First the serious stuff: internet blackout tomorrow to protest SOPA. Let's see if I'm able to figure out how to get House of Dioxin to go dark for the day. I'd say it's even money that I can't. I would also note that (no surprise), claims by congressional clown car commander Eric "respect my authoriteh" Cantor to the contrary, whichever GOP dumbass is pushing SOPA is planning to continue trying to move the bill forward. Like I've said before, these clowns were elected because they don't take government seriously. So why should we expect them to listen to their so-called leaders? They don't know what they're talking about. And seem to think there's something wrong with you if you DO know what you're talking about. Blinkered pig-ignorance. It's not a bug, it's a feature. Gingrich 2012!
Enough of that.
Here's a bit o' fun: alternate reality movie posters. I am legitimately in awe. I think my favorite is Fritz Lang's Inception.

Reminder to self: it's probably not the best idea to wrap up the week by catching up on a whole bunch of Charlie Pierce. It's gonna be either depressing or else it'll angry up the blood a bit more than may be desirable heading into a (theoretically) relaxing weekend.
Instead, maybe look at some art. Here's the Friday Project by UK artist/designer Stephen Wildish. You may have seen the movie alphabets linked around the internets already. There's lots of other fun stuff as well. On the movie alphabets, I did best on the 80s and 70s, not so much on the 60s and 90s.

Holiday linkage funtime continues. Here's some spiffy Calvin & Hobbes snowmen as Xmas yard decorations. Egad, bad dad!
Also here's a nice write-up on the 70s Chuck Jones cartoon A Very Merry Cricket which I remember vaguely but fondly. Well, it's been 30+ years since I've seen it so it's no surprise my memories are vague.
Meanwhile, we recorded Holiday Inn when it played on AMC the other night. Sure, it's got commercials which is ridiculously annoying. But at least you can fast forward past them. What it doesn't have (in the version we recorded) is the cringe-inducing Lincoln's Birthday blackface song and dance number. They just cut it out of the movie completely. Of course, they left in several references to it (and the scene where Crosby is applying the blackface to Majorie Reynolds' face). I mean, I understand that "Father Abraham" is offensive. But it's in the movie. If you don't want that number to air on your channel, don't show the movie. And, yes, I know it's been years since AMC really had anything to do with "American Movie Classics" in any serious way. Hell, they interrupt their movies with commercials. But I just cannot stand these attempts to create a fake past where we're supposed to pretend that fucked-up shit didn't happen.
I was sure I'd written about this before here but looking thru the archives it seems not. Anyway, I think it's interesting to note the changes between Holiday Inn (1942) and its crypto-remake White Christmas (1954). By '54, it seems, the people making the movie realized they couldn't have a spunky Mammy character running Bing's household. So she's out and the sassy housekeeper is in. Problem solved. Of course, they eliminate all the cringe-inducing scenes with Mamie and her children by setting White Christmas in a world where black people don't seem to exist. You can say that Vermont in the early 1950s probably didn't have a very sizable African-American population. Perhaps true, but Bing and Danny Kaye are in show biz so you might think there'd be a bit of diversity. And then there's the minstrel number. Big production number with the whole cast which directly references minstrel shows. But the blackface is gone. I'd argue that the technicolor-red gloves are stand-ins for the blackface. But I think you can make a case that they're just there to look cool in Technicolor. Also, even though the lyrics directly reference minstrel shows (in an "oh so sad those days are gone" way), they don't explain what minstrel shows were. Most viewers in the early 1950s wouldn't have needed an explanation I don't think but that allows the scene to slip somewhat beneath the radar of a contemporary audience as opposed to "Father Abraham." It's kinda hard to have Bing Crosby in blackface slip by unnoticed.
So anyway, I still prefer Holiday Inn. It's got Fred Astaire and better songs. But I wouldn't fault anyone who found the Mamie character or the blackface number so offensive that they'd refuse to watch the movie. Still, show the whole movie or don't show it at all. AMC sucks.

