So tonight I’d like to say thank you to Austrian Death Machine for bringing me a few glorious minutes of teenage stupidity and making the phrase “Get to the choppa!” pop up uninvited in my head every so often.

Let’s count the wins here, shall we?

1. The band name: Austrian Death Machine. Yes!
2. The song title: Get to the Choppa. Like Schwarzenneger intended it to be spelled.
3. Using an obscure Schwarzenegger sample instead of going with the tired, overdone ones.
4. Bringing the twin lead guitars. If there’s one thing the inner 15-year-old always responds to it’s twin lead guitars.
5. Apparently not worrying for one single second about how stupid the song is. Crucial, that.

So, without further ado, the video for Austrian Death Machine’s Get to the Choppa:

\m/

But.

You know what’s not wonderful?

In all the techno whiz-bangery of the Blu-ray spec, for some reason a little checkbox was thrown in, where a Blu-ray producer can specify whether it’s ALLOWED for the player to resume a movie where it was left off.

So okay, the committee meeting was running late, everybody was tired, they decided what the heck, let’s put it in the spec. What kind of nutjob would actually want to not allow the player to resume a movie? Why in the name of all that is holy would ANYBODY. EVER. WANT. THAT.

Turns out, movie studios want that. Pretty much every Blu-ray disc that’s winged its way to Casa Core Dump has not allowed me TO RESUME THE F**ING MOVIE.

Why? Dear Lord why? What could you possibly gain from not allowing me to watch a bit of a movie, decide I’m tired and need to go to bed, then come back the next day to finish the movie, but OH NO YOU WON’T.

I’ve tried. Lord knows I’ve tried during the times I’ve spent trying to remember exactly where I left off the movie and scanning the chapters to get to that point again, I’ve tried so hard to find a reason WHY THIS IS A GOOD THING FOR ANYBODY.

And I can’t.

A bunch of people at movie studios have apparently decided that a really great way to not make me download movies online is to make it EXTRA F**ING INCONVENIENT for me to watch their product I’ve paid money for.

If anybody out there knows WHY anybody in their right mind would think it’s a great idea to make their product less useful, I’m all ears.

Jeez.

Nevertheless, I’m done giving Lucas my money (at least until the inevitable Blu-ray release).

So I put this together to remind myself why there will be no 3D Star Wars for me:

Stay strong, brothers.

Original image source: http://donbcivil.net/pics/misc/jar_jar.jpg

A Bridge Too Far

It was time to pay some more guy tax, so I bought a Blu-ray player now that they’re finally available for around $250.

Yes, it’s still way too much money to pay for better picture quality, but the testosterone needed out, so there it is.

Thanks to Netflix and their ever-growing selection, I’ve started to go through old movies that might benefit from the shiny high resolution. Big movies. Like A Bridge Too Far. Which I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing in a theater, but have caught on TV multiple times. Finally, it was time to see it (kind of) the way it was meant to be enjoyed. Obviously, my budget precludes purchasing an HDTV measured in feet instead of inches, but Blu-ray provides some serious crispness to make up for the size.

Not only is A Bridge Too Far one of the great WWII movies, but it’s such a nice change of pace to watch a movie expressly made to be enjoyed in a theater, made before rental residuals were a gleam in some Hollywood accountant’s bloodshot eye, before ADD gripped the industry. You’ve paid your money and parked your butt in the seat, so the movie will take its time. No worries that you’ll switch the channel or answer the phone. You’re in the theater and you’ll damn well stay, so there’s no rush. Let the momentum build. Introduce some characters. Hell, put in a few side plots while you’re at it.

Even in an action movie, the throttle doesn’t have to be stuck between “Turbo” and “Red line”—some scenes take some time to develop, and that’s okay.

And you’re rewarded for paying attention. Imagine that. Instead of just getting annoyed at the plot holes and inconsistencies, you actually get more out of the movie by paying attention. Almost like it’s not normal to be ADD.

What a concept.

I was sitting on the bus in the morning using my trusty iPhone as an entertainment center, all very casual. And then I realized that I’m sitting there in my half-awake state, on a moving bus, listening to music, reading the New York Times online, and checking my email on a single device that fits in my pocket. And then I watched a video of the previous evening’s news from Sweden. On the bus.

When you think of it, not only is it insane that you can do those things using nothing but consumer-grade hardware and software, but that it’s so easy it’s almost mindless. Click and drool, and there you go, the information of the world in your hand.

It’s really time we started worshipping William Gibson as the messiah he is.

Of course, I’m still waiting for my implants, but what we have isn’t half-bad.

How very quaint

This house ad showed up on the International Herald Tribune‘s home page today. That’s right, the IHT seems to believe its target audience is people who still use paper diaries to stay organized.

So what kind of damage would one of these bad boys do to a jet-setting executive’s wallet? A cool $49.95. Plus shipping. But wait! You can have it monogrammed! So that makes it alright.

The most worrisome part of all this is that the IHT may be right and yes, in fact, the people reading one of the best newspapers in the world are the kind of troglodytes that still handle their appointments on paper. With monograms.

