Last week was the 2009 Radio and TV Correspondents’ Dinner. The main speakers were President Barack Obama and comedian John Hodgman. I have provided the Obama speech above and the Hodgman speech below, both speeches are funny, but Hodgman’s Nerd vs Jock speech is great, but if you can answer all of Hodgman’s questions without problem, then all I can say is wow…

Enjoy

Dany

I was lucky enough last week to get into a sneak preview of Woody Allen’s latest film, a collaboration with Larry David, Whatever Works. This was a much anticipated joining of Larry David’s George Costanza/Curb Your Enthusiasm style of comedy with Woody Allen’s classic New York City storytelling.

While I enjoyed Allen’s Match Point, his more recent films centering in Europe have fallen short, but with Whatever Works, Allen returns to his native New York and in turn returns to form, delivering a wonderfully funny and quirky film that follows the latter life of a limping genious physisist (Larry David). There is a scene or two that is somewhat predictable, but there were many belly laughs for me and I wholeheartedly recommend this film to anyone looking for Allen at his best behind the camera as writer/director. The duo of David and Allen break a few film conventions here and it feels like a return to Annie Hall form, it is very well done.

Now to Star Trek, first off let me just say, I know this is a late review of the new JJ Abrams Star Trek movie, but I have spent most of 2009 in Grenada where this film was unavailable in theaters, so I haven’t had much opportunity to see this latest JJ Abrams film.

There is a lot about this film that really bugged me. I have never really been a big JJ Abrams fan and his overall filming style just seems to rub me the wrong way. I don’t know if it was the excessive and unnecessary lens flares, the wild and off kilter camera angels, maybe it was seeing the beautiful Winona Ryder play the role of Spock’s mother, it could have been all of these things, but whatever it was, something got under my skin with this film.

Now that I’ve gotten my gripes out of the way… I had a great time with this film. Even with all these things knawing at me in the back of my mind, this film is just a hell of a lot of fun time. As someone who grew up watching Star Trek reruns, the homages to the old series, like Captain Pike, his wheelchair, the fate of the classic red shirt and many many more tips of the hat were great fun. I was exteremly happy with the main character casting as well, placing Zachary Quinto (Spock), Karl Urban (Bones), Zoe Saldana (Uhura), Simon Pegg (Scotty), John Cho (Sulu), and Anton Yelchin (Chekov, by the way, how many times can they script in V-words for this kid to say? It’s great.) in the main rolls were all great choices. It was also great to see Eric Bana completely melt away in his portrayal of Nero. I don’t know how much I liked Chris Pine as James T. Kirk, but that might just be because no one can out Shatner, William Shatner.

Another positive aspect JJ Abrams brings to his films is an extremely interesting conception of alien creatures, the scenes on the ice planet were visually stunning. So, it’s a bit late, but I would definately recommend that any sci-fi fan go out and check out this latest film, especially since there is no way that this is the final installment for this new Star Trek and even though I could do without the lens flares, I am looking forward to the next installment.

Thanks to available images and poster geek for the above pictures.

Enjoy

Dany

There are very few things that will drive me to see a film when I know little to nothing about it. It’s pretty much only been when Woody Allen’s name is mentioned as the director that this is the case, but now, I would have to add a Pixar production to that short list. I have learned that anything that Pixar produces is totally worth my time.

I knew nothing about this film Up, other than its title and that it was in 3D before walking into the theater, but I left so happy that I showed up. I had heard an early review from the Filmspotting folks (subscribe here) that there was some surprisingly mature subject matter that this film dealt with, but they were good not to reveal anything about it. There are very few films that have made me cry, but I think there were at least 3 or 4 separate times that I cried during this film. I won’t reveal too much, since I went into this film cold and loved that that was the case, but I feel that because Pixar premieres a 5 minute silent short film before each of their feature films, that they have become masters at silent storytelling. The opening 40 minutes of Wall-E were some of the best silent film making I had ever seen and now with Up, the silent montage that is in the beginning of the film was just stunningly emotional. There are some real adult themes that that montage deals with, but the way that Pixar handled it, I feel that the youngest of kids won’t be as emotionally effected by it than the adults in the crowd, I really must commend Pixar, it was excellently done.

There are many positives about this movie and the relationship between the old man and the scout is just great to watch, but I felt that the conflict that included the older explorer from the main character’s past was almost entirely unnecessary to the plot. If the film had remained an adventure movie, it would have served it better. The best scenes are the main character with his wife and the main character and the scout. I have to say though, if the film had just ended when the main character had walked back into his house with his mailbox, I would have felt that that alone was probably Pixar’s best short film to date. The only other criticism I had was that I didn’t feel that the 3D experience really added much to the film and it certainly wasn’t worth the extra cost to see the movie, $16.50 was a lot to pay to see this film, the storytelling was great, it was emotionally intense, but I would recommend seeing the regular big screen version of this film.

I think people of all ages should really see this film, there are very few films that truly earn their G rating for ALL AUDIENCES, but this is definitely one of those movies.

Thanks to Twitchfilm for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

*Updated 11pm 2009-06-02* As I was walking to the subway this morning around 8am in Manhattan, I noticed that on 76th st and Lexington avenue an Access-A-Ride paratransit bus had caught fire and had COMPLETELY burned to a cinder. You can click here to see the google streetview of the street where this burned bus was located. I’ve now posted a bunch of pictures I took while at the scene of the actual bus all a cinder, but  I still cannot find any news stories about this fire online.

Dany

I can’t believe that it is almost halfway into 2009 and we are still arguing about defending marriage. Congress has presented a bill to define marriage as between one man and one woman in Washington, DC. This came about because the DC city council recently decided to recognize same sex marriages that couples obtained from other parts of the country where same sex marriage was legal. Congress has ultimate say over the laws in Washington, DC so to follow up their 1996 federal defense of marriage act, some conservative members want to extend this definition to The District as well.

It is hard to believe that with all the progress we have made in recent years that we are still so close minded at times. It is the same representatives who want big government out of their personal affairs behind the closed doors of their own homes that want to prevent two people from getting married because they don’t happen to be a man and a woman. The idea of a government being able to explicitly tell me who I could not marry seems like the definition of a big overreaching government to me. If our government wants to define marriage, the only definition I would support is that: Marriage should be between two consenting adults.

I used to live in Washington, DC for years and I would hate to see it regress to a city where separate but equal was still in existence, only instead of it being in regard to the school system, it referred to the rights of couples.  I know this message does not had much power, but I am including a link here so you can find the contact information for your congressional representative, so make sure you let them know how you feel about this issue, I hope you agree with me, but if you don’t, let your representative know that too. I am about to contact my member of Congress right now.

Just remember, gay rights is also a national security issue as well. Every year dozens of qualified and willing US soldiers are discharged because they reveal they are gay, even when they are Arabic translators or are willing to be redeployed to the battlefield. If Democrats were smart, they would be out front on this issue to show that they are strong on national security and anyone who is against gay rights is really hurting our national defense at the same time.

Thanks to Jeff for the link to this Washington Times article and thanks to Salon for the above pic.

Dany

*Update 22 May 2009: My NY reprepresentative in the House, Carolyn B. Maloney is against this bill and supports equal rights for all couples, so that makes me a bit happier.

Not without controversy, President Obama has been keeping busy by speaking at a couple of recent commencement ceremonies. He was first scheduled to speak at Arizona State University, but then news came out that they would not be presenting him with an honorary degree, so Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show did a great piece to suss out this story. Then President Obama was scheduled at the Notre  Dame University commencement, but many Notre Dame faithful were upset that he would be speaking and that he was being presented with an honorary degree. I’m posting the full video from both the Arizona State University and Notre Dame speeches below where you can see that even some people attending the commencements made their objections heard:

Here is his full speech at Arizona Statea:

Thanks to the lovely Jessica for finding that Daily Show video!

Enjoy

Dany

For the past week or so, surrounding President Obama’s trip to Trinidad for the 2009 Summit of the Americas, we have had dozens of F-15 flybys in two jet tandems. They are the fastest, noisiest and most chest pumpingly awe inspiring show of US might and it has been bringing an American shaped tear to my eye every time I see one, even if they have also been flying by at 1am, 4am, 6am (waking tons of people up, but not me, since I sleep like the dead) as well as during random points throughout the day and evening. Whenever they fly by, it makes me think of Team America: World Police: “America, FUUUUCKK YEAAHHHH.”

I just wish we could see one of them just shoot something down or blow up a tree or watch them do SOMETHING explodey. God, I miss America being at school here in Grenada. While walking back from lab today, two more flew by and someone yelled out “TAKE ME WITH YOU” and that brought a huge laugh from a lot of surrounding people.

OK, that was my International news update
Dany

I found this 60 Minutes news story about the recent advances in prosthetic limbs from Dean Kamen’s (the inventor of the Segway) company DEKA. It totally floored me just how far this new upper limb technology has come.

Regardless of your politics, this is an amazing new advance coming out of the DARPA funded research.

Enjoy

Dany

I had to take a break to share this wonderful panorama I took of tonight’s sunset, I wish I had caught it a bit earlier while the sun was still visible in the sky, but I’ll try and get a better version soon.

Enjoy

Dany

After Jon Stewart slammed CNBC, Jim Cramer came on The Daily Show to try and set the record strait, but again, Jon Stewart called Cramer out on some of the more outrageous things he has done both on CNBC and while being interviewed by other non-mainstream media outlets. The interview was long and I’m posting all 3 segments of the uncensored verion. Other than all the cursing from Stewart, the whole thing felt very Tim Russert-esque with Stewart calling Cramer out with statements he had previously made that were caught on tape.

