WTF LINKS, Monday Aug 25

I swear this is another example of how we're one step closer to a New World Order

Swift Boaters claim that Obama's birth certificate is a forgery; they offer no proof to support this claim, which is why many people believe them.

Polar Bears are just swimming around in the ocean cuz all the ice is gone.

Religion poisons everything: Evangelist School Director says "Dinosaurs helped build the pyramids", uses Bible to prove it.

Hello, everyone, meet Big Brother. Big Brother, meet everyone else.

This is another reason why I'm going to have a problem flying out of country.

Bush Surrenders

Something about this is kick-ass awesome and fascist at the same time.

Just when I thought Joe Biden was a stud...

America thinks like the tube, eats like the tube, raises kids like the tube:

Meet Your New Vice President

Watch his speech in its entirety. This guy's gonna kick ass and take names.

Frost/Nixon

This is probably the only Ron Howard movie I've looked forward to... Ever....

Frost/Nixon looks really good.

Watch the trailer here before it gets yanked.

Huffington Post

I wrote something up for those guys...

Check it out here.

Ashley Sanders and Why She's Voting For Nader

Elias and I shot this for the Nader '08 campaign.

Review: Clone Wars

A lot of people will instantly discard my review of this film, knowing that I have what some might call a blinding love for all things Star Wars. That's not exactly the case. I can nitpick Star Wars, there's a few things I'd have done differently, there's some "corrections" to the Special Editions that piss me the fuck off. But overall, I love it all.

I've been on and off about this cartoon for a while. I've been excited for it for a long time, but the reviews have been pouring in and people have been taking big, smelly shits on this movie. It had my expectations down a little bit. I went into this film wondering what it might be like to not enjoy a Star Wars theatrical experience.

Thankfully, that didn't happen.

This film sets a tone right at the beginning that let's you know that it's a kids movie. The opening crawl is replaced with a war-film-like narrator, bringing the not-yet-able-to-read-that-quickly-audience like my son up to speed on where this occurs in the timeline and doesn't really let up from there. It seems as though a lot of reviewers of this movie were expecting an animated Empire Strikes Back and wrote reviews based more on their dissapointment of what the film wasn't instead of their joy at what it was. This is a kids movie, through and through. And it's done in some very smart ways.

I thought that I would be annoyed by the idea of giving Anakin a sassy young padawan (who will by the end of the TV series no doubt meet a sad and horrible fate) but this is a stroke of brilliance to rein in an age demographic that hasn't been specifically served by a theatrical Star Wars movie since Phantom Menace. Ahsoka is what every young Star Wars fan wants to be, a padawan learner, and she's every bit the reckless padawan Anakin deserves. And it's insinuated in the film that Obi-Wan and Yoda planned this padawan purposely in order to temper Anakin into the Jedi he should have been. I can't imagine him losing her before the end of the Clone Wars will help his descent to the Dark Side...

But this film is a really, really accessible kids movie for all ages. It's not as good as a Brad Bird kids movie, but it's certainly ahead of the curve on childrens entertainment and made me thirsty for more. I'm quite pleased with the idea that I'll be able to tune in to new installments on Friday's.

This set the tone for how I imagine the series will run and the Clone Wars is an almost endless well of short stories to cover in a 20+ minute format.

Also, Jabba the Hutt's son didn't bother me. There's not much to argue with there. I heard a lot of people were pissed off about it, but seriously, people who'd be pissed off about something that trivial is obviously a douche-bag.

The animation took a little getting used to, but by the time a third of the film had gone by, the animation seemed great. The stylizations of the characters were really cool, the action sequences well coreographed and the Clones were absolute bad-asses. I can already hear a lot of people groaning about how they turned the Battle Droids into clowns, but the audience I saw it with (admittedly, the median age was 11) ate it up. The movie as a whole really entertained the kids and Star Wars fans like me and even drew applause from the harder-core Star Wars fans dressed as Boba Fett, Plo Koon and others.

It was pretty good. Will I see it again? Definitely. Will I see it again this weekend? Most Definitely.

Should you see it? If you're the type of nerd who can appreciate kids entertainment, yes. Bring a kid, yours, a niece or a nephew or something if you want to see it but you're the jaded prick sort of nerd. I guarantee you'll like it a lot better and enjoy it a lot more watching it with and through them.

But don't expect the animated version of Empire Strikes Back. It doesn't even try to move in that direction, though I would bet there will be episodes of the show that might be able to pull of that sort of mood and timbre.

Ernest Borgnine's Secret to Old Age

WTF LINKS, Tuesday Aug 12

VIDEO: Bush Smacks a Bikini Clad Girl's Ass

Nancy Pelosi is the most clueless politician ever and she should just kill herself.

If you're an Islamic Chick who pisses off crazy Islamic fuckheads, prepare to be "honorably" set ablaze, strangled, shot at, clubbed, stabbed, tortured, axed, or stoned to death.

CNN, scared shitless, refuses to use the word "Islamic" or "Muslim" in its reporting of above story on crazy Islamic Muslim fuckheads.

Bush weakens Endangered Species list, gets an erection.

Bush seems to be enjoying getting away with murder; smuggly dismisses any problems with America.

Oh, and here's a reason why Bush might get away with war crimes.

No, you cannot fucking do that. Towing companies posts "No Parking" signs AFTER people had parked there.

Now, I know everything above is doom and gloom, but I end with a good story:

I was watching this swimming match live Sunday night and it seriously had me on the edge of my seat. Before the race, the favored French team had said, "We're going to smash the Americans" and, for most of the race, it looked like France would win... Until the last 25 yards... Wow. If you can, watch the whole video.

REVIEW: Salvador

About two years ago I purchased the box-set of Oliver Stone's complete works. It's been gathering dust on a shelf since then. There's always another movie I seem to want to watch. What with the recent trailer from "W" making it's rounds on the internet, I thought it was time to break out the set and start chronologically through Stone's career.

I've only seen a few of his movies, you know, the one's everybody's seen (Platoon, JFK, U-Turn...) Ok, maybe not everybody, but those are it. So, I didn't know what to expect on his first outing as a major film director with a budget and I had no idea what Salvador was about.

Salvador is a biographical film about photo-journalist Richard Boyle (who helped Stone write the script) during the failed revolution in 1980 and 1981. (It's widely emphasized that Reagan's policies had a lot to do with this, in fact, the Fascist leaders in the country praise Reagan's election.) But the film plunges you into 1980 El Salvador and really gives you a taste of how shitty things were (and in some cases, probably still are) in Central America at the time. It's sad, really.

And James Woods delivers the performance of his life as our lens for the politics of the film. Yeah, he's a liberal guy, but he's got a soul and a conscience and when he lets loose with his moral outrage against the military and CIA stooges, you can feel it. You get pissed. And the stuff that the American's turn a blind eye to is enough to make you sick. When the fascists order a group of American nuns to be raped and killed for...whatever reason... It's just disgusting. The American Ambassador (played competently by Michael Murphy, whom I've enjoyed in a couple of Woody Allen movies, particularly Manhattan) tries to cut off military aid to the fascists, but the military and the CIA and the Reagan-ites back him into a corner and force him to relent, thus shattering the peasant uprising, for fear that communism might spread.

At the end of the day, this film really just pissed me off in all the wrong ways for absolutely the right reasons.

I also found it startling how much that period in US foreign policy seemed like today. The US was perpetrating terror. And when they weren't perpetrating it personally, they were enabling the perpetrators.

It really makes me sad that America hasn't wised up.

For anyone that has a moral compass I would recommend this movie. It puts fire in your belly.

(For related reading (only in subject matter, not geography or time) I would recommend Kurt Vonnegut's essay's about the long-since passed country of Biafra.)

FOR BRYAN

CLICK EACH TO ENLARGE

Morgan Spurlock's 30 DAYS

If you read this blog around the time of Sundance, you know that a few of us here shit all over Morgan Spurlock for creating the worst documentary ever made, "Where In The World Is Osama Bin Laden?"

But today, I came across a link to his FX tv show, "30 DAYS". I quickly saw one of the latest episodes was about a strict Mormon housewife having to live with 2 gay adoptive parents for 30 days. I thought, "Huh, ok, I'll watch the first 5 minutes and as soon as Morgan Spurlock inserts his shitty animation montages or goofy schtick jokes, I'll stop."

During the first 60 seconds, Morgan is talking about (with shitty animation) the many ways babies can be made in the modern world. He opines, "Maybe one day, even men will give birth". Then is cuts to Morgan with a balloon stuffed under his shirt while he eats pickles and ice cream. I was about to stop right then and there. But...

I watched the whole episode.

