So when the BBC approached Mr. Davies in late 2003 to update "Doctor Who" for the 21st century, he was already teeming with ideas. "It's a genuine love of mine," he said, "and loving a program means you're not blind to its faults."
19. Revenge of the Nerds 2 - Nerds in Paradise
18. Battle for the Planet of the Apes
17. Star Trek V: The Final Frontier
My favorite Trek joke goes ''What do they call Star Trek in Japan?'' Answer: Sulu, Master Navigator.
12. Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
8. Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan
None of the Camp Crystal Lake killathons are what you'd call good, but this one's unwatchable. Even the ways Jason dispatches his victims aren't very creative, unless you consider a speargun creative...and I think they used that in Part III.
7. The Fly II
Weekend At Bernie's II
2. Caddyshack II
Again with the classy Roman numerals! This is one of the most brilliant marketing ploys ever. I don't know anyone who'd want to see Caddyshack 2, but Caddyshack II? Let me put on my ascot and monocle and I'm there! Unfortunately, Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, and the late great Ted Knight are not there.
NEC's "KotoHana" LED flower knows how you feel
It's pretty hard to tell what's going on here, but there seems to be a "Sensibility Technology" that recognizes the user's feelings, and then tells the flower over a wireless connection.
| You Should Get a MFA (Masters of Fine Arts) |
 You're a blooming artistic talent, even if you aren't quite convinced. You'd make an incredible artist, photographer, or film maker. |
"I wait for the postman to bring me a letter/I wait for the good Lord to make me feel better/And I carry the weight of the world on my shoulders...Tell me the truth, did you ever love me?"
| This Is My Life, Rated | |
| Life: |  3.3 |
| Mind: |  4.1 |
| Body: | 3.1 |
| Spirit: |  5 |
| Friends/Family: |  1 |
| Love: | 0 |
| Finance: | 2.9 |
| Take the Rate My Life Quiz | |
But hey, who knew my spirit was in such good shape, huh? Suddenly I feel like Tom Baker should be making that speech in Ark In Space about me...
Your Social Dysfunction: Schizotypal You display social deficits and oddities of thinking. Your perception and communication are similar to those of a schizophrenic. | ||||
| ||||
Take this quiz at QuizGalaxy.com Please note that we aren't, nor do we claim to be, psychologists. This quiz is for fun and entertainment only. Try not to freak out about your results. |
a hodgepodge of movie cliches and bad acting that's sure to generate unintentional laughs. Unfortunately, the movie is not bad enough to be good.
Crooks and Liars has a video up of what appears to be a Presidential video conference recorded a day or more before Katrina made landfall and flooded the city of New Orleans. The video shows both FEMA Director Mike "Heckuva job" Brownie saying he had a gut feeling this would be the "big one" and storm meteorologist Max Mayfield standing in front of a radar image indicating a breach in the levees, specifically from Lake Pontchartrain driven by high winds, was a concern...
Hoping to counteract the damage of the story, the White House leaked Newsweek transcripts from daily noon FEMA conference calls during and after Katrina to show how engaged and concerned Dubya was. Trouble is, these are transcripts that they had initially refused to provide to congressional investigators.
I can't recall offhand how many times the Administration has invoked the "dog ate my homework" excuse this year, but I'd have to take off my shoes to count them.
They really had to weigh the benefits of this one -- in order to try and prove that a narcissistic, elitist frat boy actually gave a shit about a bunch of dying poor people they had to bust their own lies:Some congressional investigators say it now seems somewhat ironic that having belatedly found the Aug. 29 conference-call transcript, the administration is now touting it as evidence of deep presidential -- and White House -- involvement in the crisis.
Moya is curvaceous and sleek...
...behind the hull are numerous veins and hull tissues.
Because of it's power and speed, the Peacekeepers were keen to modify Leviathans for battle and breeding. They developed huge ‘collars’ and a number of other control devises and instigated a breeding programme (for which Moya was to be the prototype).
Moya has a couple of transports used for ferrying passengers to and from the ship, a docking beam used for assisting other visitors to the ship and a number of small drones called DRD's used for carrying out repairs and in some cases protecting the ship from aggressive guests.
More than one in three soldiers and Marines who have served in Iraq later sought help for mental health problems, according to a comprehensive snapshot by Army experts of the psyches of men and women returning from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places.
The accounts of more than 300,000 soldiers and Marines returning from several theaters paint an unusually detailed picture of the psychological impact of the various conflicts. Those returning from Iraq consistently reported more psychic distress than those returning from Afghanistan and other conflicts, such as those in Bosnia or Kosovo.
Stewart: ...what seems absurd to me is the length that Washington just seems out of touch with the desires of Americans to be spoken to as though they are adults.
I mean when you listen to Bush's speeches, and I'm leaving the Democrats out because I honestly don't feel that they make an impact. They have 49 percent of the vote and three percent of the power. At a certain point you go "Guys, pick up your game."
