Tuesday, February 16, 2010

HILARIOUS

I am laughing so hard right now.



I've gotta say..."I think it's pretty damn funny that they are TPing a perfectly inoffensive tree in order to 'connect with nature'" has to be my favorite comment so far.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Dear J----- C-----, Property Manager:

Fuck you and your condescension. I hope you sit on a tack and get tetanus.

Yours in Disgust,

Al

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Fun with the Daily Commute

LA has been having some unusually heavy traffic these past few days, which draws out the daily commute. What is already an interminable bore becomes all the levels of hell wrapped into one Uber Level called LA TRAFFIC.

Today I got caught behind a bus for the final, painful two miles to my work. And on the back of this bus were the words "We Believe."

This is the most obnoxious, overused, entitled phrase in the English language. What, exactly, do you believe? That elephants are gray? The sky is blue? Fake saltines aren't as good as the name brand?

So I decided to have a little fun and call the number emblazoned on the back of the bus. The following is a transcript of our conversation:
Guy: Hello, [company].
Me: Hi! So, I'm on my daily commute and stuck behind one of your busses. I was wondering if you could answer a question for me.
Guy: Uh, sure.
Me: Great! So on the back of the bus it says, "We Believe." I'm just curious about what you beilieve in, because I find that an odd thing to put on the back of a bus.
Guy: Oh, it's the owners.
Me: You believe in the owners? Well, I guess that's a good thing...
Guy: (trying not to laugh) No, the Owners believe.
Me: Well, I got that, I'm just trying to figure out what--aside from the mass transit of large groups of people via bus.
Guy: A higher power.
Me: Oh. That's...an odd thing to put on the back of a bus with no context.
Guy: (giving up and laughing) I suppose so.
Me: Alright, well thanks for making my commute a little more interesting!
Guy: (trying to breathe) You're welcome!
Glad I could make this guy's day a little brighter, and it made at least five minutes of my drive to work worthwhile.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

A Couple of Gems

I think this commercial is beautiful. And positive, which is a change for most of these.


Find more videos like this on AdGabber



For your Superbowl weekend, I give you...What the Superbowl Would Be Like if Famous Filmmakers Directed the Super Bowl. It's actually a nice little run down of several deirectors'styles.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

The Three Worst Scripts I've Ever Read (In No Particular Order)

These are in chronological order starting with the first one I read to the last. 1 and 2 I read as an intern. The second I read as a gainfully employed person, though that didn't make the experience any less painful.  Not even my "I'm Getting Paid to Read This" mantra helped.




  1. The one with the Cow Abortion.

    I kid you not. After reading a script fille dwith gratuitous violence, uncertain motivations, and bad writing, I realized it was about these two guys who make moonshine during prohibition and sell it to gangsters. Somewhere between old-timey car chases, pointless standoffs, and caricatures of mobsters, they take the time off to--for no reason that I can tell, and no build up to this moment--abort a cow's fetus by sawing off its legs in utero one by one. All six of them.

    Here's the best part about this script. Are you ready?

    It's actually being made into a movie. (Though at last check, the director said the movie had 'fallen apart.' 3 guesses why, only one of them counts.)

  2. The one with the guy who works at a fertility clinic and replaces the donor sperm with his own. He's then shocked when women start showing up with red-headed babies because...he didn't expect that to be a consequence of his actions? In addition to his surprise at the facts of life, the mothers want to return their babies. Because they didn't 'order' red heads. I'm not joking, this idiot stoner guy ends up with around 18 red-headed babies that the 'executive business women mothers' didn't approve of--the implication being these women are so career-oriented they couldn't find a man to answer their biological clock so they bought 'designer babies' and then decided to return them like badly-matched drapes once they'd given birth and the children didn't meet their expectations.

    BUT WAIT!  THERE IS A TWIST! 

    Turns out the guy who ran this fertility clinic was actually inseminating his clients whit HIS sperm so when he catches his erstwhile employee replacing the samples (this stoner kid was apparently trusted with 'vetting' all of the samples), he doesn't really have a leg to stand on.  Oh, and the hot doctor totally falls in love with the stoner and his 18 babies.

    The End.
  3. The one with the father/daughter incest. Chinatown this was not.

    This script refused. to. end. None of the scenes were longer than a page. That's like having a book comprised of 100+ 'chapters' that are each about a page long. There's no flow to the story, no cohesion, and NO SENSE. None of the characters had any discernible motivations. The father--who rapes his daughter twice and then attacks her with a broom handle once he finds out she's pregnant--vacillates between creepy systematic predator and sulky depressive woobie who has these uuuuuurges he can't control. HIS DAUGHTER TAUNTS HIM, OKAY?

    On top of this, all of the female characters are indiscernible from one another, falling into one of three groups: the daughter (who has no personality to speak of and spends her time doing an impersonation of a mopey Kristen Stewart), aggressively pro-life Catholics, and mildly sympathetic people who hide the daughter from her father. The thing is, I still have no idea who knows about the abuse, who suspects, and who is oblivious. Writer, your word of the day is: Consistency. Please to be having it.

    Ugh. I need brain bleach.

    Thought the true tragedy of this is that my summation up there makes this sound better written than it actually is.

Truthfully, the most mind boggling part is that these scripts were submitted by people. Someone read each of these and went "This should totally be made into a movie! Let me call up all the people who I've met in the Industry and send it out because they HAVE to see how great it was and want to make it!"

