As I’ve mentioned a few times, I’ve become a big fan of Flight Of The Conchords. Since the band hails from New Zealand the show is just littered with references to the Lord Of The Rings trilogy that Peter Jackson filmed there. Below I’ve included an mp3 from their BBC Radio 2 show from a couple years ago, where the fictionalized background for the song “Frodo, Don’t Wear The Ring” comes from.

Frodo, Don’t Wear The Ring – The Flight Of The Conchords [mp3]

In the HBO show they made a video for the this song, featuring most of the regulars from the series as characters from LotR. The whole production is pretty amusing, though the song isn’t as good as the original recording of the song.

Now what I wasn’t aware of with FotC is that when Bret McKenzie appeared as Legolas the Elf, it wasn’t the first time he’s appeared on screen donning pointy ears. Bret actually played a small role in the Lord Of The Rings, as a background character from the trilogy who hardcore fans of the series have dubbed Figwit. Figwit is an acronym for Frodo Is Great…What Is That? His first appearance was in the meeting scene from Fellowship Of The Ring where the Fellowship is formed in Rivendell.

This character gained enough notoriety among fans that Peter Jackson took notice and used him again in Return Of The King, and gave him a few speaking lines. I’d say Bret has managed to get a larger measure of fame as a member of Flight of the Conchords, but it’s amusing that he already had notoriety as a background character in one of the biggest movie franchises of all time.

I went to go see Superbad on Friday night. Aside from the fact that I suspect Corina and I might have been the oldest people in the theatre, I found the movie quite enjoyable. We went to see the movie at the Galaxy in the mall, which pretty much gets over-run by teenagers after hours. The theatre itself was just packed, which I figure is a pretty good indication that this movie will probably be #1 at the box office this weekend.

Superbad is a movie that aims to be a modern day Dazed and Confused, which is a pretty good formula to emulate. The plot of the movie takes place pretty much in a 24 hour period, following the adventures of Seth, Evan and Fogell. They’re a bunch of high school losers who get invited to a party and get tasked with buying booze for said party using a fake ID. The story pretty much follows this plot and the calamity that ensues. The funny thing I found about this movie is that it really didn’t seem that far fetched to me. In my teenage years I can recall begging older friends to buy booze for a party and subsequently lugging a case of beer all the way across town in a backpack. That’s where I think this movie succeeds, being able to relate to the experiences of these characters, as I’m sure most people have all sorts of crazy teenage adventures involving lots of underage drinking.

The one thing that I kinda marvelled about after watching this movie was how cleverly edited the promos for this movie were. Right from the get-go this is a dirty, raunchy comedy, so finding bits that weren’t too rude to be featured in commercials was probably a task. I found myself hearing a line I knew, yet having the punchline to what was featured in the commercial come 3 or 4 lines of dialogue later. Here’s a clip from the movie featuring one of the recurring themes to this movie, penis drawings. It gives a pretty good look at what kind of humour you can expect from the movie.

As I’m sure everyone is aware of, The Simpsons Movie is opening in wide release today. The marketing machine has been hard at work, turning 7-11s into Kwik-E-Marts, commercials since around the Super Bowl and running a contest to determine which of the 14 Springfields in the US would stand in for the fictional TV town for its movie premiere. Even the Booze Mail application on Facebook allows you to send Squishees and Duff Beer to your friends. They definitely did a great job of creating awareness for the launch of the movie.

Though something strange happened during this whole process. In seeing all this stuff going on I realized something about their promotional efforts. It was making me feel nostalgic about The Simpsons. Now if I were to guess on this, I’m doubting that was the reaction they were wanting to elicit with their marketing campaign. The Simpsons is still on and is going into season 19 in the fall, but in reality, who’s still watching this show? I know its probably been 5 seasons since I made a concerted effort to be home on a Sunday night at 8pm to catch a new episode. I know many of my friends are the same way. Almost everyone I know used to make The Simpsons a can’t miss during their weeks. You wouldn’t want to be caught out on some great line from the show the next time you see your friends. The days of quoting The Simpsons are pretty much over. It has come to the point that it is now uncouth to be caught uttering re-hashed Simpsons lines. And the reason for this is because the only stuff worth quoting is pretty much from the first 8 seasons of the show, when it was actually funny.

So to get nostalgic about the show seems only fitting when it pretty much jumped the shark a decade ago. I would say probably around seasons 12-13 the laughs were so few and far between that it was hardly worth watching anymore. I think everyone yearns for the days when an episode had more of a sub-text then the writers scripting a way for the Simpson family to encounter a random celebrity and for Homer to have a crazy new day job. We can only hope the movie will rise above the recent standard the show has managed.

Is nothing sacred in Hollywood? Why does everything from my childhood have to modernized and re-hashed? Why does Simon look like LL Cool J? Why on Earth would they have picked Jason Lee to play Dave Seville? Did the world really need wiggermunks?

I’ve been seeing lots of commercials for the new Transformers and I have to say, it looks pretty balls. Michael Bay is a known hack, so I feel a sizable chunk of my childhood has been heisted by some Pearl Harbor making huckster. Transformers was about Autobots fighting Decepticons. It’s not some stupid human survival story, which from the trailer, seems to be the way it’s being skewed. There were barely any humans involved in the original cartoon, yet they’re promoting this movie like it’s Independence Day. Another thing that’s bothered me is the design of the characters. They all seem so ridiculously complicated. The genius of the original series, and the associated toy line, was that the toys easily transformed from car, gun, ghetto blaster etc. into an awesome robot in seconds. These new characters seem more inspired by Gundam toys or Super Shredder from TMNT 2.

Optimus Prime was already plenty cool. He didn’t need some dumb-ass flames to modernize his look. Megatron was an awesome gun and not a metal chicken. The whole point of the cartoon was to sell toys, and even at 8 I knew that. Making these ridiculously complicated so that they can’t even make toys that they don’t even mildly resemble the character they represent is pretty stupid.

So when Transformers hits theatres on July 4th, I think I’ll be taking a pass.

Happy New Year everyone. I hope the holiday season has treated you well. So far it’s 2 days into 2007 and I can definitely say I’m dragging my ass at this point. On New Year’s eve we were invited to Kevin and Courtney’s wedding, which was a pretty good time. Any opportunity to drink beer and smoke cigars with friends is always a good thing. Then many of us got together to play the traditional road hockey game on my parents street. If anyone isn’t convinced we have a problem with global warming it should become apparent to them after the downright tropical 9 degree temperatures we experienced while playing hockey. It made for a great game though.

Also this weekend a bunch of us checked out Rocky Balboa. I quite liked it. The movie definitely worked, as it meshed a modern day plot that paralleled the current boxing scene, while hitting on all those Rocky-esque moments we all love. Rocky movies have always been unapologetically corny, and this one was no exception. And the way the movie ended seemed a much more fitting end to the Rocky series then Rocky V was. In fact, I’m floating the idea that Rocky V be removed from the public consciousness, in a style similar to the game ET for the Atari 2600. We’ll take all copies of the movie on VHS and DVD and bury them in the desert in New Mexico somewhere and pretend Tommy Gunn never really existed. And the world would be a better place for it.

And over the last week or so I’ve been trying to track down a Nintendo Wii. What a biatch. I’ve been itching to buy one for awhile, and now I actually have the money to do so and can’t. They are such a hot item right now mainly because there is such a broad audience buying them. I’m hoping I can scare one up in time for next week when I have a week off. Though by rights I’ll probably need to do some packing, as Corina and I gave our 2 months notice to the landlords over the weekend. We’re now looking for a place in Cambridge, a 2 bedroom in the $800 inclusive range, so if you hear of anything, shout me holler.

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I have to admit it, I actually want to see the new Rocky film, Rocky Balboa. And I will readily admit that I had bashed the whole concept when I first heard about it. But after seeing a few of the commercials they’ve managed to perk my interest. After Rocky V I can say I was quite jaded on the prospect of future installments. But in seeing the trailers and hearing Sylvester Stallone talk about it, I get the impression this project has a little more modesty to it. He knows Rocky V sucked. He knows his career is in the crapper. He knows people will see right through his attempt to resurrect his career. So deep down, he knows this movie will have to be good, or else he’ll be making budget action movies alongside the likes of Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper for the rest of his career.

The thing is, he did create the original Rocky when he was a nobody, and it vaulted his career to superstardom. As Stallone’s career and ego escalated, the quality of the Rocky films deteriorated. They went from being a drama about a nobody underdog with a million to one shot at glory to Rocky becoming a larger then life superhero, complete with robot butler. Now 30 years after the original Stallone is trying put together the pieces of what will be his movie legacy. Rocky is again the underdog, well past his prime, when he gets drawn back in. This may sound contrived, but just look at the sport of boxing in general. Everyone remembers George Foreman and his comeback to win the title. Evander Holyfield is still kicking around thinking he can make a run at the title. Looking at wrestling Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan are still involved in wrestling well into their 50′s. The bottomline is that people in the business of getting beaten up for a living just don’t seem to know when to hang it up. So using this premise Rocky Balboa is coming back to the big screens for one last time.

The movie has actually been getting some good reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, enough to warrant a Fresh rating of 65%. The reviews seem to echo the same sentiment, that this movie is much closer to the original, Academy Award winning Rocky movie then the 4 films that followed. Which is definitely a good thing. It’s good to see the franchise come full circle.

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On Friday night a bunch of us went out for dinner at the Mandarin for chinese buffet. I have to say, I love buffet places like that. It’s so bastardized that you can get just about anything there. Chinese, pizza, roast beef, steak, salads, full sundae bar. It does cost an arm and a leg, but it’s worth it. The occasion was to celebrate a massive amount of birthdays among our group of friends. There are 7 birthdays between now and the end of December, so the idea was to celebrate all at once. I’m not sure it worked out quite that way as a few people didn’t show, but it was still a good time. Afterwards we caught a late show at the theatre, where some went to see Casino Royale, while others, myself included went to see Borat. This was my second time seeing it. The new Bond movie only had front row seating available, and given I had seen a movie from the third row recently I opted to see Borat again. Sitting through a 2 1/2 hour action movie at close proximity didn’t seem appealing after how much I ate at the Mandarin. Borat was just as funny the second time around. Even though this was its third weekend the movie was still pretty packed for a 10:10 showing in 2 theatres, both of which were near capacity.

On Saturday night I saw what would be my first Segway in the wild. I’m sure people who live in the city might see them around often enough, but I don’t get out much. The weird part about seeing this Segway was that it was in Ayr, a town less then half the size of Paris. This guy was motoring around town at night, which seemed really odd. He was probably in his early 30′s, had a beard and glasses. He definitely fit the Steve Wozniak mold of Segway owner. They have seemingly become one of the popular tech toys of geeks with too much money in their pockets. The part that seems most amusing to me is that you can guarantee that guy is known as the Segway nerd around town, as you wouldn’t figure there would be too many other people buzzing around a town of 4,000 people on a $5000 toy.

Now sadly my Wolverines came up short on Saturday against Ohio State. Given the fact that the #1 team was playing at home, by rights Ohio State should have won, and they did, by a field goal. I, for one, am rooting for a rematch of the game for the national championship. I think anyone who watched the second half of that game Saturday probably is too. And I think the Wolverines proved they could take Ohio State. Put it on a neutral field and lets see the 2 best teams in college football play for the championship.

Sticking with football, how about those 49ers? I looked at the schedule about a month ago and told people that San Fran had a shot at sneaking into the playoffs at 9-7. I was merely using pie-in-the-sky optimism as a basis for this prognostication. Since then they’re 3-1 and rolling. They do still have a couple of very win-able games coming up, so I’m hoping there is more where that came from.

And last but not least, the Superblues moved to 4-0 on the season with another 3-1 win. It almost seems like we’re unable to score more then 3 goals in a game. And all the scoring was done in the first half. It was probably the best team effort we’ve had so far this year. It seems things have really gelled nicely.

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In recent days since the Borat movie became an international sensation there have been many people who were in the film coming out of the woodwork and making their voice heard. First 2 of the 3 drunken frat boys filed a lawsuit, then it was the inhabitants of the town that stood in for Kazakhstan who are threatening legal action. Now comes the news that the lady from the etiquette school has filed a complaint against the movie as it relates to unfair trade practices, with a possible lawsuit in the works. To me, these people seem to be quite disingenuous in their intentions, especially since this movie has made a boatload of money since it opened. My guess is that it would never have resulted in lawsuits all over the place had it flamed out in theatres, but because there’s money being made, here comes the lawyers.

In the first case of the drunken frat boys they claimed that they signed a contract while drunk, then acted and said things that they wouldn’t normally do or say had they been sober. This is garbage. Drinking does tend to loosen your inhibitions, but it doesn’t put prejudices in your head that weren’t already there to begin with. It just makes you more forthcoming in mentioning these things. You don’t all of the sudden become a male chauvinist and a racist because you drank some Jaegger. These guys seem to be the typical drunken frat boy stereotype and now they are crying about it because they’ve been outed as such. The lesson to be learned here is to not be an idiot on camera, as the repercussions can last a very long time.

The inhabitants of the town of Glod, Romania are crying foul because they feel the movie makers took advantage of them. From the couple of articles I’ve read on this people were paid roughly $5.75 USD for their work in the film. While this does seem like a pittance, consider the local economy there. There are only 4 people who have jobs in the town. According to this article one of the townspeople with jobs makes $132 USD a month. Lets assume a 40/hr work week and 160 hours worked in a month. That works out to $.83/hr. And that was for one of the people who had a job. Paying these people $5.75 for their work doesn’t seem that outlandish when looked at in those terms. They also donated televisions and computers to the community as well and paid people for the use of their houses. To me this doesn’t seem as horrible as they want to make it out to be. This production wasn’t a huge budget movie, so paying on scale with the local economy doesn’t seem that out of sorts. The people of the town said they feel embarrassed by how they were portrayed, but in actuality they were paid extras. They weren’t even from Kazakhstan. I’m sure if they hadn’t made a big deal of it probably nobody would have even known where Glod was. Again the lesson learned is that if you don’t want to look foolish on camera, don’t take money and sign releases from people who want you to do just that.

In the third case with the etiquette teacher, I think she came off very well in this whole venture. She did her job, instructed Borat on etiquette and came off as competent in this capacity. I don’t think her appearance in the movie necessarily reflected poorly on her at all. My guess is that she’ll get more business as a result of the movies success then anything else.

I don’t really think any of these lawsuits will result in anything major. Many of the people come off as transparent in their attempt to make money off the success of this film. These people all agreed and signed waivers about their appearance in the film. Now that they’ve been made a spectacle of to the world it’s simply sour grapes. Suck it up, you made your bed, lie in it.

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Yesterday I went to go see The Prestige, which if you have been reading along, was my pick as the winner of the old timey magician movie showdown from awhile back. I still haven’t seen The Illusionist, but I can say The Prestige was definitely a pretty decent movie. It was one of those slow build movies that comes together at the end. If I had watched the first 2/3rds of the movie only I would have probably deemed it a stinker, but all the loose ends get tied up nicely. The cast is very good from top to bottom. David Bowie as Nicola Tesla was very convincing. I kinda wished he had some more face-time in the movie as he stole pretty much every scene he was in. Something that hadn’t dawned on me until watching this movie was that this was the second movie to feature the trio of Christian Bale and Michael Caine with Christopher Nolan at the helm. The first was Batman Begins and they will be together again in the next Batman installment, The Dark Knight.

If you do intend on checking this one out, in the words of Michael Caine’s Cutter, “Watch closely”. You’ll be rewarded when it all comes together.

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