I’ve become a movie evangelist lately. When I see a movie again that I love (latest example: “The Big Lebowski”), or even if I just think about a great movie, I have this impulse to go up to people and say, “Have you seen this? …You haven’t? Will you? Come over right now and we’ll watch it. You *have* to see this movie.” Clearly this is my father coming out in me, since whenever “Cool Hand Luke” was on TV while we were growing up, my father would require that we plop down and watch it. I must have seen Luke eat those 50 eggs about 1,000 times.

Unfortunately, this impulse to evangelize movies doesn’t take into account how different people’s tastes in movies are, and how different they can be from mine. Not to mention the “overselling” problem, which has bitten me in the past. But I tend to think to myself, “How can anyone not like ‘Fearless’? I just don’t understand it.”

Well, I’m still happy (see previous). But I’m experiencing technical difficulties. My software DVD player is supposed to have a screen capture function, but it doesn’t. And screen capture programs like SnagIt (and I’ve tried others) don’t work, presumably because the DVD player uses some hardware shenanigans to get the image on the screen, so it’s not “seen” by the screen grab utilities.

Anyone know of a computer software DVD player that has a working screen capture, and/or screen capture software that works with DVD images?

I want to capture some of the wonderful images from Monsters. I am in awe of the Pixar people.

I own the “Monsters, Inc.” DVD. I am happy.

On The Daily Show last night they showed an absolutely hilarious/chilling clip of Dubya trying to talk about Saddam and Iraq:

“We have a saying in Tennessee… well, we have it in Texas and I assume it is here in Tennessee as well: ‘Fool me once, shame on… [long pause, blank stare] …shame on you. Fool……. well you won’t fool us again.”

You really can’t get a true sense of how amazing this clip was without seeing it. (If anyone knows if it’s posted anywhere online, let me know.) Jon Stewart played it twice because it was so unbelievable.

This is our Commander in Chief, people. He has the launch codes. Are you really comfortable with that?

The Big Pay-Off

Congratulations! You’ve devoted your entire life so far to hopping through scholastic hoops for petty, meaningless rewards. Now all that frantic hopping is about to be rewarded – you’re about the ambark on a career of mediocrity and powerlessness as part of a giant bureaucracy where nothing you do or say will ever really matter, where you will never be your own boss, where you will spend your waking hours striving to earn enough money to buy material goods that will never satisfy you.

-Matt Groening, “School is Hell”

Watched a preview for the horror movie “The Ring” before “One Hour Photo” today. The tagline was something like…

THERE’S A VIDEO – IF YOU WATCH IT – ONE WEEK LATER – YOU DIE!

…and I’m thinking to myself, “Are they talking about ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?'”?

I was doing some search engine submissions for a client (Elegant Foods – go there and order something immediately) and came to Yahoo. Apparently their policy now (has it always been this way?) is that businesses must pay a $299 yearly fee to be considered for submission to the directory. They mention over and over that this fee doesn’t even guarantee you’ll be listed. I’d love to see what happens to the cheery “renew your Yahoo listing” e-mails that go out to the people who are rejected.

Favorite dialogue of the week

David Fisher of “Six Feet Under” is sitting with a friend’s niece, who has just received an Easy Bake Oven as a gift for her birthday.

David: My sister had one of those. But I broke it.
Girl: On purpose?
David: Well, I wanted to make a pizza. So I put a 300-watt bulb in and the whole thing melted.
Girl: That was stupid.
David: Yes…[sheepishly]…and I was 17!

I really like “Six Feet Under,” which I happened to watch because they were having a promotional weekend on my cable system, so it was free. Yay for free cable.

Backhanded Non-Compliment of the Week

“It wasn’t interesting enough to loathe.”
-Richard Roeper, on “Stealing Harvard”

Bonus points for identifying the source of my new tagline.