Been thinking some more about the idea (raised by that xkcd comic I blogged about the other day) of the death-grip of boomers on Xmas music. Which I can't really disagree with. Listen to holiday radio and it's either trad. carols or songs from Tin Pan Alley or Brill Bldg. era. But if the hegemonic refusal of boomers to leave the stage is what's responsible for the fact that the most-played Christmas songs were written in the 1950s (or earlier), then why is the same not true for movies? While it's true that It's A Wonderful Life, White Christmas, and Miracle on 34th Street still get played often and are widely considered to be classic movies (or at least classic holiday movies), there are also newer movies that have developed into holiday standards -- Christmas Vacation, A Nightmare Before Christmas, and of course A Christmas Story. Seems clear that there is room for new movies to become Xmas classics in a way that doesn't seem possible for new songs. Delusional boomer "end of history" thinking must not be the only thing going on. I think maybe what that all tells us is that there's still a general movie audience (maybe not as broad-based or universal as before but still basically there) while there really isn't one for music. Post rock, the audience has splintered and re-splintered. There are now hundreds of micro-audiences and there really isn't an over-arching pop sensibility that connects them. So there's no one trying to write the new pop music Xmas standard because there's no reason to believe it would find an audience, would ever be able to break thru genre boundaries. And since there's money to be made just rehashing the already agreed upon classics, there is incentive to do that and not risk trying something new.

or not...

Last weekend we finally caught up with the final Harry Potter movie. Really good and I enjoyed it immensely. But it was still a little sad to be at the end of the Harry Potter experience. Cos even tho it was sad to get to the end of the last book, there was the promise of the movie out there so I knew there were a few more years left. But now it's done. Things change. Things end.
But, anyway, Deathly Hallows. Pt 2 isn't my favorite movie in the series. I mean, I understand why they did it in two parts. 4+ hour movies are a tough sell. The loss of screenings in a day is a big problem for theaters. Etc. But I think they should just go ahead and put it on DVD (or Blu-Ray or whatever the hell format) as one movie. Cos it really is one movie. Even if the pacing is off as a standalone movie, they did right by the story. I'm sure there's huge chunks of plot left out. I mean, you'd have to -- it's a honking big novel. But I think, like I said, that it gets at the heart of the story in a way that's intelligible on screen. IOW, you don't have to have read the book in order to understand what's happening in the movie.
It's grim where it supposed to be grim. I missed having Hagrid in the movie but that's cos Rowling basically wrote everyone who would be likely to stand between Harry and Voldemort out of the story by the end. Neville's story doesn't get a lot of screen time but what time it gets is well used and gets the point across. The 3D moments are totally obvious (oh look, something's leaping right towards the camera) but not super distracting. Loved the visual shout-out to the first movie in the train scene at the end of this one.

Just finished up a three-week run with the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings. For the Blu-Ray release of the extended editions, they remastered all three movies and decided to do one-night-only theatrical releases. Partly as promotional events, of course, but mostly I think just because they could. We were only originally planning to see the Fellowship of the Ring but that was so much fun that we ended up seeing all of them. Went with our friends Charles and Zac. They actually vacationed in NZ last year and went to visit the Hobbiton set. Jealous!
Having seen the whole trilogy again, I'm sticking with Fellowship as my favorite. I also still think that the extended version of the Two Towers is a much better movie (Saruman's part is so cut down in the original theatrical release the title of the movie almost makes no sense).
One thing I noticed this time is that the multiple endings of the Return of the King didn't seem nearly as drawn out and attenuated. Watching it for the first time I remember thinking "oh my god, will this movie never end?!?" I guess the difference this time is that I know when the movie will end. It's not after Frodo says "here at the end of all things" and it's not when the eagles carry them off and it's not when the fellowship reunites at Frodo's sickbed in Rivendell and it's not at Aragorn's coronation/wedding and it's not when the hobbits return to the shire and it's not when the elvish ships sail away.. It's the seventh ending that's the actual end, when Sam says that he's back. But it's just like how the first time you travel somewhere it seems to take forever and on subsequent trips it becomes "oh, are we there already?"
Another thing from these viewings was that I completely misremembered the lighting of the beacons scene. Still, btw, my absolute favorite visual shot in the entire trilogy. Anyway, I was all excited heading into the Two Towers and looking forward to that scene; Of course, it's actually in Return. I think my favorite visual in Towers is probably the arrival of the Rohirrim and Gandalf at Helm's Deep. Altho the flooding of Isengard is also pretty impressive. Just in terms of visuals, my fave moments in Fellowship are the scene where the hobbits hide beneath the road when the black rider appears and rowing beneath the Argonath.

