Winning the Lottery

Just doing my part to keep this particular bit of blogspam going:

What happens when your friends Tivo last night's lotto numbers, buy a ticket with the same numbers, and then show you the Tivo recording as if it's real-time TV? Find out when Thad Wins the Lottery.

Yeah, it's pretty worn by this point (the victim and perpetrators, who videotaped the whole thing, were on The Today Show a few days ago), but I thought it funny enough to include here. I especially like the choice of music at the end.

The Ten Worst Bollywood Films of 2005

I haven't seen a damn one of them, but I sure am glad someone out there is keeping track. Read Rediff's Year End Special, the 10 Worst Hindi Films of 2005.

Cult Movies Podcast #9

Our regular weekly installment of the Cult Movies Podcast – DVD Picks, the current state of theaters (will 3-D flicks save movie houses?), Wolf Creek, Godzilla 3-D IMAX, and more.

Also, we have a new voice mail line for our listeners to call and leave us a bit of audio goodness of their own, some of which will make it into the podcast itself.

Check it out over at cultmoviespodcast.com.

Cult Movies Podcast #8

The first of a two-part series of interviews with Jay Edwards, editor/producer of Aqua Teen Hunger Force and the writer/director of Stomp! Shout! Scream!

Get episode 8 of the Cult Movies Podcast now.

Stomp Tokyo review: The Magic Christmas Tree

After seeing the trailer for this movie at the Alamo Drafthouse, I knew I had to track it down and make Scott watch it. Watch it we did, and this review is the result.

For his second wish Mark wants to have Santa Claus all for himself—something he obviously couldn’t have done with his godly powers in the previous hour. The tree complies, and a cut-rate Santa find himself glued to a chair in Mark’s house. It’s sort of like a yuletide version of that scene in Reservoir Dogs (1992), but our secret wish for Mark to brandish a straight razor while the tree sang “O Tannenbaum” went maddeningly unfulfilled.

Read the full review of The Magic Christmas Tree.

Mac Mini big ideas

Apple has a new page on their web site showcasing the cool things that people have done with the Mac mini. Probably the coolest in my opinion is the least flashy: configuring a Mac mini server exactly how you want it, then sending it off to a colocation facility for hosting. Presumably they take care of backups, uptime, etc. but you know for sure that it's configured exactly the way you want it.

But I guess you're probably more interested in the Millenium Falcon case mod.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Wookiee New Year

Having trouble getting into the swing of Christmas? Feel like a little holiday love from a Wookiee might help? Then you need this Christmas message from the Star Wars franchise's shaggiest denizen.

For the love of God, Montresor.

Via Cinematical.

Slate: Movies So Bad They're Good podcast

Slate presents Mark Jordan Legan to talk about some of his favorite bad movies. It's nothing really new if you've been reading Stomp Tokyo for a few months but it's always nice to see affectionate mainstream coverage of cinematic crap.

Visit the Slate: Movies So Bad They're Good podcast.

Cult Movies Podcast #7

In this episode Scott and I discuss our earlier misconceptions about the Bollywood scandal involving Aishwarya Rai & Salman Khan. (Not Twinkle Khana, as we originally and erroneously reported.)We also wear out the word "fantastic" while talking about Peter Jackson's King Kong, the collapse of the DVD window, and more.

Check out Episode #7 of the Cult Movies Podcast. To get these episodes automatically, don't forget to subscribe in iTunes or your favorite podcasting client.

A*P*E in 3-D at the Alamo Downtown

I haven't been paying close attention to the Alamo's schedule because I've been snowed under with work and holiday preparations, but I did notice that they're is playing A*P*E in 3-D at the Downtown Drafthouse tonight. That's right – in 3-D. Unfortunately I'm seeing a 3 p.m. show of King Kong today and I'd never make it to the 7 p.m. showing of A*P*E (which I've seen a few times anyway), but if you're in Austin you might want to check it out.

An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla

If you're not reading Patrick Macias' blog, An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla, you are quite simply missing out. Read Macias' dispatches from the heart of Japanese pop subculture in Tokyo, and try not to be so jealous you could spit.

Current entries include the swag Patrick got for his birthday, the tv show he spent rubbing elbows with Yumiko Shaku, and the King Kong fever currently sweeping Japan. Don't miss the King Kong ice cream "King Cone," with Kong Flavor!

