Archive for September, 2009

The first pic of Seth Rogen as the Green Hornet shows up online

UPDATE: Looks like the embed is down but you can go HERE to check out the video.

Never was a huge fan of the Green Hornet character in general but the one thing that peaks my interest in this modern day remake is it’s director Michel Gondry. Always cool to see someone work in a genre outside of the norm and for this superhero piece, it should be cool to see if the Frenchman can carry a film like this and make it standout. Nothing much to see in the video for the most part, I mean if you count a cool explosion & a bulldozer being dropped on a car, of course. No, but really, it’s footage shot from a long way out…

28 Days Later sweded in one minute

It seems like this might be the next level of the swede in that the University of York Filmmaking Society have retold the entire movie in a single, one minute long take. They have made some more of these in the past including Kill Bill & Forrest Gump and although I have yet to see Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, those seemed to be pretty awesome adaptations of the original stories. So if anyone was looking challenging way to make a swede for the upcoming Swede Fest, here’s an idea that you might want to consider. Shoot away!

Watch Whip It with the NOtown Roller Girls this Friday

Who wouldn’t want to watch a movie with a room full of beautiful women that could undoubtedly beat the living piss out of you but don’t because they’re all nice? In a truly excellent cross promotion idea, the NOtown Roller Girls are inviting one and all to go watch Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut Whip It this Friday, October 2nd at Edwards Theater at Riverpark with members of the team and will also be doing a meet & greet. Head on over here for the official announcement & more details as the exact times will be announced later this week.

Dem Trailers: A Nightmare On Elm Street

It’s that time of the year when movie goers begin salivating for scary movies (I personally can’t wait to go see Saw 17 and see some wacky dismembering action) and the teaser trailer for one of the films from my childhood that caused me to lose some sleep. Jackie Earle Haley takes over for Robert Englund as Freddy Kruger which I think is pretty awesome casting but the “Produced By Michael Bay” title card only hurts the films chances for me. But visually, it looks pretty damn good and it looks to be stepping far away from the caricature Freddy became in his latter films. Check it out and see what you think!

Swede Fest 4 update: venue set, local blogs & podcasters called out

In in a continued effort to keep the nomadic theme of the Swede Fest going, we’ve finally got our next venue in place: Audie’s Olympic has graciously accepted to host the next Swede Fest! As we announced earlier this week, it is all going down on Saturday, November 7th at 5pm so you have plenty of time to get your entry ready for the big day.

Now, Bryan & I always do one each for the festivals and that’s a given. But we want to call out all the other local blogs and podcasters here in town to step up to the plate, have some fun and create a Swede! I’m talking to you Fresno Beehive, The Fresnan, ArcHop, The View Looks Good From Here Fresno, Late Update, Strangers With Comics, Fresnocentric,  This Is Conlan, The Married Gamers, Mike Scott, It’s Worth Recording… the list goes on and on. Get out there and represent! Get your team together, grab a camera and get out there & shoot! Mad props to Michael Banti, Travis Sheridan & Famous Whitewater who’ve been participating in the event. They real, they real!! Those first guys up there: not so much. SAY SOMETHING!! (that is merely me talkin’ smack to serve as motivation) I really hope to see some new entrants this time around or at very least come on out in November and see what your fellow creative Fresnans have put together!

Entertainment Tonight visits Iron Man 2 set

Man, there are some pretty cool images in this pretty long behind-the-scenes featurette for the upcoming Iron Man 2 produced by those pretty people over at Entertainment Tonight. They touch on some things that might be considered spoilers so if you want to go in fresh into the film next year, I suggest you stay away but something tells me you won’t. One notable tidbit was Robert Downey Jr. mentioning that he has to go back and do some reshoots for Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes. I wonder if that has anything to do with the rumors that Brad Pitt will make a cameo as Moriarty in the film. Hmmm…

Dem Trailers: Symbol

A teaser trailer, but what a teaser. Visually captivating but honestly I know nothing about the film so lets see what our friends at Slash Film had to say about it:

Matsumoto plays the main character, a man who wakes up in an empty, white, windowless room and evidently can’t help looking bewildered. As seen in the teaser above, the man notices a dick-and-balls thing protruding out of the wall. According to a synopsis at IMDB, before the monochromatic, freaky angels circle around him, a pink toothbrush falls out of the wall “setting in motion a genuinely bizarre chain of events. Soon the imprisoned man is engaged in an absurd escape the gleaming room, releasing random objects from the walls, creating a life sized mouse trap game...”  The man surrounded by dogs in the trailer is an aging Mexican wrestler who is (non-) preparing for a big match, much to the concern of his family. There is a spoiler-worthy meta-sounding connection between the two.