Yesterday I mostly spent turning one big mulch pile into four smaller mulch piles. Which might make more sense to you if I mentioned that the big pile o' mulch was blocking the driveway. So it kinda couldn't stay there. And it was unlikely to move itself anywhere. So there didn't seem to be much alternative. After that (with a pause for lying around feeling exhausted, showering and other such like boring activities) I watched this fun movie A Town Called Panic. It's a Belgian movie, the stop motion animated adventures of Cheval, Coboy and Indien. Involves music lessons, bricks, wall thieves, giant robotic penguins, Santa (well, a fake Santa actually), parachuting cows, weaponized swordfish and much much more. I think it was Ebert's review that described the plot as basically one damn thing after another. Or as we used to call it in the fee room, bildungsroman. He kinda meant that as a mild negative but I didn't mind that aspect of the movie at all. I will say that it might take viewers of a certain demographic a while to get past associations with Robot Chicken. Altho the animation style is somewhat similar the spirit of the movie is wholly different. It's a much more innocent, carefree sorta movie. Light and wholly lacking the edgy snark of RC. One thing I wasn't able to figure out from the reviews I read is why the English title of the movie is A Town Called Panic. The original title is Panique au Village which more literally translates as "Panic in the Village" which to me seems a much more fitting title. I'm sure there's a reason but I wonder if it's a good one.

Now here's a fun thing: blogger running down his list of the top 100 film noir posters (found via the always interesting Scrubbles, which I've surely mentioned before but if I haven't well now I have). This is an example of one of the things that I love so much about the internets. It gives people a chance to explore their interests and put it out there for an audience. I mean, back in the olden days of the 20th century I guess this guy could've published a zine. But how many people would ever have seen it? Anyway, it's an interesting perspective, since it's all about the quality of the posters without any consideration as to whether the movie was any good or not. I'm looking forward to the rest of the list (as of today, he's only done 100-81). It's hard to imagine what's gonna top crazed Mickey Rooney w/ machine gun, tho...

Been working way too much the last few days. Surprisingly, not because of the looming holidays but for reasons that are wholly project driven. So there is light at end of o' the tunnel and it's probably not an oncoming train. The end of the tunnel is a bit farther off than it would be if it was just holiday madness (since TG is only a week out... eek!).
Oh it's not all family medical emergencies and overtime. We had brunch with friends on Sunday. Last night I went down to Pinhook for trivia (team: Thundercats) (hoh!). Same results as last time. We won a round and tied enough only to lose on the tiebreaker round. And tonight Sarah and I went to Fullsteam for another fun A/V Geeks show. This time it was "How to be a Woman" and included films on: self defense (face scratching, foot stomping, eye gouging and knees to the crotch were prominently featured, along w/ advice to elbow an attacker hard enough to break a couple of his ribs), saying no to sex (even if the guy says "do you know how much money I spent tonight" it's apparently okay to say no), the joys of fragrance, and how to make a sammich (tuna rarebit!).

Was geeked to see this (on boing²) the other day: Destroy All Movies, a big whonkin' guide to "movies with punks in them."
Perhaps you're wondering why I'm so geeked about this. Well, I just watched Repo Man last month. (and it gets funnier every single time!) Back in the 80s I used track of movie appearances by Lee Ving (of Fear) as a sure sign of cheeseball cinema brilliancy. And, yes, I do believe I recognize that cover art on the book, from the ridiculously bad punxploitation flick Class of 1984. I should probably google that and make sure I'm not mis-remembering but, hey, no guts no glory. I have no idea how many other people constitute the target market for this book but I'm totally in. Expect I'll be ordering a copy before the week is out.

and yet, I blame society...