The Slammin’ Salmon
The Slammin' Salmon is the newest movie from the creators of Super Troopers, Club Dread, and Beerfest. The Slammin' Salmon is a restaurant run by retired boxing heavyweight champion Cleon Salmon who needs a lot of money to repay a debt he has to a Yakuza boss. That day. His idea is to take the money made that day from the restaurant to pay back the debt and stages a contest with his waitstaff in order to get the money. I laughed a lot at this film, it has some great lines and some very funny moments. Some of the best lines go to Michael Clarke Duncan playing Cleon Salmon; however, everyone gets great lines. If you've seen any of the other Broken Lizard films you'll see a lot of familiar faces throughout the movie. For you familiar with the other movies, the best way to rate it is that it isn't as good as Super Troopers and not as bad as the misuderstood Club Dread; it is on par with Beerfest.
The Exterminating Angel
Yes, I watched another Luis Bunuel film, this time, The Exterminating Angel, or if you're movie snob: El angel exterminador. The premise for the movie is simple, a group of upper class citizens attend a dinner party and find themselves unable to leave the party or the room their in due to the pretenses and rules of polite high society. As the facade wears on they descend into savagery, resort to experiment with witchcraft, stuff a dead party guests in closet, cook slaughtered sheep over a fire of burning furniture all in order to leave the party. Much like L'age D'or, The Exterminating Angel is a satire and dark comedy with wonderful non-sequiturs and situations fitting of Monty Python.
Of course, with an absurd setup and Bunuel as a director you know there has to be more absurdity and surrealism; and there is. During the film there is a string of people repeating a lines, movements or scenes a second time during the film. One of my favorites is when the host of the dinner party proposes a toast, the toast is done and everyone goes back to talking. As soon as he sits down, he stands up again and proposes the same toast and no one pays attention to him. He then looks bewildered over the dinner guests and sits down awkwardly. Of course, you know the guests finally get out of the room only to attend church together the following Sunday setting up Bunuel's biggest dish of the film.
L’age d’or
The film Un Chien Andalou piqued my interest in Luis Bunuel so I sough out some more of his films. His next film was one called L'age d'or and, was consequently, the film I watched. The plot summary from IMDb tells you:
Bunuel's first feature has more of a plot than Un Chien Andalou, but it's still a pure Surrealist film, so this is only a vague outline. A man and a woman are passionately in love with one another, but their attempts to consummate that passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, the Church and bourgeois society.
but, it is so much more than that. This film is Monty Python before Monty Python; it pokes fun at society using absurdist imagery and situations.... much like Monty Python would do 40 years later. It is an attack on the Catholic church and bourgeois society all done in the surrealist way. You have scenes of drunk people in an ox drawn cart walking through a bourgeois party and no one caring, a scene of a little boy stealing an item from his father then being shot twice by the father in front of the bourgeois at the party and no one caring, a cow sleeping on a king size bed in a bedroom, and a scene of statue foot fetish. In the 1930s I'm sure this offended many people (the film was withdrawn from circulation for over 50 years) and during a screening of the film, people began throwing purple ink and acid at the screen and then ran next door to the art gallery and began destroying works of art by Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, and Man Ray. In truth, I bet the surrealist painters loved this. What is more surreal than having people get pissed off at a film then rioting in an art gallery destroying surrealist artwork?
Judicial Humor
Read this document and see what happens when the judge thinks of the sides bickering. Some of the choice quotes in the document are:
The Court is sympathetic with the Defendant's argument. Surely Defendant's corporate representative, a resident of Arkansas, would feel great humiliation by being forced to enter the home state of the University of Texas, where legendary Texas Longhorns have wrought havoc on the Arkansas Razorbacks with an impressive 55-21 all-time series record.
On the other hand, the Court is sympathetic with Plaintiff's position. Plantiffs might enter Arkansas with a bit of trepidation as many residents of Arkansas are still seeking retribution for the "Game of the Century" in which James Street and Darrell Royal stunned the Razorbacks by winning the 1969 National Championship.
Of course, the judge has the best way to solve this little issue of people not wanting to enter each other's state:
Accordingly, it is ordered that unless the parties agree otherwise, the deposition of Defendant's corporate representative shall occur ... on the steps of the Texarkana Federal Building ....
It is further ordered that each party is to remain on his or her respective side of the state line.
And of course, if you're thinking about it, the "Game of the Century" the judge references isn't really right, since the true game of the century according to the judge in his footnotes: '...occurred on January 4, 2006 when Vince Young and Mack Brown led the Longhorns in a 41-38 win over the USC Trojans...'
I just wonder how many judges and lawyers write funny orders or motions either because they find the case absolutely ludicrous or just plain don't like the other people?
Listening to the Web through Code Organ
I shared this item through Twitter but thought it was worth a longer post since it is a very interesting concept -- it "plays" websites. Code Organ uses information on the web page to generate the key, the synth, the drums and the music for the website. Although this isn't ground-breakingly awesome it is a very neat way to auralize the web -- much like how they have programs that create sounds for blind people to see the world around them.
ShadyURL
Want to keep people away from your website? Have I got the site to use for you. Forget those weak and stupid tinyURL programs, go with ShadyURL. Make people think they're going to a phishing or penis enlargement website to only be redirected to Yahoo! or Google. Then, to keep them on their toes, actually send them to a porn site or penis enlargement site on purpose.