Read An Eternal Thought... now.

Stomp! Shout! Scream! Atlanta premiere

Jay and the Violas
Originally uploaded by stomptokyo.

It's late but I couldn't go to bed without posting some pictures and mentioning that tonight was the Atlanta cast & crew premiere of Stomp! Shout! Scream!, the '60s rock & roll beach party monster movie by Jay Edwards. Jay, as you may recall from the earlier Eleven Questions interview, is an editor and producer for the Cartoon Network, but this picture is his baby and tonight was its big night. The house was packed, almost the entire cast was in attendance, and the film went over really well.

Best moment of the night for me – being the first person ever to say to Chris Hines: "Hey -- aren't you Deputy Bob?"

New department at Stomp Tokyo

With the help of Ryan Cullen (a.k.a "Keiichi" over at the BMMB), we've opened a new department at Stomp Tokyo. While much of the writing at Stomp Tokyo deals with the obscure filmic output of yesterday, Reel Opinions will focus on newly released movies. We've taken flak in the past for including a "mainstream" department in an otherwise cult-oriented site, but I believe there's a place here for the examination of the blockbusters from the perspective of a b-fan.

Welcome Ryan! Go check out his reviews, including one of the newly released The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Gmail WebClips

You know, I was about to get really annoyed with Google for adding to their Gmail service the new "WebClips" feature, which puts a line above your inbox with a sponsored headline and a link. Then I hit the "customize" button and realized you can put any feed you want into the WebClips blurb, remove the ones you don't want, and even turn WebClips off entirely.



Every time I think Google has reneged on their promise to do no evil, it turns out they've implemented a seemingly evil feature in a benevolent way. About a week ago I began forwarding my stomptokyo.com address to Gmail and I haven't regretted it once. Nice going.

Addendum: I should have checked the Gmail What's New page - apparently they also added auto-detection of addresses and tracking numbers within messages, which will generate companion links in the sidebar to Google maps or the tracking site of the shipper in question. (This isn't perfect, but when it works it's pretty cool.)

Also, Microsoft Office documents can be viewed from within Gmail. Again, not perfect – it won't handle graphics, but it's still much handier than downloading and launching a separate application when you just need to get something quickly out of a Word document in your inbox.

Say it ain't so, Scarlett

It really chaps my hide when my celebrity crushes don't consult me about their fashion choices. I mean, really, Scarlett Johansson, was a bull-style nose-ring a necessary addition to your style repetoire? I think not. The ring may come out of your nose but it'll be a while before these images come out of my head.

Anyway, if you're curious to see how she junked up a perfectly lovely face with a bit of metal, click on over to PopSugar. (Some of PopSugar's content is not safe for work, but the linked page is fine, other than the horror I've described above.)

Day of the Triffids review at Stomp Tokyo

Another Stomp Tokyo review for your reading pleasure.

Day of the Triffids (1962)

"In a secondary plot that takes place completely independently of the Bill Masen story, a husband-wife science team fend off a Triffid attack on their lighthouse island home. The wife is played by Janette Scott (yes, the one mentioned in the Rocky Horror lyric) and her hysterical reaction to the vegetative onslaught is sure to set modern women to groaning or giggling or both. Scott's character is the sort of woman scientist who, were she stationed on a spaceship, would be offering coffee to the other astronauts in between her experiments."

Corman B Films Due On DVD

B-movie king Roger Corman told SCI FI Wire that he will record commentaries for dozens of his movies that Buena Vista Home Entertainment will distribute over the next year, including Dinocroc, Brain Dead, Big Doll House, School Spirit, Welcome to Planet Earth and Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfold. Corman said he won't do a lot of preparation for the commentaries, which will appear on the DVD special-edition releases. "I don't like to prepare for the DVD extras. I think it's better to do [them] fresh," the legendary independent producer said in an interview. "And when I do it with somebody else, it's a lot of fun. They're like mini-reunions or parties. ... I'm thinking of the great time I had with Bill Shatner for The Intruder or Angie Dickinson with Big Bad Mama. ... I hope that the good times we were having comes across on the screen."

Read the full Sci-Fi Wire story about Corman's DVD deal here.

