3D VR Display with Head tracking, thanks to the… Wii?

This guy should be working for Nintendo. He has managed to use a Wii and a Wii mote to create head tracking — I feel like I’m butchering some big business jargon, so just watch it! Cool stuff.

Zero Gravity Dog

I laughed very hard at this video. I wish I knew what was going through the dog’s mind. It looks like he/she is wagging its tail though, so it must be enjoying the ride! Flying Dog (note: the pic above has absolutely nothing to do with the video)

Netflix: Borat

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was my first experience with anything by Sacha Baron Cohen. (Actually, that’s not true; I saw Talladega Nights and despised his character because his French accent was horribly wrong.) For some reason, when something becomes kind of a comedy phenomenon that various people around me start to quote all the time, I tend to resist experiencing it myself. And I’ve always had something against quoting things. I once knew someone that spouted out lines from “The Simpsons” more often than speaking from his own thoughts. I also think it’s a good way to alienate someone who hasn’t seen/heard what you are quoting from (which mostly means me because I am not good at remembering funny lines from anything). So anyway, I haven’t seen “Da Ali G Show” and I didn’t feel any need to go see Borat in the theater especially since there was so much hype and controversy surrounding it. It was also suggested to me that I wouldn’t like it.

After all this overly complex business I decided at some point that I should see this movie just so I can speak knowledgeably about it if it ever happens to come up again in conversation. I’d say about 45% of my Netflix queue is made up of this sort of thing, actually. In the end, I just don’t really know how I feel about Borat. There is a battle in my mind between giving it two stars versus three. There were many parts throughout the movie that were so completely ridiculous and inappropriate and offensive and disgusting. I could have done without the excessive nudity and vulgarity, or at least it could have been toned down a bit, but maybe I’m just getting old. All the parts with him trying so hard to rattle or surprise real people are the parts that I didn’t like and made me uncomfortable.

As much as I feel like I should have been giving this one star, however, I really enjoyed a few segments. Even though it lasted a bit long, the part when he was learning about American humor was great, especially with the callback right at the end of the movie. I also thought the local news appearance was pretty good and I really liked some parts of the etiquette lesson. There were other parts I was laughing really hard at, but I can’t exactly remember them (see above about my lack of memory).

As for the parts that were embarrassing to some friends I’ve talked to (the frat guy part and the church part?), I thought those were bad for different reasons. The college guys in the RV said some pretty terrible things that I’ve actually never heard anyone say in real life. Maybe I didn’t get the full college experience since I wasn’t in a fraternity and didn’t have any friends like that at all, but I have to wonder how many random frat guys he had to spend time with before he found those gems of humanity. The evangelist part was a completely different kind of scary, though. Speaking as a Christian who goes to a church that many people consider a cult of some sort (but isn’t at all), this entire sequence at the end of Borat freaked me out a lot. I think there were good intentions with what was going on, but let’s just say it might not have been the best representation of true Christianity.

Working through the good and bad of this movie has helped to confirm what my rating will be. I think it contains a few things that are great to see but you shouldn’t feel bad if you miss out. At the same time I think a lot of people would get a lot of enjoyment from this movie. It’s definitely a unique comedy, and I’m really glad whenever I see something creative happening. For me, though, this one just didn’t work as well as I’d hoped.

** out of *****

The Shame!

I always thought my dogs looked somewhat embarrassed at times like this one depicted in the poster (from Kirainet), but look at how worried this dog appears.

YouTube Holiday Greetings

This first one gets good(?) after about 1 minute 55 seconds. I can’t get over the jubilant music during the scene.

 

These two are from a frequent YouTuber called mittymoo. I saw the Christmas one a while ago, but the phone call one is pretty new. These somehow get funnier the more times you watch them.

$28.8 Billion?

Forbes put out a list of the top 15 richest fictional characters. Apparently they do this every year. I had no idea there was any such thing or that Scrooge McDuck was worth so much money. What qualifies someone for this list? And how do they even know for sure how much each character has? You can read the full story here, but I’ll put the list below.

