Ten Unusual Wines that Geeks Would Love

With Valentine’s Day just around the cor­ner, any one of these wines would make an awe­some gift to present to that spe­cial geek in your life:

Wines for Gamers

Player 1 by 8-bit Vintners

“Player 1″ was cre­ated by an actual gamer, and comes from the wine­mak­ing region of Walla Walla, Wash­ing­ton.  Owner/gamer Mike James says, “My wine is for any­one who spent time try­ing to save a princess or fit odd shaped blocks together. We may have never met, but we have more in com­mon than we ever knew. So blow out that old Con­tra car­tridge, give the NES a good dust off, and pour your­self a glass.”  Sadly, 8-bit Vint­ners has closed up shop, but you can still pur­chase the wine on Ebay and other places (if you know where to look).

Boss Mon­ster by Woot Cellars

This 2007 zin­fan­del from Woot Cel­lars is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of every ter­ri­ble boss you’ve ever encoun­tered in a video game (though I think he looks vaguely rem­i­nis­cent of Phan­toon from Super Metroid).  “Boss Mon­ster” is a lim­ited edi­tion wine that is only some­times avail­able via Wine.Woot.  If you like wine and enjoy get­ting a good deal, you might want to sign up for Wine.Woot’s deal-a-day style offers.

Stun­lock, nOOb, & Gamer Win­dow  by GamerWine

Gamer­Wine is avail­able in three vari­eties with relat­able names: Stun­lock, a rich red; nOOB, a full-bodied Mer­lot; and Gamer Win­dow, a smooth Pinot Gri­gio.  Sug­gested pair­ings:  Hot Pock­ets, Pizza Rolls and Cheetos.

Wines for Fan­tasy Film Buffs

The Bot­tle of Wits by Alamo Drafthouse

“The Bot­tle of Wits” is a new line of sig­na­ture wines by Alamo Draft­house inspired by everyone’s favorite 80’s fan­tasy film, The Princess Bride, which cel­e­brates its 25th anniver­sary this year.  The line includes both red and white vari­eties: “As You Wish White,” a light, golden medium-bodied Cal­i­for­nia blend, and “Incon­ceiv­able Cab,” a 2009 vin­tage Cal­i­for­nia Caber­net.  The wine will go for sale online start­ing Feb­ru­ary 14, 2012.

Wines for Hor­ror Fans

Zom­bie Zin by Chateau Diana Winery

From Chateau Diana Win­ery in Healds­burg, Cal­i­for­nia comes “Zom­bie Zin­fan­del” that is blood-red in color and described as “hor­ridly rich in con­cen­trated fruit fla­vors with a fin­ish that never dies!” Clever.  And here I thought the only zom­bies with mohawks were from Tiris­fal Glades.

Return of the Liv­ing Red by Red­heads Studio

“Return of the Liv­ing Red” is a red wine from Red­heads Stu­dio (I see what they did there), which is a small win­ery in South Aus­tralia. The wine is dark gar­net in color, full-bodied, with fla­vors of cur­rants and black­ber­ries.  The grue­some (but awe­some) pack­ag­ing was designed by Mash.

Kil­li­b­in­bin by Broth­ers in Arms

This col­lec­tion of “killer” wines is by Broth­ers in Arms of the Met­alia vine­yard, also in South Aus­tralia (side note: why does Aus­tralia have all the cool wines?).  The labels were designed after vin­tage hor­ror movie posters to play up the “kill” part of the wine’s name.

Vam­pire, Drac­ula & True­blood by Vam­pire Vineyards

When it comes to vampire-themed wines, Vam­pire Vine­yards pretty much has the mar­ket cor­nered.  The vineyard’s full line includes Vam­pire, Drac­ula, True­blood, and Chateau du Vamm­pire.  There’s even red Vam­pire Vodka, and the com­pany is also branch­ing out into other vampire-themed bev­er­ages  like soda, cof­fee and energy drinks.  Thanks to the pop­u­lar­ity of Twi­light, True Blood, The Vam­pire Diaries, etc, it’s no sur­prise that this type of bla­tant pan­der­ing has also been very suc­cess­ful for the com­pany (just read their nau­se­at­ing About Us page).