Enjoy

Dany

I saw this video of Jon Stewart BASHING Rick Santelli and CNBC after hearing about the story on This Week In Tech and I knew I had to come out of hibernation to post about it. This was such a great response to the insanity of CNBC’s rose colored glasses and bad reporting.

Enjoy

Dany

TPMtv (subscribe here) has taken all of the recent press conferences and media appearances of embattled Illinois Governer Rod Blagojevich and condensed it all into a neat little package that is less than 4 minutes long.

See how he has publicly handled himself in the past six weeks. It’s a great way to get all caught up, in case you might have missed anything he has said since the scandal broke out.

Enjoy

Dany

This week has brought us two very important keynote presentations. First there was the Macworld 2009 keynote by Apple’s Phil Schiller (the last keynote Apple will give at Macworld) replacing Steve Jobs, who has traditionally given this keynote, then came the opening of CES and Steve Ballmer delivering this year’s keynote, a job that Bill Gates had traditionally filled in years past.

It was very interesting seeing both lectures for their similarities: all the cool hardware and software they were promoting, and the differences: Microsoft made a concerted effort to show off many different hardware and internet vendors, not just their in-house products.

Watch the 135 minute Macworld 2009 keynote here or get the HD version (subscribe to the iTunes podcast here) and watch the 123 minute CES 2009 keynote here.

Enjoy! I actually think the Steve Ballmer keynote (watch it here) was more interesting to watch, especially since they showed off some cool flexible e-ink reading technology.

Dany

I would stop posting The Onion’s videos (iTunes subscribe here)… if they weren’t consistently hilarious. This latest video is a great send up on Apple and their (at times) lemming-like hardcore fan base.

Just enjoy the absurdity of the revolutionary keyboard-less Macbook Wheel.

Dany

I have a Windows XP Service Pack 3 laptop and I am usually the only person who uses this laptop, but there are times when friends and family want to use my computer. I am a power user and I run as an administrator, but I do not want anyone else to have total, unfettered access to my computer, so I created a limited user account for everyone else who wants to use my computer. Windows has a nice feature that enables you to switch between different user accounts (go to Control Panel, User Accounts, Change the way users log on or off, check Use the Welcome screen and Use Fast User Switching) while keeping all the programs and processes from each user open and running in the background.

The problem is that there are times when I forget to switch users when I leave my computer or I might get quickly pulled away from my computer for some reason at times. I usually just end up closing the lid of my laptop, leaving my computer unprotected and open for anyone to use.

In the Windows Advanced Power Options, there is a menu setting where you can set what your laptop does when you close the lid, but the only options are “Do Nothing,” “Stand By” and “Hibernate” (this last option only appears if you have previously enabled hibernation mode). I don’t like any of these options. “Do Nothing” does not help me at all since anyone can just open my laptop back up and start cruising around with full admin privileges. “Stand By” mode in general is no good, because there are many times, when I have set my laptop to Stand By with a bunch of programs open and the computer wouldn’t wake back up again, so I would have to turn the computer off and turn it back on again, thus losing all my unsaved progress in the process. I also turn off Hibernation mode, since I don’t like reserving at least a gigabyte of memory for this process, considering I’m usually running out of disk space on my computer as it is.

I Googled my way all over the internet looking for solutions, I checked a whole bunch of tech sites, then tried Lifehacker, Microsoft and I even contacted Dell tech support to see if they had any solutions, but I found nothing.

I then decided to post my problem on a few tech forums. Exactly 5 minutes after posting on the Hak5 forum, my question was answered! It turns out that motionman95 (email: motionman95 [at] yahoo.com) recently wrote a program to solve this. The original stable program is MonitorState (download it here), but the beta version 1.2, (which is supposed to fix some bugs and glitches) has been renamed to StandbyLock (download it here). *Update 1-5-2008 – There is a new stable version, StandbyLock2.0 (download it here).*

*Update 1-6-2008 – StandbyLock v2.0 (download it here 1-8-2008 – updated download link) is now out of beta and available.* While this program is running, if you set the laptop’s advanced power options to “Stand By” when the lid is closed, the program bypasses Stand By mode altogether and just switches off users and when you open the lid up again, you’re greeted with the Windows XP Welcome Screen and you can pick which user you want to run as.

I did not have any problems with MonitorState and I have not had any problems with StandbyLock either, but I have noticed from the Task Manager that StandbyLock seems to use more and more memory the longer it is left running, which is very similar to the problems Firefox 2 had with memory leaks. At this point, I will continue to use MonitorState, but I am waiting for the release of a stable version 2 of StandbyLock that doesn’t cause a performance hit to my machine the longer the program runs in the background. Let me know in the comments which version works best for you if you decide to try both. When I get new versions, I will keep you updated. *Update 1-5-2008 – start using StableLock2.0 (download it here) *Update 1-6-2008 – StandbyLock v2.0 (download it here) has now gone gold (now with some nice taskbar menu features and an F2 hotkey to enable/disable the program) and I have switched over to this version,* it is a smaller program, it has a MUCH smaller memory footprint and the memory leak problems have been solved.

After thanking motionman95 for sharing his software creations, I found out that he also has some other programs that he has written and is in the process of creating a website of his own to showcase all these applications. I can not wait to see what other goodies motionman95 has created!

Enjoy

Dany

I saw Slumdog Millionaire on the advice of Lindsey the newly anointed movie buff. The movie was extremely entertaining and funny, but it will be a bit violent for some people. The people I went with were watching a few of the more violent scenes with hands over their faces to block out some of the harder to sit through torture and scenes of violence.

The story overall was entertaining, funny, sweet and uplifting though… and after hearing the M.I.A’s Paper Planes song all over NYC at EVERY single bar with a jukebox, hearing the song here in director Danny Boyle’s film was extremely surreal (video above). I thoroughly enjoyed this film where the Indian police are trying to figure out, using any means necessary,  how a slumdog could know enough to make it all the way to the final question in the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and why this slumdog wanted to win, and no, it isn’t just for all the rupees involved.

The only issue with this movie is that I feel the same way I did after I saw Boyle’s Trainspotting and Sunshine, I really enjoyed myself, but I knew I do not want to rewatch this film, the only one of his movies I’ve ever seen more than once is 28 Days Later… (watch the full movie here on Hulu) and after seeing both the long and short versions of that movie, I don’t feel like ever watching THAT movie again either, even though I liked that zombie movie as well.

The other problem I had though was with the movie theater I saw Slumdog Millionaire in. I saw the film in City Cinemas’ CC East 86th Street theater here in NYC and the official showtime was listed as 7:10pm and we had gotten to the theater early, but promptly at 7:10pm, the lights dimmed and the they proceeded to play 5 minutes of commercials before the actual movie previews started at 7:15pm. It would be fine if before the published movie start time, the theater was playing commercials, but once it’s showtime, the movies previews should be starting, not the commercials. I know that Roger Ebert has even complained of this same issue both here and here. Movie tickets are getting more and more expensive and we currently had to pay $12.50 per ticket here in Manhattan and we didn’t pay to see commercials start once we were expecting to watch the movie. I do not have a problem with movie previews starting at showtime, I consider the previews a key part of the movie-going experience in theaters, but NOT commercials!

So, after the film, I went and found the theater manager and politely complained about this, explaining that I enjoyed the movie, but didn’t appreciate having the commercials start when we should have started watching the previews at 7:10, she said she had no control over it, since the computers were preprogrammed to do this, but she gave me the name and phone number of the person in the main office to talk to about this.

I will call on Monday and will keep note of my progress with this issue. This used to be an issue at all the theater chains, but I know that AMC/Loews changed their policy of at one point showing 15 minutes of commercials after the published showtime, so now their listed showtime actually indicates when the previews begin.

Dany

Thanks to the Digg Reel (subscribe here), I’ve found me some scary tv commercials through Esquire… so scary, in fact, that they’re quite compelling and harder to turn away from than a car wreck on the side of the road.

Enjoy the drunk people the bad acting and the Schwarzenegger-esque accents.

Dany 

Today is the first day of the new season. Here in the northern hemisphere, that means it’s the first day of winter and here in NYC we already have some snow on the ground. This means the holiday season is upon us. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the Solstice or anything or nothing in between, we’ve all experienced the magic and fear of the everlasting fruitcake.

Watch as the Systm (subscribe here) crew finds some very creative ways to handle fruitcake this holiday season (watch it here in HD). Let’s just say that fire and firearms might be involved…

Enjoy!

Dany

I am a 24 year old NYC PBS member who has been personally donating to PBS for over two years now. My family have been PBS donors for over a decade. I love their programing, but I rarely watch it on television outside of its Saturday night movie lineup: Reel 13. I love watching all the online content, especially NOVA, but every time I watch the NOVA podcast (subscribe here), if I want to see more, I go right to their website and the full version of what I just watched in their podcast will not be posted online until it has aired on television a few days later.

This does not drive me to watch the show on television, I usually end up forgetting to go back a few days later to revisit PBS, so I don’t get to see the program until maybe a month later, if not missing the show entirely. If PBS is not going to post full NOVA episodes in the NOVA podcast feed (which I would LOVE), I would hope that they would wait to release the podcast until AFTER it has aired and has been published ONLINE. Television revolves around schedules, but online video needs to inherently be video available ON DEMAND.

