Ghandi was Straight Edge

I'm not quite sure what the reason this video was made, but it is a bit of a mind boggling concept. Sir Ben Kingsley playing Ian MacKaye (front man for DC hardcore band Minor Threat), and miming the song Minor Threat (very poorly).

It's fun to watch, but Benny doesn't really get into the song too much. He looks like he's laughing, and having trouble remembering the (quite simple) lyrics. It seems like something someone put together for shits and giggles one weekend.

Still it's quite the juxtaposition of Classic Punk meets Classic Thespian.


Sir Ben Kingsley STOMPS into the shoes of Minor Threat's Ian MacKaye from Mean Magazine on Vimeo.

Bak in the saddle

A couple years ago I was totally blown away by the martial arts action of Tony Jaa in Ong Bak.

Now Ong Bak 2 looks to blow away the first film. It appears to be not so much of a sequel, but another Tony Jaa film that happens to be called Ong Bak 2. It could be a prequel of sorts, as it appears to be set WAY before the original.



Thanks Twitch

The First Rule of Wizard Club...

One of my favorite fantasy book series is being made into a TV series.

This November the first book in the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind, "Wizard's first Rule" will air as an ongoing series. And if it does well, we can expect the series continue on through the other books.

I can't say the show's title has me dancing with joy. While "Legend of the Seeker" is an accurate description, I'm not sure why they didn't use the already well know "Sword of Truth" that the book series is known under the world over. Originally the show was to be called "Wizard's first Rule", but as it's an ongoing series (hopefully), I can see why they didn't want to change it each season.

Show titles aside, the main point of my post is to let those of you that may not already know that the first trailer for the series is out.




Overall I'd say it looks pretty good, and has me excited. The production values look to be fairly decent from what was shown. As always with books transitioning to movies or TV some of the characters don't look like you may have imagined while reading, but for the most part they look pretty close. My only complaint is that Zedd looks a bit young, but I suppose that could be explained away as a wizardy thing.

Keeping my fingers crossed for November 1st.

Check out the show's official website for more info.


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Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

It seems that during the writer's strike Joss Whedon set about writing a 3 part web musical, and the teaser is now online.

This looks like it could be quite the funny.

It stars Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, How I met you Mother) as the title character and Nathon Fillion (Serenity, Buffy) as what appears to be a super hero.


Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

The official site is here, not much there but the teaser right now.

This from Joss's blog:

ONE WEEK ONLY! AN INTERNET MINISERIES EVENT!

"Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog" will be streamed, LIVE (that part’s not true), FREE (sadly, that part is) right on Drhorrible.com, in mid-July. Specifically:

ACT ONE (Wheee!) will go up Tuesday July 15th.

ACT TWO (OMG!) will go up Thursday July 17th.

ACT THREE (Denouement!) will go up Saturday July 19th.

All acts will stay up until midnight Sunday July 20th. Then they will vanish into the night, like a phantom (but not THE Phantom – that’s still playing. Like, everywhere.)

Then it will be a paid download and eventually a DVD chock full of super bonus material.
So mark your calendars, after July 20th YOU WILL PAY!!!! Mwahahaha!!

sorry 'bout that. got carried away a tisch

KITH me once...

Last night we went to see the Kids in the Hall do a live show at the Royal Oak Music Theatre.

There was a 7 & 11 show, and we had opted for the later "adult" show. Not sure what the difference between shows was, but ours was hilarious, but I digress, let's wind back the story a bit.

We had plans to meet friends for dinner at 8, and we ended up getting to RO a half hour early. We decided to walk around the city a bit while we waited for them to arrive.

We only made it to the other end of the block from the theatre when we noticed a large group of people, some tents, and police holding back traffic. When I first realized it was a film crew, I thought "cool, they're shooting a commercial or something", then I noticed that there were quite a few movie style "director" chairs with "Prayers for Bobby" stitched along the back. This was a movie crew, not a commercial crew. It looked too small for a major motion picture crew, so I was wondering if this was some local independent film crew (with obviously waaaaay more money than we had with "broken"). As I was looking around to see what all was going on, and to see if I recognized anyone from anything, Anne called to me to point out that Sigourney Weaver was standing not 20 feet in front of her! We saw her for about a minute or two, and she was off. Apparently done for the day.

Clouds started rolling in, and they only had the time for two more takes before they started to wrap for the day. We watched them pack up some equipment, and right about that time our friends drove by looking for a parking spot. We headed to the restaurant to grab a table, and started looking up details about what we just saw on the internet via Anne's Blackberry. Ain't tech sweet!

