The Dumb Are Mostly Intrigued By The Drum

Bullshit. That's seems to be all we're getting from our "leaders" that we pay to run our city. I can type away and list the ways our fine politicians have decided to slowly and systematically run this city into the ground. But in not very eloquent with words (as you can tell by the first word of this post) so I won't waste your time. Rather, I'm here to inform you about the latest idea out of the think tank that is the Fresno City Council: decommissioning the Fresno Film Commission. It seems like they plan to get rid of it and everyone involved. So what can you do to help stop this nonsense? Well, come by downtown city hall tomorrow, June 17th around 2pm (if you do go, try to get there before) as the council is voting on the budget around that time. Here's the email sent out by Ray Arthur, an overall good guy and head of the Film Commission:

An Email sent out by Ray Authur, Fresno Film Commissioner:
Many of you have asked, based on Councilmember Duncan's motion to defund the Fresno Film & Entertainment Commission, when the vote on the Commission's budget will occur. The budget motionvoting process is scheduled to begin at 2:00 PM, on Tuesday, June 17th, in the Council Chamber at City Hall.


I'm going to try my best to be out there and I really hope that those of you interested in keeping our film community growing here in Fresno can make it out there!

Well, I wouldn't call it NSFW since technically, there isn't any cuss words or dirty images....butt (pun intended) check it out anyways. Have a great weekend trying to gt this outta your head. Thanks to Rob Stank & Canaforian for directing this little gem to me.

Oh, Paul W.S. Anderson (please don't confuse this hack with P.T. Anderson) how have you destroyed franchises via your awesome films: Resident Evil=shit. Mortal Kombat=shit. At least Michael Bay can blow shit up real good. Well, now we have Death Race, a remake of the cult classic. Ugh. I like cars though! And cars with giant mini guns mounted on them....a little bit of Twisted Metal....aight, maybe. Check out the trailer here at Yahoo! and see for yourself.

Add "The Incredible Hulk" to the works of parking lot security guard Guillermo. Always good to see big name actors have a sense of humor and do good shit like this. Is it me or is is Kimmel quickly becoming the best late night show out there?

The Punisher: War Zone
Frank Castle is one of my favorite characters out of the Marvel Universe. I mean I'm a huge Punisher fan. So when the Tom Jane version was released a couple of years back, I was hyped too see Hollywood take another crack at the character. Well, although I liked Tom Jane, the rest of the film was kinda "meh". So now Jane is gone and we get Ray Stevenson instead. Never heard of him, never heard of director Lexi Alexander, although it's cool to see a female taking the helm of such a bad-ass character. The trialer looks prety cool but I'm not totally sold on this yet. Check out the trailer over here at IGN.

Religulous
Bill Maher. Yeah not a big fan of the guy and you wanna know why? Simply cause he said that the turntable can't be considered a real instrument and his general stance on Hip-Hop as a whole is dumb. Everything else, we're cool. But regardless of what I think about him on those topics, this film looks good. It's the Farenheit 9/11 of religion! Check out the trailer over here at Apple.

Miracle At St. Ana
So this is the film that Spike Lee is currently pushing and it was at this film's screening in Cannes where them fightin' words came outta Mr. Lee's mouth. Yeah...that has nothing to so with this trailer but figured it would help fill up space. It's Friday & I'm lazy. And there you go. Now go check out the trailer over here at Yahoo!

So Iron Man was released in May and made a shit ton of money. Not even a week after it release, Marvel had announced Iron Man 2 for the summer of 2010. The director, Jon Favreau, is at this pint not involved whatsoever in the deal. So what's the deal? Well, it seems like even though Favreau delivered what at this point is the biggest movie of the summer, Marvel Studios head David Maisel is not willing to give Favreau the money he deserves. Aintitcool has a good write up on the situation over here and IESB.net has the original story which you can check out here. So after enduring all the bullshit Marvel movies, we finally get a film worth of the material and they're is ready to fuck it all up again and begin making the same mistakes from the past. That's when we end up with shit like this, and this, and don't forget this. Although the fanboy in me got all giddy when those upcoming release dates were announced last month, realistically, there is no way a quality film can be made and meet those deadlines. There's no way. So I pray that Maisel wakes the fuck up and realizes what needs to be done to keep this ball rolling in the right direction and gets the right team formed. And that means Favreau gets what he deserves: Iron Man 2.

