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Photoshop gone bad: 8 Atrocious DVD Covers

Posted in advertising, movies, pop culture with tags advertising, movie posters, movies, pop culture on August 25, 2009 by Paxton

Adobe Photoshop Tuesday is the day studios traditionally release their DVD offerings to stores. So I thought this would be the appropriate time to discuss a problem I have. Why do many studios refuse to use the movie poster on the cover of the DVD? It makes no sense. Many times, they commission another “poster” that includes all the major actors as “floating heads” with the title and some random scene from the movie. It’s ridiculous. Sometimes they even cobble together head shots of the actors, photoshop them on body doubles, and create some insane, nonsensical situation that many times has nothing to do with the movie. Here’s a funny video mocking the phenomenon of the “floating head” movie poster.

To illustrate what I’m talking about, here are a few of the DVDs that are the worst offenders in the “WTF did they not use the movie poster” awards.

footloose_dvd
Footloose — Hey, Kevin Bacon. Stop staring at me, Kevin Bacon. Stop it. I’m serious. I don’t care how blue your eyes are. If you keep staring at me like that, you’re gonna see me kill you. I would much rather have the famous poster for this movie on the DVD than have to kill you for eye-ballin’ me, Kevin Bacon. Also, your cover looks like a Lifetime movie. Footloose: The Town that Never Danced: The Kevin Bacon Story.

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Real Genius — This is one FUGLY cover to a great movie. WTF happened here?! Are the electrical shocks being administered to the side of Val’s head what’s keeping his hair up like that? Who approved this? There is no way Val Kilmer signed off on this. The original movie poster was BAD ASS. Why not use that? Cause that would make sense, and Hollywood doesn’t play by the rules of the natural world, that’s why.

weird-science
Weird Science — I love this movie. But by not using the awesome theatrical poster for the cover of this DVD, Universal Studios may as well have dug up the body of recently deceased John Hughes, kicked the corpse in the groin, pissed on it, walked around the cemetery “Weekend at Bernies-style”, then re-buried the corpse head down/ass out back in the dirt. I get the idea of using images of Gary and Wyatt with bras on their head, but WTF is up with the picture of Kelly LeBrock? Is that even a scene from the movie? Is she ballroom dancing? Conducting a seance? WHAT?! And what’s with all the clouds? I don’t remember any part of this movie taking place in the sky.

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Dork-topia: Cities that are constantly overrun by nerdy fans

Posted in Americana, books, movies, pop culture, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, Wizard of Oz with tags books, movies, pop culture, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, Twilight, Wizard of Oz on August 19, 2009 by Paxton

Nerds. You gotta love ’em. When they love something, they don’t half ass it. They are ALL IN. They live and learn the minutia of whatever aspect of pop culture they relate to. Be it comics, costumes, card games, TV shows, movies…whatever. And whenever they get the chance, they will make the pilgrimage to whatever place on Earth is the focal point for their obsessions. A Geek Roatrip, if you will (and I will, thank you). “So, Pax, where are the nerdiest places on Earth?” Other than the San Diego Comic Con or DragonCon in Atlanta, here is a list of the nerdiest vacation destinations in the world. And this is only a few of them. There are more, trust me.

Forks, Washington – Home of Twilight — This one is the most recent addition to the list. Forks, Washington is the real life city where the fictional Twilight novels are based. Constantly inundated by Twilight nerds (called Twerds…no, I’m not kidding) this town has finally thrown it’s collective hands in the air and said, “FINE! You dorks win. We’ll sell you Team Edward shirts, let you eat at Bella Italia (OMFG…at the EXACT table Bella and Edward had their first date!!! You must order the Mushroom Ravioli!!) and even tailor entire tours of the city around a fictional book about vampires that sparkle in the sun. Hell, visit Forks High School and buy a t-shirt as if you actually attended there with Bella and Edward. It’s all nerdy fun. I’m sure my friend Marlene will be there. Tell her “Hi”, and that I think she’s a dork.

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Tour de Pain Aftermath: Laying low

Posted in exercise, life, movies, running, TV shows with tags exercise, life, movies, running, Tour de Pain, TV shows on August 14, 2009 by Paxton

I’ve been somewhat wrecked this week. This past weekend I ran the Jacksonville Tour de Pain.

Like the image says, the race is a grueling 3 races in 24 hours. The first race was on Friday evening at 7:30pm. It was out at Jacksonville Beach. The distance was 4 miles and you ran it on the actual beach. I don’t know if any of you guys have ever run on sand before, but it’s hard. REALLY hard. 4 miles on the beach is probably like 6 miles on asphalt. At least, that’s how it felt. Actually, I felt worse after running the beach 4 miles than I did after running the Gate River Run’s 9 miles. But part of the reason is the humidity and heat. It was overcast when I ran the Gate River Run. Anyway, I was looking to beat 40 minutes which would be 10 minute miles, but I seriously died the last mile and wound up crossing the finish line at 40:26. Just over 10 min miles. I was really not happy with that performance, but I had to live with it. I mainly was pissed about how I fell apart during the last mile. It was terrible. The time looks better than it felt, I’ll tell you that. Here’s a pic of me crossing the finish line for the 4 mile race. I felt like I was actually going to drop dead at that point.

