The Slim End Of The Long Tail

From kaplak - Twitter Search. Promoted by Kaplak Stream

Aye, ye Scurvy landlubber! To join Kaplak, prefix ye squawk wit’ "d kaplak" & share ye lovely booty wit’ all mutual followers ‘o @kaplak!

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From Pop Syndicate. Promoted by Kaplak Stream

If your guy hasn’t licked your brown-eye, how are you going to get him to do it?

Question 1:

Michael

Dear Michael,

It’s relatively normal for a 17 year old to feel constantly horny.  The influx of testosterone in your body will cause you to feel that way. There are some experts that believe masturbation is more common in adolescence as opposed to adulthood because of the fluctuation of hormones. I say that’s rubbish! I know plenty of men in their 30’s and 40’s that jerk off just as much as you. 

I asked my boyfriend for his opinion on this and he said that when he was 17 he was beating off ten times a day and you should consider yourself lucky that you have such a low sex drive!

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with thinking about sex all day unless it interferes with your life.  If you can’t study for your exams because you’re day-dreaming about blow-jobs, it’s a problem.  If you can’t get your homework done because you’re too busy getting yourself off it’s a problem. If you forget to pick up your brother from soccer practice because you’re thinking about nailing the hottie in Algebra class then yes, it’s a problem.

What would other people think if they found out?  Honestly, it’s going to depend on the type of community you life in.  I’m sure that saying you’re incessantly horny will go down better in a nudist society then it would on an Amish farm.  Seriously though, I bet other guys your age feeling the exact same way. It just sometimes feels embarrassing to talk about sex and being horny when you’re a teenager.

You don’t have anything to worry about.  You’re normal.  If you’re still bothered about being horny then try some strenuous exercise.  Yes, you heard me.  Drop and give me twenty!

-Anjelika

Question 2:

Sarah

Dear Sarah,

We must be kindred spirits because I love being rimmed, however, I find it impossibly hard to ask for!

If you’re specifically looking for a guy to toss your salad why not put a post up on the NSA section of Craig’s List or try Adult Friend Finder?  I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that when you put up an ad asking for analingus you’ll get over 100 responses.

Things get more difficult when you’re already in a relationship.  If your guy hasn’t licked your brown-eye, how are you going to get him to do it?

I would suggest that when you and your guy are alone that you take a nice long bath.  Make sure you’re extra clean down there.  Dry off and head to the bedroom.  When he’s licking your clit, tell him to go lower and lower and lower until he reaches your anus.  He may happily keep licking.  Conversely, he may stop and retreat back to the pussy.

Some guys love licking ass.  Some guys will only do it when asked and some guys absolutely hate it.  There’s no surefire way to find out if a guy likes it besides asking outright.  I’m not a shy girl, but asking for some tongue-to-ass action always makes me feel embarrassed and dirty.  I rarely ask hence I very rarely get.

I eventually realized that there was a direct correlation between my reluctance to perform analingus and my reluctance to ask for it.  In other words, I don’t want to reciprocate, so I feel guilty for asking for it. Still this shouldn’t stop me.  In a similar vein I don’t like giving blowjobs, yet I have no problem asking for my clit to be licked.  So why is it so hard to ask for a rimming?  It’s hard because deep down in my psyche I still associate the ass / anus with being dirty.  Until I can get over those feelings asking for a rim job won’t come easily.

-Anjelika

Tags : blogging, books 

From Pop Syndicate. Promoted by Kaplak Stream

Moon is a shocker—because of its cunning, because it’s so good, and because it’s not supposed to be as good or as clever as it is.

The science-fiction genre is one unique to all others of the industry. Why? Because unlike horrors, actioners, comedies, and in many cases dramas, sci-fi pictures live and die by their ability to stimulate the mind. Simply put, people go to sci-fi movies to think. And the difference in intellect between films of the genre—even similar ones—is plainly recognizable (take Event Horizon and Danny Boyle’s contrarily effective Sunshine for example). This could be the reason that much fewer sci-fi works are being released every year (no, Transformers is not firstly, or even thirdly, a sci-fi series), and why an even smaller number are successful commercially and critically. But first-time feature director and conceptual writer Duncan Jones, son of legendary pop-rock icon-turned-reputable actor David Bowie (whose first and latest prominent roles came in ‘76’s sci-fi classic The Man Who Fell to Earth and 2006’s thriller The Prestige, respectively), and rookie screenwriter Nathan Parker assert Moon as both a film successful to the standards of the genre and perhaps sci-fi’s newest psychological classic.