Yep, craziness! But the trailer did make me jump. What do you think? More foreign mumbo jumbo and a case of style over substance or not? Call it now, gaijins! [via Slash Film]

Zero Punctuation: Beatles Rock Band & Guitar Hero 5 reviews

I tend to end up with some pain riddled digits after playing a few solid sessions of these music games and although I do own previous incarnations of the game and a few guitar controllers, those things set in the deepest regions of my closet untouched. So the hoopla behind the release of these two games recently really ain’t a thang for me so why not sit down and here Yahtzee’s review for the two games as this week he’s giving us a two-fer. In the mean time, I’ll sit and wait patiently for DJ Hero which just might be something more up my alley.

Random Goodness: Police raid turns into Wii Bowling tourney

Wow, all of a sudden I have the urge to become a police officer in Polk County Florida. You see, according to the full story, these guys raided a drug dealers house and after all was said and done, they decided to congratulate themselves by pulling a 9 hour session of Wii Bowling on the bad guy’s system. Little did they know the home’s security cameras were still rolling. Man, cops get all the perks of the job: talking on cell phones while driving, tasing random perps and Wii Bowling on the job. I need to reevaluate my career path a little here.

SWAG!: Win tickets to Rockstir!

UPDATE: And we have our winner! Juan was selected my our Randomator™ machine and he will be rocking out at Rockstir this weekend. And be sure to order one of the drinks of this list! Thanks to everyone who entered!

We love our loyal readers more than we love the bacon wrapped hot dogs at the Cherry Auction so we’re once again hooking you guys up with some more free swag! This time, we’ve got two tickets for this weekend’s Rockstir even going on at Riverview Shopping Center this Saturday and all you have to do to win is leave a comment here telling us a what nerdy drink names you would demand to see if Dumb Drum opened up a bar: Dumb Rum? Wu-Tanqueray?  Swedetini? Seven and Seven Samurai? Give us your best and we will randomly select a winner from the all the comments but entertain us, for goodness sake! Limit one comment entry per person so feel free to comment more than once, only one of those will count. Contest ends this Thursday at 9pm and we will email the winner that same evening. Tickets will have to be picked up by this Friday at 4pm so please be sure this is possible. Good luck to everyone!

Check out the full press release for the event after the break. Read more…

Call for entries! Swede Fest 4 coming in November

It’s that time of year again and we need your entries for Swede Fest 4 and this time we’re making some changes to the whole thing. First thing, we’re sticking to a singular naming convention for our bi-annual festivals: Swede Fest. Along with that, we’re going to spitting up the two festivals into the Spring festival being more family/kid friendly and our Fall festival being a little more mature giving people a little more free range with pushing the limits (but still maintaining our regular rules of engagement). We will be making more announcements as we get closer to the date so keep an eye here!

We’re still in the stages of finalizing our venue but as of now the date is set for Saturday, November 7th at 5pm. What you need to do if you want to submit an entry to be shown at the festival is to let us know by shooting us an email at thedumbdrum@gmail.com to let us know you will be creating an entry (we’d like to have an idea of how many entries we’re going to be screening) and then when you are done, we need to have a DVD of your film to show the day of the festival. That means we need to have your entries in hand by Wednesday, November 4th. Please contact us at thedumbdrum@gmail.com and we can make arrangements to collect your entries. Entries must not be over 5 mins. in running time. Also, the films must not use any excessively abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening, sexually-orientated or any other material that may violate any laws. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us via email or just leave us comments here on the blog.

Well, there it is for now so bust out your DVDs, decide on something to swede, get your camera & cast together and make a movie! Remember, the key to making a swede is using creativity so get cracking! After the break, you can see some entries from previous Swede Fests for your inspiration along with an instructional video from Jack Black & Michel Gondry on how to swede, just in case you still weren’t sure. Hope to see your film at the screening in November! Read more…