Day: May 13, 2010

MasterChugs Theater: ‘Rushmore’

I’m going to let you in on a secret, an answer to a question that is heard more and more frequently these days: Why do the tastes of film critics and the filmgoing audience differ so much? After all, something so critically lambasted as Armageddon can end up as the top grosser of the year, while something like A Simple Plan can garner glowing reviews and still face an uphill climb to profitability. Of course, exceptions like Titanic happen as well, but usually the critics’ judgment is unrelated to popular appeal.

The answer is the dreaded predictability of most films in this day and age. An average viewer, who goes to the movies once a month or even less frequently might face a standard specimen of any of Hollywood’s standard genres (romantic comedy, action, special effects extravaganza) rarely enough that the redundancy of these films goes unnoticed. For an average film critic, even one as lackadaisical as your faithful servant, watching more than a movie per week can get really boring really fast especially if these movies feel like they were all xeroxed off When Harry Met Sally, Die Hard, or Jurassic Park, all movies that weren’t marvels of originality to begin with.

That’s why the arrival of something like Rushmore feels like a proverbial breath or make it blast of fresh air. Rushmore is an offbeat comedy, an offbeat buddy film, an offbeat romance, and an offbeat revenge story. Or none of these things. Mix up some wildly varying comic elements, combine them with some of most deliciously deadpan acting in recent memory, add highly imaginative and inventive usage of the widescreen format, and get Rushmore, which is just about the least conventional and yet solidly enjoyable movie to come out in the past decade. Continue reading MasterChugs Theater: ‘Rushmore’

Going over like an LED balloon

It’s finally happening: LED light bulbs!

For people who date (yet somehow read this Web site), LED stands for light-emitting diode and is the same technology used for your computer and monitor’s status lights. (Right there, on the front.) Notice how they never burn out until the rest of the computer goes down?

In addition to their long life (20 years!), they use 80-percent less energy and–unlike those twisty fluorescents–are capable of dimming and being thrown away without a guilt trip.

The only problem is that we’re stuck with previously mentioned fluorescent bulbs until they finally burn out in a couple of years.

Theft does not equal store credit

A man in California has been arrested and sentenced to five years in prison. This is not unusual; however, the cause is more idiotic than unusual. What was the cause, one might ask? Well, he stole four women’s purses over the course of two weeks and used that score to buy a number of PlayStation 3 games from a Target in Vista, California. He also bought mobiles, televisions and iPods.

Where it gets stupid, though, is that Rodelio Cataroja, Jr. used the same store to buy the same brand (PlayStation 3) in a total of four transactions.

Whoopsidoodle.

That would have alerted the store’s guard, let alone the cops. I don’t exactly understand on how a guy like him who was intelligent enough to steal credit cards actually made a stupid mistake of making a number of transactions from the same store, but clearly, I’m not a criminal mastermind like Cataroja.

Of course, there’s a fairly large amount of people not in jail that are also not criminal masterminds like Cataroja.

Just when we were about to launch SGTV

A satellite that brings people cable television (confusing, isn’t it?) has gone rogue, drifting off its course, which mean some cable subscribers could lose their signals in the days ahead.

Apparently it’s not as bad as it sounds, it will really only affect a handful of customers of some company in Europe. But because we’re part of the media, and need to sell ads ourselves: CRAZY SATELLITE THREATENS TO DESTROY CABLE TV AS WE KNOW IT!!!