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) is a scientist employed by Earth’s leading supplier of energy, Lunar Industries (LI), to catheterize helium-3 from the surface of the Moon. For nearly three years, Sam has lived on and worked out of a lunar station called Sarang, with no more company than that of an A.I. support system called Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey)—a rather dull companion whose cookie-cutter emotions (happy, sad, blank, and confused) are expressed through animated faces on its small 6- to 8-inch monitor. With little more than two weeks remaining on his three-year LI contract, Sam begins having hallucinations (mainly of a young, black-haired girl), which eventually cause him to crash one of the base’s rovers while on a helium withdrawal mission. When Sam wakes up, he finds himself safe in the station’s infirmary but without any recollection of how he got there—and when he goes to investigate a stalled extractor on the base’s perimeter, he finds what could be the mysterious answer to the aforementioned question or the mental effects of his accident: himself, unconscious and trapped in a crashed rover beneath the massive siphoning machine.

Former commercial helmer Jones makes a desolate, eerie, suspenseful environment and tense atmosphere out of his story and Parker’s screenplay—and does so on a meager reported budget of around $5 million (an estimated $35 million less than ‘07’s Sunshine). Jones and his art team referenced films such as 2001, Alien, and others spanning the late-‘60s and early-‘80s for set design aboard Lunar Industries’ Sarang base, and supposedly reproduced the Moon’s surface to match images from the Japanese orbiter SELENE, which was launched from Tanegashima Space Center in September of 2007. The result is a haunting series of set pieces which settle comfortably amongst the serene interiors of the films that inspired them. Yet these can all only magnify the unsettling performance by Rockwell, whom Jones had pegged as the star before the movie’s conception. Moon is not mainly about its struggling character, Sam; it’s about a specific kind of idea (the kind we don’t see enough of in Hollywood—but more because of its level of difficulty to pull off than its lack of ability to intrigue). Still, Rockwell adds an extra element to the project. He gives Sam Bell multiple dimensions of anguish, allowing us (the audience) to sympathize for him. And we need to, for without a figure to scramble and grieve with and root for, we are only just watching a movie, instead of sharing an experience.

Moon is a brilliant example of the overall power of cinema and, specifically, the insightfulness of ingenuity and the craft of concentrated storytelling. Movies start as ideas. And good ideas don’t need or rely on the caliber acting of high-profile talents or tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in production costs. Modest role-players and non-excessive finances do the job best—and, more importantly, let the story glow in the spotlight, small or large. I guess, then, that it’s a consequence of fine fortune that Rockwell, a decidedly better than “modest”, more “high-” than “small-profile” actor, agreed for this minimalist underdog presentation. And I’m betting he’s glad he did, thanks to the spirited proficiency of Duncan Jones and the equal dexterity of everyone else involved in making this film. Moon is a shocker—because of its cunning, because it’s so good, and because it’s not supposed to be as good or as clever as it is. Don’t miss it.

Read the Pop Syndicate interview with director Duncan Jones.

Tags : movies 

From Pop Syndicate. Promoted by Kaplak Stream

On an unusually drizzly Dallas day, I was fortunate to spend 15 minutes with the very charming and witty director/writer of Moon. We talked about his new film, about being a paper hoarder (like me) and he laughed at all my comments. Hey – aren’t I supposed to chuckle at all his remarks? We also touched on being David Bowie’s son. Here’s an excerpt of our chat. It helps to read it with a British accent.

PopSyndicate: I promise I didn’t conjure up this weather to make you feel more at home.

Duncan Jones: (laughter) I got in yesterday from London and its okay, it does feel like home.

PS: I am a major science fiction fan!

DJ: Excellent!

PS: Growing up, I never missed an episode of the Twilight Zone - it’s one of my all-time favorite programs. Moon reminded me of that genre. Let’s get right down to the nitty-gritty – you know the questions folks ask at a film festival……I am aware that this is an independent production and thus made on a shoe-string budget.

DJ: It was about $5 million.

PS: (I register surprise) It doesn’t have the feel of a small budget film. Yes, the set is austere…….

