The Librariad

NSFW: 100 Movie Lines of Various Types

2012-01-26T21:14:00.000-05:00

Stumbled across these videos rounding up the top 100 cliché movie lines, the top 100 movie insults (twice!), and the top 100 movie threats of all time. Very funny, but also very NSFW for language so watchers beware!

If you like it, you should subscribe to their channel, they've got a lot of other cool compilations.

Does This Thing Go Past 11?

2011-12-16T17:00:00.000-05:00

Right, so do we all remember how excited we were about The Expendables when we first saw that Sly, Arnie, Willis, Li, et al. were going to be in a movie together?

Now add Chuck Norris and JCVD (and probably more Arnie and Willis).

Take a moment to let that sink in.

Now watch the trailer:

Probably One Of The Strangest Mashups You Will Ever Hear

2011-12-15T22:31:00.003-05:00

And yet somehow it is totally fitting in a way that makes you ask, HOW HAS NO ONE THOUGHT OF THIS BEFORE??!

Ahem.

Yeah, We Live There

2011-11-13T21:53:00.001-05:00

Kick back, hit the HD, mute the sound (audio is a little grating, but hey, nothing is perfect) and replace it with your favourite aethereal tunes, and go full screen. This is why we developed space travel.

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Some People Take Holiday Decorating Way To Seriously

2011-10-24T12:59:00.000-04:00

Like these people. Their neighbours must hate them.

Trailer Frenzy: The Avengers

2011-10-11T11:51:00.000-04:00

So here is how my day has gone so far:

I saw this,

And then I went like this,

RDJ's snarky Tony Stark paired up with Whedonisms galore? Forget the action, I'd watch the movie just for that!

So Bad It's (Almost) Good

2011-09-28T12:05:00.002-04:00

Right. So I saw Abducted last night.

Poke my eyeballs out with a hot skewer.

I'll be honest, the movie did kind of drift into so-bad-it's-good territory, but still. The entire audience was pretty much in stitches for all of gooey romantic scenes, not to mention the (surprisingly) few scenes that featured Taylor Lautner shirtless for whatever reason. And Sigourney Weaver! I don't think I've ever seen her directed so badly.

*Spoiler* My favourite plot hole in the movie has to do with the fact that, contrary to the title of the film, no one is actually abducted. Seriously!

Oddly enough, Taylor Lautner's acting isn't one of the problems I had with the film, though I'm not sure if that isn't due to low expectations. No, the thing that killed this movie was an awful script and some very ham-fisted directing.

On the whole, probably the worst movie I've seen all year.

Now For Some Politicking: Lawful Access

2011-08-12T22:20:00.002-04:00

It isn't often that I wade into political discussion - online at least. I'm a fairly politically minded person, and do like to talk politics with my friends, but it can be really difficult to have a... rational discussion on the internets. This, however, is an exception.

Over the last couple of years the Harper Government has attempted to introduce legislation that would give police more, and freer, access to the information stored by ISPs (Internet Service Providers) on their customers. Now that the Conservatives have a majority mandate, they plan to roll together their previous attempts into one, great big omnibus bill that they have promised to pass within the first hundred days they are in power. Given that a fair bit of that time thus far has been spent out of session, that is not going to leave a lot of time for debate before the hundred days are up.

So why am I making a big deal about this? After all, giving the police the equipment they need to catch the bad guys can't possibly be a bad thing, especially since I have nothing to hide, right?

Maybe. But consider what the bill entails:

In a nutshell, lawful access has to do with how law enforcement can access your communications. That includes activities like wiretapping, and obtaining access to your email or your web surfing history.

Of course, right now, police can get access to any of that stuff, but it requires legal authority (like a warrant) and reasonable grounds to believe you've done something wrong. But proposed new lawful access legislation could change things, making it easier for police to get detailed information about you from your internet service provider, your social networking accounts, or from your cellphone company (in some cases, without a warrant or without reasonable grounds to believe you've done something wrong).

- Dan Misener, CBC

As with most other Canadians, and a fair portion of the world with access to the internet, my life is increasingly integrated with the internet. So much of my public and private information and discussions are held in realms covered by this new legislation, and would thus be available to law enforcement officials with few limits and no real checks and balances (so far). I may not have anything to hide, but do I really want a stranger to have access to things that I wouldn't necessarily share with my friends? Not to mention that so rich a treasure trove of information is sure to be a nice target for the kinds of nefarious people this legislation is meant to target.

