Posts categorized “Movies”

As a follow-up to my Festivus Round-up, creative collective The Beta Society has posted the entirety of the movie portion of A Very Alan Thickemas. It features the real voice of Alan Thicke, and also an impersonated voice of Alan Thicke. It’s directed by Celene Ramadan, who you might also know as chiptune musician Leeni. Yes, it’s a puppet musical.

Happy Festivus, everyone! I hope you get to air some good grievances. I hope the plain aluminum pole is not too distracting. And I hope you win the Feats of Strength!

Here I’m going to round-up a big random heaping of things I’ve found interesting recently. Artists, websites, musics, games, whatever. In random order:

Michaela Eaves

I saw her at a studio open house where she had some paintings and prints out for display. I really dug the way her paintings have heavy outlines, and the way the lines break up the colors in such a way that her paintings almost look like stained glass.

She also had an adorable painting of a rocket ship, done in a soft, children’s book style of painting. I dug it, but I can’t find a picture on her website (which is mostly about her graphic design & illustration business):
www.michaelaeaves.com

8-Bit Jesus

I thought this was pretty spectacular. Not only did Doctor Octoroc (sic) make 8-bit chiptune versions of many Christmas songs for his album 8-Bit Jesus, but he also wrote them in the specific styles of various 8-bit video games. My favorites are definitely “Carol of the Belmonts,” “Bubbles We Have Heard on High,” and “8 Days of Master Robots,” which very excellently captures the essence of the Mega Man experience. Also, “Icarus! The Herald Angels Sing” is quite accurate. Check it out:
http://www.doctoroctoroc.com/8BitJesus/

Machinarium

Machinarium is a beautifully done, old-style, point-and-click adventure video game, unbelievably done entirely in Flash. I like it ’cause it’s about robots. But more than that, the world is completely enthralling, and the puzzles all involve robot logic more than real-world logic.

The art style is pretty much spectacular. You can play a demo for free, or buy and download the full version here:
http://machinarium.net/

Kaiju Dance to Thriller

Just what the title says: a bunch of Kaiju dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”

Wonder Woman Pumps

This woman takes shoes and tastefully collages them with pages from Wonder Woman comic books. She tends to use mostly monochromatic images, so the effect is a little subtler than you might expect.

She has an etsy shop where she makes all kinds of shoes and boots (not just Wonder Woman):
http://www.etsy.com/shop/Pachainkapink

Regurgitated Thanksgiving Dinner Scarf

Taisha McGee sells what she calls “Ugly Scarves.” They’re mostly actually quite pretty, but she nevertheless gives them hilarious names based loosely on their color schemes, names like “Mulched Roses,” “Tidy Bowl,” “Moldy Cheese,” “Mushy Froot Loops,” and my favorite, “Regurgitated Thanksgiving Dinner.” She also has the sense of humor to take photos of the scarves wrapped around a cardboard stand-up of John Wayne. Bravo!

Check them all out at her etsy shop:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/TaishaMcGee

Alexis St.John

An artist whose work I saw in a tea shop in Downtown Tacoma (Mad Hat Tea, 1130 Commerce Street) and I liked the humor and simplicity in it. I also really appreciated how most of the paintings were really small; a lot of ‘em were only like 6″ × 6″, and I don’t think anything of hers gets over 20″ in any direction.

You can buy the actual artwork, of if you’d prefer you can buy frameable prints of it.
http://alexisstjohn.com/Gallery.html

TheSixtyOne

TheSixtyOne.com is a fascinating idea for a democratic music website, where the more people like a song the more popular it becomes, and ANYONE can upload ANY song they’ve created (as long as they’re legally allowed to blah, blah, blah, y’know).

Not only that, but it turns listening to music into kind of an RPG. You gain experience (called “reputation”) and rise in levels. There are quests (like “Listen to 7 recently-uploaded songs” or “Listen to the radio stations of 5 other people for 5 minutes each”) that let you earn experience and “hearts,” which you can use to mark a song as a favorite (i.e., you heart the song). And you also earn experience as other people later heart songs that you previously hearted. The more reputation you have, the more likely other people are to listen to your opinions (in theory at least). So you get tangible rewards for finding new, unheard songs that you really like and then getting other people to like them as well, other than the reward of discovering good music.

