Online overkill – week of April 6

Good, bad, unnerving and tragic, these are some of the topics that made frequent appearances in my RSS feed this week.

The Palin family circus. File under: stories that should be left to the tabloids and Jerry Springer.

Nick Adenhart. The Angels pitcher and three others were killed by a drunk driver in an accident shortly after the rookie pitched six shutout innings. Utterly senseless and sympathetically commented on in just about every corner of the Web I frequent this week.

Everybody poops trailer. A clever take on the massively popular trailer for a real film adaptation of a popular children’s book. I don’t know about you, but it hasn’t gotten old for me yet.

Billy Bob’s Interview. There’s really only one word to describe this: asshole.

Arrgh. Like I’ve said before: non-Disney pirates really aren’t very cool.

Extract trailer

The latest from Mike Judge (Beavis and Butthead, Office Space, Idiocracy).

Everybody Poops trailer

Fresh off the smashing success of the Spike Jonze-directed Where The Wild Things Are trailer comes another trailer of a Spike Jonze-directed film based on a popular children’s book.

Howard the fail

Failure goes by many names. Waterloo. The Edsel. The ’62 Mets. Joey. These disasters can fairly be called upon to convey calamity on a large scale. But some reputations for failure are undeserved. Here’s one: Howard the Duck, a synonym for artistic and financial disaster since the premiere of a little-loved movie in late-summer 1986. Released with great fanfare and rejected emphatically by critics and audiences alike, Howard the Duck quickly became a favorite target of late-night comics (and even, in one episode, The Golden Girls). It wasn’t available on DVD until last month.

Howard the Duck, the movie, is as bad as you’ve heard. Actually, it’s worse. But its failings as a film have overshadowed the frequently brilliant 1970s comic book that inspired it. Using only the most superficial elements of its source material while discarding most of what made the comic interesting, the film serves as a textbook example of how to turn something into nothing.

–Keith Phipps

A Michael Bay breakfast

Online overkill – week of March 30

Good, bad, annoying or overhyped, these are the items that set my RSS reader on fire this week.

John Calipari. Living in Kentucky, you’d think a different JC had shown up this week to replace the Messiah from two years ago who was tarred, feathered and run out of town by the most obnoxious college basketball fans in America.

Lance Stephenson. Haven’t you heard? He’s born ready. For way too much media hype. This New Republic article cuts through a lot of the crap.

Glenn Beck admits he’s wrong. Whatever. What are Rush and Sean up to these days?

C Me Dance trailer. Boy, does this movie look awesome or what? I stayed away the first five times it popped up in my RSS feed, but I sure am glad I finally took the time to watch it.

Sarah Palin calling for a Senate re-election. As annoying as the liberal hatred of her can be, she deserves it for advocating that a guy she previously said should drop out of the race get a do-over in a race he lost fair and square.  An Economist.com blog appropriately called the move a “new frontier in sore loserdom.”

The hug heard round the world. The first-lady hugged the Queen of England.  Awesome. I hug my wife every day when I get home from work.

Praise Band trailer

Wow. This. Is. Amazing.

“Pretty cool. We gotta Matt, we got a Mark, gotta Luke. Now, all we need is a John.”

Hahahahahaha.

(Hat Tip: Patrol)

Online overkill – week of March 23

Good, bad, annoying or shady, these were the items that made frequent appearances in my RSS reader this week.

Obama’s Teleprompter. The right-wing teleprompter meme has been played up so much lately, the electronic note card machine has its own blog. The blog is kind of funny, even if making fun of a president for having prepared remarks seems a bit strange.  If the great communicator Ronald Reagan used a teleprompter, why can’t Obama?

Where The Wild Things Are trailer. Part movie tease. Part Arcade Fire music video. Spike Jonze’s worlds colliding, the video was everywhere this week for good reason.

UConn in hot water. A Yahoo! Sports story Jim Calhoun flippantly dismissed as a blog entry couldn’t have hit at a better time – for maximum exposure’s sake. It’s not something you wouldn’t actually want to read in a RSS feed though – way too long for that.

John 3:16 sign snagged.  The original Bannerman, Rollen Stewart is in jail for doing for holding a maid hostage in a hotel room, but his famed John 3:16 sign antics live on. Not if this security guard has anything to say about it though.

The death of Culture11. Culture11 was a short-lived conservative Web site modeled off of Slate Magazine. It received a thoughtful eulogy in the Washington Monthly recently and sparked some interesting conversation about conservative media in places like Patrol Magazine.

Taking Woodstock trailer

Where The Wild Things Are trailer