Norton is usually a very entertaining guest on whatever chat show on which he appears. However, I’ve watched his stand-up and it never really clicked for me. His routine, much like most of this book, is him talking very matter-of-factly about his personal perversions. I don’t know. I guess observational humor about a fringe-y lifestyle is hard to relate to. I wanted to like this book but alas, it’s just not my cup of pee. Puns… Now that’s top-notch humor.
Grand Slam is a reasonably amusing heist film with the usual tropes of assembling of the team, a complicated heist, and the inevitable team squabbling that leads to everything falling apart. Edward G. Robinson is green screened into half the scenes in which he appears and doesn’t really need to be in the movie. The soundtrack is by Morricone, but is not one that I particularly like. Way too much Brazilian festival music.
One of the better super hero films I’ve seen. The limited scope of the plot helped center the focus on the characters rather than massive action sequences. I probably could do without the last twenty minutes which devolved into the usual fake CGI battle with a seemingly invincible enemy. Yet it is a battle in which there is no sense of danger or tension.
A euro-crime thriller/drama about a prison warden who is blackmailed into letting a prisoner escape. Boasts a wonderful score by Ennio Morricone and features the world’s least intense prison escape, mountain hiking with commies, drunk acting from Oliver Reed, corrupt hippy pop-stars and a cynical ending that those life-loving Italians just go bonkers for.
A 70s euro-crime film from Italy featuring a barely-there performance from James Mason. Mason is out of the film at about the halfway point at which time it becomes a revenge story with little to no tension. The only reason to watch it is this fantastic clip of J&B delights:
The sequel to Shadowgrounds doesn’t offer much new. There’s the same aliens, same corny voice acting, and the same top-down shooting mechanics. However, I liked this one a bit more. This is probably due to the slightly improved control scheme. I also think the game was helped by the lack of an attempt at creating deep narrative. You get a paragraph of text and some narration before each level and then you’re off to shooting hordes of aliens. Simple, short and worth the two bucks I spent on it.
There is a lot of variety on this soundtrack. It feels similar to the excellent Danger: Diabolik score. But, unlike that masterpiece, none of the songs have grooves or hooks that stick with me. They are almost like ideas that were never fully developed. There is even some re-purposed music from For a Few Dollars More. All this adds up to an decent collection that is more suited for background music rather than for careful listening.
This one is mostly noteworthy for its wacky premise of new wave rock band karate masters fighting motorcycle ninjas. It’s not as wild and fun as it sounds, but there is a big cheese-factor payoff in many of the scenes, especially the concert footage. Friends forever.
Only the last of the three stories in this horror anthology is worth watching. It’s directed by Frederico Fellini and is (no duh) quite Fellini-esque. At least I think it is. I’ve not seen any other of his movies, but it was very surreal and goofy. Supposedly these are all adaptations of Poe stories, but Fellini just makes his a take on stardom and the shallowness of cinema celebrity. The first segment is Jane Fonda falling in love with a horse and the second is basically a 70’s let’s play, watching two people play cards.
Today I did a revamp of the site’s theme. Mostly this was because Prepros no longer supports Compass in its Sass implementation. I had to go through all my sass code and remove any Compass references and write my own mixins based on them.
In the process I managed to reorganize much of my code and make some style tweaks across the site. I am going to go with slightly bigger fonts and am now using a grid system based on the Bootstrap grid instead of the confusing Zen grid. The biggest change to the site is that now the most recent post appears in full at the top of the homepage with a little “New” label in the corner. Future is now!
