Cassavetes' Forgotten Masterpiece

Soon we'll all get to witness "Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland," featuring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. One cannot help but be reminded of one the world's greatest lost cinematic treasures, "John Cassavetes' Alice in Wonderland," starring Peter Falk as Humpty Dumpty, Ben Gazarra as the caterpillar, and Gina Rowlands as the Red Queen.

All that's left of this forgotten masterpiece are these three production stills...

HISTORY LESSON FROM HELL

The Powers That Be: What do you want to let us make you president?

 

Obama: I'd like the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

The Powers That Be: Workable, but you've got to increase the forces in Afghanistan.

 

Obama: That doesn't make any sense.

 

The Powers That Be: Don't worry. You don't have to make the announcement till AFTER they announce you've won.

 

Obama: Cool.

Top 10 Christmas Movies I Want to See

Top 10 Christmas Movies I Want to See

by Michael Dare

 

10: It's a Horrible Life: Clarence the angel gets his wings after convincing George W. Bailey to kill himself by showing him how absolutely fantastic the world would have been had he never been born.

 

9: The Polar Espresso: Elves from around the world are kidnapped and forced to work at the first Starbucks at the North Pole.

 

8: How the Magnanimous Billionaire Gave Away Christmas: A mad billionaire hires minions to sneak into people's houses and replace the gifts around the tree with much better ones.

 

7: Homo Alone: I really don't want to see this. What was I thinking? You go see it.

 

6: Elf Realization: Che Elf rouses the toy workers to overthrow their hefty master. Siddhartha Elf finds enlightenment.

 

5: The Nightmare After Christmas: A swamped clerk at a Wal-Mart's return desk kidnaps shoppers and opens an underground slave department where illegal aliens can buy white people.

 

4: The Little Shop Around the Coroner: Law and Order meets CSI meets Bones meets Love, Actually, with a bit of Die Hard and Eyes Wide Shut thrown in.

 

3: Rudolph the Normal-Nosed Reindeer: There's nothing special about Rudolph so he never guides Santa's sleigh or ever really amounts to anything. Nobody writes a song about him and he dies in obscurity.

 

2: Disaster on 34th Street: Santa is hijacked by elf terrorists who crash his sleigh into Macy's which mysteriously comes crumbling down in what many claim must have been a controlled demolition. The US declares war on the North Pole and blows up a Starbucks. Gimbels has its biggest week ever.

 

and the number one Christmas movie I want to see...

 

1. The Most Improbable Story Ever Told: A virgin who appears on tortillas gives birth to a man who can walk on water. Starring Jesus Saves (pronounced Hey-soos Sah-vess.)

 

 

Having hope gives me hope

 

At Hopenhagen there's a map of the world showing a quote from each of the 1,745,537 concerned citizens who have signed a petition begging the United Nations Climate Change Conference to come to their senses, and a good petition it is, well worth signing. The form shows a blank space before the words "gives me hope," hoping people will create phrases like "beauty gives me hope" or "Viagra gives me hope" but the vast majority of submissions don't quite get the concept, creating things like "Let's gather together in peace gives me hope" and "what countries will get submerged gives me hope."

 

LOL

 

Come to sign the global warming petition. Stay to make fun of others.

 

MD

 

Free Monty Python album you've never heard

What a pleasure it is to listen to a Monty Python album where you don't already have everything memorized. "Memory Training" is right up there with "Word Association Football," and the dialogue between Mrs. Particle and Mrs. Velocity is just as good as the one between Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion. This never has been, and possibly never will be, officially released, so it's time to look on the pirate side of life and download a bootleg. It's only available in BitTorrent. Download this torrent.

 

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3665277/Monty_Python_-_The_Hastily_Cobbled_Together_For_A_Fast_Buck_Albu

 

Despite the title, this 1981 album was never actually released to the public for a fast buck. Andre Jacquemin, who put together much of the Pythons' album work, cobbled this album together from material which had been recorded for other albums (mostly the Contractual Obligation Album) but not used. It was given by Michael Palin to the band Motorhead as a gift, and has found its way, unofficially, into the hands of fans, but has never been sold in stores.

