completely confused/insulted or possibly the worst: indifferent about their ad.

First Failure: I do not for the life of me get why companies like Intel advertise? I cant even bring myself to watch this spot again because I remember just being perplexed.

Second Failure: Charles Barkley should go away. I have no idea why he is still incessantly featured on TV, especially in a spot that makes him ramble on incoherently about tacos. I just…I don’t know.  Moving on…

Third Failure: What the fuck snikers.  I know the advertising industry makes mistakes, but handing over the most important advertising slots in the history of the fucking universe to the spots you fielded this year was the superbowl of suck.  Case in point, why, why, why am I relating Betty White and Abe Vigota to your candy bar? Have you ran out of similarly unrelated basketball personalities who’s names easily lend themselves to your stupid puns? Abe Fucking Vigota, really? Hasn’t the man done enough to earn our respect? He almost single handedly dismantled the Corleone family for god’s sake, and you have him getting tackled by some everyman jagoff. Score one for Milky Way, idiots.

Oh, and “Puxatony Palomolu” might be the worst fucking combination of two proper names in the history of the world. God help us all (till next year).

Someone with Photoshop hates you Charles!

Charles Barkley is a guy I never really liked. I never really hated him either. The most logical place to start the discussion him is his college experience.  At first glance, he’s exactly what you’d want out of a player. Averaged nearly a double double his entire three year career, All SEC selectee, strong finisher, shot over 60% from the floor, and the list goes on.  He brought some excitement to Auburn fans and they ended up retiring his number. In fact, since college athletes aren’t given a big enough platform to run their mouths extensively, he was a pretty popular guy. The only real knock people had of  him is that he struggled with a weight problem.  I, along with many, find it unacceptable for supposedly premiere athletes to be lazy enough to get fat. However, after stage one of his life, he’s comes out strong in my book.

On to the NBA. Barkley joined a team that was good enough to get to the Eastern Conference Finals where they lost to the Boston Celtics. Under Moses Malone’s tutelage, the Round Mound was able to shed a few pounds and not look like a lost Van Gundy brother. He scored a lot, grabbed a lot of boards, and made some All Star teams. He also spit on a little girl during overtime of a game. While this is not necessarily out of the ordinary in the slimebox called Philadelphia that he played in, the rest of the country found it pretty terrible. Charles later listened to his agent and gave the loogie faced girl some basketball tickets, which he got for free, to see him play.

As if playing in Philly wasn’t enough to get him despised by most of the country, Charles never shied away from cameras.  He was picked up by Phoenix in 1992 and, along with Danny “Shitbird” Ainge, made it to the finals.  Barkley famously told Michael Jordan that it was destiny that the Suns would win. They lost and I am confident that it was because God hates assholes.  The next year, Barkley decided that he was tired of being followed by cameras (but not the millions of dollars he made because of it) and stated that athletes are not role models. Dumbass Dan Quayle backed him. Most people saw it as the cop out that it was.

In 1996 he moved to the Rockets with Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon. He still couldn’t win a ’ship.  However, his time in the league is equally remembered for a few other incidents as well. On court fights with Shaq, Oak, and Laimbeer (among others), off court assaults of random men after games, and terrible gambling issues, make Barkley an easy guy to hate. Hell, if he wasn’t an NBA player the guy would be in jail 5 times over.

After he retired he took his trash to the networks. He became the least intelligent color commentator (you’re welcome Joe Buck) in the history of commentary on TNT.  The stuff that would come out of his mouth was/is atrocious. He wouldn’t disagree.

He is also known as the worst golfer ever. His swing is painful to watch. He hit a fan in the head with his awful shank. I don’t know what else to say about that one. He doesn’t have a job and still can’t find time to not look like a moron on the golf course.

Most of my dismay at the existence of this fatass comes from a few issues. 1) He wrote a book and I, like an idiot, read it. I wish it was possible to sue for time. To quote Billy Madison “what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.” 2) He’s on TV. All the time. I don’t mind the fact that there are morons in the world. I usually just ignore them or shove them down stairs. Charlie-poo however is shoved down everyone’s throat. TNT, Dwayne Wade commercials, Dwight Howard commercials… fuck you Charles. You were a good player but MJ was better and he only bothers us with Hanes commercials. 3) Snickers. Why did Snickers make the “get dunked on by Patrick Chewing” commercials when there was a fatter, dumber, more washed up player that they could have used? If it was Barkley making an ass out of himself in those commercials I might have given him a pass.

At the end of the day, the way I will remember Charles is as the worst dressed man on TV. The guy looks like Stevie Wonder, Bryant Gumble, and 1986 got in a fight and they all lost. Hawaiian shirts, synthetic turtlenecks, ill fitting 5 button suits, and more olive tones than a vineyard. This guy can’t dress. He can’t speak. He could play. Charles, you get a 3 out of 10 on my scale.*

*1 being genocide and 10 being a blow job while wearing new socks.

Fuck it, this is a random list of a bunch of semi-realistic names that are also things.

1 Jen Oreous
2 Ray Zorburn
3 Janet Ore
4 Reid Enwright
5 Luke Wharm
6 Dan Jerous
7 Miles Tugo
8 Chris Tollball
9 Rick O’Shea
10 Jacques Strapp
11 Jim Nasium
12 Juan Tedmore
13 Nick Ellendime
14 Cy Bohrg
15 Dan Dilyion
16 Chris Mastry
17 Reid Astorie
18 Guss Tuvwind
19 Rob Yurbank
20 Sol Tanpeper
21 Justin Case
22 Mike Hunt
23 Pattie O’Furniture
24 Ryan O’Plasty
25 Ben Yornee

If you don’t get any of them on the first try, then think about it for a minute. These are the best ones.  If you still don’t get it, wait until the next 25.