But Bush, you know the other day when he had the speech about us being addicted to oil, he says those things as though, you know, he just thought of it and we're disagreeing with him, like...everybody's been saying that. Jimmy Carter said it I think in 1978.
And he comes out, "What people don't realize is we're addicted to foreign oil" and he's saying it like you're going "Get out of here." ...And -- and his vice president did shoot a 78-year-old man in the face. Aaron Burr was the last vice president to shoot a guy in the face, [correction]Alexander Hamilton.
KING: And that was a duel.
STEWART: That was a duel based on personal integrity. This vice president thought a 78-year-old man was a bird. It happens....I cannot tell you how many times I'll turn around and go, "Grandpa?" Oh no, it's a pigeon.
Tens of thousands of Indians waving black and white flags and chanting "Death to Bush!" rallied Wednesday in New Delhi to protest a visit by President Bush.
Surindra Singh Yadav, a senior police officer in charge of crowd control, said as many as 100,000 people, most of them Muslim, had gathered in a fairground in central New Delhi ordinarily used for political rallies.
"Whether Hindu or Muslim, the people of India have gathered here to show our anger. We have only one message — killer Bush go home," one of the speakers, Hindu politician Raj Babbar, told the crowd.
"The West Wing" co-star Bradley Whitford has joined Aaron Sorkin's new show, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," with Sarah Paulson and Timothy Busfield also coming on board the NBC drama.
The WBTV-produced "Studio 60" is set behind the scenes of a fictional broadcasting network's flagship late-night sketch comedy show. Whitford will play a producer-director and recovering cocaine addict who has come back to run the sketch show he used to work for. Paulson plays a Christian fundamentalist, while Busfield will play the control-room director.
Busfield, who also enjoys a successful career as a TV director, also will serve as a producing director on "Studio 60."
Whitford won an Emmy in 2001 for his role on "West Wing."
Busfield often has collaborated with Sorkin. He starred in the Broadway run of Sorkin's "A Few Good Men"; was a director on the writer-producer's comedy for ABC, "Sports Night"; and recurred on "West Wing."
Amanda Peet of my obsessive daydreams, Matthew Perry of "Friends," Evan Handler, also a recurring on "West Wing" and Stephen Weber of "Reefer Madness."
To Do Today
posted by Thesaurus Rex Monday, February 27, 2006
Find a Republican.
Confirm that they voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004.
Say, "This whole Iraq thing? Thank you for that. Heck of a job."
Walk away.
Unlike the earlier benefits, the bulk of last night's presentation was done by one guy--Michael Johnson, a Pixar technical guy who's also a board member at the museum. That was fine; he did a great job, giving a talk that was about both Pixar's film-making process and its perspective on the world.
He began by stating three Pixar rules of success:
1. Casting, casting, casting. (ie, nothing is more important than the team you hire)
2. Hire people smarter than yourself.
3. Art as a team sport. ("51 percent is plays well with others.")
* Johnson said that all Pixar productions begin as 2D ideas. Some of the artists who work on ideas like to use real-world art materials; others work digitally, using Wacom's Cintiq tablets. That's fine: "We take no position on paper."
* He showed a great little film about all the work that went into giving The Incredibles' Violet plausible long hair. It had never been done before and was a huge technical challenge: "Violet's hair brought this production to its knees."
* Random quote: "We don't want real-looking humans--they're kind of creepy...reality is just a useful measure of complexity."
In case you hadn't heard, Bush's approval rating is now at 34 percent. Breaking into the 20s is beginning to seem more and more like a real possibility. All it would take, quite frankly, is just one more flame-out of incompetence. Just one more port deal, or Iraq continuing its slide into civil war.
I'm not rooting for those things to happen. I just think they're going to.
And Republicans get overwhelming support from our military. Except, of course, when they don't. From AmericaBlog:
72% of US troops in Iraq want us to withdraw in a year
by John in DC - 2/28/2006 11:19:00 AM
That's the Murtha plan, a Democratic plan, that our troops are supporting. Remember that, oh Democrats who were afraid to support Congressman Murtha (Mr. Hoyer, uh hum). Democrats represent mainstream American values now. Believe it, and trumpet it. You don't get credit for coming to the party late - embrace these policies now.
From the NYT via E&P:A poll of U.S. troops currently serving in Iraq—reportedly the first of its kind—shows that 72% advocate a U.S. pullout within a year, with only 23% for staying as long ”as necessary,” reports Nicholas Kristof in his New York Times column today.
On the February 24 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, host Chris Matthews joined Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen F. Hayes in praising President Bush's handling of the controversial agreement to turn over control of six U.S. ports to a company owned by the government of Dubai. Matthews compared Bush to Atticus Finch -- the Alabama lawyer who "represents morality and reason" in Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird (Warner Books).-- Media Matters for America
Matthews's comparison of Bush to Finch -- a character portrayed by Gregory Peck in a 1962 film adaptation (Brentwood Productions, Pakula-Mulligan, Universal International Pictures) of the novel, and voted the number one movie hero of all time by the American Film Institute -- is just the most recent example of his over-the-top praise for Bush.
