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September 30, 2005

Serenity is How All Movies Should be Made and Marketed!

by Joshua Minton

I didn't get a blogger press pass to see Serenity like some of my more connected comrades in the blogosphere, so I shelled out six bones to see the movie on the IMAX/Ultra screen here in Columbus.

And, by the way, if you have one of these screens in your town and have not elected to use them when great movies come to them, you are a fool and should mend your ways. These screens are worth driving 30 minutes to watch a film on.






  • This movie is the perfect blend of great television and great cinema.
  • The sound is amazing.
  • The effects are spot on.
  • The dramatization and character backstories are believe able.
  • The overall story was on that earth-shattering social level that reached into the individual human choices we make
  • You basically get five seasons of good television story and character arc in two hours


      I was never a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer but Joss Whedon has won a fan today and his name will be revered in the hallowed halls of Boys Wear Pants Dot Com.

      Thank you very much, Mr. Whedon, for your vision and your team of skilled artisans have brought forth a true and noble work of proper art.

      This movie is the best science fiction piece I have seen in quite some team and will be a strong contender for the best sci-fi movie in my collection.

      PS: I hope the studios are paying close attention to what the blogosphere and podcasters have done for the marketing of this movie. And I hope they're smart enough to start giving us press passes to sneak previews more often. We will put the snobbery that has become film crticism on its ass and start telling people what's up from a common sense point of view.

      Tags: ,

      Related Posts (on one page):

      1. Firefly is the Way Television Shows Should Be Made (But We Can Learn Some Things from Its Marketing)
      2. The New Video iPod is About to Launch a Revolution in Television
      3. Serenity is How All Movies Should be Made and Marketed!
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September 15, 2005

Getting Lost and Loving It

by Joshua Minton

Another of the birthday presents I received was the entire first season of the ABC show Lost which I didn't get a chance to watch last year because I gave up my cable for two years to pay for a laptop and ABC is one of those channels that comes in shitty off my antennae (and yes, you can use Tivo with an antennae).

There are 24 episodes in this season and each one is about 40 minutes long. That equals 960 minutes or 16 full hours of show.

To give you an idea of how addicting this show is, I finished it in three days! Of course, consider that I'm in between jobs right now (I start my new job in two weeks) so I have a lot of time on my hands but my days are busier now than when I was employed full time.

So the show opens up with the most awesome plane crash I've ever seen filmed (it even beats the one in Castaway). Actually that's not true because the show opens up with Matthew Fox (Charlie from Party of Five) lying on his back in the jungle with a dog sniffing him. He stands up, pulls an empty mini-liquor bottle from his jacket pocket and looks around. Everything is chaos. People are getting crushed by flying debris. One dude get sucked into one of the engines which explodes and it's all you can do not to duck for cover.

Let me interject here to say that the picture and surround sound on this set are amongst the best I've ever heard coming from a television show. There were times when they were in the jungle when I felt like slapping my neck to keep mosquitos off.

There are about 40 some odd survivors but the show focuses on a handful and employs flashbacks from their pasts to show why they were on the plane and why they are acting the way they are on the island. All of these people are connected in crazy ways (like we all are) and the season shows them progress from fighting over nonsense, succumbing and beating their own inner-demons, to becoming an actual functioning community.

Beyond that, the island they landed on a very mysterious and dangerous place. Crazy unopenable hatches, stranded survivors from a previous crash, a crashed slave ship in the middle of the island, polar bears, crazy boars and loads more make this one of the most interesting shows on television today.

By the end, you are fully investe in the characters and the plot and it is well worth dropping four sawbucks on this set. You won't regret it.


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September 13, 2005

Revisiting The Office

by Joshua Minton

Another one of the birthday presents I got this year was The Office collection on DVD which includes Season 1, Season 2, and the two Christmas Specials.


Ricky Gervais is a comedic genius, as funny and as original as anyone I can think of today and this show is pure work of art that rises above comedy, tragedy, and pity to something sublime.

Consider that there are essentially 14 episodes that take you through the emotions of hating this dipshit boss who is far more concerned with being popular than with being successful, to turning your head away at his embarassing flubs and outright slanderous behavior towards others.
You've got to love it when he's outside waiting for a blind date and a fat woman walks up and he's put off but relieved when she's looking for someone else. When she asks what he's so happy about; he says, "I was waiting for a blind date and I was afraid you were it."
But when he puts his people to pasture to save himself only to be denied when he fails the medical test, his peer from another branch becomes his boss instead and he has to eat crow throughout the entire second season to the point where he gets fired and comes back continually again and again into the office in the Specials where everything winds up to a feverous emotional pitch and it is in the last five minutes of the last special where the emotional breakthrough occurs and the series goes from being a comedy to being a true work of art.

I have watched this show four times now (three before receiving this gift) and I cannot recommend it highly enough. There is stuff here that will keep you laughing for years and years.

I can't wait to see what Ricky comes out with next.

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September 11, 2005

The Question that Defines The Sopranos

by Joshua Minton

I've rewatched all five seasons of the show these past two weeks and I've concluded that this is the question that the show is demanding of the audience:

How much is one man willing to sacrifice in order to take the easy way out which has become progressively harder the further he progresses in life?

Tony is a natural born leader in everything he does but he ultimately falls victim to his pride or his own pussy ass weakness as he calls it.

This is American tragedy on a Shakespearean scale--a true epic that will define our culture in this time we live in.

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September 8, 2005

Jim Henson was on Drugs...

by Joshua Minton

...but damn it made him good at what he did.

We just got through the First Season of the Muppet Show and I'm telling you that this man and his puppet team were hitting the hookah before they wrote these songs and these shows.

I mean, right out of the cage, the song Mahamana is one of the weirdest things I've ever seen or heard...but the son of a bitch just popped out of my subconscious three days after I had watched it and I couldn't get it out of my head. And to top it off, once I did get it out of my head that day, Opie and Anthony use the instrumental of the song as one of their background tunes and it was back in my head for another few hours.

The man was brilliant but the man was on drugs.

And obviously he was good at making television crack because I was back at the fixing post two days ago, shelling out another thirty crackers for the First Season of Fraggle Rock.

Fraggle Rock was one of my favorite shows growing up and I am very surprised to see how well it has held up. My son is captivated by all the songs and the crazy ass puppets (remember the talking trash heap who was the oracle and those big nosed king and queens of the universe...man, this show is some crazy shit!).

But what I was most surprised to find out about this show is that Henson created it to put international global conflicts on stage in the most simplistic terms possible so that children could understand why it is that countries don't get along together. He wanted to bring world peace through his puppets on HBO.

All this time we've been thinking Ronald Reagan ended the Cold War when all along it was Jim Henson with his hookah pipe and puppets that really brought down the wall.

Rock on!

PS: Just try to tell me that it doesn't look like the Swedish Chef is smoking a roach in the picture above.

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