movies

2006 Films in Review

Posted on by grahams

Beeeeeeeeewwww

Posted on by grahams

Friday after work,

[info]equalize

,

[info]rat_girl3

, and I left for Rochester…  We hit the road around 6:45pm and expected to arrive some time near Midnight..  Unfortunately, as soon as we were ready to leave, it started snowing..  Apparently in Boston it quickly turned to rain, but we had white-out conditions until the Mass border, delaying us like crazy…  We were planning on driving directly to Nick’s, but had to bail just because we arrived so late.   But we just revised the plans to hit Dinosaur for lunch on Saturday and grab some Nick’s for dinner just before FUMN started… 

We hit up Dinosaur with some folks as planned, and then headed over to CSH to hang out on floor for awhile…  Unfortunately, almost everyone was at some stupid RIT function that ResLife leaned on the house to attend…   I was pretty much set to go to Nick’s before FUMN, but I got guilted into attending

[info]james_kieliszek

‘s birthday celebration..  It was a great time, but I really wanted Nick’s…

FUMN seemed to be a great success..  The committee picked a fine selection of flicks this year:

The films seemed to be pretty well received, although each flick had it’s detractors, but that’s to be expected..   We might have shown another film, but we got a late start as it was (after 10pm) and finished things up around 4am…  As it was I was contemplating dropping Oldboy and going out to Nick’s, but I decided to make that sacrifice….  :)

Sunday we swung by DiBella’s on our way out of town, which was as delicious as always.  We had a really nice drive back though…  The TomTom did us right, guiding us directly to Garrett’s for his Super Bowl party..  We watched the boredom of the Super Bowl and hung out with friends I hadn’t seen in awhile..   Finally rolled into Boston at 11pm, and crashed pretty quickly…

See, I told you FUMN was Scholarly!

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I did a vanity search today for the phrase “fucked up movie night”, and was astonished to find that FUMN was cited in an academic article!

“Besides video and DVD rentals and purchases, the film is still being shown in theatres around the world. Indeed, in January 2001, the Royal Cinema in Toronto played an Ilsa double feature, presenting Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS at 9:15, and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks at its 11:30 PM show. Paradise Cinema in Toronto also showed the double feature. It has also been shown on college campuses. For instance, Associated Students of UC Davis advertised it ironically as “the heart-warming, inspirational World War II epic” for a free-screening, Lewis and Clark College played it during its “alternative movie night,” and Rochester Institute of Technology showed it for “fucked up movie night.””

—  Rapaport, Lynn – “Holocaust Pornography: Profaning the Sacred in ‘Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS,'” in Shofar, 22, Fall 2003

I’m not sure what pleases me more, the fact that showing “Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S.” was enough to get us into a scholarly journal, or that the credit (blame?) for showing the film was given to RIT as opposed to “The Committee”.  =)

On that subject, tomorrow is FUMN #16 at 9:45pm in the conference room below Kate Gleason Hall.    We’ll be landing in Rochester tonight around midnight, and will likely go directly to Nick’s.  Be there or be somewhere else.

MPAA Ratings

Posted on by grahams

I decided to use a Christmas giftcard to purchase the final two installments in the Lord of the Rings trilogy (Previously, I only had Fellowship of the Ring).  They arrived today, and I when looking over the packaging, I noticed the notes associated with their ratings.  A few years ago the MPAA started including a blurb of text along with the rating to describe the reasons they came to their decision.

Both films are rated PG-13, and most people would probably agree that the films are cut from very similar cloth, but I noticed subtle differences in the notes between the two films:

  • The Two Towers: “Epic Battle Sequences and Some Scary Images”
  • Return of the King: “Intense Epic Battle Sequences and Frightening Images”

This led me to wonder where “scary” ends and “frightening” begins. Are they measuring the same value? If so, which term represents a larger value?

The Movies I Saw in 2006

Posted on by grahams

Keeping up the tradition of the past few years, here is the list of flicks I watched in 2006. This was a strange year for me, I saw more movies in the theatre, but (relatively) few on video. I can only attribute that to all the home improvement stuff
coco_b and I had to deal with this year… Our plan is to move to a new home in 2007, so it’s possible that this trend could continue for another year. In a few weeks I will put together my “best of 2006” list, but I want to give myself an opportunity to catch some of the things from 2006 I haven’t seen yet.

