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« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Endhiran: Invasion of the BollySnatchers
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 17, 2011 by admin in Popular Media
Monday, January 17th, 2011What do you get when you fuse Bollywood, the entire robot science fiction lexicon, and rock opera spectacle? Endhiran. Probably the most entertaining three hour film ever to be filmed with Tamil dialogue.
Fight Clubliminal – Revisiting The Subliminal Elements Of Fight Club
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 10, 2011 by admin in Popular Media
Monday, January 10th, 2011People are always asking me if I know Marla Singer…
[Please note: spoilers ahead] People are always asking me if I know Marla Singer. And although I have to say I don’t think she’s Jack’s Vagina, I have to say yeah, I know Marla Singer, she’s Jack’s anima in Fight Club
To me, the best popular media – whether it’s music, film, or literature – possesses a gratifying story or message, but manages to layer metaphors, symbols, or otherwise express ambiguity that makes the creation rewarding on repeated consumption. And Fight Club does a fantastic job of this, with its more obvious exploration of consumer culture and nihilism, and its deeper exploration of the struggle for romance and personal identity in modern life, where most of us are “voyeurs of material wealth”. This film has been analyzed to death, so I’m only going to touch on one thing here, something that gets discussed occasionally, but is usually either dismissed out of hand, or rabidly defended by those who believe it’s “true”: The idea that Helena Bonham Carter’s character Marla Singer is just another projection of Ed Norton’s “Jack” character. I like this idea, and think it brings an interesting and different meaning to the film. Although it’s easy to find references to David Fincher’s explanation of the early subliminal cuts of Tyler Durden (they’re just meant to foreshadow Tyler’s later appearance), as far as I know, he’s never been asked why, for instance, Marla can get away with smoking heavily both at meetings for a Tuberculosis support group and a meeting for men with testicular cancer. I’ve also always found it worthy of note that Tyler, Marla, and “Jack” are never in the same scene, except one extremely brief moment in Tyler’s bedroom.
Although the film diverges from the book in ways, author Chuck Palahniuk
Uncanny Dolly: Anatomically Correct Barbie
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 4, 2011 by admin in Popular Media
Tuesday, January 4th, 2011Have you ever wanted your very own anatomically correct Barbie or Ken doll? Me neither. But there are plenty out there if you change your mind.
 I imagine this is what humans would look like, if Barbie and Ken designed them. Source |
[Please note: the following may be NSFW, if naked, anatomically correct Barbies are not safe where you work] This probably belongs somewhere in the realm of the uncanny valley, but I’m not sure where. Do you remember when you were a kid and you stole your sister’s Barbie doll so you could sneak a peek and get an idea of what a girl looked like naked? Okay, maybe you were more sexually repressed, and never did this, or still are more sexually repressed, and don’t remember doing it. I don’t know if this was so common with the girls, but I know that most relatively well-adjusted guys that I know did it, myself included. As someone who grew up in a weepy liberal and often too progressive college town, I was exposed to explicit sex education in the first grade (thanks mom, for signing the permission slip), so I was a little disappointed by the whole Barbie heist-and-strip-search adventure, and the underwhelming basic biological accuracy of it all. But I’ve always wondered about the trauma other boys must have experienced the first time they were naked with a girl and they suddenly discovered they were soft, had little protuberances here and there, and (gasp) *hair on their body. So have you ever wondered what an anatomically correct Barbie would look like? Yeah, me neither, but I found out today, when I ran across an AOL “Weird News” piece called Artist Gives Barbie Nipples … and a Bad Reputation, about how San Francisco-area artist LaVonne Sallee eeks out an income “re-purposing” Barbies. This opened my eyes to the strange (and disturbingly large) world of Barbie cosmetic surgeons, whose work ranges from the ghastly results of the prankster site Zug.com to the hard-working professional over at BatKatCreations.com, who offers both Barbie and Ken models. Yes, you too can have your very own (more or less) anatomically correct doll for as little as a eighty bucks. Or if you’re more of a do-it-yourself type, Lavonne Sallee offers the tutorial How to Create One of a Kind Barbie Nipples in a Few Simple Steps! I don’t know if the world really needs any Barbie nipples, so “one of a kind” should be plenty. If you’re really into this sort of thing, also be sure to check out Barbie’s Sex Tape. Be warned, although all the “nasty bits” have been censored with little black rectangles, that last link contains explicit doll sex. I’m just gonna go back to playing with my Internet now. There has to be some eye-bleach out there to make this all go away. Read the rest of this entry »
Should Drunk Driving Ads Be Funny?
