Can’t help posting these. I so heart Queen Latifa.
Tina Fey knocks it out of ANWR once again with her Tina Fey Sara Palin (that’s what I get for lack of sleep. Thanks Grand Master for the correction) impersonation. The VP debate wasn’t such a debate as much as a sideshow. We were all watching not to hear what these two idiots had to say. We were watching to see someone fuck up. We were watching to see if Sara Palin was really as overwhelmed and inexperienced as she appeared in her interview with Couric or if Joe Biden would layeth the smacketh down upon her candy ass. Let’s be honest, the VP debate doesn’t mean shit to anyone. Lloyd Bentsen destroyed Dan Quayle with his “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” slam and it didn’t make much of a difference to Bush senior’s campaign.
John and Barack go at it again tonight. The economy will most assuredly be a huge focus. When this whole circus started, war and terror were the big issues. Now it’s the moneys and the bail outs and all. What a difference a year makes.
Angry Zen Minion Paul Jang alerted me to the news that inspired by Chucky’s 20th anniversary, Universal wants a Child’s Play reboot. And true to form, writer Don Mancini and producer
David Kirschner who both worked on the property since its inception want to go dark. According to Mancini:
That’s really our goal with this next movie, bottom-line, was to make it scary again. After having, I think, rather successfully mined the horror-comedy aspects of this concept over the course of Bride of Chucky and Seed of Chucky, the fans are really telling us that they want it to be scary again. Doing the remake just provides us with a really good opportunity to bring it home, so to speak.
Although the film will be updated to reflect the time period it's released (project sometime in 2010), they want to use good old animatronics for Chucky rather than CG. Brad Dourif will return to voice the maniacal puppet.
Puppet. Check. Original voice. Check. Scary. Check. I guess if you're going to do a remake, do it right.
Do want a Daredevil movie that doesn’t suck? Sure you do! Well, you’re in luck because Angry Zen Minion Ted O’Hanlan writes in to tell us that Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman is interested in rebooting Daredevil.
Of course, when it comes to reboots the tendency for comic book flicks (hell, comic books as well) is to go dark, especially in light of Dark Knight’s tremendous box office WIN. Here are Rothman’s thoughts:
Would it be as dark? I don’t know because what it really needs is, it needs a visionary at the level that Chris Nolan was. It needs someone, it needs a director, honestly, who has a genuine vision. What we wouldn’t do is just do it for the sake of doing it. Right? What we try to do is to get a creative engine for it, that really had a great vision for it, that’s what we would look for.
Right. You won’t do a reboot just for the sake of doing a reboot. Sure.
Honestly, I thought Daredevil was okay. Not great. Certainly not worth watching again. And Electra might as well have gone direct to DVD. But I loved Michael Clark Duncan as Kingpin. Absolutely perfect. I would have loved to see a movie featuring his rise to power. In terms of outright reboot, Incredible Hulk was certainly entertaining. And if you were a fan of the television series, it was a lot of fun. Still, I felt something was missing. It was like watching The Fugitive with giant green guy. Not a whole lot of substance and it didn’t do nearly as well as Iron Man. Was it worth it? I guess now they can include Hulk in whatever Avenger flick they do. Other than that, I don’t have much interest in seeing a third Hulk or second or whatever.
There’s a lot you can do with Daredevil. I would be in favor of anything but an origin reboot. Origin stories make for dull movies. I’m not terribly optimistic, but I’m not terribly against it. We’ll just have to wait and see how it all shakes out.
Angry Goddamn Zen Minion Ted O’Hanlan writes in with the goddamn news that there’s going to be a goddamn sequel to 300. Goddamn Zack Snyder has expressed goddamn interest in directing a second film but says he’ll wait until goddamn Frank Miller finishes the goddamn graphic novel. The goddamn sequel to 300 would cover the goddamn year between the goddamn battle of Thermopylae and the goddamn battle of Plataea which we saw the very start of at the end of the goddamn first film. Goddamn.
I think this is a goddamn stupid idea. A money making idea, surely, but goddamn stupid. Can you imagine sitting through a goddamn recruitment movie? “Hey, did you hear? Goddamn Leonidas lead 300 goddamn Spartans against the goddamn Persians!” “Well, goddamn! Let’s fuck em up!” Goddamn boring.
The story is told. The goddamn point of telling the goddamn tale of goddamn Thermopylae is the goddamn notion that a goddamn few can stand against goddamn many and that even in goddamn defeat can inspire goddamn victory. That’s all you goddamn need. I suppose the goddamn battle of Plataea would be goddamn interesting if only for the goddamn fight. But the goddamn period between just isn’t goddamn interesting. You don’t hear about the goddamn recruitment drive, you hear about the goddamn battle of Thermopylae.
Tina Fey returns to portray Sara Palin in SNL’s parody of Katie Couric’s interview with the Alaska governor.
