Fight Club

This is a fascinating post about the evolution of the Hollywood fight scene. It starts with Charlton Hesston in The Big Country (1958), and takes 10 steps through Bruce Lee, The Matrix, Jason Bourne, and the revival of the long edit.

His remarks about each clip are spot on, though he does tend to enjoy the long edits more than I do. We share a dislike for the MTV Aesthetic/Shaky Cam which The Bourne Supremacy fell prey too and Ultimatum recovered slightly from.

On the other end, I can respect the desire and skill of the long edit most recently championed by Tony Jaa and Prachya Pinkaew. While they might claim inspiration from Bruce Lee, they fail to incorporate any of his style.

I believe the best fights can be found somewhere in between the stylized wire fu Morpheus/Neo fight from The Matrix and the WTF shaky cam of Bruce Wayne/Prisoners in Batman Begins. Examples of such scenes can be found in The Borne Identity, Kill Bill, and Troy.

TR2N

Who remembers TRON? Everyone does! Well, the long awaited sequal is finally making it to the big screen. The folks at San Diego Comic Con were there to witness the teaser trailer release.

Accordingly, bootleggers with shaky cams were there to. Let's watch...



Update: In Soviet Russia, bootleg video finds YOU!!

Foaming At The Mouth

In 1997, more than 700 school children showed up in hospitals after suffering an epileptic seizure. The cause turned out to be the cartoon show Pokemon. Flashing lights and fast edits were so effective at inducing seizures that the news clips aired the following day sent another surge of folks to the hospital.

Fast forward to present day and it seems we have actually learned something. Part of Sony's quality assurance is an epilepsy test, and the anticipated game, WipEout, failed miserably. A futuristic racing game, WipEout's fast moving neon tracks caused so many problems the art direction is being completely re-engineered.



It's a wonder that they continue to bother with the game at all. It feels like the current publisher environment would instead cancel it completely, but the PS3 really needs the games.

Where The Hell Is Matt?

This guy, Matt, was a game developer for Pandemic Studios in 2003. He came up with the idea for Destroy All Humans! as a joke despairing about the direction of the Xbox and the game industry. The studio didn't get the joke and green lit the project.

He quit in disgust and spent all his money traveling abroad. As a memento to all the places he traveled, he started filming himself doing a silly dance that is somewhat of a calling card.

This video won him his 15 minutes of fame on YouTube, but more importantly it got the attention of Stride Gum. They decided to pay for his dancing around the world. And this is the result...

ROCK AND ROLL!!!

The music game industry is really taking off, and I have to say I'm hooked. I really enjoy banging on plastic drums like I know what I'm doing. In that vane, there have been three announcements that I thought you should know about the future of rock.

1. Rock Band 2 will import all of your downloaded songs from Rock Band. Do not worry; your copy of Roxanne will be easily available in RB2. Harmonix doesn't distinguish between RB2 downloads and RB1 downloads which means the opposite is true as well. You can download all the new songs into RB1.

2. The RB2 set list has been released. You cannot get these songs unless you buy RB2, and you obviously want these songs.

3. Red Octane finally got their shit together. Guitar Hero World Tour will support all of the Rock Band instruments. They even shrink their 5 button drum chart to 4 buttons to accommodate. That's so nice of them.

So much music, so little time...

Good Morning

I was talking to a friend recently about waking up in the morning. She explains to me that alarm clocks don't work for her. She just sleeps through the buzzing relying on her husband to kick her out of bed.

In an effort to poke fun at her in the most efficient manner, I went looking for a bigger better alarm clock.

Meet the Sonic Bomb:



Capable of dealing anywhere from a gentle squawk to 113 decibels of ear piercing noise, this alarm clock is designed to drag you out of bed and beat you awake. At 113 decibels with the bed shaker this alarm is equivalent to sleeping on your lawn mower.

Speaking of Beer...