In the great tradition of trying to get things done on the internet OpenMedia.ca has created a petition protesting this legislation. I've signed it, and embedded it below. Do a little research and then think about signing it yourself.

Great places to start:

The Dan Misener article
Coverage from the CBC, Financial Post, and Globe and Mail
An open letter to Public Safety Canada from the Privacy Commissioner and the provincial and territorial equivalents
An open letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper from a variety of individuals and organizations, including Michael Geist...
... who is also rounding up information on the legislation as it comes out

&lt;p&gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Loading...&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&lt;/p&gt;

A Message To The Future: Bertrand Russell

2011-08-05T14:54:00.001-04:00

Philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell on the two things he would like to say to the people of the future, from 1959.

Sage words.

Some Things Just Need To Be Reblogged

2011-07-25T23:04:00.000-04:00

From Feminist Fatale

I was excited for the panel, considering I am frequently frustrated by the media’s exploitative use of women (whether it be the host of a show, such as Olivia Munn, or booth babes at E3) to appeal to a market that they treat as exclusively male. However, my expectations were quickly dashed when discussion of media literacy was tossed aside in favor of accusations of jealousy. Bonnie Burton and Adrianne Curry mused that women who were critical of sexy geek culture in any way were just jealous, had no confidence, and were projecting their issues with self-esteem onto the women who felt empowered by walking the Comic-Con floor in a Slave Leia costume.

When Jennifer Stuller (one of the creators of the upcoming Geek Girl Con) suggested that women who criticized “sexiness” were more than likely deconstructing the media, and by extension a society that tells women their worth lies in their ability to appeal aesthetically to men, she was rebuffed by the other members of the panel. Later, Stuller attempted to turn the discussion towards media literacy, to which Clare Grant responded that she doesn’t read magazines, therefore the media has no influence on her whatsoever. Adrianne Curry added that women criticize one another “because we’re all a bunch of bitches.”

Read the whole thing here, its good stuff. Media literacy always gets a +1 in my books. Also contains awesome Seth Green.

Weekend Wrap-Up: Neil And Hugh Sing A Tune, And It Was Good

2011-06-18T22:00:00.061-04:00

Its safe to say that I come across a lot of things I think are cool in my meanderings about the internet. Here is where I get to close some tabs and share my findings!

This week we have the Tony's, lionesses trying to eat babies and the internet as a basic human right. Onward ho!

So Neil Patrick Harris hosted the Tony's recently. Have I ever mentioned how much I love NPH? The promise of more NPH almost - almost - convinced me that going to see the new Smurfs movie wouldn't be such a bad thing. Almost. I've gone through pretty much all the clips from the show, but this has got to be my favourite of the bunch. Also, if the Oscar people are listening, this is how you put on an award show. Tony > Oscar any day.

This is actually old news by now, but I cleaning out my bookmarks and came across this gem: Born fighter - The five-year-old boy who has sold 3,000 of his own monster drawings to pay for the cancer treatment that could save his life.

Not overly surprised to hear this, but given the increased attention the internet has been getting with its use as a tool in the unrest in the Middle East and Africa, the United Nations Human Rights Council has recently declared internet access to be a human right. Given the (mostly failed) attempts to stifle access in Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia, and given the importance of the internet as a tool for mobilization and communication, this declaration certainly will have some interesting policy implications. CBC's The Current takes a good look at the issue.

Six seasons of American Gods on HBO as well as a potential sequel? Be still my beating heart.

Apparently the line between tragedy and comedy is only a few inches of plexiglass.

Weekend Wrap-Up: Videos Galore!

2011-06-11T21:13:00.003-04:00

Its safe to say that I come across a lot of things I think are cool in my meanderings about the internet. Here is where I get to close some tabs and share my findings!

Right then, on offer this evening we have a hilarious misadventure with the Dalai Lama, a steampunk laptop and the future of Windows! Also, a very adorable Doctor Who monologue.

Watch - and cringe - as an Australian morning show host tries to tell the Dalai Lama a joke.

YOU MUST WATCH THE AWESOMENESS OF THIS CHILD MONOLOGUING DOCTOR WHO. (Best started at the same time as this music)

Steampunk laptop. 'Nuff said.

Actually old news by now, but Microsoft recently unveiled Windows 8, the first real touch-friendly version of its operating system. It looks pretty slick, and I can't wait to see it in action on some fancy devices - sooner rather than later please! Engadget has the unveiling here and a demo video here.

The (Not So) Return Of The 30 Day Challenge

2011-05-14T22:18:00.000-04:00

Confession time.

I haven't really started yet. The sudden freedom of summer kinda came back to bite me and I have taken on more projects than I can apparently chew at the moment with an (almost) full time job. So for now I'm putting my crazy project on hold, though I certainly still intend to complete it before the summer is out.

On the good news front, the project which has been demanding a fair bit of my time is coming along swimmingly. I may or may not have mentioned before that I am building a new web-site for Seana's karate school, and I should have all the design work done by the end of the month; still have to work out some hosting details and such before I can commit to an official launch date. So! In lieu of exciting commentary I'm sure would have arisen from my breakneck read-through of the Bible, I shall instead offer up some screen caps and such of the site design for you to lay into and express dissatisfaction with the design!

(Seriously though, I'll probably need some testers and such to break the site before I put it up all the way. There shouldn't be much to break, but if it can be broken, or if it is just borked in its design, I'd like to know before I put it up for the rest of the world to see)

With that out of the way, please allow me to leave you with something I think you will enjoy:

There are more over at The Shiznit

Geeks On Ice

2011-05-03T16:29:00.000-04:00

Simply put: awesome.

Blogging The Bible: 30DC Redux

2011-05-01T23:32:00.003-04:00

Right, so it is now May, and we have another 31 day month. Time for the return of the 30 Day Challenge! School is over and summer has begun, so this time around I'm shooting for something highly ambitious: to read the entire Bible by the end of May.

Given the scope of this project, I'm not planning on blogging about what I read every day; I do need some time to do other things, like work and socialize. I will, however, periodically give updates on how far I have read and share some of the interesting things that I stumble across/occur to me as I wind my way through the month. I might work out a schedule as I go along, just to give the project some structure, but I will at least commit to once a week posting.

Also, I do realize that this is not the best way to read the Bible, and in the interest of honesty I want to make it clear that this is a stunt. The best way to read the Bible is to take your time and reflect on the passages that you read, something I will not have the luxury of doing when I am trying to burn through 40+ chapters a day. That does not mean that there is no value in this project; I will be the first to admit that I don't engage with this text nearly as much as I should and this could be a way to get back into the habit, albeit at a slower pace once I finish.

So, wish me luck and happy reading!

Go Free, Willy!

2011-04-17T23:37:00.000-04:00

I had a similar experience in Zanzibar. We had just finished snorkelling off of some reef and were getting ready to head back to land when a guy on our boat dives back into the water. He had spotted a pod of dolphins who had just decided to drop by and say hello. Sadly, I had accidentally taken my camera for a swim earlier that day and the salt water disagreed with it, thus the lack of pictures. It was still really cool though.

Winter Is Coming (Or Is It Summer?)

2011-04-16T00:42:00.000-04:00

The weather suggests that it is indeed summer that is coming, but on the other hand A Game of Thrones starts up on Sunday. Best of both worlds! I'll admit, as someone who has only recently been exposed to the series (which is a little odd considering the amount of epic fantasy I read and how long it has been around) and is making my way through the books, I'm fairly excited to see what HBO does in its adaptation and whether or not it will be able to live up to the significant hype it has managed to build up. My only reservation will be the nudity: I fully expect it to be there - this is HBO after all - but it needs to be... tasteful, and not gratuitous. I'm a little conflicted when it comes to depictions of nudity in media. On the one hand there is the acknowledgement that nudity is a normal part of life (it is after all, ahem, aur naturel state of being) and is nothing to be ashamed of, and yet on the other hand there are the problems in the glamourization of titillation so prevalent in films like the American Pie series where nudity is played ~~to get a rise~~ with little or no purpose beyond getting the audience to associate what they are seeing with sex.

