shameless self promotion

I'm horrible at promoting myself but if you're out there and haven't heard it yet, feel free to check out my take on some music from The Fountain. Clint Mansell wrote an amazing score for the film and it was most excellent to get a chance to work with his source material. It looks as though my own effort will probably get slammed for being too reverential to the source material but I am more than happy with the result I got, linking one Mansell theme to another (from another film no less) in my own subtle way. I approached the endeavor with a "less is more" attitude, take it or leave it. Remixing really isn't my thing though, I prefer to work with my own ideas, no matter how bad they might be.

wish I had a time machine

I would go back in time and stop me from buying and later ingesting the burrito I purchased at 7-11 which calls itself "the bomb."

where is the pulse again?

The good news is that S-Mart--the soulless retailer that employs my sorry ass--is hiring. Why is this good news? Because someone at 20th Century Fox is going to need a job. Maybe a lot of people.

In one of the most spectacular miscalculations in recent history Fox reduced the amount of screens that Borat would open up on. They cut it down to a mere 800 screens... you could almost call that a limited release these days. The reason they cut the number of screens to feature the critically acclaimed comedy was they felt people would rather see something else, or perhaps anything else.

OOPS.

Borat pulled in 9 million duckie (half of its production budget right there) in one day on those 800 screens. That's pretty good for a film that no one wants to see, unlike the Santa Clause 3 which made just 5 million on four times as many screens.

Like I said: Oops

-after the original post-

Early estimates for the weekend have Borat #1 at the US boxoffice outpacing the family friendly double punch consisting of Tim Allen in a fat suit and the CG offering from Ardaman with 26 Million, and a worldwide take of 44 million dollars in 3 days. Having just seen the film, I can only say that it was even better than I was expecting and I expected it to be really good.

will someone please make some news?

CNN.com reports that "Joey Buttafuoco is getting a little break."

I must admit I have dreams of hearing the words "Joey Buttafuoco" and "break" in the same sentence, but that's not exactly what I had in mind.

"did john henry die for nothing?"

Last night some friends were over for nickel and dime poker. One of them told us how he refused to use the self-checkout at soulless retailers. In order to repel some of the derision and giggles he invoked the name of John Henry, great American folk hero.

Though I didn’t give him much support last night, the more I think about it, the more I have to agree. Self-checkout is an atrocity. It is a perfect metaphor for the soulless, faceless corporation that is gutting the “mom and pop” small town retailers.

It is also quite literally soulless and faceless, and when the machine revolution comes I can promise you the automated or “self” checkout units are going to be right there on the front lines... although I'm not quite sure what they will do exactly. Do they have arms? Anything they can stab with?

I think it could also be humiliating to some (not all, mind you) cashiers. Don’t you hate when someone walks into your place of employment—some Joe Schmoe off the street—and conveys that he can do your job as well as you can. When you shop at a store and use the self-checkout, you might as well shout to every cashier you see “I can do your job, asshole!”

Worst of all, the self-checkout is eliminating one more human aspect to our existence. Interaction is a vital part of being a human and the more we eliminate that from our lives the less human we become.

I for one am not going to use them ever again. Maybe I’ll have to wait a little longer. Maybe I’ll have to tolerate a real dumbass cashier every now and then. But at least I will retain my humanity.

If you use self-checkout, you are basically pissing on John Henry’s grave. You are also proclaiming your contempt toward the plight of the American worker. And since John Henry was black, it probably means you hate black people too.

have you met my good friend?

I have always had a very strange regard for MySpace. I will not deny that I do have an account of my own, I will probably not deny that I did it only because a friend of mine did one first, and I will never deny that it serves an important role in my life since it is the primary means by which I am able to stay in touch with certain people who mean a great deal to me.

Besides real friends, I have made “friends” with a handful of celebrities. Some of my celebrity friends—take Kevin Smith for example—are people who actually spend a lot of time on the internet and put a lot of effort into their pages. Others, like the Spinal Tap page, are not as fun as they should be because there is no real interaction going on.

I know that these celebrities aren’t really my friends, but it’s nice to pretend that they are every once in a while... I mean, that is what the internet is all about, right? Pretending?

Every once in a while one of my not-really-my-friends will post something that makes me think that we would be best buds if only given the chance. My latest not-really-my-friend is Darren Aronofsky, and he posted something in his MySpace blog about how procrastination is a part of writing.

I totally agree with that. I have always felt that procrastination and interruption are an integral part of the writing process but it’s not something they tend to teach in college or high school writing classes where all of your assignments have a due date.

It feels good to make a connection like that with someone who I look up to. Not only that, but considering his “educated” attitude towards writing, I can’t help but think Mr. Aronofsky is a guy who would not only purchase but truly appreciate my autobiography: Who is this Noodles person?

If you don’t believe me, check out a sampling from the first chapter…

“…I was born on the heels of the Watergate scandal in the heart of one of the most—Oh look, something shiny!”

So far that’s all I have. I hope you were able to get as much out of it as I put into it. It was a labor of love… Love for shiny, shiny things...

music at work

Each night while we're unloading the truck at S-Mart we listen to one of those radio stations that plays random music as a gimmick, even though they play pretty much the same random music every couple of nights.

One of the songs I hear every time I work is "Super Freak" by Rick James, which is a song I really dig.

Except for the line where he sings "She's a very freaky girl. The kind you don't take home to mother." That line doesn't sit well with me.

Rick James obviously never met my mother.

TV is confusing

Is it me, or is it strange that the new NBC show Friday Night Lights is going to be on Tuesday nights?

NOMAD

Anyone familiar with the whole scandal involving the Borat movie—as sad and hysterical as that is—is likely aware that in an effort to counter the “negative publicity” from Borat, Kazakhstan has made the most expensive movie in their country’s history. It’s called Nomad, and from what I have seen it has potential. If you don’t believe me take a look for yourself, although be warned that this page does play the first few minutes of the film automatically.

http://www.universcinema.com/ww/chfr/film/nomad.html

The film also has an official webpage—a page that plays music once it is all loaded up. You can view the trailer using the second link from the left hand side at the bottom of the page.

http://www.kochevnik-film.ru

The film looks both intriguing and epic, and promises plenty of violence so I’m already on board. I’m really taken by the production values, perhaps because I figured this movie would look lame… I can't say why I expected that, but I swear it is not because I am a huge Borat fan.

I’m 100% behind Borat. This is definitely one of the few movies I am looking forward to seeing this fall along with The Fountain, The Prestige, Tenacious D, and Babel… its looking to be a good season, which will be followed by a way decent winter considering Pan’s Labyrinth is due out before the end of the year and has already earned a nomination for the Mexican equivalent of an Academy Award in the foreign language category. Besides, anyone who doesn’t worship Guillermo Del Toro sucks rhino dick… that happens to be a crime in this and many countries… sucking the rhino dick, not harboring less than warm feelings for Mr. Del Toro although that should be.

But I digress…

I am intrigued that Nomad happens to star, among other American actors, a man named Mark Dacascos. This is the guy who plays “The Chairman” on Iron Chef America. Why do I worry that he will only have a cameo where he appears at some point with his Iron Chefs to announce that today’s secret ingredient is Sacha Baron Cohen’s nuts?

To be fair, Mark Dacascos is an impressive martial artist. The only movie I have seen him in is The Brotherhood of the Wolf, which has such amazing cinematography it will almost make you forget that it was made by a bunch of America hating French.

fall movie preview

I was going to take a moment and present a list of films set to be released this fall but as I looked over my information, there was only one burning question in my mind…

What’s the point?

The only movie worth seeing isn’t due out until next year, so why waste your money on films that will be arguably inferior and ultimately a waste of your time.

The film I speak of - My Name Is Bruce.

Anyone who has been waiting for Evil Dead 4 knows that the possibility of it being made is about as likely as Pat Robertson not being an anti-semite. Sam Raimi would have to run the Spiderman franchise into the ground and then some for there to be any remote chance of another Evil Dead.

My Name Is Bruce is a little film starring legendary B movie actor Bruce Campbell playing... well, Bruce Campbell as he is mistaken for Ash from the Evil Dead movies by the citizens of a town with a real demon problem.

What more do you need?

The film’s cast includes Ted Raimi, and since Bruce is also directing the film, we can be sure that there will be enough classic one-liners and fake shemping to last us for years and years.

My Name Is Bruce is currently in post-production and is set to be released next year.

As a side note to all of this, there are people all over the internet who keep calling this movie They Call Me Bruce which is actually the name of a very silly kung fu movie from the 80’s about a Korean guy who keeps getting mistaken for Bruce Lee. One of the scenes that sticks out in my mind is where he is trying to convince some cops that his nunchucks are his chopsticks. “I’m a big eater,” he says… but its been years since I’ve seen it. There is also a sequel called They STILL Call Me Bruce.