Not only was it good, it was extremely balanced and disciplined (as much as a TV show can be I guess). Morgan kept himself out of the camera for the most part and I felt this episode was one of the most fascinating short documentaries I've ever seen.

I didn't feel like Spurlock or the show's producers were taking things out of context or juicing the subjects for emotion. The outbursts and tears in the episode felt expected and normal rather than exploitative.

On top of this, the section where Spurlock actually goes on camera to visit a sperm bank, I was actually laughing out loud at his quips. Did I just laugh at a Morgan Spurlock shenanigan?

Seeing this made me realize how much better a guy like Spurlock is when he has 2-3 really good producers tweaking and polishing his creation. I know for a fact that my last film wouldn't have been as good if Bryan and Elias weren't breathing down my neck about some of the crazy ideas I came up with. Maybe Spurlock should keep this in mind when he does his next documentary.

Anyways, I think I might pick up the DVD seasons of "30 DAYS" now.

Watch the Mormon Wife vs. Gay Couple episode here.

DAILY LINKS Sat, Aug 2nd

Murder Trail: The "He turned my cat gay" defense.

Kurt Vonnegut: How to write with style

Johnny Depp as THE RIDDLER?

How People Die

GhostBusters with Steve Irwin

Jesus Freaks Trying to Control the Vagina

This is mass madness.

It's an uncontrollable diety-like urge to control how and when a female can get impregnated.

In the name of religion, George Bush has proposed a new act to take away more reproductive rights of women and to protect crazy loon doctors who refuse birth control in the name of Jesus Christ.

Here's a sum up:

"Under the guise of rules to protect antiabortion nurses and doctors from discrimination in hiring, a proposed new regulation would expand the definition of abortion to include any form of contraception that can work by stopping implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus. This can include common birth-control pills, emergency contraception, and the intra-uterine device, or IUD. Doctors who refuse to perform abortions for reasons of personal conscience already are protected by law."

Mormon Mike Leavitt (the head of the fucking U.S. Health and Human Services) has thrown in his support of this paleolithic proposal.

More from the madness:

"At some point in their lives, 98 percent of US women use birth control. The proposed rule, while claiming to protect the rights of nurses and doctors, would interfere with patients' rights. A woman seeking treatment could be denied birth control and not even be aware that the service was available - only denied to her because of the unexpressed personal beliefs of the practitioner."

It is my opinion that any doctor, ANY doctor who refuses a woman birth control because of his belief in space aliens should lose his license ON THE SPOT. If I were a woman, I would make it a point to bait known Dr. Jesus Freaks, have them deny me birth control, and then sue the pants off them.

Hitting them in wallet is what will work. Hitting them in the balls definitely won't work. These men apparently don't have any.

TAD WALCH UPDATE

I forgot to update you guys on whether Tad Walch (Mr. I know and write about things that I haven't done any god damn research on) did NOT come to our Utah County screening of "Killer at Large".

He told the entire public that our film was not worth seeing, having never seen it himself.

I hope he dies a sad and lonely death.

Just kidding! I actually hope he keeps writing meaningless and wasteful bullshit about yours truly.

New Huffington Post Article

Go over there to read my exclusive....

Killer at Large audio interview

I did an interview for Killer at Large.

You can listen to it by clicking this link: (audio here).

The film is picking up quite a bit of heat.

Nader in Salt Lake

Ashley Sanders who is in our forthcoming BYU 25 documentary asked me to spread the word about Ralph Nader's visit on the 31st.

Be there.

Big Shiny Robots! at Comic-Con!

For the few of you readers who are nerds like I am, you'll be greatly interested to know that Big Shiny Robot! (www.bigshinyrobot.com) is doing pretty consistent and constant comic-con coverage for the next four or five days.

I'll be following it closely, since this is the first time in a long time that I haven't been able to go.

And it makes me sad.

For all of their comic-con articles, click here.

Short Story Blog....

...has been updated.

Check it out here.

Couldn't Help Myself

I was so mega drunk when this picture was taken. But whatever. That's Harvey Fucking Dent.

Conan, ET, Viggo

Great Video

I've been watching far too much Alfred Hitchcock Presents and I thought this was one of his best intros:

Deseret News likes Killer at Large!

Despite Tad Walch's best efforts, the truth has been printed in the Deseret News.

Jeff Vice did a quick review of the film and called it "Impressive" and said "[We've] really done our research".

You can check it out here.