Also, please note that I cannot properly convey how truly badly written all of these scripts were.  You'll just have to take my word for it.

o.O

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Hollywood and Media Outlets, A Word

Regarding reports that Amanda Seyfried is holding out for 7.5 million to due Mamma Mia! 2, I have something to say. (Other than the first movie was so bad I can't imagine the train wreck the sequel will be.)

She is not worth $7.5 million dollars.

She will NEVER be worth $7.5 million--she's not that good an actor, and she doesn't have the charisma to be a movie star.

She could have a pretty good career and make more than enough money to keep herself and whatever family/ies she has in the future comfortable.

Today, I read this:
“Amanda’s developing a reputation as an actress who is very ambitious when it comes to money and credit. She really hides behind her good-girl image.” -National Enquirer**
There is nothing wrong with ambition. There is nothing wrong with trying to eek out as many credits as you can. In Hollywood, everyone is trying to get more money because it means you can ask for more on your next project. Credits that one can look up on IMdB make investors and studios feel better for hiring you. Even if you don't deserve them and don't do anything to deserve them--we like to call such people "bullshit producers"--for some reason, the People Upstairs think you're awesome. Everyone in Hollywood wants a screen credit and more money. Men, women, midgets, trained ponies, chimpanzees, turtles, ghosts--they all want it.

Wanting and actively working for these these things does not make a woman a "bad-girl." I makes her business-savvy and ambitious.

NOT wanting/asking for these things doesn't make a woman a "good-girl." I DOES make her passive and unambitious and buying into a system that constantly belittles and criticizes women who are trying to be cutthroat in a cutthroat industry.

It's one thing to say holding out for an exorbitant--and undeserved--fee is career suicide. It's another to trot out that kind of bullshit.  Bad form, National Enquirer.  And bad for to the various media outlets that are reposting this line and mode of thought.

**I know, I know. It's the NATIONAL ENQUIRER. Still, this is pretty text book when it comes to women being aggressive in their business dealings.  The same wording pops up in legitimate news sources all the time.  Unfortunately.

Unexpected Brilliance

There's this guy on YouTube who is brilliant. He sounds like he's slow, but when you actually listen to his analysis of film, they're actually accurate, well argued, and presented in a hilarious way. I first saw him rip THE PHANTOM MENACE into itty bitty badly written bits--for 70 minutes. It was love and first viewing. (Seriously. If you have time to spare, watch it--it's GREAT.)

As the Huffington Post says about him:
While the sound of his voice may make you think he's got some developmental problems, the guy's clearly a genius. This is required viewing regardless of whether or not you liked the movie. And if you didn't, here's every thought you've had about the film, presented in a grinding, monotone form.
So now, I give you the best deconstruction of AVAHONTAS (or, if you prefer, DANCES WITH SMURFS) that I've seen yet.





A few points for after you watch:

Read More...

  1. For those of you going "OF COURSE Cameron released the film when it's make the most money--this is show BUSINESS, after all" I say: yes. It is. I, as an aspiring producer, would fight tooth and nail to get my movie released at the appropriate time. But that's not the point--the point of this is to make people aware of how they're being manipulated by the media. Once you know you're being manipulated, you can chose to either go along with it or not; but the point is the choice. Not the mindlessness of simply doing without thought. (Not that I hold out hope that the majority of people will ever break free of their carefully prescribed roles as mindless dollar signs, but there's a small little part of me that insists people can be better.)

  2. There are only 7 stories in the whole of human storytelling. It's the characters that are going to make your story different--and when you give me stock characters like in AVATAR, that's not storytelling. That's appealing to the lowest common denominator and perpetuating stereotypes. This film is so incredibly racist I get mad every time I think about it.

    People have this idea that “racism” is only about believing that people from “other” cultures are bad, but it’s so much more than that. We do people an equal disservice when we think of them as good because of their race—the exoticized image of an “other” is no more accurate than the demonized one. We do “others” an even worse disservice when we try to imitate them in order to get some of that nummy racialized goodness for ourselves (regardless of our own racial identities). If we’re so dissatisfied with our own culture that we can’t stand it anymore, appropriating someone else’s is taking the easy way out—and it’s not that terribly different from what colonial cultures have done since the dawn of time, that is, ditch the homeland to go rape and pillage elsewhere in the name of progress.
    From Sex Geek

  3. The Oscars, while still considered Hollywood's most prestigious award, haven't been relevant for some time now. Which is why I'm going to be disgusted if AVATARD wins the Best Picture Oscar, but not overly upset. Because the awards aren't worth my ire.

  4. District 9 really was the best picture of the year. But it won't win because sci-fi (real sci-fi that shows us the trials and tribulations of the human condition in a meaningful way as opposed to stock characters) is notoriously underrated. AVATARD isn't science fiction. It's a James Cameron film that happens to be science fiction.

  5. If you're depressed Pandora doesn't exist and considering committing suicide, either a) GET OVER IT because OMG, SRIUSLY?! or b) go ahead and do it, preferably before you've reproduced. I'm sure you'll get reincarnated as a giant blue cat and live happily ever after (because the native people had no problems of their own until the White Man showed up and raped their way of life. But a White Man can also do native better than the natives, so...I think we've hit a conundrum.)
Next up: The Three Worst Scripts I've Ever Read (In No Particular Order)