The list is pretty much in the order I saw the pictures, and I tried to italicize films I had previously viewed.

Continue reading “The Movies I Saw in 2006” →

RiffTrax

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Last night I watched Episode 1 with commentary from RiffTrax. RiffTrax is the brainchild of Mike Nelson, formerly of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  If you were a fan of MST3K, you already understand the basic premise behind RiffTrax:  Mike (and friends) record a snarky commentary track to a film and release it as an mp3 file.  Simply load the file into whatever media player you choose, press play and follow the audio directions.  I understood this all in principal (especially since I beta-tested the same concept a few years ago when

[info]patrickwonders

 was experimenting with DVDTracks), and I loved MST when it was on the air, but I couldn’t tell if this would work or not.

When I saw that they had done Episode 1, I couldn’t resist..  The first thing you notice is that the commentary is delivered in a zip file containing an unprotected mp3 and a text file.  The text file contains some basic information and also a guide to mapping “movie time” to “audio time” with some dialog snippets to help you in case you pause or stop the film for whatever reason and lose sync between the two.  My biggest concern was the issue of sync, but the RiffTrax guys handled it very well…  At the start of the audio file there is some introductory matter, and then there were instructions to pause the audio track after a countdown and to un-pause it after “A long time ago…” faded off the screen.  In addition, they have a “robot” named DisembAudio which occasionally recites a line of dialog so you can tell if they were in sync.  In practice, I found that it didn’t really matter if they were out of sync, even if it was by a second or two, but also that unless you were pausing or whatever, you didn’t have to worry about sync at all.  

As far as content goes, Mike has Kevin Murphy at his side for this one, who you may recognize better as the voice of Tom Servo on MST.  Other tracks feature Bill Corbett, who voiced Crow and was also a writer on the old show.  While the commentary for Episode 1 started off a little slow (just like the movie!), once they got into a groove it was like old times again.  It was a great experience, and if you are an MSTie, you owe it to yourself to grab one of their tracks and give it a go.   Obviously with my small sample size, I don’t know how much the quality varies, but for 2-3 bucks, it’s a pretty good deal.  I might even consider renting some REAL stinkers and just buying the RiffTrax that go along with them to make them watchable. :)

Brainwaves

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This weekend was the Brainwaves Festival over in Arlington, which was a ton of fun. Jon really did a great job pulling the whole thing together, and while I wasn’t in to every artist, it was great seeing so many different bands. The highlight for me was The Dresden Dolls turning out a great set (even if they seemed out of place in the midst of the other bands on the lineup). Amanda and Brian brought out Edward Ka-Spel (from The Legendary Pink Dots and The Tear Garden) for “Missed Me”. I’m not the biggest Ka-Spel fan (I actually left before his set, closing out Friday, was over, but I was mostly just exhausted).

After a Kelly’s brunch, I made it back to the theatre on time on Saturday Afternoon. This daytime lineup seemed to be mostly noise artists, which can always be hit-or-miss. Fortunately, none of them seemed to take themselves too seriously, which made it more palatable. came out Saturday night to join me, and it was great seeing him again and catching up. Saturday night was definitely my favorite overall night of the show. It was dedicated to Steven Stapleton, who did a “DJ” set playing some of his favorite records. All of the artists Saturday night were enjoyable, but the stand-out band were also the headliners, Volcano the Bear. They had great energy, and while at times they seemed to be in Schtick Coma, they really rocked it out.

I missed the final day of the festival as I had previously committed to heading over to ‘s place for some Nintendo Wii love. He has preordered his and was having a big party to celebrate (and play). We mostly played Wii Sports, Tennis and Baseball are the standout games, but Bowling is pretty cool too. Golf and Boxing were a bit spottier though. Boxing definitely felt like your actions with the remote had the least correspondence to what happened on screen. That, and Corinna kicked my ass at Boxing, so I can’t like it. :P

We played from like noon until 6pm, when and I had to run off to see “Casino Royale”. I really, really enjoyed it, as did seemingly everyone who showed up to the club this week (17 people!). Definitely removed the crappier aspects of Bond for the past however-many years and stuck to spying and action (Parkour FTW).