Back in the day, one of my favorite Saturday morning traditions was watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the SciFi Channel. Now, I've found a another one in that same vein of backhanded bad movie appreciation - The Flop House podcast.
Like many others, I stumbled on this podcast a couple of weeks ago thanks to Gawker, and its hilarious (possibly drunken) discussion about recent film flops made it an instant favorite. Yeah, the sound quality on the first handful of episodes suck, but not only have the hosts cleared that up in the newer episodes, it's worth dealing with for their commentary. The drubbing they give the Bratz movie is priceless.
You have to be a certain type of movie fanatic to truly, truly find enjoyment in bad movies, but if you are, you'll love this. My only suggestion, guys? Bring in a female perspective now and again. No one can tear apart Jessica Alba's dubious talents like a sarcastic woman can.
In my personal opinion, there are many worse ways you could spend your time then checking out the recent vidcast offerings from They Might Be Giants' latest children's album. Anything that can genuinely entertain both me and my two-year-old at the same time is a winner, although maybe that just reveals more about me than I should admit.
There are a ton of great movies I haven't seen, and, of course, as a self-styled future cineaste, that drives me crazy. So, I've decided to work on correcting that over the next year. Using the They Shoot Pictures, Don't They master list of the best 1000 movies ever as a reference, I'm going to see how many I can see during 2008.
I actually determined to do this about a month ago in an informal way, then I thought maybe I could blog about, then I decided it would be the perfect vehicle for something I've wanted to do for a while now - podcast. So I'm going to start it as a weekly podcast, in which I'll cover a varying number of films, and hopefully provide some interesting background info on them.
I decided to use as a guide the TSPDT 1000 Greatest Film List because it's a mash-up of over a thousand different critics' top film lists. A clickable list (currently being updated in accordance with the latest 2007 corrections) is available over at Lists of Best, if you want to play along at home. Look for the first introductory episode after the first of the year.
My comrades Brandice and Joe have launched a new vidcast about teas called STeaP. Their first episode (embedded above) is all about Earl Grey and proper steeping methods.
This happens to be of particular interest to me, a huge tea drinker notorious among my friends and family for letting tea over-steep. When I drink special loose teas it's generally not much of a problem, but with the amount of tea I drink daily, I more often drink bagged tea, which often gets left in my cup to stew while I'm busy doing a thousand other things. Even lovely little programs like Cuppa haven't been able to save me from this habit. I'm working on it, though.
I've signed on to do some graphic and site design for STeaP, which I'm working on as we speak (... or, more accurately, as I type, or perhaps shortly after I'm done typing). I know there's a lot of big plans for the vidcast, so stay tuned.
G4's Morgan Webb has just launched a new vlog with Mon-Thurs internet and tech news round-ups. I've watched Morgan in some media form for years, ever since the old, wonderful TechTV days, and she's a personable, intelligent presenter. This particular project is just getting off the ground, but I think it has potential. Check it out at WebbAlert.com, and watch the first episode below.
