Winnie Cooper Entertainment
Next in the series:
“Lick My Math: Teaching Trig What a Little Spit Can Do”
“Two Knuckles Deep in My Mathhole: Slowly Reaching Calculus”
“Why Does My Math Hurt? Geometry: One Angle, Two Sides”
“Mathplay 31: Taming the Clitoris”
via my flickr, where I invite you to contribute your own
“Tropic Thunder” (2008)
My expectations of greatness were tempered by disappointment in the other Big Comedy of the month, which I won’t name because why be negative, but it sounds like “Nineapple Mexpress”. That said, “Tropic Thunder” is “the most fun I’ve had in the theater since maybe earlier 2008,” gushes Adam Lisagor of the website Lonelysandwich.
I was dubious how engaged I could be in a war movie parody since I generally find war boring (it’s the monotonous green color palette that makes me zone out). But, being a sensitive LA-type, the Hollywood movie-in-a-movie shit is right up my wheelhouse.
Verisimilitude makes this movie what it is. But it’s the type of verisimilitude that can only be bought for a lot of money. When the show starts with a series of incredible trailer parodies (the Jack Black character’s, my personal favorite), each begins with a legitimate film studio banner (Universal, New Line, and Fox, respectively) that actually bring a laugh by their otherwise real and self-important nature. Had the parody trailers been brought to you by parody film studios, the illusion would’ve been shattered from the get-go and the joke reduced to a wackity-schmackity-doo. By the same token, every celebrity cameo is the right celebrity cameo - the celebrity gay at the Oscars is the right celebrity gay, at no small expense, I’d guess.
Do you know who they got to shoot the movie? John Toll, ASC. The ‘ASC’ stands for “I Shot a Little Picture Called ‘The Thin Red Line’ - Heard of it?”.
And do you know who they got to do Robert Downey Jr.’s makeup? Think of a makeup artist. You’re thinking of Rick Baker. You’re right. Rick fucking ‘American Werewolf in London which I haven’t seen but is supposed to be stupendous’ Baker.
And do you know who deftly cowrote the tight and hilarious script? You probably don’t. Actor/director Justin Theroux, for my money, the most talented handsome actor working today. There’s a nice little interview with him in Vulture in which he says the following funny thing: “There are plenty of actors who are brilliant people, and plenty who should not be allowed on talk shows.”
This movie could easily have taken its heaps of cash and ego and gone in the wrong direction. But as it happened, everyone involved (including Tom Cruise) made something awesome with all their cash and ego in the fun and ridiculous spirit of big-budget moviemaking.
tumble is FREE, dummy
I’ve amended my original post on tumble, the iPhone app for tumbling to tumblr, but this was such a horrible oversight and an affront to the developers of the app that I needed to make good. My journalism is poo.
In calling tumble a $2 app, I had it confused with another app I’d just tried out, and I actually think that tumble could easily charge a couple bucks because it’s nice, it works, it’s snappy, and it’s worth paying for.
Nolan at Bitfire, please accept my apology. If you have a Paypal, I will wire you $2 and encourage others to do the same.
“…there’s kind of what I call the McLuhan Reversal, McLuhan who was saying Machines are the extensions of the human senses and I’m saying humans are now gonna be the extended senses of the machine…
Kevin Kelly speaking at TED on The Next 5,000 Days of the Web
via thatguyben
Now I have to rename mine to ‘AAA Ladytime’.
I had the idea nearly a month ago and I go shooting my mouth off like no one is going to steal it. Why must I be so goddamn naïve?
If I’d actually gotten off my ass an put it out on the market in time, Prince Of Darkness666 might’ve given Ladytime the same gushing review he gave Lady Biz: “Great app, PERIOD! ★★★★★”
tumble: the $2 FREE iPhone app
From the people who didn’t bring you tumblr, a way to tumble from your iPhone. Oddly, the app uses one typeface for the lowercase ‘t’ in the iTunes App Store and a different typeface for the icon on the Home Screen, neither of which is the actual tumblr-approved ‘t’. A little shoddy. I’m not gonna lie, I probably won’t use this to tumble, as I adore the web interface for text formatting and need the extra bit of control it gives me for meticulously for
matting each post.
UPDATE: I am an ass. This nice little app does not cost $2 and has never cost a penny. I confused it with another app, maybe because I think that tumble would easily be worth $2. I apologize to Nolan at Bitfire for my error (and it’s pretty much a horrendous error).
Isaac Hayes conducts “Theme from Shaft”
Out of respect for Mr. Hayes, who passed on today, watch this. And out of respect for Mr. Hayes, don’t watch this.
“Rock ‘n’ Roll High School Forever” (1991) trailer
NYMag’s Vulture reports that Howard Stern (a dead-ringer for Joey Ramone) is producing a remake of the original “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” (1979) (check out the bitchin trailer here).
Have you ever seen the 1991 sequel? It’s the kind of movie you see only once on accident, causing you to reassess your sexuality (possibly to null) and your worldview (assuredly to bleak). It features all the cinematic staples of the era: comically wide and canted angles, fog machines, and the two Coreys, one of whom is not an actual Corey because they presumably couldn’t wrangle the real Corey. The other one, a proper Corey, inexplicably does Michael Jackson’s hot moves ca. “Black or White” throughout the entire opus to demonstrate his rock ‘n’ his roll, neither of which is strong enough to detract from his suck.
David Lynch needlepoint
There is a girl named Ksen. She made this. It is a beautiful tribute and a beautiful work of art. Ksen explains herself here.
Detail via flickr/ksen.
Two neat new iPhone things [WITH VIDEO!]
When a person has an idea for software and puts together an engaging piece of video to demonstrate it, everyone wins. Today everyone wins twice.
First, the app known as MagicPad, which will soon be in the App Store, seems to be the closest thing to a real(ish) text editor to make it to the iPhone. Little things we take for granted on the desktop, such as variable fonts, have made their way into the app. But the attention-getter is its implementation of copy and paste. It differs from my fake multitouch implementation in that the highlight method involves a single touch and hold to enter select mode, and the clipboard functions only within the application, but it’s so good to see this level of functionality in action. I worry that the touch, hold and drag method might be cumbersome for selecting larger blocks of text that span multiple screens (as it is in the Home Screen icon manipulation). But A) I could be wrong and B) it doesn’t matter because an iteration is better than nothing. Check out the MagicPad demo video here.
UPDATE: MagicPad’s Phil Larson wrote me to set the record straight on his text selection method:
You actually DOUBLE tap and hold, then drag to do word selection. It starts selection at the beginning of the word if you are in the first half, and starts selection at the end of the word if you’re in the second half (say you’re trying to select backwards). There is also a precise selection mode, where you use the loupe as normal and if you activate the loupe within half a second after releasing the first loupe, it will start a selection with the precise start point.
This method seems like it could be pretty usable once the hang of it is gotten.
Second is the MultiTouch.framework which has a neat video demonstrating the use of a desktop in tandem with an iPhone for developing and testing your multitouch app, and is especially great because you can just close your eyes and the music will transport you to the rainforest section of your favorite world music retailer.
Also worth combining into one big iPhone nerd post, 1Password just released its magical and FREE iPhone app AND an update to its indispensable $35 Mac app which will let you wirelessly sync all your secrets, of which there are many, you’re not fooling anyone, pervert.
via Apple iPhone apps and clusterflock
