Well first off allow me to introduce myself.  I’m Exoder and I come from the planet of Metaluna.  *adjusts glasses*

I consider myself a connoisseur of many things.  Cheese, music, movies (bad ones, horror films and usually both being my specialty), and the best of all: Beer.  Seeing as I gave up alcohol for lent, it seems appropriate for my first post to be about the delicious and wonderful beverage that my all too sober life desperately misses.

There seems to be two camps that all beer drinkers put themselves into - hopheads and stoutheads (though that term and concept is up for debate).  While I don’t agree with putting yourself into a box (being a moderate liberal as well), I do still feel the need to declare, as it were.  I am a stouthead, though I do love hoppy beers as well (Ruination from Stone being one of my absolute favorites).

So with that in mind, I have to tell you all about a stout I discovered recently that is quickly becoming one of my favorite beers - Anderson Valley’s Oatmeal Stout.

This is easily one of the most drinkable beers I’ve ever tasted, as there is nothing harsh at all in the taste.  Extremely smooth taste, with all kinds of coffee overtones, and one of the more refreshing finishes you’ll ever have in a stout.

Anderson Valley is based out of Boonville, California, so for you west coasters, you have no excuse.  If you spot a six pack of this or even just a bottle, get it!  You won’t regret it.  And pour a little on the ground or carpet of the bar (they’ve had worse on that floor) in honor of your brother who can’t enjoy one for another few weeks.  Cheers!

I know it’s completely impossible to have any kind of objective standard by which to evaluate movies. There’s no such thing as a “Best Picture” on which everyone will agree. But I have to say I’m pleased with the academy’s selections. The one really important thing the ceremony does is raise the profile of movies that may not have been all that high on people’s lists. Suddenly, No Country and There Will Be Blood become must-see’s, and that’s fine by me. One day a year, movies are celebrated more for their artistic merit than their box office… which then helps their box office. A win-win.

But there exists no better representation of the continuing draw of movies than the sight of Cormac McCarthy (Cormac freakin’ McCarthy!) standing up in an apparently involuntary spasm of jubilation when No Country for Old Men was awarded Best Picture. If the notably reclusive author is going to the Oscars (let alone getting swept up in the excitement), I don’t feel so bad for, say, waiting in line for Indiana Jones tickets.

So the 2008 Academy Awards are in a few hours and I’m all a-tingle with anticipation.  After several disappointing years of movies like Crash and Gladiator winning the big prize, last February the academy found a pair and sent the most violent, disturbing movie of the year home with the little gold man.  This year should prove interesting, as the front-runners are two movies shot in the same desolate, God-forsaken Texas town and featuring the two most insane performers/performances since DeNiro ate copious amounts of ice cream and steak and nearly died for his art in Raging Bull.  If pre-Oscar awards shows are any indication, No Country For Old Men will be victorious, and it’s quite a competition when that little stomach-turner seems like the safe choice.  There Will Be Blood indeed.  And probably a few tears… 

If I weren’t already married to the beautiful, deadly Angry Teti, I think I would want to marry this band:

It’s Abney Park rehearsing their song “Airship Pirates.” Full mp3 here. A taste of the lyrics:

Flying Jib is filled with air
East India ships filled with despair,
we even up, her broadsides bare
…our cannons flair but it’s just a show of muscle.

Expendable crew starts to reel her in.
Our swords are sharpened and we’re ready to sin.
I’m 3 miles up, we’re about to swing aboard.
My tether’s made of leather so I’m not about to fall here.

A swish of air and my boots hit deck.
No cash, no fuel, no – not a speck!
Grape shots made this bird a wreck.
And a glance below deck shows a crew of nuns and orphans!

Chorus:
With a crew of drunken pilots, We’re the only Airship Pirates!
We’re full of hot air and we’re starting to rise
We’re the Terror of the skies, but a danger to ourselves now.

They totally get points for namechecking the East India Company. Everybody now, sing along! And now I’m going to have to go re-install Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura….

So Be Kind Rewind is coming out in a few short days, and I’m really looking forward to it. I think this the first movie of ‘08 that I’m excited about, in fact.

The premise (two dudes accidentally erase all their VHS tapes, and decide to re-shoot them all by themselves) might seem either far-fetched or hokey to you, or maybe you’re not a Jack Black fan. Even if both of those hold true (and I can understand being annoyed by Black at times, though I really think he’s good in quite a few things), I still think you should approach the movie with an open mind.

