Anticipatory Video Constitutional

A black comedy about the end of the world starring Steve Carell with appearances by Patton Oswalt, Britta, and Mrs. Coach Taylor? I'm in.

Foo Fighters doing the Top 10 on Letterman. The list is horribly unfunny, but the guys make it watchable.



Remember when Kristen Bell cemented herself as America's princess of adorableness when talking about her birthday sloth? Yeah, that got autotuned.



This Doctor Who cold open from Craig Ferguson is awesome and funny.

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I clicked on this reluctantly, but I was laughing within five seconds. It's "Everything I Do (I Do for You)" with clips from movies (and the occasional Simpsons episode).


Happy Valentine's Day from LOVEFiLM on Vimeo.


I wonder if I should tell my kids about the animatronic dinosaurs before the next time we go to the zoo? Nah.

What You Should Have Seen #16

Blood into Wine

I’ve wanted to see this documentary since I first heard about it last year, but make no mistake: my interest has nothing to do with wine making in Arizona. I like wine, but I love beer. Beer documentaries (Beer Wars, Brew Masters on the Discovery Channel) are what I’ll be interested in. The draw for me with this doc is the inclusion of Maynard James Keenan, front man extraordinaire of Tool, A Perfect Circle and Puscifer.

I think you have to be a fan of Maynard’s music in order to really appreciate the film; you can’t just be a wine lover. His life and background as a musician are factored pretty heavily, and for me that makes this more interesting. I also learned that Milla Jovovich is a vocalist in Puscifer. How did I not know that before? Patton Oswalt also shows up, and that was a real treat, and Bob Odenkirk does a slightly humorous bit as the credits roll at the end.

The film grabbed me right from the humorous beginning. Maynard’s dry wit shows up almost every time he is on camera. Had that been missing from the film, I don’t know if I would have been able to stay with it. I just don’t care enough about wine.

Quick observation: I think Karl Wente snorted a line of coke before his stint on camera. Either that or he REALLY loves his winery. I don’t think he took a breath at all during his little interview.

Also, I thought the segment where he talked about his mother was incredibly touching.

I will not deny that I can be a beer snob. I tend to shy away from the big American breweries, your Anheuser-Busches and your Millers and your Coors. For big American craft brewers, I love Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams, but I also love trying all sorts of new types from all sorts of different breweries, both foreign and domestic. But I’m not so snobby that I get a mouthful of excellent beer, swish it around in my mouth, then spit it out. I don’t understand that, and as soon as I saw that happening with the wine critics, I wanted to punch them. God, I hope I’m not that douchey when I’m trying new beers. Drink it! Enjoy it! I know that has nothing to do with the movie, but I needed to say it.

The best lines from the movie were from a discussion between Maynard and wine critic James Suckling as they are tasting a bottle of Primer Paso from Caduceus.

            “Maybe you’re trying to be…trying too hard.”

            “Not at all. I love this wine. I make what I like.”

Watching this documentary did not make me want to buy or learn about wine any more or less than I already did. I would like to order a bottle of Maynard’s wine at some point, but that’s just for the novelty of buying a bottle of wine made by the lead singer of Tool. The one thing that this documentary DID do was make me want to watch a documentary about Maynard himself. I checked on IMDB, and there doesn’t seem to be one, so could somebody get on that? The recent Foo Fighters documentary was spectacular, so let’s get a Maynard one going.

Wikipedia Entry
IMDB Entry
Official Webpage
Caduceus Wine

What You Should Have Seen #6

 

I’m watching this movie not as a football fan, but a fan of Patton Oswalt, one of my favorite current stand-up comedians. If you know anything at all about me, you know my knowledge of football is slightly better than nil.

Although I know next to nothing about any sport, really, other than the basic rules of the games, I get the fanaticism. My head is full of entertainment “statistics,” mostly comic book related, but not limited to that. TV show episodes and plots, comic book character histories and issue information, and miscellaneous movie and music shit. If I were a sports person, I’m sure this information would be replaced with team histories and player statistics. So yeah, I get it.

You immediately feel sorry for Oswalt’s character Paul. He’s a grown man who works as a toll-booth attendant and lives with his mother. The highlight of each day is his chance to call into a middle-of-the-night sports radio show and throw slings and barbs at fans of whichever team the Giants are playing that week. He and his best friend have season “tickets” to all the home games; their seats are in the parking lot, watching the game on a TV hooked up to his car’s battery.

This is dark humor in the darkest and loosest sense. It’s not funny ha-ha movie, but the situations Paul finds himself in are just laughable. His mom calls him out on his late-night solo bedroom activities. He finally gets to meet his hero, New York Giant linebacker Quantrell Bishop (played by Jonathan Hamm), and gets his pudgy ass kicked by him. It’s just uncomfortable.

I feel confident in recommending this movie. Just know that this is not a comedy in the strictest sense...or, really, the loosest sense I guess. It is, however, a good movie with a good story and good acting.