I like how Doug's fiance was totally reasonable and awesome. And so was the stripper. It wasn't sexist so much as Ed Helm's girlfriend was a huge bitch.
I had a feeling my first comment would get thumbed down (and also this one) but there's like two commenters on videogum I thought would appreciate it. Anyway: The cat video was filmed before I was born by Charlie Schmidt and was called "Cool Cat Playing the Keys." I just repurposed it as a visual fail tag and gave it the "Play Him Off, Keyboard Cat" title. BUT ALSO, after about a month of inactivity I noticed a light spike in traffic and backlinks from forums, and a handful of parodies. It had about 40k views. So I tracked down Charlie Schmidt and got his permission to place ads on the video (I specifically told him it was likely to become a meme, and that I'd link to his site to drive a lot of traffic to him). Then I bugged a YouTube editor friend of mine for a few weeks until he featured it. Which got it up to about 100k views, then it was cold for a few weeks, then the parodies and press hit critical mass and it started getting around 40k views a day. My original video has like 1.6 million views right now and I've made a couple hundred bucks off of it so far. But someone just contacted me on Friday about licensed merch which I'd split with Charlie. (Sorry I'm using the comments as keyboardcatgum)
I think the Twilight kids were my favorite part, they so didn't want to be there. It made me wonder if they were got roped into a low-paying contract that included them for all three (five? seven? how many books?) movies and didn't realize it would blow up. They didn't seem too happy about their situation at all. Especially Kristen Stewart! I like when her and Edward (what's his name?) won for best kiss, and the hosts knew his name off the top of their heads, and then paused, leaned into the note card, and read her name awkwardly, and she kind of threw her hands in the air. She was great. I want to be friends with her. But I don't want to see Twilight.
I was at a meme costume party last night, and right before we left someone @'d me on twitter that keyboard cat made her appearance on the MTV Movie Awards, so I checked the DVR and got it on my flip video to show people at the party. Video of that. (The cat is a girl)
Not to be Professor Goode Family, but I think only the wife's nemesis was evangelicals, not the rest of the family. She's being a hippie to lash out against her red-blooded-american father, the husband is just a hippie because he was raised that way. And I think the daughter and dog are just forced to be that way by the parents. And then Ubuntu is just a bad character. Sigh. Why am I still thinking about this show. Forget it Brad, it's Goode Family town.
Whelp then it's a good thing I only said it in a comment on a blog and not in a pilot airing on a major television network written by professional writers.
Just because she appeared on camera and said stuff doesn't mean she was "in on the joke." A few weeks ago Funny Or Die basically got Lindsay Lohan to humiliate herself similarly, and Lindsay probably thought she was 'in' on it. With both this video, and the Lindsay Lohan video, the subject is telling jokes, but you're laughing at them, not with them.
I'm pretty sure the fact that the blonde girl didn't ask was part of the 'joke' of the commercial.
Also, I wonder if the director didn't even tell the girl about the script and just got a reaction shot of her real disappointment, and then coached her lines and inserted them later. Someone give this guy a feature film about sad children.
I am a huge fan of King of the Hill. Probably one of my top 5 favorite shows. It's first few seasons were kind of slow and boring, but then it really hit a stride. As a series it has more character development and continuity than any other sitcom I've watched. The show and characters often reinvented themselves in surprising ways (the Megalo Mart explosion, Peggy becoming paralyzed, Joseph being 'rebooted' due to puberty, Cotton's death, Bobby and Connie's relationship, Nancy giving up on cheating on Dale with John Redcorn, Peggy's sanity being questioned openly, the Souphanousinphone moving in, Luanne's transition from a homebody to college student to wife and mother, etc.) and it's tone can shift dramatically between episodes (Japan, Y2k, etc).
And the individual episode 'subjects' often approach subjects in a way that is more intelligent and practical than other satires. The conservative beliefs of the Hill family are either used to make a straw man or a real argument, depending on Mike Judge's (usually slightly right leaning) opinion on the topics at hand. It requires a lot of warming up to, but once you 'get' the characters it's really fun to watch.
That said, The Goode Family was one of the most unwatchable things I have ever seen. The jokes were text messaged in and the political polarity of the show was confusing and stupid, and seemed just as extreme as the characters it was making fun of. Though there were a handful of concepts that, abstractly, could be interesting (the fact that they're too poor to be proper liberals, the daughter and grandfather's relationship with the mother, and the differences between the husband and wife's motivations for their beliefs) they were buried under a terrible, terrible, terrible jokes. "WWAGD? ... What Would Al Gore Do?" Uhg.