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Pleasing design, helpful content, clever domain. What more could you ask for? Nothing.

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I think I, like many Indy fans, were probably a bit skeptical and reserved after hearing news of the upcoming fourth Indy pic. The (then) trilogy had ended on an appropriately high note in terms of quality, so the immediate worry when hearing about a new film is, of course, that they’re going to screw it up completely.

And the movie may well be a misstep—George Lucas seems to be taking an unfortunately close interest in the production, and with no Nazis, is it really going to feel like a proper Indy picture? What about that title? The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? I like Shia LaBeouf, but will he be another Short Round?

Amazing how the thought process can be short-circuited by, well… something like this:

Now I’m whistling the theme to myself as I work, and thoughts of Lucas’ meddling are disappearing quickly. There still could be issues, of course. The initial trailer music sounds a lot more Zimmer than Williams (yes, the distinction is probably pretty minimal), and whither John Rhys-Davies or, for that matter, Sean Connery?

Still, though… I have to say I’m pretty excited now. Opening day, here I come.

The Chacojones loves to eat. What makes the Chacojones fantasize about hanging marketing executives upside down is having to learn a new vocabulary for each chain he eats at.

When did the memo go out to Corporate America that naming their product sizes ’small/medium/large’ was for the testicularly challenged? At some point, marketing executives, bored with their lives, frustrated with their women and needing to invent something to make them giggle, got together to invent the worlds most annoying game - letting Ridalin-deprived art school dropouts name the sizes of their companies servings.

The most famous is of course the Starbucks pseudo-italian, which I might argue is also the most annoying, because when you order a ‘Grande Latte’ at Peets Coffee, not only do you feel like a tool (as well you should) but then you get the look of disgusted attitude from the emo hippie freakshow serving you, which then forces you to hurt them and puts that extra felony on your permanent record.

A special award for being kicked in the metaphorical corporate nuts is Tully’s Coffee chain, which has given up and actually adopted the ‘tall/grande/viente’ pointlessness. If coffee chains were Europe, Tully’s would be the 1940 France of the stimulant beverage continent. That’s right, in this metaphor, Starbucks is Germany. Live with it.

However, there are even more annoying serving sizes out there.

You want a tasty Jamba Juice? Would you care for ‘16oz’, ‘Original’ or ‘Power’? What the hell is that? These three sizes are not even in the same semantic categories. One is named after the order in which it was introduced, another is the volumetric measurement, and the other is a completely subjective adjective. I have thus re-named them ‘Wussy’, ‘24oz’ and ‘A Bit Later’. I encourage everyone to follow suit.

You feel like a delicious Cold Stone iced cream? Your choices are ‘Like it’, ‘Love it’, or ‘Gotta have it’. Seriously? Only in America could a company base the naming process for their serving sizes on the proposition that one’s desire is directly proportional to volume. The thinking here is apparently that if you like the ice cream, you would naturally have a normal amount, but if you truly love it, you will obviously need to gorge yourself unconscious. Yet, when you go in to order a pint and ask for an “I’d Murder a Man for It”, they just stare at you before they call the cops.

So, unless you want to start seeing tasting spoons re-named “I’ll Choke It Down”s, please join me in openly mocking every establishment that does not use ’small/medium/large’ on the menu. And if you meet anyone responsible for this trend, kick them in the Chacojones.

The weekend’s worst punchline, however, is reserved for Paris Hilton’s The Hottie & the Nottie (Regent Releasing). The final count will show that the critically reviled comedy featuring the seemingly talentless Hilton has sold a meager $25,500 in tickets at 111 locations over the weekend. That’s only $230 per screen for theaters that were convinced to book this disaster. That means that, based on an $8 average ticket price, 29 paying customers showed up at each location over the 3-day. In a country that seems fascinated with Paris Hilton, only 3,219 unlucky Americans will have been suckered into seeing Hottie by Monday morning.

Quoted from Fantasy Moguls.

In case you’re curious a masochist, here’s the trailer, available in HD even.

I love that the movie bombed so convincingly, but I hate that it still managed to open in 111 theaters, when movies like Juno open in just a few, and eventually only ever trickle to my neck of the woods. Dear America—fix this.

