Thursday, April 28, 2011

Things That The Royal Wedding Is More Interesting Than

There's


Oh and you can't forget this:


And of course there's also






to keep in mind.


(Note: there is no missing content in this post.)

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

You Need To Read This Comic

This one.

Obviously this dude needs to be writing graphic novels. I'm sure he knows this, and worked on his comics stuff all along when his girlfriend was bringing in all the money and getting pissed at him. But now he's forced to work at Wendy's. Hopefully that comic will get him some attention.

At the very least, the guy deserves a callback from the port authority that gets him in on a trainee program or something to become a foghorn one day.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Fate

I'm not sure whether or not fate exists and God or the universe sends you signs of things you need to be doing. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's not the way things work. I think fate can only be described retroactively. But I think people do best if they act like there's fate, and see what's presented to them as though it's there for a reason and find a way to make the best use of it at the time.

So if you find out about an audition, interview or some other opportunity and are drawn to try out for it, despite the fact that logically it would disrupt and ruin a lot of things in your life if it all panned out, you really should go for it anyway. Because who knows, maybe I'm wrong and fate did put that opportunity in front of you for a reason. That would be the case if you were actually a character in the movie The Adjustment Bureau and just didn't know it.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Things That Are Exactly The Same

Trumpets and cornets.
Dolphins and porpoises.
Turtles and tortoises.
Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss.
Ken and Ryu.
Macs and PCs.
Droid and Droid 2.
Worcestershire sauce and soy sauce.
Ice cream, sorbet, frozen yogurt and gelato.
Every kind of pasta.
720p and 1080p.
North Dakota and South Dakota.
Lockouts and strikes.
Madden NFL 07, Madden NFL 08, Madden NFL 09, Madden NFL 10 and Madden NFL 11.
Billiards and pool.
Bush's budgets and Obama's budgets.
Nikes and Adidases.
Diet Coke and squirrel urine.

Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Review: Arthur

This review is posted over at OK.

I’ve got a 40 in my hand, and I’m pouring it out on the pavement in remembrance of the indie sensation that was Greta Gerwig.

Her proverbial sellout starring role in the halfhearted Arthur remake, following a harbinger supporting turn in No Strings Attached, means Gerwig as we know her is dead, another life lost to the harsh, ghetto streets of Hollywood. Now she can no longer be hailed as the mumblecore princess of Hannah Takes the Stairs, Nights and Weekends and Baghead. In those films she played pretty much the same character, a misunderstood, somewhat neglected hipster girlfriend type who would melt your loins with her smile and mutter likely improvised dialogue that made her seem impossibly intelligent.

In Arthur, playing a bohemian tour guide caught up in a bad romance with a billionaire playboy, she recites trite, likely workshopped dialogue with a polite disdain that brings to mind a high school drama teacher plowing through a monologue penned by her student. Either she’s disinterested or a poor actress, but either way she’s about as effective and convincing as Survivor’s Colleen Haskell in Rob Schneider’s The Animal.

The least Gerwig could have done was to have fun selling out, like her co-star Russell Brand, who seems content to make a career of channeling Johnny Depp channeling Keith Richards channeling a lifetime of chemical abuse. Brand as Arthur, the careless, womanizing drunkard who’s an heir to a giant corporation, is a young Jack Sparrow, happily skipping off the plank into banality.

The remake of the 30-year-old comedy that earned Dudley Moore an Oscar nomination may just earn Brand a Razzie, but damned if he wouldn’t probably attend the ceremony to claim his award with a drunken grin. His assignment in the film is to open his eyes wide, act like he’s slizzered and try to rescue as many dud lines of dialogue with his cutesy British parlance as possible.

Helen Mirren is the only one in the movie who actually bothers to act, but even she detracts from the package because she makes her character seem as though she’s accidentally wandered in from some other, more important movie playing on the next screen over. She plays Arthur’s nanny who dutifully shepherds him out of one drunken mess after another, first urging him to comply with his arranged marriage to a corporate sociopath (Jennifer Garner), then gradually starting to push him Gerwig’s way.

The movie made me laugh more than it had any right to, sometimes due to Brand’s twisted delivery, and others by the simple appearance of Luis Guzman as his pathetic assistant, but goes on way past its welcome and rarely coalesces into something more entertaining than a baseball game in which you care about neither team.

In college I knew a guy named Arthur. He was a drunken idiot like the movie Arthur, although not as rich. People called him Artie, Artie, the One-Man Party, and he mistakenly took the nickname as a compliment, oblivious to its implications that it meant everyone else just sort of tolerated his presence but kept looking at their watch, wishing he would leave. There’s a reason this movie reminded me of him.

Starring Russell Brand, Luis Guzman, Jennifer Garner, Helen Mirren and Greta Gerwig. Written by Peter Baynham, based on a story by Steve Gordon. Directed by Jason Winer. Rated PG-13. 110 minutes.

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