A Decade of Dreck #42: Date Movie

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more information about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

I don't want to kill Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer: I want to do far worse. I want to hurt them and to go on hurting them. I want them to look to Heaven and scream at their gods whether the misery in their lives is manifest or the machinations of Alexander W. Boivin. 

I was an innocent, a boy who loved movies. I wasn't even an especially egregious film snob; my favorite movie is Return of the Jedi for crissakes. Sure I've seen Metropolis, Breathless, Rashomon, the pillars of the foo-foo arthouse establishment. But c'mon, I took a girl to see Human Centipede on a date! I'm not some sort of beret-wearing monster! I'm willing to pay money to see a movie about a Japanese guy pooping in a girl's mouth.

Date Movie was like a burning dagger right in my cinephile heart. It taught me that the medium I love can be truly used to hurt people. I don't think I can ever watch another movie ever again. Film is an abomination and it must be destroyed. Friedberg and Seltzer alone will be left to witness the fall of cinema, feasting on the artificial butter flavoring-soaked flesh of the innocent at the Concession Stand On The Edge Of Forever.

God damn you for what you've done, Friedberg and Seltzer. God damn you to Hell.

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Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob: Week 92: The Pixies

Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.

On a lengthy winter roadtrip last year, I picked up a handful of CDs from the local library. One of these was the Pixies' Surfer Rosa, which the library had thoughtfully taken a black marker to in order to prevent me from seeing the breasts on the cover. I even remember the exact day I first listened to it, because it was January 1st, 2010. 

I remember putting Surfer Rosa in and absolutely hating it. I'm not sure if it was the hangover, the mid-afternoon hypnosis that strikes on long trips, or that, for some intangible reason, I just wasn't in the mood. But the alternating tempos and dynamics started to grate on me. The cryptic lyrics quickly became annoying. The soft whispers made the hairs on my neck stand on end, and the loud no-holds-bar rock made me tense and agitated. I made it through the album, then promptly threw it in the back seat, buried it under some dirty clothes, and returned it as soon as I was home. 

388 days later, I decided to give the Pixies another shot. And while I'm not going to be getting a Pixies tattoo anytime soon, I'm pleased to find that my initial reaction was not altogether accurate. I liked Doolittle and Bossanova, and even as I look over the track list to Surfer Rosa, I can say that I enjoy more songs on the album than I dislike. Listening to the album now, I'm not sure what inspired such an enraged reaction last January. 

It's strange how sometimes art clicks for us at a certain point in our lives. Music I used to find unimpressive now captivates me, while some of the stuff that used to blow me away doesn't inspire much in me now. On the one hand, I'm not very inclined to keep subjecting myself to stuff I don't like, in a desperate attempt to "get it." But on the other hand, sometimes it's worth it to revisit an old foe and see if it was really that bad, or if it was just a bad day. 

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After the Jump: Terrifying Marionettes

Subscribe to the podcast via the feed, or find us in the iTunes store!

Featuring Jordan!

This week, our typically wide-ranging topic list includes: Girl Scout cookies, the Oscar nominations, pizza that comes packaged with other food, homeless junkies, Egypt, stupid T-shirts, the Pope, Disney, Sony’s NGP, and more!

Thanks for listening! See you next week!

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Sunday Reading: The NY Times Videogames Section

You read that headline correctly. The New York Times website now has a videogames section under ‘Arts.’ Someone must have realized Seth Schiesel’s been too long toiling away in the ‘Television’ section and called in a favor with the web engineers.

Schiesel’s been a Charge Shot!!! favorite before we branched out beyond gaming. He represents the industry well with serious, even-keeled coverage and quality writing. (That said, I wonder if he regrets saying The Beatles: Rock Band “may be the most important videogame ever” the way I regret implying that no one remembers Serious Sam.) Plus, he has a knack for seeing where games fit into the big picture while simultaneously being able to judge them on their own terms.

His recent review of LittleBigPlanet 2 pinpoints why it should be Sony’s system-seller:

“…computers and software are really all about unleashing creativity, not stifling it.

One of the saddest aspects of the electronic age is that even as computers have become more powerful and pervasive (ubiquitous even), the ability to create software for them has escaped the reach of everyday people.

[…]Of course making anything that lots of other people will actually enjoy still takes a tremendous amount of dedication and perhaps even skill. That is true in any realm of creation. But if you are, say, a parent who worries that video games are melting your children’s brains, ask them if they wouldn’t like to try their hand at actually making a game.”

It’s not just Schiesel contributing to this nascent ‘Arts’ subsection. Others are pitching in in the news department, weighing in on the handheld wars and recent news stories like the gaming buzz surrounding Tuscon shooter Jared L. Loughner. Give them some traffic. They deserve it.

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Saturday Morning TV: OMG SPONGEBOB-KUN!

When was the last time you were this excited about McDonald’s? Or cartoons? Or anything?

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Going Off The Grid

I normally try and go "dark" at least once a year. I'll choose a day, usually when I'm on vacation, and set aside my phone, iPod, laptop, and whatever other electronic devices are in my life at that moment, then go twenty-four hours without using them. Nor will I go on the Internet or receive communications from anyone else's machines.

What always surprises me every year is how easy it is to put everything aside. I consider this a good sign. True, twenty-four hours is not a lengthy amount of time, but I don't find myself missing the constant texts, the perpetual music, or the gnawing anxiety of unanswered emails. The hardest part about going dark last year was refraining from checking Wikipedia to clarify the rules of a board game.

