Our newest Trailers Without Pity is about the retired-assassins comic book adaptation Red, starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Helen Mirren.
The video gave me the opportunity to bust out the Morgan Freeman impression I’d been storing in the closet and, ironically, the opportunity to throw in Viagra and adult diaper jokes while taking the filmmakers to task for Viagra and adult diaper jokes we only can assume will be in the movie.
Clearly we hold filmmakers to a much higher standard than we hold ourselves. I am OK with that.
It’s an interesting thing to make a video mocking a movie like this because it’s based on real people and events. I met Mark Zuckerberg a few years ago at South by Southwest Interactive and sat front row when he (perhaps unwittingly) threw a reporter to the wolves in front of an audience of several hundred people.
Mark’s a very smart guy and seems to truly believe what he says about privacy going away and Facebook’s potential to be a huge avenue for change in the world. He’s got a very young man’s confidence and all the resources in the world at his disposal right now. Which is also what makes him a little scary and very hard to relate to. When people like Diane Sawyer interview him, they will ask a perfectly reasonable question, and he’ll give a perfectly reasonable-sounding answer to a question that is different than the one which was asked. It’s a neat trick, but not one that endears you to people, really.
I can’t wait to see how the movie portrays him. I just saw Zombieland a few nights ago and really liked Jesse Eisenberg in it and think he’ll do a great job.
As for the video, it’s nice that all the time Pablo and I wasted on Facebook has finally paid off in some small way; this was a very easy script to write.
We have no quarrel with films featuring lots of Latino actors and music in which, instead of gardening or being one of several desperate housewives, they are handed a knife and instructed to hack, slice and blow shit up for dramatic purposes. I think our enthusiasm is evident in the video below. (Which you can also see at this direct link if the video doesn’t load for you.)
Next up, we’re doing the Facebook feature The Social Network.
There honestly hasn’t been a lot to alert you to lately and I’ve been so busy with some work and outside-of-work things lately that there’s not even be time to post anything fun and goofy.
What’s new:
I haven’t done NPR in a few weeks and honestly have no idea when I’ll be on again. It’s been very quiet. People have been on vacation, my producer was assigned to a major blog project and I just haven’t heard much. I’ve been enjoying the summer time off and am still posting an occasional blog entry on All Tech, but there’s been no parting of ways or anything like that (that I know of).
Ditto with CNN. They originally asked me to write just two pieces and that was that. I’m still waiting on my first check to clear through their large corporate structure and arrive before I ask if they’ve got any more assignments.
The famous tech podcast Glark and I did that was never famous, Age of Lasers, has transformed into a Tumblr blog at AgeOfLasers.com. It’s much more random and requires a lot less coordinating to post on. So far, so fun.
The contract Pablo and I have for Trailers Without Pity hits the two-year mark in October and we’re in the process of deciding whether we want to continue. We’ve been told there’s no money for raises, so it’s kind of up to us whether we want to keep doing what we’re doing at the current rate, propose a different project that would be simpler to produce, or just stop. They’re still fun videos to do and it’s very nice to get paid to do fun work, but it’s very time-consuming and we’ve been doing it with very few breaks for two straight years. I’m inclined to say we had fun, said what we wanted to say, and are ready to move on, but that decision is not set in stone yet.
Where I’ve been spending a ton of energy lately is at work where I’ve been wrapping up a story scheduled to run on the front page (fingers crossed) Sunday. It was a very tough story to put together — it’s a profile and when it comes to telling one person’s life, especially a person you’ve been wanting to tell people abou for a long time — it’s a lot of pressure. I’ll be very glad when it’s completely finished.
Lastly, my mom was in the hospital recently for surgery and just got out today. It wasn’t nearly as bad as when she was in the hospital a few years ago and everything seemed to be going wrong, but it was still scary and draining (much more for her than for us). We’re very glad this whole experience is over.
And that’s what’s going on. Lilly and Carolina are doing great. I think Lilly has just discovered that if she plays with Carolina, Carolina will respond and play back and it’s a wonderful thing to watch. Lilly has a birthday coming up. The summer already feels like it’s almost over. I’m trying to enjoy it before it’s gone with trips to Schlitterbahn, walks in the evenings and trying not to take on too many projects, at least for now.
This one had been on our list of movies to do for a while. The mix of over-the-hill action stars, ridiculous title and even more ridiculous trailer beckoned like a lit, beckoning thing over on the horizon of a hill or something.
The Expendables looks like it might be just enough fun to watch on video, but not quite enough fun to make much money in theaters. I mean, look at The A-Team. That faded quickly and looked way more interesting.
In case it hasn’t been made obvious by comicsI havepublished or by the recap I did of Aquaman, I like a good fish joke. Hell, I like a bad fish joke. If there is a fish in the joke I will probably find it amusing. Fish are funny. I hope you agree.
So when we looked at the schedule and saw that Piranha 3-D was on its way to theaters, we could not resist. It was as if it was being dangled in front of us like something you put at the end of an object so that an animal will come and eat it. What’s the word for that?
You know, you use it to catch something? It’ll come to me.
