Sunday Video: Nostalgia

This is so true. I think the Midnight Movie Club is in part based on that.

Well, aside from the cookie slurry... that is still awesome.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo Not Being Released In India

I respect David Fincher for telling the Indian Censor Board that he will not alter his remake of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo for that market.

But I love the fact that the studio seems to be backing him up and is therefore losing out on the revenue of over a billion potential movie fans in that country.

It makes me wonder if that was in his contract or something.

Does Film Exist In The Future? Not According to Star Trek

I've been thinking about this for a couple of days and I think I've noticed something very strange, something which never occured to me, but which seems so obvious now, and if I am off base, I have a feeling I will be corrected quickly.

Have you noticed that it seems like movies have ceased to exist as a medium in the Star Trek universe?

I mean, books exist, as they have been given as gifts a number of times through the various series and movies, but movies... where did they suddenly go.

I know some of you are saying they were made redundant by the holodeck, but I don't think that would be true, because there have been references to live theatre and other artistic media as well.

If Gilbert and Sullivan made it to the 24th century, then where did movies go? You'd think that on a ship that is out in space for months at a time, that having someplace on board where a large group of people could watch movies when they aren't on shift would be a good idea. Or with all the kind of computer resources that have access to the knowledge of the universe and replicators and such, it would seem like it would be possible for there to be a couple thousand movies in the databanks as well.

And there is video communication in that universe, but people don't really seem to take home movies. I know people have made logs, but those were all official. My memory isn't bringing up any instances where someone filmed their children doing things or stuff like that.

That's not to mention the absence of television or episodic entertainment as well.

Now given how some of the holodeck programs run, it is clear that someone somewhere in the history of that technology had seen genre film (like Tom Paris's sci-fi serial based holodeck simulations and Picard/Riker's film noire styled holodeck adventures), but it seems like for the most part, film does not exist as an artform in that era.

But when I think about it, it seems that in a lot of movies about the far future, it seems that film doesn't exist.

From Pinkeye To The Big Time

I wonder how many people, upon seeing Jonah Hill in The 40 Year Old Virgin thought that one day he was going to be nominated for an Oscar.

Then again, I never thought 2 actors from Big Momma's House would both be nominated for Academy Awards in the same year, so anything truly is possible in Hollywood.

Let's just hope that 21 Jump Street doesn't prove to be Hill's Norbit... you know, the thing that kills his chances of winning the award like that latter movie killed Eddie Murphy's chances the year he was nominated.

Sunday Night Video: Dora The Explorer's Incepcion

*slow applause*

SOPA and PIPA

The SOPA and PIPA bills would affect me personally if they passed, and they would adversely affect most of you as well.

This blog is in part built on mashups, remixes and music videos, all of which would be grounds to remove it from the internet if SOPA and/or PIPA passed. In addition, I have on occasion used materials for the purposes of criticism or commentary, which again would put this blog in the line of fire if someone decided they didn't like what I had to say or felt it was in the best interest of the company they represented to be very zealous in enforcing their copyright.

Even without those threats to this blog on an individual level, I would also have to worry about the potential problems Google and Blogger would face if those bills were to pass.

Because these bills also remove the protections that hosting sites have had in the past, they would be liable for the actions of their users, which means that even the most innocent of user transgressions would have serious consequences for the companies that make up the backbone of our community. That means that blogging as a whole would suffer, especially in political and pop culture/entertainment circles.

I'll get to the political part a little later, but let's start with the pop culture thing first since I do have some experience in that arena. Since as a group, we post videos a lot, it makes it difficult to do our hobby if we are always looking over our shoulder, afraid that the music video we posted hyping a new band, or the snippet of a movie shown on an entertainment program would end up killing our blog without due process or a chance to remedy the situation after being notified. In fact, you could be entirely innocent and have your blog become inaccessible because someone else on the same server is breaking copyright and because you share the same bit of webspace, you are punished. If for example, this blog was on the same server as a blog that featured a video where someone was discussing and showing clips from a Hollywood blockbuster, we could both be tarred with the same brush because we are sharing the same service.

Which, when you think about it, sort of sounds like what the RIAA did to a lot of people in their earlier battle against people for file sharing. They used dubious methods using IP addresses to try to coerce people into paying outrageous settlements when they had no case.

And with political blogs, think about how much footage of candidates and political stories appear on one of the major cable and radio news networks. Let's say you had a site or blog which was critical of one or more of these networks and you used footage from one of them to demonstrate your point as part of your rights under fair use in criticism and commentary. In the post-SOPA/PIPA world, the network in question could have your site taken down without going through legal channels and without you having the ability to defend yourself.

If you think what I am saying is far fetched, I need only mention the fact that last month the Universal Music Group had videos supporting Megaupload taken down when they had absolutely no legal right to demand that since they owned absolutely none of the content. And that was before they had the power granted to them by those two bills.