Anheuser-Busch pulled complete reversal in attitude toward InBev yesterday. Initially InBev made an unsolicited offer of $46 billion, or $65 per share. When Anheuser turned them down, InBev switched to a proxy attack. Basically they would buy enough shares to vote Anheuser's board members off one at a time. The theory being that a new board would look favorably on InBev.

Well, this move apparently scared the Anheuser's board. I'm sure each one of them was thinking about the profits they would miss out on if they were the first member to get booted.

August A. Busch IV, Anheuser’s CEO, is still fighting the merger. In an effort to quickly make the company more profitable he said he's prepared to cut Anheuser’s work force by 15%.

I'm sure Budweiser drinkers will appreciated the layoffs.

Update: It's official. Anheuser-Busch will be acquired by the Belgium company InBev for $49.91 billion, or $70 a share.

Tequila!

Generally speaking beer is my alcohol of choice. I don't drink it exclusively, just more often than other forms of alcohol. As a result I don't know very much about hard liquor.

Well this article turned out to be very educational about the wonders of Tequila. It confirmed what we already know about Cuervo Gold. Namely that it's the Keystone Light of tequila. More interesting is that Patron USE to be artisan tequila, but the company has moved into big business and no longer uses 100% blue agave.

Ultimately the author claims that when making a margarita, look for the goat.

Guns! Guns! Guns!

I didn't grow up with any hunters or hang out with any. My mother's family hunted occasionally, but for the most part guns weren't a part of my life. However, that has changed as I've gotten older, and there are now a couple of hunting events that occur with my extended family. In order to participate, I have to get my Hunter's Safety License.

You wouldn't think this would be a hard task, but it turns out that in my part of the country they don't teach Hunter's Safety. The closest course is over an hours drive away, and it's taught every three months.

All is not lost as I have finally scheduled the course after a year of trying. In celebration of my success, I present to you "How Not To Shoot A Gun".

It's A Small City After All

To finish our New York adventure we wondered into the Disney Store on 5th Ave. It's a 3 story mecca to all things Disney. This turned out to be more entertaining for all of us than FAO Schwartz. They had movies running, crafting areas, and giant walking Disney characters. Best of all they had Mr. Potato Head.

I don't mean they were just selling Mr. Potato Head. They had a 10 foot tower of separated parts that dumped into a bin at the bottom. You would grab your potato and work your way around the tower to each of the stations. One station had nothing buy left arms, right arms at the next station etc. They even had Star Wars Potatoes!

After having our fill, we had some excellent Mexican food down the street to finish off our night. On our way back to the Hotel, we walked right by Studio 54 without so much of a backwards glance. It was then I realized that the vacation was a success.

We'd become jaded New Yorkers.

I'll Have What She's Having

Yes, Katz Deli was quite the experience. You get a ticket when you arrive, and you're told to hold onto that ticket for the entire meal. We thought this very odd, but we went along. Turns out the waitress will 'validate' your ticket after you've paid. If you attempt to leave the deli without a validated ticket, you will be charged $50 per ticket. I imagine this significantly cuts down on the dine and dash.

We did see a celebrity while we were eating, but we can't think of his name. In fact we couldn't think of where we had seen him before. All we could remember is that he always plays an old Jewish professional. If only IMDB had a search for old white men in supporting roles.

MONEY

Our final day out and about in New York is a bit of a hodgepodge of attractions. Our first order of business is a set of bull nuts.



The lesser seen side of the Charging Bull is an incredibly popular attraction. Roughly 20 people are perpetually photographing this statue near Wall Street. We arrived as people were leaving, rubbed his bronze balls for luck, and were replaced by more tourists as we wondered on.

The New York Stock Exchange lies at the corner of Wall and Broad St and sports a ridiculously huge American flag. There were officers with M16 on patrol, but they weren't guarding NYSE. They were guarding 23 Wall St, the building across the street. It used to be the JP Morgan Trust, but these days it's being converted into apartments that apparently need heavily armed guards.

One can expect to pay 4.6 million for a two bedroom, but where else can you get a view like this: