Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

Ah, isn't the internet wonderful! I just caught the end of the hilarious Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! on the Adult Swim (found on the digital channel Bravo) and saw some very funny (obviously fake) commercials. After a really quick YouTube search, I found them and here they are. Amazing!

T'ird


B'owl


B'ougar


You get the general idea and "yes" I do watch a load of random crap, thank you very much.

Grindhouse - The Fake Trailers

As mentioned in my Death Proof review, here are the specially made trailers that featured in between the main presentations in the Grindhouse movie. The image is a bit stretched unfortunately (probably taken using a video phone) but you'll get the idea!



Machete; Directed by Robert Rodriguez, starring Danny Trejo (this may be coming out as a full feature!).
Werewolf Women of the SS; Directed by Rob Zombie, starring Nicholas Cage.
Don't; Directed by Edgar Wright, starring Simon Pegg.
Thanksgiving; Directed by Eli Roth, starring Michael Biehn.

I totally love these! Hopefully a Grindhouse special edition DVD will be released somewhere, sometime with both movies and all these great trailers included.

Death Proof (2007)

Death Proof was originally one half of a two part feature known as Grindhouse in the US, paired with the Robert Rodriguez zombie film 'Planet Terror'. Unfortunately Grindhouse was a flop in the US. Could that be because the film was too long (just over three hours) for the average Joe to sit through or did the studio decide that they would make more money splitting the films into two, scrapping the whole 'grindhouse' idea (watching two films, back to back at the theatre)? I personally love the idea of the 'grindhouse' experience but unfortunately as I live in the UK I haven't got the choice, both films will be released separately.

Anyway, I could moan about the unfairness of being denied the chance to experience Grindhouse for ages so I'll put a cap on that for the moment.

With this version of Death Proof, Quentin Tarantino has included extra footage unseen from the Grindhouse cut and apparently "made the movie it should have been", through his eyes.

Anyone unaware, this movie is a homage to the B-movie genre from the late 60's and 70's and has that certain low grade quality to it and was apparently shot using traditional techniques.

The film is about a stunt driver, called Stuntman Mike who has a thing for killing young women with his adapted stunt car. The car has been made 'death proof' (hence the title) with a roll cage and re-enforced shell. I really like the Stuntman Mike character (played by the excellent Kurt Russell) and the moments with him on screen are brilliant. He has a dirty great big scar across his face, drives that mean car and has a dark on screen presence. The driving scenes are really quite amazing and the crashes are really gruesome, in the best possible way!



Ok, this is where I'm going to be totally honest about what I thought, not that my opinion carries much weight!

I think its quite obvious what extra footage has been included in this version of Death Proof. If you strip down most of the dialog between the female characters this film would actually be pretty decent in my books but this is probably the area where the extra stuff was added. I found the dialog to be extremely boring and far too long, something which can probably be said for some of Tarantino's previous work. Yes, at the time dialog in his films such as Pulp Fiction was really different to what was around and it seemed pretty original. I recently re-watched Pulp Fiction and wanted to sleep through most of it. I really hate it when a character says something, makes a comment or statement then has to explain his or herself in great detail is a wise-ass style. Is that always necessary?

I really loved the way the film started with the dated looking ad's and the old grainy footage effect, that was great. But I was expecting the film to be set in this time period (late 60's - 70's), yeah - I know its a homage but does it work when its set in the current day with mobile phones and iPods but shot in an old style? I found the grainy effect on the film to be inconsistent throughout. It started off well, dipped in the middle and came back near the end. Oh yeah, am I the only person who thinks the whole "shooting a scene in black and white" has past the stage of being cool. It worked in some of his other films but really, is that necessary in all of them? The moment it turned black and white in Death Proof didn't make a scrap of difference to the plot, it was at no real interesting spot and felt like a waste of time. It did work incredibly well during the fight scene with the 'Crazy 88's' in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 though.

Tarantino has always been able to produce a really decent soundtrack for his previous films. They usually consist a great collection of relatively unknown but very "cool" tracks and I think with Death Proof he's achieved the same . I've had the soundtrack on CD since April this year and like most of it. I just think it was a shame that it wasn't integrated into the film better. The majority of the tracks will be heard during the bar scene on the jukebox.



Going back to Grindhouse - I'm sure Death Proof would have been a much better film trimmed down by 30 or 40 minutes and would have felt right for its genre. The film, together with Planet Terror and the specially made trailers (directed by Robert Rodriguez, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth and Rob Zombie) would have made the whole experience worth while.

To end on a positive, I really liked Kurt Russell's character, I loved the actual driving scenes and I thought the soundtrack was pretty good.

Random YouTube Clips

Sorry about this, its good for a laugh though.


This clips much better (and 'no', they didn't train a real gorila to play the drums!).

Thanks to Joe for the links (I'm passing the buck, I had nothing to do with the YMCA vid!).

