The Chipmunk Adventure Redub

Forest Locked & Loaded

Just saw "The Last King of Scotland." Consider Forest Whitaker locked for the Best Actor nomination, and possibly for the win. It'll be him vs. Peter O'Toole and maybe Jack Nicholson if Warner Bros. pushes him for lead.

Speaking of Jack, I'm seeing "The Departed" on Sunday. Hopefully it will be everything I've been hearing and more.

I'll have mini-reviews of both films later this weekend...

Regina Spektor

Beautiful voice, sweet songwriting, unique videos...

Sparks

As always, good music is discovered in bunches, and I just came across 5 great albums recently. The best of these has to be Sparks' Hello Young Lovers. Rarely do you find a band having as much fun just experimenting with the possibilities of music.

If you haven't heard of Sparks, the best way to describe them is Queen-ish. However, that association does them a disservice because Sparks actually predate Queen, and it's often alleged that Queen ripped them off.

Regardless, Hello Young Lovers is filled to the brim with musical composition ideas. The songs are often silly, but the execution is breathtaking. It's amazing that a band formed in 1970 can still be around putting together tracks that soar with creativity.

Weird Al - White & Nerdy

I was obsessed with Weird Al when I was 10 years old. Now looking back, I'm ashamed of my musical tastes then. But you gotta start from somewhere, and despite the fact that Weird Al is a mediocre parody musician, he still holds a special nostalgic place in my heart.

His new video...

Tickle Me Elmo - An Evolutionary Conflict

This video, besides being completely amusing, represent what will most definitely be the battle of the 21st century: nature vs. technology. When technology (Elmo) obtains the ability to represent life so vividly that it fools nature (the dog), then we'll be at a real turning point. And, if and when technology wins this battle, I bet it will be laughing at us just as Elmo is.

School for Scoundrels

What a depressing movie. Here's another comedy that insists that mellow, shy, kind guys are "losers" and need to be re-made into more aggressive alpha-males... you know, the type of guys that hit people on the head with a tennis racket, and shoot paintballs at a guy's head, and throw a ball into another man's groin. Those are "real" men.

School for Scoundrels is almost the equivalent of Anger Management, another dreadful movie about an older, wiser man teaching a younger man how to regain his masculinity. School for Scoundrels doesn't have an ending that's as far-fetched; instead, its ending is just a plain ol' ending, and the coda during the credits is just as flat.

And is it now a tradition to have a surprise cameo from the "Frat Pack" show up towards the end of all these films? Wedding Crashers had the Will Ferrell cameo, where the joke was the cameo. Scoundrels has the same type of cameo, and I won't give it away, not that I'd be giving away anything amusing.

But the most depressing thing about School for Scoundrels was the audience I watched it with - 350 college students. They (well, at least all the males in the audience) loved the film. I overheard comments like "Oh damn, he just got bitch-slapped" and "Awesome! Right in the balls!" Perhaps the futuristic prediction made in Idiocracy is not that far off.

Jon Heder (aka Napoleon Dynamite) did a Q&A after the film. He seemed like a nice guy, although you could feel that the majority of the audience was disappointed he wasn't at all like his infamous character. He's got a lot of projects lined up, but they're all comedies. Jon, you really need to get away from the comedies... if you want to ever have a career beyond "Oh, it's the Napoleon Dynamite guy," please find some indie drama to immerse yourself into.

Rating: *1/2 (out of ****)
Opens Sept. 29

Minuscule - The Ladybug

Comments Enabled

I finally gave in and am allowing people to leave comments on my posts. Cause I'm sure you've all been like dying to do so and were about to overthrow the establishment unless I added this feature.

So, yeah, go crazy...

Little Children

I've neglected talking about movies on my blog, which is alarming since movies are my ultimate passion. I guess it's just so much easier to post some amusing YouTube video than write out actual cinema commentary. But I'm going to try to start writing a bit about the films I see during these next few months.


Little Children is a very Kubrickian take on suburbia, adultery, and sex offenders. The movie starts out as a humorous satire on the conventions of suburbia, a la American Beauty. Then it moves into more serious ground, becomes tender at times, and then is a little bit too silly.

Director/writer Todd Field seems to have a tendency of taking things too far, if In the Bedroom and Little Children are any indication. Everything falls apart during the final act as all the characters make completely unpractical decisions.

Still, I'd recommend the picture. The first act contains some biting observations and jokes, and the acting is generally strong. A lot of viewers are going to be turned off by the nature of film's subject matter, which is unfortunate. I think Field almost nailed it... he just needs to show a little restraint.

I can't say anymore... I'm sure there's some sort of review embargo on this, and besides, I'll have my full Daily Trojan review of it up in a couple of weeks.

