Jack Tomas is a writer, filmmaker, and editor working in New York. He's originally from Houston, TX where he earned a BA in Theater and Communication from The University of St. Thomas. Later, he received an MA in Media Studies at The New School. Jack has worked several years as a professional filmmaker and his films have appeared in several film festivals including the Cannes Film Festival, The LA Comedy Shorts Festival, and The New York Independent Film Festival. He has also worked as a professional blogger since 2009 writing for Guanabee.com , Tuvez.com , Egotastic.com , and Directorslive.com . He lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn with his wife Marybec and two cats.
Sean Bean dies. A lot. I'm not sure what it is about him that screams "Please Kill Me!" to directors but it's obviously something. (Spoilers Ahead) When I heard that he was going to pay Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, my first thought was, "Oh, that's perfect casting! A grim medieval lord that dies violently is Sean Bean's specialty." I thought the same thing about him playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings. I wrote (Spoilers Ahead) above which is sort of pointless because if Sean Bean is in a movie you know he is going to die. I wonder if when a casting director reads a script and sees that someone is killed horribly if they just turn to each other and say, "Get me Sean Bean's agent!" Or does the instruction come from Sean himself. When he is considering projects does he make his decision based on how grizzly his on-screen death is? It's hard to say.
What I do know is that he dies well. Here is a mash-up by Harry Hanrahan. It shows Sean Beans 21 deaths in all their bloody glory.
It's hard to get motivated to exercise. Would it encourage you to go jogging if you were being chased by zombies? Of course! Luckily, there is an app for that. Zombies, Run! is a game for your iPhone, Android phone, or computer which incorporates actual exercise into a zombocalypse scenario. It measures your run and inputs it as movement by your avatar in the game. You collect items like food, search out other survivors, and run from zombies. You can even listen to your own music as you play the game. It's a fun way to encourage you to get your fat butt off the couch, right? Or it is perhaps the best training tool around to properly prepare for the coming zombie hordes. Make no mistake, the zombocalypse is coming and you better get in shape.
You know who is going to die first? Fatties. They can't run fast enough to get away. Even if the zombies shuffle slowly like in Dawn of the Dead, you will be overwhelmed when you have to stop to catch your breath. If they are the running zombies from 28 Days Later you are really screwed. Download the app here and get to training!
"Merman...(cough,cough), merMAN!" Remember that line from Zoolander where Derek Zoolander's dad is ashamed that his son is dressed like fishdude? Well, somewhere in England a father feels his pain. The freakshow parade known as My Crazy Obsession featured a real life merman. And by merman I mean a weird dude who likes to wear fishtails and act like Darryl Hannah in Splash.
He says he's been obsessed with mermaids ever since he saw a poor girl in a fish suit working in an aqua show rather than at the strip club. He makes tails too for other fish freaks. And you KNOW he rubs scales with other fish b$@ches in those tails. I fully believe that all a person has to do to create a new fetish subculture is to say it out loud. When it goes out into the ether hundreds of freaky websites pop up.
TLC is really irresponsible by showing this guy's weird lifestyle. Expect the smell of fish and lycra tails to emanate from that one weird neighbor's door.
I continue wading through the mire of crap that makes up Netflix Instant and picked up a movie that's very close to my heart. Have you ever had a movie that you truly loved to hate? Something you loathed so much that the very act of despising it brought you pleasure? For me that movie is Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. "But how bad can a musical featuring the music of The Beatles' last four albums possibly be?" If that musical stars Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees, pretty friggin' bad. The movie was made in 1978, a dark time when Frampton and The Bee Gees were some of the biggest acts in music. The filmmakers probably thought that they had a brilliant idea in casting these douchey singers into a musical that's a painfully literal interpretation of Beatles' songs. They were wrong. Very wrong. My friends and I discovered this gem in high school and there was a time in which we forced people to watch it at parties. Maybe that's why we were unpopular...
So, the movie stars Peter Frampton as Bill Shears, leader of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Bee Gees). He's in love with a girl named Strawberry Fields. You get how this works? They are seduced away from a town called Heartland, America with the promise of fame and fortune by an evil record exec. They move to LA and become corrupt. Then the bad guy reveals his plan to steal the band's magic instruments (?) and build a "Future Villain Band", which is played by Aerosmith. Frampton and the gang have to get back their instruments from Dr. Maxwell Edison (Steve Martin), The Sun King (Alice Cooper), and some guy playing Mean Mr. Mustard. Of course, all of this doesn't matter. It's all a thin attempt at a plot prop up a series of cameos held barely together with Beatles songs. Mind you, the only spoken dialogue comes from the narrator, Mr. Kite (George Burns). The ENTIRE REST of the movie are Beatles songs sung by s%#ty artists. Imagine Peter Frampton singing The Long and Winding Road, The Bee Gees falsettoing A Day in the Life, and Alice Cooper biting the head off of Because. Pretty awful thought, huh? So, why do I highly reccomend this to you? Because it is the king of "so bad it's good" films. My suggestion is to drink a lot before and invite a bunch of friends over that appreciate quality crap.