Spider-Man 3 : How It Should Have Ended

Check out the How It Should Have Ended (HISHE) site for other funny clips.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008)

'Yes' in answer to your question. They've adapted the Terminator movies into a TV series called The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Well not quite adapted, a TV series has been made to fill in the blanks between 'Terminator 2: Judgement Day' and 'Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines'.

Its an ambitious project to take on especially since the Terminator series is so well known.

The pilot episode is available here for the moment (don't worry - it hasn't got Spanish subtitles as the site mentions), on the excellent Stage6 site. Go check it out!

From what I've seen, the plot follows a similar formula to the films. A bad terminator is sent back in time to destroy John Connor (the savior of humanity) whilst a good terminator is sent back by the human resistance (in the future) to counteract the bad one and keep John alive.

There's no real famous faces in this as far as I can see except Summer Glau from the excellent (yet canceled!) series 'Firefly' (which later got made into a film called 'Serenity'). Also the terminators are lacking that Stan Winston touch in regards to the visuals although I doubt the studio would want to spend too much on makeup/animatronics/CGI for a TV show.

According to IMDb the series should start (in the US) in the early part of next year but I'm kinda expecting it not to get that far. It looks like a good show but it also looks like it will flop (not sure how to explain that though). Virgin Media have apparently secured the rights to show this on demand in the UK so I'll look out for it in the future.

Disturbia (2007)

Disturbia is basically a modern update of the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film 'Rear Window'.

Its an enjoyable movie and the update really works well for the iPod/YouTube generation. Rather than having the lead house bound due to an illness/disability the main character is under house arrest with a monitoring device strapped to his leg, alerting the police if he strays more than 100ft from his house.

The lead is played by Shia LaBeouf, this guy seems to be getting some amazing roles at the moment - Transformers and the new Idiana Jones film (Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) to mention a few. He's also got to star with some stunning women, Megan Fox & Sarah Roemer, not that I'm jealous or anything (lucky bastard!).

Anyway, its a great suspense/thriller which works really well and I recommend it. Find the trailer below.

Superbad (2007)

Ok, heres a quick review for Superbad. Its pretty much how I expected it to be which is no bad thing. Its really crude in parts and is almost 100% about sex but its still got the charm of The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up thanks to having a pretty much identical cast/crew (that'll be Judd Apatow's comedy gang).

The film is totally packed with tonnes of funny moments but my favourite scenes involve the two cops (Seth Rogen & Bill Hader) with the character McLovin/Fogell (Christopher Mintz-Plasse).

Anyway, its a great little movie. Probably best seen with a bunch of male friends as most females will likely to be offended by the majority of it. He he!

Iron Man (2008)

Here it is, the trailer for Iron Man. Looks absolutely awesome!

Good use of the excellent Black Sabbath track 'Iron Man' (from the album 'Paranoid'), it had to be in there somewhere.

Thanks to Joe for sending me the link.

Master Chief Waxwork

This is Master Chief from the Halo games, immortalized (until it melts anyway!) at the Las Vegas Madam Tussauds waxwork museum. Looks great!

Curb Your Enthusiasm : Season 6

This is now officially my most favourite comedy, just overtaking the excellent Arrested Development. I'm so pleased Larry David's created a new season and I can't wait to see it. From the picture above its already clear it's going to be as controversial as ever! Great stuff.

By the way, if you're interested in watching some old 'Curb' episodes check out Stage 6.

Larry David is a comedy genius!

Films out on the 14th of September (UK)

Well, last weeks cinema releases were nothing to talk about but by the end of this coming week things should hopefully change with a couple of new movies.

The first is 'Superbad'. Yeah, it sounds awful but the trailer looks really good. This is a comedy about a group of friends in the final few weeks of school getting into all sorts of trouble before leaving for college. It's co-written by Seth Rogen, the lead guy from Knocked Up who's really making a name for himself now (he also plays one of the cop's in the trailer). The film also features Michael Cera a.k.a George Michael Bluth from the excellent 'Arrested Development' series so I'll spouting out loads of A.D quotes throughout (to the annoyance of anyone sitting around me, ha ha!).



The second is 'Shoot Em Up'. Yeah yeah yeah!!! Gunfights, car chases, Monica Bellucci still looking hot... that'll do me! I don't really know much about this film but I've heard there's not much of a real story although it is great fun to watch full with over the top action. The excellent Clive Owen's has the lead with Paul Giamatti taking the strange role of 'BAD GUY'. Giamatti usually plays good guys or minor supporting roles so I'll be interested to see how he handles it. The film itself looks like a cross between a John Woo film and some random 80's action movie. Neither is a bad thing in my book!

Cult Movie Theater

Check out this site, its amazing!

It features loads of nicely streamed (old) cult movies, all of which are legal (as they're in the public domain).

The actual site itself (Stage 6) has loads of other stuff on it including some hilarious episodes from the series; Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

Congratulations to my bro for finding it. I no longer need to watch so much TV (although I tend to watch quite a bit online as it is)!