DJ: Well, that’s what we were trying to achieve.  You’re right, it’s a small budget. Science fiction by its very nature is very difficult, I think, to achieve on a small budget. It’s the most expensive kind of filmmaking. But we made some decisions early on, that allowed us to make a film, which I think fulfilled the expectations of science fiction fans and because we have a great love for that particular period of science fiction of the 70’s and early 80’s, like Outland and Silent Running, we wanted to have an aesthetic which mirrored that.

PS: You handled the dilemma smartly. How do you make it look like a million bucks – or should I say 10 million, on a 5 million dollar budget? The base almost looked elegant. It looked like you blew ½ your budget on white paint.

DJ: (gales of laughter) We didn’t have to worry spending too much time dividing up the colors. You’re right. We tried to keep the set small and when I was writing the story, I knew that there needed to be a certain amount of variety visually where the scenes take place. And although we only had two main locations; the lunar exterior and the interior of the moon base, I wanted to make sure that at least within the moon base, the different areas of the base had very different looks and feels to them.

PS: And they did!

DJ: Thank you! It worked.

PS: What does GERTY (the Kevin Spacey voiced computer) stand for?

DJ: (a hearty laugh) Oh goodness! I can’t remember exactly!

PS: I thought the letters would stand for something clever or significant to the story…

DJ: There is an acronym for it, but I can’t remember what it all is. All I know is that the “r” stands for “robotic,” but I can’t remember the rest of it.

PS: Kevin Spacey had the perfect voice for the “Hal-ish” computer. Did you have him in mind when you wrote it? 

DJ: Absolutely! We were very fortunate to get to Kevin Spacey back when we had the script and hadn’t started production yet. He got a chance to read the script and was very interested in it, but also very conscious of just what a challenge it was – what we were trying to achieve. He had an idea of what the budget was going to be and said, “I don’t know how you’re going to do this. Why don’t you come back to me when you’ve made the film and we can see how it turned out.”

PS: So, is that what you did?

DJ: That’s what we did. We made the film without him and we had a rough cut with some very basic special effects in it, but he was so blown away by Sam’s performance. Sam’s performance really overwhelmed him and he said, “Absolutely!”

PS: Did he rehearse by listening to HAL tapes? 

DJ: I don’t think he did actually. I think he was hard at work at rehearsals at the Old Vic (Theatre). But he was incredibly professional. He came into the recording session; asked me what I wanted and I told him. For me it was quite a big deal – he’s such a well-known actor and I told him that I thought we could try it like this. And he would do it like that. And then we tried it a different way. And then we basically laid his audio on top of the temp audio which I had done. (laughter) It wasn’t so good (he said in a mock falsetto voice). This one was not going on the DVD! But we tried a few versions out and we found one which we really felt was right, the right cadence and a sensibility for what GERTY would be like. And it worked out really well. It was actually quite a fast process with Kevin Spacey.

PS: Was he able to record in a manner of days?

DJ: To be honest, the voice recording was done in less then a day.

PS: Wow! So, did he show up in jeans?

DJ: Showed in jeans with a little dog, just hang out, watched bits of the film and then go into the booth and record lines.

PS: He has a very mellifluous voice, very smooth.

DJ: The reason I wanted him is because we pay homage and reflect on science fiction from the past, one of which is obviously HAL from 2001. And I wanted, knowing that was going to be the case, consciously doing that, I wanted to make the audiences expectations of what GERTY would be and make that work for us. So get them to expect a certain thing and then to subtly change it. Which is what I think Kevin Spacey’s voice helped us do, cause it’s a soothing voice – but its also got this slightly malevolent quality. It’s a little too slick, a little too smooth sometimes. Which was perfect. The audience expects something of GERTY and we changed the direction of it.

PS: He was spot-on perfect!

DJ: I’m glad it worked!

PS: As was Sam Rockwell. I think he’s grossly under recognized and underutilized.

DJ: He was fantastic! First of all he’s an amazingly nice guy. Have you had the chance to interview him?

PS: No (I say with a grumble).

DJ: I really, really get on very well with him. Because he was on his own for most of the film, we spent a lot of time just talking and we got on very well. We’re both only kids and we had a lot to talk about.

PS: (Without giving too much away) It must have been difficult to integrate the two Sam’s.

DJ: Yes!

PS: I can’t imagine how that was done – so technically perfect. I looked for flaws, but didn’t see any. It was seamless.