1. Scrooge McDuck – Worth $28.8 Billion
2. Ming the Merciless (from Flash Gordon) – Worth $20.9 Billion
3. Richie Rich – Worth $16.1 Billion
4. MOM (from Futurama) – Worth $15.7 Billion
5. Jed Clampett (The Beverly Hillbillies) – Worth $11 Billion
6. Montgomery Burns (”The Simpsons”): $8.4 billion
7. Carter Pewterschmidt (Lois Griffin’s father on “Family Guy”): $7.2 billion
8. Bruce Wayne (aka Batman): $7 billion
9. Thurston Howell III (”Gilligan’s Island”): $6.3 billion
10. Tony Stark (”Ironman”): $6 billion
11. “Fake” Steve Jobs (a fictional version of the real Apple computer mogul): $5.7 billion
12. Gomez Addams (”The Addams Family”): $2 billion
13. Willy Wonka (of the Chocolate Factory fame): $1.9 billion
14. Lucius Malfoy (”Harry Potter” movies): $1.6 billion
15. Princess Peach (”Mushroom Kingdom” heiress and Nintendo video game heroine): $1.3 billion

And here are a couple spoiler-ish clips. One is some guy’s digitally altered interpretation of the whisper scene at the end of Lost In Translation which isn’t all that interesting now that I know, but it’s the kind of thing that maybe you don’t want to know. The other is something I have not watched, the new trailer for The Dark Knight, but I figured those less obsessive about than I am about knowing nothing would enjoy it.

More Backflips Please

I can’t believe this is coming to the Wii Virtual Console! I’m sure Rebecca is going to be super excited. No seriously.

Pokemon Snap for Wii Virtual Console

Music Snob Fashion

Buy the t-shirt.

“Real” Widescreen

I have only played through about 20 minutes of Bioshock so far. I got distracted by many other games, so I’ve put it off until my friends and I can go through it together. Even Rebecca wants to see more of it (not the biggest video game fan). Now I feel even better about having waited to play because there is new downloadable content available. Most interestingly is the introduction of a few new plasmids (the chemicals that alter your character’s DNA and give him abilities such as shooting lightning from his hands or telekinesis). The field of view for widescreen displays has also been increased in response to whiny internet brats complaining that the 4:3ers out there got to see more of the game world. As I understand it, 2K games, makers of Bioshock, made the game with widescreen TVs in mind, and rather than cutting off the image for standard TVs they just increased the top and bottom portion to fit. The red shaded part of the picture is the added space. Well now no one can be upset anymore. See the bottom image for the increased field of view that was born of the internet flames.

Demon Barber

I love Tim Burton.  I can’t really even describe how his movies have helped to shape who I am today.  He’s affected the way I see things, my taste in decor, my musical predilections, and the references I make on a daily basis.  I once told Rebecca that if I ever make a movie reference or quote something that she didn’t know there was about an 85% chance it was from either Batman or Batman Returns.  When he and his composer of choice/friend Danny Elfman parted ways in the mid ’90s Tim started to lose his hold over me, even after they got back together.  Movies like Ed Wood, Mars Attacks!, and Sleepy Hollow just weren’t anything like his older stuff (oh yeah, Planet of the Apes, too).  Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Corpse Bride were still lacking the magic that I had grown to love in the Batman movies, Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and Nightmare Before Christmas.

The point of all this is that I still have limited faith in his work.  I will always see it and I will always like it to some degree even if it isn’t that good.  But I’m always a little worried that it’s going to be missing that special whatever that made me love his earlier work.  And now that Sweeney Todd is coming out soon, I still feel the same way.  I’ll go into that movie expecting much less even than I did with Corpse Bride.  The one other thing that usually helps me like his stuff more will also be missing from this movie: Danny Elfman.  Expectations at an all-time low for a Tim Burton movie?  Maybe (but I can’t forget about Ed Wood, which I saw about 10 years after it came out).

Now it’s time for the weird part:  This movie is actually getting good reviews.  I just skimmed a few things because I want to stay as in the dark as possible, but could this be a turn-around?  I guess we’ll have to wait until December 21st to find out.

The Movie Blog:  Sweeney Todd Gets Killer Reviews

Cinematical:  First Reviews Call ‘Sweeney Todd’ Best Film of 2007

Tim Burton’s IMDb