I enjoy their shows and I understand if they want to promote their television shows, I just don’t like to get teased with a preview, then when I actually GO to their site in excitement, find out that I have to remember to come back days later to watch what I’ve already been enticed to watch from an interesting podcast preview.

Thanks to Learn Out Loud for the above image.

Dany

*Update 12-19-2008: Now, the full version of the NOVA episode on Absolute Zero, which I wanted to watch is now available online BEFORE it airs on television, YAY! Watch it here.

Over this past year, Saturday Night Live has really been nailing political commentary. Last night’s show was no different. Some of the best material was Fred Armisen lambasting NY Governor David Paterson.

It was sad though to hear that Amy Poehler is leaving SNL, but Armisen again lightened the mood (below). I’m interested to see what Amy’s new NBC show will be though.

I wish I could post the cold open from last night’s show with a Senate hearing with IL governor Rod Blagojevich, but that was not made available online by NBC… thanks NBC.

Enjoy

Dany

In these tough economic times (if you’re playing, you know it’s time to take a drink), it may be time that math make a comeback, but all I’ve been able to find is this clip from Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm which probably explains why all these companies are looking for an economic handout since it seems like all these companies have been keeping the Kettles on their payrolls as economic advisors.

It’s this kind of math that has lead us down the road to bailoutsville… thanks best of youtube (subscribe here) for the economic lesson!

Enjoy

Dany

I always think that the US is extremely advanced technologywise… until I start hearing about anything going on in Japan. It always feels like they’re at least 15 years ahead of us, especially since they get 55megabit mobile internet which allows them to stream tv to their cell phones, but anyway, watch as Attack of the Show’s (subscribe here) Kevin Pereira goes through the Yodobashi Electronics Store. Just look out for the Sharp Willcom D4 Mini-Computer which is already being sold there!

Enjoy, just watch out for the drool

Dany

I went back to the Viral Video Chart and found this great mashup: Star Wars vs Star trek created by DMPhoenix. I love Star Trek: The Next Generation, it is my favorite iteration of Gene Roddenberry’s franchise and I’ve been a Star Wars junkie for as far back as I can remember. I even just got done watching both the original and special editions of the classic Star Wars trilogy, so watching this 5 minute clip was just great.

Enjoy

Dany

I’ve got to give credit to Mystery Can Dave for passing along these clips which really blew me away. It was one thing to read about how our brains interpret faces in psychology class, but it’s so much more powerful to SEE these illusions in action. The weird thing is that for the first clip, I only saw the illusion after the Chaplin head rotated the second time around, but once I saw it, it was something I couldn’t unsee.

Enjoy

Dany

I could tie this article to the current financial crisis and the potential bailout of the big 3 US automakers (GM, Chrysler and Ford), but in reality, I just heard Leo Laporte and Dick DeBartolo talking about Ricardo Montalban and I just love this commercial for the Chrysler Cordoba, especially after finding out that the term Corinthian Leather really meant absolutely nothing while listening to episode 644 of the Daily Giz Wiz (subscribe here).

Enjoy the soothing style of Ricardo Montalbán.

Dany

I’m always looking for the hottest, funniest and most prescient videos each week, well, after listening to Net@Nite (subscribe here) I gave ViralVideoChart (subscribe here) a look and since I found the site, I’ve seen all the videos people are talking about all on their front page, like Sarah Palin Pardoning a Turkey Interview, Cat Drives Roomba and the delightful ad created by the Guitar Hero folks: Bike Hero.

My favorite though, since I’m a huge geek is the Star Wars a capella Tribute to John Williams which was featured on that episode of Net@Nite along with the video’s creator: Corey Vidal (ApprenticeA).

Enjoy

Dany

Exposing failure is huge on the internet now and for some, it’s even become a revered badge of honor. I’ve seen a lot of failures, but this one that I found thanks to the amazingly funny Jefferson takes the cake. He even introduced me to the failblog because of this and I’ve posted (below) a more recent epic failure they found.

Enjoy

Dany

I know to always be prepared for anything when I’m watching an episode of Penn Says (iTunes subscribe) but even with that in mind, there are just some times when Penn Jillette surprises me. Penn may seem crazy and crass at times, but he’s really an amazingly thoughtful individual.

I had to share this video because it is such a beautiful way to look at parenting. I totally did not expect for this video to be so moving, especially after the way it starts.

Enjoy

Dany

I love movies and when I stumbled on That Guy with the Glasses and found that he had a whole section of 5 secon movies, I knew I had to write about it. There are 100 videos that were recreated more or less in 5 seconds and some of his best are Edward Scissorhands, Star Wars: Episode II and Scarface. Don’t take this list to think that I actually liked Star Wars Episode II, I like to imagine that the the Star Wars prequels never actually happened, but I like Doug’s take on the movie.

Check it out and enjoy.

Dany

I’m very partial to The Matrix. It was the first movie I’d ever seen on DVD. Well, the good people over at CollegeHumor (subscribe here) have created a funny video showing just how bad a place the matrix would be if it ran on Windows.

It’s geek hilarious, enjoy.

Dany

OK, maybe I was wrong last time, there IS one more set of campaign ads that needs to be seen this political season. They are from the sketch team Secret Pants (subscribe here) and it had me laughing.

Dany

I thought now that Obama has won the US Presidential election that we were done with campaign ads, but after watching Attack of the Show (subscribe here) this should probably be the last one of the season.

I’ve waited a long time before publicly endorsing any candidate, but I’m ready now. Vote for Lando Calrissian, I really can’t recommend voting for Emperor Palpatine, he blew up Alderaan for Sith sake!

Dany

There are just some times when you realize that the Japanese are crazy enough to prepare for anything. That’s the only thing I can think of after watching this Japanese rhinoceros drill at what I’m hoping is a zoo. My recommendation is just sit back and prepare yourself before watching this.

Thanks to Denise for passing the insanity forward! I know I’m speechless.

Dany

With Halloween being one of the only things coming upon us faster than the current US Presidential election, it is still bizarre to see zombie film shorts narrated by Teller of the magician duo Penn & Teller, since he has spent his entire career playing the silent sidekick to the vociferous Penn Jillette. The original production is called simply & Teller.

The second installment, titled & Teller 2 is now also available (and shown below). I only found it on Crackle after Penn promoted these shorts on his own show Penn Says (subscribe here with iTunes).

Enjoy

Dany

I might just be a sucker for claymation, but I found this great movie of a claymation chess (Digg it here) game after watching Best of Youtube (subscribe here). It reminds me somewhat of the old Battle Chess game from the pre-Windows days, I still remember playing it for hours on my first IBM computer, running on DOS.

Enjoy

Dany

I don’t usually post music videos, I’ve been described by others as someone who hates music, but I’ve been hearing talk about these funny literal versions of 1980’s classic music videos. The above video is DustFilms‘ newest literal version of Head Over Heels by Tears For Fears.

The original video, which is even funnier, that they made (below) is Take On Me by a-ha. These videos are pretty funny and I can’t wait for the next one to appear on FunnyOrDie.

Enjoy

Dany

I have noticed recently whenever the news media sets its sights on both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, someone always seems to mention that they are not campaigning enthusiastically enough for Barack Obama. Well, this past Sunday, October 12th, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Jill Biden introduced Bill Clinton, who fervently outlined his support for the Obama Biden presidential ticket. He then introduced Hillary Clinton and she laid out a great case for Obama and then in turn introduced Joe Biden, who gave an impassioned speech… but don’t listen to me, I don’t want to be a pundit, listen to the actual speeches the Clintons and the Bidens gave this past Sunday below, brought to you by C-SPAN’s Road to the White House podcast (subscribe here). The entire rally is about 83 minutes long.

Nathan Fillion takes a lot of chances as an actor, usually he does so with Joss Whedon, but this time, he’s gone a different route in another James Gunn production (the two worked together previously in Slither) starring with Aria Giovanni. It is a video series for people who love everything about porn… except everything that makes them rated X/NC-17, their official tag line is “How many times have you been watching a great porn film – you’re really enjoying the story, the acting, the cinematography – when, all of the sudden, they ruin everything with PEOPLE HAVING SEX?“

Thanks to Attack of the Show (subscribe here) for spreading the word about this clip.

Enjoy

Dany

I know I might have mentioned Sarah Silverman before (like here and here for example), but now she has not only gotten into the political scene by trying to convince grandchildren to head down to Florida to convince their grandparents to vote Obama in her The Great Schlep video, but she was interviewed on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann (subscribe to the video or audio podcast) during his October 9th, 2008 show where she was awesome.

As always, she lulls you into a false sense of security and nails you with a hilarious moment. Did I mention that she is amazing? If you want to see the full version of The Great Schlep, you can catch it below.

Dany

Religion is very complicated. There are a lot of connections between the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Isam), both historical and geographical and Bill Maher’s Religulous looks into some of these issues.

In this documentary, Maher goes around the world, visiting various places in Europe, America and the Middle East (He doesn’t touch on Asia or Africa). Maher is known for his angry/cynical comedy, but in this movie, he is in search of answers, usually “why?”.

Going into this film, I was concerned that he would be spending the entire movie making fun most aspects of religion. I was glad to be wrong in the end though, this film was HILARIOUS. The only people that Maher makes fun of throughout the film are people who genuinely seemed deserving of being made fun of, but I think that only ended up being 2-4 specific people, he did make fun of aspects of different religions though (ex: Mormonism’s magical underwear). He spends most of the film though going around to different groups of people of a variety of faiths, asking them questions about what he feels is the absurdity of the underpinnings of their faith.

