Trade Secret

Oh, by the way, in case you don't know me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter -- in case you are still living in the era when things like blogs and phonographs and daguerrotypes are the cutting edge of communications technology -- there is this.

The article makes it sound like I'm riding high already; in fact, it is a bit premature. I can still barely pay my credit card balance, and not because I just bought a ranch and a pony with big fancy Hollywood fuck-you money. Things are still not quite so definite. But as much as I prefer to keep quiet about things until they are more certain, this is still my first mention in the trades, and it's no fun to let that go by without showing people, even if I have to qualify it heavily.

Kenny's Wine Video

I made a video application for the wine job too. I hope I don't steal too many votes from Dave with this awesome application.

Dave's Wine Video

The estimable David J. Duman, co-writer and director/producer of Vlog Star and Kenny Bloggerly's Internet Life, and your favorite Bourne spoof ever, is applying for "A Really Goode Job." This is the cheesy name for Murphy-Goode Winery's new Lifestyle Correspondent. This person will be housed in Sonoma wine country and paid handsomely for six months for doing nothing more than getting shitfaced all fancy-like and building buzz for the winery Web 2.0 style. All of this is way more setup than you need to enjoy Dave's application video:



If you think Dave deserves this job more than some boring loser (and while there are many highly qualified applicants, there are a lot of boring losers vying for this thing), go to the Murphy-Goode page and favorite him! This job is perfect for him; seriously, this asshole loves talking about wine.

Terminator Salvation: Unacceptable

Slant's Terminator Salvation review neatly and concisely articulates the central plot hole that devastates the entirety of Terminator Salvation, the same one I would have written about had I blogged about it in a more timely fashion.

How is it that Skynet is actively targeting Connor in Salvation, fully aware of both his future centrality to events and his childhood escape from their robot assassins? The established timeline does not support this. Armed with this knowledge, why would Skynet even commence with their eventual plans to attack the Connors in a different time, knowing as they must that such plans will fail? Another question: Why am I putting more thought into this than the screenwriters did?

To add on to that point -- since the machines shouldn't even know that Connor is important, it is even more outrageous that they know that Reese is important. If Skynet knows Reese, Skynet knows everything, and the entire franchise is stupid and pointless. To accept Terminator Salvation on any level is to create a black hole of stupidity that disintegrates and swallows up the franchise in toto, and that simply cannot be tolerated.

Just as the T-800 in T2 tells John, "I know now why you cry," I can say that I know now why Steve continually denies the existence of T3. Personally I thought T3 had enough good moments to outweigh the bad -- sure, there's some timeline discrepancies with John's age and some dopey failed jokes, and the general feeling of a franchise being stretched too thin... but there is also the pleasure of revisiting something familiar, a few memorable action scenes, an interesting arc for John, an effective, if depressing, ending, and some successful comic moments as well. Overall, there is enough to recommend it as a watchable, if inferior and not-wholly-canonical entry in the series.

Terminator Salvation, however, should not be allowed in the door at all. There's just nothing that good in there; the action is flashy but utterly unmemorable and uninvolving, Sam Worthington and Anton Yelchin do their best to connect, but at no point does the story reward them or us or give anyone a reason to invest in the characters, and the ending is just plain retarded, as was the equally retarded ending it replaced. Certainly nothing here good enough to justify overlooking the staggering crimes of logic and story.

Political Cartooning

Making fun of political cartoons is as old hat as political cartoons. But still funny after all these years. Hat tip to Jaime Weinman's Twitter (Man, I hate the term "hat tip").

Vlog Star Bonus Featurette

If you're not yet, come be a fan of Vlog Star on our Facebook page! We might even post more cool behind-the-scenes bonus videos of us talking about ourselves, like this one:



The reason we say Vlog Star "started" as a web show is that I edited footage from season 1 and season 2 together into what is hopefully a semblance of a half-hour (22 minute) pilot which a cohesive storyline. This was always something we'd had in mind, although originally I thought one season would offer us enough material for a pilot. As it turned out, having the second season to draw on was much better. The pilot version basically focuses on the material that advances the overall story. A lot of our favorite stuff that appeared in standalone episodes didn't make it because they would feel out of place in a half-hour show if they just brought the plot to a standstill.

Anyway, I did all this in order to submit the show as an independent pilot to the NYTVF, the New York Television Festival. I spent all weekend shaving bits off the show to edit it down to 22 minutes (even with only the story-arc-episodes, it still added up to almost 40 minutes initially), and then burning it to DVD. They wanted 5 copies, one of which would contain a bonus feature discussing the making of the show. So that's what this is.

I called up Chase and Dave and we sat down on Dave's couch, talked about the show for about 40 minutes, and then I went and cut that down to one. In retrospect, we probably should have just thought about what we wanted to say and spent 20 seconds each saying it. But it was a good time and we got to act like big shots praising each other effusively. I ended up not using the worst of that because it was kind of nauseating. Still, there's a lot of footage left over so if I have time this may become an occasional series to fill the time until season 3.

Over the weekend, I thought I would never get the submission done. Twice I thought I was finished and then realized there were more brand names and logos that I had to censor out due to rights issues, and each time I had to go back into Final Cut for a few hours and then spend a few hours more exporting and burning.