It's a nice thing to do every once in a while, if nothing else just to prove that I can. We hear so much about how bad the Internet is for us - it's killing our attention span, it's devaluing our friendships, it's making us bad writers, it's sealing us up in a self-serving solipsistic blogosphere, et cetera. All these things may be true, but I'm growing just as tired of the histrionic screeds against technology.

Case in point: I read an article in my (analog) newspaper this week about the Maushart family. The matriarch, an aspiring writer named Susan, decided that her family was too addicted to technology, and she pulled the plug on the Internet for six months. You can read about the family here; apparently, a book is in the works.

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The Office Fills Open Positions with Temps Ferrell and Gervais

Are you still watching The Office? I’ve long since given up keeping up with the show week-to-week (the last episode I watched when it premiered was probably the one with the baby), but I find this allows me to better enjoy it in syndication. The awkwardness feels fresher and less predictable, the scenarios more original.

Steve Carell, of course, doesn’t get to experience The Office as I do. He’s been stuck managing the chaos at Dunder-Mifflin Scranton since 2005. Carell’s contract expires this year, and it’s been made clear that he’ll be out before the season’s over.

While it’s still up in the air (get it?) who NBC will tap to replace Carell (if they deem a replacement is needed), they’ve already made arrangements to bring in a few ringers to close out the show’s seventh season. Will Ferrell – you may remember him from that movie career he had – will be joining The Office in a four-episode arc, one episode past Carell’s exit. Also, New York Magazine’s Vulture blog got the scoop that Ricky Gervais shot a short cameo with Carell, reprising his character David Brent from the U.K. Office for yesterday (Jan. 27) evening’s episode.

These are not, of course, permanent solutions. These are brief stints commemorating Carell’s fantastic run on the show. We’ll see whether or not NBC can fill the man’s shoes next season, but for the time being it’s fun to watch them pull out all the stops.

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Listen To This – Finding Meaning in the Music

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” – Martin Mull

It is with this quote that Alex Ross opens his new book Listen To This. Ross, longtime music critic for The New Yorker, quickly robs Mull’s statement of its power. He rightly points out that “every art form fights the noose of verbal description.” His job as critic, as he sees it, is to “demystify the art” while still inviting us to bear witness to its wonders.

I read Ross’s first book, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, on the recommendations of a number of friends, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. His immense knowledge of classical music doesn’t weigh on the text. His storytelling thrives even amidst the densest of jargon. I came away from The Rest Is Noise thinking not simply, “Wow, there’s a lot of music I haven’t listened to,” but “Wow, there’s a lot of music I need to listen to.”

It’s fitting then that Ross’s latest is titled Listen To This. A collection of pieces from his New Yorker career, Listen To This sounds like it should be a mere book of reviews, recommendations from an esteemed critic. However, Ross’s gifts at contextualizing music and its creators elevate it to a must-read for musicians and music fans alike.

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Sony Reveals ‘Next Generation Portable’ (Their Words, Not Mine)

Earlier today, Sony held a press conference in Japan to unveil their newest portable gaming device: the Next Generation Portable (working title, I guess).

The two biggest questions – actual name and price – have yet to be answered, but Sony’s been nothing short of pushy about the device’s other specs. The NGP (ugh) will feature dual analog sticks, front- and rearview cameras, flash memory cartridges, a rear touchscreen (?), Sixaxis tilt controls, and some touch control on the front OLED screen. Sony’s also touting the machine’s power, showcasing adaptations of popular PS3 franchises like Uncharted and Killzone. It also features built-in Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and 3G connectivity.

Sony’s strategy comes straight out of the Tim Allen “More power!” playbook. It’s conceivable that they included the rear touchscreen simply because someone said it couldn’t be done. Sony would also like you to believe the NGP belongs in company with its bigger brother, the PS3. Please take that one with at least fifteen packets of salt.

We can expect to see the NGP on shelves this holiday – in direct competition with the Nintendo 3DS. Nintendo, despite a relatively soft launch game-wise, is banking on the strength of its first-party software, as well as the allure of 3D. Sony is throwing in everything but the kitchen sink (and 3D, by the looks of it), hoping their “More power!” approach will win us over.

No word yet on whether or not consumers should expect to take a second job to pay for their NGP.

[via Kotaku and GameInformer]

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Game Review: 3D Dot Game Heroes

In the Olden Days for which our society spends so much time yearning, you were often dumped into a game with little to no explanation on how it worked or what you were supposed to do. Climb this structure and save a pixelated girl from a barrel-tossing monkey. Eat these dots until there aren't anymore, and then repeat ad infinitum. Run to the right until you get to the castle.

Absent are the layers of tricks that games have learned to make you think you're doing something other than pushing buttons while staring at a flashing screen. Nowadays you can't sign up for a digitized grand adventure without also signing up for tomes of middling writing and cutscenes long enough to put Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings special edition DVDs to shame.

Silicon Studio's 3D Dot Game Heroes remembers those days well, and it hearkens back to them with a vengeance. Equal parts The Legend of Zelda and Dragon Quest, 3D Dot brings that old-game feel to a new adventure, and it does it in a way that pays homage without feeling derivative. Well, not entirely derivative.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #2: The Seventh Seal

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

One of the biggest pitfalls of taking on a project like this is how well-tread some of the ground is. Last week's entry covered a little-seen Polish film by a director who isn't Roman Polanski, so I had some more room to stretch. Nobody's going to fault me for seeming trite in my discussion of a film that practically no one has seen.

That is far from the case with Ingmar Bergman's canonical 1957 film The Seventh Seal. So much ink has been spilled picking apart the metaphorical import of the film's images: the knight's chess game with Death; Death leading his charges in the danse macabre at the end of the film; the knight's confession in the country church. Some of these images are so indelible, in fact, that they've been parodied in films and TV shows mostly watched by people who've never heard of Ingmar Bergman. So what to do, other than continue to flog an already battered dead horse?

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Book Review: Patton Oswalt - Zombie Spaceship Wasteland

Are you a Zombie, a Spaceship, or a Wasteland? That’s the central question posed in the titular chapter of stand up comedian Patton Oswalt’s memoir/comedic short story hybrid. Are you the type of person who shuffles through life, clinging to the hierarchies and archetypes already laid out on the planet? If yes, you’re a Zombie. Are you the type who wants to escape it all and avoid the nuances and dilemmas of human social interaction? Sure you are, you Spaceship. Or are you the type of person who’s always ready to move on; the type who relishes the thought of the post-apocalyptic world and the changes it will bring? You, sir or madam, join Patton as a Wasteland.

Patton Oswalt made his career on being a lot of things most stand up comics aren’t. He’s unabashedly a dork. He’s unafraid to venture into comedic territory that some people may not get. Don’t get the humor in his use of a phrase like “lead marauder”? Tough nuts. Oswalt plays for a specific set of comedy fans and, over the years, they’ve never left his side. His jokes about cult culture have, in some ways, fostered a cult culture around him. With the release of Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, he further proves that few can match his wit and even fewer can escape his vast cultural eye (of Sauron).

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Mad Men and the Tarot

While investigating a recent phenomenon regarding the positions of the stars and the planets and how they influence our lives - which I have confirmed is in fact nothing but a Scam, as suspected - I suddenly got an unexplainable urge to explore the precepts of Mysticism (that is to say, nonsense). And I was recently presented with an outlet to pursue this urge through an episode of the hit scripted AMC drama Mad Men. In one episode, which I'm sure one of our esteemed writers remembers, Don Draper (that is to say, John Hamm), gets a Tarot card reading.

Even though this happened a full two seasons ago, I won't give away the circumstances under which this happens, as I'd like this post to stay spoiler-free until after the jump. Remember, I'm watching this on Netflix (a fact I'm sure the Nielsen boys would love to get their hands on), so while I'm rather far behind, I'm still going in sequence, so I'd like to stay as spoiler-free as possible myself. So back to focusing on the mysticism.

I had picked up a Tarot deck back in my days of living like an indie-hipster-druid in Portland OR, so I decided to freeze-frame on Don's tarot reading and analyze it a little. Turns out it's a pretty accurate description of his character in the show. Which is interesting, because I've always thought the Tarot had more weight in its descriptive powers rather than its predictive powers.

So if you've watched up through Season 2 of Mad Men and/or you're interested in the divinatory arts, press on to find out what all this means for us.

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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – Frozen Synapse Edition

Indie game developers love to show other indie game developers love. The community thrives because of its collective will and desire to get good games into the hands of people who want to play them. So I’m excited this week that an indie game I play a lot of is pimping a game I’ve heard of more than once.

Frozen Synapse is a game worth looking into. It also is going into its preorder beta period (a stage that’s all the rage in the indie world these days). To celebrate, this week’s tracks are all from _ensnare_, the musical side project of one of Frozen Synapse’s creators.

Oh, and did I mention it was all chiptune?

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A Decade of Dreck #41: Big Momma's House 2

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more information about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

Dear Lord. I just watched Big Momma's House 2.

I swore when the first one came out that I would never see it. Well, swear might be too strong a word. I probably just said to myself "Meh. That looks stupid" and carried on with my life. But jeez louise did I never expect to see it, let alone a sequel.

And c'mon, a sequel! Did this need to happen? I'm sure nobody who reads this blog ever saw Big Momma's House but couldn't you tell this was a one and done sort of franchise? We get it: Martin Lawrence dresses up as a sassy black mammy and busts criminals. It's the action comedy Mrs. Doubtfire! I don't think the character and universe needed to be explored anymore, but who knows? As I said before, I didn't see the first entry in the series.

Questions are finally answered! Truths revealed! Who will survive and what will be left of them? Fat jokes!

So, yeah. Explaining the plot of Big Momma's House 2 isn't important. Martin Lawrence picks up where he (I assume) left off. After the (again, I assume) big case in Big Momma 1, FBI agent Malcom Turner has hung up the fat suit and settled down with some nice lady and her son. With a baby on the way, Turner has taken a public relations job with the Bureau. But when his old partner is murdered during an undercover case, Turner springs back into action, morphing back into Big Momma and infiltrating the home of a crooked software bigwig who is selling a computer virus to terrorists as his family's nanny. Would you believe it if I told you that everybody learns something about family and whatnot? Well, we're told that they do. Also, antics.

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Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob: Week 91 - Yo La Tengo

Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.

One of my favorite activites is the late-night walk, and I happened to take one last Tuesday. Before leaving my apartment, I cued up And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out on my iPod, and then set off into the damp Floridian winter night. 

It was one of those beautiful nights where my mood just happened to match the meteorological conditions - a rainstorm had just passed, the moon was nearly full, and the entire city was obscured in a cloud of gray fog. As I walked under hazy streetlights and dim stars, I was blown away with how well the album matched this weather. The blurred drones of noise lying underneath pitch-perfect harmonies, the soft vocals and chiming guitars, the restrained beauty of the music, it all seemed to function as the aural equivalent of the peculiar beauty of a suburban neighborhood at midnight. 

