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March 05, 2008Transformers 2 In Philadelphia?
It's all mentioned in an interview with the Philadelphia Film Office's Sharon Pinkenson and how Philly is a booming movie town; this article is notable for being the 453rd one to use that premise. (Yeah, yeah, I've written it too.) Posted by D-Mac at 03:48 PM | Comments (6) December 17, 2007Hilarious N.J. Escapees Leave Thank You Note
In a story that would be even funnier if they weren't, you know, violent criminals, one of the inmates who escaped from prison in a Shawshank Redemption-type escape actually left a note for a guard: "Thank you officer (name redacted) for the tools needed. You're a real pal! Happy holidays," Jose Espinosa wrote in a message left in his cell before he and fellow inmate Otis Blunt jumped down 15 feet to a landing, then 30 feet further down and over a razor-wired fence to freedom. The two, both charged with violent felonies, remain at large. Meanwhile, somebody else says the escape is like Escape from Alcatraz. Personally, I find it more like the escape scene in Masterminds. Update: Oh, yeah, a dude escaped from a prison in Bucks County, too. He was in jail on forgery charges. Posted by D-Mac at 04:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) September 05, 2007Revenge Of The, Erhm, Dorks
Ahh, yes, but wither the child (me) who goes to school between the high points of this genre, post-Revenge of the Nerds and pre-Rocket Science et al. I got American Pie and (as the article notes) Election, but by then it was my senior year, and those movies weren't nerd-centric anyway. All I got in high school were a series of horrible movies about teams of losers overcoming all the odds to win it all, occasionally by cheating. Screw you, Little Giants. Don't even talk to me, Ladybugs. Theme of nerds popular in movies [Gannett/Courier-Post] Posted by D-Mac at 03:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) May 23, 2007Mike Nutter Quickly Getting Priorities Straight
He talked with KYW 1060 and let them know he will not stand for fatcat Hollywood producers making movies in New York. Well, making movies set in Philadelphia in New York City. There's a new movie coming out, "It Is What It Is," which was filmed in NYC but set in Philadelphia. "Look, I'm glad that there's a film set in Philadelphia," Nutter said. "But it is a little crazy that a film about Philadelphia is being made in New York."
Nutter: Movies Set in Phila. Should Be Filmed in Phila. [KYW 1060] Posted by D-Mac at 09:00 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) April 02, 2007Penn Kids Carrying On In Fine Tradition Of, Uh, Me
The Motion Picture Association of America recently released its Top 25 schools for movie sharing, and two local schools are on the list: Penn at #2 and Drexel at #22. It's one giant West Philly vortex of filesharing. I remember back in the early days of downloading movies during my freshman year at Penn. Ahh, memories. The list, by the way, is woefully undercounted -- Penn is second with only 934 students sharing movies, while Drexel has 455. If you think that only 455 Drexel students or 934 Penn students are sharing movies, then insert your own cliche here. The list was formed after Rep. Howard Berman, chair of the House committee on courts, the Internet and intellectual property, asked for it. (Apparently if you get lots of campaign contributions from Hollywood, you can also get them to do things for you.) So, apparently, college kids trade movies! In other news, the sky is freaking blue. MPAA names its Top 25 movie piracy schools [Ars Technica] Posted by D-Mac at 10:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) December 18, 2006Leftovers: Clever Police Fool Idiot• Police managed to capture two suspects wanted for murder -- their ages, of course, are 15 and 19 -- after the two stole cell phones. The cops called the suspects on the stolen phones, set up a meet to buy the phones back for $100 and -- presto! -- two murder suspects captured. Excellent. [Inquirer]
• Will Smith's annoyingly-spelled The Pursuit of Happyness took first place in the box office over the weekend, taking in $27 million in sales. $27 million, incidentally, is what Smith should be fined for making that crime against humanity, Wild Wild West. [AP/Yahoo!] • PATCO train passengers were forced out onto a catwalk on the Ben Franklin Bridge this morning after smoke was seen coming from the first car. Unfortunately, the bridge was closed to walkers (as it usually is), so the passengers had to hold on to the side of the bridge instead. [AP/Metro] • And, finally, a puppy for Monday. [Daily Puppy] Posted by D-Mac at 04:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) December 05, 2006Incidentally, 'West' Is Salma Hayek's Best Movie