Bourne to Cook

Check out our new video, a stand-alone parody of the Bourne movies. Then send it to everyone you know!

Jason Bourne cooks a quiche from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.

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Transporter 3

Transporter 3 is an essential entry in the franchise, assuming you have been waiting for the Transporter to fall in love with the least charismatic girl in the world. Actually, their chemistry is so bad that it's more like he falls in like, or falls in tolerate. By the end, he can sort of stand her, and she's goaded and pestered him into having grudging sex with her that he doesn't completely hate.

The problem is not that she's useless, annoying, dumb, shallow, and constantly distracted by booze and pills, it's that the actress playing her fails to make any of this fun. A charming girl could make us like this idiot, and that would have been kind of brilliant, the perfect love interest for a franchise so wonderfully, unapologetically brainless. Unfortunately, Natalya Rudakova is not that charming girl.

A fan's first thought might be, who cares? After all, we don't watch this for the story, and the slo-mo easy-listening-scored love scenes in the first Transporter movie were painful too. But those scenes felt more compartmentalized. You could grit your teeth and get through them, and they never felt like they dominated the movie. Unfortunately, in Transporter 3, we are stuck in a car with the girl for most of the movie, and worse yet, there is nothing to occupy our attention but their dull banter about food and the green-screen backgrounds quietly sailing past the windows.

One of Luc Besson's strengths is setting up simple but high stakes dramatic situations with crisp, economical pacing that quickly pulls you in. This strength is not in evidence here, where we jump around to various situations we don't care about before finally meeting the Transporter fishing. The first big fight scene is thrown away in a flashback, which is a clever and subtle way to sap out what little tension there is -- in these movies, we know the Transporter will always win a fight, but watching it when it's already over just makes the danger even less significant. (In an odd touch, several henchman bones are obviously snapped in this sequence, but conspicuously lacking the crunching sound effects that would make them satisfying -- a PG-13 concession perhaps?)

The pacing is leaden, the action scenes are too few and too brief, and at least two-thirds of the movie (though it feels like more) is the Transporter driving his car while talking to boring people. The fight scenes are well-choreographed, but they are too short, and they're shot and cut in showy, annoying ways that make them less exciting instead of more.

For a franchise that revolves around a man driving a car, the car chases have never been the series' strongest suit. The first movie's first scene was its only decent car chase, and the second movie had several hilarious car gags, but no extended car action that was actually impressive. In this installment, new director Olivier Megaton seems to have pioneered new ways to make speeding cars look dull. Either that, or he shot a bunch of terrible footage and tried to save it in the cutting room with lame and desperate editing tricks. Here are some tips for him in case next time he wants to make his car chases good:

1) The best way to add excitement is not to get as far away from the cars as you can -- don't shoot the whole thing from a helicopter.

2) When you're choosing a bad guy car to chase the hero's black luxury sedan, maybe don't select a nearly identical black luxury sedan, especially if you're going to shoot the whole thing from a helicopter. I shouldn't have to constantly check the Audi and Mercedes logos to tell whose car I'm looking at.

3) I can tell when you speed up the footage. Are you trying to disguise the fact that you shot the whole thing at 10 miles per hour, or are you just fast-forwarding it for me because you know how boring it is? If it's the latter, then thanks, I guess, but maybe next time have the cars do more cool shit than swerve at each other on an empty road.

4) Two-wheeling between the trucks was a nice, appropriately stupid-in-a-good-way kind of idea. Now just don't surround it with worthless filler and then we'll have something.

On the plus side, my fondness for the first two Transporter movies has increased as I'm reminded how difficult it is to do fun, low-budget action. This car-bound, claustrophobic exercise made me wonder if they ran out of money.

There are a few decent set pieces here, including a well-conceived but half-assedly executed bike/car chase, a nonsensical but sorta clever underwater predicament, and a climax on a train that is hilariously awesome and far superior to the lousy airplane fight at the end of Transporter 2. Unfortunately, they're buried by the movie's many flaws.

Vlog Star #27: Come Back

In the season 2 finale, Alexa tries to convince a despondent Nate not to run away.

Come Back | Vlog Star #27 (Season 2 Finale) from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.



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So... what did you think?

Vlog Star #26: Riding the Rails

In the penultimate episode of season 2, Vlog Star gets all dramatic on you.


Riding the Rails | Vlog Star #26 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.



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Vlog Star #25: Betrayal

Vlog Star hurtles toward season 2's dramatic conclusion:


Betrayal | Vlog Star #25 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.



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Professor YouTube #7: My New Haircut

Discussing this:



And this:

Vlog Star #24: Trading Spaces

Nate and Alexa switch apartments. This episode is notable for having the most scenes and cast members of any single episode.


Trading Spaces | Vlog Star #24 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.



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Merv and the Mystery Meat

Oh, this is so not a turkey sandwich.*



The texture was almost like hot dog, only as you can see it's cut into wide, thick slices. The taste could also be hot dog like, though you could make an argument that it was not totally unlike ham. Then again the sandwich also had bacon, which confuses matters.

Any guesses?


*I ordered a turkey sandwich.

Vlog Star #23: Sexual Tension

Sexual Tension | Vlog Star #23 from kennybloggerly on Vimeo.



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