Also, TheSixtyOne.com is the only place right now where you can hear Taisha’s musc (yes, the same Taisha that makes those scarves). Just go here:
http://www.thesixtyone.com/taisha/

A Very Alan Thickemas

THE Alan Thicke, Leeni, and puppets. Lots and lots of puppets. And Blake Lewis is somehow involved. It exists, I just have no idea of how to see it. Other than these:

That’s about it for now.

Back in March I posted some videos made to promote tourism in Hakodate, Japan. If you haven’t seen ‘em yet, you should go watch them. They’re awexome.

Well, the awexomeness continues. You see, a new film called Watashi Dasuwa recently premiered at the Tokyo International Film Festival. It was shot on location in Hakodate. It’s a low-key drama about a woman returning to Hakodate to spread the wealth she made in Tokyo.

The Hakodate tourism board got their hands on the trailer and made some improvements. Take a look:

I mean, seriously, come on! Why can’t any American cities have this much fun and sense of humor when it comes to their tourism promotion? Las Vegas is as close as we get, I guess, but there are no alien squids or giant robots or spaceships in any of their tourism videos or commercials!

Here’s a bonus of an alien squid dancing at a streetcar that’s advertising the movie:

I’m terrifically excited for this movie. It supposedly gets a theatrical release some time next year. But just be warned: the only thing longer than a croc’s mouth is the time it takes to swallow you whole!

Link of the Month:
Breakfast of the Gods
A stunningly hilarious and frighteningly accurate parody of those mega-crossover “event” comics like Crisis on Infinite Earths, this is the story of a nefarious vampire and his monstrous henchmen plotting to plunge the world into eternal night. Only an army of unlikely heroes can stop evil from triumphing. Oh, and did I mention that the vampire is Count Chocula and that the heroes are led by Captain Crunch and Tony the Tiger? This comic has to be seen to be believed.

Album of the Month:
Chubby Mummy: Extremely Hallowen: An Alblum
How can one describe this, perhaps the most quintessential Hallowen alblum ever recorded? This isn’t just Hallowen, after all; this is EXTREMELY HALLOWEEN. Hot Bokkin’ Harris and Stusan Willsing are at their most spooky and fright-inducing here. Just look at the titles of the tracks and try not to get freaked out of your gourd. YOU WILL FAIL AT NOT GETTING FREAKED OUT OF YOUR GOURD. Plus, and this’ll blow your mind just thinking about it, this alblum includes not only regular songs, but album songs as well!

DVD of the Month:
Lifeforce
This is absolutely the horror movie that has everything you could ever want: sci-fi monsters, vampires, body-possessing demons, frenzied zombies, and a lot of nudity. And that’s all just one character! This is a wonderfully schizophrenic mid-80s classic from Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist) that seems to shift genres ever 15 minutes or so. First it’s an Alien-style sci-fi spookfest. Then it’s a (naked) vampire movie. Then it’s about trying to track down an evil that’s hopping from body to body. Then it’s about a zombie/vampire outbreak in London. And then… it’s completely crazy and absolutely wonderful, and features a really fun small role by Patrick Stewart.

I’ve added a new feature here on this here website right here: I’ve compiled a page that has all of the reviews for movies that I’ve given four stars. There are a bunch of movies I’ve given four stars without ever writing reviews for them, but they’re not on this page because they have no reviews to read. And as I write more reviews of four-star movies, I’ll add them to the top of the page.

I know it prolly seems like my website has been nothing but movie reviews this month, but that’s just ’cause I’ve seen a lot of movies this year (hooray!) and I’m trying to actually keep on top of my reviews for once. I only have two more reviews to write before I’m all caught up! I’m not letting myself see any more movies until I’m caught up, and there are a couple that I really, really want to see, so that’s good incentive for me to get crackin’. So expect to see another one tomorrow. But I’ve also got a rather epic Article lined up, so look for that this weekend as well. Honest!

In the meantime go ahead and amuse yourselves by reading my reviews of four-star movies. Partake… and enjoy.

Here I posit a question: Are the best movies necessarily the most watchable movies? Or are “favorite” movies and those movies that can be watched again and again of two distinct categories? I will now investigate to see what the answer is. Come with me, won’t you?

Read the full article here!