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After the Jump: Stunner Shades For Horses

Subscribe to the podcast via the feed, or find us in the iTunes store!

Horses and Glenn Beck and Angry Birds, Oh My!

This week we talk about TV pundits, Steve Jobs, Game Show Supercomputers, Disney mascots on lockdown, comic book continuity, Duke Nukems, Russian night sweats, and a whole lot more.

Enjoy! See you next week!

 

 

 

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Sunday Reading: Five Emotions Invented by the Internet

We do our best to eschew numbered lists here at Charge Shot!!!, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading them elsewhere – especially when they’re insightful examinations of digital culture.

Leigh Alexander’s “Five Emotions Invented by the Internet” has been circulating around the, well, Internet for a week or two now. I’ve actually stumbled across it by accident a few times, which speaks to its resonance with a substantial chunk of the online population.

I’ve listed them below. Be sure to head on over to Thought Catalog to read her explanations of each.

“A vague and gnawing pang of anxiety centered around an IM window that has lulled.

A sudden and irrational rage in response to reading an ‘@-reply’ on Twitter.

The state of being ‘installed’ at a computer or laptop for an extended period of time without purpose, characterized by a blurry, formless anxiety undercut with something hard like desperation.

The car collision of appetite and discomfort one feels simultaneously when using the internet to seek and consume images or information that may be considered unseemly or inappropriate.

The sense of fatigue and disconnect one experiences after emitting a massive stream of content only to hit some kind of ‘wall’ and forget and/or abandon the entire thing.”

Without a doubt, I have experienced each and every one of these. What about you? Are there any she missed?

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Saturday Morning TV: Phoenix Jones

Oh man, Phoenix down!

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Book Review: Brandon Sanderson - "The Way of Kings"

When Brandon Sanderson was selected by Robert Jordan's estate to complete the epic Wheel of Time series in 2006, his career quickly heated from a slow simmer to a boil. Long-time fans of the series (of which I consider myself one) were apprehensive that this relative unknown was picked to finish one of the more ambitious fantasy sagas of the last two decades. However, with the publication of The Gathering Storm in 2009, and last year's Towers of Midnight, Sanderson has proven both a capable storyteller and a fitting figure to keep track of the arcane and encyclopedic minutiae of the Wheel of Time universe. 

With the series set to end next year, however, it's clear that Sanderson doesn't want to be known primarily as the guy who finished somebody else's story. In a fit of workaholicism, 2010 saw not only the publication of the 800-some pages of Towers of Midnight, but also Sanderson's thousand page original story, The Way of Kings. 

Jordan's Wheel of Time is rather infamous for its epic length, but Sanderson apparently wants to follow in his predecessor's footsteps. The Way of Kings is the first book in The Stormlight Archive, a projected ten (!) book series that Sanderson has been planning for several years. Now that Sanderson has made a name for himself in the pool of epic fantasy literature, Tor Publishing seems to be setting him up to be the Next Big Epic Fantasy Writer on their payroll. The book's hefty weight, as well as it's beautifully drawn maps and illustrations, support the notion that this is meant to be Sanderson's magnum opus (or at least the first tenth of it).

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Rolling Around in the Night Sky

When was the last time you played a game starring a sphere? No princes, no monkeys. Just a plain little orb. I have to think back all the way to Marble Madness, though of course I could be forgetting something.

For some reason, Night Sky just so happens to star a sphere. Basing a game around a nondescript orb seems like an odd choice, but I’m glad indie developer Nifflas (Nicklas Nygren) did. Its blend of physics puzzles and roly-poly platforming makes for one of the more unique and relaxing games I’ve played in some time.

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Steph’s Science Corner: The Lightning Mystery

Email topic suggestions and comments to science@charge-shot.com, or post them below!

We all know the famous story; Benjamin Franklin stands in a storm with a kite, a key attached to its base, and uses lightning to discover electricity. Or maybe he discovers lightning with electricity. Or perhaps he discovers that that lightning was made up of electricity? Most of us don’t actually know what happened. In 2006 Mythbusters ran an experiment on whether Franklin could have survived a direct lightning-strike to the kite, and found that he could not have. So what was the real story?

In whatever direction the truth actually leads, many of us are fascinated by this awesome, powerful, and deadly metrological phenomenon. The deafening crack of the ensuing thunder can rattle the most stoic nerves. Yet it is as commonly misunderstood as it is terrifying. Most of us are guilty of spreading at least one incorrect fact about its nature, its origin, its behavior, or how best to avoid it. But you might be surprised to discover that until this last decade, it was just as misunderstood by modern science. A staple of our physical world that has been around since the era of man (and not just on our planet), the mechanism of a lightning strike is poorly understood and highly debated, and it is still being studied at research centers across the world.

Some people choose to see this as the will of God, humiliating the efforts of mankind’s futile attempt to understand his divine creation. If this describes you, you probably found this blog by accident. But if you’re like me and you think thunderstorms are thrilling, then you might appreciate this week’s topic. We’re awfully close to a complete understanding. It’s just much more complicated than most of us realize.

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Oh boy! Comcast-NBC Merger Approved By the FCC

On Tuesday, the FCC approved Comcast's much-ballyhooed acquisition of NBC.

This deal has been a long time coming: General Electric agreed to sell NBC, then worth $30 billion, to Comcast in December of 2009, and this agreement followed some nine months of negotiations. Then, the deal passed to the Federal Communications Commission, who decided in a four-to-one vote that it was okay for a production company to be controlled by a company that distributes those productions.