New Huffington Post Editorial

This one is called Politics in Comic Books.

Read it and comment.

Another Example of American Patriotism

I found this at Blame It On the Voices. It's rather old (2002), but still. WTF.

PUBLIC INVITATION for TAD WALCH

As mentioned below by Bryan, we are having another screening of Killer at Large due to public demand.

In an effort to assist Deseret News Utah County bureau chief Tad Walch's journalistic integrity, I would like to offer him a free ticket to our film screening in Orem. He's already publically said, "No thanks" to seeing Killer at Large, but I would still like to invite him to at least see it first so that he can see how silly he was to lazily dismiss such an important film.

Here's the screening info:

KILLER AT LARGE
Friday, July 25th
7:00pm
Festival Cinemas (behind University Mall in Orem)
Tad Walch gets in for free.

I'll keep you guys posted as to whether he actually comes or not. He may be too busy reading my blog.

The Deseret News Foofaraw

So, we were all surprised to see that a Deseret News article by Utah County bureau chief Tad Walch attacked one of Steve's blog posts and the integrity of This Divided State and BYU 25 and then went on to dismiss Killer at Large.

You can read his original article here.

It's pretty bad. So Steve asked for some help drafting a response and so the response blocked out below is what we came up with.

It was surprising to me to find an editorial aimed squarely at me in Saturday's Deseret News. Apparently, a musing I had posted on my blog incited such fury in Utah County bureau chief Tad Walch that he saw fit to write a scathing two-page attack both on me personally and my body of work.

I don't mind the constructive clash of ideas. The jest of my blog post was an opinion (albeit colorful and rather sarcastic) that Utah County overwhelmingly displays both distorted patriotism and blatant superficiality. The fact that the headline "Utah Has Lowest Voter Turnout in Nation" came the day after the patriotic smorgasbord called "Stadium of Fire" was particularly fascinating to me. Mr. Walch, God love him, clearly holds a different opinion. I would have no qualms discussing these differences at length with him on another day.

No, my concern for his editorial stems from a number of different issues.

Firstly, there are much more important things going on in the world that deserve a 700 word column. Mr. Walch's decision to dedicate this space to elaborate his fury against a random internet blogger seems a waste of time and a misuse of journalistic potential. Perhaps this country wouldn't be in the sort of crisis it's currently in if more "journalists" like Mr. Walch paid more attention to crucial social events rather than what the "buzz" on the internet is.

Secondly, Mr. Walch decided to write his article without contacting me, or any of my production team, for comment. Because of this error, in both his judgment and journalistic integrity, Mr. Walch printed two factual inaccuracies in his article. First, he claims that my team and I "made fun of ultra-conservatives" in our first film, This Divided State. We produced, what dozens of critics across the country called, one of "the most balanced documentaries ever made" that "let's both sides have their say". Further, he falsely claims that we "manipulatively edited some film to cast an inaccurate [sic] light on BYU President Cecil Samuelson." This libelous statement is all the more damaging to Mr. Walch since a simple phone call to us would have provided him with any raw footage he needed in order to prove that no "manipulative editing" was done to cast anyone in an "inaccurate light." Knowing that it's a very bold thing to call someone a liar in print, I'll state frankly that in this instance Mr. Walch is a liar.

The third issue is his lazy dismissal of the newest film my team and I have worked for the last two years on. Claiming my blogpost was a desperate bid for attention for my new film, he called on his reading public to say, "No, thanks," to "Killer at Large."

Killer at Large is a film about the American obesity epidemic that, according to former Surgeon General Richard Carmona, is a "greater threat to our country than 9/11 or any terrorist threat you can point out to me". To dismiss an issue of this magnitude (and to call all of his readers to ignore it as well) is, at best, a sign of ignorance and, at worst, a damaging action to our entire community.

You see, Killer at Large is a non-partisan examination of the surprising causes of obesity, why it's costing American tax-payers more than the war in Iraq, why it's the single largest health crisis affecting our country and our community and more importantly what we can do about it. In it's short life (public screenings started a mere three weeks ago), the film has won three international awards and has been called "entertaining cinematic advocacy journalism" on " the right side of the issue" by critics.

Since Mr. Walch is the bureau chief of Utah County, we're having a screening of Killer at Large on Friday, July 25th at 7:00pm at the Festival Cinemas behind University Mall. We'd like to extend Mr. Walch a V.I.P invitation to the movie. Perhaps afterwards we can have a discussion that's both constructive and worth talking about, unlike his recent musings about internet blogging.