Certainly Tina Fey is a dead ringer for Palin. Her first sketch as the governor was absolutely brilliant. Even so, we all know that comedy is about exaggeration. I mean, surely, Palin isn’t that out of touch. Surely there’s more in her head meats than partisan sound bites. Surely she can give real answers to tough questions. Surely being governor of Alaska prepares her for pretty much anything, right?
“I’ll try to find you some and bring them to ya’.”
Um… wow, that wasn’t even a tough question.
It should be more than apparent that Sara is out of her league. I’m sure she’s an intelligent enough person. But preparing for the onslaught of the moose apocalypse and preparing to lead the nation are two vastly different things. If a moose is attacking, hell yes, I want her and her lipstick on my team! Everything else, no thanks. What in the glorious fuck were McCain’s people thinking when they picked her?
Angry Zen Minion Ted O’Hanlan sends word that one of the writers of that dumb-shit Shia LaBeouf thing, Eagle Eye, is working on a sequel to Blade Runner. Travis Wright and John Glenn worked on a first draft of Eagle Eye before Glenn left the partnership. The two had previously talked about writing a sequel to Blade Runner and even got some input from Blade Runner producer Bud Yorkin, but that all ended a while ago. So if there is still a sequel in the works, Wright is running solo.
No studio is attached to develop the project so for now, it’s all in Wright’s head. Here’s hoping it stays there. Blade Runner needs no sequel. After twenty six years, the film stands the test of time. We rarely get sci-fi films that hold up for even five years. A sequel has little chance of living up to that standard of quality.
I have given Death Magnetic more of a listen and I still think it sounds horrible. And now we have some sort of explanation.
Angry Zen Minion Jana sent me this article outlining one of the reasons Metallica’s Death Magnetic sounds like shit. It all has to do with the mastering.
The version of Death Magnetic you may have purchased on CD was mastered at close to peak levels. Commenter Norm in my previous rant mentioned this as a good thing. Master a track so that all the wave forms peak out will make a track louder. But louder is not always better.
The top wave forms are from the version of Death Magnetic released on Guitar Hero III. The bottom waves are from the version released on CD and iTunes. The peaks and valleys represent the dynamic range of the track, how loud and soft it plays. The top wave forms have a wide range of peaks and valleys. There’s more interesting stuff for your ears to listen to. You get a full range of sound.
The bottom waves are all peaked out. Every wave is fighting for attention which makes the sound crunchy, loud, and event distorted. It’s tiresome for your ears to listen to that kind of wave. In fact, static noise looks a lot like the bottom wave.
Ian Shepard posted a video comparison of both sounds.
If you can’t tell the difference, just ignore everything I’ve said and write me off as an audio elitist. For everyone else, let’s move on.
So what the fuck happened? This is an example of what is known in audiophile circles as the “Loudness War.” Let’s grab an expert to tell us more. Here’s a video explanation from Turn Me Up, a non profit group of audio engineers seeking to bring back dynamic range to music.
This brings us back to the iPod and MP3s. If you wanted to listen to your music in its original glory with all the possible dynamic range, your audio files would be pretty big. Takes a lot of bits to represent the full range of awesomeness of a track. When you convert your audio to MP3, you crunch out a lot of the dynamics and end up with something that sounds a lot like the CD version of Death Magnetic. But you get a much smaller file.
This smaller, compressed audio file lets you load thousands of songs onto your iPod in the blink of an eye. And honestly, people rarely care about audio quality when they’re jogging or taking the train to work or flying on an airplane. They just want some tasty jams. Audio engineers are now faced with the sad proposition that their work will go straight to iPod. In order to make that compressed audio sound better, they peak it out. So the Loudness War wages on. And entire generations of young music fans will never hear what they are missing.
Resident AZM Uwe Boll watcher Tyler Anderson writes in with news that Uwe Boll is no longer satisfied with just spewing shit upon the silver screen. Oh no. This time, Uwe Boll takes on gaming! From Tyler:
As if making movies which borderline on travesty isn’t enough, now Uwe Boll is turning his sights to my personal favorite hobby; video games. 1968 Tunnel Rats is the newest offering from Uwe Bolls seemingly endless supply of terrible concepts. The trailer is just…pricelessly terrible, with issues that run the gamut from jittery framerate, terriblly rendered textures and messages like “If you were a soldier in 1968…They would’ve prepared you to fight in tunnels.”
The best part? RollyBolly is apparently completely pleased with this product…like everything else he’s ever done ever. But hey, I guess you really should love your work…even if everyone else hates it and thinks it’s a terrible idea. And that’s what he must do; just shove his fingers in his ears and scream “la la la la la la la!” until everyone looks at him sadly and walks away. Kotaku writer Mike Fahey make a pretty good suggestion though; “I am just hoping the whole thing is a big joke, culminating in Boll doing a movie adaptation of the game based on his movie which turns out completely different than the original film.”
What amazes me the most is how a man who is so reviled in the gaming community for churning out shitty movie adaptations of their favorite games manged to convince a game studio to produce this crap on purpose. I mean, they actually spent time and money to develop this nasty thing. Even a shitty game costs money. It baffles the mind.
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