As with the Net Neutrality restrictions that the FCC issued last month, there's a lot going on in this deal, and a lot of different people have a lot of very different things to say about it. In this week's episode, I'll try to parse the news and, as always, explain what the big deal is.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #1: Ashes and Diamonds

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

I should have known it was a bad idea to base my decision of where to start this project on the screen cap on the DVD label. The picture on the front of the disc for Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds shows a sunglasses-clad young man gleefully firing a World War II-era submachine gun. "Ooh, this looks like it could be fun. Maybe it's some kind of Polish gangster flick. Like Goodfellas with kolacky."

The gun-toting twentysomething on the front of the DVD is a Polish revolutionary named Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski). It turns out that the ballistic moment depicted is one of only two moments in the film where any character fires a weapon. The scene's the first one in the film, where we meet Maciek and his partner Andrzej (Adam Pawlikowski). Andrzej is impassive, as he remains for most of the film, while the two of them lie on the side of a hill waiting for a car carrying a communist commissar and his staff to arrive. Andrzej seems merely to be waiting, but Maciek seems to exult in the quiet moment. He takes a flower from a farm girl who's loafing around the hillside and sniffs it rapturously. Then the car arrives. Maciek sloughs off his peacenik pose and pulls out his gun. He and Andrzej quickly dispatch the passengers and are on their way. Maciek seems to enjoy the execution as much as he did the flower.

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Ghosts from Charge Shot!!!’s Past: The Social Network

Charge Shot!!! has been around for two years now - amazing, we know! - and in that time we've amassed a lot of posts. Much of our writing is in an editorial vein, simply because we don't have the time or resources to report on every news item that flies across the Interwebs. Therefore, we feel that our output has a better shelf-life than you might expect from some run-of-the-mill news blog.

This feature, Ghosts From Charge Shot!!!'s Past, aims to bring some of this stuff - both good and embarrassing - to the eyeballs of our newer readers, while taking long-time constituents on a trip down memory lane.

Let’s assume you care about the Golden Globes. Assuming that, let’s assume you believe them to be an accurate predictor of Oscar success. Assuming that, let’s also assume that you care about the Oscars.

This past Sunday, The Social Network took home the Golden Globe for Best Picture – Drama, as well as awards for directing, screenwriting, and original soundtrack. Despite some heinous CGI cold breath, it’s an excellent film that dropped at a time that also makes it feel important.

Wondering whether the hype is deserved? Check out Jordan’s review from a few months back:

“The question The Social Network raises is whether Facebook has irrevocably changed how we deal with such events and, indeed, our collective human experience. Specifically, has Facebook's founder remade the world in his own image? Mark Zuckerberg's villainy, at least as interpreted by Eisenberg, stems from his autistic inability to deal with those around him. The jury's still out on whether that makes him a sociopath or just a good business man.”

Enjoy!

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This is the Dawning of the Age of ... Capricorn???

Ophiuchus, the serpent-bearer

Have you ever read your horoscope in hopes of gaining some supernatural preparation for what the future holds? Or have you ever looked at a breakdown of your astrological sign, latching on to all the vague tidbits that accurately represent your personality type (or rather the personality type you wish you had), and conveniently ignoring the ones that aren't so insightful? If you answered yes to either of these questions, then you might have already heard that the astrological sign you always used to define yourself could be wrong.

Last Monday, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported a claim made by astronomer Parke Kunkle that, thanks to a gravitational shift, the Earth is no longer aligned with the zodiac signs the way it used to be. That means that on your next birthday the sun (or moon or whatever) might not be "in" the same constellation it was in on the day you were born. The news took a few days to go viral over the Tweeters, and the Diggits, and the FaceUnions, and it's been a few more days until my scheduled post where I can tell you all about it.

Many astrology buffs have reacted with feelings ranging from annoyance to rage at finding out that their favorite pseudo-science has suddenly proved unreliable. And I can't say I blame them. I didn't read my horoscope before the big change, and I don't plan to now. But do I have to start identifying myself with a whole new portion of the population? And what's with this crazy 13th sign, Ophiuchus? And Scorpio only lasts a week now!? There's plenty to read about after the jump.

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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – Nineties Ladies Edition

I’m warning you: I will reference other bands if I have to.

If I feel describing your music requires tracing its lineage, I will not hesitate to do so. I can’t hear a guitar and tell exactly what model it is or what amp it’s running through. But I might be able to name a band that’s used a similar setup. Q.E.D. If you sound like the Nineties, I will say so.

Zamza sounds like the Nineties. Unfortunately, I can’t tell from their completely unhelpful website (head to the Jamendo, it at least has the music) whether this is one woman’s band or what. Two of the three songs do feature strong female vocals, but the last is more of an electronic instrumental. I will be making an effort to use ‘Zamza’ when referring to the vocalist, thereby giving her credit for everything else in the process.

I warned you.

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A Decade of Dreck #40: Extreme Ops

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more information about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

One of my favorite parts of this epic project is the chance to go back and look at the first decade of the Twenty-First Century and trace the rise and fall of certain trends and stars. It's always interesting to see the precise time where a fad wore out its welcome or an actor or actress went from the top of the world to a punchline. The Decade of Dreck is in its own small way a brilliant chronicle of the first ten years of the new millennium.

Then again, there are movies like Extreme Ops: films nobody saw or cared about, one's that might present a "That?" or "Are you sure you're not talking about Torque?" These are the movies that were released to precisely zero fanfare and in our current, more civilized age might have been released straight to DVD, unseen by vicious critics.

