Zack Danger’s Blog

*What I had when I saw the latest trailer for Tron: Legacy.

In case you missed it, back in 1982 Disney released an awesome movie called Tron.

In a nut shell; Jeff Bridges is a computer programmer (Kevin Flynn) who gets digitized and sucked into a mainframe with an evil program blackmailing people. He has to battle his way out to save the day (and himself).

The graphics for 1982 were epic and, because they were the best at the time, represent directly the computing power the character Flynn finds himself stuck in. In this way, the movie isn’t even dated because it’s essentially a period piece.

Whether their motivation is pure, or they just ran out of original ideas, Disney has chosen to release a new Tron movie. But unlike other rereleases of recent, I think Disney is doing everything right.

Instead of making it a “reboot” they are creating a true sequel.

In this new version, Flynn has been missing for years and his son is sent on a quest to find him. The kid ends up being sucked into a computer as well and finds his father there.

I know that the whole “now it’s the son blah blah blah” idea sounds a little contrived, but I submit it works here.

Primarily because Jeff fucking Bridges is back in Tron: Legacy, and he’s playing his original character 25 years later.

Now that this sequel is clearly set in the future of the original, it allows for the use of modern CGI in the context of modern computing power, and in no way detracts from the original film.

And it gets better: Even though the modern CGI in Tron: Legacy seems incredible… the film makers went ahead and created physical Light Cycles:

Not stopping there, the film makers wanted to do the sound track justice. The original Tron featured analog and digital synths to compliment the computer theme. So the most logical thing was done, and Daft Punk was hired to do the soundtrack for Legacy (with all its 8bit crunch glory). Rumor is they even have a cameo in the film.

(There was a supposed leak of one of the Daft Punk tracks back in January, but their label eventually announced that it was a fake.)

But of course don’t just take my word for how awesome this all is, check out the new trailer for Tron: Legacy…

(Do yourself the favor of putting it in fullscreen hi-res and turning your speakers all the way up.)

Epic.

Oh, and don’t think I forgot the obligatory:

(you’re welcome)

You may have guessed from my recent post that I rather enjoy Curling. (even if it does means “Ass Lick” in Romanian).

It’s funny because whenever I tell someone I like the game, I end up having to tell them three times.

Me: “I really like curling.”

Them: “Are you serious?”

Me: “Yeah! Absolutely!”

Them: “No, really. Are you serious?”

Me: “Yes! I’m serious! I love curling.”

Them: “Okay……?”

I think it’s this skepticism and judgment from others that have kept me a closeted fan for over a decade.

The weird thing is that recently it almost seems like Curling is becoming “cool” and “sexy.”

Even Sports Illustrated has been touting its awesomeness.

I’ve even heard it being referred to as “hip.”

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for more people to get excited about it… but not if it means I have to dress like this:

Who knows, perhaps this commercial from 1986 has finally started getting people swept up in the fun.

(watch for the serial killer at 0:21)

Why am I bothering to go on about this silly sport?

Could it be because I wanted to show off my new hat?

Maybe a little, but mostly I figured you’d want to watch video of me falling down.

The other day NECN saw the writing on the wall, and decided to send a reporter out to my Curling Club to get a story on the new craze. She was there with her camera operator for the better part of 2.5 hours doing interviews and getting footage of us playing.

Just like any time there is a news crew around, I spent most of my energy trying to stay out of the shot.

Call it nerves, or just bad luck… but the one time I’ve ever fallen down playing, I look up and there is the camera lens right in front of me.

My friends tried to comfort me and say that they “might not show it.”

But I knew just as well as they did, the reporter would be a FOOL not to use it in her piece.

And sure enough, she did.

Now, I have never claimed to be a champion curler, and I’m certainly a novice, but this line was a little low:

“The club is made up of veteran curlers and newcomers who still have a little learning to do…”

Although I guess I did kind of deserve it, and I don’t blame her. If anything I think it’s rather hilarious.

So without further adieu, here I am falling on my ass thanks to NECN.com.

And if anyone wants to know what this means:

“The vice did a great job putting just the right amount of weight on that stone and avoiding the corner guard to draw to the button for shot rock.”

I’m more than willing to explain the ins and outs of the game to you.

I was in Stop & Shop the other day purchasing frozen pizza and popping corn.

As I was getting ready to pay I looked over to see the person behind me had put down only pistachios and an astronomy magazine.

I tried to come up with a mental picture of what type of person would have made the trip to the supermarket for just these things.

Yep.

Spot on.

(I love the idea of him going home, sitting by his window, and enjoying his treats.)

I loves me some curling; that’s no secret.

Needless to say I’ve been rather excited that NBC is dedicating a ridiculous amount of time to the winter olympics right now. And considering the events are in Vancouver, I figured Curling would get a decent amount of coverage.

Now, I’m pretty cheap and I don’t pay for all the fancy cable channels, so unless something is on the bottom 10 channels, I can’t watch it.

Tonight is one of the first USA Men’s Curling Team matches. However NBC has decided to devote their main television coverage to Louge, Snowboard Cross, and Figure Skating.

No problem I figured, I’ll just head over to NBC.com and watch the live stream of Curling!

(I must say that NBC has some pretty fantastic and comprehensive internet coverage of the events. You can even set up alerts so they can email you when a certain game is about to start.)

Of course, if I’m writing about this you can bet that my cunning plan is going to turn south at some point.

You see, when you select an event to watch NBC greats you with this screen:

That’s right. The fine print is explaining to me that the Online content I wanted to watch because I don’t have cable, is inaccessible to me because I don’t have cable.

Their consolation is that in a few days I’ll be able to watch a minute’s worth of highlights. But forget about watching it live, let alone viewing the game in it’s entirety.

Even worse, commenters over at The Consumerist are reporting that even if they do pay for cable/satellite, they are being denied access to the NBC site because they don’t have an expensive enough package.

So thanks to you NBC, I’m raging just about as hard as any Curling fan could rage right now.

(For those who are interested, you can find me at my local Curling club next week.)

Yes.

I’m going to keep dwelling on this as long as people keep bringing it up. (but I probably promise this will probably be the last time)

The hilarious guy from Red Letter Media is back with a sequel to his hilarious review of The Phantom Menace.

And the good news is that this one is only 20min instead of 70!

Dammit.

I’ve been pretty vocal about my love for Nikola Tesla. I’ve even flipped Edison the bird in Tesla’s honor.

Now the Wall Street Journal (of all places) is reporting that Tesla is in vogue.

Tesla, in short, is cool.

I’m happy for you Tesla, and frankly I’m ecstatic that more people, and a new generation, may begin to appreciate your work…

…but I’m a little bummed that just like pirates, I’m going to have to hand over my likes to the realm of the mainstream again.

I know this whole thing is probably selfish of me, but isn’t it human nature to want to keep things for ourselves?

What is society going to take from me next?

(Thanks to Laura for pointing the story out to me.)

Oh man is it a mess over at NBC right now.

After the Late Night switch up which landed Conan O’Brien “The Tonight Show” and Jimmy Fallon “Late Night“, NBC just couldn’t give up Jay Leno.

In the network’s infinite wisdom they gave Leno his own one hour show (aptly named “The Jay Leno Show,” which is about as original and edgy as the man’s jokes) at 10 pm.

I have no problem with Leno having his own show; millions of people adore him. My problem is that it started an avalanche of terrible programming decisions.

Leno’s 10 o’clock time slot caused the first casualty when it bumped Southland clear off the air.

In a time of Breaking Bad, Mad Men, etc, NBC had something really blossoming with Southland. (This is where I describe it as a “gritty crime drama” or something or other.) The problem that NBC faced was that because of the content, they felt they couldn’t put Southland in a time slot earlier than 10pm.

So they cancelled it.

But it doesn’t end there. Leno’s ratings have been “just okay” and his show’s viewer sludge has been dragging the rest of the night down. Local stations are complaining because their News at 11 has suffered as a result, and without the momentum The Tonight Show and Late Night take a hit as well.

Here’s where NBC gets all Nutella with their programming.

The network announced just the other day that they planned to cut his show down to 30 min and move it back into the late night realm of 11:30. This means however that Conan and the Tonight Show would switch to midnight, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon falls in at a distant 1am.

(Carson Daly gets pushed to Telemundo or SyFy opposite the Super Bowl or something… I really wasn’t paying attention.)

Watching the institution of The Tonight Show fall apart before his eyes, Conan today told NBC they can go pound sand, and that he’s not moving to 12:05.

Here’s the thing:

I’ve always been a humungo Conan fan. His reign of Late Night was unsurpassed in my eyes by any other talk show.  But after he moved to The Tonight Show he lost me. I’m not blaming the guy, it’s just that hour earlier makes a world of difference.

I can just barely tolerate his show now.

The interesting thing is that now I love Jimmy Fallon. I never really cared for him on SNL. As far as I was concerned he didn’t really need to be there. But what he’s done with Late Night is perfect.

I know this is where a lot of you will say that his show is terrible and needs to be cancelled…. and I honestly thought that at the beginning. In fact a lot of the public opinion that I hear is 70/30 that he is talentless and his show sucks.

But trust me when I say it was all just growing pains. Now that Fallon has found his voice his show fucking rocks.

(Even Conan had a rough first couple of years.)

With skits like Thank You Notes:

Head Swap:

Post Apocolyptic Andy Rooney:

And audience participation like Competitive Spit Takes:

And Dance Your Hat And Gloves Off:

how could you not love Fallon?

He’s even played beer pong with Betty White!

And his house band is The Roots for Christ’s sake!

So, here’s my point.

NBC can continue with their schizophrenic programming decisions. They can think Leno will pick back up where he left off. They can force Conan to take his talent else where. Hell, they can even sell the whole damn thing to Comcast.

But if they as much lay a finger on Jimmy Fallon to take away his show, I’m going do burn down Rockefeller Plaza myself.

Avatar just grossed over $1.14 Billion globally.

Yeah, I just said “billion,” and that’s in less than 3 weeks.

The movie studios like to tout how each consecutive movie they release brings in more and more money. Every big movie that comes out seems to break some previous box office record.

Hell, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is highest grossing Indiana Jones film of all time.

But you and I know that this is a lie.

And the studios know it too.

See, there is this funny thing called “inflation” which automatically drives up the cost of tickets. When tickets cost more, the studios gross more money. And with new gimmicks like 3D adding a 50% markup (at least) to the price of tickets, it’s no wonder movies keep breaking sales records.

Viola! Guaranteed blockbusters!

In order to honestly calculate a film’s popularity we should really be looking at “admissions” (tickets sold).

Well, we should look at admissions, except those numbers are impossible to come by.

Unless you care about only looking at Germany, The Netherlands, or Spain, the only info you are going to get is gross ticket sale amounts. But at least they’ll break that down to week-by-week numbers for you.

So, how do we get some honest numbers? We consider the average price of admission when each movie was released, do some math, and adjust for inflation.

Care to guess when the most popular movie to date was released?

1939

That’s right, Gone With The Wind, when adjusted to today’s dollars, grossed $1.48 Billion.

And that’s just here in the United States.

Here is the list of Top 100 grossing domestic movies, as adjusted for inflation thanks to the lovely Box Office Mojo.

The most recent movie in the Top 10 is Titanic… And that was released 13 years ago.

Box Office Mojo can even extrapolate an estimated number of admissions based on the gross sales and year of release. These numbers are very fascinating, but are getting further and further away from hard numbers. I’d take these as a real loose estimation.

(As of this post Box Office Mojo states its numbers are current as of this afternoon, so Avatar’s 85th position will most likely rise before the time it’s out of theaters.)

That “$1.14 Billion globally” that Avatar has pulled isn’t sounding that impressive anymore.

Frankly, when the dust settles it’s likely more people will have seen Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie.

My point is this:

Just like any product,  understand that the studios are trying to sell you something. Don’t let their disingenuous hype fool you into thinking their new movie is going to be any better than their last one.

(I’m not trying to be pessimistic, but lets’ be serious… It probably wont be.)

Let their product win you over (or turn you away) on it’s own merits… not on how much money has been thrown at the screen.

Comedy Central has canceled the Jeff Dunham Show.

At best he is a 47 year old hack comic with his lame jokes, 5 o’clock shadow, contrived wardrobe and gold cross necklace he clearly displayed on his show.

At worst his jokes promote ignorance, racism and homophobia. (And not even in the good way.)

Anyone who knows me will say that I appreciate humor that strikes a nerve and pushes envelopes. I’ll even go as far to saw that for humor to be outstanding it *should* do these things.

Dunham on the other hand simply promotes “people from the middle east are stupid terrorists,” “people from the south are inbred retards,” and “gay people are a blight on our society.”

Worst yet, he doesn’t have the conviction to say these things himself. Instead, he channels his thoughts through his hand and out the mouth of the puppet… and he has the nerve to go “hey now” or just roll his eyes when his dummy says something truly unconscionable.

There is no witty satire, clever observation, or intellectual commentary.

Just shit.

Hank Steuver at the Washington Post puts it best:

Not only is it deadeningly unfunny, it also defies all the known constructs of television criticism. I simply have no idea why it’s on.

Regarding the fact that he is the “highest grossing comedian” in North America; I simply don’t know how this could be. I have no compelling explanation for why so many people seem to adore him. Perhaps it says more about the state of the general public than the caliber of his comedy.

Anyway, back to his terrible show being cancelled.

His October premier pulled a record 5.3 million viewers. The audience for his second show dropped by 50% and by December, he only had a quarter of his initial viewers.

Apparently he still maintains a contract with Comedy Central and will be making appearances elsewhere. At least his soap box wont be so big.

I really like cars. I like them a lot. Especially vintage ones.

My problem is, much like the gentleman’s game of billiards, I don’t know nearly as much about the subject as I should considering how much time I spend on it.

Even when I do know something, often times my enthusiasm for a certain vehicle manifests itself as grunts and frantic pointing. So while I may have some knowledge of the following, I’m just going to point and grunt in this post.

First up is what some have claimed is the “most authentic Back To The Future DeLorean in existence.”

A private “investor” (because lets be serious, that’s exactly what this is, an investment) told the creator that money was no object. The result was this amazing beauty.

Everything works and is authentic. Well, not the “time travel” thing… but everything else is movie perfect. The digital speedometer on the dashboard works, all the switches light up just as in the movie, even the time circuits chirp when dates are entered.

And no BTTF DeLorean would be complete with the Flux Capacitor.

Oh… and did I mention it’s FOR SALE ON EBAY!?

I want it so bad I want to throw up.

(you can read more about it over on Jalopnik)

(you can read more about BTTF at BTTF.com)

Meanwhile… I dig this:

You hipsters can thank Vespa South America for that little gem.

And because great things come in threes…

Turns out if you know how to ask (and you’d better ask nicely), an additional $5k can open up a pallet of 6 additional BMW Paint colors.

How does “semi-gloss frozen gray” on an E60 series M5 sound?

I think it sounds pretty awesome.

Fffffffffffff.

(The lucky owner is on M5board, but because I don’t frequent that board, I first heard about it via Jalopnik.)