Month: October 2018

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I Was Reminded Of This The Other Day

https://youtu.be/KSPzsV2YN6Q

Very funny, and very much NSFW.

From Our RoboCop Remake, a project undertaken by a group of filmmakers pissed off about the 2014 RoboCop remake …

Our RoboCop Remake is a crowd-sourced feature based on the 1987 Paul Verhoeven movie. Pooling our resources through various filmmaking channels (including Channel 101) we are 50 filmmakers (amateur and professional) from Los Angeles and New York who have split the original RoboCop into individual chunks, remaking the movie ourselves. Not necessarily a shot-for-shot remake, but a scene-for-scene recreation. We’re big fans of the original RoboCop, and as filmmakers and film fans kinda rolling our eyes at the Hollywood remake machine, we’ve elected to do this remake thing our own way.

Our RoboCop Remake premiered in Los Angeles on January 26th 2014 and New York on February 5th. On February 6th, it was released online.

Because if anyone is going to ruin RoboCop, it’s us.

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So Long, Google+

I’ll remember our time together fondly.

From The Guardian …

This March, as Facebook was coming under global scrutiny over the harvesting of personal data for Cambridge Analytica, Google discovered a skeleton in its own closet: a bug in the API for Google+ had been allowing third-party app developers to access the data not just of users who had granted permission, but of their friends.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s almost exactly the scenario that got Mark Zuckerberg dragged in front of the US Congress. The parallel was not lost on Google, and the company chose not to disclose the data leak, the Wall Street Journal revealed Monday, in order to avoid the public relations headache and potential regulatory enforcement.

Disclosure will likely result “in us coming into the spotlight alongside or even instead of Facebook despite having stayed under the radar throughout the Cambridge Analytica scandal”, Google policy and legal officials wrote in a memo obtained by the Journal. It “almost guarantees Sundar will testify before Congress”, the memo said, referring to the company’s CEO, Sundar Pichai. The disclosure would also invite “immediate regulatory interest”.

Shortly after the story was published, Google announced that it will shut down consumer access to Google+ and improve privacy protections for third-party applications.

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Shit

Add Scott Wilson to the growing list of people who are no longer watching The Walking Dead.

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Shaun!

Funny, then stupid, then funny again. I don’t know why.

Cracked says …

Heavy Rain is an ambitious, complicated and tense murder mystery, which is exactly the sort of game that’s begging for glitches to interrupt the drama like a drunken clown stumbling into a funeral. In the heady emotional climax, protagonist Ethan has found his missing son, Shaun, just in time to stop a serial killer from serial killing him. You’re prompted to hit a button to howl Shaun’s name to the heavens in sheer joy, but what’s supposed to be a touching moment of fatherly love instead turns into a bizarre fit of familial Tourette’s.

Sometimes the prompt to shout “Shaun” shows up and refuses to leave. You can scream it anytime: Ethan yells it at his girlfriend for no reason; he interrupts the villain’s evil monologue with “SHAUN”; he hollers his son’s name in response to getting shot. Later, as Ethan’s lady friend is running from the killer, he keeps screaming “Shaun!” with the voice of a demigod that carries for miles. Eventually, Ethan recovers from his wound, confronts the killer, and blows him away on top of a construction crane. In the pouring rain, he delivers his badass one-liner. It is, of course, “SHAUN!!!”

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25 Years Of Conan

Coco’s been at it for a while.

I probably watched more Letterman (I’m an old, old man), but I know enough Conan to be dumbfounded that Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Masturbating Bear, and Live via Satellite Famous Person Interview did not make the final cut.

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It All Began As A Summer Vacation …

Burnt Offerings, the 1973 inspiration for Stephen King’s The Shining, was made into a movie in 1976 starring Burgess Meredith, Bette Davis, Oliver Reed, and Karen Black. I’m almost certain it’s one of those horror flicks that scared the everliving shit out of me when it aired on network television back in the day.

The story concerns a family who moves into an old house that regenerates itself by twisting the life force of the occupants who become violent and either kill each other or are killed off while the member of the household who becomes possessed by the spirit of the house survives and becomes a sentinel (in this case “elderly Mrs. Allardyce”), awaiting the next family to be lured once the powers of the existing sentinel wear down and a successor must be found.

We watched it on Amazon Prime the other night – for nostalgia more than anything. It’s pretty slow by today’s standards, but suitably creepy. I kinda want to read the book now, which is recently back in print.