DJ: Thank you. Hopefully, you were watching the story a little bit too. We got away with a few things. We watched the Criterion edition of Dead Ringers on DVD.

PS: Ah, Jeremy Irons.

DJ: The DVD has a whole section of how they did the effects. Sam and I were both watching that for a long time before we started shooting, breaking it down and working out what they did and what we could do better. Hoped we could do better. I was very fortunate. I had the chance to talk to Spike Jonze who did Adaptation, where Nicolas Cage plays twins. I talked to Spike a little bit on how they achieved that effect. So between the Criterion DVD and Spike, I had a pretty good idea what had been done before and where maybe we could improve things. And we did some physical interaction stuff where one Sam puts his hand on the other Sam’s shoulder, which nobody had really done before. I’m very proud! As an indie film, to be able to push technical boundaries I think was something I’m very happy with and proud of.

PS: So this is your writing and directorial debut?

DJ: I guess that’s correct. It’s certainly my directing debut. And the debut of something I’ve written that’s been made. But I’ve written a couple of other scripts which hopefully I’ll make in the future.

PS: Well, that’s quite an auspicious beginning. What’s your background? How did you get interested in filmmaking?

DJ: I went to college in Ohio and I studied philosophy. Graduate school in Tennessee at Vanderbilt studying philosophy again.

PS: That shows in your writing. Tell me about the title, Moon . It almost follows along the lines of the rest of the film, clean, austere…..

DJ: Straight to the point really, isn’t it? If you’re going to make a science fiction film, and we were trying to make a science fiction film which again reflected what Sam and I loved, the ones from the 70’s and 80’s, we wanted it to be about something that was relevant and that the audience could relate to. That’s both in the story – about a guy who is forced to face himself – and also just literally the location. The moon. It’s about as obvious a place for a science fiction film there you can get. The thing that you see every night in the sky; it remains mysterious, even though we’ve had a cultural association with the moon, since culture began.

PS: For the last question……You had the built-in song reference for Major Tom, I assume. I want to know why you didn’t name Sam, Tom?

DJ: (another very hearty laugh) I couldn’t get the rights.  Also, I’ve spent an awfully long time – I’m 38 – trying to build a career on my own merits. As much as I love and respect my father, who I see all the time, I want to try and make my own way in the world if I can. He’s been very generous in giving me the opportunity to make my own way.

PS: I waited two hours to hear the opening notes of Space Oddity.

DJ: (more hearty laughter) I am so sorry! You gotta admit though, Clint Mansell – not a bad second choice. He’s the guy who did Requiem for a Dream – an amazing, amazing performance.

PS: Yes, It was wonderful! I wish you well with Moon and I hope we’ll be seeing more of your films hit the big screen. And I hope the weather clears up too!

Read the Pop Syndicate review of Moon.

Tags : Interviews, movies 

From Pop Syndicate. Promoted by Kaplak Stream

Nominee for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film 2009 (Austria) Revanche is a tale of guilt, red lights (as in district) and the art of getting even.

Written and directed by Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann, the action switches back and forth from the lovely, rural countryside to the gritty backstreets of Vienna.

Alex (Johannes Krisch) and Tamara (Irina Potapenko) live in the big city, a world where they’re enslaved by brothel owners, drugs and money. Tamara works as a prostitute, while Alex (a former convict) is a glorified gofer for the bordello where Tamara is employed. Robert (Andreas Lust) and Susanne (Ursula Strauss) are a happily married couple living a predominantly average life in a house located in an idyllic countryside. But appearances can be deceptive and when the two worlds collide, their lives are irreparably changed.

Does it sound like the premise of many other movies we’ve seen both past and present? Yes, except that this film isn’t a Hollywood production; meaning that the story is much less predictable. And that’s a good thing.

Alex and Tamara are lovers, but the relationship between the ex-con and the Ukrainian prostitute is frowned upon by management, so the two go to great lengths to conceal their liaisons. Besides sex, the glue that binds them together is their desire to abandon their deplorable jobs and flee. The only thing standing in their way is……money. With a little bit of cash, Alex can fulfill his dream of opening a restaurant in Ibiza.

Alex hatches a plan to rob a bank located in a small town in Austria close to where his grandfather lives. Tamara is not in favor of his scheme, but reluctantly acquiesces as long as she can accompany him. Alex assures her that nothing can go wrong with the robbery. And he’s correct – nothing does go wrong with the robbery. It’s the getaway that’s a little more problematic.