Now, remember, the last thing of note Riberio really did was this instructional DVD that came with a washing machine. (I swear to God. My friend got it.) But how does he reply? "Well, there was Wild Wild West. That's really all we can ever really make fun of." That's pretty bad, but I'm fairly sure these lyrics to "Freakin' It" are much, much worse: "I read in Rap Pages they refer to me as soft/ Yeah, more like Microsoft... As soon as it drop watch the phones blow up!/ BOOM then ship a mill/ Quick to the store/What, sold out?/When y'all gettin more?" Party Lines [NY Mag via Gawker] Posted by D-Mac at 01:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) North Philly Residents Rush To See Crap
Although there are drawbacks -- "It's definitely going to bring a lot more people. A lot more traffic. I'm definitely going to have to use the crosswalk rather than jaywalking," Stanley Daniel told Metro -- the benefits of the retail/student housing project on Broad Street inbetween Oxford and Cecil B. Moore seem to outweigh having to cross the street at the light. There $100 mil project features 1,200 student housing units, 20 retail spaces -- Qdoba! Foot Locker! Bank of America! -- and, best of all, a movie theater. Although Blatstein's company also built Riverview, The Worst Movie Theater In The City™, prospects are a little better for the Pearl. But although you can put a $100 million dollar complex in North Philly, you can't buy taste. Just ask our friend Daniel: With the gala red carpet opening for the first movie theater in North Philadelphia to open in 60 years going on across the street, Stanley Daniel was trying to get movie times. “Is the new ‘Van Wilder’ playing here?” he asked, while the well-dressed patrons inside ate popcorn and hors d’oeuvres at the opening of the Pearl Theatre at the new Avenue North complex on Broad Street last night. Unfortunately, The Pearl isn't playing National Lampoon’s Van Wilder: The Rise of Taj. But the dollar movies running right now aren't so bad: They have Invincible! Theater of engagement [Metro] Posted by D-Mac at 10:39 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0) September 26, 2006A Very Special Chat™: Vai, Napoleon And Starstruckcakes
There's a new blogger on the horizon, and his name is Dan Stamm: pwddmac: looks like teresa has some competition! NBC10.Com Blog: Vai Sikahema, NBC10.Com and Jon Heder Go Hollywood In New York City [NBC 10] Posted by D-Mac at 03:26 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) September 15, 2006Corey Feldman Still Makes More Than You
Feldman was in the area to film Cluster, Gross reported, and yesterday the Bucks County Courier Times had the goods about the movie: “It's a whole expose on contemporary teenage culture, specifically in relation to dating and teenage sexuality,” said Scordia, a 2000 Neshaminy graduate. “It's a fictional story but we've shot it in kind of a documentary-like style. It follows four female high school students and four male students, and it's about their intertangling relationships and the back-and-forth and jealousy. It's like a web. That's where the name 'Cluster' comes in.” I was all ready to make fun of this, but then I thought about it: $12,000 for five or six days of work. Shit, he's still got it made. Director, writer recruit big name for small film [Bucks County Courier Times] Posted by D-Mac at 12:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0) August 18, 2006Movie Review On A Website
Never fear, moviegoers! The Inquirer sent reporter David Hiltbrand to a late-night showing of the movie after it officially opened, and the verdict is in: The movie does, indeed, feature snakes on a plane. 'Snakes' is a concept in need of a story [Inquirer] Posted by D-Mac at 11:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) August 17, 2006New Movie Set In, Uh, 'Philly'
What it doesn't star, however, is Philadelphia, as Michael Klein reports: Yet in 10th & Wolf, city buses bear a mysterious "PTransit" logo; the luxe Dorchester is at "226 Market Square"; Catharine Street is misspelled in signs as "Catherine"; and riverfront scenes play out not along the Schuylkill or Delaware but on the banks of the Monongahela. Hey, I'm headed over to 226 Market Square later today. At the movies [Inquirer, 2nd item] Posted by D-Mac at 11:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) August 16, 2006Smoking Under The StarsHey, South Street Headhouse District, what movie are you showing on August 30?
