Savage Popcorn

Tired of being ripped off over the past three years on YouTube, the Monty Python team has finally taken action… by setting up their own channel on YouTube (via Slashdot).

No more of those crap quality videos you’ve been posting. We’re giving you the real thing - HQ videos delivered straight from our vault.

What’s more, we’re taking our most viewed clips and uploading brand new HQ versions. And what’s even more, we’re letting you see absolutely everything for free. So there!

And in return, all they are asking is that you click on the links and buy the films and TV shows. And you can’t say fairer than that.

Have you ever wondered how lightsabres worked? Probably not, but this article (via Slashdot) is worth taking a look at if you want a quick smile at a bit of 2005 era japery.

Alternatively, you can catch up with the YouTube generation and follow the Everyday Dark Lord’s household uses for a lightsabre.

It’s what Barack Obama promised. But the signs are that someone in Hollywood missed a memo because the men with the money are still ploughing ahead with bad remakes of classic and foreign films.

Nothing good can come from either of these projects.

Whatever the result of the US election one thing is certain: George W Bush will finally be voted out of office. Some felt that the day would never come, so io9 reminds us that two years ago, a team of filmmakers decided to bring Bush’s presidency to a premature end with Death of a President.

Much controversy surrounded the film for depicting the assassination of George Bush and it suffered distribution woes in the US, Italy and elsewhere. But what made this SF mockumentary interesting was what came next.

Set in 2013 - six years after the assassination – the film uses a combination of archive footage and interviews with those involved in the investigation to slowly unravel the story of who shot the president – and why.

The film is still available on DVD and is worth checking out. Alternatively, if you want a more UK oriented political film, you could do a lot worse than taking a look at Taking Liberties.

The Klingons for Jesus are coming

In fact not only should Klingons worship Jesus but Jesus is the messiah the Klingons have been waiting for all along.

It’s certainly the most consistent religious website I’ve seen in a long time.

Via Pharyngula

According to CHUD, Ricky Gervais – in an interview with Empire magazine – said of British films: “The Americans are just better at it than us. There’s an odd exception, but when it comes to making movies we don’t really cut the mustard. Not since about 1950.”

Not one to let it lie, Edgar Rice has come up with 101 such exceptions, from The Lavender Hill Mob to Son of Rambow. And being the modest man he is, he has failed to list either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz – both of which deserve a mention in any list of Great British Films.

There are many, many more. But, given the number of films that are either co-productions or draw cast and crew from both sides of the Atlantic, is it even meaningful to talk about British Films as a separate category any more? Was it ever meaningful to make such a distinction?

There has been much discussion recently about Google’s entry into the browser market, what it means for other browsers and what it means for Microsoft. But Neatorama (via) has found another significance by looking at the Chrome logo.

Well, I say there’s something else. See that glowing blue eye? It’s absolutely, positively from SAL 9000, the Earthbound twin of the HAL 9000 computer in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. (Huh? There are two of ‘em? Yep: HAL has a red eye, SAL has a blue eye.)

SAL, like HAL, was a sentient computer that hopefully wouldn’t turn into a paranoid psychopath like her older brother, which makes you wonder about the subtext of Google’s ever-expanding, ever-learning search algorithms. If Google ever “wakes up,” you better hope it sounds more like Candice Bergen than Douglas Rain.

Dealing with fan mail is a problem faced by many authors – especially as their popularity grows. CT2 reveals that Robert Heinlein had an entertainingly unique solution to this – the form letter.

While a form letter such as this may be a bit impersonal, some acknowledgement is better than none and it is impressive that Heinlein managed to reply to pretty much all his mail. There is probably also something revealing about fandom in the fact that a mere 21 responses were enough to cover the vast bulk of Heinlein’s mail.

Sadly this approach was abandoned in 1984 when, according to Heinlein’s wife, Ginny: “with the advent of computerization in our household, we no long use the form letter to answer fan mail. I find that it is possible now, with the computer, to write individual letters in reply to fan mail faster than I could check off the answer on the form.”

The Observer has quite a good article today charting the rise of Daily Show presenter Jon Stewart and asking what his success tells you about the dire state of journalism in the US.

His most effective move is to cull through the tapes of all the countless banalities, hypocritical contradictions and attempted snow-jobs executed in boundless profusion on our airwaves and on political podiums. He just puts them on the air and you watch with slack-jawed amazement.

And here’s an example (via) of him puncturing the sort of nice-sounding but utterly meaningless phrase so beloved by political types.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Looking back to the UK and the inanities being uttered by members of the two major parties (and I have to admit that I have found myself becoming increasingly unimpressed with the Lib Dems over the past few months), where is Chris Morris. Still, there’s always In The Loop to look forward to next year.