Wines for Techies

USB Port by Peltier Station

A zin­fan­del dessert wine, “USB Port” (get it?) has a rich, sweet fla­vor that bal­ances choco­late with ruby cherry and spice. Sounds deli­cious.  Just don’t try to plug it into your laptop.

 Edu­cated Guess by Roots Run Deep

This Napa Val­ley Caber­net Sauvi­gnon is the flag­ship wine of Roots Run Deep win­ery, who would like you to make an “edu­cated guess” about which wine to choose.  The very tech­ni­cal, smart-looking label depicts actual wine­mak­ing for­mula strings that chemists would use.

‘Room 237′ Documentary Explores Fantastic Theories Behind Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

The Shin­ing is one of my favorite hor­ror movies of all time, if not favorite movies, period.  Room 237 is a doc­u­men­tary about The Shin­ing that recently debuted at the 2012 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, and it sounds sim­ply fascinating:

“If Stan­ley Kubrick were still alive, Room 237 would make him extremely happy. Directed by Rod­ney Ascher, the exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary gives the leg­endary film­maker a ton of credit, maybe too much at times, as it explores sev­eral wild, and not so wild, the­o­ries about his 1980 hor­ror mas­ter­piece The Shining.”

Via www.slashfilm.com

And now for the bad news: Room 237 may not ever get a the­atri­cal release, due to uncleared footage, copy­right issues, and other pieces of red tape.

‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ Meme is Now a Movie

One of the great­est inter­net memes of all time is now a movie.  Safety Not Guar­an­teed is a film based on the mys­te­ri­ous real clas­si­fied ad pic­tured above, which first appeared in a weekly Dan­ish news­pa­per.  The ad was later paired with the accom­pa­ny­ing photo of a rather serious-looking young man who seems to have stepped straight out of 1986, mul­let, turtle­neck and all.  The orig­i­nal YTMND that started it all has over 1.2 mil­lion views as of Jan­u­ary 2012.

What will a movie based on an inter­net meme be like?  The film, directed by Colin Trevor­row,  is about two mag­a­zine employ­ees (Aubrey Plaza & Jake John­son) who set out on an assign­ment to find and inter­view the quirky man who placed the clas­si­fied ad seek­ing a time travel com­pan­ion (Mark Duplass).  Accord­ing to an early review in Vari­ety,  Safety Not Guar­an­teed is “a sci-fi-tinged odd­ball com­edy about love as the ulti­mate risky adven­ture” that fea­tures “some nice soul-searching moments along­side a steady stream of laughs.”  Indeed.

Does axl­bon­bach (the per­son who cre­ated the orig­i­nal YTMND) deserve com­pen­sa­tion?  What about the unknown man in the photo?

I sup­pose it’s only nat­ural that the film indus­try would start min­ing the annals of the inter­net for movie ideas, since they seem to have exhausted most other resources.  Last month we heard about Bad Ass, a movie star­ring Dany Trejo based off the “Epic Beard Man” viral video.  It’s hard not to feel like these types of movies are only being made to cash in on the mil­lions of hits and social media buzz these dig­i­tal curiosi­ties have gen­er­ated over time.

One of the best doc­u­men­taries I’ve seen in the last few years is a film called Win­nebago Man, in which the film­maker sets out on a quest to find out what became of the tem­pera­men­tal, potty-mouthed RV sales­man whose unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous sales train­ing video out­takes ended up on the inter­net and became wildly pop­u­lar.  It was a heart­felt and fit­ting trib­ute to a sim­ple man who did not real­ize the extent of his own fame, but whose recorded moments of weak­ness gave us so much joy.  It’s doubt­ful that movies like Bad Ass and Safety Not Guar­an­teed have their sub­jects’ best inter­ests at heart.

My Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2012

I hope you’re pre­pared to fork over a lot of cash to Hol­ly­wood, because 2012 is going to be a kick-ass year for movies.  Our first year of Life After Harry Pot­ter™ will be one filled with promise.  New trilo­gies will begin, beloved trilo­gies will end, and some of the biggest and best direc­tors are expected to unveil mas­ter­pieces. If the world’s going to end on Decem­ber 21st, at least we’ll die sat­is­fied know­ing we’ve finally seen The Hob­bit.

