The Futile Podcast

I was just reading this Month’s Wired and they have a list of the top 50 Robots.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/robots.html?pg=1&topic=robots&topic_set

Now here we have a different issue. With movies the question is genre, with technology and in this list we have that which does exist and that which exists only in the annals of science fiction (does not exits, hence the fiction). I do not think that a list containing real robots can fairly be compared (at least not yet and in the future the issue might be moot at least for talking cars, etc) to a list that contains fantastical ficticioal robots. I’d have to say that if you want a robot then get a robot, if you want to fantasize about how cool robots will be, might be, then watch or read some good science fiction. I mean Forbes did a list of the richest ficticional characters but they did not compare them to Donald Trump and Bill Gates. That said and Done I will say that Astro Boy rules!

Yeah for sure, IGN just put out their top 25 list of hero movieshttp://filmforce.ign.com/articles/676/676647p1.html

most of them are just wrong. There have been some really good movies about heroism and the super form is usually great fan fare but Blade 2 (the one with the Sun bombs) and Hulk (the Jungian father relationship of the decade) are just bad movies. I’ll admit that they have some of the good ones there including Spiderman 2 and Superman but for the most part either they were stretching too thin when it came to figuring good Super Hero movies OR the core conceptual themes that make up a good super hero movie is not what the list was about. I mean for sheer spectacle and explosions some of these might be great but many are just badly made movies. I thought I was a geek but maybe I just don’t get why people like Hell Boy so damn much? I’m waiting for 2006 when Superman Returns. http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/supermanreturns/

‘Tis the season for people to partake in the company of loved ones, goodwill and cheer but when that wears off you can turn to some commerciaized emotional hyperbole (movies) that along with the Charlie Brown and Nat King Cole ought to keep the season jolly.

10. Lethal Weapon (Mr. Joshua: “It’s Christmas!”)

9. Ernest Saves Christmas (one of the best Ernest movies out there second maybe only to Goes to Jail)

8. Rocky IV (Sly must go train in the cold Siberian tundra for his fight with Drago on December 25)

7. Elf (It was a cute movie and you need a few of those)

6. Die Hard (Argyle playing Run DMC is worth it alone)

5. It’s a Wonderful Life (Bruce Wayne from Batman TAS episode 102 Christmas With the Joker - “It’s not relentlessly cheerful is it.”)

4. Home Alone (slap stick Pesci style)

3. Mirale on 34th Street (1947) (gotta love screwing the Government with it’s own legal loopholes)

2. A Christmas Story (It had Darin “The Night Stalker” McGavin as the gruff dad)

1. Scrooged (The Night the Reindeer Died)

Bonus: Santa Claus (my favorite when I was a kid) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089961/

Have a good one.

http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/674/674712p1.html

They’ve done another one about comedies. PersonallyI have some problems with anything Steve Martin every did being called “funny” but that’s a subjective thing (no it’s not . . . but differ to diplomacy). Also any list of comedies that does not include Leprechaun http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107387/ is missing some angle on humor. I think the next step is to finish off the solid lists and get into post modern genre combinations like top 25 Space Musicals or something. I myself am thinking that a version of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes set in space and given the edge of some Ice Pirates http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087451/ and an homage to Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom for the big number would be something fun, just Busby Berkley http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busby_Berkeley it up (yeah it should be a verb). They pay for concepts in Hollywood don’t they?

I just stumbled across this http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/673/673392p1.html at the IGN website. It is a list of 25 of the best action movies. The list has some variety of style, genre, etc. You may disagree about some placements but this is a list that gets it right and stays within the easily definable bounds where such subjective lists belong.

I just got a link
http://www.empireonline.co.uk/features/50greatestindependent/50-41.asp

from my good friend Eripsa. This link lists the top 50 or so “Independent Films”. This term has been in dispute ever since the mid 90’s when Mirimax made a name for themselves by distributing these films that were not seen as being part of the studio system: MGM, Universal, etc. Soon the Independent Film Channel followed and later another Sundance. They were seen as a place to showcase the independet sprit of filmmaking and all that. However, along the way as is to be expected and in a perfectly sensibly fashion following the success of Mirimax’s indie hook, a whole new crops of autuers appeared and the independent label perhaps got a little blown out of proportion. It is my firm belief that “gay cowboys eating pudding” is not inhernently indie. I do not prescribe to this ideal about the “sprit of independent cinema”. Today I think, more so than not, what people might think of as independent cinemas just isn’t. For my two cents a film is truly independent if it is produced and financed outside of the Studios (i.e. the big Corporation with money) entirely. It is the sort of film like Kevin Smith’s Clerks or David Lynch’s Eraserhead where they had difficulties getting the money and where the likelyhood of the film getting made, let alone distributed and released to the public, was not at all certain. We’ll that’s my new rant have at it! I have to go finish my own independent film now.