It’s at this point that something goes horribly awry and this critic chooses not to reveal what transpires. (You don’t want me to spoil all the fun, do you?).

Alex flees to the country and seeks refuge on his grandfathers farm (Johannes Thanheiser) and plots his revenge while chopping wood for winter. It’s here he meets the kind-hearted Susanne.

Spielmann assembles a whole host of characters who demonstrate basic human emotions; sadness, revenge, desire and loneliness. Add isolation to the mix, whether it’s in a big city or in a desolate forest and it makes for intense character studies. Even though the plot moves slowly (think snail-pace), the characters were authentically portrayed. According to the press notes, Potapenko spent a few nights “incognito” in a brothel; drinking champagne with customers and pole dancing while Lust spent a week at a police station in training mode.

The one thing I didn’t like about this film: The pace. The first revelation doesn’t come until almost an hour into the film – that’s a long time to ask an audience to wait without looking at their watch.

The one thing I liked about this film: The unpredictability. I’m pretty good at conjecture and just when I thought I had a handle on who would exact revenge upon whom, the script takes a wicked turn.

If you can wean yourself from MTV-paced entertainment and can sit in a comfy seat luxuriating in a movie that affords a more leisurely tempo, you’ll enjoy Revanche. If you’re seeking faster-paced, shoot-em-up scenarios, like Alex, you’ll be seeking revenge against those who talked you into buying a ticket. 

From Fan History's Blog. Promoted by Kaplak Stream

As privacy is such a frequent, troubling issue in fandom, it is important to note that today, Facebook has begun making status messages, photos and videos visible to the public by default instead of being visible only to a user’s approved friends. The New York Times has a good article on what these changes mean, both now and potentially in the future.

Many fans use Facebook, with varying levels of success or effort in keeping their “fannish lives” and identities separate from the “real lives”. All fans who use the service should now take the time to review their privacy settings there, and decide what they are and aren’t comfortable sharing with the world at large. Unfortunately, many users will no doubt not even realize these changes have happened and/or how to adjust their default settings. I won’t be surprised if there may be more incidents of outing seen in the future using information now public on Facebook that users may not have realized was out there for all to see, or how it could put themselves at risk.

For useful information on protecting your privacy on-line in fandom, see FanHistory’s Privacy help page.

Tags : misc 

From Digital Overload. Promoted by Kaplak Stream

I finally did it. I killed the office network… Don’t worry, no data was lost. I now have all web services on my virtual Ubuntu server over on Amazons EC2 service. I’m happy to report everything is working.

Main server…

1. WordPress - Content management software for creating websites
2. Laconica - Micro blogging software
3. Zimbra - Email server software that has a nice web interface
4. Jabber - Online chat

DNS Server…

1. BIND9
2. Provides DNS info for my domains
3. Its a hidden master so I leave it offline most of the time

Websites hosted on this server…

1. This very website digital-overload.net
2. damienhull.com
3. notes.damienhull.com
4. linuxninjas.tv

Future plans…

1. This website will get a name change
2. Might open the chat server for public registration - maybe
3. Jabber and gmail users can add me as a buddy - damien @ linuxninjas.tv (no spaces)

Tags : Uncategorized 

From Fan History's Blog. Promoted by Kaplak Stream

There have been endless debates in fandom as to the legality of fan fiction.  The general consensus, with some noted exceptions, in the community is that fan fiction is highly derivative and would not be covered under fair use.  Some of the most noted proponents of fair use for fan fiction claim that fan fiction is a form of parody. I’ve generally found this type of rationalization rather ridiculous, as most fanfics are easily perceived to not be parodical in nature. (And you’re never going to convince me that your post episode story is, or that your chan story featuring Harry Potter getting butt sex is a form of parody either.)  We’ve just been rather fortunate in our community that there is no legal precedent in US courts, which say that fan fiction is a copyright violation.  We’ve also been fortunate that copyright holders have largely managed to ignore fan fiction or saw ways that they could fit fan fiction into their business plan.  In the past several years, there have been almost no cease and desist letters and DMCA takedown notices for fan fiction.

But it looks like we have finally come close to having that precedent that everyone should be concerned about. By concerned , I mean they need to be concerned about keeping fan fiction out of the courts if this holds up on appeal.  Why?  This court case shows that we could damned well lose.