I think the most important aspect of this film is that Maher points out that 16% of the American public tells pollsters that they are athiests/agnostic/non-religious, making them an extremely large minority that is vastly underrepresented in politics and public life today. Being a member of this group myself, I didn’t realize just how large a group this is in the USA.

He doesn’t make too many friends during this journey and if you’re a religious person, you might not enjoy it when he starts poking holes in your beliefs, but I enjoyed this film, especially his interviews of the Vatican Astronomer and Vatican Priest (which I was not expecting in the slightest). I felt that these two people had the most answers to give Maher and were his intelectual equal, if not superior. If I could re-edit this film, I would have downplayed things like the Truck Stop Church and the Amsterdam pot smoking believer and added in more from the two Vatican interviews.

Thanks to Meet in the Lobby for the above pic.

Dany

The political commentary has not been sharper than what is coming out of Saturday Night Live during this presidential election and the hilarity of their take on the recent Vice Presidential debate (video) is only surpassed by their initial Palin/Clinton joint press conference. I never would have thought to make the connection, but Queen Latifah playing Gwen Ifill (who I still hope takes over as the Meet the Press anchor after the election) was an inspired choice along with Jason Sudeikis playing a funny Joe Biden and the AMAZING job that Tina Fey did again as Sarah Palin.

I just WISH that NBC would post full episodes of Saturday Night Live on either NBC.com or Hulu. If they did, I would be able to SHOW you this entire episode, because it was easily the best entire episode of SNL in the past few years. Anne Hathaway did a great job as host, I even liked her intro, when I usually find that SNL intros are annoying or boring. I’ll post the rest of the funny clips I’m allowed to show. I’d post more, but that’s how I got my youtube account canceled (master1228). If anyone from NBC is reading this, please start posting entire episodes of Saturday Night Live. Hulu has been such a great success, you’re making money off the comercials on Hulu and you’d make your SNL fans extatic.

I know you sell each episode for $1.99 on iTunes and Amazon, but Joss Whedon did this on iTunes AND offered (and still offers) up Dr. Horrible on Hulu and monitizes through their commercials as well and the fans LOVE it. I know no one at NBC really cares what I think, but they should. NBC was one of Hulu’s founders, you’d think they’d support it fully by offering up ALL their shows on the platform that they want to succeed, especially the shows they air on free network television.

Enjoy

Dany

Cali Lewis of the effervescent Geekbrief.tv (subscribe here or the full HD feed) recently interviewed Nick Colas, an interesting financial expert about the current financial problems here in the USA and answers questions from the hosts and the live chat audience from uStream. It is a great interview, where Colas speaks in depth, in a way that you just don’t see in mainstream media interviews.

If you want some help understanding the complicated situation surrounding Congress’ Bailout/Rescue bill check out this video, which runs for about one hour.

Dany

Sometimes Windows starts to run slow and it can be caused by commonly used files on your computer being fragmented. I’ve tried a few different programs to help with defragmenting my computer, since the built in Windows Disk Defragmenter just takes forever.

The most recent episode of CNET Live (subscribe here) suggested the program Smart Defrag (download it here). They liked it because it was fast and free. I decided to try it and I love it. This is the first defrag tool I’ve found that has been able to COMPLETELY defragment my drive. This is the first time I’ve ever scanned my computer (using multiple defrag programs to test this) and it said there were ZERO fragmented files!

There is also the option to have the program start with Windows, and have it defrag on the fly to keep your machine’s fragmentation low.

Smart Defrag works on all versions of Windows from Windows 2000 through Windows 7 according to IObit.

Give it a try.

Dany

I have this love-hate relationship-obsession with politics and as of today, I’m leaning toward the hate side. McCain has always been interesting to me, I’ve liked the man, even though I’ve almost always disagreed with his stance on issues, but today, I’m not really even liking the man himself.

Suspending his campaign, trying to postpone the first debate and lying to his friend, whose show he’s been on numerous times, David Letterman, just looks horrible for him. It makes him look like he just can’t handle a full load of problems that any President is bound to face on an almost daily basis. This a long way away from McCain wanting 10 town hall style debates earlier in the campaign.

OK, I’m glad I got that off my chest, now take a look at this Veracifier clip (subscribe here) below. The Veracifier crew has a daily politics video that does a great job of unearthing political news at risk of running under the radar and every Monday, they run a great roundup of all the Sunday morning political shows.

Oh, notice who David Letterman got to fill in as a guest once John McCain dropped out, Keith Olbermann! You can bet that Olbermann got a lot of material to use on his own political show, Countdown, because of all this as well!

Enjoy

Dany

Now, I love music by Queen, especially their Flash Gordon soundtrack, but after watching Around the Net today (subscribe here), I realized just how much free time some people have after watching this chipmunk lip sync to Another One Bites the Dust from College Humor.

All that being said, I loved watching this video, it made me laugh.

Enjoy the madness of chipmunk Freddie Mercury.

Dany

The 34th season of Saturday Night Live opened last night and I thought I’d share what was easily the funniest and most anticipated part of the show: A Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton sketch with the hilarious comedy duo Tina Fey and Amy Poehler:

I didn’t think that the rest of the show was anything special, but did anyone think that Michael Phelps could handle comedy as well as the breast stroke? I didn’t even like the SNL Digital Short.

Enjoy

Dany

OK, I don’t have much for today, but I did stumble across the above pic of Javier Bardem after seeing Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which I enjoyed a great deal. I really don’t know what to say about it, other than it is visually stunning and it reminds me why I love photography.

Thanks Vanity Fair for the above photo!

That’s all I got.

Dany

Well, it looks like Kevin Rose’s leaked rumors were true. Steve Jobs announced today that Apple was releasing a new iPod Nano (8 and 16gb versions for $149 and 199 respectively) that looks exactly like the leaked photos, that they were reducing the prices on the iPod Touch (8, 16 and 32gb versions for $229, 299 and 399) and letting loose iTunes 8.0.

I was very surprised that the leaked Nano photos were legit though, the idea that Apple is moving from flat screen displays to a curved glass display is very strange. I could understand if they only curved the metal/plastic body, but curving the glass introduces a lot more reflections into your viewing experience and if they’re heavily promoting the video experience with these new players and their newer, larger screens, this is a very odd turn indeed. Remember the glare you used to get on your old tube televisions and monitors before they all went to the more expensive flat screen models?

Now, I haven’t gotten my hands on the new Nano yet, I’ll be heading over to an Apple store to get a hands on before my final judgement, but from what I’ve heard, they’ve vastly shrunk down the thickness of the Nano to an almost wafer thin state, which sounds quite nice.

The only other major change to their lineup is that they consolidated their iPod Classic lineup by cutting out both their 160 and 80gb versions and splitting the difference with a new thin 120gb version for $249. This was surprising since the new Zune was leaked to be only 120gb, but this brings down the high end version of the iPod Classic down to that same capacity for less than a dollar more than the rumored Zune.

Thanks to Engadget for the above pic and the best live blog of the entire event today.

Enjoy

Dany

Microsoft’s new ad campaign has officially kicked off with Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld now.

This is Microsoft’s long overdue response to Vista’s publicity woes and Apple’s Mac vs PC ads, which have gotten progressively more aggressive against Microsoft over time.

Enjoy

Dany

I just got back from watching Woody Allen’s new movie, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. This film really has not gotten a lot of press coverage, I haven’t really seen any ads for it, but shows like Filmspotting (subscribe here), The Totally Rad Show (subscribe here), along with the always trusty Roger Ebert and James Berardinelli have also tried to bring this film into the light of day.

I try and make a point of seeing any new Woody Allen film I hear about and this is definitely one of those times where I feel completely rewarded for this policy. This movie is wonderfully wild, especially as the film progresses and yes Scarlett Johansson is insanely beautiful and sexy, but with this movie, I can see specifically what it is that Woody saw in her to have her star in 3 of his last 4 films, while I liked Match Point more than this movie, I thought she gave her best performance here as Cristina. Johansson has a restless, exuberant innocence that is wonderful.

I don’t always like the use of a narrator and I didn’t always like it in this movie either. It was useful for explaining which Spanish landmarks were being visited and which artists and sculptures were being admired throughout the film, but it got a bit annoying when, for example being told that the characters were tasting chocolates at a local chocolatier, while on screen, we can see Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem walking in and eating those chocolates.

It has been a long time since I saw a film with Penélope Cruz and her sensuous and wild performance reminded me of the first time I ever saw her, back in Abre los ojos (the role that also inspired Tom Cruise to remake that film into Vanilla Sky with her starring in it as well) and it shames me to think that I still have not gotten to see her in Volver up to this point! I NEED to put that film on my list of things to see on dvd now.

I think this is a wonderful movie and I just loved it, especially with all the photography featured in the film, I love photography and I wish I could get my shots to come out looking as good as some of those taken in this film. Thanks to VickyCristinaBarcelona.WordPress.com for the above pic.

On a side note, throughout the film, I kept identifying with the Doug character (Chris Messina), no matter how much I wanted this to not be so, while at the same time, I wish I acted more like Juan Antonio in my dealings with women and relationships.

Enjoy

Dany

I feel a bit silly about publishing this this review, since I wrote it a week ago… I just saved it without clicking the Publish button… I guess that’s what happens sometimes with a new medium like this. Anyway, here is my review.

After seeing Tropic Thunder, I realize that there are two parts to this review. First, for the squeamish and the easily offended, it’s time for you to leave. Do not buy a ticket, this movie is not for you. You WILL get offended and will not have fun… unless you want to get offended.