Denizen of the Darknet reviews 2012

Denizen of the Darknet Reviews 2012

by Michael Dare

 

I've never snuck into a movie theater showing a big new blockbuster with the intension of surreptitiously making a copy of it with my digital camera and offering it immediately for free to everyone on the internet, but I HAVE snuck into a movie theater showing a big new blockbuster and thought to myself "I must make it my mission in life to prevent other people from having to go through the same hideous experience I was just subjected to." Giving it away for free might be one way to do it.

 

I'd like to point out that one nanosecond after the first public showing of 2012, there were several versions available in BitTorrent.

 

And I'd like to point out that more than a month after its release, there still isn't a copy of A Serious Man, the Coen Brother's new film, available in BitTorrent. (At least so far as I know. It could be available on some limited stream the public doesn't have access to.)

 

And I'd like to make a big deal over those two facts, which I believe turn the release of BitTorrent versions of movies into an actual political statement and not just the work of "pirates" out to make a buck. (How can it be piracy if no one makes a penny? Sounds like a Robin Hood metaphor might be more apt.)

 

I put it to you that the reason A Serious Man hasn't been ripped off is because the intelligent minds behind BitTorrent actually respect the Coen Brothers and so it hasn't even occurred to them to rip them off. They would never, ever, pass around a shoddy copy of a Coen Brothers movie. They would only wait for the official DVD release so they can point with pride to their vastly superior Blue-Ray rip where you can see every wisp of smoke in the distance. The visuals are everything, man. You want to pay attention, to stop whatever it is you're doing and actually WATCH a Coen Brothers movie, and if you're giving it all your focus, you don't want to hear audience noises and see people getting up to go the bathroom from a copy shot in a multiplex that doesn't include the end credits because that's when the lights go up and the ushers appear.

 

I put it to you that 2012 was available immediately because nobody in the the vastly intelligent world of BitTorrent gives a good flying fuck about Roland Emmerich and the Hollywood money stream he represents. They show their contempt by saving you money which you can now spend on something else. There's no sense in feeling guilty because you were prevented from wasting your money. You'll just waste it on something else. No matter what, Hollywood gets your money.

 

Despite the fact that hell has called and wants my eyes back, I am grateful to the knowledgeable and generous denizens of the Darknet for saving me the bother of dragging my bones to a movie theater.

 

Here's a nice game to play. Exactly how much random money would you have to have lying around before you were willing to fork over fifteen bucks to see 2012? For me, it's about a hundred. Yeah, that's right. You'd have to pay me a hundred smackeroos before I'd go see 2012 in a movie theater. Before that point, I've got something better to do with that money. I could have a bong hit and imagine my own end of the world, where everyone is nice to each other and it drives them crazy, with hot fudge lava from the Electric Brownie Mountains flowing free into the churning Sea of Cold Stoned Creamery French Vanilla with a Jerry on top, Colonna, not Lewis, and everything is free, including food, from Foodster, the BitTorrent program that replicates food, and Drugster, the BitTorrent program that replicates drugs. Don't get me started about Sexster. No character needs an arc and no species needs an ark because there's nothing to escape from but their own lunacy and the unlimited barrels of pure pleasure available for free. The world falls apart because people stop believing in fairies. Nothing makes any sense. Ducks bark, dogs quack, and everyone wears hemp underwear. They got it wrong. It's just a bunch of random things happening. Entropy. That's how the world ends.

 

MD

 

"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality."
- Pablo Picasso -

 

 

Modern DNRs

 

 

 

 

My Debates with Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert is having a contest where he invites you to download a bunch of clips of him and to cut yourself into the footage. The winner gets to actually appear on the Colbert Report. I submitted four videos and miraculously, three of them are currently being featured on the front page of the contest. Don't know how long they'll last. Please go to the link below and give me a thumbs up. You want me to be on the Colbert Report, don't you?

 

http://community.colbertnation.com/formidable-opponent/

 

MD

4 DNR Tweets

Funny, I thought it would have been Prison Break

According to an officer in David Miller's documentary "In Guantanamo," the favorite TV show of all the prisoners is the Discovery Channel's "World's Deadliest Catch."