But they didn't print it like this. This is what ended up getting printed.

They cut off the last two paragraphs, which was our challenge to Mr. Walch to come see the film and base his opinions more on fact than the conceit of his own arrogance which he seems so close to choking on.

Perhaps the Deseret News didn't want to call out Mr. Walch any further. Perhaps they didn't want him to know about the invitation. But, I know he reads this blog, so we're reprinting it right here.

We're doing a panel discussion after the film and would love to have a lively debate with Mr. Walch about the film after he sees it.

Somehow, I get the feeling he won't show up...

WHY SO SERIOUS?

Just a reminder (like you needed one) that The Dark Knight arrives tomorrow night at 11:59pm. I got my tickets a week ago and the show was already almost sold out. I don't think I've been more excited for a film's release than this. The only other movies I've gone apeshit over are Return of the King and Revenge of the Sith, the latter of which I dressed up like a Sith lord complete with lightsaber. Anyways, prediction? Knight will make over $130 million at the box office during opening weekend. If I turn out to be wrong, then I'm sure the Deseret News will write a huge article pointing that out.

DAILY LINKS Tue, July 15th

Protest Like a Man

Utah County is Still Batshit

Phil Gramm: McCain Supporter and Pornographer

Newest Democratic Pussy: John Conyers

Refresh Yourself on the Milgram Experiment (and then kinda apply it to today's world)

Most Bizarre Film Trailer Ever

This is from a really bizarre looking propaganda film from the fifties.



This would never fly these days, but I thought I'd share it since it was just so fascinating.

Note:

We will be commenting on the inaccuracies in the Deseret News editorial by Tad Walch that appeared in today's paper shortly.

Watch this space.

Radio West

Killer at Large is on Radio West right now.

Listen Live at Kuer.org

DELETED SCENE From Killer at Large

This was a scene cut from the second act of the film that illustrates the Sugar Industry's influence on the American Government to the detriment of the world over.





For more deleted scenes, click here.

"Killer at Large on "The Home Team"

This morning Steve, Elias and I appeared on the K-Jazz morning show "Home Team" to talk about the film and the obesity epidemic.

Part 1:










www.killeratlarge.com

The First Review of Killer at Large

Scott Renshaw with the Salt Lake City Weekly was the first to review "Killer at Large" and had this to say about it. (Read the original here.)

Director Steven Greenstreet captured a fascinating moment in local history with his documentary This Divided State, which chronicled the furor over Michael Moore’s appearance at (then) Utah Valley State College prior to the 2004 presidential election. For his next film, he has turned his attention beyond the Utah microcosm to a bigger picture—much, much bigger.

Killer at Large explores America’s obesity epidemic in a way that moves beyond the alarming statistics—two-thirds of the country is overweight or obese; 9 million children rank among that number—to offer a complex, comprehensive picture. While such expected villains as fast-food industry advertising and increasingly sedentary lifestyles make their appearance, Greenstreet also finds other, less obvious pieces of the puzzle. Our bodies’ evolutionary chemical response to stress—eat more and store it as fat—makes it harder to reduce the issue to platitudes like “eat less and exercise more.” And governmental policies come in for a sound thrashing, whether it’s farm subsidies that make processed food too cheap and easily accessible, or political neutering of the Surgeon General, or school lunch programs that actually discourage serving healthy meals. Don’t even ask what happens when two Murray High School teachers try to rally their students against omnipresent vending machines.

Perhaps the most compelling bits of Killer at Large, in light of skyrocketing fuel prices, deal with the impact of our diet on energy consumption. Ever wonder how much of our national petroleum purchases end up in agri-business uses? Or how much gasoline could be saved if our transportation wasn’t hauling around so much fat? Greenstreet has, and the answers are eye-opening.

The film covers a lot of ground, and inevitably loses some momentum and focus. What’s impressive is how consistently Greenstreet’s filmmaking keeps the simple dissemination of information engaging. It’s the kind of movie that isn’t worth seeing just because it’s on the right side of an issue; it’s entertaining cinematic advocacy journalism.

Join Greenstreet and other members of the Killer at Large creative team at the Tower Theatre on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. for a premiere screening. Proceeds from ticket sales will go to supporting Wasatch Community Garden. That’s a food decision we can all live with.

For more information, be sure to visit www.killeratlarge.com