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Glorious Glass: A look back at some of my favorite collector’s glasses

Posted in advertising, comic books, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews, Star Trek, Star Wars, Superman, The Flash with tags advertising, Burger King, comic books, glasses, McDonald's, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, reviews, Star Trek, Star Wars, Taco Bell on July 28, 2009 by Paxton

Fast food joints used to give out the best swag back in the day. At the top of this swag list was commemorative collector glasses. These were glasses made from ACTUAL glass (not f’n plastic) with kick ass graphics all over it usually given away as a premium with a purchase of food or drinks. Actually, collector glasses didn’t just come from fast food joints. The convenience store 7-11 as well as soda giants Coke and Pepsi both created collector’s glasses that were distributed in stores, gas stations, supermarkets and/or fast food joints. The heyday of collector glasses was in the ’70s and ’80s, but glasses were also released in the ’50s, ’60s and ’90s. Burger King recently revived the collector glass (real glass!!) tradition in May 2009 with their four glass set for the new Star Trek movie (Thanks, Michelle for finding those for me).

So without further ado, here are a bunch of my favorite collector glasses from the ’70s and ’80s. You can click any of the below images to see it bigger.

Burger King Star Wars/Empire/Jedi Glasses (1977, 1980, 1983) — The most famous of all commemorative glasses, the Star Wars Burger King collector glasses are what everyone thinks of when you mention “collector glasses”. A set of four were released for each movie. Surprisingly, it is not very hard to complete a set of all 12 as they made a crap-ton of them. Here’s a pic of the Star Wars set. Here’s a pic of the Empire Strikes Back set. Here’s a pic of the Return of the Jedi set.

Glasses for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom by 7-Up (1984) — This is probably one of the more obscure glass sets. Made by 7-Up to commemorate the second Indiana Jones movie, the glasses were only released to certain local fast food chains so getting a full set is extremely hard. I don’t care about a set, but I would love the Mola Ram glass (far right hand side) with him holding the still beating flaming heart. That is BAD ASS. A year earlier, in 1983, there was a set of three glasses created by Coca-Cola for Raiders of the Lost Ark but the set was never released. Check those glasses out here.

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7 Time Machines that would suck if they existed in the real world

Posted in humor, movies, pop culture, time machine, time travel with tags humor, movies, pop culture, time machines, time travel, Time Travelogues on July 21, 2009 by Paxton

As promised, here is the third article in my list of failed Cracked.com pitches. This was actually the first pitch I made to them.

Let’s be honest, time travel is bad ass. Everyone would love to travel back in time and buy up shares of Microsoft or crates of unboxed Star Wars figures from back in the ’70s and then return to the present and live large like P Diddy. We are all waiting for that moment when NASA holds a press conference and says, “HOLY CRAP, WE JUST SAW DINOSAURS!!! I WAS NEARLY EATEN BY A T-REX!! A F’N T-REX, PEOPLE!!” Everyone on Earth is gonna lose their minds and there will be rioting in the streets like when the Lakers win an NBA Championship. So when this announcement inevitably happens in the far flung future, what will be the rules of time travel? What will the time travel vehicle look like? No one knows. Movies, TV and books have given us some ideas of what time travel MAY be like. Let’s take a look at what I hope will NOT be what time travel is like when we all get to go back in time and play Marty McFly.

Bill & Ted's Phonebooth
The Phonebooth from the two Bill & Ted movies — Despite what the movies show you, this is no good for sending teams of people back. I know Bill & Ted fit like 20 people in it, but in reality, have you ever tried to fit TWO people in a phone booth? It’s like a game of Twister. To send several people back you’d really need like 10 booths. Besides, AT&T stopped servicing and turned off all their phone booths, so are there any fully enclosed phone booths left? Why don’t we just make the time vehicle out of a horse and carriage? It makes as much sense. And the flimsy rabbit ears antenna on top? Is this booth traveling through time or trying to pick up grainy cable stations? It’s BEGGING to be damaged by random debris in the time continuum. Plus, who the hell came up with the phone book and dialing strings of numbers to get to specific dates? A yellow pages of time travel? What if you want to go back to ancient Rome to meet Socrates, mis-dial the number and get dropped in the middle of the Spanish Inquisition? Hope you are fireproof cause you are gonna get burned alive as a heretic. Time travel’s not so fun now, is it?