June 17, 2010 by ScreenbeardcloseAuthor: ScreenbeardName: Joshua Nunn Email: josh@nunnone.com Site:http://joshnunn.nunnone.com/ About: Josh Nunn is a technology-loving-guy working in a large metropolitan high school. He lives in South Australia with his wife Camilla and his daughter Amelynne. [more]See Authors Posts (402)
As much as I miss the genius of Jim Henson, I realised the other day that I will miss something else just as much as Jim’s Muppet characters. I will miss the insane and brilliant pieces of comedy gold he used to create with Frank Oz.
Frank Oz is nowadays probably best known for being the voice of Yoda, but he’s also a respected and talented film director. He’s still entertaining, long after Jim Henson’s death and I hope he continues to do so for a long time to come.
But what the world has lost since Jim’s death is not only a talented puppeteer and performer, but some classic comedic pairings of his characters with those of Frank Oz. I cry a little inside when I realise that there will be nothing new created by these two fabulous men working together.
Let me give you some examples. First up the most obvious pair:
This is the only video in this collection that I’ll forgive you for not watching in full. It’s a scene from my least favourite of the Muppet movies (Muppets take Manhattan ) showing the “wedding” between Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog, probably the most memorable Muppet pairing of all time (even if it’s not one of my favourites). Though an unlikely pair, Jim and Frank made the pig’s flamboyant declarations of love and the frog’s seeming indifference oddly engaging and has created a love affair that is still going strong.
April 19, 2010 by ScreenbeardcloseAuthor: ScreenbeardName: Joshua Nunn Email: josh@nunnone.com Site:http://joshnunn.nunnone.com/ About: Josh Nunn is a technology-loving-guy working in a large metropolitan high school. He lives in South Australia with his wife Camilla and his daughter Amelynne. [more]See Authors Posts (402)
I’ve not actually met you in “real life” yet, and much of what I know of you I have only learned through your blorgs, twoots and videos of you getting slapped… which seems to be more often than regular folk.
Regardless: Happy Birthday.
I’m glad you’re having a good year. I hope you don’t grow up as soon as you think you should. We should meet sometime soon.
This tickled my fancy. Over on First Waves I’ve got a post ready to go about Google Wave competitors, and one of the ones I mentioned was Sharepoint. Amusingly, the spelling suggestion for it was chokepoint…
Which apparently is a geography term, but sounds kind of ridiculous.
April 5, 2010 by ScreenbeardcloseAuthor: ScreenbeardName: Joshua Nunn Email: josh@nunnone.com Site:http://joshnunn.nunnone.com/ About: Josh Nunn is a technology-loving-guy working in a large metropolitan high school. He lives in South Australia with his wife Camilla and his daughter Amelynne. [more]See Authors Posts (402)
Unfortunately I have two movies that spring to mind when I was given this suggestion:
Review the worst movie you’ve seen this year.
The first is The Ugly Truth with Whatserface and That Bloke who always seem to be in these awful movies. Normally I would have steered clear of something like this, but occasionally I have to watch a romantic comedy so that my wife will keep watching SciFi with me.
Bleh
What a dreadful movie. I’m not sure there’s much to be said beyond that.
The second was Surrogates with Bruce Willis. I had heard it wasn’t fantastic, but the idea behind it intrigued me: what if everyone lived their lives virtually through robot simulacrum?
Bruce Willis: Bored.
The movie’s conceit is ridiculous in execution though, with almost the entire world having chosen to live in little pods that feed sensory input from their virtual bodies back to them. I cannot imagine anyone but the elite and a select few ever going for it. The movie world is one where doctors no longer espouse the benefits of sunlight or fresh air, where muscles don’t atrophy from under-use, and the technology is so good that no one misses reality.
Except Bruce Willis of course.
He has that same sort of bemused look he has in every film. Except in this one it doesn’t suit. I also recently re-watched 12 Monkeys and the man can act, but when the script is bad, he just spends the entire film with a little half-smirk like he knows something the director doesn’t. Well his character hates his virtual life for some reason. He’s a cop put on the trail of a man with technology to kill someone through the surrogate. There’s all sorts of interesting questions that this raises, but none of them are really explored or adequately covered.
Which is the essence of this film really. The premise is interesting, but the execution is flawed. About half way in the movie starts showing all its cards until there are no surprises by the end. None of the characters are “real”, so you don’t care about them in any way. The technology is so magical you just cannot believe any of it.
The final indication that this was not a good film came about 2 minutes after Bruce Willis saved the entire planet and my wife woke up. Oh how I envied her.
April 3, 2010 by ScreenbeardcloseAuthor: ScreenbeardName: Joshua Nunn Email: josh@nunnone.com Site:http://joshnunn.nunnone.com/ About: Josh Nunn is a technology-loving-guy working in a large metropolitan high school. He lives in South Australia with his wife Camilla and his daughter Amelynne. [more]See Authors Posts (402)
I have that “Suggestions” button up there on the right because I’m hoping that people might make my never ending search for interesting stuff to write about easier. Before today my only suggestion has been (literally) “.…”, which I’m not sure what to do with. I thought it a stretch to drag a post out of an ellipsis and a period.
Then today I got GOLD.
“mate your a wanker”
Not a suggestion as such. It’s entirely possible that the chap misread the tab to read “Statements”, and just decided to put his 2 cents in. Read more »