Cheech and Chong. Awesome. Wait, but which movie is it? Movies at The Headhouse! [SouthStreet.com] Posted by D-Mac at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) July 26, 2006'Daily News' Discovers, 'Hey, People Yell At The Movie Theater!'From a column by Patty-Pat Kozlowski today: But for a contemporary film, [An American Haunting] was relatively clean. Not one obscenity is uttered by the actors - or even the demon. But the night I saw it at the $4 Tuesday movie night, I was treated to an extremely annoying phenomenon - new dialogue dubbed in from the audience. No @&*!^# way! Next they'll tell us that some drivers cut other ones off in traffic! Horror show at the cheapo movie [Daily News] Posted by D-Mac at 02:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) July 24, 2006Blogicized: Great Discoveries Of The Internet• Metroblogging discovers that unpopular movies released over a month ago are sometimes removed from theaters! [Metroblogging] • Phillyist discovers that some people are rude! On the Internet! [Phillyist] • Fiftyone:Fiftyone discovers that you can get 1,000 people into Transit on two days' notice, provided Hollertronix is there. [Fiftyone:Fiftyone] Posted by D-Mac at 03:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) July 21, 2006Consensus: 'Lady In The Water' Is Awful
And, so, as expected, I was fairly excited for Lady in the Water. I mean, c'mon, it was filmed in Bristol. That makes it a must-see (at least for anyone who's spent any time in Bristol). But, since I'm one of those people who likes to read a good movie review, I figured I'd check out them out before I see the movie. And, uh... uh oh. PW film critic Sean Burns, who I tend to agree with more often than not, wrote a hilarious, scathing review and gave it a D. Our competitor wasn't quite as mean, but had a similar reaction. The Inquirer's Stephen Rea gave it two stars. The Daily News Gary Thompson gave the film a C. Shyamalan must be disappointed Roger Ebert is recovering for surgery, as the critic surely would have give the film a good review. (He gave Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties three stars.) Rotten Tomatoes, the film review aggregator, currently has Water ranked at 23 percent. Okay, so it's higher than Little Man, but there are still reviews to be added into the score. (Water has already dropped two percentage points since I started writing this.) Of course, critics can be wrong, and you can manage to like movies that every critic hates, but I think Burns' description of the plot can sort of prove that the consensus is this movie is a train wreck: Billed as “a bedtime story by M. Night Shyamalan,” the film takes place entirely inside a run-down apartment complex, where Paul Giamatti's Cleveland Heep (the names in this movie are really something else) is the depressed, stuttering superintendent. There's a Rainbow Coalition cast of self-consciously “wacky” characters dwelling in their separate units just above the poverty line. And then one day a mermaid shows up in the swimming pool. And, naturally, there's a film critic who gets eaten. (The Village, you may remember, was trashed.) You also may remember the Godzilla remake in the mid-1990s, which had a Roger Ebert character as a bumbling mayor. That means, yes: M. Night Shyamalan is sharing plot points with the Godzilla remake. God help us all. Living Night-mare [PW] Posted by D-Mac at 12:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) July 13, 2006Blogicized: Snakes On A Video• Snakes on a Plane: The Music Video. Amazing. [Badminton Stamps] • MSNBC lists Top 10 Least Politically Correct Movies Ever, fails to note Birth of a Nation (or, for that matter, any porn ever). Then again, it was probably done by a 13-year-old intern. (Note: Previous inaccurate line taken out.) [A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago] • Rick Santorum is helping the mayor of Hazelton, the town that just declared war on illegal immigrants? What a shocker! [All Spin Zone] Posted by D-Mac at 02:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) July 11, 2006Breaking: 'Rocky Balboa' Trailer Proves Movie Is Going To Be Totally Awesome
"What's that from, the 80s?" "Probably the 70s." If you're having trouble loading this movie, just go to the Yahoo! link, which has Quicktime and Windows Media versions of the trailer. 'Rocky Balboa' on Yahoo! Movies [Yahoo!] Posted by D-Mac at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) June 27, 2006Movies Just Keep Getting Better And Better
Adam Sandler and Kevin James will star as two of Philly's Bravest in a movie directed by David Dobkin ("Wedding Crashers") and written by "Sideways" director and co-writer Alexander Payne and his regular writing partner, Jim Taylor. You know what the worst part is? Someone in Hollywood said, "Y'know, I don't think we have enough movies for the homophobic frat boy demographic." And then someone -- many people, probably -- agreed with that person and decided to make this movie. Sandler and James to play our firemen [Daily News, 2nd item] Posted by D-Mac at 10:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) May 10, 2006The Same Thing, I Think, Happened After 'Spring Break Shark Attack'The city has finally spoken up about bird flu: Tuesday night's ABC movie about a fictional bird flu pandemic has prompted Philadelphia officials to post their real-life emergency response plan online. Oh. So that's how you get city officials to do something. Make a movie! Phila. Plans to Show Bird Flu Facts vs. Fiction [KYW 1060] Posted by D-Mac at 09:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) May 01, 2006Blogicized: In Case You Can't Afford A Walkman...