Freaky Robotic Hand

This is video of a robot hand made by researchers in Japan. This hand can do many things, very fast, and very accurately. The hand can dribble a ball on the table, pick up a grain of rice with tweezers, throw a ball, twirl a pen and toss something to itself and catch it. The video is about 3 minutes long, but really interesting. At least I know that when the zombie apocalypse happens, we'll be safe with robot-defense.

FAIL!

I just discovered a site, thanks to a friends' Facebook posting, about a site called Fail Blog. It's in the same vein as Awkward Family Photos in that it's a bunch of ridiculous stuff. If you've ever heard of the phrase "Epic Fail", it's an MMO video game term, then you know what this site will be about. The categories for the posts are limitless, but in every post someone has failed at something. For instance, the man with the clear plastic shopping bag over his head that he uses to stand in for safety goggles is labelled "Eye Safety Fail". Get it? Anyhow, here's a link to the site:

Fail Blog

And here are a few choice entries that have made me laugh out loud this morning.

Bus Ride Fail

Parenting Fail

Grocery Outlet Fail

Cardinal Fail

Disneyland Photo Fail

Haunted Mansion!

Disney's Haunted Mansion is 40 years old today, so to commemorate this, here are a couple fantastic YouTube videos about the my favorite ride in Disney World. (I am really bummed that I missed out on the Nightmare Before Christmas integration for the holiday season.)

Video Game Advertising

There is a current trend in video game TV advertising that gives a whole new meaning to the word "juxtaposition". Lately we've been getting a lot of violent material in our video games (which I love, but some don't) and the commercials for these games have been set to music that is the complete thematic antithesis of the video game content. Below are some examples. The best and most recent one is the final clip advertising Left 4 Dead. (Left 4 Dead is the most fun and most exhilarating zombie-fighting experience out there.)

Mercenaries 2

Batman Arkham Asylum

Gears of War

Gears of War 2

Fallout 3

Left 4 Dead 2

Halo 3

The music completely downplays what's going on visually and plays with your head a lot. If you didn't realize how important the balance of visuals and sound play when you watch a movie or TV show, now you know. The sound can transform what you're seeing in interesting ways. I love this style of advertising and I hope they continue to keep it up for a while.

Rob Zombie is like golf

Most of the time Rob Zombie makes some decent stuff, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere, he hits one out of the park. Just like me and golf. About 90% of the time I'm playing poorly enough to want to give up, but then I hit some great drive, and that one shot keeps me going.

This interview with Rob Zombie about the upcoming Halloween 2 is good. He mirrors my feelings about Halloween itself and why it didn't work. I will see Halloween 2 and I will go with optimism in my heart. Of course, I still don't feel he's going to wow me the way he did with The Devil's Rejects, but one can hope.

Here's the interview over at Aint It Cool News.

Two Things I'm Enamored with Today

Here are two items from the web, both referenced to me by my favorite site for crazy awesome stuff: boingboing.net.

The first is a four minute-long video of the Hubble telescope's Ultra Deep Field. Apparently, in 2004, the guys running the Hubble telescope pointed it out into a black piece of space about the size of a grain of sand, and opened the aperture up for eleven days to take in some light and see if anything could be captured on the CCD. They ended up with the light of thousands of galaxies. It's an intense video that does a great job of illustrating how large the universe is and why we are such a tiny tiny part of it. Hard evidence like this is why people wonder what else is out there.



This next piece is from Bazaar magazine. They did a spread this month of supermodels without makeup. It's a great piece, and it makes me wonder, as I always have, why everyone cakes on the makeup anyway? People look great without it.

Bazaar: Keep It Real

Adaptation, for better or worse

A comment by a friend of mine in the Harry Potter post I did several days ago made a comment about Shell Cottage, the home of the Bill and Fleur and how the filmmakers had better not leave it out of HP7! So much happens there that I won't spoil for anyone, but Bill and Fleur have to get married first right? Well that part is at the beginning of book 7. But they get married at the Burrow...and there was a huge fire at the Burrow at the beginning of the 6th movie. That fire, along with the whole scene of Ginny and Harry being led out into the middle of nowhere, was fabricated for the movie and did not appear in the book.

Why make up a scene like that with the point being that the bad guys burned down the Burrow? maybe it's because the filmmakers aren't planning on putting the wedding into the seventh movie. Bill and Fleur weren't even in the sixth movie, so chances are they won't be in the seventh movie either. Why would the filmmakers do that? One word: Streamlining.

A movie works very differently than a book. In a book you can take detours and build character relationship in a much more intimate and intricate way than in a movie. It takes hours to read a book, and two hours (roughly) to watch a movie. You cannot possibly put everything from a book into its movie adaptation. It blows because some of the best parts of books are never in the films. Here are some examples:

- Fight Club: Ed Norton's character meets Tyler Durden on a plane in the movie. In the book he meets Tyler when Tyler is making a sun dial in the sand with sticks on a beach while Norton's character is on vacation. Why didn't this appear in the movie? To impress upon the viewers of the film that Ed Norton's character is high strung and in a bad place professionally and psychologically, you can't have him go on vacation to try and unwind. A movie-going audience won't accept his issues is he's on vacation. Plus you can't break u a gritty city movie like Fight Club with some scenes of a lovely beach in the bright sunlight with cool blue water.