I don't understand how it's even possible for this show to happen. It's like George Lucas creating a new Star Wars trilogy and somehow intentionally making it lack all the subtly and enjoyableness of the originals. It's the same dude! Mike Judge. You're better than this. Someone would make a bad joke on the show, and then I would hear Mike Judge's voice (the dad) and it made my head spin. How is he even allowing this show to happen!
Anyway, it was terrible. But. I think I'm going to force myself to watch it. It's future will most likely be a quick cancellation or a dramatic overhaul, and either one would make me happy, for different reasons. (I love watching bad shows get bad endings... Did anyone else watch Reaper? Perfect shitty ending.)
There's actually a canon Japanese comic book sequel to the labyrinth, because I guess it was big in Japan (the video game was also Japanese-only) where Toby (the baby) is a teenager and he goes back to the Labyrinth because he's in gay love with David Bowie. It's called Return to the Labyrinth. I almost bought it on Amazon and then I realized I didn't care enough.
Not to defend SKYNET or McG or anything, but it's possible that the Terminator time travel is like "We can't change anything because of destiny" Losty time travel OR EVEN "If we change the past our present remains the same and it just creates a parallel universe where everything is different" time travel, like Star Trek, and that Skynet knew this, and knew that John Connor didn't know this or wasn't sure, and knew they could lure him into their bases with Kyle.
ALSO, now that I'm thinking about the stupid movie again, I've found some things to get mad about:
* It should've explored themes of salvation for the machines as well as humans, especially since it had that cyborg guy as an in! It should've been about working towards harmony or some shit. Not just "US VS THEM, WHAT MAKES US GREAT IS WE'RE GOOD AND THEY'RE BAD!" Also, relying on the theme of "We value human life and they don't!" is lame because that gets blurry in war anyway and the humans were just as violent and killy as the machines were. Like when they were shooting at Blair in that one scene when she was trying to help the cyborg guy escape, and it wasn't even like presented as a moral conundrum for John or humanity, it was like "Shoot that bitch!" It didn't do much to make you root for humanity or even care where these rag tag ruffians ended up.
* John Connor can't EVER trust machines? What about Terminator 2? That was him. Remember? "I'll be back"? Crying? Thumbs up? And yet he's so untrusting of machines that he'd permit a rocket launcher being fired at an innocent woman who disagrees with him? Despite the whole father figure life lesson? Then what was the fucking point of (the most interesting aspect of) Terminator 2?
* Was that Sarah with the cancer in the first scene? Who was that? They never explained why he was robotnikized since Skynet wasn't even around at that time. Whatever.
* I hated how that fucking girl, Blair, was supposed to be a love interest, and she was introduced like halfway into the movie, as a Mary Sue just dangling from a tree waiting to be rescued. She was the female lead from the 20% mark to the 80% mark of the movie, but only in three scenes. They could've at least shown her earlier in the movie, interacting with John at the base or something. Or did they? Either way, she wasn't noticeable.
* That cute little black girl and Kyle were by far the most enjoyable parts of the movie, but they needed to be more of them and they needed to be more complicated and warmer.
* That old white haired woman at the gas station basically didn't ever come into play at all.
* John's wife being pregnant was also irrelevant. Okay? Why do we need to know that. She just looked fat and then you could kind of see she was pregnant in like the last scene but by then I stopped caring.
* The more I think about Terminator 2, the more annoyed I am. Remember when they stopped at the gas station and those kids were shooting at each other with the pop guns and John was like "We're not gonna make it." "Why? The machines?" "No, the people." That scene was deep! It was supposed to imply that humanity is doomed by it's own warlike be behavior, and the machines were just holding a mirror up to that. And you were supposed to think that potential future John Connor, with his Jesus symbolism, was going to maybe UNITE humans and machines, or convince humans to deviate from their violent nature and strive for peace, or something. But NOPE! It turns out the reason he's the savior is because he's really good at army stuff? And he can give orders to people through the radio that slightly contradict the strategic opinions of the person in charge (also why isn't John the person in charge in the first place?) and everyone will listen. Stupid.
Man I went into the movie getting all excited and mustering up all the caring I could about the Terminator franchise, and I walked out of the theater not even wanting to talk about what just happened. I saw it with a friend too. We were like "Where's the bathroom?" I didn't even want to talk about how lame and disappointing it was or whatever, I just didn't care times a million. I was like "I wonder how Gabe is even going to care enough to write about it tomorrow."
