Fun for Wednesdays! We look at an image from an upcoming movie or TV show and write snarky, witty, or otherwise entertaining captions for it. No prizes, it’s just for fun.

“Honestly, dudes, I don’t have any spare change”:

continue reading "caption this! image from ‘Clash of the Titans’" »

It was exactly a year ago that the Sci Fi Channel announced that it would be changing its name to Syfy. And much geek angst ensued. Did this mean the network -- a haven for nerds even if it was even then falling down on its apparent stated mission to, you know, present science fiction on a regular basis -- would be moving away from, you know, presenting science fiction on a regular basis?

This week we learned that the answer to this is an emphatic Yes:

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- A year after the Sci-Fi Channel replaced its name with the more vague and therefore less limiting "Syfy," the network is also broadening its pitch to advertisers.

During its upfront presentation at the Museum of Modern Art in New York tonight, the NBC Universal cable channel will tout a slate of programs less bound to the niche of years past, announcing its first night of reality programming and other forays into science non-fiction content, as well as its growing slate of scripted sci-fi dramas and fantasies like "Warehouse 13," "Eureka" and "Battlestar Galactica" spinoff "Caprica."

continue reading "because Syfy wasn’t kidding when they said they don’t like sci fi" »

(previous: “Dr. Linus”)

There’s no way to “review” or “analyze” or even “discuss” this show on an episode-by-episode basis -- it’s more like you just have to react and try to guess what the hell is going on. So I’m not even gonna try to impose any sense or reason upon it: I’m just going to react. Maybe when it’s all said and done there will be something cohesive to say. Till then...

Perhaps needless to say, Lost doesn’t make much sense while you’re watching it. My ramblings will surely make even less sense if you haven’t seen the episode... and something may get spoiled for you that you don’t want spoiled. You have been warned.

So, here are the thoughts I jotted down, pretty much in order as they occurred to me as I watched:

continue reading "‘Lost’ blogging: “Recon”" »

Don’t be drinking anything while you view this:

It’s an instructional guide on how to be a proper lady!

Minding Manners Kitty learns the right way to use her fork and how to be polite at the dinner table. Streetwise Mama takes Kitty and Mimi downtown. On the way, she teaches the girls important lessons on staying alert and safe. The Magic Bags Kitty and Mimi go to Magic Land and find some magical bags which have the power to create happiness. The Dust Monster Mama encourages Kitty and Mimi to do their spring cleaning by giving them a book on the dust monster. Put On A Happy Place Kitty and Mimi become interior decorators for a day and help a baker turn his dismal bakery into a happy place. The Train To Grandmas House At the train station, Kitty and Mimi learn lessons about safety and how to behave in public.

Because every young girl needs to understand the importance of housework and of making people happy.

I look forward to the cute educational DVD for little boys that teaches them important lessons on how not to be a rapist or a thief who makes women feel threatened when they’re downtown.

Take a break from work: watch a trailer...

continue reading "trailer break: ‘Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too’" »

I was baffled by all those who took exception to Avatar on the basis of its somehow being anticapitalist, antimilitary, antiscience, and -- oh noes! -- anti-American. (See here and here, if you want to be baffled too.) It seemed to me that these objectors were saying that destruction and bigotry and horror and selfishness are absolutely inherent qualities -- and qualities to be celebrated -- of capitalism, the military, science, and America, instead of distortions and avoidable excesses of such. Nothing highlights that better than the fact that so many objectors seemed to find it amusing and ironic that, to their eyes, Cameron made an anticapitalist movie for $300 million and is raking in huge capitalistic profits as a result: these objectors do believe, it seems, that there is no excess of capitalism -- up to and including the destruction of another culture in the pursuit of profit -- that should be criticized as wrong, that the excesses aren’t excesses at all.

It seemed to me that these objections say a lot more about what the objectors think about America than what Avatar and James Cameron think about America.

continue reading "question of the day: In what ways is ‘Avatar’ -- and now ‘Green Zone’ -- unAmerican?" »

...except for the web video I’d previously scheduled to run.

The something that had to give is finally this site, at least for today.