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 30, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Thursday, December 30th, 2010Personally, I think humor can be more effective in designated driver commercials than horrific statistics and images, but does anyone really think a talking urinal cake will prevent drunk driving?
Years ago, before the idea of designated drivers was familiar in the US, my friends would often choose me as the driver at the end of a night of clubbing, because I had a miraculous ability to appear sober with ten or fifteen cocktails in me. When the concept of designated drivers was popularized in the late 80′s, my friends would actually joke about how my job finally had an official name. We thought this was pretty funny for a long time. That is, until the first of our friends died in a drunk driving accident. I’ve personally lost three friends to drunk driving, and even more to drug addiction, so I don’t take the topic lightly. But I feel there’s a reason you kind of have to if you want to drive real change on the issue, and here it is: This year, 10,839 people will die in drunk-driving crashes. That’s one every 50 minutes. But probably more shocking than numbers like that is the fact that organizations like MADD seem to think that scaring the general populace with these kinds of numbers will somehow stop people from drinking and driving. In my opinion, it won’t. We’ve pointed out before that studies have determined that telling people to stop smoking won’t work, and may even make them smoke. And the fact is, drinking and driving is based on a similar problem. Any sentient human with a driver’s license in America in 2010 knows that drinking and driving will not only get you in serious legal trouble, but may actually kill someone. The real problem is that this sentient human we’re talking about no longer exists when they walk out of a bar after a hard night’s drinking and get in a car. There’s no point in aiming an ad campaign at a person who doesn’t exist, and for all practical purposes, that drunk person never saw the shocking ad about the results of drunk driving, and might even laugh it off if they did. In my opinion, there are only two approaches to this deeply-embedded social problem that might prove effective. One would be to legislate sentencing so stern that no-one would ever think of driving after drinking, i.e.: a life sentence for first-time offenders. There are two obvious problems with that notion. One is that our already overcrowded prisons couldn’t handle the load of the several years of sentences that would be required to make the law work. The other is that – as evident in the old joke about Ted Kennedy saying “we’ll drive off that bridge when we get to it” when asked to make a final decision on a piece of legislation – the legislation itself would bog down for years. Another possible – and I think more effective – approach is using humor to table a topic that otherwise generates a tremendous conscious resistance on the part of those who need to hear the message most, i.e.: problem drinkers. It is with some discomfort that I say that I think one of the best campaigns I’ve seen in a while is the Wanna Go Home With Me Tonight? campaign created by Anheuser Busch. Although some take issue with the fact that it plays on jokes about being drunk and relies on sexual overtones, the people who get up in arms about those otherwise legitimate criticisms aren’t the people we need to reach, and behind the adolescent teaser of the campaign, they do direct users to more content and social networking tools that can spread the message. Admittedly, they fall short on useful detail in their “Great Party Guide”, but if you’re throwing a party and serving liquor, hopefully you’re not looking to a global beer conglomerate for hosting guidance. So this all reminds me, I meant to ask. Who are YOU going home with New Year’s Eve? Whoever they are, I hope they’re sober if they’re driving. For a little more drunk driving humor, check out the video clips below. We also included our own little sobriety test at the end. Read the rest of this entry »
10 Movies For New Year’s Eve
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on December 18, 2010 by admin in Popular Media
Saturday, December 18th, 2010This New Year, if you’d rather watch a film you’ll remember than drink away a night you’ll forget, here are ten New Year themed films that include some of the best and the worst movies ever made.
  Okay, okay. So you had a bad year. No need to jump. Yet. |
Christmas is less than a week away, and you know what that means. Time to start over-anticipating the next holiday, i.e.: New Year’s Day. I’ve always been a bit perplexed by the holiday tradition of drinking your brains out on the last day of the year, as if that will somehow make it go away. The year, that is, not your brain. Even when I did drink – which used to be quite often – I certainly didn’t see anything especially exciting about drinking for a holiday, and now that I don’t, my New Year’s Eve is more often spent having a nice dinner and watching a movie or going to a party where I know that getting staggering drunk isn’t the over-arching theme. This year looks like a movie year for me, so if you’re thinking along the same lines, we’ve rounded up some interesting New Year’s themed films for your consideration. In my opinion, probably the best New Year’s film ever made was the Coen Brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy