5/30/2009 - Rap Chop (500th post)

Holy crap! I can't believe this is my 500th post! And what better way to celebrate than with one of the coolest videos on YouTube? One that takes one of my favorite infomercials and edits it into a music video! A software program called Auto-Tune was used to control the pitch of Vince's voice so that it appears he's actually harmonizing with the background tunes. I'm sure it's not as automatic as it sounds, but with a lot of editing, the end result really is a full music video:



I think that if this version of the infomercial hit the air, even more people would by the Slap Chop.

5/28/2009 - Snakes on a Plane - The TV Edit - The famous line

It's weird to me how stuff on TV gets more and more violent (or they show more blood and guts in the medical shows), and more and more racy, and yet when it comes to language, profanity is still a no-no. Kiefer Sutherland himself says that when Jack Bauer says "Dammit", he's really saying it place of an expletive. So what happens when a movie's most famous quote has to pass the television censors? Well, here's the original quote in question, from the movie Snake's on a Plane:



Samuel L. Jackson even said that they didn't fight the R rating mainly to keep that quote in. Now that's standing for artistic principle! I just wonder what he thinks of how the TV edit butchered the line:

5/26/2009 - We Didn't Start the Flame War

This video really encapsulates the state of the Internet today in it's "Web 2.0" state where everybody can many any comment on anything, good or bad. As you can imagine, message boards and comment sections are perhaps the least civilized stomping grounds in today's society:

5/23/2009 - Real-life Mega Man

The guys at Mega 64 are great, but I don't think they could top this cosplayer from Japan dressed as none other than Mega Man. I think he truly understands the character and how he would behave in our world. Free from Dr. Light and missing his friends Rush and Roll, Mega Man would have a difficult time adjusting to a life devoid of enemies and boss fights. It seems like only E-Tanks can drown his sorrows:

5/21/2009 - Jack in the Box - Mini Sirloin Burgers

I like the White Castle burgers occasionally, but I don't really get the mini-burger phenomenon. I like my burgers big... with multiple beef patties and grease oozing from every pore. But these days, fast food places seem to be downsizing with items like snack wraps and mini burgers. One would think that the restaurant cooks would protest such a trend since it would probably mean more work to them (flipping three patties at a time instead of one).

While I generally don't care for the concept of mini burgers, I really like the Jack in the Box commercial for their version:



Everything from the song, to the midgets (or should i say dwarfs?), to the mini cattle is hilarious. I especially like the expression on the gopher's face.

5/19/2009 - Super Mario Kart : Death Race Double Dash

It seems like making a good video game movie is an impossible task. The last one I saw, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li, was so bad that I think there should no longer be live-action movies based on video games. The only video game movies that I thought were decent were DOA and Mortal Kombat. They do have the greatest acting or plots, but at least they were fun and didn't take themselves too seriously. Trust me, I'd love to see a good Legend of Zelda movie, or a good Metroid movie. But I just don't think it's ever going to happen.

I can kind of see what studio execs are thinking with video game movies though. They see an audience with a pre-established brand, and that audience paid up to $60 for a game with that brand, much more than the price of a movie ticket. If they could make a quick movie of that video game, even if a sixth of those who bought the game watched the movie, they would be making the same amount as that video game publisher. The more successful the game, the more successful the movie should be, right? Wrong.

I mean it's surprising to me that there haven't been movies of some of Nintendo's biggest franchises like Zelda and Metroid. What would really be daring would be to make a movie out of Super Mario Kart. I mean, it's a huge seller for Nintendo, right? And here's what it could look like:

5/16/2009 - Rose Ball

It's rare in a fighting game to have a character that has a fireball move and and move that reflects fireballs. But when you do have a character like that, you can play a mirror match and have a mini-game reminiscent of Pong where you reflect a fireball back and forth until one player gets hit. In Street Fighter, Rose has both a fireball and a reflect move, so this game is naturally called "Rose Ball":