It might be the cynic in me but I have a hard time believe a lot of promises in advertising. It’s generally a case of if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. It turns out that I’m not the only one who feels this way. This infographic shows there are a great many who have a hard time believing what they see in ads. Continue reading
Wednesday Link-Off: A Week at the Movies
Have you been reading Scott’s list of the Top 45 Movies of 2012? If you haven’t, you’re missing the most thorough breakdown of the year in movies that I’ve seen. Today, he’s dropping Part Three which covers #15 to #1. Therefore, I thought it was fitting to lead off this linkdump with actress Jessica Chastain.
Blue Brothers is one of the all-time great comedies. This oral history looks at how the movie almost never got made. (Vanity Fair)
If comedies aren’t your speed, maybe you’d rather read about Ben and Matt got their big breaks with Good Will Hunting. (Boston Magazine)
Okay, so Notre Dame got hilariously beaten by Alabama for the BCS Championship. My question is whether they even deserved to be there. After Penn State was nearly sanctioned out of existence for the Jerry Sandusky affair, the Notre Dame rape scandal was swept under the rug allowing them to get within one game of a national championship. (The Nation)
After the jump, did Dalhousie women’s hockey get screwed out of a season, Tony Bourdain vs. Travel Channel and a montage of montage. Continue reading
Worst of Music: Pitbull – Don’t Stop The Party
When it comes to finding new songs for our semi-regular Worst of Music feature, I usually go to the Billboard Hot 100 charts. However, a barrage of ads for Pitbull’s new album, called Global Warming, convinced me that there’s a WoM winner on that album. That Worst of Music winner is Pitbull’s most recent single Don’t Stop the Party. Continue reading
“My” Favourite Movies of 2012 Part 2 #30-16
Today is movies 30-16 which with movies numbered 32 & 31 are movies I would consider meets expectations. We’ll start with a trio of animated films that were enjoyable, fun but ultimately unmemorable films.
30. Ice Age: Continental Drift
Weird thing happens when you see a lot of animated films; you kind of feel like you need to see them all. I remember seeing the first Ice Age with my younger siblings years ago and not minding it too much and then my wife and I saw this trailer earlier in the year and found the need to go see this movie despite the fact that we hadn’t seen either of the other movies in the interim. So now I have all three of the other Ice Age movies in Blue Ray of all things. If you liked the rest of the series then you will like this movie. It’s pretty simple. I would say that the voice actors of the series are starting to mail it in (and they are) but for most of these actors voice work is mailing it in so the quality isn’t exactly lacking. I enjoyed the film for the most part even if I don’t remember most of what happens. There were pirates and that was kind of cool.
Lowdown Monthly – December 2012
It’s time to once again take a look back at the past month here on the blog with Lowdown Monthly. Considering the amount of content we’ve pushed out over the 31 days in December, I thought now would be a good time to bring it back. So here’s our look back at our favourite and the most popular posts of December. Continue reading
“My” Favourite Movies of 2012 Part 1 #45-31
I realized I needed to write this post when I was going to see Wreck-It Ralph for a second time with my younger brother and sister who were quizzing me on the movies I had seen and I started listing off close to 30 films. All told I saw 45 movies in theaters that were released in 2012. Having recently seen Jack Reacher and This is 40 in 2013 I think I can finally close off my list. And frankly, if January (2012) hadn’t been such a miserable time for movies (for me in any case) its entirely possible I would have seen over fifty movies this year in theaters. Frankly, I might be close because I saw couple twice in theaters.
Sunday Link-Off: Deal or No Deal
After a few rather slim linkdumps, the internet is back up and running which means we have a regular sized set of links today. Since I have some photos queued up that I keep meaning to run at the start of the links, here’s Eva Longoria.
America’s fiscal cliff was solved just in time by the US Congress. It’s just a temporary thing because there is a debt ceiling crisis looming in which the Republicans will play chicken with the world economy again by threatening to default on their debt. Anyway, the bad blood between Democrats and Republicans almost meant that this deal didn’t get done. (Politico)
The folks at Bloomberg did an in-depth recap of this summer’s infamous maple syrup heist. Yes, it was that big a story. (Businessweek)
The hacking group Anonymous scares a lot of people but they’re often a force for good. For example, they uncovered evidence in the case of a rape allegedly committed (innocent until guilty) by high school football players in Stubenville, Ohio. (The Atlantic Wire)
After the jump, Normstradamus has a golf column, Guy Fieri has more crappy food for you and a massive NYE TV fail. Continue reading
Entertainment Link-Off: Face Off!
The new year is here! Since the Christmas movies are still out in full force, don’t expect many wide releases to compete for the box office crown for a little while. Opening this weekend is Texas Chainsaw 3D. Whether this will revive the flailing franchise will be up to the audiences to decide. Starring in this movie is Alexandra Daddario, who can also be seen in first season of White Collar. Anyway, let’s just kick off the first ELO of 2013 with her.
After the jump, a few trailers to see, Quentin Tarantino loves his pop culture references, some Star Trek stuff and eat a Hobbit meal in 20 minutes. Continue reading
Caption This: December 29, 2012 – January 4, 2013
Inspired by the Globe and Mail’s caption writing person, we waste our time writing funny picture captions for some of the more interesting photos we come across when blogging. So here are some of the best pictures from the past week with a funny (-ish) caption. Continue reading
The Economics of Video Game Development
A few weeks back, one of the hot stories in the video game world was that Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 reached gross sales of $1 billion in only 15 days. What sounded like good news for publisher Activision was quickly reigned in by writers pointing out that CoD: Blops 2 sold fewer copies to reach $1 billion of gross sales than 2011’s CoD: Modern Warfare 3.
This raised an interesting question in my mind: How profitable are video games to make? Even if Blops2 sold fewer copies, shouldn’t Activision still have covered the sunk costs of development and marketing after paying for the variable costs of each unit sold? Continue reading
The Lowdown 