Why are Americans so fat? Because of things like the new Pizza Hut Crazy Cheesy Crust pizza. What is that, you say? It's a large pizza with giant cheese stuffed pockets all around the crust. This isn't the cheese stuffed crust from the 90's with a thin layer of string cheese. This is a giant dairy turd. Why does Pizza Hut hate its customers so much? If you eat this thing you've given up on life. You've decided that your organs can no longer function without the lubrication of 2 cups of grease. Was there really a call for this? Were the morbidly obese hobbling over to their laptops and typing with their pudgy sausage fingers to request even more cheese in their pizzas? I think not. I'm pretty sure this is a foreign plot to make us weak and fat for easy invasion.
I'm not sure who exactly is behind it. Maybe Iran? North Korea? The Illuminati? Communists? Presbyterians? I don't know. What I do know is that if you want to commit suicide head over to the hut. This thing will make your heart explode.
Cory Monteith checked into rehab over the weekend. Who the hell is Cory Monteith, you may be asking? He's the main doofus on Glee, the one who dates the annoying scrunchy faced main girl, (on and off screen). This is the second time that the doughy heartthrob has gone into rehab. Apparently he was also a teenage alkie and drug addict. Why should we give a crap about a guy on the single most ball shrinking show of all time? Because it strikes me as strange that he can be both a junkie and soooo painfully boring. Look at Hollywood's other druggies, people like Linday Lohan and Courtney Love. Now those are some splendid drug addicts. Amanda Bynes crashing into people, that's entertainment!
But this guy is about as interesting as a doggie bag full of poop. No, I take it back. He's less interesting than a doggie bag full of poop because at least that has the decency to smell bad. Cory probably just smells like Axe Body Spray and mediocrity.
What I'm saying is that it's sad that doing drugs didn't make this homunculus troglodyte any more interesting. I bet it will be hard for him to stay in the closet without drugs. Eh, he's too boring to be gay.
Are zombies legally responsible for their actions and could they be prosecuted for murder if they ate your mom? These are the questions being examined by legal expert Ryan Davidson. He specializes in hypothetical cases involving fictional characters, which I didn't know was a law specialty. It's for his blog Law and The Multiverse. He'll be discussing the implications and problems with prosecuting the undead today at Wondercon in California. He says, "If zombies are effectively unconscious, then they would be incapable of performing voluntary actions and thus immune to criminal liability (or civil liability, for that matter),". A good point. Once they are mindless eating machines they can't help themselves anymore than a lion can stop himself from eating a zebra. Humans are simply his food. Davidson argues that if the zombies can think rationally, then maybe they are committing murder, (Like in I am Legend, for example).
I would argue that even in the case where the zombie does realize what he's doing he still shouldn't be prosecuted. The central task of any organism, alive or undead, is to feed itself and reproduce. If human brains are their only source of sustenance and the only way they can reproduce is by biting people and turning them into zombies they are just following the biological imperative. It doesn't really matter because if the zombocalypse does come society is going to break down. That includes the judicial system. How are you going to sue anyone if the judges and lawyers are either zombies or zombie lunch?
Now watch a zombie fight a shark below in a scene from Lucio Fulci's classic Zombie.
Egotastic
Why Do Directors Love To Kill Sean Bean?
Sean Bean dies. A lot. I'm not sure what it is about him that screams "Please Kill Me!" to directors but it's obviously something. (Spoilers Ahead) When I heard that he was going to pay Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, my first thought was, "Oh, that's perfect casting! A grim medieval lord that dies violently is Sean Bean's specialty." I thought the same thing about him playing Boromir in The Lord of the Rings. I wrote (Spoilers Ahead) above which is sort of pointless because if Sean Bean is in a movie you know he is going to die. I wonder if when a casting director reads a script and sees that someone is killed horribly if they just turn to each other and say, "Get me Sean Bean's agent!" Or does the instruction come from Sean himself. When he is considering projects does he make his decision based on how grizzly his on-screen death is? It's hard to say.
What I do know is that he dies well. Here is a mash-up by Harry Hanrahan. It shows Sean Beans 21 deaths in all their bloody glory.