UPDATE I just actually watched the trailer, and in between the dry heaves I read the text on the page, and I couldn’t not post this:

And then it hits him: June needs a makeover. But as Nate and June become friends and she emerges from her cocoon, Nate slowly realizes that the girl of his dreams isn’t the hottie at all. It’s the nottie — who turns out to be something of a hottie herself.

Reading that makes me hate everything.

Okay, this is my first post, so I’ll start by giving my top 20 movies for 2007.  I used to judge people based on their movie tastes, so it’s therapeutic to lay myself bare right off the bat.  And for the record, I still love Mars Attacks and plan to torment my children with it, should I ever have children.

1.  Inland Empire
2.  There Will Be Blood
3.  I’m Not There
4.  No Country For Old Men
5.  Zodiac
6.  Atonement
7.  Michael Clayton
8.  Gone Baby Gone
9.  Into the Wild
10.  Once
11.  Grindhouse
12.  The Simpsons Movie
13.  Superbad
14.  Southland Tales
15.  Blade Runner: The Final Cut
16.  No End In Sight
17.  Sicko
18.  The Lives of Others
19.  28 Weeks Later
20.  Sunshine

Inland Empire:  I don’t know if this movie has an official release date, but it would be my favorite in either year.  This is the one where Lynch finally goes all the way into his obsessions, unencumbered by studio constraints and without having to make compromises to investors.  I was skeptical of the video approach at first, but now I hope Lynch makes every movie this way.

There Will Be Blood:  P.T. Anderson was done channeling Altman and Scorsese when he came out with the wholly original “Punch Drunk Love.”  Now he’s gone one better on the master himself, Stanley Kubrick.  The themes, the stylistic flourishes, even the score, are reminiscent of some of Kubrick’s best work, but Kubrick never got to work with the madman Daniel Day-Lewis.

I’m Not There:  Yes, Cate Blanchett looks and sounds a lot like the mid-60s Bob Dylan, but the real joy in this movie is watching how Dylan the artist carefully manipulated what we know of the man.  Creating a realistic portrait of Dylan is not the point, or even beside the point, it’s the opposite of the point.

Grindhouse:  ”Planet Terror” was fun, but it was really more of an inside joke intended for Z-movie fans.  ”Death Proof” was the real deal, full of genuinely disturbing violence, tough women and the coolest car chase since, well, “Vanishing Point.”

Political Movies:  It seems like most good movies out this year had something to say, at least peripherally, about the arrogance of U.S. foreign policy, or the dangers of the Patriot Act.  But even Warren Beatty’s “Reds,” originally out in 1981, was hailed as being so “now” when it was released on DVD last year.  I don’t think it’s a sign that filmmakers are entering the fray as much as it is a reminder that things don’t ever change all that much, and any movie that deals with the abuse of power will seem relevant to any generation.

Southland Tales:  Is it wrong to love a movie for what it tries to be?  Richard Kelly has all the ambition of David Lynch and P.T. Anderson, without the skill to fully recreate that vision on screen.  But it’s buried up there somewhere, and you can see snatches of it from time to time, and boy is it awesome, with all its giant CGI zeppelins, floating ice cream trucks and rips in the space-time continuum.  I’d rather watch an over-reaching failure like this one than any ten movies like “300″ or “Transformers.” Sure, those movies succeed on the terms they lay out for themselves, but are those terms worth my ten dollars?

Atonement:  It’s sad that this movie didn’t wind up on more year-end lists, even though it does fall under the dreaded “prestige picture” category and is reminiscent of the kind of movie Miramax was releasing every other weekend in the 90s.  That wasn’t always a bad thing, and this one is a pretty good adaptation of a pretty great book.  Plus, the hottest shot in any movie out this year is when Keira Knightley’s shoe falls off in the library (granted, the effect is spoiled when it’s clearly seen back on in the next shot).

This year caused more “lump-in-the-back-of-my-throat” moments than any year in recent memory.  Hal Holbrook crying over Emile Hirsch’s departure in “Into the Wild,” the look on Marketa Irglova’s face at the end of “Once” as she plays her piano, father-son bonding as Homer lets Bart hold the bomb in “The Simpsons Movie.”  I look at 2007 as the year genuine feeling came back into the movies.