BlingBang

LOST: The Mad Scientist is Back

VincentVega: That was a long two weeks. But fortunately LOST came back with a bang yesterday (and a serious shootout). Last episode we learned Miles's backstory. This time it was Faraday's turn, finally. And that means learning more about time travel. Lots of questions were raised by this episode. Where to start?

GeneralGametime: You have to start with the end. Once again, I have proved to be a Lost savant, correctly connecting Eloise Hawking with Ellie on the island and nailing the fact that Charles Widmore was Faraday's father. Boom. But that ending was absolutely nuts. We were clued in that someone was going down, and Faraday's speech to Jack earlier in the episode should have been a warning sign. But his own Mom? Hot damn, that was crazy.

VV: Pretty crushing way to go out. When Eloise talked about sacrifice, we knew Faraday was going to die, but I never thought it would happen like that. Faraday was definitely one of the best characters on the show, and it's a shame he's gone. But he left his mark on the episode, and as we saw from the "Next On", leaves behind his notebook. Now, Faraday was trying to detonate the H-bomb we saw in this season's episode "Jughead" (presumably buried underground) in order to destroy the energy that the DHARMA folks were about to release at the Swan site. Could it be that the detonation is actually the explosion of energy that causes the "incident" and sets the course of this show, from the building of the Swan to the crash of Oceanic 815?

Avatar: Opiate of the Nerd Masses

 I don't know what reaction to have to this news. It's comedy, tragedy, and horror all together.

"To date, neither a trailer nor even a still photo from the film [Avatar], which tells the story of a disabled soldier who uses technology to inhabit an alien body on a distant planet, has been made public by Mr. Cameron or Fox.

But a number of enthusiasts who have been swapping notes on the message boards at IMDB.com claim to have already seen the movie — in their dreams. “The special effects were mostly drawings and cartoons, but they looked 3-D still,” wrote one “planetshane,” whose particular dream involved a pirated copy of an early version.

“It was the best movie I had ever seen,” the post continued."

To clarify: This IMDB commenter wrote a review of a dreamed-up pirated version of the unreleased Avatar.

This movie is going to mindfuck an entire generation of nerds - it is going to be for geeks what Titanic was for teenage girls...and probably just as annoying. No good will come of this.

[VideoGum]

Two completely unrelated things that will blow your mind

This post has no coherent flow. I just don’t want to do two separate posts. Keep that in mind.

Firstly today we have a set of audio clips that is not particularly new. In fact, it is from 2001. But I just recently rediscovered them and they are worth a listen. The only hint I’ll give you is that they involve Bill O’Reilly and lesbians. Just check them all out. Trust me. I have never steered you wrong.

Next is a quality video called “Auto-Tuned the News.” After the success of the SNL Digital Short I’m on a Boat this is clearly the next logical step. Thank you T-Pain.

[Warming Glow]

Your day is about to get better

I’m always hesitant to send anybody who has stumbled onto BlingBang to another site. But today, I’ve got to do it. I’m really behind the times on this, but this is to cool not to pass along.

Videogum has a series called “The Hunt for the Worst Movie of All Time” and they have spent considerable time and effort on this endeavor. Subjecting yourself to the worst of the worst, the true dregs of Hollywood garbage, is such a horrible enterprise that I think they deserve a little recognition.

Hilariously, this quest began with a random screening of Death Sentence, starring Kevin Bacon. Of course it did. That is why I have a created a second Golden Rule to live my life by.

Golden Rule No. 1: Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.
Golden Rule No. 2: Do not watch unto movies that feature Kevin Bacon, Jason Biggs, Dane Cook, any Wayans brother, Paul Walker, or any professional wrestler in a starring role.

If you are going to read just one of his dozens of breakdowns, I recommend this one. It really sums up my feelings on why that movie was so painfully bad.

[Videogum]

The More You Know: FOX style

I love TV. I love the environment. So fringe TV personalities telling me to reduce my carbon footprint? Yes please!

