Podcast Episode 78

Thor's 78: Saint Valentine's Day Massacre 2013: Part 2

Thor, Loki, Freyja, Heimdall, Njord, and Tiki discusses Cloud Atlas, Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, The new Star Trek Into Darkness footage which premiered at the Super Bowl. Is Benedict Cumberbatch Khan?

As well as more of their favorite and most hated romances in movies.

Slash Fiction, Aquaman, Justice League, Wonder Woman, Daily Show, Colbert Report Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, John Oliver, Jason Jones, Samatha Bee, I know I am but what are you, Sailor moon, Tuxedo mask, Canada, Leonard Cohen, Crash Test Dummies, Eh, Michael J Fox, John de Lancie

photos via:
http://www.romeotangobravo.net/2011/02/happy-valentines-day-from-brownells.html
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/May-2010/Photos-The-St-Valentines-Day-Massacre/

Daily Show adds opening credits to their commercial breaks

I was too busy laughing at this to get a screen capture, but a Chevy Sonic car ad came up during the commercials on dailyshow.com and it showed the title card (with the 7 second count down in the corner and beeps at each second) which ad agencies put in front of their ads. Thanks to this, I momentarily knew the name of the ad agency with created that ad where the drop a Chevy Sonic out of a plane (assumedly the same guys behind the Danny Glover film "Operation Dumbo Drop"), as well as the director and the ad's official title. I don't actually remember any of these details, since It only appeared for seven seconds, and I was too busy laughing uncontrollably at the fact that this title card was playing as part of an ad on a website owned by Viacom, one of the largest media companies in the world,  who should in theory have figured out how to play ads properly by now. If you are watching the Daily Show and something like that comes up be sure to let me know.

This probably doesn't amuse anyone else as much as it amuses me, but that is probably true of most of the stuff I post here.


Here is the ad in question:



It clearly is a very effective ad for a car, since you can barely see the shape or styling of the car with it spinning and all the lens flares, and they never mention any features or its price or how it handles. But if you are planning on buying a car based on its ability to fall out of a plane, boy howdy does Chevy have a car for you.

One Last Thing About Movie Trailers

I have been finding I enjoy a lot of big summer tent-pole movies more in trailer form than I enjoy them in actual movie form. Partly I'm sure this is because big action movies are on average getting lazier and worse. But this will happen to me even with movies I like. Where I see it and like it but liked it better as a two minute short film of explosions and catch chases. I guess the problem is that for big budget action movies, you often times are only seeing them for the cool set pieces, and maybe a few snappy lines of dialogue. Since a really well cut trailer can provide you with a perfect distillation of little bits of every action sequence, the rest of the movie kind of seems extraneous by comparison.

I realize this kinda goes against everything cinema as an art from stands for, but since most summer movie explode-athons contain very little artistic or cinematic in them anyway, I stand by my opinion.

Though its always a bad sign of I have the same opinion as a satirical segment from Stephen Colbert from the Daily Show in 2002.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Trailer Hitch
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Rally to Restore Sanity

Actually, after watching that again. I agree with most of those jokes as valid opinions.

Footnote(s)

I just wanted to use this space to thank comedy central for having every single second of the John Stewart and Colbert accessible online. I was trying to find a great clip of Ian McShane on Conan to use in my previous post, only to have what was supposed to be the video, instead be an error message from NBC's portion of Hulu stating, "This video is not longer available we suggest you enjoy these related clips instead." All four of the related clips, where, I kid you not clips from Leno's 2010 version of The Tonight Show. This selection was probably determined by a computer program, but I kinda think NBC is just trying to convince people that Conan never had a TV show. I assume if they could, NBC would send the T-1000 back in time to 1962 to kill  Ruth Reardon before Conan is born.