Wow, this one looks vastly different than the teaser we got a while back. The backgrounds, the ambient environments....everything looks a bit more finished and lush. And who can say no to some dual lightsaber action, right? Love that shit....Hmmm, will this be the surprise hit it's ramping up to be? Perhaps. Check out the trailer over here at Yahoo!

'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Ah, Sony. For years they have pelted us with ads for their video game system and software for said system. There have been some bad ones and some good ones. Well, PS3 Fanboy has compiled the two lists and have they ready for you to check out in their series called "This Is Advertising". Of course, most of these ads have never been seen on TV screens on our shores being as Europe always gets the cool (and not-so cool) ad campaigns. Their number one for best ad is posted above and I believe I totally agree with them on this one. Check out the best here and the worst here and you let us know which ones stood out to you.

Another film that has been put on the back burner for a long time (which is never a positive sign) has finally dropped a trailer, Babylon A.D. Good ol' Vinny is back just in time (cause we can never have enough of actors who name themselves after trucks, right?) to try to save his career but it probably won't be enough....that is until Fast & Furious comes out and he wins that Oscar. And the trailer comes in as the first one of the summer to use the Lux Aeterna music from Requiem For A Dream (and that makes 2 films with Michelle Yeoh in it). Awesome:( Check out the HD version over here at IGN.

So Spike is mad cause Clint didn't accurately portray the black man in his war films Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima. Clint responds with a resounding suggestion that Spike "shut his face." Well, it wasn't that resounding but maybe for the Man With No Name, that was the best he could do. I could break it down for you....or you can just head over here to The Huffington Post to catch a recap. Now I'm not gonna take sides here....yeah, I think I might. The side of "I wanna see these two fight!". Dirty Harry vs. Mars Blackmon in Las Vegas, maybe sharing the same card as the Boll vs. Bay fight. Hey, you never know what'll happen anymore.

I'll keep 'em separated Offspring style here to ensure that we don't run into any complications, so the first mighty paragraph will be spoiler free, while the next may have a thing or two in it, but shouldn't be much more than you've already gotten out of the trailers.

It was good. It was damned good. The trailers don't do it justice, but watching it, I can't really imagine that there would be any way to really make a better one and still convey the jist of what the Hulk is all about. The Tony Stark scene was in there, and you don't even have to wait through the credits to see it. I did wait through the credits anyways, just in case, but nothing there. We'll have to check the webernets and see if there's something in there for the main release, or if they played it cool this time. I give Iron Man the slight edge here, but it's slight, and I'm going to say most of that edge comes from a.) Geeking out over the hardware, and b.) teh funny wordplay.

*Spoiler-ish Section*










I'm going to go on record and say the coolest bit of the flick for me was when Blonsky (Tim Roth) had taken the Super Soldier Serum (and we all know what that means, huh guys? huh? HUH?) and went up against the Hulk. The just-slightly-more-than-human reflexes and strength and such made it a very, very cool precursor to what Captain America could be like. There are a few references to other Marvel stuffs within the flick, and keep your eyes peeled for a peek at who the next films villain might well be with an interesting little origin setup.
The Hulk was done well. I wanted more rage from him. There is a scene where he's beating the shit out of Abomination MMA Ground-and-Pound style, and I'm thinking "Yes, yes, it's perfect! If he just rains the punches down while screaming, it's pure rage, pure Hulk." And then he pauses. Wha...? It was so close. Still, good flick, way better than the trailers make it look, and worth your $10 ticket.

Oh yeah, and Lou Ferrignos part was pure win.

More overkill, but yeah, we're gonna continue with the hype on this film. Have I seen it? Nope, so it might be the shittiest film of the year for all I know. By I have high hopes and everything points to it being a good one (hey, The Fall came through for me last time). Check out the trailer here over at Yahoo!

So to day is one one of those days. Steve Jobs will be giving a keynote which means new product from Apple. A revised iPhone is expected (and this nerd will go batshit insane if I don't get it) as well as a slew of other announcements, which we'll post here as the news flows in. Not quick enough for you? Head on over here to Engadget's live blogging of the event or here for MacRumors updates which all begins at 10am PDT. So will this new phone mean that I HAVE to upgrade my current iPhone? Lets sit back and watch.....I love these keynotes.

