I just watched Sanjuro for the first time. I love Kurosawa's other stuff that I've seen, and this was no different. It lagged a bit in the middle, but by the end it's a great mix of gritty adventure and humor. Toshiro Mifune ranks alongside Clint Eastwood and Sam Jackson for sheer awesomeness in the badass-with-a-smirk category, and probably ahead of Harrison Ford and Kurt Russell.

For anyone who hasn't explored Kurosawa but who has a passing interest in anime, you will find his stuff very accessible. Every Star Wars fan should at least see The Hidden Fortress.

I feel compelled to mention once again that I CAN MAKE A PRETTY FANCY POWERPOINT PRESENTATION.

/sits down

That's great! I would have liked some frantic clawing at the briefcase as the end or a head bouncing toward the camera, but it was pretty cool.

You could have done more of a punchline by having him see another person and call for help, and that person shows that he or she is also cuffed to a briefcase. That person explodes, and our protagonist becomes frantic.

Maybe he notices two boulders butted together and swings the briefcase into the crevice so that the stones protect from the explosion when the bomb goes off.

Dazed but out of immediate danger, he stumbles to a Lamborghini parked nearby.....

I'm not going to kid you, it starts to get a little expensive at that point.

I agree: horrible tragedies belong in Australia. Sorry, Australia. It's science.

Well, Porter came to Hollywood already very famous and kept the right to his songs.

Also, I don't think anyone was under the impression that they were going to get a baby out of Cole Porter... including his wife.

That's because it's not a cease and desist letter. The book cover is well within the boundaries of parody, and that's well-trodden case law. Jack Daniel's is being nice because they don't have legal ground to make a real demand.

You could use the actual label if you wanted, assuming that you are mocking the product and not pretending that you're selling something endorsed by the company.

That's how The Daily Show gets away with using the Fox News logo and clips of Fox News shows.

Stuff I've watched recently (without commentaries)....

Jimmy Stewart in Harvey. Not at all what I thought it would be. Rather gentle comedy that sometimes rises to screwball levels.

Tucker and Dale vs Evil. Very funny. Not quite a Shaun of the Dead-level subversion of the genre, but a lot of fun.

Three Amigos. This was with the 9-y-os. They loved it, and holy crap is that a fun movie. Just about perfect. We gave up on the dull and song-poor Pete's Dragon after 20 minutes (I'd never seen it) and put on The Addams Family. They weren't sure what to make of that for a little while but really got into it by the end.

Ep 1 and 2 of Mission: Impossible. I'd only seen maybe 1 ep previously in syndication (it's now all available on Amazon Streaming, free with Prime). It's really good, but Steven Hill (later replaced by Peter Graves) plays it very flat, reportedly at the demand of the creator.

Also having fun with Sherlock series 2.

I was in the chat for this, but I listened to it again on a drive and just laughed my ass off over Teague's Hedwig story and Trey's follow up about busting out the balloon animals if you get dragged on stage.

You owe me one ass, sirs.

EDIT: Oh, and a related note on Trey's method of rewriting lyrics for a song then rewriting the melody to get a whole new song, and his recommendation of Singin' in the Rain.... MGM writers were not above doing the same thing, and in fact for Singin' in the Rain, producers said, "We need a song for Donald O'Connor like 'Be a Clown'." So the writers rewrote the lyrics as "Make 'em Laugh" but didn't bother to rewrite the melody. "Be a Clown" was written by Cole Porter for MGM's The Pirate (also with Gene Kelly), and Porter didn't complain (hopefully there was a payment under the table).

Also, I've got to throw a word in for The Sound of Music and Guys and Dolls, my two favorite musicals, along with Singin' in the Rain and The Blues Brothers.

I watched this with DIF yesterday. It's a really fun movie that still works as a kind of horror film. The opening "Skid Row/Downtown" number is just amazing, and there's hardly a bad song in the bunch. (For Red Dwarf fans, one of the doo-wop cats in the flashback origin sequence is Cat himself, Danny John-Jules.)

It's interesting how Steve Martin's dentist number is similar to his "Maxwell's Silver Hammer" number in Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Now that would be a challenge for the panel.)

Bravo! More musicals!

Also, more Chinese shopkeeper regulation! Did Gremlins teach us nothing?!

The equating of cost with value is largely the result of marketing. Big-budget productions have big budgets for marketing, often in the neighborhood of tens of millions of dollars. It makes no sense spending $25 million to market a $2 million film, so such films (and games as well) always rely more on word of mouth.

But make no mistake. Word of mouth is *extremely* effective. Portal was one part of an inexpensive set of games. Angry Birds and Bejeweled cost much less than Medal of Honor and had little marketing. My Big Fat Greek Wedding and The Full Monty became phenomena with very little advertising.

The person who wants to pirate a big-name game instead of buying (or getting for free) a small-name game is doing so because the big-name game's marketing was very effective. But word of mouth can make anything into a big name.

I guess what I'm saying is that the DiF panel needs to do a striptease and throw birds and jewels thru wormholes, and we all need to tell everyone we know.

Spoken like a true wise man.

...and criminally negligent personal trainer.