It’s pretty bizarre that at this point in our cultural development, infomercials about shammys and blankets somehow take on a iconic status.
Still, it’s undeniable that the carnie dude from the Sham-Wow commercial has been elevated to the same level of notoriety as that lady in the 80s who fell and couldn’t get up.
Generally, G4TV doesn’t have the final word on any meme, though they are pretty amusing when they try to. This time, they might have put this one to bed.
Watchmen, the highly anticipated graphic novel adaptation from 300 director Zach Snyder has hit the movie theaters, and i got a chance to check it out this weekend with some friends.
Watchmen is a nihilistic view of an America where Superheroes are real, if only in the masked vigilante sort of way. But it seems as if this movie was built for the faithful fans and only them.
The movie itself is 2 hours and 41 minutes long, or short depending on where you are in the fandom. Snyder and crew have managed to pack in a lot of hidden goodies for fans of the film, and also managed to take the story progression of the graphic novel and adapt it perfectly to the screen. Most of the scenes in Watchmen are shot for shot with Alan Moore’s Masterpiece. The dialog scenes between certain characters have been fleshed out, and most of the material translated quite well.
Fans of the comic will be disappointed to see entire plot lines cut from the movie. The two detectives who investigate Edward Blake’s death have a much larger role in the comic itself, but here they are part of a quick 1 minute scene to set up the Rorschach storyline.
Speaking of which, Jackie Earle Haley does an amazing job as Walter Kovacs A.K.A. Rorschach. He translated the obsessive and angry nature of the character to screen perfectly and managed to convey the very twisted nature of the journal entries almost flawlessly. In fact the movie itself is set up chapter style just like the comic. It drops the normal three act movie creation template in order to convey almost everything it can in its relatively short time frame.
This movie is built for fans of the comic. I had the advantage of having two people who had never read the book and me and another friend who had. My friend and I who were familiar with the material were stunned and pleased greatly with the film. The two who had not read the material were enthused, but felt that it had progressed too slowly and ran too long for the average comic movie. But that's the thing, Watchmen is not for the average comic movie fan. Its dark….very dark, and a good portion of the material has been sighted as being almost un-adaptable by most critics and fanboys of the comic book. However, just like V for Vendetta, this movie did a service to its original material and the actors involved were great at conveying a huge overarching world of decadence, violence, and civil unrest in the face of a looming doomsday scenario.
If you are a fan of the book, go see this film, you will not be disappointed. If you haven't read Watchmen and are looking for a quick way to understand everything…..this movie really isn't for you.
-Jon
No Pun intended…
Last night’s episode of The Daily Show carried a much different tone than the normal fake-news we’ve come to know and love. Mr. Stewart seemed rather irritated by the cancellation of a CNBC Analyst by the name of Rick Santelli. You might know Santelli as the guy who stood on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading floor and attempted to call out President Obama on his idea of helping struggling homeowners with their bad mortgages instead of funneling all that money into scam corps like AIG and Etc Etc so on and so forth.
Rick was scheduled to come on the show last night, but cancelled on Friday for no reason, which Stewart explained as him “Bailing out” on the show.
Watch the entire episode above and make sure to pay close attention to how Stewart skewers CNBC in the first segment of the show. This is guaranteed to be a HUGE viral video by next week.
Normally i wouldn't post on economy issues, but seeing this video made it far too tempting not to share here on Recomedia.
(thanks to Hulu.com for the embed)
-Jon
Last week over at the robot blog, we were talking about precursors to holodeck technology that are being built right now. I’ve come across some more stuff this week that look to even further advance us toward never leaving our rooms to explore the world, and that should end up going on the site this evening.
Few things have sparked our imaginations as much as the holodeck from Star Trek. There wasn’t much usage of the tech on the show in a way that showed how a simulation was created – and when it was, much of the creation process seemed be left up to the ubiquitous computer.
Now that we’re nearing the time where such technology is a reality, we’re starting to see more depictions of this tech in a manner that makes sense.
In addition to the short film World Builder being a geeky look at the future, there’s also a touching love story tucked away as well.
Gizmodo’s Mark Wilson has the scoop on the digital short:
Bruce Branit's World Builder is a short much along the same technological theme, but made today.
After one day of shooting, World Builder was in post production for 2 years. Despite its extremely small artistic team (essentially one guy), the first half of the piece deploys some really believable visual effects to establish a sort of virtual reality version of Illustrator or Maya.
The clip, be it a tad long for internet perusal, is a real pleasure to watch. Load it up when you have a few minutes to dedicate to your imagination.
Download worthy tracks include:
And Always
The Never Ever Aftermath
Animals
or if your not a fan of iTunes….you can purchase the cd or get more info on the band at their official website or myspace page
And Please Remember, if you like the music, buy the music, and keep food on the table of decent artists like this…
-Jon
Credit to Huffington Post for finding the video
Credit to youtube user “genrocks” for the video itself
I have nothing more to say, you just have to see it to believe it…
On a completely different note, im working on a format for posting. The idea on this thing is to get some people who would like to write for a major blog the chance to do so, so if you are conscious and want to do reviews, show off your style, or if you even have something you’d like me to show off here on Recomedia, drop me a line at jon@rizzn.com
I like to think i have a rather diverse musical taste, and this is one of my favorite new bands of 2009. Architects are a Metalcore band out of the UK and their CD “Hollow Crown” hit stores back on February 10th. If you are into decent metal music, give this band a try, and buy their album here
-Jon