Oh--this post just reminded me. I had a teacher who showed us Dead Poets Society. He was always trying to get us to 'think outside the box' but he was kind of lazy about it, because he was an English teacher / coach, it was weird. But after showing us the movie he was like "I want you all to close your eyes and think of three words, that are the most important things in the world to you. Remember, these are only for you. Okay, now pull out a piece of paper. Write those three things down. Now think really hard, and cross off the one that doesn't mean the most do you. Now cross off a second one. Okay, the remaining word will be the topic of your semester-long research paper." and one of the kids that sat next to me wrote "Homosexuality" and he didn't do the paper and he would clam up any time the teacher tried to talk to him about the paper, like, all semester. It was awesome.
Wasn't the point of the Midas story that he ruined everything he touches? I mean the phase "the midas touch" is used positively, but in the actual story, it turned out to be a bad thing!
Probably why it wasn't re-released: "Now, if you've never seen Dead Poets Society, well, don't. You're too old. It's too late..."
Also, for me, sub Robin Williams for Mister Feeny.
"Class dismissed."
(Also, the last shot of the movie is an UNDER THE CROTCH shot?)
Man I just thought of a much better story: A vampire is attacking a night school. And he falls in love with a middle aged woman trying to jump start her career. Basically Hellen Hunt from Pay It Forward.
I don't know anything about Twilight but I'm sure a wristwatch would come in handy if the sun caused you to die. JUST KIDDING, I do know one thing about Twilight: The sun doesn't make vampires die, it just makes them SPARKLY. That's so annoying. It's like the story wouldn't work if the sun killed him (because how could a vampire attack a high school? high schools are only open during the day) and the writer just kind of ignored the sun thing, which is like 50% of vampire mythology (other 50% is that they kill people, which I guess was also ignored.) I'm not trying to be professor vampires but, come on.
How about when she's like "Everyone, drinks are on me!" and then in like ten seconds there's light music and everyone is dispersed and chitchatting and drinking. And they're all like 17. Is this that underage speakeasy from SNL?
Rhett and Link are Internet comedians/musicians who live in North Carolina http://rhettandlink.com/ So they probably made a fake commercial parody using a real furniture store and employees. They're in this video. And it was posted on their channel.
Man. I watched 24 for a while, but it started going down hill each time Kim got her leg stuck in a bear trap or whatever. The only shining light of the bad seasons was Chloe (and that one crazy First Lady, she was awesome too) but it's like they're doing everything in their power to ruin her. She is NOT sexy. She's not supposed to by sexy. They kept giving her sexy plots and stylish makeup, and putting her in sex-appeal promo art. THATS NOT WHAT CHLOE IS! The whole premise of Chloe's character is "What if the incompetent unprofessional dumbass at your office worked at an office that was struggling to save the world?" She was great. Because at first she was just being incompetent and unprofessional in an annoying way that kept fucking everything up, but THEN she started being incompetent and unprofessional in a way that made her Jack's only constant because she was too dumb to be part of conspiracies. But then they fucked her up. I guess I'm saying Chloe was awesome for one that one season only. There should be a Chloe spinoff where she just works at the DVM. No nuclear bomb threats or anything, it's just her yelling at people for not filling out form correctly. I'd watch that.
I don't want to write a long post defending The Butterfly Effect, but let me just say: The Butterfly Effect can be two totally different movies, depending on how you put the DVD in your DVD player. The director's cut is on one side of the disc and the theatrical cut is on the other side of the disc. The theatrical cut shows that the studio was smart enough to edit the retarded movie you saw into an enjoyable movie, by basically removing all the "he has no soul, he's destined to die" shit and all references to his father and grandfather, and changing the ending, to exactly what you said the ending should've been: "Why didn't he Butterfly Effect himself to before any of this happened and get himself some fucking therapy?"
In the theatrical ending, he goes back to the first time he met the girl (via a birthday party video) and just says something mean to her so he never sees her again. Then he has a relatively normal life, because most of those problems were a result of him knowing her and her crazy brother and pedodad. Then future him burns all of his journals and records of his childhood so he can't ever jump back again. Then the final scene is like 10 years later in NYC and he's on the phone with his wife walking home from work and he passes the girl, who he recognizes from the parallel timelines (even though this is technically the only time they've ever met, save for the birthday party) and it cuts right before we see wether or not he approaches her or she recognizes him. It wasn't a bad ending.
Also, all of your nitpicky stuff about the childhood being unrealistic is nitpicky, Gabe! Some people have shitty childhoods. It would be a less interesting movie if he was just undoing that time he cheated on his SATs or whatever.
Photoshopped or not, her right eye looks weirdly matte compared to her shiny left eye. Also WTF kind of facial expression is that? I'm angry but sad? Oh boy I hope I don't poop my dress? Acting!
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