There was a court case in the United States.  It involved an unauthorized sequel to a work by J.D. Salinger.  The court wrote the following:

To the extent Defendants contend that 60 Years and the character of Mr. C direct parodic comment or criticism at Catcher or Holden Caulfield, as opposed to Salinger himself, the Court finds such contentions to be post-hoc rationalizations employed through vague generalizations about the alleged naivety of the original, rather than reasonably perceivable parody.

Or as Ashby Jones at the Wall Street Jones said, “did not fit into the fair use exception in copyright law because the book did not constitute a critical parody that “transformed” the original.” This sort of ruling doesn’t help the case for the legality of fan fiction.  The court saw through the same sort of bullshit rationalizations for the legality of of this work that fan fiction writers have made.

Will this change the situation in the fan community at all?  No, it won’t.  What it hopefully will do is quiet those voices who claim that fan fiction is transformative, not derivative.  that rational may end up doing more harm than good.

Tags : fan fiction, jd salinger, legal issues, organization for tranformative works, quizilla, Rat Patrol 

From Pop Syndicate. Promoted by Kaplak Stream

Can you tell me how to get, how to get back to my childhood’s Sesame Street?

Can you remember a time when Sesame Street didn’t include Elmo, the furry, fuzzy, scarlet-red usurper so many of us have come to loathe? I can. He was just being introduced when I was a little kid, and mostly, he just showed up in a couple of small segments. He would sing his cute-but-not-overkill “Elmo’s Song,” (mostly composed of the lyrics, “La la la la…”) and go away again, and because he always seemed like a little brother to all the other characters, that worked out fine. No, to me, Sesame Street is about all of the other characters, so many of whom have now been pushed to the wayside, either because the show itself has decided to re-focus on younger children, or because (sadly) the original voices are no longer with us. My Sesame Street will always be Jim Henson’s Ernie and Frank Oz’s Bert. It’s Grover and Cookie Monster and Herry and Snuffleupagus and Barkley and the Tweedles and Guy Smiley. It’s Maria, Luis, Susan, Gordon, Linda and Bob. It’s “The Alligator King,” and “I’m An Aardvark,” and the original Henson version of “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon” that makes me tear up every single time.

Follow That Bird is my Sesame Street.

Actually, it pre-dates me slightly. Follow That Bird is the original, theatrical Sesame Street feature film from 1985, probably less than a year before tyke-sized me sat down in front of the tube and started learning how to memorize a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter. But the elements that are here are exactly as I remember the Street: a little expanded in size and detail for theatrical presentation, to be sure, yet with the same cast and the same puppets at the time I recall them best. The interesting thing about Follow That Bird is how much it emphasizes the ensemble nature of the cast, human and otherwise. Yes, it’s a story about Big Bird leaving to search for a family (or if you prefer, being forced to join a family by social workers!), but the point of the film is that he’s already left his family behind, back on Sesame Street. As viewers, children are asked to identify the cast as a sort of extended family, too: all of them, not just Big Bird, or Oscar, or the cameoing little red monster who looks just like something called an Elmo (but sure doesn’t sound like him). All the characters kids loved in 1985 are here. They all get something to do. Nobody gets left on the sidelines.

Okay: truth be told, it’s not the greatest of plots. It’s a good plot idea, and the central theme works well. Big Bird gets placed with a “bird family” (a group of Dodos who are, well, dodos) by a well-meaning social worker, Miss Finch (a large Big Bird-style Muppet voiced by Sally Kellerman), and she takes off in hot pursuit when he makes up his mind to leave for his real home. Simple enough – and, in fact, boring enough, really only punctuated by a couple of songs and a cameo from singer Waylon Jennings. Ex-SCTV members Joe Flaherty and Dave Thomas don’t work that well as villainous carnival shysters, and their threat – locking Big Bird up and painting him bright blue as a sideshow – is a bit of a damp squib after the energy of the chase throughout the rest of the film. That’s where the fun does come in: watching the residents of Sesame Street set out in search of Big Bird themselves. Cookie Monster ends up eating most of Susan’s car; Oscar and Maria end up at a Grouch diner; Bert and Ernie take their biplane (yes, their biplane) and have the most addictive song of the movie. Those are the portions of the movie parents will find at all entertaining; the rest is strictly for kids.