Update 1: Next version of Apple OSX officially named Snow Leopard.

Update 2: 3G iPhone official! Pic from the conference
Update 3: Even thinner, black plastic back, solid metal buttons, same gorgeous display, camera, flush headphone jack, and dramatically improved audio. GPS official, as well.

Update 4: The iPhone 3G 8GB will sell for $199. $299 for the 16GB -- a white version of this size will be available too. Available July 11th in the US and 21 other countries worldwide.

Update 5: If your one of those who already have an iPhone (like myself) you'll be happy to learn that AT&T is gonna take care of us. Check out this article for all the details of upgrading to the new phone. NYUP!

Head on over to www.apple.com for all the details!

A yes, that is the smell of a bunch of bloggers actually leaving their lairs and interacting with humans....actual humans! Well that's exactly what happened when last weekend the Fresno Beehive sponsored (officially or unofficially) Blogger Olympics went down. Yeah, I'm too lazy to recount what went down exactly but if you feel like you must know, Ed Stewart gots all the info here and The Fresnan has another video over here. Long story short: we got 3rd behind Beehivers Mike Oz & Heather McLane. Good times...maybe by next year I'll have my Wii bowling and Mini Golf games down betta....probably not though. It was great to meet everyone, though. Good times!

Yeah, this is a film that kind of dropped off the radar for a while but now this new trailer has dropped. So some rumors have been floating around about how much trouble this film is in. Reshoots, revised release dates and a movie star whom had received nothing but bad press these last couple of years really has put the screws to this Bryan Singer film. We'll have to wait and see but this trailer will have to do for now.

Gametrailers have put together in-depth videos in their ongoing Retrospective series and since the latest (and last?) entry into the video game series, Metal Gear Solid 4 will be released this coming week, they have dedicated the latest to the groundbreaking series. So far, four separate videos have been released and they all do a wonderful job in documenting the series from it's inception to it's current state. So take some time and watch these great videos if you feel like catching up to the Metal Gear mythology. But be warned, each entry comes in at around 23 mins. so be sure you have some free time. After you check out the first one embedded here, head on over here to catch the rest. Good stuff.

I know we were all waiting for Michael Bay to jump back into his director's chair and start fucking around with our childhood once more and this past week, he did just that. Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen began filming in Pennsylvania and this blog has been doing a good job of documenting the production (that layout looks familiar), including that awesome picture of Jetfire up there as well as breaking some news about which vehicles will be in the film and which characters will return and new ones that appear in the franchise. Now all we have to do is sit back and wait for Bay to work his magic.

X-Files: I Want To Believe
Ah, back in the days when I was young....and being a nerd hadn't yet become a cool thing to be, I still spent every Friday night glued to my television in Firebaugh watching the latest adventures of Agent Mulder & Agent Scully, clutching my X-Files playing cards & comic books. Then the first movie came out and I stopped. I couldn't support the bullshit anymore. All that hype for no payoff seemed unjust. So fast forward to now, everything old is new again and my nostalgia prevents me from not wanting to rekindle those nerdy Firebaugh nights and this trailer kinda gives me hope. Check it out over here at Yahoo!

Choke
"From the Writer Of Fight Club." That quote alone will get people in the theater and this trailer sure makes the film look cool. Already a success at film festivals, this film is going to be released theatrically pretty soon and although there are no major stars attached to it, hopefully audiences will support the effort coming from director Clark Greg (Agent Of S.H.I.E.L.D?). The trailer can be seen here at Apple.

Boy A
The story for this film goes like this: Boy kills. Boy goes to jail for 14 years & changes. Boy is released and still gets shit for what he did as a boy. Seems like an interesting concept and although the trailer seems to not really show the film in a good light, I think it has potential. Check out the trailer over here at Apple

So here it is, our swede. And the lucky film for our first swede is Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Yup, overall our production cost us around $17 for random things we used (or didn't use) in the project. So please, by all means, let us know what you think, good or bad. And we issue the same challenge we issued last time we posted about sweding: kick our ass. I know this can't possibly be the best swede that Fresno can produce so pick your favorite film, scene, trailer WHATEVER! Just get out there with your friends and create and send them our way. Depending on response, maybe we can have some sort of showcase (contest?) here on Dumb Drum!