We found that "Prayers for Bobby" is a Lifetime film based on a book of the same name, and Sigourney plays a mother coming to terms with the suicide of her gay son. IMDB doesn't have much info, other than to say that it's in production, and if you get their pro account you can find out more info. That sucked because we saw a few young actors that we thought looked kind of familiar, but couldn't quite place, and had hoped to find out who they were with the aid of good old IMDB. Anne took some pictures, but they are still on her camera as I write this.
EDIT: Anne's pics are now on her Flickr account.

After an excellent dinner, we saw the afore mentioned "hilarious" Kids in the Hall show. We had great seats in the center of the theatre, but unfortunately the theatre is configured for people to stand at music events, and as such the seats we had were folding chairs all on a level floor. Meaning we had to crane our necks left and right to see the stage around the people in front of us. Even so, the show was super mega funny, and the Kids couldn't help but interact with the audience as people spontaneously combusted with shrieks of laughter or screamed out they loved one Kid or the other.

There were a few moments where they would make each other break up on stage. In one sketch Kevin wore a sweater that turned out to be Scott's favorite sweater that he thought he had lost the night before at a bar while evidently quite drunk. After they were all breaking up at Scott's surprise, and lack of a decent comedy cover for same, they had to break out of the sketch, explain to us the significants of the sweater and then continue the sketch. Bits like that just made us feel "in" on things and made it that much more personal.

They have definitely aged a bit, but then haven't we all. But other than being a little more paunchy or wrinkly than they used to be, they were the same old troop, with the same sense of humor we loved. The show used some pre-taped bits on the screen behind them in between some sketches, used slides to set scenes, and had a good mix of new characters and ones from their TV show, and all the material was new stuff, nothing recycled from TV.

All in all it was an excellent night.

Picture this

One of the pictures I took last summer while we were in Washington D.C. has been chosen for use in an online map/guide site called Schmap.

Evidently they search around through picture hosting sites like Flickr for photos that fill the need of their guide, and when they needed a picture of the International Spy Museum in D.C. they found one that I took, and asked if I would mind if they used it on their site. I said sure thing. There's no monetary compensation, but it's still kind of cool.

Your plastic pal that's fun to be with

Last week Character Options made an announcement with the details of the upcoming line of classic Doctor Who action figures via the Toys and Merchandise section of the doctorwhoforum.

Over the past few months they had already let us know most of the figures in the set, but we now have more complete details on the first wave of classic figures, including there being a build-a-figure in this set.

The full release follows:

Character set to launch Classic Doctor Who range

Fans of all eras of Doctor Who can look forward to an incredible range of classic Doctor Who figures and monsters being launched by Character Options later this year.

Recreate scenes from the classic series of Doctor Who with the poseable action figures. Each figure pack comes with a different collectable part of the giant K-1 robot from the fourth Doctor’s first story in 1974. When all eight packs are collected, the giant robot will be complete.

Classic figures include Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Colin Baker. Other figures and monsters include a Sea Devil (1972), Zygon (1975), Magnus Greel & Mr Sin (1977), SV7 and D84 (1977).

Also being launched is a Doctor Who 5 inch Classic Dalek Set – this set of three poseable Classic Daleks includes Daleks from The Dead Planet, (1963), The Planet of the Daleks, (1973) and Genesis of the Daleks (1975).

As master toy licensee Character has enjoyed immense success alongside BBC Worldwide through its Doctor Who range of products and predicts a hugely positive response to the new collection, which is due to launch in August.

Not only did we find out about the previously unknown build-a-figure, but we also learned about the classic Dalek set.

Then, a few minutes later, the pictures started showing up.




WOW! (click on any of the above pics for bigger images in my Flickr account)

Every one of those figures look excellent!

The swappable heads for Tom are just too cool. The detail is just outstanding, I hope the final figures look as good as those prototypes.

I also really hope that they sell as well as I expect they will, so more and more are released.

And if that wasn't exciting enough for fanboys like myself, later that week they let us know what we can expect from the second wave of classic figures through a series of posts with cryptic hints that the forum members had to figure out.

After all the hints were solved The Character (one of the Character Options posters) summed up wave two as such:

Ok people so here we go

Wave II
Morbius Creature
Ice Warrior
10th Planet Cyberman
7th doctor
8th doctor
Mummy service robot

and collect the parts of?.......... now that you have to wait for but ..its original! lol lol lol

They have previously announced that the first three Doctor's figures are waiting until they can clear the likeness rights with the estates of the late actors. Also they say there are currently no plans for companions. Two reasons mentioned are that monsters sell better, and the whole likeness rights thing again. But if the classic range really takes off and makes them big money... *Fingers crossed*

Now I just have to wait until August.

Ugh!