7 posts tagged “video”
Okay, so Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes is doing the new Nightmare on Elm Street movie. It's probably a reboot, and, from what I hear, will largely crib from the first movie in the series. Whatever, they recently announced the director. His name is Sam Bayer, and he's never done a movie before, but he's a pop director. Really, this movie will be more about the writing than the directing, but here are some videos by Bayer, to give you a taste of who this guy is.
This is now officially a Movie I'd Be Willing to See. It has the potential to be both hacky and stabby (durf!). But seriously, I would.
One of the most e-mailed articles at the New York Times the other day was a little something about literacy, and how kids these day don't read actual books. When I was younger, I'm pretty sure it wasn't "cool" to read it, but I did it. I had friends who read, but, then, most of my friends were as socially outcast as myself, so we were in no way a barometer of what people (who don't want to be called fags) should be doing. I had RL Stine and the girls had their Babysitters club, and people with no taste had their Hardy Boys, and all was right. Nowadays, what is there even? Harry Potter can only teach so many of us how to read (right, Fantasia?). But the article mostly focuses on high school kids and they'd rather read fanfiction and flirt on Facebook than read Catcher in the Rye. Plus, books have too many fucking rules, right, dudes?
Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author’s vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.
Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line,” said Rand J. Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”
Yeah, chapters suck, bro! Life doesn't have a beginning...well, birth, but...and I guess it has an end too, with there being no cure for death or anything. Whatever, I read as many blogs as the next asshole, but I'm not trying to act like doing so makes me any smarter. I mean, I don't read Perez or anything, but I do read Gawker, and those guys can actually write, for the most part, but it's not a substitute for literature. And I don't care how good your Gossip Girl fanfiction is--read a book, it's different. It doesn't have to be Hemingway, but it would help if it's not just Buffy novelizations (though I've read that shit). I understand not reading a book to study (I have never read a book assigned to me at school except Gatsby, but I've read a lot of fucking books) or write a paper, since I also use Wiki and other information resources for tasks like that. And if a kid who only gets credit for his physicality has trouble reading, but likes reading online, then that's a solid; it's helped someone not feel inadequate, and maybe even a little brighter.
But...there's something to be said for someone devoting their life to a style and expressing themselves through writing, and focusing their energy on getting their work out there, and suffering just to be heard. There's a million stupid quotes from the article, so I shall direct you to it (I wrote a whole diatribe on it, but my work computer didn't save it, so fuck that) but i'm over it:
There's a new Harry Potter trailer out, though! It looks good. David Yates, the director, won over every Potter fan I know with OotP, but I'm still diggin on Azkaban pretty hard, though I'm rooting for this guy to kick my ass. He's got three tries, including the 2-part final movie, so we'll see.
The movie comes out on the 21st of November. Go read a goddamn book!
The New York Times peice.
And since we don't just want to hate on some chick without being nice to another, we'll throw out some approval to Selma Blair, who is in Hellboy 2, and about whom we never hear anything bad, so: Selma Blair, you're an awesome chick, so good for you.
I like a lot of music and other stuff from the '80s, but not like everybody else. I can't stand Bon Jovi, I think Top Gun kind of sucked (this is arguable), but I like a lot of stuff from that time. However, I think the 90s takes the cake as being a time when people began to "care more" about how their product was perceived. Blame it on grunge and irony, but even artists of dubious originality quotients (like, say, Silverchair), wanted you to know that they meant it. With hip-hop and R&B, even the most bubblegum of artists needed street cred, somehow, some way, and one way was to throw a rapper on the track. I mean, people still do this: I think even the Jonas Brothers have done this.
So, in the case of the group Total, they already had the cred because of Puffy, and because they were total tough and/or bullish-looking, depending on which member you were talking about. Could there be a total these days? I mean, the Jonas Brothes are prettier than them, but that's only because they are trying so hard to be--Total didn't give a shit about being pretty, not at first at least. Anyway, Mariah Carey's temporay proteges Allure actually needed the rap accompaniment, if they wanted Funkmaster Flex playing their shit that is. So that's what we get, some Total, some Allure. Happy Wednesday.
Bees: In which I don't hate something.
I found Glass Candy from the Chromatics, who I found from Liars. I don't know how I found Liars, but more on them some other time. The Chromatics used to be noisy and scary, but by the time I looked for, and found, them on Myspace, they played night-time disco music, and were on the same label as these guys. I like these guys a lot, although, going in cold, one might not know what to think at first. Anyway:
