Weekly Preview – April 14 2008
DVDs
Juno – Oscar winner for best writing, stars Ellen Page and Michael Cera in the funniest move about teen pregnancy in recent memory. Directed by Jason Reitman, who also directed the brilliant Thank You for Smoking. A great movie, worth a trip to the rental store.
Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead – Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman are brothers plotting to rob the family jewelry store when all goes awry. Pulled a 7.9 on IMDB and an 88% on Rotten Tomatoes. Certainly worthy of a watch.
Also out this week, Aliens vs Predator: Requiem, Lars and the Real Girl, and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, if you’re into crappy monster movie mash-up sequels, goofy indie-flicks about love dolls or wretched Uwe Boll abominations, respectively.
Beer of the Week – Old Thumper
The Shipyard Brewery in Portland, ME has a solid line-up of brews, including this week’s Beer of the Week, Old Thumper. Old Thumper is an ESB, or Extra Special/Strong Bitter. Here’s what Shipyard has to say:
Old Thumper Extra Special Ale was created in 1979 by veteran British brewer, Peter Austin, foundr of the Ringwood Brewery in Hampshire England and mentor to Shipyard’s master brewer, Alan Pugsley. A British Grand Champion beer, Old Thumper is a non-traditional English Bitter, brewed in the United STates soley by the Shipyard Brewing Company.
Pulling in a B at BeerAdvocate, Old Thumper is no slouch, having won several awards, including Best in Show at the 2004 LA County Fair. Track some down this weekend and enjoy, it’s a perfect brew for watching the Sox trounce the Yankees. Happy Weekend!
dwot Helpdesk – Firefox 3 Beta 5
The Final Beta of Firefox 3 dropped last week and I wholeheartedly recommend picking it up to everyone who uses a web browser, whoever the hell that might be. Firefox 3 adds updated page rendering, improved memory handling, tighter integration with the Look and Feel of the operating system, a revamped download manager, and a wealth of other improvements. In non-web-geek talk, it runs better, eats less memory and looks prettier. It installs fairly well in parallel to Firefox 2 on Windows at least which makes it a fairly low-risk install if you don’t feel it’s ready for you yet. Also, be sure to check out Lifehacker’s awesome Field Guide to Testing Firefox 3
Top 10 Annoying Local Commercials
For this week’s Top 10, we’ve scoured the depths of YouTube to bring you the Top 10 Annoying Local TV Commercials. We’ll start off with a favorite of my hometown, Bernie & Phyl’s.
#10 Bernie & Phyl’s Furniture
Which one is Bernie? Which one is Phyl? WTF are they saying?
You Have To Burn The Rope
“Computer games are getting so hard these days…”
Allow You Have to Burn the Rope to help you kick back and rewind with a fun, simple game with a great post game musicry. It’s no Still Alive, but it’s pretty damn good.
Save the World – Stop Uwe Boll
Uwe Boll, the certified hack most likely responsible for whatever wretched video game to movie adaptations you’ve seen in the last decade has said he will quit single-handedly ruining entertainment if 1 Million people request it. Please, I implore you. For the many who have been hurt by Uwe’s crimes and the many more we can spare, please sign the fucking petition.
Uwe Boll Will Quit Making Movies with One Million Signatures | /Film
Podcast Pick: WebbAlert
Like Tech News? Enjoy snarky commentary? Can’t get enough Morgan Webb? Well WebbAlert is certainly for you. With a new episode roughly 80% of weekdays, WebbAlert is a great tech news podcast providing headlines, insight and commentary about all the important or at least interesting or humourous tech news of the day. X-Play co-host Morgan Webb delivers what you need in about 5 minutes each episode with mild commercial interruption. Certainly a worthy and informative way to waste a little time each day.
Weekly Preview – April 7 2008
DVD’s
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story – How can you go wrong with John C. Reilly starring in the latest Judd Apatow film? You can’t. Reilly is supported by a tremendous cast and many many cameos. Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Harold Ramis, shit even Frankie Muniz show up as character in Dewey’s amazing life. Walk Hard is simultaneously smart-funny and stupid-funny, so there’s sure to be a little of something for everyone. If you haven’t seen Walk Hard yet, do yourself a favor, as it was easily one of the funniest movies of last year.
There Will Be Blood – Daniel Day Lewis’s Oscar winning performance as an oil baron at the turn of the century, There Will Be Blood is a bit more serious in nature than Walk Hard, but certainly worth checking out. Lewis takes few roles and tends to do amazing things with them.
Also releasing this week, Lions For Lambs, The Water Horse, and Reservation Road, that is, if you’re into crappy movies or kid’s flicks. Or possibly just watching the trainwreck that is Tom Cruise.