Anyway, we'll see what happens and how much of the series I actually end up watching.

In related GoT news, the internetz got all up and indignant today with the continuing ignorance of NY Times writer Ginia Bellafante. That may seem a bit harsh, but having read a few of her tv "reviews" I find it difficult to even imagine the dark arts she must employ to keep her job. Seriously, I wonder if she is just playing us all for fools or if she really is that incompetent.

The article in question is, naturally, a review of A Game of Thrones. While the main thrust of her argument may seem valid to anyone new to the the Song of Ice and Fire series, anyone familiar with the texts or Martin can spot the fairly obvious problems with her statements. We'll leave her insistence that AGoT is a metaphor for global warming alone - though she is fairly adamant about it - and focus in on her insistence that girls would never, ever watch this show. Bellafante suggests that AGoT is "boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half." The basis for this argument is that the show is set in a medieval period with horses, swords, honour, and fighting and that the illicitness (sex) was inserted "out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise." After all:

While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first.

What?

Perhaps we should cut Bellafante some slack; after all, how can we expect her to invest time in the characters - especially of the female variety - if she can barely handle the dramaticus personae of the tv show? It is unfortunate indeed: Martin has packed his books with strong female characters - no Mary Sues allowed. If the allure of interesting and complicated female characters wasn't enough, the series involves much more gossip and politicking than it does actual fighting, the nobility preferring to work out its aggression through subversion and alliances than outright fighting. Sounds like a certain male/female dichotomy to me.

I'm not the first, and certainly won't be the last to point out the problems in this "review", so I won't flog it any further. Ultimately, it seems more like Bellafante reinforcing the mainstream bias against genre fiction than it is an actual critical piece. She concludes by contrasting AGoT with more "real" shows like The Sopranos and The Wire:

When the network ventures away from its instincts for real-world sociology, as it has with the vampire saga “True Blood,” things start to feel cheap, and we feel as though we have been placed in the hands of cheaters. “Game of Thrones” serves up a lot of confusion in the name of no larger or really relevant idea beyond sketchily fleshed-out notions that war is ugly, families are insidious and power is hot. If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort. If you are nearly anyone else, you will hunger for HBO to get back to the business of languages for which we already have a dictionary.

Who Doesn't Love Renaissance Sci-Fi?

2011-04-12T20:17:00.000-04:00

Here we go again: another version of The Three Musketeers for our viewing pleasure. I'll give this one props for its look and feel, and the fact that it appears to be clockpunk, which seriously needs more attention. The cast looks pretty good too: Milla Jovovich as M'lady de Winter; Orlando Bloom as the Duke of Buckingham; Logan Lerman as D'Artagnan; and Juno Temple as Queen Anne. The 3D makes me kind of leery, but who knows.

Also, found on cute patrol:

Essays, Web Style

2011-04-05T01:34:00.000-04:00

I find myself at the end of the school year working late to put the finishing touches on last-minute assignments and wondering to myself if I will ever have a professor who will embrace a new style of essay writing. One not constrained to the limited capabilities of a traditional “paper”, bound by the sensibilities that come from working in a single medium for millennia. With all the new abilities afforded us by our interconnectedness to the world through the internet, why is it still unacceptable to incorporate these freedoms into academic pursuits?

The short answer is ease of use: that paper represents a sense of mobility and portability (not to mention disposability) which comes at a much lower cost than owning a laptop or a portable device capable of reading and making full use of “’net” benefits afforded by such things as video embedding in word processing documents and that cornerstone of the internet, hyperlinking. But as more and more people carry around iDevices and other increasingly sophisticated technologies – more importantly, as the price of these things drop – will we see a shift towards incorporating more fancy tech into academic writing? That is not to suggest that there is no-one doing such things, but rather that the mainstream is missing out by not adopting these kinds of changes.

Imagine if you will that you are writing a paper. For a long time you have been able to incorporate images into the text of your essays, but now you find that it is less images that bear relevance to your areas of interest and it is more short films. Or that you are, as I am now, writing about a film or a sequence and would like to make visual reference to it in your essay. Paper does not allow you to do this, but with a digital file, you could. You could even go the wiki rout with your citations: rather than leave them as ambiguous references to books or websites, you could link directly to the sections you used in your writing. The current MLA bibliography rules are perfectly situated to support this addition to the link economy.