Why would you have seen Extreme Ops? Was it showing at the dollar theater and you needed to kill time during your layover in Denver? Were you babysitting a young cousin obsessed with snowboarding? Are you just a Rufus Sewell completist? Truly, unless you had committed yourself to undertaking a quixotic quest for your college buddies' pop culture blog, you would probably never know of its existence. Lord knows I didn't.

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Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob: Week 90 - Muse

Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.

Last week I lamented the fact that there's less crossover music between classical and popular than I would like. This week's artist provides another bridge between the two worlds, albeit in a completely different manner. Where the Moody Blues utilized immaculately produced orchestral flourishes, Muse is wilder, like a hunter in the Musical Jungles that grabs old classical themes by the throat and wrestles them to the ground. Their use of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D, for example, is filled with life and vigor, a nice change for a piece of music that has been utilized as cliched background music for the past 300 years. 

I can appreciate that. Muse doesn't mess around with any subtlety or restraint in their music - pretty much every song is balls-to-the-wall howling back by synthesized arpeggios and wailing guitar. Even the "soft" tracks sound like they're about to explode at any time.

Last Monday, this was great. By this Sunday, I'm a little tired of it. 

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After the Jump: The Fusilli Jerry

Subscribe to the podcast via the feed, or find us in the iTunes store!

Listener beware: this podcast contains repeated references to a recent incident involving a New York prisoner and what may or may not have been a mouse. You have been warned.

We also discuss the changing Zodiac signs, Ted Williams and his golden fall from grace, Jimbo Wales’ ten-year-old encyclopedia, the Verizon iPhone (or VeriPhone … anyone, anyone? Bueller?), Capcom’s sneaky mobile department, and much more!

Enjoy! See you next week!

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Sunday Reading: Musical Easter Eggs

Did you know that you could collect clues about Paul McCartney’s death if you play Beatles records backwards? Or that if you put on Pink Floyd’s The Wall on at the same time as The Wizard of Oz, you can enjoy neither product? If you’re into facts like this, you’ll love what Craig dug up for you guys this week!

It’s about Easter eggs – you know, those secret little tidbits that artists sometimes scatter throughout their work as a sort of secret message to those who really “get it.”

Well, maybe not really. It’s on the Cracked Web site, so they’re probably not being serious. It’s hard to say. But if you want to read about Jimi Hendrix’s hidden alien voices or about a bunch of jokes made at Thom York’s expense, this may be just the article for you!

Here it is. Enjoy!

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Saturday Morning TV: Les technologies du passé

Once upon a time…vintage technologies.

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The Myspace Layoffs: Have We Seen This Before? Will We See It Again?

2010 was the year that pretty much cemented Facebook's ascension as the dominant player in the social networking world. It managed to fight off the rising tide of Twitter, earn an estimated worth of $50 billion, and be the subject of a fairly well-acclaimed movie that cements the website's status as some sort of generational milestone. In The Social Network, David Fincher uses Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg as a way to examine how we communicate in the 21st-century and, in the process, portrays Facebook not as an Internet flash-in-the-pan, but as a full-blown paradigm shift. 

News came out this week that Myspace (remember them?) is cutting half of its remaining staff.  The Other Social Network has declined in inverse proportion to Facebook's meteoric rise, and these layoffs, combined with the recent Myspace make-over that allows the user to integrate the site with Facebook, pretty much confirm that the Social Networking wars are over. 

A quick search on Google Trends reveals April 2008 as the date in which Facebook surpassed Myspace (at least as a search term). At that time, Facebook did not even have 100 million users; presently, it has more than 500 million. As of this summer, Myspace had a mere 66 million users. 

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Minerva’s Den, Another Taste of Rapture

And you thought you were done with BioShock.

At least, I thought I was. When Irrational Games (or 2K Boston or whatever the hell they were called at the time) ceded control of a sequel to 2K Marin and a host of other studios, I joined the growing mass of skeptics. Promising that we’d get to play as one of the hulking Big Daddies didn’t seem like enough. And how could a bunch of people not working for Ken Levine produce a worthy follow-up to his seminal game set in Rapture - an underwater Art Deco Objectivist dystopia?

Turns out, they sort of did. Andrew noted in his review last February that 2K Marin successfully played it safe with BioShock 2. I wholly agree. They embarked on a second tour of Rapture, tossing in a few gameplay tricks and adding some new enemies along the way. The story held my interest, but it of course paled in comparison to the whiplash-inducing twist of its predecessor.  Besides, Rapture’s the star of the show, and Sophia Lamb’s reign did little to illuminate an environment I’d already spent hours poring over (save one stunning Little Sisters chapter).

BioShock and its sequel both dealt with Rapture on the macro level. Thus, the stories told feel similar. A leader exerts his or her philosophy upon a populace. A player-controlled protagonist arrives. Shit hits the fan.

Minerva’s Den, a downloadable add-on for BioShock 2, follows a similar pattern but on a micro scale. It’s a tighter tale with a smaller cast of characters. It may also be one of the best pieces of downloadable content I’ve ever played.

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Steph’s Science Corner: Things That Make You Sound Smart Edition – The Doppler Effect

Come be my friend! Email me with suggestions at science@charge-shot.com.