- Lord of the Rings: There are two huge issues in this epic, and many more small ones. I'm going to bring up Tom Bombadil and the romance between Aragorn and Arwen. Tom Bombadil is a much loved character from Fellowship of the Ring. Frodo and Sam meet him on their way out of the Shire. Tom is very much a man of the [middle] earth. He is so in touch with nature that he is immune to the One Ring's effects. Therefore he can't be in a movie about how dark and powerful the ring is. In order for the audience to believe that the ring is this terrible thing that is the scourge of Middle Earth and must be destroyed, a character like Tom Bombadil can't exist in the film. If Tom exists, then why not give him the ring?

As to the romance bits, Aragorn does indeed love Arwen in the book and they do get married. However, Arwen's character barely exists in the book. She certainly doesn't do any fighting, nor does she have visions of the future. But a movie has to appeal to as many people as possible. In order to do that you have to give women a reason to go see a movie that is basically about fighting. It may sound sexist, but it's true. So the filmmakers trumped up the romance in order for the film to have a wider appeal.

- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: I assume that Bill and Fleur will not exist in this movie for much the same reason as Ludo Bagman never existed in the fourth movie and because Winkie was never a character in previous movies either" Streamlining. The filmmakers have already set up their omission of the wedding, and they can have Dobby do his thing in the seventh book anywhere they want. Because of this they don't need to hire actors to play Bill and Fleur nor do they need to ad one more location. I could be wrong, but I think the wedding won't be there. If it is, I don't think they'll make Bill and Fleur big characters.

Of course the seventh book is being made into two films, so they will have about five hours to tell the story instead of just two and a half. We will see.

In closing, adaptation sucks, but is necessary. You have to move things around and create the illusion of cohesion for a film. I've said it before and I'll say it again: A movie is an illusion from start to finish. Everything about a movie is fake. In order to sell the story visually, you must make sure that the audience buys into certain plot points and ideas. To do that some things must be sacrificed or moved around.

In case you were curious...

The website Mr. Skin, which is an inventory of nude scenes in movies, is 10 years old today and so they have prepared a list of the 100 best nude scenes ever.

It's not a complete list, and of course, they've left out a few favorites, but it's a pretty comprehensive gathering of celebrity T & A. If you wanna take a look, then go ahead. There isn't any nudity at all. You have to pay extra for that at Mr. Skin.

Mr. Skin's Top 100 Nude Scenes

John Hughes

You may have heard the term "universal" when applied to some movies. It seems like a cheap term derived mostly to market certain movies to as many people as possible, but there is a director who has made movies that I feel are universal. John Hughes' work is a part of me. It's a part of everyone born between 1965 and 1990. Hughes made movies with such funny plots, such endearing and honest characters, and such overall personality that it's hard to think of anyone whose oevre has more reality instilled in it.

John Hughes directed only eight movies. Six of them I could watch anytime, anywhere, as could most people. Of the eight movies Hughes directed, here are my top five: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Weird Science, Planes, Trains and Automobiles. (Uncle Buck is just slightly less impressive to me than these five, but I still love it.) Is there anyone who can't put themselves into one of these films? There is someone's high school lifestyle approximately personified in at least one of these movies, probably more than one.

More astounding still is that Hughes has done great films from both the female and male perspective. He's captured geeks and jocks, popular girls and nobodies. I don't care how cool you were in high school, you can still identify with Wyatt and Gary in Weird Science. I don't care how popular you were, there is some of you in either Breakfast Club-Molly Ringwald or Sixten Candles-Molly Ringwald. (And speaking of, how perfect is she in these movies? A-plus amazing.)

The only thing that separates these movies from being timeless is their obvious '80's accessories. The cars, clothes and hair all serve to remind us that these stories are actually taking place in a world without cell phones, iPods, ABS brakes or Abercrombie and Fitch. I am put perfectly at ease by a Hughes movie. Going back to the world of the fictional Shermer, Illinois is a comforting thing. (It doesn't always work out for everyone though. See Jay and Silent Bob's issues with Hughes and Shermer in Dogma.)

Some might say these films aren't great because they are full of crude humor, drinking/drug abuse and sex. My answer to those people is that these things are what matter to teens. They are what make up the fabric of teen lives. For better or worse, a teenager's life revolves around sex and drugs and a lot of crude humor. Weird Science is the movie that I like best. I love the ultra-sexy Kelly LeBrock and I really enjoy watching the guys try to impress everyone and be popular. So many kids pine for popularity. The point of a lot of these movies, and I've found this to be true in my life as well, is that outside of school, outside of the cliques, the kids are all very eager to meet on common ground. I remember, just as many of you do, being cool with someone all summer, but losing that friendship when school started. Or being able to say "hello" to someone only if no one else was around them.

John Hughes was an amazing personality. I don't know him personally of course, and maybe he was just existing in the past and trying to make sense of his youth as a jock or geek. In any event he made movies that have lives of their own. He created characters who make you laugh and cry. His characters were ones you empathized with. You don't just watch a John Hughes movie, you part of it is in you and there will always be a draw to his films for that reason.

Not to leave anything out, but John Hughes also wrote a lot of great films. In addition to all the movie he directed, Hughes also wrote The Great Outdoors, Home Alone (1-4), the first three Lampoon Vacation films and Mr. Mom. (They're all worth checking out...except Home alone 3 and 4.)

The only film that has come out lately that reminds me of the magic of a John hughes movie is Can't hardly Wait. The people that made that movie did their hughes homework and I really enjoy the movie. It's like an updated version of Sixteen Candles from the opposite side of the gender divide. Go watch a John Hughes movie ASAP. (I watched Sixteen Candles this afternoon.)

I'm officially weirded out

Over at boingboing.net they've posted a link to a blurb about a 3,000 year old Egyptian statue that just happens to look EXACTLY like Michael Jackson. I can't add anything to this.

3,000 year old Jackson bust