Goblin Mercantile Exchange

Most devastating review of Garfield: The Movie can be distilled into one line: “The special effects are less sophisticated than the comic’s.”

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I love watching GAC (a clever acronym for “God Awful Country”)-not because of its “music” but because of the ceaseless amazement as to how a supposedly widely available cable channel looks like it was produced on cable access at 3am in a teenager’s basement. (And for the record, I watched a good bit of CMT [...]

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One other note re: meta-advertising; when a movie wins an award or is “the #1 movie in America!”, splicing in film clips in commercials to celebrate this fact. This usually involves fist pumps, exhortations, and exuberations. One wonders, particularly in movies which are already in essence product placements spliced with CGI footage, whether those directors [...]

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Advertising cues up its metafictions with efficient ease. One in particular comes to mind. One is the record player needle falling off the record sound. You’ve heard it, although its overuse might render it invisible. Particularly plied in advertising situations in which, in first 10 seconds of spot, there is some idyllic, albeit misleading, usually [...]

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More proof it’s better to just trust the alternate universe I’m living in. So I was watching Matrix Revolutions the other night (god knows why; what an abomination of a movie!) with Kristin, and I noticed that one of the councilors of Zion looked strikingly like Cornel West, but I thought that this would be [...]

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Best quote from a review of Cat in the Hat, from the Boston Globe: “If the producers had dug up Ted Geisel’s body and hung it from a tree, they couldn’t have desecrated the man more.” Just to give you an idea of how obscenely bad most people consider the movie to be, on Metacritic, [...]

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In other news, this is what your television thinks about you.

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I remember it was 1996-1997 there was a computer retail company, one of those online dot-com things, you remember those, and there was an ad they had on that new dot-commy MSNBC network (remember their bad, yet somehow endearing, early techie programming? Because it was new economy. Those were Soledad’s finest hours). I forget the [...]

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Working on a mini-essay/post on how Tara Reid is the Brian Jones of the 90s teen movie explosion. I feel bad for her. Maybe this is the essayic.

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Can someone please explain to me the fascination street with [insert television show here!]! Slap your back for-somehow-actually bringing this one-eyed, three horned lamb to gestation, but please don’t mind the “I am talentless” sign that THE AMERICAN VIEWING PUBLIC WITH MORE THAN A FIFTH GRADE EDUCATION HAS TAPED TO YOUR BACK. Perhaps we can [...]

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If I have to see Vincent D’Onofrio “act” one more time I’m going to go “criminal intent” on the twitch smarm fucker hobo. I AM EMMY!

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Akin to Ringu: what if there was a haunted mineral? One that transmitted a viral tendency that bore a palimpsest of its dark maker? Which caused great consternation and if you didn’t solve things it would kill you in a fortnight minus three? A mineral whose content so disturbed (even in its banals) that upon [...]

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A posting about the aforementioned Lizzie Maguire movie. It’s a good thing everyone in the town square is reading this

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mean, Lizzie can’t fall for Gordo, can she? Gordo, just watch 16 Candles, or perhaps Biodome. Pray to the patron saints of mesomorphs, use obeah against Ethan. Learn to cook. Boil the woodants’ nest.

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The sign posted on the gate of Moria. I mean, that’s what the runes said. The keraoke of “Love Shack” became a device known as “foreshadowing.” Which is literary to a T. Oh, Merry and Pippin knew there was hell to pay when they saw that gate. I mean, the runes were in Eleven.

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Saw the DVD Special Edition of Lord of the Rings. SPOILERS: The kareoke scene at the Prancing Pony was aoutstaounding! However when Frodo sang “Love Shack” Merry and Pippin didn’t back him up. Frodo was very upset, and I’m sure Frodo will keep bringing this up throughout their journey, e.g., in that Moria place. Hope [...]

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(hg) On Lizzie McGuire as postmodern discourse. E.g., on jumptheshark: For once no attempt is made to disguise a teenager’s vile personality, staggering shallowness, & complete self-absorption. Take the episode when “The Tudge” asks Lizzie out. She’s mortified because he’s a quirky type, & she lusts only for the hunky dumb guy Ethan. But she [...]

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The ordinary is hard work. Went to see the English Cider House Hours in Love today. SEVENTY STARS! Those actors can act emotive. I wish I was a member of the academy so I could nominate Shakespeare in Gladiator Chicago yesterday. Why don’t they streamline that process so the “blockbusters” are much more like going [...]

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I just lurve undead shows. Undead means you’re kind of alive, but also kind of dead. Non-dead doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, though Evening tells me it is more accurate. ANYway, the Drew Carey show. Late Night with Craig Kilborn. Just Shoot Me. No one watches them, no one promotes for them. [...]

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Is it just me or does Ben Horne from Twin Peaks look remarkably like Tom Daschle? Also, they are both fervent environmentalists. Also, Major Briggs looks a lot like that guy from Stargate, which is also a branch of the federal government. Case closed. QUESTION: did the anthrax-tainted letters originate from the Black Lodge? It [...]

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