• God help us: You're going to be able to get 'IP on your cell phone. Hopefully they'll have ringtones of Eskin going, "Cock-a-roach!" [The 700 Level] • There are only four episodes of Sopranos left, and yet there are so many gay and non-gay plotlines left to explore! [SteveSilver.net] • Oh, yes, the jihadists are really into Atrios and Suburban Guerilla, and they're issuing a denial of service attack on conservative blogs only because they love American liberalism. Yeah, those Islamofascists are all about, y'know, gay marriage and such. I thought the oh no the media is ignoring Stephen Colbert (a man with his own TV show and a book coming out) conspiracy theory was going to be the silliest thing I read today. [Blonde Sagacity] • Oh, come on! Movie studios don't get techie stuff wrong! I mean, The Net was 99.99 percent true to life. And Hackers was simply the truest movie ever made! [Literal Barrage] Posted by D-Mac at 03:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) April 28, 2006Leftovers: 7 IP, 0 R, 14 K
• Sirius satellite radio offers devices that transmit the sound to a nearby radio. All you have to do is tune in to 88.1 FM. Unfortunately, this sometimes interferes with real radio stations operating on that band in, say, passing cars. And Christian radio and NPR enthusiasts are pissed. [AP/Philly.com] • A long day at the baseball park is proven worthwhile due to a Cecil Martin jersey spotting. And not even on Cecil Martin himself! [Dils] • President Bush has taken time out from important things like war and running the country to tell us that we should only sing the national anthem in English. Because if you sing the anthem in Spanish, Russian, Gaelic or Pig Latin, the terrorists have won. [AP/CNN.com] • A top Vatican official urged all good Catholics to boycott the upcoming Da Vinci Code movie. Also being asked to boycott it? Those of us with good taste. [AP/Yahoo!] Posted by D-Mac at 04:00 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) April 04, 2006Blogicized: Blogs Gone WIld• Oh no! Frank Fitzpatrick makes an offhand joke about bloggers! An unfunny columnist doesn't like us, guys? Oh no! Let's get him! He's not relevant anymore! And so forth! This is what you're supposed to do when the mainstream press mentions blogs in a negative light, right? I lost the handbook. [Shallow Center] • Another side of the baby seal in the Delaware: It this a sign of Philadelphia offering amnesty to seals that could have been clubbed in Canada? Developing! [Badminton Stamps] • Milkshakes, naah, not that big of a deal. But has Wawa changed its coffee roast? [Life, Family Et Al] • Congrats to Prep grad Jason Mulgrew, who has approximately 45 projects other than his blog in the oven right now. [Blinq] • I'll just pass on this rumor without comment: Did Jay-Z just buy a block of South Kensington? [Philebrity] Posted by D-Mac at 03:22 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0) March 28, 2006Pat Croce Finally Gets Angry
Needless to say, Pat Croce usually feels great. Whether at the helm of the 76ers, hosting that syndicated show or just being a plain old motivational guru, Croce is always happy. Except when he invests about 100 large in a fake movie. In the Daily News today, Dan Gross reports that Croce had two screenings of a 15-minute short film The Messenger yanked after learning that, well, pretty much everything in it was fake: The 15-minute-film, by Quincy Perkins, tells the story of how messenger Thomas E. Jones was held up while delivering Japan's official surrender in WWII from the Swiss Embassy to the White House on Aug. 14, 1945. I used to think Croce was a pretty smart businessman, turning an athletic trainer gig into a motivational speaking career into the presidency of the 76ers. Then he sold high on the Sixers, getting out before they became too horrid. But, dude, $100,000 on a shitty 15-minute film? Come on, man, open an ING Direct account or something. Croce doesn't feel great [DN, 2nd item] Posted by D-Mac at 02:13 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) March 21, 2006Editorial Is Stranger Than Truth Is Stranger Than FIction
Anyway, the editorial decides we're not safer now, which I'd probably agree with, but I try not to go around worrying about whether some nutjob is going to set off a bomb on the Broad Street Subway. Anyway, the Gleaner tells us the real danger the U.S. is in: In Wes Craven's nifty thriller "Red Eye," the terrorists fire on a five-star hotel with a short-range ballistic missile mounted on a fishing boat. Craven's fiction is an all-too-accurate depiction of how vulnerable our waterways are. I agree. And those people living on Elm Street could totally be attacked by Freddy Krueger in real life. Opinions/Sound Off [News Gleaner] Posted by D-Mac at 03:06 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) |
• Phillies pitching prospect Cole Hamels (at left, with some sort of 
Man, look at former 76ers prez Pat Croce. He's even in a good mood while pillaging. (I guess if you're a pirate, getting some booty puts you in a good mood. Actually, I guess that puts anyone in a good mood. Where was I again?)
The current edition of the News Gleaner, Northeast Philly's broadsheet paper, contains an editorial debating if we're "safer" now that Dubai World Ports -- the company owned by the United Arab Emirates that was going to buy six U.S. ports -- will turn over the operations to U.S. companies. (And they'll probably still have the same staffers, so I still fail to see how this was the biggest issue in the news for a few weeks, but that's why I'm a blogger and not a CNN anchor/Congressman/&c. Also, CNN would probably make me cut my hair.)