You would still need rules to govern the appropriate use of these extended abilities. As much as I love it, you don’t want your academic papers to be so hyperlinked to explanatory articles that it comes out looking like TV Tropes (sorry). And beware Rick Rolling! But on a whole, there is a place for the inclusion of new technology in academic settings. Who knows how long it will be before we see it?

Brain. Splodey. Joy. Goodness.

2011-03-30T11:43:00.001-04:00

I'd say I could die happy now, but then I wouldn't be able to watch it when it comes out...

+9000 Internets, AKA I'm Going To Need A Bigger Screen

2011-03-09T22:01:00.000-05:00

By Ward Shelly

The only real way to appreciate the awesome work that went into creating this amazingly detailed "map" of science fiction is to embiggen it: go ahead, bask in its geeky wonder.

What Apple Really Thinks About The iPad 2

2011-03-05T09:03:00.000-05:00

This is part of the reason why Coco is Full of Win:

<p>Conan Roasts The iPad 2</p>

Last Minute Picks

2011-02-27T18:30:00.000-05:00

In the categories I may know something about:

BEST PICTURE
The King's Speech
Iain Canning, Emile Sherman and Gareth Unwin

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Colin Firth
The King's Speech

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Christian Bale
The Fighter

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Natalie Portman
Black Swan

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Amy Adams
The Fighter

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Toy Story 3
Lee Unkrich

ART DIRECTION
Inception
Guy Hendrix Dyas (Production Design); Larry Dias and Doug Mowat (Set Decoration)

CINEMATOGRAPHY
Inception
Wally Pfister

COSTUME DESIGN
Alice in Wonderland
Colleen Atwood

DIRECTING
The Social Network
David Fincher

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Exit through the Gift Shop
Banksy and Jaimie D'Cruz

FILM EDITING
The Social Network
Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
Incendies
Canada

MAKEUP
The Wolfman
Rick Baker and Dave Elsey

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
The Social Network
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
Toy Story 3
"We Belong Together"
Music and Lyric by Randy Newman

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED)
The Lost Thing
Shaun Tan and Andrew Ruhemann

VISUAL EFFECTS
Iron Man 2
Janek Sirrs, Ben Snow, Ged Wright and Daniel Sudick

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
True Grit
Written for the screen by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
Inception
Written by Christopher Nolan

The Heat Of Battle, The Neon Green Of War

2011-02-24T21:56:00.000-05:00

Presenting an awesome fan-made trailer of "Modern Warfare" for the equally awesome show Community

Three Things For A Thursday

2011-02-24T14:52:00.002-05:00

Three new things today:

The complete James Bond collection of books is 74% off at Chapters
Not really new since the sale started on Monday (not sure when it ends), but I just received confirmation of my copy shipping, so I thought I would pass this along anyway. All fourteen of Ian Flemming's Bond books in retro paperback - I dare you to pass it up.
The Geek A Week Challenge
This project came to my attention recently when Think Geek announced that it would begin selling physical sets of these cards and selling various items from the people featured in the sets. Take the time to check out the write ups for each of the cards - they're pretty funny and have some interesting titbits squirrelled away in them. Heh, "Evets Kainzow."
Foleys
I will never claim to have mastery of film credits, but I am getting closer to a fuller understanding of their complex code. Added to the arcane pantheon of Key Grips and Gaffers (my confusion over this term stemming from early exposure to British colloquialism) is the Foley, whose very cool job I learned about while browsing around Vimeo

SoundWorks Collection: Gary Hecker - Veteran Foley Artist from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

From "The Empire Strikes Back" to "Robin Hood", award-winning Foley artist Gary Hecker of Todd-AO says it takes “timing and a huge creative mind” to be the man behind the sound. Here, he shares tips and tricks he’s learned during a career that has spanned more than 200 films.

Hecker also recently joined CSS Studios’ Todd-AO in late 2009. One of the most accomplished Foley artists in Hollywood. Among his recent credits are 2012, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, Angel & Demons, Watchmen and the Spiderman trilogy.

Check out more video profiles at www.soundworkscollection.com

Join the Vimeo Group: www.vimeo.com/channels/soundworkscollection