Rating: *** (out of ****)
Opens Oct. 6

Lucas, Part II

Well, after ragging on Lucas regarding his "Star Wars" DVDs, I should at least acknowledge his recent gift of $175 million to USC's film school - the largest gift in USC history.

But I'm still not going to buy those DVDs.

They Say That Getting In Is Hard to Do

Yesterday's line at the student entrance gate was the most poorly organized thing I've ever seen. Thousands of sweaty students were forced to crowd into one another and then just stand there...

You cannot get 8,000 students into the Coliseum by only opening one tiny gate.

Why I Won't Be Buying the Star Wars DVDs

The new "Star Wars" DVDs are a disgrace.

If you head over to the Amazon.com page for the DVDs, you'll see that people are rating the discs a 2.5 out of 5. Read over the comments and you'll see that people are furious.

Simply put, George Lucas is a money-grubbing businessman who tortures his fans and then pretends to give them what they want.

We all wanted the original theatrical versions of the "Star Wars" trilogy, before Lucas added all his digital enhancements and decided to insert Hayden Christensen into the ending. We asked and asked, and Lucas kept on saying no, no, and no.

Then one day, out of the blue, Lucas announces that he will release the original versions on DVD for a limited time only. Fans rejoiced... and then they learned just what these DVDs really were - a scam.

Lucas decided to use the laserdisc transfers from 1993 for these new DVDs. That's right, he decided to use a 13-year-old transfer that predates the existence of DVD. So instead of a new, pristine transfer, we're stuck with visual quality that is closer to VHS than DVD.

Then, he decided to release these movies in non-anamorphic widescreen. What this means is that these discs will look like crap on any widescreen TV. Literally every studio DVD is released in anamorphic these days (on the back of the case, it'll say something like "Enhanced for 16x9 televisions"). It's a very easy and cheap process to do. But nope, Lucas says "fuck you" to all the people with new TV's (which is ironic since Lucas is supposedly a supporter of cutting-edge technologies).

And, he doesn't even release the movies in Dolby Digital surround sound. Instead, we're stuck with 2.0 Surround. I own old Hitchcock movies that are presented in Dolby Digital, so there's no excuse.

Of course, what will happen is Lucas will re-release the films all over again when HD-DVD (or BluRay) is the standard. He'll re-release the films in theaters again - this time in 3-D. People will pay to see the movies, and buy the new DVDs, just as they bought the DVDs before that, and the DVDs before that, and the laserdiscs before that, and the VHS tapes before that. Lucas will get richer and richer, and what's so amazing is that he will be doing so by mistreating the very fans that made him rich in the first place.

For shame, USC alumnus.

Interactive TV Wall

The Elegant Universe

A nice 50-min documentary on quantum mechanics & string theory.

Charlie the Unicorn

Rube Goldberg Pool Table

I find this video approximately 58.2 times more interesting than politics and 839 times more interesting than law.

Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear's Yellow House is the best album I've heard in awhile... and the only adjective I can think of to describe it is soothing.

Sample song:
click here

Okami

Okami comes out next week on the PS2, and the big question for me is should I pay $40 for it now or wait until Christmas? The game looks so beautiful and intriguing.

Graph of Facebook Group

A nice graph of the Facebook group's growth can be found here.

It currently looks something like this:

Half a Million

The Facebook group mentioned below just past 500,000 members.

Facebook Drama

This is amazing. Flat out amazing.

The controversy over Facebook's brand-new "News Feed" and "Mini-Feed" features is an internet watershed.

Go to this Facebook group - Students against Facebook News Feed (Official Petition to Facebook). Look at the number of members. Then refresh the page and look at the number of members again.

For instance:

At 6:44:15 PST today - 420,227 members.
At 6:44:45 PST today - 420,558 members.

In a span of 30 seconds, 331 people joined the group.

In internet history (or even real history), has there ever been a group that has grown this quickly before?

On the Wikipedia page for Facebook, there's already an elaborate explanation of Facebook's changes and the enormous negative response. Time Magazine already has an article on the phenomenon. Keep in mind that these Facebook changes were implemented just yesterday.

I think this may represent a defining technological moment. Yes, the Facebook changes are silly and way too stalkerish, but to have this large of a response occur so quickly is mind-boggling.

Official Seal

Bow down to the official seal of Obviously Losing.

Falling Water in Half-Life 2

Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water," one of the most incredible homes ever built, has been thoroughly recreated using the Half-Life 2 game engine. Pretty neat.

The Future of Air Travel...

... as seen from 1975.

1-Year-Anniversary

Wow, I completely missed Obviously Losing's first birthday. This blog was created on August 28, 2005... and back then I would have never imagined it would still be going a year later. But blogging is like eating chocolate-covered pretzels - you just can't resist.