Now, for all you people who don’t fall under that former category, get ready for a fun ride. This is not a great movie, but it had me cracking up during enough scenes that I lost count, probably the two most memorable parts were the film’s fake movie trailers, which completely took me off guard and had me laughing out loud (especially the one with featuring Tobey Maguire). My other favorite part of the film was Robert Downey Jr’s entire performance. This man has had an amazing year, most actors are lucky if they’re in a good movie every couple of years, but between his performance here and earlier in Iron Man, he’s having a great year.

The movie is about a group of actors trying to make an epic Vietnam War movie, based on the writings of a GREAT grizzled and hand-less Nick Nolte, but they end up having production problems and the creators of the film decide that to try and shake up the production, they would strand the actors deep in the jungle to try and scare them into making a great authentic feeling movie and let’s just say that things start to go wrong FAST!

This really wasn’t really a tour de force for Ben Stiller’s acting and his pacing (as a director) felt off at times, there were times when Jack Black was funny, but at other times he just didn’t really cut it and Danny McBride wasn’t as much fun as in Pineapple Express, but even with that, Stiller made a funny movie that I had a lot of fun watching this movie.

Thanks to ScreenRant for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

Oh yeah, also, watch out for Tom Cruise, that’s all I’m going to say.

After watching the short claymation film Chainsaw Maid from The Digg Reel (subscribe here), I knew that I had to share it. Claymation has always had a place in my heart starting with Gumby and Penny (from Pee Wee’s Playhouse) and more recently with Knox toons, but this is quite different… and much more violent.

Enjoy the short film, but remember, I warned you.

Dany

Throughout this week, the Democratic National Convention is going on in Denver (catch the live HD feed here), but for all those people who are too busy to catch the speeches and spectacle live, their official website is presenting all the video on demand in HD, you can even subscribe here to their feed to get all the updated videos as they’re released or just check out their video gallery here.

Just check out Ted Kennedy’s speech from earlier in the week to get an idea of the quality here. I just hope the Republican National Convention coming up is as technologically savvy!

Thanks to Minnesota Public Radio for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

I thought you’d appreciate the crazy… I wanted to order some minor electronics to help me build an LED circuit (a capacitor and a timer), which totaled $3 and change, but when I saw that the shipping charge alone was over $6 and the fact that RadioShack.com has a similar deal to Amazon (free shipping on $25+ orders).

So, I went sifting though the Radio Shack site for some other things that I already was going to buy to bump it up to $25. I started with everything on my Amazon wish lists (ex: Hellgate: London and Soon I Will Be Invincible) and got nothing, but I then started looking at video games and stumbled on Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga… I had wanted to get the game for a while, especially since the only real knock against it that I had heard/read was that it was not very new or different from older versions of the game, but since I have never played any version of the game, I figure that I’ll fully enjoy it all for the first time.

So, I ended up getting a $49.99 game that I wanted so that I could avoid $6 shipping on a $3 item.

Just thought I should share the insanity with you.

Dany

Here is Morgan Freeman in The Narrator. If you want the best movie of the year… this is not it, but if you want one of the best narrators in history waxing philosophically about, well, narrating, this is for you. The whole thing is quite meta and extremely soothing.

Thanks to The Digg Reel (subscribe here) for pointing out this video.

Dany

The above video is a great act from Penn & Teller in which they magically produced 1 million bees from thin air and challenged “Siegfried & Leroy” as well as many other performers in the process. I bring up this blast from magic’s past because of a recent episode of Penn Says (subscribe here) where Penn explains the horrifically hilarious back story that went along with that trick.

Enjoy

Dany

Oh yeah, check out that back story below:

I enjoyed Knocked Up and I have been anticipating seeing Pineapple Express ever since I saw Seth Rogen flying off  a ledge to jump on top of Lumbergh… er, Gary Cole, even though I wasn’t looking forward to seeing James Franco as the buddy stoner though since I hated him in all the Spider-Man movies.

As I was watching the film, I had a problem believing how well the main characters were handling the situation they were put in, one minute they were scared stiff (rightfully) and the next they were  doing things no regular person would be  able to do… but once I was able to let go of reality though, I thought this was just a whole lot of fun to watch.

It has been a long time since I saw Rosie Perez in a film and surprisingly, she may be the only woman that makes getting hit in the face hilarious. She did a great job throughout the film, with a role that may have fallen by the wayside with a less talented comedic actress. The best part of the movie in the end though was James Franco, he had me laughing through so many scenes, he was great and that really surprised me.

The other real disappointment was that the movie didn’t have any credit cookies, which I’ve almost come to expect from a comedy movie like this, but if that’s my problem with the movie, I know I had a good time and will probably get this on dvd. Rogen did a great job in writing this film.

Roger Ebert was right in his review that this movie “is the answer to the question, ‘What would happen if a movie like this was made by a great director?’”

Thanks to the Examiner for the above pic.

Dany

I didn’t really think Swing Vote was going to be any good going in and I was not wrong. I saw this film because I love politics and have tried to keep on the bleeding edge of this years Presidential election and I wanted to see what, if anything this film would offer about elections in America. This turned out to be a bad movie, but I was surprised that there were scenes that did manage to make me laugh.

The biggest problem, that I could not get over was that the entire movie glorifies the federal felony committed within the first twenty minutes of the start of the film and what made it worse was that the character who finds out about this and you would expect to DO something about this, sits back and in the end HELPS keep the secret safe!

It was funny watching the fake political ads and seeing Nathan Lane and Dennis Hopper, it may be impossible for either of these two consumate professionals to come to work and give a bad performance. This is also probably the best performance I’ve seen out of Kevin Costner (sad but true) in a LONG time, probably since 3000 Miles to Graceland.

I definately recommend that this movie be skipped, go back and watch The Dark Knight again, you’ll have a much better time.

Dany

I found this little program called Launchy and it is good if your want a quick (just press Alt+Space), simple search that specializes in programs and searching sites like Youtube, but then I went to Microsoft Update and saw that there was an optional update to their desktop search called Windows Search 4.0, it works for all versions of Windows from XP onwards. Download it here.

The big advantage of the Microsoft search tool is that you can add it as a toolbar onto your desktop and it can search the web using your default search engine, so when I tried that option, it actually opened a Firefox window for a Google search, when I was expecting it to open IE and do a Live search. I was pleasantly surprised by that.

It is also a pretty comprehensive search as well, when I used Launchy (which also works for Linux) to search for Backgammon, it came up w/ my backgammon game, but the windows search found my backgammon game as well as two different books I got from Project Gutenberg (A Tale of Two Cities and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) since it searched the text of those docs and found that they both mention backgammon. The search results are also fully accessible to commands like Copy, Rename, Delete, etc via right clicking and accessing the menu bar.

Thanks to WildWheelz for the above pic.

Dany

*Update September 4th 2008* After a few weeks of using both programs, I find Launchy immensly more useful a program and have taken the Windows Search Tool off of my taskbar to save space and system resources, while I have been using Launchy more and more.

OK, it has been a while since I wrote about stupid tech, but when the lovely Denise sent me this, I had to respond publicly.

After watching the video demo from Goatee Saver, I… I… I just can’t believe it has come to this. Do guys REALLY need to chomp on some ginormous contraption that brings us just that much closer to looking like Darth Vader while we shave!?!?!

Why couldn’t this have just remained vaporware?

Thanks to Gizmodo for the above pic.

Dany

It’s just the right time, with the Beijing Olympics starting tomorrow and the Presidential campaign in full swing… yeah, that’s why I’m posting this video of Obama Girl vs McCain Girl from Barely Political (subscribe here)… riiiiight (also because it made me laugh).

Oh and just because I can, here’s Paris Hilton’s frighteningly rational energy plan as she throws her hat in the ring for President from FunnyorDie:

Dany

It has been a long time since John F. Kennedy put forth the idea that we would go to the Moon in the span of a decade, but we accomplished that goal. Today we may need our politicians to make some sort of similar inspirational proclamations.

I realized that from the Ford Model T through today, cars average 20-30 miles per gallon (thank you Ford and the US National Highway Traffic Safety for that little fact) and after almost 100 years, that is just NOT acceptable.

I would love to hear one of our candidates proclaim an initiative that within ten years, we would mandate that all car companies that wanted to sell their cars in the USA would have to maintain an average fuel efficiency of at least 100 miles per gallon (or the equivalent using alternative energy vehicles) across their entire fleet (cars and trucks combined). I know there will always be some people that need larger cars that are less fuel efficient, others just love their Hummers and then there are truckers who haul massive loads across the country, but if we can balance that out with other, extremely fuel efficient vehicles, this would do a lot to help our current problems dealing with energy costs/foreign oil/national security.

I implore either Senator Obama or Senator McCain to adopt this plan and fight for this idea… check that, I’d rather see BOTH candidates addopt this plan and vigorously fight to make it a reality. I also hope that any/all of the potential 3rd party candidates adopt this initiative as well.

If you agree, let the candidates hear that it by digging this story and sending this article to your campaign of choice. Tell McCain about this story. Tell Obama about this story. Tell the third party candidates about this story.

Dany

I think I might be more surprised about this article than anyone else, especially since I pretty much have no interest in non movie soundtrack related music, but I’ve actually got to spotlight a music video I heard today on Popsiren (subscribe here). The band is the Black Kids and the song that hooked me is called I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend. The visuals in this video just really caught my eye and I found myself enjoying what I was hearing as well. I don’t know what got into me.

