The Annual Christmas Night Movie: 2008

I told the story last year about my family’s annual Christmas tradition of going to the movies. This year, the choice was Bedtime Stories. I was not thrilled, but the rest of the gang (my brother, our cousin-in-law, and her two sons) enjoyed it.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Investing in Movies

For nearly 10 years, I’ve been playing the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Basically it’s a prediction market based on the box office returns of movies. It’s been a pretty good indicator over the years, but the income model was based nearly totally on ad revenue. A few months ago, they announced a complete site overhaul, ostensibly to “update” to the Web 2.0 model. It must not have been very successful, given its short life and eventual reversion to the “old” site.

Anyway, the 2.0 idea has been abandoned in favor of an even more major step forward: the Cantor Exchange. Named after HSX’s parent company Cantor Fitzgerald, it will be similar to the game format except you’ll be able to invest with real money. Details are sketchy as to the actual implementation, but I expect I’ll be playing around with it a little.

Michigan’s Robotic War Bat vs. Georgia Tech’s Cyborg Moths

In an article that is somehow evocative of a certain movie franchise (whose bloggers unfortunately met a grisly, Cloverfield-esque end late last February), the University of Michigan has received $10 million from the army for a “Center for Objective Microelectronics and Biomimetic Advanced Technology, or COM-BAT.” The robotic bat produced by this group apparently will have a “gargoyle mode” that involves perching on a building and lurking. Since there already is a Michigan Gargoyle, I suggest changing the name to “hunter-killer” mode (good luck with James Cameron’s lawyers). Even worse (or better!), another article in The Register speculates that the RADAR of the Michigan war bat would allow it to easily destroy Georgia Tech’s “cyborg infiltrator machines [that wear] living creatures like fleshy cloaks.” Apparently Prof. Robert Michelson’s group plans to scoop out the entrails of moths and replace them with remote-controls and sensors.

Also in the article, The Register describes DARPA as “the Pentagon asylum for usefully-insane scientists” which can’t be entirely true since our own Andy (who is still pretty sane despite his defense coming up this Friday) was partly funded by DARPA.

1776

I was just going through my forgotten and nearly dead post drafts and found this doozy. Since many of us went and sat through the amazing-looking, albeit fascist 300 together, I figure many of you might also enjoy Robot Chicken’s 300-inspired take on the American revolution:

I especially enjoy the crossing of the Delaware. Robot Chicken really captures the movie for me — I remember longing for the sophistication of Starship Troopers.

And while on the topic of the founding fathers, I can’t help but find HBO’s John Adams to be completely unnecessary. I don’t really think it’s any fault of it’s own (except maybe for casting overused Paul Giamatti) but I can’t help but giggle at the oh-so-serious looking promos that popped up seemingly everywhere a few weeks ago. I don’t know if it’s possible to have year-long movie-watching moods, but I feel like I wouldn’t be in the mood for something like this until at least next year…

Innotech, er… EniTech

I spent Saturday through Friday last week in Seattle at the Society of Toxicology annual meeting. Seattle is awesome and I had a lot more time to explore than my previous, three day trip. The weather was actually pretty decent — it was often rainy but not raining. In fact, it only rained the two times I didn’t take my umbrella with me.

Anyhow, I need to get back into the blogging habit, and as a big Terminator fan (apparently one of the few that prefers the original) I think that the website for Enitech is pretty entertaining.

Where Did These Guys Learn to do Business?

Word on the the streets is that the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien has now had to sue New Line Cinemas in order to receive what they claim was 7.5% of the $6 billion that Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy made.  Allegedly they only received a $62,500 up front fee and have been trying to negotiate for the rest ever since.  Apparently, New Line won’t let them see the books to verify how much money was made.  This is exactly the probablem that Peter Jackson had with the company and already delayed the making of The Hobbit for three years.  It also reminds me somewhat of the way the producers handled negotiations with the writer’s guild, in that they claimed that they weren’t sure if new media (the internet) would be profitable, so they’d rather pay a small fixed fee to the writers than a percentage.  Isn’t a percentage of nothing still nothing?  Apparently not in Hollywood producer math.  I don’t know how much involvement fellow Gargoyle alumnus Bob Shaye has had in this, but if it’s not his fault he really needs to clean house.

Recidivistic Development?

Kristin from E! Online—who I think would fit in with our group just fine—reports that an Arrested Development movie may be in the works. It was definitely a love-it-or-hate-it show, and many of us loved it immensely.

The Many Looks of the Imperial Stormtrooper

So now we’re really in trouble — a third posting on stormtroopers. It would seem to require a tag, but I’m going to hold off for now so that the many cool readers I assume we have (site visit statistics be damned) don’t think we’re uncool. At least until they read the posts.

At any rate, I present Foot soldiers clad in Empire chic from IGN. Given certain Brians fascination with athletic couture (enabled, no doubt, by the Helmet Project and its awesome catalog of historic helmets) I figured there just might be some interest here, even if most of the interesting “facts” were cobbled together in the last few years for the Star Wars prequels. Does it seem to anyone else that they were more concerned with bludgeoning the audience with familiarity than with continuity or entertainment?

Is Our Children Learning?

From the New York Times:

Corpse Wheeled to Check-Cashing Store Leads to 2 Arrests

 Two men were arrested on Tuesday after pushing a corpse, seated in an office chair, along the sidewalk to a check-cashing store to cash the dead man’s Social Security check.

Clearly movies are educational after all.  If these guys had only been fortunate enough to see Weekend at Bernie’s, or it’s sequel (which is currently earning 3.6/10 stars on IMDB) they could’ve avoided possible fraud charges.

My favorite part of the article is the detailed description of how the corpse was dressed:
The late Mr. Cintron was dressed in a faded black T-shirt and blue-and-white sneakers. His pants were pulled up part of the way, and his midsection was covered by a jacket, the police said.

I’d like to think my roommates would at least go to the effort of putting my pants all the way on.

The Annual Christmas Night Movie: 2007

Picture it: My grandparents’ house, December 25, 1999. My brother was about to turn 25, my cousin was 22, and I was a mere 20 years old. As our annual festivities (read: Spades game) were winding down, and we decided to drive to Greenville to see a movie. We’d decided on “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, but by the time we got there around midnight, the showing had sold out. Instead, we saw “Any Given Sunday”. I enjoyed the movie, enhanced by its raucous crowd, but neither of my companions really appreciated the atmosphere.

The next year, we decided to do it make it an annual tradition and invite anyone who wanted to come. Many did, but the movies for the next several movies, while some were “good”, weren’t really crowd-pleasers. They were “Cast Away” (2000), “The Majestic” (2001), “Catch Me If You Can” (2002), and “Cold Mountain” (2003). In 2004, my input was outlawed and the movie decided upon “Ocean’s Twelve”, which was fine, but unimpressive. In 2005, we took a year off, due to general bad moods of everyone involved. Finally, last year, some of our progeny wanted to get involved, so the decision of “Night at the Museum” was made, and ushered in a new era of good Christmas movies. This year, I’ve suspended my longstanding “No Nicolas Cage” rule and we saw “National Treasure: Book of Secrets”. My 12-year-old cousin gave it a 10 out of 10.