The last few weeks have been busy ones for me, and lately I find myself tapping the end of my patience reservoir. I was fortunate, however, that just at a time when I thought I was in danger of destroying inanimate objects, I found myself at a weekend-long bluegrass festival. Say what you will about the genre -- I  will attest to the calming power of almost any live acoustic music if nothing else. As for bluegrass, it’s as Steve Martin said: “You can't play a sad song on the banjo, it always comes out so cheerful.” I found myself relaxed, my mood improved, and I spent some quality time with my dad.

One of the bands featured a musician who burned some tuning time by imitating commonly heard city and wilderness sounds on his fiddle. Along with bird calls, car-whooshings and train whistles, he included a pretty impressively precise rendition of an police siren passing by. Impressed, I nudged my dad and whispered, “That was a pretty accurate Doppler Effect.” He responded, “You should write about that in your post for next week.”

Who am I to deny my most loyal fan?

So now that I’ve wasted your time by making you read that irrelevant introduction, I give you a discussion on perhaps the single most recognized physical phenomenon – the one that helps us predict the weather, identify distant stars and galaxies, and medically image the flow of blood through the heart. Understanding it helps us understand supersonic speeds (and sonic booms that accompany them), and most importantly, the  it is the scientific principle that tags us with expensive speeding tickets: The Doppler Effect.

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All You Need To Know About the Verizon iPhone

As recently as New Year's Day, I was telling people that I would believe that a Verizon iPhone was coming when an Apple exec hopped up on a stage and said it was so, no matter how feverishly insistent the rumors were.

This is because I follow the Apple enthusiast press, and when you do that, there are some rumors to which you just become deaf: the iPhone is coming to Verizon. Mac OS X is going to be unlocked to run on regular PCs. Apple is going to lower its prices (ha!). They're a big deal the first time you read them, but after awhile they just become background noise.

But! I will admit when I'm wrong, and Apple and Verizon jointly proved me wrong earlier this week when they got onstage and, in a brutally efficient twenty minutes, squashed three years of rumors: the iPhone will be available to Verizon Wireless customers starting on February 10, 2011.

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Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America's movies

The A.V. Club is reporting that Hollywood's latest arcade-inspired abortion to be foisted upon unsuspecting Americans is an adaptation of Atari's I-guess-you-can-call-it-legendary Missile Command. I know what you're thinking: the game must have some heretofore unrevealed backstory involving political intrigue or offer philosophical musings on the role of artificial intelligence in national defense, a la Philip K. Dick.

Well, fictional reader, you're dead wrong. Missile Command is still the arcade game probably none of our readers remember playing at the arcade where you use the trackball to shoot down a never-ending stream of ballistic missiles from what the A.V. Club calls the "vaguely mammarian" command center (that means it looks like a tit). It's a relic from a time when video game storytelling was considered sophisticated if the games, you know, had a story.

So it's perplexing that 20th Century Fox has decided to adapt the game for film. Perplexing, but not altogether surprising. After all, it's the latest in a line of inexplicable adaptations of arcade games/properties with no discernible narrative, including Peter Berg's adaptation of Battleship (starring Rihanna and LIAM NEESON GAH HOW IS THIS A THING) and Asteroids. Screenwriters Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (apparently taking a break from antagonizing the Power Rangers) are slated to pen the script. They're responsible, by the way, for the upcoming reboot of Flash Gordon and the sure-to-not-defile-a-classic Dracula: Year Zero.

The whole thing seems completely unfathomable until you take a look at the producers' credits. Direct your complaints to Peter Chernin, the erstwhile COO of News Corp. and current corporate director of American Express. Who else could come up with such a terrifically shitty idea and have the money to bankroll it but a corporate mogul with no film experience?

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Ghosts from Charge Shot!!! Past: The Room

Charge Shot!!! has been around for two years now - amazing, we know! - and in that time we've amassed a lot of posts. Much of our writing is in an editorial vein, simply because we don't have the time or resources to report on every news item that flies across the Interwebs. Therefore, we feel that our output has a better shelf-life than you might expect from some run-of-the-mill news blog.

This feature, Ghosts From Charge Shot!!!'s Past, aims to bring some of this stuff - both good and embarrassing - to the eyeballs of our newer readers, while taking long-time constituents on a trip down memory lane.

I was talking to someone the other day about why I dislike certain movies.  Advocates of movies I don’t like will often say something along the lines of “Well, don’t expect it to be something it isn’t.”  Essentially, don’t go to an action movie and expect a mind-blowing script or Academy-caliber performances.

They’ll also say, “But didn’t you enjoy Snakes on a Plane?  Didn’t I see you having a great time during D-War?”  And I’ll nod in agreement.  Those are terrible movies, but they’re so bad they kind of loop around the spectrum into a different kind of good.  That, or there’s some sort of Uncanny Valley of Mediocrity.

As we approach awards season, it’s worth reminding ourselves that not every movie is an Oscar-winner, and that’s okay.

The Room is one of those movies.  Last year Boivin, our intrepid explorer of all things terrible in cinema, saw Tommy Wiseau’s “masterpiece” at a midnight showing.  Thankfully, he lived to tell the tale:

“The Room is the stuff of trash cinema legend, the sort of story that a Tim Burton-esque auteur of the future will surely make a movie out of someday. It's the brainchild of bizarre wrtier/director/producer/leading man/probably at least four other credits Tommy Wiseau and its so bad it kind of sort of really hurts (but it's a good hurt). Ostensibly a melodrama about a successful yuppie being two-timed by his fiancée (excuse me, "future wife") the Room has taken on a life of its own as the internet generation's Rocky Horror. However, unlike Rocky which was conceived as an over-the-top camp midnight movie spectacular, the Room has all the earnestness of a high school short story contest.”