It starts out introducing our favorite man, John Conyers, and questions him on just what he was thinking by introducing a resolution "to make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment” in a Republican-majority House, given how the neocon Congress are nothing more than lemmings (slight paraphrase). Conyers goes to brass tacks in answering why:“To take away the excuse,” he said, “that we didn't know.” So that two or four or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, “Where were you, Conyers, and where was the United States Congress?” when the Bush Administration declared the Constitution inoperative and revoked the license of parliamentary government, none of the company now present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity, can say that “somehow it escaped our notice” that the President was setting himself up as a supreme leader exempt from the rule of law.
I don’t know where to put my eyes first, or where to avert them from. Her neck is broken. Her head’s too big for her body. Her sleeve appears to be as wide as my ass.
And he has a bleeding rose in his crotch.
He is bummed too that the academy did not nominate "Grizzly Man" for best documentary, because of the high-concept commentary he might have wrung from Werner Herzog's existential rumination on the bear lover eventually eaten in the wilds.
Stewart explains, "I very much wanted to do a bit where the bear from 'Grizzly Man' and one of the penguins from 'March of the Penguins' came out to present best documentary. Only the bear would come out and I would go over and go, 'YOU PROMISED ME! YOU PROMISED ME! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID IT! WHAT ARE WE GONNA TELL HIS WIFE?'
BRUCE VILANCH, the wild-haired gag writer and gay activist celebrating his Oscar "Sweet 16," has his own ideas for a "Brokeback Mountain" bit ("I was hoping for a seminude kick line, but I lost") and for dealing with Clooney ("With a bottle of wine and some date-rape drugs").
"The show could end with gay cowboys and Truman Capote and a 'tranny,' " a.k.a. a transvestite from "Transamerica," Vilanch says. "Not what the red states are used to."
Stewart says he consulted Crystal, Steve Martin and Rock and all advised him not to try to outthink either the academy or the audience, just trust his instincts and have fun. That and, "Chris said, 'Go there with a passport, $10,000 and a fake beard. And if you have to head to Mexico, you head to Mexico.' "
"I'm not doing this for posterity," he says of hosting Oscar night. Stewart leans back behind his desk and explains how these awards are a 78-year-old entity and a pretty sweet franchise and he'll be borrowing interest from it, not the other way around. Can he bring a slightly different atmosphere? "That may be," he says.
"My impulse is always to start with absurdity, either the absurdity of me doing it, or whatever the absurdity may be of this year's films … I'll do that or I will come up with a song parody that somehow figures out a way to rhyme 'Syriana' and 'Capote,' which is not going to be easy,"
one of the blog world’s authentic voices: a free-market capitalist, Ayn Rand-quoting libertarian who isn’t awed by power or transported by dreams of Middle Eastern empire.
At one time, libertarianism represented a serious and vital intellectual tradition, one that included thinkers and writers of great significance such as Hayek and von Mises. The faux "libertarians" of today, who are especially and annoyingly numerous among bloggers, have rendered genuine libertarianism unrecognizable. For the moment, libertarianism's reputation has been almost entirely destroyed and deservedly so, if one considers only its loudest contemporary advocates. These phony libertarians have no understanding at all of the principles they claim to be defending, and genuine liberty can find no place in their world view.
It's over, folks. Cong. Murtha's "extreme" position of only some three months ago is now mainstream conservative conventional wisdown. Only time will tell if the rest of the Dems join in, or whether the conservatives will get credit for "saving us" from Iraq. And only time will tell if the Dems are smart enough and crafty enough to label the Republicans as abject failures.
If Iraq was key to the war on terror, as Bush has said so many times, then his failure there has put our country at even more risk. Just like the Dubai ports deal, George Bush is making life in America and this world more dangerous by the day.
"The director of the film (Bennett Miller) and I went to college together and the writer (Dan Futterman) of the film, we all met when we were 16.
"We had this friend at the time, Steven, and we all made this drunken pact that if one of us ever won the Academy Award, that we would bark the whole acceptance speech."
"We were very serious," he continued. "Literally, we were like: 'I'll do that. I will definitely commit to that.' Bennett and I met with Steven recently in Los Angeles and he said: 'So remember we made this pact that you have to bark?'
"The thing is you can't just bark, you have to bark until they pull you off (the stage). Let's hope I don't have to get up there."
Until someone can point out the inherent logic to me of the John Dickerson's of the world who have concluded that we early opponents of the war were wrong to be right even as the warmongers were right in their wrongness, I think it's valid to keep harping on the scorecard. If not only to knock the struts out from underneath the GOP's plan to run on "national security" in 2006, then surely to figure out who should be listened to from here on in based on who has had a clear-eyed vision of this mess from the start, as distinct from those who most certainly have not.
Anyone who cares about a true romance. And by that I don't mean the kind of novel in which buxom redheads with names like "Wylde" are captured by scruffysexycool pirates and tied to the mast.