I've had my site scraped and had my content stolen by spamblogs many times in the past, so I know it sucks to have your intellectual property stolen. But these bills aren't the solution to that.

As Clay Shirky from The Guardian has noted, they will have the effect of forcing sites worldwide to be far more invasive than they currently are to protect themselves from being blacklisted.

SOPA and PIPA are bad for almost everyone and it is my hope that the mounting public pressure against them will kill them both.

Comedy Gold: The Relationship Doppelganger

In situation comedies, there tends to be certain patterns that emerge as you watch characters traverse the world of relationships. One which I've noticed popping up more often than I had thought is the relationship doppelganger. To explain that simply, I mean instances where one character begins dating someone who is clearly a younger or slightly altered version of another character on the show.

I have broken these kinds of relationships into 4 different kinds.

The Oedipal: Examples: Frasier, Two and a Half Men

The lead character has just met the perfect woman, someone who makes them feel something they haven't felt in a long time. And then the other characters on the show meet the new girl and there is a stunning physical and at times, personality similarity to the lead character's mother. Everyone else can see it and is unnerved by it, but the character in question is in denial. It finally takes seeing their new lover in a situation which makes it clear that they are very much the embodiment of their mother for them to finally understand what they have done.

In the case of Frasier, it took seeing some home movies of his mother, played by the same actress as his character's girlfriend, Rita Wilson, for him to finally see that he was dating his mother. And on Two and a Half Men, Charlie had to see his current girlfriend with her two sons to finally see the parallels between her and his own mother. The fact that he stays with her after noticing it pushed the joke way too far though.

The Ex/Desired Lover: Examples: Friends, Frasier

A character either breaks up with another character on the show or they secretly long to be with them, and they then start dating someone who is very similar physically and in terms of personality to that person.

With Friends, there was a single episode which followed Rachel's admission that she wanted to be with Ross, and the ill fated list that angered her so. So she ends up dating Russ, who is also played by David Schwimmer. Ross hated Russ, even though all the things he hated were things that he himself did. Of course, everyone but Ross and Rachel could see from the outset that they were very much the same person, which said everything about Rachel's feelings for Ross.

And on Frasier, just before Niles was going to ask Daphne out, she met Rodney at a singles bar, a man who looked and acted very much like him. Unlike Ross however, Niles almost immediately realizes the similarity. In the end, Rodney ends up falling in love with the woman that Niles had started dating and in the final segment, Niles ends up comforting Daphne about the breakup.

And these last two examples are both Seinfeld spins on this kind of thing.

Dating Your Best Friend: George dated a girl who physically looked a little like Jerry. It wasn't until she got gum stuck in her hair and had to get a short haircut that he finally saw it.

Dating Yourself: Jerry got engaged to a girl played by Janeane Garofalo who was basically him as a woman. He decided that he couldn't date himself because he hates himself.

Now, there are likely other variations on this theme that I've missed, but I think you get the basic idea of this particular category.

Dungeon Defenders

Every time there is a major Steam sale, there is one game which I end up with which becomes the star of the show.

In the previous sales, it had been Beat Hazard Ultra, with a twist of the-then newly free Team Fortress 2.

In the holiday sale that ended a few weeks ago, the star ended up being a game called Dungeon Defenders.

And the thing is, I didn't end up buying the main game. Someone I know won a copy as part of the contest, but since they already had it, they gave it to me.

Then I bought everything else including DLC that is yet to be released, and I've put about 60 hours into it already.

The basic jist of the game is it combines tower defense with third person action RPGs in a world that is cel-shaded and cartoonish with a light fantasy story.

It is designed for 4-player co-op play, but it is also very approachable for solo play, and I've done a bit of both during my time with the game. There are some challenges which you need help on based on the logistics, so it is always better to play with the little help from your friends.

There are basically 4 different classes to build a character from: the Squire, who is your traditional knight-type character; the Apprentice, who is your basic mage; the Monk, who builds a lot of support towers and such; and the Huntress, who lays traps and uses crossbows and guns (and there is DLC which allows you to build the characters from the opposite side of the gender divide as well), and their abilities and towers complement each other. Take for instance, the monk has a tower which slows enemies down. When you pair that with the magical elemental towers of the Apprentice, it means that enemies are exposed to damaging projectiles for much longer.

It is a game that is simple from the outset, but which has a lot of depth, and is well worth investing time in, because I have one character almost at the top of the heap levelwise, but there is still a lot more stuff to get and more challenges to attack.

The game is currently available for the PC, PS3 and 360, though the PC version has a lot more DLC available (and is available worldwide, unlike the console versions which I've heard haven't been released in Europe or Australia yet).