Normal posting should resume tomorrow.

obsession: Canadian TV (and film) (because I’m hungry for something new and good)

boyfriend: Esai Morales in Caprica (not so much his character, though: he’s sorta sad and scary)

psyched: Matt Smith’s debut as the Doctor (though I’m dreading it a little, too, like I haven’t since Tom Baker regenerated into Peter Davison... and I was already in love with Peter Davison)

girl crush: Noomi Rapace in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, who rocks like few woman on film have rocked before

dreading: Hot Tub Time Machine (and hoping my boy John Cusack isn’t going to disappoint me too much)

enemy: everyone involved with Our Family Wedding (couldn’t they tell how awful it was?)

Florida lawmakers are hoping to withhold tax incentives from any film production in the state that intends to result in a movie unsuitable for kindergartners. A production that wishes to receive credits must be “family friendly”:

A certified production determined by the Commissioner of Film and Entertainment, with the advice of the Florida Film and Entertainment Advisory Council, to be family-friendly... Family-friendly productions are those that have cross-generational appeal; would be considered suitable for viewing by children age 5 or older... and do not exhibit or imply any act of smoking, sex, nudity, nontraditional family values, gratuitous violence, or vulgar or profane language. Under the current incentive program, review of the final release version is not required and nontraditional family values, gratuitous violence, and implied acts do not exclude a film from receiving this additional credit.

Is “sex” a “nontraditional family value?” Where do these people think families come from, anyway?

As always with such idiocy, it gets worse:

continue reading "because no one smoked or swore in the 1960s" »

As related to today’s QOTD:

continue reading "watch it: “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter”" »

(previous: “Know Thy Enemy”)

(lots of spoilers! assumes you’ve seen the episode!)

continue reading "‘Caprica’ blogging: “The Imperfections of Memory”" »

Take a break from work: watch a trailer...

continue reading "trailer break: ‘Robin Hood’" »

Someone it had escaped my notice that a bunch of historical figures are in the process of getting rebooted as movie action heroes, often with supernatural elements tossed. Seen at Cinematical last week:

In an age where we lack action heroes and recognition factor is key for franchiseability (a new made-up word), Hollywood is turning to history for new characters. In addition to all the King Arthur stories that are brewing, Leonardo DaVinci, Marco Polo, and Harry Houdini are quickly being reworked into the 21st century's Indiana Jones or Sherlock Holmes.

As Eugene Novikov reported earlier today, Warner Bros is looking at making the actual Leonardo DaVinci into the star of his own DaVinci Code type of movie. Last week, Variety reported that they've also hired Francis Lawrence to develop an action movie starring 13th century adventurer Marco Polo.

...

continue reading "question of the day: Which historical figures should we plunder as action heroes (and who should play them)?" »

Take a look back at an old trailer...

continue reading "retro trailer: ‘Lucas’" »

Every week my browser gets cluttered up with tabs for stuff that I stumble across and figure I might be able to use as a Question of the Day or a WTF Thought for the Day or grist for some other post. And inevitably, I end the week with most of that material unused. But there’s no reason to let thias stuff go to waste: I can still share it with you, for your amusement, and start the new week with a clean slate.

Herewith this week’s leftover links, in no particular order:

continue reading "poor little rich movie stars, NetFlix and ‘Variety’ sued, God as a film critic: leftover links" »

...women go to the movies more than men, and more.

Yup, it’s The Week in Women, my regular column over at the Alliance of Women Film Journalists. Enjoy.

We know how it is: You’d like to go to the movies this weekend, but you still haven’t given up the search for WMDs in Iraq. But you can have a multiplex-like experience at home with a collection of the right DVDs. And when someone asks you on Monday, “Hey, did you see Green Zone this weekend?” you can reply, “No, I prefer my urban warfare when I can watch it from the safety of my sofa.”

continue reading "March 12: DVD alternatives to this weekend’s multiplex offerings" »

continue reading "watch it: the 3/13/10 weekly address from President Barack Obama" »

What’s the strangest or most exotic pet you’ve ever had, or would like to have?

My life has been rather boring in this department. We had a cat when I was very little, and a dog for a short while when I was in high school (she was killed, run over by a car, only months after we adopted her), and then I’ve had cats and parakeets as an adult. Now, I’m petless. But if I had the money to buy one and the attention to give that they require, I’d love to own a big bird, perhaps an African gray parrot. It would be like having a little alien intelligence in the house.