Let me know what you think

Dany

I think most of you remember the hillarious JibJabers from their amazingly funny hit from the 2004 election season: This Land! Well, they’re back for this year’s presidential election with Time for Some Campaignin’… JibJab never really went away, they’ve actually been making videos since 1999 way back in the dial-up days and before the dot-com bubble burst.

Thanks to Net@Nite (subscribe here)for interviewing those funny JibJab founders. Hopefully soon, those crafty JibJab guys will set up their videos as a podcast to make them even easier for people to watch and keep up to date on their latest funny videos.

Enjoy

Dany

As an added treat, here’s the This Land! video below, just in case you forgot what I was talking about.

The Dark Knight is probably the longest (over two and a half hours), most violent, shocking, enthralling, fun and disturbing superhero movie I have probably ever seen. I had a wonderful time, but I was let down when I couldn’t get in to see the IMAX screening of the film, but I couldn’t wait any longer to see this film. I will definitely be going back next week to try and see it in IMAX and then buy the dvd.

A lot of people are talking about Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker and part of the reason that it has been so hard to get tickets for this film is because he died before the film was released, but I must say, he TAKES OVER in a way that only Jack Nicholson would be proud of.

I really can’t review this film, but it does show what a superhero movie could be and that our current efforts in CGI are so realistic that it is almost impossible to tell that we are being fooled by an effect. I am not going to give anything away, except to say that I don’t believe any young children should see this film, it is both too long and also the most violent and disturbing PG-13 ever, but even though I’m intimately familiar with the Batman comics, I believe in Harvey Dent and it was inspiring to see that Gotham did as well.

Thanks to The Telegram for the above pic.

Dany

*8-29-2008 Update* – I finally got in to see The Dark Knight in IMAX and it was totally worth the wait, but the only oddity I noticed this time around was that Gotham’s Mayor (Nestor Carbonell) wore eyeliner, I later found out through the great imdb, that this was to give the role a more Frank Miller comic feel.

I went along to see Mamma Mia today. I didn’t know what to expect from it since I had never seen the theatrical production and the only exposure I had to it was seeing the theater posters and the movie trailer itself. After watching Meryl’s last two movies (Lions for Lambs and Rendition) I was really hoping to see a GOOD movie from Meryl Streep and maybe even a film where she looks like she’s having some fun, especially since I don’t think the scripts of those last two movies gave her a whole lot to work with.

I can’t say that I liked this movie, but then again this really wasn’t a movie geared toward me, I must say though, the grown ups in the film (Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski) seem to be having all the fun in this film. Everyone else… including the young couple that is supposed to be getting married (Amanda Seyfried and Dominic Cooper) just seem undeveloped and uninteresting.

Whenever the grownups were on screen, the story felt somewhat interesting and amusing, but once they were off camera, the story sagged with their absence. The script tried to show parallels between mother (Streep) and daughter (Seyfried), both had their two best friends come to meet them for the wedding, both groups had similar reactions to seeing each other for the first time and then later in the film they paralleled the scenes between both groups of friends after the bachelorette party, but there was no comparison, Streep and Baranksi far out shadow the younger generation in this film.

My biggest complaint about this film though, is that nobody seems to care about the Dominic Cooper’s character, not even the woman who is supposed to be marrying him! No matter what happens, he seems to love her unconditionally (not that that’s a bad thing, mind you), but in the one scene where there’s tension between him and his fiancee (where the whole fight is her fault, by the way) he gets mad and walks away, but instead of Seyfried running after him or at least making sure to mend fences, she just walks away assuming that he’ll get over the whole thing and because he is such a shallowly written character, she was right and there were no consequences. Then at the very end of the film, something similar happens to her on a boat in the shadows, but I don’t want to give away the end of the movie.

It was fun watching Brosnan, Firth and Skarsgård having a lot of fun and make fools of themselves throughout the film especially throughout the credit cookies, but I must say, Streep and Baranski were definitely having the most fun of anyone.

I would never recommend this film to any of my guy friends and I don’t know if I’d recommend it to my female friends either, but I did see a lot of women who left that enjoyed the film and if you are a big musical fan or just a big ABBA or Meryl Streep junkie, you might like it.

Thanks to The Theatre Addict for the above pic.

Dany

Now, I don’t know how long this 3 part miniseries from Joss Whedon will remain online, but if you haven’t seen it, try and catch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog here.

Dr. Horrible is a 3 part miniseries starring Neil Patrick Harris (yes, Doogie Howser), Felicia Day (from The Guild [subscribe here]) and Joss Whedon regular, Nathon Fillion.

I don’t usually like musicals, but a Joss Whedon musical is different, just watch the Buffy musical, Once More with Feeling, to see what I mean,

For now at least, this miniseries is free via Hulu.com, but you can keep it by buying it off of iTunes by purchasing each individual episode for $1.99 or get the season pass for $4.99 and it will eventually be released on DVD, which I will buy in a heartbeat.

Thanks to Stuff.co.nz for the above pic.

Hope you all get to enjoy it

Dany

*8/2/2008 Update* As of right now, the entire 3 acts of Dr. Horrible have been combined into one 42 minute movie and are available to watch via the Official site and Hulu.

*8/9/2008 Update* Or watch it here:

*9/1/2008 Update* Thanks to Nathan Fillion for sharing Dr. Horrible’s iPhone remote van controls from Act I.

This first clip is fitting since we celebrated America’s independence earlier this month, from Break.com, America Rules England Sucks.

The second clip is a behind the scenes look at a Family Guy taping. It is very strange watching Seth McFarland switching from one voice to another having a conversation with himself, but the whole thing is hilarious.

Enjoy these two clips I found from watching episodes of The Digg Reel (subscribe here).

Dany

After reviewing Pixar’s most recent success in Wall-E, it’s only fitting that I present the very first Pixar short titled: The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. It’s hard to believe that Pixar’s origins go all the way back to 1984, since they burst onto the scene over a decade later with Toy Story. What’s also interesting is that along with presenting the short film, The Experience Project also chronicles the early history of Pixar.

Thanks to The Digg Reel (subscribe here) for highlighting this early work.

Enjoy

Dany

After finding out what Homer Simpson and Mario Mario would look like if they weren’t cartoons by Pixeloo, I knew I’d have to see what was the next projects were.

I really enjoyed Pixeloo’s rendition of Jessica Rabbit:

and Stewie Griffin:

Also, here is the ~10 minute video going through the Jessica Rabbit untooning process.

Enjoy

Dany

I download a LOT of podcasts daily (I currnently have 10 solid days of audio waiting for me to listen to and growing) and keep only a small percentage of them. I have so many, that the only way I can manage them and keeping sane is using the EXTREMELY useful iTunes smart playlist feature.

The only problem with this system was that I could not delete the smart playlist items I had already listened to directly from the smart playlist menu, I would still have to sift through iTunes‘ Podcast section and individually delete all the old podcasts…

I’ve FINALLY found a solution, all you need to do to fix this is to select all the smart playlist items that you want to delete and while holding the SHIFT button, hit DELETE. This brings up the regular iTunes deltetion dialog box and presto! Problem solved. This also works from any iTunes playlist, smart or otherwise by the way.

Now, I use Windows, so I don’t know if this fix works for Mac users, but if you run a Mac and have this problems, try this fix and let me know in the comments below.

Thanks to PhilMug.com for the above pic.

Dany

**UPDATE** AlisterComputeron commented that on a Mac, all you need to do is Option+Delete to get the same result.

**9/12/2008** It looks like with iTunes 8.0, Apple changed the shortcut, now Shift+Delete will just remove a playlist item from iTunes, but to delete an item from the computer, the new shortcut is Ctrl+Shift+Delete. This is an annoying change, but there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.

I’m usually the “tech guy” for our office, but lately I’ve had to try and get help from some much more seasoned tech people both at Dell and Microsoft, but up to now, my tech problems at work are still troubling me, even though I’ve had very helpful techs working on my case.

Now though, my friend Dan sent me this clip from Break.com and I thought it was so fitting considering what I’ve recently been going through. This is hilarious, especially once the IT guy wants to get himself a screen shot.

Dany

After watching this clip from Best of Youtube (subscribe here) of a guy texting while cruising down the highway on his motorcycle, I almost fell off my couch. Even though this guy could manage to lean back, text AND drive his bike at the same time without crashing into a wall or another car, I could barely manage sitting on my couch… truly sad, I know.

I think I know at least one person *cough* Tara *cough* who might just get a kick out of this video… or maybe hate me for sending this out. Either way this video is crazy.

Dany

I know I’ve talked about Dan Carlin before, but after listening to his most recent episode

Ever since Tim Russert’s passing, I’ve noticed there aren’t that many interesting, exciting and original voices speaking out about politicals. The people that come to my mind that I enjoy listening to are Chris Matthews, Rachael Maddow, Tavis Smiley, Penn Jillette, John McLaughlin, John C. Dvorak (who is a technology writer, but who loves stirring it up interesting with interesting political views) and…. Dan Carlin.

Check out DanCarlin.com to get all his most recent updates. Thanks to MeFeedia for the above pic.

Dany

I know I usually provide funny videos from The Onion, but today I found a great video called Plasma Blaster 3000 from the troupe Secret Pants (subscribe here) and this one had me laughing the entire time. Check out their other videos if you enjoyed this.

