Miley Cyrus looks...different

A New ‘Toy Story’ Short Will Run Before ‘The Muppets’

From slashfilm, The info comes from a brief mention in Variety, which speficially says after mentioning the short that will run with the Cars sequel, “a second will unspool in front of the upcoming “Muppets” movie.” So, two new Toy Story shorts this year, with the second being the first Pixar short to play in front of a non-Pixar production. Not bad.

This is in conjunction with the official announcement of the Cars spin-off Planes, and Disney chairman Rich Ross says that there will be other similar projects in the future. I’d love to see more Pixar shorts playing in front of other non-Pixar films, as long as the studio’s high level of quality can be maintained.

Listen to 12 Hours of François Truffaut Interviewing Alfred Hitchcock

From slashfilm, If you’re a film fan, chances are you’re an Alfred Hitchcock fan. And if you’re an Alfred Hitchcock fan, today just might be Christmas. Film Detail was poking around online when they stumbled upon almost 12 hours of audio featuring the father of the French New Wave, François Truffaut, interviewing the Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock in 1962. Let’s say that again. There are 12 hours of free audio of Truffaut talking to Hitchcock about his entire life, both personal and professional. For anyone who can’t afford $120,000 for film school, we may have just found a free one.

Part 1: Childhood through to his early years in the film industry
Part 2: Mountain Eagle through to the end of the silent era
Part 3: Blackmail through to a discussion about American audiences
Part 4: Rich and Strange through to realism in films
Part 5: The 39 Steps through to plausibility in film and film critics
Part 6: Secret Agent and Sabotage
Part 7: Young and Innocent and The Lady Vanishes
Part 8: Final years in Britain through to his move to America
Part 9: Rebecca
Part 10: Discussion about Hollywood through to Notorious
Part 11: Mr and Mrs Smith through to Suspicion
Part 12: Saboteur through to Shadow of a Doubt
Part 13: Lifeboat through to Spellbound
Part 14: Notorious through to The Paradine Case
Part 15: Rope
Part 16: Rope and Under Capricorn
Part 17: Stage Fright through to Strangers on a Train
Part 18: Strangers on a Train through to I Confess
Part 19: Notorious through to a discussion about suspense
Part 20: Initial discussion about the The Birds through to Rear Window
Part 21: The Wrong Man through to Vertigo
Part 22: North by Northwest through to Psycho
Part 23: Psycho
Part 24: The Birds
Part 25: Psycho through to characterization in films

Each one of those 25 pieces of audio are just over 25 minutes long so, that’s more than enough content for you to sift through for the rest of the month. Seriously, how cool is this?

Listen to the chapters here

2nd Thor trailer makes me a bit more optimistic

Hump Day poetry slam results

So this week's pickings were slim but muscular, kind of like a hipster who secretly works out. I laughed out loud at 50p's and Catfreeek's respective limericks and nodded wisely at JSP's haiku trilogy; I have empathy and appreciation for Octopunk's struggle to tell his Williamsburg hipster tale; and like JPX, I really don't know what a hipster is, either; but I have to give the win to guest poet H-Town, for the amazing

Fixies, PBR

Only douches own a car

Can I get a ride?

To me, that nailed the hipster essence while simultaneously cracking me up every time I read it. So if H-Town is willing, she can guest-host next week's competition; if she is bashful or busy, let me know and I will name a runner-up to shoulder the responsibility next Wednesday.

Signs

No, not the odious M. Night Shyamalan movie ("My son leaves half-empty glasses of water around! And these mimes in leotards are harmed by water -- that must be why they came to Earth, a planet that's 80% water! It's a miracle that restores my faith!" ) but my own photographs of signs I like. I've been interested in typography and design all my life and I've always been intrigued by older, largely-handmade signs that embody an advanced understanding of form, color, proportion and typographical beauty (even if the signmakers are just reproducing the trends of the day).

I started assembling these pictures a while ago, Photoshopping them only so as to remove the linear perspective from the original photographs and make everything rectilinear (and to remove the surrounding material). I started doing this in black-and-white but I just re-did the whole thing in color and it's definitely good-looking that way. (I've got a bunch more that I haven't finished yet; this is very much a "work in progress.") I'd be interested in any opinions on color vs. black and white (or on anything else).

Black and white: http://www.jordanorlando.com/signs

Color: http://www.jordanorlando.com/signs_color

And oh yeah...spoiler warning on Signs. Just think: You could have had your mind blown by the incredible half-empty glasses of water that the leotard-clad mimes are susceptible to (Who would have guessed?), and now I've gone and ruined it.

Early Episodes of Siskel & Ebert Shows Now Archived Online

From slashfilm [excerpt], Over the past year and change, Roger Ebert has written a new chapter in his more than forty-year career as a major film critic. Now some of the earliest days of that career are online thanks to the Library of Congress and SiskelandEbert.org, which presents raw tape archives of the early episodes of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert’s film review shows that aired for decades, starting in 1975.

I grew up watching Sneak Previews, the second incarnation of their show, and this archive isn’t just a time capsule, but a reminder of some of my first exposure to film criticism of any kind. I think the show was the first exposure to film criticism that a great many people had, and it is a reminder of a time when getting detailed info on films was a much more difficult process than turning to an IMDB app on your phone. The voices of Siskel and Ebert were enough of a cultural force that the idea of the thumbs-up rating system became universally recognized.

A better Scream 4 poster

Uncle Leo ( Len Lesser) dies at 88

Hump Day Poetry Slam: Hipsters!

Maybe, like me, you don't know exactly what hipsters are, but find them intriguing and entertaining (except when they hog the comfy chairs at your local coffee house). Maybe you love them, hate them, or are indifferent to them. Maybe you are one. Whatever your stance or status, let me know your thoughts in any type of verse you wish!

Galaxy of Terror

1981 ***1/2

That's right, it's another Horrorthon review!

As a teenager I sought out Galaxy of Terror when it first came around on cable because I had read the following fact in an issue of Playboy: a woman has sex with a giant maggot.

But this movie is so much more -- as of this viewing I've decided it's the best 80's sci-fi/horror B-movie there is. That may sound like a ridiculously narrow category of achievement, but consider...

Roger Corman produced it, and unlike the huge volumes of his work that predate the 80's you can actually see tits in this movie. The production design is by some first-time hack named James Cameron, and check out the fun faces in the cast:

Freddy Kreuger, Laura Palmer's mom, and Mr. Hand!

and Joanie! In spaaaace!
This movie hits "bad enough to be good" on a lofty zen-like level. It makes it look easy while doing it, too, drawing from any number of its sci-fi betters but actually pulling off some original stuff on the way. You will see the label "Alien clone" slapped on this flick, but it doesn't really apply. Where, for instance, does Alien hint at anything like the following?

We open with narration from this witchy lady, who states her name and space-witchy stature and talks about how she and the Planet Master, who's head glows constantly, sit around and play the "eternal cosmic game," which appears to be a tabletop Ms. Pac-Man the Planet Master boosted from a nearby bar.

"Holy FUCK when is that pizza getting here?"
Ignoring the fact that someone stuck them in an undisturbed corner of a mid-level hotel lobby, the two great beings stab at their buttons with tense determination, possibly altering the destinies of thousands of lives with each stroke.

It's hard to say. The cosmos only has four buttons
Fortunately a colonel so-and-so crashes the party and gets the plot rolling, announcing that a ship of the realm has gone missing on the mysterious planet Morganthus. Citing some ominous signifigance to that particular planet, the Planet Master orders a hand-picked rescue operation. The space witch and her narration disappear from the movie forever.

Horrorthon Public Service Announcement: Not one thing from this poster is in the movie
There follows an admirably quick introduction to our crew of players, who before you can say whoop de whoop have zipped into space and crash landed on Morganthus themselves. At this point the terror rolls up its sleeves and gets to work, and the picking-off process can get going. In this sense it is a very Alienesque movie, but as the cast members go down it's soon obvious that it isn't just one kind of critter getting its claws dirty.

Actually it becomes clear pretty quickly that the characters' own fears have something to do with the monsters they face. Knowing this in advance, during this viewing I couldn't help noticing the hand-picked crew is pretty much a bunch of unstable, whiny ninnies. Take Captain Laura Palmer's Mom for instance:

"I'll never stop hearing the skurgbloks' screams..."
She's the lone survivor of some long ago Space Viet Nam thingie, and so she masks her inner damage with a rough and tumble exterior. Except she doesn't mask diddly, as any mention of the historic battle drops her straight into haunted vet flashback mode. Which can only lead to...

"Hahaha! Die, Space Santa!"
Yep. Full-blown flashback mode, tripping balls while manning a big laser cannon. Take note: these are the kind of personnel decisions that happen when your planet is ruled by a video game addict with a glowing head.

Uh-oh, looks like Willie's "just" again.
Galaxy of Terror charms my socks off every time because it's got that Ed Wood-like gumption to just tell a story, dammit, and it's got enough skill among its cast and crew to fake it like the best. There's one monster in particular that you can tell is just the worst puppet monsta ever, but they knew enough to keep it in the shadows as much as possible.

And look at the spaceship corridor above; total ripoff of Aliens and Star Wars, but it's still so sincere in its way. (I'm think one benefit of old, crappy sci-fi flicks is, cheap or not, they still had big sets because you couldn't throw it all in front of a greenscreen.)

The result is a scrappy, not terribly bright movie that has just the right slapped-together mix of stupid and clever to be thoroughly enjoyable and occasionally kind of visionary. Sort of. Maybe.

At least it's better than being raped by a giant maggot