The Dumb Are Mostly Intrigued By The Drum

Unboxing videos have been around for a long time. Recently, I saw an actual report on a major news site about the phenomenon and I thought to myself "It's only going to be oh too soon when we see a company use this in a viral or advertising campaign." And here it is. Pretty cool, I thought. How awesome would it be to open up your Playstation 4 or your new Sharp HD TV to something like this. Everyone would be clamoring to push the red button! What do you guys think?

Can't vouch for the films themselves, but red band is always a good way to see how the film is going to be.....yeah, not too sure about these end of summer gems. But the Van Damme talking poster was good. So if you had to choose one to see, which one would it be, based strictly from these 2 trailers? Lionheart!

"Get 'em, boys..."

Yeah, an amphitheater isn't exactly the best place to hold a Hip-Hop show, I found out this weekend. Maybe it as the fact that i didn't spring for the seated area, opting instead to pay $35 to stand at an angle and therefore destroy my ankles with all 800 lbs. of me. But I'll take it as a lesson learned. The performances were all great, except for MF Doom, who apparently a couple of days before the concert was officially removed from the lineup. Last year at the same festival, he was a no show and I was hoping this would be the time for to see him but I guess it wasn't meant to be. But everyone else rocked: De La Soul was awesome, Red & Meth rocked that shit, Ghost & Chef kicked some Cuban Linx & lead the crowd in a rendition of Shimmy, Shimmy Ya in honor of the late ODB. Beers were $12, food was ridiculous and I heard quite possibly the dumbest song of all time come from Spank Rock. Or maybe I'm just getting old. Overall, an awesome show with some classic Hip Hop groups. Tribe, Pharcyde, Nas, De La, Rakim....that's a pretty fucken awesome lineup! And some of the weird things I saw there: a girl with more hair under here arms than me, a lemonade vendor taking a hit of a joint mid sale and a couple in which roles were reversed when the dude's drinking a Cranberry Smirnoff and the lady was pounding a giant beer. Good times!
This was a promotional item they were giving out for the upcoming release of the Street Kings film on DVD. Kind of an odd thing to be giving out at a Hip Hop concert, no? I'm a sucker for buying stupidly expensive stuff at concerts. But I've been wanting to make this shirt for a while but never got around to it. So I just bought one.

Yup, you wanna see 50 Cent get verbally abused by Robert DeNiro? Then this lil gem if for you. I'm really surprised they haven't been playing up Fiddy's role in the previous trailers for the film. Could this be the DeNiro/Pacino team up film we've all been waiting for? Perhaps....this red band trailer really helps it's cause. And if your really interested in the film, check out this little art exhibition based on the works of it's stars done on behalf of the films upcoming release and involving some cool street artists. Pretty cool marketing.

click pics to enbiggen

So Indy 4 might not have been the bad ass movie we all hoped it would of been. I'm okay with that, it was still entertaining. Well, last week, Paramount announced specs for the DVD release (on October 14th) of the film that will undoubtedly have some behind the scenes footage of local origin. And with the announcement comes these exclusive pics Dumb Drum received from the Fresno Film & Entertainment Commission, who worked hand in hand with Indiana Jones producers from Paramount Pictures when they came to the valley to shoot some scenes at Chandler Airport and Eagle Field in Firebaugh. Lookit Harrison taking a glance over at the SPCA down the road from Chandler. See him take in the beautiful Eagle Field scenery as his ride takes off. Oh yeah, there's Shia in the shots, pre-hand smashin'. So buy the DVD (can I say "support local films"? They did pump some Hollywood cash into our economy) and if you see a fat dude behind the fence holding a camera, looking all paparazzi-like, that's probably me. Check out IGN here for all the specs on the DVD and Blu-Ray releases on October 14th.

Tried as I might have, I couldn't come up with a better headline than the one Slash Film came up up, which is where this story comes from (I even stole their image). No more words, click on the link as read what Silent Bob thought of the film.

So the news was that Wu-Tang Clan member Ghostface Killah, who also goes by Tony Stark & Iron Man (among a whole slew of nicknames), was to make a cameo in the Iron Man film at Jon Favreau's request. When the film was released, all we saw was the Tony Stark bumping the emcee's video on his private plane. A little disappointed but still, it was cool that the director threw that in there. But with the upcoming DVD release on Sept. 30th, we get a little expanded role from the rapper. Check out the clip as Pretty Tony gives Tony Stark a little gift. A lot of threesome related posts on the blog this week, huh? The clip comes courtesy of Access Hollywood.

With $400 million dollars worth of people seeing the trailer in front of The Dark Knight this summer, I wonder how many of those will translate into people watching this film when it's finally released next year. I wonder if audiences will be willing to sit through a complex story as the graphic novel was...that is, is Snyder decides to not dumb it down. But it sure doesn't seem that way.