Dany

Before Wall-E came out, I thought the robot was a ripoff of Johnny 5 for kids too young to remember Short Circuit and Short Circuit 2. After seeing the movie though, I can admit that I was wrong… the good thing is that I am not usually this glad to be wrong about something. There were also some great nods to classic science fiction and technology fans, with callbacks to 2001: A Space Oddyssey and the classic Mac startup chime,

I consider myself a jaded New Yorker and that’s why I was so surprised to be emotionally knocked on my ass for many scenes in this film. I even teared up during some of the scenes between Wall·E and Eve (the slick white robot that resembles ASIMO), which was the most surprising thing for me. I was NOT expecting to be hit so hard by the love story and the ability of Pixar’s animators to imbue that much emotion into robots that say less than 5 words to one another.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film though was the first 40 or so minutes of the film on Earth, first with WALL·E alone and then with Eve. This was some of the best pantomime since Charlie Chaplain and what really moved me was the interaction between WALL·E and Eve reminded me of Chaplain’s City Lights. I liked the juxtaposition between Fred Willard’s live action scenes from the past and the animated humans who are now blubberous blobs of laziness and a shell of their ancestors, played to a tee with voicework from Jeff Garlin John Ratzenberger and Kathy Najimy.

This movie is a definate must see, even the silent animated short with a hungry bunny and an obnoxious magician was entertaining to watch and I know I’m going to be looking for this movie when it is finally released on dvd. Thanks to MoviePatron for the above pic.

Dany

I’ve been waiting a while to see Hancock, but I was very surprised with what I got with this movie. I HATE it when the trailers reveal too much about the plot of films, especially when they reveal the film’s final scene, battle or closing explosion.

It turned out that the trailers for Hancock really didn’t reveal anything about the plot and that was refreshing. I didn’t even realize, going into the film that Charlize Theron was in the cast. I don’t usually like her, but I loved her character in this film and I thought she gave a great performance that I didn’t expect at all. I’ve never really been attracted to her, but she has never been more beautiful than in this film in my opinion.

Jason Bateman plays a struggling public relations agent who has taken up the task of pitching an idea that no big company wants anything to do with and it was fun just watching Bateman pitching his absurd, yet hopeful ideas.

Then, there’s Will Smith as Hancock. The film opens with him being woken up by a little kid (Atticus Shaffer) who tries to get him to dispatch some criminals, only for Hancock to blow him off because of his hangover and the kid calls him an asshole, a name he really doesn’t enjoy being called. He ends up saving the day, but at a definite cost to the city. This paves the way for us, the audience to see what we’ve got in store for us.

It’s only after Hancock saves Jason Bateman and Bateman tries to pitch a new image for Hancock that things start to change… slowly. I’m not going to reveal any more of the plot, but I must say, this was a fun movie.

The problem is that there really wasn’t anything special about this film. It was a fun summer movie, but not so much so that it was memorable for anything in particular. This may have been director Peter Berg’s fault. The movie wasn’t filmed in a great way and there are some scenes and dialogue that could have been cut down a bit, but there aren’t many bad things to say about the film.

One thing I did notice from the trailers was that there was a lot of talk about Hancock, the hero that no one wants because he brings with him chaos and destruction along with his “help,” but there was never any mention of an enemy for him to grapple with… after watching the film, I can see why, there really were no interesting baddies in this film. There was a main villain, it is just that it wasn’t very satisfying watching Hancock face the film’s big bad… although, it was fun watching the irony in how the big bad was ultimately defeated.

This was definitely a fun summer movie, I just don’t think it will really even be remembered after this summer is over, partly because of all the other highly anticipated summer films. Iron Man came out weeks ago and was just a joy to watch and The Dark Night comes out in two weeks (and looks AMAZING from every trailer although, I did get to see the opening 6 minutes of the film before another Will Smith film and have been hooked ever since).

Thanks to HancockTrailer.com for the above pic.

Dany

I like guns and with all the news revolving around the recent Supreme Court case that struck down the unconstitutional DC gun ban, I thought I would provide a few videos on the gun topic.

First we have this video by Penn Jillette, where he talks about his views on Penn Says (subscribe here), which I find very compelling about guns and freedom and how freedom should reign over safety.

I also found these two videos from Attack of the Show, Gun Apocalypse and Gun Apocalypse 2, where we get to see some of the most extreme guns available. These are some crazy guns that go way beyond necessary, but they look like a lot of fun too.

Thanks to Mizzourah! for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

I love watching Jackie Chan, especially when he seems to lose his mind and do some crazy stunt that you just can’t believe a person could survive, like falling over 50 feet from a clock tower. You also have to love watching his drunken boxing style in Drunken Master and Legend of Drunken Master.

Thanks to Best of YouTube (subscribe here), here’s 10 really amazing examples of why Jackie Chan is completely insane.

Enjoy

Dany

P.S. As an added bonus, I’ve also included 10 amazing Jackie Chan Fight Scenes:

I almost feel bad promoting ANOTHER video from The Onion (subscribe here with iTunes), the problem is that they keep coming out with funny videos, which makes it very hard to resist.

The name is pretty self explanatory, watch as George Bush Tours America To Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency!

Enjoy

Dany

If you have a ton of Styrofoam that you don’t just want to throw out, maybe from packing peanuts or just some disposable plates or cups, you can melt them into seeming nothingness with just a bit of acetone (available at any hardware/paint/walmartesque store) or some nail polish remover… but I’d recommend going strait for the acetone, you get a much cooler (and faster) reaction.

I was reminded of this from, of all places, Attack of the Show (subscribe here), check out their video here to see just how fast you can get rid of that polystyrene.

Thanks to Alibaba for the above pic.

Dany

After George Carlin died, you realize just what a loss it is to the comedy world, especially with all the work he did behind the scenes with young up-and-coming comedians. Jerry Seinfeld wrote an op-ed about his friend in the New York Times and I wanted to share it here, which I found out about on a recent Larry King Live (subscribe here) interview with Seinfeld.

Thanks to Chemistryland for the above pic.

Dany

After what I thought was a TERRIBLE marketing campaign during the runup to Kung Fu Panda’s release, it took me a while to actually bring myself to the theater to see it. It wasn’t until I saw some of the previews for Tropic Thunder, another movie starring Jack Black, that I got excited to see this film. Below is that promo. 

Now that I’ve seen the film, I wish I had gone sooner. This was easily the best Jack Black film to date, with King Kong and School of Rock trailing behind. One of the best moments comes right at the beginning of the film where the first style of animation we see transitions to the film’s main animation style. The way it was done was stunning. It made it very hard to tell that the style transitioning to was animation at all! I was very impressed.

The story was a lot of fun, a definite winner of a kids movie. There really weren’t any adult wink wink nudge nudge moments, but the movie was hilarious so I didn’t mind at all. There were some reviewers *cough* Filmspotting.net (subscribe here)*cough* that thought it was unwise to portray the Chinese villagers as yellow buck toothed bunnies, but I didn’t find it to be offensive or in bad taste in any way. When I was looking for this, I found that in actuality, the villagers were really represented by a few different animals: bunnies, pigs and birds. So I felt this was a real non issue. Seriously though, if you want some great movie reviews, check out Filmspotting.

I really think that if you want to just go in to see a film and spend the majority of the time laughing, this is an easy choice for a film to go see.

Dany

There has been a lot of press coverage surrounding the United States Supreme Court decision in which the court struck down the use of the death penalty in a child rape case (read the official decision here).

Now, I know this is a sticky topic, which is going to get on some people’s nerves, but I took some time to think about this after my cousin Richard let me know about this recent court decision. Even though it is very hard to argue in any way for child rapists, I ultimately agree with the majority opinion from the court’s 5-4 final decision.

Hear me out on this, I agree because of the underlying issues surrounding the case, not because I don’t think a child rapist should die a horrible death. Just because I think someone should be killed for committing a heinously crime, like raping a child, doesn’t mean that it should be the lawful to do so.

I do not believe in the merits of the death penalty anymore, so the idea of narrowing the scope of when it can be used is something that I agree with. The point was made by Justice Anthony Kennedy, that the penalty of death is not a proportional punishment for a crime which does not result in the death of the victim, which is another point I agree with.

I also do not believe having prisoners spend an average of more than 10 years on death row (which has been the case since 1995) is a humane way to treat a prisoner, it certainly doesn’t give the death penalty the perception of being a deterrent to violent crime with such a long time from conviction to execution either. I am not advocating leniency with these prisoners by releasing them or anything like that, I just believe that instead of sentencing them to death, sentence them instead to over 100 years in prison without bail or the possibility of parole.

One of the reasons behind these long stays on death row is no doubt the length of time the appeals process is for these inmates, but the right to appeal (and the advantages potentially available) is another reason for being against the death penalty. We are coming up with new technologies all the time and we hear of people being exonerated for crimes previously convicted of based on things like new DNA evidence. Once you put an inmate to death, there is no way to bring that prisoner back if it is later discovered that the person was wrongly accused, but if sentenced instead to spend their remaining days in prison, then an appeal could then be made at any point in the future to release the wrongly accused if new credible evidence surfaces.

I know there are many arguments both for and against the death penalty. Let me know what you think about this recent decision or just about the death penalty itself.

Thanks to DeathPenaltyInfo.org for helping me a bit with the facts here.

Dany

OK, now that I’ve probably thoroughly depressed you with this weighty topic, I need bring to you as a treat a very apropo to the above topic. The Onion just came out with another hilarious video (subscribe here) that just so happens to involve both the Supreme Court and the death penalty.