24 Going Green PSA - Mary Lynn Rajskub

This video is awesome for about 100 reasons. In case you don’t recognize who that is, it is Chloe from 24, also known as Mary Lynn Rajskub (a “Hollywood” name change never crossed her mind?). This may be the greatest line reading off all time. And by greatest, I obviously mean the most hilariously awkward.

That would be a great idea for the next season of 24. Terrorism is old news. Let’s see Jack Bauer reverse climate change in a day. I gave up on 24 a long time ago, but if I would go back to see Kiefer save a polar bear from melting ice.

[Videogum]

New LOST: Father & Son & Chewbacca

GeneralGametime: Better late than never. Lost was good this week. Very good. Which is especially nice, considering last week's episode was one of the worst in a while. And we have to wait two weeks for the next installment (which happens to be the 100th episode). This week we got a much better idea of where Miles came from, why he is on the island and what role he might play in the final season. Good stuff.

VincentVega: Finally, we got Miles's backstory. He's definitely one of my favorite characters on the show, and he's at his best when he's with Hurley (who was also in fine form this week, and looking especially fat). Their trip in the van was hilarious from beginning to end. Not only an entertaining episode, but a lot happened too. To start with, we officially find out that Dr. Pierre Chang, aka Marvin Candle, Edgar Halliwax, and Mark Wickmund, is Miles' dad, as we've long suspected. And that he likes country music.

GG: So Miles was born on the island. Not a big shocker given his special abilities and all. As much as I enjoyed the episode, I'm not totally sure we learned that much about Miles himself, but more about the people around him. We now know that Naomi was working for Widmore and that it was in fact Widmore who dug up the bodies and put them in the fake plane in the ocean. We know that the group of plane crash survivors on the Hydra Island are neither agents of Widmore or Ben and they probably wanted to be on the island. And we learned that the DEA agent from Breaking Bad didn't tell his son that he loved him enough. But we already knew Miles could talk to dead people and guessing that Chang was his dad wasn't that big a stretch. After all, everyone is connected in this show and the number of Asian people to choose from was fairly limited.

Miracle at Sprint

If you watched ESPN at all in the last six months, you've seen this asshole philosophizing about phones with classical music in the background while sauntering down Times Square or hanging out with the commoners at a diner.

"Can you believe we call these phones?"

Yes, yes I can, Dan. I have a Sprint phone and it does exactly what phones have done for the last hundred years. And your network sucks.

Fortunately, some ad guy at Sprint has saved me from Dan's smarminess by designing this commercial, which has got to be the best phone commercial I've seen since the iPhone debuted.

[kottke]

More on Tarantino

Can someone tell me what the hell Quentin Tarantino is doing on American Idol?

Quentin Tarantino: Megadouche

As you can probably tell from my friend’s “blog name,” we at BlingBang are big fans of the films of Quentin Tarantino. That does not make us fans of Quentin Tarantino himself. In fact, we find him pretty intolerable.

Take the clip above, for instance. The scenes from his latest movie, Inglourious Basterds, are awesome. Mike Myers looks awe-inspiringly ridiculous, Brad Pitt is going to be amazingly silly and there is absolutely going to be some over-the-top Nazi-killing. What is not to like?

However, the shots of Tarantino – just terrible beyond words. There are very few people involved in making movies as self-absorbed as he is. Which is saying something. Why did he put himself in that clip? What purpose does it serve, other than to remind people of his existence? 

Someone needs to take him down a peg. Maybe once he makes a three-hour-long movie that nobody sees he will realize he is not as awesome as he thinks. Oh wait…

[Film School Rejects]

Teabagging Our Way to Freedom

The news business is a trying one. Newspapers are folding, foreign bureaus closing, and the fourth estate was widely impugned for its coverage of both Iraq and the recent election.

Under all this pressure, it's nice to see newspeople having fun. I don't know how David Shuster kept a straight face during this segment, but I applaud him for his aplomb.