Stray Hawkeye » movies

Holy Hakuna Matata Batman

Kearn — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 03:14:19 +0000

Batman is easily my favorite superhero, and there is a new Batman movie is coming out this summer. So, obviously, I was excited to see the trailer:

Looks pretty good. I’ve never been a huge fan of Bane as a villain (I would rather see Two-Face get a full movie to himself) ,but the potential for social commentary with this one looks huge.

Then, I saw this mash up on Facebook that Brad Hansen (a friend of mine from college who’s now out in LA) made (his youtube is here and imdb here):

Love it. Especially impressed by the quality of syncing the words to the various animals. Plus, the Zazu shot is hilarious.

48 Hour Film Project

Kearn — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:41:14 +0000

Over the weekend I participated in the 48 Hour Film Project. Basically, it’s a competition where teams get a genre, a character name / occupation, a line of dialogue, and a prop, and 48 hours later have to come back with a 4 to 7 minute film (plus 60 seconds for credits). A couple of my friends have a production company, so I auditioned to be on their team and ended up with a part with a couple of lines (which in a 7 minute film I’m claiming is major role :) ). Plus I made a website as a prop that also gets some screen time. So, what I’m really saying here is you should come to the premier screening, because I’m going to be totally famous and on the big screen and stuff. Also there’s about a 5 second shot of me and two other guys just shaking our butts in a musical number. Did I it’s a musical? And a Western? Because for genre we got “Musical or Western”, and decided that “and” is far better than “or”, so we did both. Confused yet? Good, more reason to come see the finished product.

Due to the number of teams, they break up the screening into groups. We’re in Group D, which shows Wednesday, June 15th, 9:00 – 11:00pm at the Riverview Theater. Admission is $10, and you get to see about 10-15 movies made as part of this chaos. If you have a large amount of faith in us, there’s a best of show a week later on the 23rd. I’ve seen our film and I think it’s pretty good, but having not seen others from this year, I have no idea where we’ll fall in the pack, or, for that matter, what categories / criteria they use to pick the best of, so, you may want to come to the premier screening just in case. Besides, the best of is $15, and you’ll have no idea what people are talking about for the week in between when everyone is saying how awesome ours is.

We’ll leave the light on for ya – or – What Super 8 is really about

Kearn — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 04:35:57 +0000

You may have seen the trailer for the upcoming movie Super 8. If not, here it is:

Let’s see, main character appears to be a giant alien monster thing from space. It loves to eat metal and all things electric, especially high voltage power lines. It’s super strong and leaves large trails of wreckage wherever it goes. A somewhat anti-social young boy seems to be central to the plot, especially in the creature’s initial release, and tracking it down. Officials are kept in the dark about what’s really happening. The military is mobilized to try to deal with it, but seems outgunned. And, the whole thing is noticeably stylized to a few decades back.

I don’t want to ruin the ending for you, but I’m pretty sure I know what our giant monster alien thing looks like:

The Iron Giant 2 - Hogarth's revenge -or- The Iron Giant 2 - Rise of the Beatniks

Just don’t tell Spielberg I let the cat out of the bag. He seems like the type who would sue.

Also, fun fact – The Iron Giant‘s voice was done by Vin Diesel. Now you know.

Tron Sex

Kearn — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 03:58:18 +0000

Ever want to read the Karma Sutra, but were waiting until they came out with a video version that riffed on the Sci-fi classic Tron? Well, you’re in luck – the mainframe brings you Tron-a-Sutra (everyone is completely clothed, but still really NSFW). The pictures are amusing, but you need to watch the videos for full effect. They’re really inappropriate, sightly disturbing, and have lots and lots of great sex/technology puns.

I’m surrounded by Dikshits

Kearn — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 04:47:34 +0000

A co-worker of mine recently pointed out to me that one of the people who is on the offshore team in India for his project has the last name of “Dikshit”. I of course assumed he was lying as we tend to joke around a lot, but I looked it up in the company directory, and, in deed, there is not one, but around 10 people who work for our company in India (and a couple in the US for that matter), with the last name of “Dikshit”. I couldn’t help but think of this scene from Spaceballs:

One can imagine a similar scene set at a corporate headquarters (no so different from Dark Helmet’s spaceship after all) with the following unfolding on an IT project:

DARK PROJECT MANAGER

Careful, you idiot. I said update the record in the database, not overwrite it!

CODER

Sorry, sir. Doing my best.

DARK PROJECT MANAGER

Who made that man a coder?

SYSTEM ARCHITECT

I did, sir. He’s my cousin.

DARK PROJECT MANAGER

Who is he?

COL BUSINESS ANALYST

He’s a Dikshit, sir.

DARK PROJECT MANAGER

I know that. What’s his name?

COL BUSINESS ANALYST

That is his name, sir. Dikshit, Bhanuprakash Dikshit.

DARK PROJECT MANAGER

And his cousin?

COL BUSINESS ANALYST

He’s a Dikshit, too, sir. Software Engineer, Team Lead, Philip Dikshit.

DARK PROJECT MANAGER

How many Dikshits we got on this project, anyhow?
(Everyone attempt to talk at once on the conference call to say “Yes sir, I am one as well as he already.”)

Pretty sure that script is waaaayyyy funnier in my head.

