Minimal Media
bushwells | October 19, 2008My seventeen year old daughter is keenly interested in politics and political figures so I wasn't surprised that she wanted to see Oliver Stone's biopic W. We saw it on Friday night in an almost full theater. In a nutshell, the movie was entertaining in a squirm-in-your-seat fashion.
Josh Brolin (l) [No Country for Old Men] starred as the Lame Duck (r). Although not a doppelganger, Brolin nailed Bushie's mannerisms and speech patterns perfectly. Interestingly, Christian Bale was originally cast in the role, but dropped out for various reasons.
As I reminded Spawn the Yonger, this is an…
bushwells | March 19, 2008One of the guilty pleasures of my sabbatical from the dark halls of Pharma-dur is the freedom to take in a movie on a weekday afternoon. There's just something special about sitting in a theater of the local googolplex with maybe three to ten other people and watching a new release on the big silver screen. It's like my own semi-private showing, and I can make believe that I am a dowdy suburban semi-literate version of the late Pauline Kael.
Among the flicks I've taken in as afternoon delights: No Country for Old Men (saw it twice - I'm a combined Cormac McCarthy/Coen Brothers fan), There…
bushwells | November 20, 2007When the word "stinker" was bandied about in reviews, I should have known better. Yet at happy hour last Friday, my two gal-pals and I made a date to see a Sunday matinee of Robert Zemickis' Beowulf. My friends, a biologist and a chemist, had taken medieval literature as undergrad electives so they were curious, and having recently read Seamus Heaney's translation and as a Tolkien aficionado, I thought the flick might be fun.
Ay caramba, man. The critics were on to something.
The performance-capture animation has improved somewhat, and the scenes in the movie were richly detailed. The…
bushwells | November 12, 2007On many occasions, I have made apparent my predilection for viewing some of the worst crap televised. Ever. I land on it like a fly on fresh feces (and not just monkey feces), so this past weekend was no exception when a friend turned me on to America's Most Smartest Model, one of the plethora of reality TV shows that litter the airwaves, or cable lines as the case may be. This one is broadcast on VH1. Apparently, it's a hit among the science-geeks of my friend's Boston biotech crowd.
The models, seven men and seven women, are not only judged for their Derek Zoolanderish qualities, but are…
bushwells | September 10, 2007In anticipation of forking over multiple dead presidents, a healthy kidney and sacrificing a pair of white doves to enter the local googolplex cinema to see 3:10 to Yuma, I indulged in a Christian Bale-o-thon this weekend. Well, OK, two DVDs don't make a "-thon" but it's a little more focused than my typical viewing habits.
The two films I watched this past weekend were Reign of Fire and The Prestige. Both qualify as Mystery Science Theatre designates. In fact, Michael Nelson of the real MST 3000 has a Riff on Reign of Fire available for the low, low, LOW price of $2.99!
Some of the blurbs…
bushwells | July 11, 2007As a belated follow-on to my rant on ol' Hissy Chrissy Hitchies' contention that women aren't funny, I offer this film clip via LiveScience: Humor and the Sexes. Be forewarned that you must suffer through a Yahoo ad in the beginning which pokes gentle fun at Incompetent Men and Their Tools, a subject that is always a knee-slappper. In the meat of the film, Allan Reiss discusses the tantalizing observations that men's and women's brains respond differently to humor.
From Hitchen's Vanity Fair article:
The researchers found that men and women (10 each - Doc Bushwell) share much of the same…
bushwells | July 2, 2007A friend visited from Boston this past weekend, so we took a jaunt into The City on Saturday. Our prime destination was the American Museum of Natural History where Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns and Mermaids is now playing as a special exhibition.
The imaginary bestiary was entertaining and informative. The basis of myth was explored nicely, and provided testament to the power of human imagination when confronted with natural phenomenon. A seventeen-foot winged green dragon greeted us at the entry, and a plethora of dragon, unicorn and mermaid flavored tchotckes awaited the…
bushwells | June 2, 2007"Your children, like or not, are attracted in their weaker years to the occult..."
Sit in on an actual gaming session with the Dead Alewives' Watchtower and see for yourself!
8-bit D&D from Cyber Moon Studios.
Sent to me by my delightfully nerdsome son, a D&D aficionado, who sports a permanent "Kick Me" sign on his back.
bushwells | May 28, 2007
But he don't pay no mind to no intelligent design. He'll tell you how it's absurd.
He's evolution's top banana and he's married to Romana and that kinda makes him king of the nerds!
Check out Mitch Benn's (indie UK musician) "Richard Dawkins" number. It's in the downloads box on the right section of his web page.
Hat tip to the Irish cephalopod.
bushwells | May 27, 2007My Saturday night exercises in TV viewing resemble Mystery Science Theater 3000 as my spawn and I hoot at bad sci-fi offerings. On occasion, I seek these out in the interest of seeing how poorly scientists and science are portrayed in the pop cultural milieu. Last night's trawling of the cable networks landed Pandemic which premiered (oooo, la, la!) on the Hallmark Channel, of all places, and the truly horrid Dark Storm on the SciFi Network.
"Dark Storm" was so bad, in the sense of "bad" that is not campy bad like the wonderful Mansquito but "bad" in the Lewis Blackesque I'd rather ram a…
bushwells | April 16, 2007I freely admit it. I routinely destroy my neoencephalon by watching all manner of crap on television. I am not one of those overweening snobs who daintily curl an upper lip as I sneer, "I never watch television." I love popular culture, and frankly, find a dose of mindless television to be relaxing, and occasionally thought-provoking.
Warning: This is recycled bonobo scat from the long defunct Refuge, ca. Nov. 5, 2005.
Such occurred recently when I watched the imaginatively titled, "Vampire Bats" featuring the unconquerable Lucy Lawless. Although I was not a devotee, I enjoyed watching…
bushwells | January 10, 2007Here's a belated follow-up on my previous yammering about the SciFi Network's series Eureka. As I expected, the show blends the quirkiness of Northern Exposure with the Big Science of the Manhattan Project. I watched most of the episodes and would rank it in the "OK, I guess" category of marginal TV. Keep in mind that my pop culture entertainment bar is set low.
Colin Ferguson and Joe Morton are the saving graces of the show, and both are highly watchable. Ferguson's role is Jack Carter, the US marshal who, along with his quasi-Goth teener daughter, stumbles into Eureka where he is…