Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Link Roundup: Volume 9

What do you get when you combine the musical stylings of Robin Sparkles with Doctor Who? Magic!

Community fans, you might be surprised to find out the identity of one of the writers of the much-hyped The Descendants.

Guess which Big Brother couple is rumored to be on the cast of The Amazing Race next season.

Office fans, Dunder Mifflin paper is now a real thing.

This list of common movie poster cliches is fabulous and hilarious. My favorite has to be "Tiny People On the Beach, Giant Heads in the Clouds." You can also visit the site where these examples originated for more of them (I included the first link because much of this site is in French).

If you love Once Upon a Time as much as I do, you should check out this first look of Emilie de Ravin as my favorite Disney princess, Belle. Maybe I can finally forgive her for what Tess did to Alex on Roswell.

Speaking of Once Upon a Time, I'm disappointed in myself as Lost fan for failing to catch this Apollo candy bar reference. 

While I'm on the subject of references I missed, this one from Community is both brilliant and ridiculously subtle.

Bringing these links back around to Doctor Who, you'll never guess (okay, you might) which cartoon of the 90s contained a Dalek reference.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Trailers of the Week Roundup: The Hunger Games, The Vow, and More

Movie trailers and Breaking Dawn seem to have invaded the Internet this week. I'm not going to touch the second topic at the moment, but due to some extreme Spanish-studying procrastination, I would like to share my thoughts on the first. Here's this week's trailers in order from the movie I'm most excited about to the one I'm least excited about.

1) The Hunger Games



If you've been on the Internet much this week, you've probably either seen the trailer for The Hunger Games movie or have least heard that the trailer has been released. I just finished the Hunger Games books about a month ago. So I was pretty excited to see a preview of the film, and I must say, it didn't disappoint. I was initially a bit dubious about Jennifer Lawrence being cast as Katniss, but after watching the trailer, I'm convinced that she'll be great in the role. From the casting to the sets to the costumes, most everything in the trailer fits how I'd imagined it, and I can't wait to see to see this in March.

2) Brave



The Hunger Games trailer isn't the only trailer featuring a female archer that was released this week; a trailer for Pixar's upcoming movie Brave also shows a girl who's handy with a bow and arrow. I think Pixar is pretty fantastic, and I'm a sucker for princess movies. So I'm pretty excited for this upcoming release. I adore the Scottish accents in the trailer, and I just realized while writing this that Craig Ferguson's voice is among those accents. So there's another reason to be excited about Brave.

3) Gone


I like Amanda Seyfried (although it's hard to think of her as anything other than Lily Kane or Karen Smith) and maybe this is just a bad trailer, but Gone just doesn't grab me or strike me as particularly original. Still, it looks like a possibly-entertaining, mindless thriller that I wouldn't mind seeing eventually, particularly if it were on Netflix streaming.

4) The Vow



Since when is Hallmark able to snag stars like Rachel McAdams? Oh wait, this isn't a made-for-tv movie? You could have fooled me. Look, I can enjoy some sappiness from time to time (shout out to both the Walk to Remember book and movie), but this movie does not look good. The Taylor Swift song, the falling in love all over again montage, the brief glances at scenes featuring tears and dramatic outbursts followed by lighthearted moments, the tagline "Can the love of a lifetime find a second chance?" slowly appearing across the screen, and Channing Tatum's (or is it Tatum Channing? I can never remember.) "acting" are just too much for me handle. I think Rachel McAdams is fantastic, but she can do much better than this.

5) Mirror, Mirror



I love fairy tales and princesses as much, if not more, than the next person, but this looks 20 kinds of terrible. To be fair, I've never been much of a Snow White fan (although I'm loving Ginnifer Goodwin as Snow White on Once Upon a Time), but even if I were that wouldn't excuse dialogue such as "Snow White. Snow Who? Sno-way." Plus, Julia Roberts' performance as the evil queen looks absolutely dreadful. Visually, the movie looks pretty (which shouldn't be a surprise given that it's directed by Tarsem Singh who directed The Fall), but that's about the only nice thing I can say about it. I can definitely enjoy some campiness (which Mirror Mirror seems to provide in spades), but this looks like campiness of the worst kind.


Did I miss any of this week's trailers? Which of these trailers are you most excited about? Whether you agree with my opinions or think I'm way off base, I'd love to read your thoughts in the comments, as always.