And his name is?  Well let’s just say that thank the lords Dr. Moreau didn’t take Batman and Hancock to the island of misfits and come up with a new creation.

This first-run theater with second-run conditions is within spitting distance of my apartment in Portland.  I saw the change over about two weeks ago at Cinemagic at the intersection of Hawthorne and 20th. and it was the first time I actually felt a pang of sadness for not owning a snazzy camera phone.  Luckily someone did and they passes it along to Shawn Levy, film critic extraordinaire at the Oregonian.

Unfortunately, the Oregonian is a conservative paper and you couldn’t get away with posting this on their website.  So Mr. Levy passed it along to Jeff Wells and my guilt for not having a camera is gone because Jeff posted it to the ever-awesome Hollywood-Elsewhere.

Life is funny sometimes.  So yeah, I can vouch for no photoshop, probably just someone with a good sense of humor doing the marque changeover.

Not quit. We’ll miss ya big guy, you will always be that lovable stoner out in left field to us, who could hit like a ballet dancer but held up minor league games to look for diamond earrings.

Sadly, the Sox might have been better off trading for Favre.

American Michael Maniaci has fully functional balls, but that doesn’t prevent him from sounding like a 300-year-old relic of the Italian courts.

He does not sing falsetto, nor does he have a baritone register, as counter-tenors do. On the other hand, he is whole and male (he obviously shaves; he assures me he is fertile). It is just that some quirk in his development led to all the appurtenances of puberty appearing except one – his larynx did not grow along with the rest of him. As a consequence, his voice never broke.

Maniaci’s speaking voice is light and high, but, because he is an adult with a stocky frame, it is oddly resonant, like a rather fruity maiden aunt. His singing voice probably comes close to those castrati voices of long ago – although with only one antique recording available we can only really guess.

We can only imagine how much sixth-grade must’ve sucked for him. Seriously, our last name is Furbush and sixth-grade sucked to holy hell. Actually, it wasn’t so bad. We paid someone protection money and said person eventually ended up in a max security jail. Everyone wins! MORE »

College Humor is definitely on a roll lately with some of their videos and whatnots. Here, they stage a fake revolt of Bowser’s minions. There reasoning is Bowser’s arbitrary rules. “The Mario jumps over me everytime. I don’t know why Bowser put this goddamn chain on my body.” Even better is when the Bomber Mouse comes out from Mario 2 and all the other guys look at him as if they don’t know who he is. Side note: what was up with Mario 2? So different yet so good.

Seriously. I didn’t even know this was a PSA until the end. If blood makes you squeamish then look away, but it’s pretty hilarious how fake this is. “Roads are like totally hard dude!”

Wow, things must be so bad for actor Freddie Prinze Jr. that he’s taking a role with the World Wrestling Entertainment group. I’m not sure if I like him more (he always comes off as a likable person just not a likable actor) or if I want to start the long con on Sarah Michelle Gellar to be there the moment she decides to divorce him. “In his new role, Prinze will be behind the scenes contributing to WWE’s weekly television and pay-per view programs. WWE did not elaborate on what the actor would be doing for the company.”

Universal unveiled some footage from Spring 2009’s The Wolfman. The Victorian-era set movie, stars Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving and Emily Blunt. We were excited out of the gate for the project because of the cast, the premise behind the film and the involvement of director Mark Romanek.

When Romanek left the project due to “creative differences” our excitement waned. Director Joe Johnson stepped in to finish the movie. Johnson is a steady if unexciting director. He can handle action, but nothing in his CV suggests greatness. Nothing suggests he could deftly handle a Victorian monster/horror film.

But the leaked footage looks promising. And I love the way the world looks and we haven’t had a great monster/horror movie since the Korean export The Host.

At a certain point it seems like John McCain has just lost it. We know he has anger management issues, and heretofore they have been sadly absent from the campaign. Until know. It’s not something he did, per say, but his new ad equating Barack Obama with the shallowness of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton is the equivalent of John McCain blowing a gasket.

Obama is getting showered with love from the people (even if he’s not as popular as Britney or Paris), not necessarily the media, and McCain can’t stand it. It also doesn’t help that Obama has largely ignored McCain on the campaign. He acts as if McCain is inconsequential to his march to the White House. Nothing more than a pesky mosquito, who only needs to be dealt with when said mosquito annoying tries to suck some blood.

Obama, by largely ignoring McCain, is in his head.

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For those scratching their heads Kwassa Kwassa was a dance craze in the Congo during the 80’s. So I’m not really sure how that relates to the uppercrust on Cape Cod, but this video seems to take place on Nantucket instead. Still, who’s counting?

I guess it’s easy to hate on Vampire Weekend and you’d get no arguments from me, however, I think some of their tunes have merit. The reason I’d excuse them (note, I didn’t say defend) is the band has a subtle sense of humor. Sure, they are full of rich kid posturing, but they strike me as a bunch that knows how to take a piss. As evidenced in this video that’s part John Hughes comedy and part Lost Boys via Robert Smith of the Cure.

I’ve been racking up a lot of new music and I’ve been doing an otherwise terrible job at sharing it with you all. So here’s some great tunes to kick start your Wednesday morning. I checked out The Republic Tigers last night at the Towne Lounge.  You never know how you feel once you get out of work and if staying up late is worth it.  I didn’t stay for the whole set, but what I did see I was impressed with.

I do sorta dig The Republic Tigers breed of sensitive electronic rock. It’s not quite progish, not even close, but that’s the descriptor that comes to mind. Like it’s an Americanized late-period Britpop.  The Tigers write tight upbeat pop songs, with dark and moody underpinnings.

Photo by: Jalapeno at Philly’s North Star Bar

One day I will get my camera back up and working.  So on to the new music.  MORE »

A few articles have surfaced that counter the NYT article about internet literacy amongst youths from Sunday.  The Washington Monthly tells us long-form non-fiction is needlessly overwritten.  In other words write less.  And, Digital Journal furthers the notion that literacy is changing.

When Pixar essentially went all in and took over Disney animation a few years ago, the exciting news was that John Lassiter was taking the reigns and wanted to bring back traditional 2-D animation in the vein of classic Disney movies. They wouldn’t be hand drawn, obvs, but just the promise of Disney returning to the roots they ceremoniously abandoned for the computer animation oil field was exciting.

The first such project is going to be The Princess and the Frog, a Broadway-style musical tale set in 1920’s Jazz Age New Orleans and featuring their first African-American character, Tiana. Tiana is a chambermaid much like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, who no doubt meets a Prince and lives happily ever after.

Cool, I can get down with that.

Looks like we might even get some stereotypical cajun anthropomorphic insects and music by Harry Conick Jr Randy Newman (ugh).

So yeah, Disney isn’t exactly bringing it their first time around. The thing is we need this movie to be a success if animation fans (that would be me) want to have mainstream animation movies to see on the big screen. I suppose that’s a rant for another day, however.