You?

(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD/QOTW, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTW sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)

(via Jezebel)

“Do or not not: there is no try.”

Friday fun! Here’s a screen capture from a DVD... and just to make things harder for 2010, this one is from a TV show which may or may not be in my collection (it’s sooo much easier to do screengrabs now that Netflix is streaming to my computer). Guess the TV show -- you don’t need to guess the episode, just the show -- and earn the respect of me and your fellow FlickFilosopher.com readers. One guess per comment -- no fair hogging all the guesses.

Necessary Reassurance

I must say that it’s awfully generous of Hollywood, after engaging in a decades-long campaign to winnow down the image of what it’s acceptable for a woman to look like if she expects to be received in polite company -- or any kind of company at all, in fact -- to finally acknowledge the impact this has had on real people.

Not on the women! Oh dear god no. Everyone knows that fat ugly chicks aren’t real people! No, the impact on the men. Men -- ordinary plain schlubby unkempt men -- have for so long been bombarded with images of impossibly physically perfect women that they’re beginning to doubt themselves. Even after all the reassurances they’ve received, via everything from Maxim to The Man Show to every other sitcom featuring an overweight idiotic jackass of a man with a slender beautiful wife, that they absolutely deserve a supermodel, regular schmoes find themselves obsessively pondering the notion: Am I worthy of such a goddess? The damage to men’s self-esteem is incalculable. Won’t someone -- excuse me, I’m getting all choked up here -- think of the boys?

continue reading "She’s Out of My League (review)" »

Take a break from work: watch a trailer...

Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod!

continue reading "trailer break: ‘The Twilight Saga: Eclipse’" »

Sci Fi Wire ran a piece recently about “the secret code names of 37 sci-fi blockbuster films” -- which sounds cooler than it actually is. I thought it would be about the original titles for great films that we now love, and hey, wouldn’t it be funny/silly/stupid if we couldn’t stop talking about that classic film I Almost Married My Mother, and isn’t it better that we instead call it Back to the Future?

But that’s not what the piece is about. Instead, it’s about the fake titles mega productions often use to disguise the fact that they’re shooting, say, a new Star Wars movie, not actual might-have-been titles. And with the exception of the granddaddy of them all -- I still want to see a movie called Blue Harvest, the code name used during shooting of Return of the Jedi, which I find very evocative and mysterious -- they’re not very interesting. Incident on 57th Street was the code name for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? *yawn* Changing Seasons was actually The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring? Who cares?

continue reading "question of the day: If you could retitle any blockbuster, what would you call it?" »

Mass Distraction

Spoiler alert! Jason Bourne does not find the WMDs in Iraq. Sorry to ruin Green Zone for you, but surely reality already did that years ago.

Also: There is no Santa Claus. But it would be hilarious to see Jason Bourne invade the North Pole in search of him.

It’s an odd duck, this not-Jason Bourne movie in which star Matt “Jason Bourne” Damon and director Paul “Bourne Ultimatum” Greengrass go to Iraq in order to pursue truth, justice, and the American way that We the Little People are supposed to live up to but from which our leaders are, apparently, exempt. It’s 2003, a month after the U.S. invasion, Baghdad is a looter’s paradise, Saddam is on the run, and Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller is getting frustrated. He’s leading up a special army team, see, a band of brothers tasked with swooping into WMD sites -- we know they’re WMD sites because Our Secret Iraqi Source told us so -- and bringing out the smoking guns so they can be paraded before the world press. Small problem: No WMDs. Not anywhere. Miller smells a rat.

continue reading "Green Zone (review)" »

Everything’s gonna be 3D from now on:

1. Alice in Wonderland: £10.6 million (NEW)
2. Avatar: £.91 million
3. The Crazies: £.67 million (2nd week; drops 44%)
4. The Lovely Bones: £.66 million (3rd week; drops 45%)
5. The Princess and the Frog: £.38 million

(actual numbers, not estimates)

continue reading "U.K. box office: ‘Alice’ pummels ‘Avatar’" »

Holy crap:

continue reading "watch it: 1960s IHOP commercial" »