As an American, I have viewed it as my civic duty to ignore and even sneer at Doctor Who, the perpetual British adventure series that has never broken thru in the US. Growing up in the late 70s and early 80s, I viewed the snippets I saw of old Who from the Tom Baker era (the fourth Doctor) and later as sad and silly. Sure the girls were pretty (not 'arf, mate), but the sets were cheap and the robots looked like they were designed to be janitors rather than warriors. But then along came a little podcast called Fantragic.

Who owns whom in the car industry?

2007.07.20 — Business | Cars | by Derek Jensen

The world of car manufacturers is a complicated one. The corporations want to obscure some of their lines to maintain brand separation, but also want to keep you somewhat aware of them so as to leverage the history and goodwill they've tried so hard to attain over the years. BMW didn't need any special British technology to build a cheap runabout like the Mini, but it did need the name in order to give them an excuse to make a cheap runabout in the first place and to have their car be seen as the next generation of the classic Mini.

The laziest presidential article ever

2008.05.27 — Government | Politics | by Derek Jensen

A new Slate article on the presidential names is about the laziest piece of writing I've ever seen on presidential history. The author claims that "Barack Hussein Obama" is such an unusual name that it is entirely out of keeping with American history—largely true—and that past presidents and even presidential candidates have all had very ordinary names, which is patently ridiculous.

Audio commentary: Seinfeld 808 "The Chicken Roaster"

2008.03.24 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Analysis | by Andrew Cole

A Kenny Rogers' Roasters restaurant moves in across the street and beams red light into Kramer's apartment day and night, so he gets Jerry to switch apartments. Elaine buys George a sable hat on the Peterman account along with a load of other things for herself, then gets audited by their accountant. I take apart this classic eighth season episode scene by scene, praising all its loopy goodness and gently pointing out its mild gaps.

Audio commentary: Hot Fuzz

2008.03.10 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Analysis | by Andrew Cole

Simon Pegg knocks one out of the... cricket pitch(?) as super cop Nicolas ~~Angle~~ Angel, who gets reassiged to sleepy little Sanford and discovers that there is an evil there that does not sleep. Nick Frost pulls duty as his comic sidekick and film professor. And a host of fantastic British actors support Pegg and director Edgar Wright's brilliant and hilarious screenplay. I focus on the failures in it, of course. But I do heap praise where praise heaps are due. I focus mostly on the themes and intricacies of the plot. I compare it to other films in various genres, including Cars, Doc Hollywood, Sharky's Machine, Halloween, Friday the 13th, Shaun of the Dead, Point Break, Bad Boys II, romantic comedies, and spaghetti westerns. But I'm nothing compared to Wright and Tarantino. Check out my voluminous list of films that Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino talk about in their own weird meta-commentary.

Introducing Zarban.com

One stop for audio commentaries

2008.02.19 — Entertainment | Movies | Internet | by Derek Jensen

We at Tysto have been doing audio commentaries for movies for more than a year now. There is a small cadre of regular fan commentators out there, including Renegade Commentaries, MMM Commentaries, Adudathuda DVD Podblast, Sofa Dogs, and the pay service Rifftrax, which is the new project from the guys who brought you Mystery Science Theater 3000. But how do you find a commentary for a movie or TV episode you want to watch? Go to Zarban.

Audio commentary: Cars

2007.02.08 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Analysis | by Andrew Cole

Owen Wilson is the voice of Lightning McQueen, the superfast city boy race car who is on his way to California to win the Piston Cup, if only he can ever get out of little old Radiator Springs. Paul Newman is wise old Doc Hudson and Larry the Cable Guy is dumb old Larry the Cable Truck, or should have been. Bonnie Hunt is way sexier than an automobile has a right to be, which causes me to ponder car anatomy. I complain about the title of the film. I explain the concept of setup and payoff. And I explore the difference between American-style animation and Japanese-style animation. But I focus primarily on the two main stories that conflict and the two sub-plots that complicate things further and how the film manages to keep them all from tearing the film apart.

The Playstation 3 as Blu-Ray player

2008.02.05 — Business | Movies | Technology | by Andrew Cole

Having figured the high definition disk format war has come to an end, I got a Playstation 3 (40 GB) to play Blu-Ray disks. Not having owned a game console since the Sega Dreamcast back in 2000, what I found surprised me in several ways.

8 things film makers should stop doing

2008.02.02 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Analysis | by Andrew Cole

In the last 10 years, Hollywood has gotten very good at making big franchise pictures. We've gotten fun and high-quality fantasies like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, good superhero treatments like Spider-Man and Batman Returns. Even bad action movies are better than most good action movies of 10 or 20 years ago, like Sahara, National Treasure, and Live Free or Die Hard. At some point, most filmmakers seem to have woken up one morning and said, "Hey, the story is really the important thing...." and "I guess we could have actually comedy writers write the jokes instead of just using the first bad pun that comes to mind...."

Just... don't put any more of these things in motion pictures, please.

Every film mentioned by Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino in their Hot Fuzz commentary track

2008.01.14 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Analysis | by Andrew Cole

Hot Fuzz is an amazing movie. It's easily one of the funniest films I've ever seen and also one of the cleverest. In the new 3-disk super edition, director Edgar Wright invites fellow director, friend, and fellow action movie buff Quentin Tarantino to do a commentary. What follows is a tour de force of movie and television geekery from both directors. In the course of their commentary—which almost never actually comments on the scenes they are watching—Wright and Tarantino mention close to 200 movies.

Here is the list, with links to the Internet Movie Database so you can decide for yourself if you want to delve into the overlooked gems and weird schlock that inspired these two filmmakers.