Sorry, Potter fans. Slash Film is reporting that the studio wishes to capitalize on the summer audiences ($$$) and have decided to push the film from it's original Nov. 21st, 2008 release date back to July 17th, 2009. Yup, so that means almost a year to the date The Dark Knight was released is when you'll see the next Potter film. Another reason given was due to the writer's strike, an open gap was available and they seem poised on taking advantage of it. In the mean time, just keep watching that pretty cool trailer they released not too long ago. So what do you guys think? Can this only make the film a better end product?

Well, there's nothing much else to say than that. No, you won't have sex with her but you can at least have a chance of being in her presence at a screening. This promotion for the upcoming Woody Allen film Vicky Christina Barcelona seems pimp out Scarlett Johansson (my future ex-wife) just a bit and I wonder how many weirdos (unlike myself) will be entering this little contest. Oh and if any of you guys win and need someone to take, I'm sure I could make time in my busy schedule you join yooz guys. Head on over to the official site here for more details.

...but what a fake it be!

When I went last night to see Tropic Thunder, I was privy to find out that the Flashback Features program is coming back again (we were just wondering if they had killed this, too)! This year, the films will be shown at Edwards 21 in Riverpark every Thursday beginning August 28th. at 10 p.m. (that's kinda late, huh?) and the price of admission will be a mere $5. "So enough of this nonsense! Show us the films!" you say? Calm down, here they are:

Aug. 28th: Goldfinger
Sept. 4th: Scarface
Sept. 11th: Annie Hall
Sept. 18th: Back To The Future
Sept. 25th: The Great Escape
Oct. 2nd: Monty Python And The Holy Grail
Oct. 9th: Midnight Cowboy
Oct. 16th: Army Of Darkness
Oct. 23rd: Raging Bull
Oct. 30th: Spaceball
Nov. 6th: Rocky
Nov. 13th: Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas
Nov. 20th: Some Like It Hot
Nov. 27th: Beetlejuice
Dec. 4th: Westside Story
Dec 11th: The Goonies

Yeah, pretty good list, I must say. Army Of Darkness FTW! I think I'll post this list over to the right pretty soon to keep a running tab of what's coming up, maybe set some meeting ups beforehand or something. So which ones are you guys looking most forward too?

And to top it all off, they even posted the footage from the San Diego Comic Con Panel...noice!

And it's that time again for another episode of The DUmb! This time (again) we welcome back some of the usual suspects from our Swede Festival entry as Adrian Rodriguez from Late Update, John Rios from Dead Days, Bryan Harley from AMF Productions and Jay Montes from....Sanger join us for the round table discussion, which includes:

• A wrap up from this past weekend's Swede Festival over at Corridor 2122 and we address some negative feedback over at The Beehive's comment section, some discussion on the actual swedes and some early details on the next festival.

• Talk about the new "Cheap-O Theater" format the Clovis Towne Center has adopted and probably bumping The Wackness out of playing here in town.

• The Tropic Thunder & Star Wars: The Clone Wars controversy.

• Bryan tells us how he met the stars & creators of the BBC series Spaced.

• How I tried to buy Henry Perea's support for the new Film Ordinance.

• John discusses his workflow with Dead Days.

• Bryan reveals another word in the title of his upcoming secret project.

All this and and more! Download it, listen and let us know what yout hink. If your interested in coming on as a guest, please drop us an email at thedumbdrum@gmail.com. Thanks to Late Update for hosting our podcast!

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE DUMB #8

Also available in HD over at Yahoo! here. So does that bearded Leo bother anyone else?

Yup, who knows how long this will be up but the studio taking this down might actually be a good thing. Man, I honestly never thought that The Spirit was going to make that big of an impact in general but every time we get a trailer or leaked footage (coming via Slash Film) my hopes sink even further. Now I hate to judge before the film comes out but this looks pretty bad. I'm wondering what kind of trump card Frank Miller can pull in order to save this little film. What do you guys think?

All kinds of Hip Hop-ness going on this week around here. The Readnex poetry squad will be performing tonight at the Smokehouse. Immortal Technique will be performing over at The Exit tomorrow night and again this weekend at a little concert going on at the Shoreline Amphitheater called Rock The Bells. Yup, I'll be there for that one. I mean, lookit that lineup up there. No serious, check it out. Crazy, huh? Yeah, that's bananas. I've heard bad things about this venue from other people but still, I'll be there. We got lawn seats for $35 (which I thought was a bargain, quite frankly) and that should leave us some money for a shirt and 1 beer with a $100 bill. So far we have a packed car but if some of you out there are planning on heading up to see the show, we should caravan! C'mon, I know there has to be some heads wanting to go see this lineup! Who's in?

Mountain Dew has been doing this promotion for a while now, getting some top artists on board to create unique designs for a series of aluminum bottles. But up until earlier in the year, the only way to get them was through some special process and they were never available to by in store. That changed earlier in the year when they released the first commercially available line, the Green Label Art series. And I had to have them all. Now, they've gone ahead and revealed the designs for the next series and they should be out there somewhere. Now I'm off to the nearest AM/PM (the best place to get them I found out last time) to become the milk maid in search of all of them. Check out the design up close here at the official site.