The fourth episode of the Doomcast covers a variety of topics that may have slipped through the cracks of so-called professional news organizations:
[podcast flashvars="titles: 'Doomcast: Play the Dungeon Master'"]http://doombot.com/d-cast/doomcast3.mp3[/podcast]
Download, for your listening enjoyment. [18m 15s]
With Tony off collecting rattlesnakes and other dangerous animals, the task of compiling your weekly list of links falls to the rest of the Doombot crew. Please to enjoy.
Things That Happened a Long Time Ago
Frozen Goods
Five human heads discovered in ice chests in central Mexico. It’s a little bit like Deal or No Deal, except instead of money you get a human head. Every time.“Don’t touch that, 007″
Taking Back the Streets
YouTube Video of the Week
Episode three of our continuing podcast adventures sees Tony and Dan consider a number of important issues:
[podcast flashvars="titles: 'Doomcast: Pants on Fire'"]http://doombot.com/d-cast/doomcast2.mp3[/podcast]
Download, for your listening enjoyment. [18m 50s]
The third and final installment in Leone’s Dollars trilogy is the lengthiest and the most iconic, if for nothing other than its trademark theme. Eastwood’s Man with No Name (here called “Blondie”) is the good, taking on the bad, in the form of the amoral contract killer Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef, who played the sympathetic Colonel Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More). Then there’s the ugly, Mexican bandit Tuco, played by a show-stealing Eli Wallach, who can’t quite escape his Brooklyn accent and occasionally looks eerily like a pudgy Dustin Hoffman. All three are looking for a box of Union coins, but the convoluted plot features more twists and alliances than your average game of Risk. The version I saw was the extended 2002 version, with an almost twenty additional minutes of footage that had never before made it into the English cut and required Eastwood and Wallach to return to dub more lines 35 years after the original film (van Cleef had died in the meantime, with another actor filling his role—and I also swear I caught The Middleman‘s Matt Keeslar in the credits, though I haven’t been able to confirm). Frankly, several of the cut scenes probably could have been left on the floor, since they stretch the movie out almost 3 hours, and make it lag in parts, but whole film—including the 5-minute Mexican standoff at the end—is still a work of beauty.
In this, the second in a series of podcasts, our heroes take on the following pressing topics of the day, to wit:
[podcast flashvars="titles: 'Doomcast: Canine Haberdashery'"]http://doombot.com/d-cast/doomcast1.mp3[/podcast]
Download, for your listening enjoyment. [19m 05s]
Based on the novel by acclaimed author Neil Gaiman and brought to life on the screen by Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach), Coraline is the tale of Coraline Jones, who discovers another world behind the tiny door in her new house’s living room. The movie, filmed as stop-motion, is absolutely gorgeous and exquisitely crafted, with the kind of attention to detail you’d expect from such a production. Of particular note to me was the recurring theme of reflections—for instance, a scene in which Coraline and her mother are driving in the car, and out the window you can see the side mirror, in which you can watch the road disappearing behind them. They could just have not bothered—but the fact that they didn’t tells you something about the immersion of the world they were trying to create. The 3-D effects were used to good effect as well—too often it’s a technique used mainly for cheesy gags, but here it added depth and texture to the experience (in particular, I loved the shots of the corridor that connected Coraline’s house with the other world—it was like you could actually feel it). Oh, and they snuck in a They Might Be Giants song, which was pretty cool, too. On the whole, the movie is a little bit creepy (probably too much so for the younger set), but does a fantastic job of creating a living, breathing world.
The first in a series of podcasts, in which Tony and Dan discuss sundry matters of importance, including—but not limited to:
[podcast flashvars="titles: 'Doomcast: The Sport of Kings'"]http://www.doombot.com/d-cast/doomcast0.mp3[/podcast]
Download, for your listening enjoyment. [21m 51s]
As I haven’t been posting a lot, I’m sure what you’re all (okay—what some of you) wondering is: what am I up to when I’m not helping unstick widgets.
Well, boy am I glad that you let me appropriate your voice and ask. I recently spent some time working on a little film project, featuring my friends Merlin, Scott, Adam, John, and, most especially, John. Delightful folks, all. I hope they don’t sue me.
Anyway, you might enjoy watching the trailer below. Or you might not. Admittedly, it’s got a pretty limited audience.
Fireball – The John Gruber Story Trailer from Dan Moren on Vimeo.
Update: This widget relies on data that we don’t control, and has not been tested for Snow Leopard. It appears to be having difficulties updating now, so we can’t make any guarantees that it will work. Sorry!
If you’ve been using one of the fine folk using our Xbox Live Widget, you may have noticed that it’s lately been suffering from a mild case of not-working.
Turns out we had a slight bug in the works that caused the widget not to be able to get your friends’ statuses, and resulted in a totally blank widget. Fortunately, it wasn’t too difficult to iron out once we knew what was causing it. Thanks to our hard-working volunteer widgeteer Andrew (seriously, folks, give him a hand).
And so we present to you our newly updated widget (v0.81 if you’re keeping track at home), now with 100% more workingness. You can download it here; I’ll also note that it’s been updated on that original download page.
I’m thinking we might need to get an actual download page for this at some point, huh?
As far as political drama goes, it was no West Wing, but the casting was good, the writing accurately captured the soaring rhetoric of hope and change, and a musical score by John Williams and Aretha Franklin never hurt anybody. But while I kept waiting for something to happen, to break up the interminable speechifying, the expected terrorist attack/assassination attempt/asteroid collision just never materialized. Also I hope the writers can lighten up the tone a little bit in future episodes. In sum: while it wasn’t the most gripping hour of television I’ve watched, it certainly has promise. I hope it gets renewed for another season—I’ll be watching.