Propaganda posters from the 20th Century

The Free Information Society has a fun gallery of proganda posters, mostly from World Wars I and II. There are some obvious gutbusters like the "Goin' Steady With Hitler" poster from the Coalition for Abstinence Education, but there's also some gorgeous art there. Some of the sentiments are shockingly sardonic; it's a reminder that we are not necessarily any more cynical now than our grandparents were then.

Check it out.

NBC Universal shows to sell on iTunes

NEW YORK (Reuters) - General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal and Apple Computer Inc. on Tuesday said they would make several NBC-owned television shows, such as "The Office" and "Law & Order," available on the iTunes music store.

The shows, taken from NBC, the USA Network and the SciFi Channel, include current and older programming, the companies said.

Among the offerings are "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and "Surface," as well as older programs such as "Alfred Hitchcock Presents," "Dragnet" and "Knight Rider."

(Entire NBC/iTunes article here.)

This is obviously pretty good news for Apple and NBC, but even better news for users – it signals an increasing willingness (however limited at the moment) on the part of the networks to meet the demands for video downloads. Of course I'm sure the nets only agree to this at the moment because the videos are properly viewed on something the size of a business card, but the walls are slowly coming down. I just surfed over to iTunes and saw that the entirety of the new Battlestar Galactica series (including the miniseries) is available. Pretty cool.

This is also good news for users because we'll have an official reference point for episode listings and the like. Once all of the networks hop on board (and I'm fairly confident that they will), you'll be able to surf around and see seasons at a glance on iTunes. I'm hopeful that this will allow some shows that might otherwise be cancelled prematurely to find an audience more quickly than they might have otherwise -- with the ability to download shows on the cheap and catch up quickly when someone recommends a show to you, it will be easier to hop on as a viewer when you've missed the first couple episodes of the season.

Good news, good news. Now I just need that damn video iPod.

(Yes, I know you don't need an iPod to watch the shows, but the idea appeals.)

Cult Movies Podcast #5

So we've been noticing that the podcasts (that's internet radio for you non-nerds) sound pretty bad. Not the audio quality, though that sucks too. I'm talking about our pre-scripted dialogue. I thought it would sound more professional if I wrote things out beforehand, but my delivery completely blows and it was trampling all over Scott's more relaxed, less-prepared stuff. Some of you out there noticed too, and let us know that we had problems. (So kind!)

So this episode we throw the scripts out and just go by the seat of our pants. The result? A podcast that's twice as long and hopefully more than twice as entertaining. We get sidetracked on all sorts of topics including the Fantastic Four movie, the old versions of The Chronicles of Narnia, and whether laserdiscs would make good serving dishes for pizza. Hope you enjoy it. No, really.

Cult Movies Podcast episode 5

"Big" gets a cross-genre trailer

Someone has created a trailer for the Tom Hanks flick Big in the style of a psycho thriller. It doesn't quite work and the video & audio have been compressed to the point of being nearly unwatchable (I hate that "metallic" sound that audio gets when it has been compressed too much), but it is an amusing effort.

This is in the style, of course, of that trailer for The Shining that was edited to make the film look like a romantic family drama.

(via Cinematical)

Everyone Who's Anyone

I always wondered why the Internet hadn't done more to break down the traditional barriers between the clamoring masses of aspiring writers and directors and those who hold the purse strings, but here's a site that begins to chip away at those walls. Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing and Tinseltown Too is a list of e-mail addresses for literary agents, editors, publishers, talent agents, and motion picture production companies big and small. It's an amazing resource, though arranged in a quirky and less-than-useful manner.

Cinematical reports that there has been some controversy over the site, but it stands for the moment. Kudos to creator Gerard Jones.

Holy crap, Infra-Man fans!

Jette over at Celluloid Eyes reports that the Alamo Drafthouse actually tracked down a film print of Infra-Man for their Turkey Marathon! Looks like the dream of showing this movie at B-Fest might actually be a possibility . . . ?

Blogopoly

I'm told this online version of Monopoly, featuring a blog-themed board, is fun and addictive. I wouldn't know, as I've never played Monopoly since that fateful day when, while playing the Star Wars version, I was reduced to fiendishly defending my sole property: the Ice Planet of Hoth. Not only don't I like the game much, but I suck at it too. Perhaps you'll have a better time at it than I did.