The Last Poo-bender

Kearn — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 01:03:55 +0000

I’m not really sure what it says about what I watch on TV, but I noticed a couple of weeks ago that two particular products were being advertised a lot on the shows I was watching.

The first was the movie The Last Airbender- an M. Night Shyamalan movie that appears to be about a 8 year old asian boy who does martial arts and has supernatural powers that allow him to transform the fabric of the world around him to create wind and waves and such to fight huge numbers of generic, undifferentiated 30 to 40 something year old bad guys, and he’s the only hope to save the world from this evil force and bring balance to the world, all with various spiritual and religious overtones, along with self discovery, a dangerous quest for training, and the need to evade these evil bad guys until he’s truly ready and trained to be able to face them once he has mastered his talents. In sort, an 8 year old asian Neo from the Matrix.

There is no spoon.

The other product that was being advertised a lot was Activia. From Activia’s website:

Activia® is a delicious, creamy yogurt that is shown in several clinical studies to help naturally regulate your digestive system*, which for many women means it can help with your occasional irregularity, or when you are feeling a bit sluggish.

Activia, with the unique probiotic culture called Bifidus Regularis® (Bifidobacterium lactis DN 173 010), works in your gut to help regulate your digestive system by helping with slow intestinal transit*. Activia is good for you, and it tastes good too! You can enjoy Activia every day, as a delicious snack, part of a nutritious breakfast or as a delicious end to your favorite meal.

In short, yogurt that makes women shit.

Mmmm, strawberries. It also comes in prune flavor. No, really.

So, aside from the randomness of these two products advertising on the same type of programming, both to someone who couldn’t care less about either, why did it strike me as blog worthy? Well, I noticed a similarity, and couldn’t stop laughing once I did.

See it yet?

Let’s see if I can help…

Hoodie, trench coat, same idea

Is your colon supposed to make a whooshing noise?

See it now? Maybe look a little harder….

Cut. Cut! Now who gave the kid yogurt after midnight?!?

What do you mean I'm pregnant? And it's a what?

Just struck me as an interestingly similar design choice across products for an semi-intricate, downward pointing, glowing arrow as the main logo for each.

To the space station, and beyond

Kearn — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 03:18:41 +0000

Did you know that NASA makes movie style poster for its missions? They do, and they’re awesome. I think the one for Expedition 13 (really big pdf of it) is my favorite:

Neo... In... Space!!

And before anyone starts bitching about “my tax dollars at work”, remember:

If you know what you’re doing it doesn’t take that long to do this sort of thing, especially when they already make the informative versions for press / schools.
Seeing a government agency embracing a bit of remix / pop culture is sort of a refreshing surprise. Especially with the continuous corporate push towards more DRM and more strict intellectual property laws that would limit this sort of format.
These people when to god-damn space and are in basically the most hazardous profession that exists. They deserve to be doted on a little bit, especially now when shuttle launches and space walks barely even get a 5 second mention on the evening news unless they’re the last one of something, or something goes terribly wrong (see most hazardous profession that exists comment). I mean really, without looking at the poster above, name me one astronaut in the last 5 years. Now name me one reality show star. That’s what I thought. Our real heroes need some more press.
They’re awesome.

Via Kottke.

Lebowski in the Rye

Kearn — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:05:02 +0000

I’m not entirely sure why, but it strikes me that The Big Lebowski and The Catcher in the Rye have a fair amount in common. I can’t exactly put my finger on what it is, and I may be off as its been several years since I last read The Catcher in the Rye. Sort of a wandering, semi-aimless main character / protagonist who is easy to relate to, but not necessarily look up to. He’s both profoundly self assured and entirely shake-able. Quirky and largely driven by impulse and outside influences. A certain reoccurring metaphorical theme around falling or feeling like you’re falling. Brushes with the sex industry and art/artists. Unfulfilling / odd sexual encounter, include ones centered around a certain voyeurism and also one night stands. An attempt at denying or avoiding responsibility for the majority of the piece, but ultimately sort of accepting it, but mostly meditating on it. Questions about identity and the inability to correctly identify it and phonies both real and perceived. Being beaten and left curled on the floor by a stranger. A conflict between the real and ideal worlds that the character imagines himself in. Lots of religious overtones that are never really directly addressed. Lots of profanity, to the degree that it occasionally seems purposely excessive. And as much as all of that, the fact that I really like them both, but always end them feeling like I didn’t totally get it. Like there’s something I missed, or that even though I pretty much know what it’s about, I can’t really put my finger on it or explain it.

Kevin Smith

Kearn — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:33:34 +0000

Kevin Smith (Silent Bob and director of Mallrats, Clerks, Dogma, etc) being entertaining and talking about a potential Superman movie. Amusing and some good insight into how Hollywood movies get made, or not made (language is NSFW, video’s not that entertaining visually so if you just want to listen to the audio you won’t miss much):

And a bit more recent clip that really changes my view of Twilight fans, though not my guess of how bad the movie is (also language NSFW), first bit’s the best (via An Amber-Colored Life):

Meow

Kearn — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:06:14 +0000

The news last night had this amusing clip of a cat climbing on a police officer while he was issuing a speeding ticket:

I started laughing really hard about half way through, when he keeps going with writing the ticket, because it made me think of this bit from Super Troopers (despite the warning, this is one of the most clean parts of the movie):

“Do you need some help with that cat, sir?” “You just stay in the car, meow.”