Check it out below:

I know it is a gross oversimplification to say that the South votes Republican, while the North votes Democrat here in the US, but the New Yorker has an interesting video in their Naked Campaign series (subscribe here), called Map Quest, where they talk about which states Obama could win to get the magic number (270) in the electoral college, while also pointing out which states McCain could swoop in and take himself.

It’s quite interesting to watch, especially for a political junkie, like myself.

Dany

I love finding interesting short films, especially those made by enthusiasts. This short is called Sebastian’s Voodoo and was created by Joaquin Baldwin and scored by Nick Favola at the UCLA Animation Workshop. I found this video because of Boing Boing TV (subscribe here).

Watch as a brave voodoo doll tries to save its fellow voodoo dolls from harm. If you can, try and check out the high quality version to get a feel for some of the amazing detail work that went into this!

Enjoy a visually stunning 4 minutes created using Maya and After Effects.

Dany

If you’ve ever watched dotBoom (subscribe here), you know Brian Hogg. Otherwise, dotboom started out as an online puppet show showing the foul-mouthed trials and comical tribulations of a website development firm in Toronto. He’s already made an Emperor Palpatine, Leo Laporte and Amber Macarthur puppets for previous shows.

In his latest endeavor, the Stephen Colbert Puppet Challenge, he has created a Stephen Colbert puppet, in the hopes that Stephen Colbert himself will voice this puppet. If Colbert agrees, he can keep the puppet on The Report’s set for free and the whole thing is totally awesome!

Oh, by the way, as of this week, full episodes of both The Colbert Report and The Daily Show are now available at hulu.com for free! Check it out and spread the word!

Dany

I never watch MTV, so I didn’t see the MTV Movie Awards, but thanks to Dan Trachtenberg from the Totally Rad Show (subscribe here) for pointing out that as part of Mike Myers hosting the award show this year, he got Dana Carvey to make an appearance and the two revived a huge hit from their past: Wayne’s World.

It’s hard to believe that it has been 14 years since we last got some Wayne’s World, but you can watch the video from MTV here as well as watch the entire award show if you like as well, the whole show is available online.

Enjoy

Dany

There are very few things actually captures the true essence of living in New York City, Woody Allen films come to my mind first and foremost, but HBO’s Sex and the City also comes to mind. but recently, Woody has been AWOL from NYC, spending his time in Europe and Sex and the City held their series finale in 2004. This has left a gap even with rumors that Woody Allen will return to his NYC roots for his next film, I might just need something to hold me over until 2009.

I was hoping that the Sex and the City movie would be that holdover. I enjoyed the television show, but I can’t say I’m a part of its rabid fan base. So, the advantage for me was that I knew all about these 4 women going into the film…

After watching the movie, I felt that it held pretty true to the television show and would satisfy the film’s built in fan base. It felt like 3 or 4 episodes of the television show back-to-back. After telling the person I saw the movie with this, I realized that this may not be such a good thing after all.

The film didn’t just feel like 3 or 4 episodes of the show, it felt like the film ran long, with these episodes just tacked onto the back of each other, instead of a tight continuously flowing story.

The next realization I had was there was very little setup for the main characters (and why the casual viewer should care about these 4 relatively well off women). Now, for someone like me, who knows these four strong ladies very well from their tv escapades, this was not a problem, but what about for someone who has either never seen the tv show or has only seen a handful of episodes? Well, these people just get a quick (~2min) video recap of the tv series laying out the history of the characters and a voice over by Sarah Jessica Parker to go with it and my guess is that this will leave the uninitiated confused and in the lurch.

Even with these misgivings and the fact that there were times when I felt the film was just a bit long, I DID enjoy the movie, there were a handful of unexpectedly funny moments, Charlotte’s troubles during international travel being one of them (a point I disagree with my favorite reviewer, Roger Ebert on). I feel like for those people who are NYers, New Yorkophiles or fans of the tv show, you should definitely go out and see this film (especially if you’re planning on pre-gaming with a Cosmo or two), but if you’ve never really seen the show or know the characters, you’d be better off not initiating yourself to this world with this film, just go back and rent/borrow/buy the dvds of the original series.

Thanks to No Guarantee for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

I know most have heard of High School Musical, but the sketch comedy gang The Monkey Box (subscribe here) created a somewhat darker comedy trailer for the musical College Musical.

Ahh, memories…

Dany

The Onion (subscribe here) reports on the newest, laziest and most slovenly solution to anyone’s fast food needs in their recent report: New Wearable Feedbags Let Americans Eat More, Move Less.

If I didn’t think this was so likely to become a real product option, I’d find this funnier, but as it is, I’m a bit afraid that it isn’t too far from being a viable option sometime in the near future, especially after seeing the World of Warcraft South Park episode!

Enjoy what is, for now, a hilarious farce.

Dany

MUTO is an amazing visual experience. This short film by Blu was created using stop motion animation in Buenos Aires to painstakingly create this 7min short film. I’ll let the film speak for itself, just check it out.

Thanks to Diggnation (subscribe here) for mentioning it on a recent episode and thanks to Blu for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

In a similar vein to Garfield Minus Garfield, we have Martijn Hendriks taking the classic Hitchock film The Birds and digitally editing out all the birds that the movie is named for, frame by painstaking frame as part of an art project called Give Us Today Our Daily Terror which is slated for completion in 2008.

There are currently only 3 excerpts (1, 2, 3) available and some movie stills, but this is an interesting project that you should check out. I can’t wait to see what the final 2 hour movie will be like.

Enjoy

Dany

I would give credit to where I heard about this art project from, but for the life of me I can not remember which podcast mentioned it recently. If anybody knows, can you leave a comment or email me about it, I feel bad not attributing where I found out about this from.

It has been a long time since the last installment of the Indiana Jones movie series and not only is Indy back, he unearths an old friend, Marion Ravenwood, a blast from the past (Raiders of the Lost Ark from 1981). I know this film has been getting mixed reviews, especially with the silly sounding official title: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

After watching the movie, there are a few interesting things of note. I was worried thinking about seeing Harrison Ford (65 years old) as Indy again, but from the first scene, when he picks up his hat, he just exudes Indy. My only problem with Indy was best stated by Alex Albrecht on The Totally Rad Show (subscribe here) when he wished they hadn’t turned Indy into an invincible superhero and I completely agreed with that sentiment after the refrigerator scene. Another issue I had was with the heavy handed use of CGI… especially unnecessary/bad CGI.

The movie was definitely fun to watch (how can Indy NOT be fun to watch?), but the movie wasn’t exciting, there were no real edge of your seat moments. There were times when it felt more like I was watching The Da Vinci Code, Sherlock Holmes or National Treasure, than Indiana Jones which was disappointing.

Even with all that going against it, I still had a good time at the theater, but the person I saw it with fell asleep a couple of times (remember that not exciting quality I mentioned earlier?). I did love watching how Spielberg was able to create an incredibly violent movie, but because most of the gun violence takes place off camera, it seems like a much lighter movie than it really is, it always amazes me just how effective leaving things to your imagination is for a film maker, instead of showing every bit of violence and gore possible,

Thanks to Costumzee for the above pic.

Dany

After loving the movie Juno, finding this movie trailer spoof called Jewno, just made me laugh. I can’t believe they got J.K. Simmons to help with this, he’s one of my favorite niche actors. Also, the 92nd st Y mug was a nice touch.

I originally found it on Funny or Die because of the GREAT podcast The 404 (subscribe here), which I am extremely backlogged with this podcast (I’m 2 months behind), so I gotta go try and catch up now.

Enjoy

Dany

Normally the news I hear coming out of Africa, especially in places like Rwanda has been terribly depressing, whether its being forgotten about by the western world, disease or ethnic strife.

Well, after finally finding some positive and uplifting news being reported by Washington Post, I figured I HAD to share (subscribe to Washington Post HD video stories here).

This is a video (watch the HD version here) shining a light on some success stories coming out of Rwanda, highlighting the positive role women have played in the emergence of business (especially in coffee exports) after the horrific genocide that the country went through during the 1990’s.

Thanks to Wooden Bike Coffee for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

If you want to watch an interesting short video that explains how ants are able to communicate with one another, check out this Nova (subscribe here) video called The Ant Whisperer.

It is an interesting view of how these extremely intelligent creatures interact using chemicals and even ignoring what’s visually apparent. If you like this short video, check out the full production (Lord of the Ants) from PBS Nova’s site here.

Enjoy

Dany

I just got back from taking my family out to see the new Broadway play August: Osage County and this was one of the most entertaining ways to spend 3 hours. The show started promptly at 7:30pm and ended at a quarter to 11pm after two intermissions.

I don’t want to give too much away about the plot, other than to say that this was a story that deals with a very dysfunctional family brought together after a family tragedy having to deal with long dormant issues.

The play won a Pulitzer prize and the cast does a wonderful job with this masterful script. The only issue I had with the play is that there were moments that were so funny that the laughter in the audience would drown out some of the dialogue (it’s tough when you’re essentially complaining that a show is too funny). I thought this was a great play, I LOVED August: Osage County but for those who are sensitive, the language is quite foul. Any work that can keep me guessing throughout the entire play on what was going to happen next and make me wonder just how this show could end is a definite success in my book. Not to mention that this show has one of the most impressive sets I’ve seen in a recent play, the whole play takes place in and around this family’s 3 level house and watching the cast move up and down all three levels of this house is amazing to see.

I hope some day to see this production move to the silver screen.

Thanks to August on Broadway for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany