Another popular movie is getting the 8-bit video game makeover treatment.
This time around it's Kill Bill, director Quentin Tarantino's tale of bloody vengeance. The video comes from CineFix, whose past 8-bit makeovers include the likes of Fight Club, Finding Nemo, and others.
Click on over to the other side now to watch the video. [...]
The post Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Kill Bill’ As An 8-Bit Game (Video) appeared first on Geeks of Doom.
Firewalking is the act of walking over blazing hot coals without being burned--or at least badly burned. In some cultures, doing so is a religious rite that serves as a test of faith. Physics teacher David Willey explains that it's possible because coarse coals are poor conductors of heat:
It would seem then, that a firewalk of short length is something any physically fit person could do and that it does not need a particular state of mind. Rather, it is the short time of contact and the low thermal capacity and conductivity of the coals that is important, and it is not necessary for the feet to be moist nor callused, although either may be of slight benefit. Longer walks appear to be possible if a layer of insulating ash is allowed to build up on a well packed down bed, where the temperature has been allowed to fall significantly from what it was when the coals were at their hottest.
LEGO bricks, however, are a different matter entirely. As any parent can tell you, a LEGO-strewn floor is a minefield. To promote The LEGO Movie, Bull Moose, an entertainment shop chain in Maine and New Hampshire, developed a firewalking path covered with LEGO bricks. Will you dare to take of your shoes and walk across it?
-via Blazenfluff
On last night’s Tonight Show, Chris Rock announced that, this fall, he’ll be embarking on his first comedy tour since 2008. Dubbed “The Black Plague Tour”—a name Rock says was given to him by Kanye West—the run of shows will find Rock “spreading the Black Plague all over the world.” While exact locations and dates have not yet been announced, it appears that Rock will be spending at least most of October and November on the road. This will all follow Rock’s upcoming hosting gig at the BET Awards on June 29—his first time hosting an awards show since the Academy Awards in 2005.
The hottest video on the Internet today—besides the one with the kids and the Weezer and the keyboard—is “Fartzenegger,” a clip that basically amounts to a bunch of fart sounds added to clips of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. And while The A.V. Club gets that, yes, this is certainly the kind of clip that is contributing to the downfall of our society and (the entirely false and offensive perception of) the decline of The A.V. Club, we’d be absolutely remiss if we didn’t share this video with our readers because, well, duh. <farrrrrrrrrt.>
So there’s that. Nathan Fielder created an Instagram earlier this month to promote the upcoming second season of Nathan For You. The photos he’s posted seem pretty normal upon first inspection, if only for the inclusion of some sort of reflective surface—be it sunglasses, a butter knife, or a CD—where you can see an old man with a huge penis touching himself. These images are NSFW-ish, obviously, depending on how close anyone is willing to look. Fielder’s latest post is arguably the most brilliant, with the lewd image reflected on the screen of an email from Instagram warning him about said lewd image.
If this seems shocking to anyone, remember that this is the same guy who rigged a machine to pull his pants down in front of children if he couldn’t escape a pair of handcuffs.
Nathan For You
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There’s something beautiful about a festival free of EDM and getting trampled by 18-year-olds in tutus—it’s hard to imagine these people getting this pumped for Aziz Ansari’s jokes about texting—and there’s something even more beautiful when it involves seeing some of the funniest comics around. For the second year in a row, Funny Or Die and Live Nation provides the best of those both worlds with its Oddball Festival. This year’s slated performers include Marc Maron, Reggie Watts, Amy Schumer, Aziz Ansari, Louis C.K., and many more. The 21-stop tour will feature two stages of stand-ups, the Cut Throat Freak Show, and a “roaming troupe of misfit performers.” Tickets go on sale Saturday, June 28 at 10 a.m. local time via Live Nation or Funny Or Die. There are currently presale tickets available—but only for Citi card users, because that ...
With the proliferation of the “gritty reboot,” everyone from Batman to Peter Pan to Dorothy is getting a more down-to-earth and darker retelling. So why would the favorite cartoons from the Nickelodeon archives be any different?
They shouldn’t, dammit.
So someone went ahead and gave them ALL gritty reboots, and managed to do so in a pretty authentic fashion. That is to say, the images look like what the TV shows themselves would have done to give their characters a facelift, rather than just making Rocko look like a character in Sin City.
Here are the pics:
The post If Nickelodeon Rebooted Its Iconic Cartoon Characters, It Might Look Like This appeared first on Screen Junkies.
There are a lot of pretty interesting things done with posters and album covers these days. Many are minimalist, some are abstract. Most are pretty damn impressive.
And these posters, which take new films and create faux-classic movie posters for them, are no exception. Take a gander, and be glad that you weren’t tasked with this.
Enjoy more of Stults’ work here.
The post Kudos To Peter Stults For Reimagining Recent Films As Classic Film Posters appeared first on Screen Junkies.
CoreyI have been looking into this the past few weeks. I am not a coffee drinker, but would try if I was. I'm trying to find a decent tea recipe for it.
If you aren't drinking your own Bulletproof/butter coffee right this second then it's like you don't even know about things that everyone is doing now. So let's talk more about this new trend that is not really new but looks to be headed straight for a mainstream near you.
CoreyAll fantastic.
New Line Cinema
There was a time when the comedic cameo was a special, timeless treat. It would blend fiction and reality in an irresistible way, one that that might accentuate the rant of a neurotic New Yorker, like Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall, elaborate on the subtext of comic books like Stan Lee in Mallrats, set the scene of the narrative like the many grunge cameos in Singles, or embody the dream of every struggling college student when paper-subject Kurt Vonnegut pops up to give Rodney Dangerfield some help in Back to School.
The above are all contextual, rare and so particular that they’re still remembered all these years later. They were both a viewer treat and an addition that added legitimacy to the film’s message. But what about today?
Cameos have shifted from the exception to the norm – I Love You Man, This is the End, Veronica Mars, Zombieland and The Hangover are some of the many modern comedies that throw in a cameo just to have one (some good, others not so much). There are films that get away with it – one can’t blame the 21 Jump Street folks for wanting some source material cameos, for instance – but generally, it’s about a wacky pop culture fun.
Ten years ago it was already wearing thin. In a piece at Slate, Adam Sternbergh wrote of the rising ironic cameo culture during the release of Dodgeball, and concluded: “the satire fizzled. So many people were in on the joke that it stopped being a joke at all.” The exception has become the rule.
Cameos are no longer dictated by context, but absurdity. Step by step, the surprise is becoming the expected, the memorable disappearing for the fleeting and time-dependent smirk. Can the modern cameo hope to hold the same humor ten, twenty or thirty years down the line? Time will tell, but in the interim, here’s a look at 8 films that helped make cameos the comedic norm, and don’t seem as indelibly timeless as their predecessors.
If anything ushered in the new era of unexpectedly absurd cameos, it’s Bob Barker in Happy Gilmore. The original The Price is Right host plays himself, totally peeved to be teamed with Gilmore as the ex-hockey player lands them on the bottom of the tournament scoreboard. Happy wants to fight and Bob obliges, easily besting him.
The cameo relied on a double serving of surprise – that Barker appeared (his only big-screen role) and beat the crap out of Gilmore. The cameo became an opportunity for self-indulgence, to imagine an absurd scenario for a pop culture celebrity and make it a reality.
Before Jimmy Kimmel’s viral videos, Kevin Smith was the guy to remind us that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were just as goofy as they were Oscar-winning dramatic screenwriters. As Jay and Silent Bob set out to stop a movie, they find themselves on the set of Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season. Affleck’s a goof, Damon is a badass, and along with a severe lack of help from Gus van Sant, they turn their Oscar winner into some sort of action film.
The true test of comedic willingness is whether Smith’s film gets a nod when Good Will Hunting becomes a television series. As for this cameo, it helped usher in the era of friendly pop-ups – the gigs that remind us of the male friendship networks feeding Hollywood (Rogen/Apatow, etc).
It’s no wonder that 2004’s Dodgeball was the focus of Sternbergh’s piece. The comedy structured itself around cameos, from Lance Armstrong and his testicle trauma to the two guys who made this list. All are nods to a particular moment and pop culture landscape.
As Sternbergh wrote of Hasselhoff’s cameo, “the gag only works because we know about Hasselhoff’s outsized and somewhat comical popularity in Germany.” The film reframes the cultural cameo as one of the time, and Hasselhoff is the epitome of it – his nod not referring to his celebrity or work overall, but to his location-sensitive fame.
And then there’s Chuck Norris, who is there purely for indulgence, to give a thumbs up and inspire a few quotes and F-bombs – a habit that was becoming the norm after comedies like Happy Gilmore first relished in the mix of celebrity and vulgarity.
Brett Favre’s cameo might seem totally random in There’s Something About Mary, and that’s because it was. Though a cameo was desired to show just how far Cameron Diaz’s allure stretched, it wasn’t actually written for Favre. He was the plug-and-play sports pop up.
As Boston sports fans, the Farellys wanted to give the role to Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe, but having just come off a mosh pit scandal, he declined. Favre ended up in the role, but only after Steve Young passed as well. It might even be the one time a character voices the audience’s response: “What the hell is Brett Favre doing here?” Matt Dillon asks.
I wonder what it must be like to watch Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle for the first time today. Does it seem strange that Barney Stinson would be high on ecstasy and change a road trip into an insane adventure? Not likely.
Though NPH had never stopped working over the years, he was still Doogie Howser to the masses in 2004, but now all grown up and doing drugs instead of being a medicinal prodigy and avid computer journaler. The cameo was a hit and reinvigorated his career. In one year he got his gig on How I Met Your Mother, and now he’s an Emmy-winning actor, show host, song and dance man, take your pick.
The cameo was time-specific, and some ten years later, without long-running syndication, its resonance has changed entirely, the cameo becoming the career.
What do many of these films have in common? Ben Stiller. Of course, that means his wonderfully ridiculous Zoolander would be no exception. In a world of male models, many cameos come into play, none more random than David Bowie in his “I can’t believe you nabbed the space oddity” cameo.
It’s cameo on top of cameo. Billy Zane announces there will be a walk-off before he puts a cork in it, then Bowie ups the ante, arriving to judge it. It’s purely a moment to boast, as Bowie pauses on screen as a line of his “Let’s Dance” plays, and his name flashes on the screen. He isn’t there as a character, or to play off his celebrity. He’s purely there to be a cameo.
Finally, Tom Cruise in Goldmember (or rather, “Austinpussy”) is another good example of how pop culture cameos change. Cruise played the quintessential hot Hollywood version of the less-than-hot real source material. The basic looks and lines are there, but more polished and alluring. The cameo, of course, was nodding to Cruise’s position as the action star of Mission: Impossible and Minority Report.
But it also came right before his image explosion where star power was replaced with Scientology drama and the Oprah incident. The cameo took on a different hue, a strange nod to a time before the tabloid sensation and absurdity placed on an already absurd joke. But now, as Cruise slips back into the action mold, it look like it will change the resonance yet again. Who knows how it will read in another ten years?
"7 Comedies That Made Pop Culture Cameos the New Norm" was originally published on Film School Rejects for our wonderful readers to enjoy. It is not intended to be reproduced on other websites. If you aren't reading this in your favorite RSS reader or on Film School Rejects, you're being bamboozled. We hope you'll come find us and enjoy the best articles about movies, television and culture right from the source.
CoreyI do this whenever possible.
Tipping can be confusing—not just figuring out how much to tip , but also knowing how your tip is really being applied . One thing you might not know about tipping is that restaurant servers might not get as much of the tip if you leave it on your credit card.
CoreyI don't care what anyone says, I love these movies.
From James Gray’s The Immigrant to Richard Linklater’s Boyhood, there’s no shortage of thoughtful, nuanced pictures out this summer. But sometimes, you don’t want thoughtful and nuanced. Sometimes, you just want to turn your brain off for a couple hours and watch famous people blow stuff up real good.
That’s where The Expendables 3 comes in. The latest entry in the summer blockbuster franchise brings together Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, and so many more for a noisy adventure that involves big-ass guns, expensive explosions, gravity-defying motorcycle stunts, and, well, pretty much everything else we’ve come to expect from an Expendables movie. Watch the Expendables 3 trailer after the jump.
[via IMDb]
The plot of Expendables 3 involves some history between our heroes, led by Stallone’s Barney, and the villain, played by Gibson. But mostly, it’s an excuse to cram as many stars and as many explosions as possible into a feature-length film. We’re not complaining.
Directed by Patrick Hughes, The Expendables 3 also stars Terry Crews, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Kellen Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Victor Ortiz, Glen Powell, Antonio Banderas, Kelsey Grammer, and Wesley Snipes. It’s out August 15.
In THE EXPENDABLES 3, Barney (Stallone), Christmas (Statham) and the rest of the team comes face-to-face with Conrad Stonebanks (Gibson), who years ago co-founded The Expendables with Barney. Stonebanks subsequently became a ruthless arms trader and someone who Barney was forced to kill… or so he thought. Stonebanks, who eluded death once before, now is making it his mission to end The Expendables — but Barney has other plans. Barney decides that he has to fight old blood with new blood, and brings in a new era of Expendables team members, recruiting individuals who are younger, faster and more tech-savvy. The latest mission becomes a clash of classic old-school style versus high-tech expertise in the Expendables’ most personal battle yet.
The post ‘The Expendables 3′ Trailer: “Courageous, But Insane” appeared first on /Film.
CoreyIt's gonna be good.
The film Guardians of the Galaxy is scheduled to be released on August first. The movie is based on the Marvel superhero team that first debuted in 1969, although they have undergone many changes over the years. Still, many of us were not aware of the group until we started hearing about the movie. And in the few weeks left before it opens in theaters, we get to deconstruct it as much as we can without any proof of its quality. But if you look at it in a certain way, as Dorkly illustrates in their latest comic, it’s liable to be awesome.
There are plenty of bad digital photo manipulation projects out there, and people post photoshop disasters on a daily basis that remind us how bad it can be if you go a little too far with that clone stamp or eraser tool, but there are also plenty of digital artists out there using photoshop to create masterful manipulations for the enjoyment of us all.
Martin De Pasquale is one of these photoshop wizards working for the power of good, and with his digital art skills he’s able to bring his wildest dreams, and a few freaky nightmares, to life with lots of visual appeal.
He was even nice enough to post a behind-the-scenes video for us to watch and learn from, so future photoshop fails can be avoided, and budding digital artists can learn to use their powers for good instead of evil.
-Via Bored Panda
CoreyDool.
Mobile Relationship by Manu Cornet
Who's the boss? Your smartphone or you?
Manu Cornet of Bonkers World shows us in just two panels the horrendous reality of our relationship with our mobile phones. All that's missing is that cruelly addictive app 2048, whose super power is erasing hours of productivity out of your day.
Now pardon me as I have to go charge my new mobile overlord phone.
That little white plastic thingy that comes in your pizza box? Supposedly it's a device called the pizza saver, used to prevent the top of the box from collapsing at the center and ruining your pizza. That's what the pizza industrial complex said anyways.
We know better. All these years, pizza delivery companies have been shorting us the companion to that little pizza table: the mini pizza chair.
The editing geniuses at The Tonight Show have done it again, making NBC news anchor Brian Williams perform Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” But he’s not alone, because others of the NBC news team lend a hand here and there. -via Warming Glow
See also:Other rap sings by Brian Williams.
Champion father and member of io9's greatest breakout stars of 2013 , BatDad is back! And just in time for Father's Day. We missed you, BatDad — you are just the best.
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