The Dark Knight Poster. Source: Wikipedia

Hot from Netflix, The Dark Knight appeared at Casa Core Dump yesterday. I noticed it was rated PG-13, which struck me a little odd, since from the trailers it seemed like a pretty dark (heh) movie.

And yep, it’s a disturbing movie, especially the Joker character, who truly brings the psychotic.

The Dark Knight doesn’t have any nudity, f-bombs, or gore, but is stocked to the rafters with psychotic people, disturbing imagery, and endless violence.

So how much violence does a movie actually have to contain to get an R rating? According to the MPAA themselves, a PG-13 movie may contain “depictions of violence … but generally not both realistic and extreme or persistent violence.” An R rating is earned when there is “intense or persistent violence.”

We can argue semantics all day, but I’d say the correct definition of R versus PG-13 is: “Boobies means R. No boobies means PG-13.”

So thanks MPAA for reminding me that your ratings scheme is utterly worthless.

It’s a decent movie, though, if you happen to be a grown-up.

Yes, riveted. Because of course, Merlin Mann wasn’t really talking about blogging—he was talking about the creative process and how to sharpen your output.

I’ve been a bit of a Merlin fan boy for a while, but the speech he gave has catapulted me into full-on wannabe-henchman territory. That’s right: I’ll even be a henchman without a name tag. That’s how good this speech is.

Here’s an image that captures the core of the speech:

Learn it, live it, love it.

Thanks, Merlin. You’re doing good work.

But for some reason a lot of grown men seem to think that transferring those comics to the silver screen is a great idea. A fantastic, coke-fueled, brilliant, genius! idea.

The problem with super hero movies for me, I think, is that comics (sorry, graphic novels, snigger) and movies are such different media that what works in one simply doesn’t translate to the other. The biggest problem is the universe that you have to buy into. In a comic book, it makes total sense that a part-time crime fighter has a cave under his house where he stores his wicked-cool car and his rubber suit with nipples. Comic books have their own rules and the suspension of reality is huge. In a movie, the same setup makes at least my tiny brain go, “Really? A rubber suit with nipples? In a cave under your house? Really? That’s how you roll, huh?”

So it can be really hard to get the suspension of disbelief factor working.

At the same time it’s funny just how silly the things can be that pull you out of the universe the movie is creating. I was reminded of this the other night watching X-Men 3: The Last Stand.

The concept itself is pretty special ed: Some people are mutants and they have weird and wonderful powers. Okay. And some of them choose to hang out in a mutant haven that’s cunningly disguised as a K-12 school. All right. Why not? And some other mutants are all angry at not being allowed to get their mutant freak on and have a secret hideaway somewhere and mostly hatch cunning and involved plots that always somehow involve the other mutants. Again, okay, I guess.

And the mutants in the K-12 school call themselves the X-Men and have groovy costumes with the letter X worked in wherever possible. I’m getting a migraine now, but sure, let’s roll with that.

And the powers these mutants have! There’s the guy who can control and create magnetic fields. Okay. The guy who can turn anything into ice. Right. The woman who can look and sound like anybody. Sure. Handy, that. The guy whose eyes shoot raw energy unless he wears sunglasses. Ehm. Okey-dokey. The guy who can control anybody’s mind. Right on. The woman who can control the weather. Still not sure why her irises turn white when she does that, but whatever. Right on with the weather. I could sure use some rain here.

And it goes on and on. Including the poor slob whose mutant power is to have hedgehog spines coming out of his head. Man, wouldn’t that just piss you off at the mutant meetings? Everybody else is like, “I shoot fire,” “I am unstoppable,” “I levitate thing with my mind.” And you have to go, “I can make these spines come out. Pretty fierce, huh? Guys? Come on, you promised not to laugh.”

But back to the movie. All these different kinds of mutants have been introduced, and I’m still in the suspension of disbelief zone and grooving on the story, and then they introduce this mutant whose power is to have little pieces of wood come out of his arms that he can throw. And the little voice in my head goes, What about conservation of mass? He’s extruding those things and he’s not getting smaller. Shouldn’t he have to eat a ton to replace all the body mass generating those things cost?

And that movie ends right there for me.

Like for my brain that just tilted the lever and the movie has now become absurd.

Silly brain.

Soundtrack: “Alien Sex Fiend” by Garbage

Easy. The more money has been spent on a movie and the crappier it is, the more money will be spent on advertising for the movie before it opens.

The rule of thumb is, the earlier ads for a movie show up, the worse that movie is. The amount of advertising that shows up is related to how much money has already been sunk into the stink bomb. If you are mathematically inclined, feel free to put that into a formula.

So, if a month before “Death Mega Watch” opens at a friendly multiplex near you, you start seeing ads for it, it is probably crap. Increase the crap factor each time you see an ad for “Death Mega Watch,” and if you watch a lot of TV you’ll probably be able to predict pretty accurately just how bad the movie is.

Why do the studios waste money like that? Simple. They know they have a stinker on their hands, and they know that word of mouth is going to kill them, so they want to pack the theaters as full as possible on opening weekend. After opening weekend, only people without friends to warn them off will see these abominations.

Soundtrack: “French Fries With Pepper” by Morphine