Boivin may well inspire you to watch The Room yourself.  If you do, just remember: this was a warning, not a recommendation.  Enjoy!

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Fist-Pumping All Over Again...

Remember last year between August and October? For me, it was all a blur of fake tans, rippling muscles, and drunks falling all over themselves trying to put on a show for the camera. Because for those three glorious months, I reviewed every single episode of the second season of MTV's The Jersey Shore. I was so engrossed in that world that it wasn't at all out of the ordinary to hear me burst into song about T-Shirt Time or exclaim for all the world to hear that the "Cabs ah heah!" So imagine my surprise when I heard that Season 3 of SallyAnn Salsano's megahit premiered to record numbers, and I didn't even notice!

I know, I know, for someone who works in the reality television field, I'm hopelessly (blissfully?) unaware of what's going on in the industry. It was mostly by accident that I stumbled upon the first season of Jersey Shore and a pure act of will to stick with my "Fist-Pump Gazette" feature for an entire season. I mean, after my experience watching Season 2 cover to cover, I've had enough guidos and guidettes to last a lifetime. But when I heard that episode 301 was MTV's highest rated broadcast EVER, I decided I had to check it out via the magic of MTV.com.

What did I discover? Hit the jump to find out.

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Reznor and Ross To Score Fincher’s Dragon Tattoo

Subway readers-slash-NIN fans rejoice: Trent Reznor will be bringing his musical talents to bear on yet another film score.

Reznor recently told a New York Times music critic that he and producer Atticus Ross have signed on to score David Fincher’s upcoming adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  The duo recently received a Golden Globe nomination for their work on Fincher’s The Social Network.  It appears all parties involved are hoping lightning strikes twice.

I gushed about their Social Network score a few months ago.  Its digital tone fit the onscreen drama perfectly; Silicon Valley has never felt danker.  What legions of commuter readers are probably wondering, however, is how the work of Reznor and Ross will match the action of their favorite Swedish crime novel. 

Questions surround the Fincher adaptation, in general.  The Stieg Larsson novels were already brought to the silver screen in Sweden, but Hollywood decided America needed its own versions of the Millennium Trilogy starring Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.  So there’s already some potential for redundancy if the films don’t carve out their own identity. 

Hopefully the soundtrack escapes the shadow of The Social Network score and proves that Reznor and Ross having staying power in Hollywood.

[via Pitchfork]

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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – Eight Minutes of Something Edition

According to HowToGetAGrip.com (a no-nonsense, self-“Suck it up” website), there are scores of things you can do in under eight minutes to make your life a little less crazy.  Take out the trash, load the dishwasher, gather some laundry, wash a meal’s worth of dishes, iron a shirt or two, pay a few bills: all of these things can be done in fewer minutes than you have fingers with which to count them.

You know what else you can do in eight minutes?  Ride one of this week’s two Audiosurf tracks.

Technically, Schattenfell’s ambient track will take over nine, but let’s not split hairs.  Or, if you’d like to split hairs, take it up with them on their Jamendo page.  Poland’s Radek Samson asks for just under eight minutes of your time – though if you’d like to give more, head right here.

Will it take you eight minutes to read this article?  I have no idea.

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'Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark' Reviewed or "Turn it off! Turn it off! TURN IT OFF! *sobs*"

As was the case with my parents' last visit to my New York abode, my father decided to spring for a Broadway show when they came to town two weeks ago. This time around, on Christmas Day 2010, he opted to secure tickets to a preview performance of the already infamous Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. For those of you who don't have subscriptions to Playbill (or you know, read the Internet) Spider-Man is currently on track to being the most expensive show ever to (dis)grace the Great White Way, with costs rivaling those of a summer blockbuster. More than that, technical problems and a shocking number of near-death experiences on the part of the cast  have delayed the production by over a year. Yes, I saw that show.

As you may or may not have been noticed, I am a lifelong Spider-Fan (I self-identify with that term). Spider-Man was, depending on the sources you consult, my first favorite superhero (largely varying on whether or not one counts Jun Fukuda-era Godzilla as a "superhero"). Spider-Man helped inspire my love of science fiction and served as a moral compass on my impressionable youthful psyche. My love of the character continues to the present day, being nurtured by the (first two entries of the) recent film series and a slavish devotion to the comics.

In addition, I was a theater kid in high school. I loved the spring musical, even if my particular vocal talents had yet to develop and I was usually relegated to non-singing roles (my greatest part played was the Constable in Fiddler on the Roof). My stage years nurtured in me a healthy appreciation for showtunes and admiration for the talents and perofrmances of live theater.

So, I basically had to see this show.

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Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob: Week 89 - The Moody Blues

Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.

I haven't been following popular music for very long, but one thing I've noticed is that critics generally seem to recoil with loathing at any work that smacks of "high art." Any popular musician who throws out a basic music theory term is suddenly derided as pretentious and full of themselves, and god forbid anyone who dabbles in "classical".

This is even stranger, because popular music critics are just as pretentious and snobby as their classical music counterparts, only in a completely different way. As a friend pointed out to me, the same critics, fans and store owners who would skewer you alive for mistaking techno for house, or hip hop for trip hop, have no problem throwing two thousand years worth of Western art music into the same "classical" bin.

Of course, as a former classical music snob, I must say that we're not exempt from turning up our nose at the other side either. But I feel that there's a lot of potential to create some sort of music that lies between the punk rock band and the symphony orchestra, but  the standoffishness on both sides has meant a lot of wasted potential.

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