That’s okay, though – this is, after all, Sesame Street. If a five-year-old likes it, success! And really, that’s still true. No matter how much I dislike the modern incarnation of the show, the four- and five-year-olds adore it, and they adore Elmo, the spotlight-grubbing imp. (This doubtless explains why he appears on both the DVD menus and cover art!) Jim Henson’s vision, then, carries on, just as it should, and it doesn’t matter if Ernie doesn’t sound quite the same as he did in 1985. Really, it doesn’t. It doesn’t at all.

Okay, so it does to me, anyway.

Follow that Bird comes to us from Warner Brothers, and is presented for the first time on home video in its original, 1.85:1 aspect ratio. The anamorphic transfer is grainy and, frankly, a bit gray. Skin tones are rather pink. Otherwise it looks okay – just not remarkable in any way. Kids aren’t going to be disappointed, but this is one of the DVD transfers with the least “pop” I’ve seen in a fairly long time.

Audio is provided in English, Spanish and Portuguese, while optional subtitles are available in English, French, Japanese, Spanish and Portuguese. Wow! Lots of options for the kids to learn from, there, and they’re available for the special features, too.

Despite the DVD cover’s claim to be “loaded with NEW bonus content!” the only real bonus is Follow That Bird: An Interview with Caroll Spinney (10 mins.). Spinney discusses his creation of the Big Bird character, along with Oscar the Grouch, and relates a few specific memories from making the bigger, more expensive film. It’s all pretty generalized, and frankly, I was a little sorry not to see clips of the early, “Bullwinkle”-voiced Big Bird, or even the original costume design so kids can fully visualize how it works.

Sing-a-Long offers kids the opportunity to sing along to three songs – “Easy Goin’ Day,” “Grouch Anthem,” and “One Little Star” (exactly two of the three choices you might expect); the film footage, interestingly, is presented 4:3 and unrestored, while the technique of showing what lyric to sing actually makes them quite hard to read. When did the bouncing ball fall out of fashion? Jump to a Song, on the other hand, does just that – to any one of the seven songs in the movie.

The Theatrical Trailer (2 mins.) may be dingy and unrestored, but it is presented in the original 1.85:1 ratio, while the Trailers sub-section includes spots for Scooby-Doo: Where Are You?, Clone Wars, Smurfs, Peanuts: Snoopy’s Reunion, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, Tom and Jerry Tales and The Wiggles Present Dorothy the Dinosaur. I would certainly take Follow That Bird over any of those.

Finally, as is mentioned on the DVD menus, parents with DVD-Rom drives can use this disc to print off six Sesame Street coloring pages (four of which, comically, star our old friend Elmo!). There are also weblinks to the KidsWB and Sesame Street sites. Sneaky.

Follow That Bird is a welcome reminder of my youth; more so, I think, than it actually is all that great a film. Its heart, however, is firmly in the right place, and anyone who grew up with Sesame Street in the early-to-mid-1980s will enjoy a visit with old friends. Maybe a few of us will even be able to pass on a little of that enthusiasm to the next generation – leading them, naturally, from the cult of Elmo, and back to the path of righteousness.

…I really have become an old woman, haven’t I? 

Tags : DVD 

From Pop Syndicate. Promoted by Kaplak Stream

What kid wouldn’t want to play with President Obama and the First Lady?

From early childhood I have always loved paper dolls. As an adult, I still actually find myself buying special books for various reasons. I love visual draw.

The Barack & Michelle Obama Paper Dolls & Cut-out Book is actually pretty cool. It features the beloved President Obama and Michelle in a variety of outfits. Starting with election night, we embark on the fashion path to the inauguration ceremony and the balls with the outfits are just as we saw them. We get a glimpse into the first day of work, the normal clothing of a couple doing good deeds on the Day of Service. We then move on to more fun attire, like sportswear and vacation outfits.

All in all, this is a fun little book. Collectors might not be as excited about it as the characters only loosely resemble the President and First Lady, but The Barack & Michelle Obama Paper Dolls & Cut-out Book is sure to please the youngsters whose parents have not deprived them of the fun of paper dolls.

The Barack & Michelle Obama Paper Dolls & Cut-out Book
St. Martin’s Griffin
John Boswell
Illustrated by Randy Jones & Susann Ferris Jones

Tags : books