Here are the 2012 movies I’m most look­ing for­ward to:

(ordered by release date)

The Woman in Black

Release  Date:  Feb­ru­ary 3, 2012 
Direc­tor:   James Watkins

Based on the 1983 novel by Susan Hill, The Woman in Black is the woe­ful tale of a young busi­ness­man, Arthur Kipps  (Harry Pot­ter Daniel Rad­cliffe), who is sum­moned to the Eng­lish coun­try­side to set in order a deceased elderly woman’s affairs and estate when he soon becomes haunted by a men­ac­ing pres­ence.  I love atmos­pheric hor­ror films, espe­cially when they take place in big, secluded old man­sions.  If you’ve never seen it, I also highly rec­om­mend the orig­i­nal British made-for-TV film ver­sion from 1989, which oozes atmos­phere and dread.  I have high expec­ta­tions for this mod­ern remake.

The Hunger Games

Release Date:  March 23, 2012
Direc­tor:  Gary Ross

Finally, a  hugely pop­u­lar young adult fic­tion film adap­ta­tion that isn’t Twi­light (with­out candy-ass vam­pires, and bet­ter writ­ing)!  Set in the future dystopian North Amer­ica (now a nation called ‘Panem’), The Hunger Games is an annual tele­vised bat­tle between young boys and girls from each of Panem’s twelve dis­tricts.  These 24 “trib­utes” must fight to the death until only one remains stand­ing.  The story cen­ters on Kat­niss Everdeen (Jen­nifer Lawrence), and her strug­gle to sur­vive.  I prac­ti­cally devoured these books at the beach last sum­mer, and I’m hop­ing this first film does the series justice.

The Raven

Release Date:  April 27, 2012
Direc­tor:  James McTeigue

Being a hor­ror fan from Bal­ti­more means you can’t not love Edgar Allen Poe.  The Raven is a fic­tion­al­ized account of the last days of the writer’s life, in which Poe (John Cusack) tries to track down a ser­ial killer whose mur­ders are eerily sim­i­lar to the ones he wrote in his sto­ries.  Will the film also por­tray Poe’s rag­ing alcoholism?

Dark Shad­ows

Release Date:  May 11, 2012
Direc­tor:  Tim Burton

Another love child between Tim Bur­ton and his go-to lead­ing man, Johnny Depp.  The three or four peo­ple who read this blog already know I’ve been look­ing for­ward to Dark Shad­ows since I first heard about it.  Other than cen­ter­ing around Baran­abas Collins (Depp), the plot descrip­tion on IMDB is dis­ap­point­ingly vague.  But I’m sure we can expect a delight­fully Burton-esque mix of char­ac­ters and sto­ry­lines bor­rowed from Dark Shad­ows’ many incar­na­tions.  Hope I can fin­ish my Dark Shad­ows marathon project before then!

Prometheus

Release Date:  June 8, 2012
Direc­tor:  Rid­ley Scott

Prometheus might turn out to be the film everybody’s been hop­ing Rid­ley Scott would make since Alien.  It looks dark, unset­tling, full of alien crea­tures, and obvi­ously, set in space (although Scott has con­firmed this isn’t a pre­quel, and is only loosely based on his pre­vi­ous Alien films).  A team of explor­ers set out to unearth the ori­gins of mankind, but instead unknow­ingly unleash our poten­tial destruction.

Brave

Release Date:  June 22, 2012
Direc­tors:   Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman

Pixar does fairy tales.  Set in the myth­i­cal high­lands of Scot­land, Brave is the story of a coura­geous young princess named Merida (Kelly Mac­Don­ald).  Deter­mined to carve her own path in life, she defies an age-old sacred cus­tom, result­ing in a curse that unleashes chaos and fury upon her kingdom.

Abra­ham Lin­coln: Vam­pire Hunter

Release Date:  June 22, 2012
Direc­tor:   Timur Bekmambetov

There are two movies about Lin­coln com­ing out this year, but this one’s bound to be the most fun.  Adapted from the best­selling novel, Abra­ham Lin­coln: Vam­pire Hunter is a mélange of his­tory and hor­ror in which our beloved 16th pres­i­dent leads a secret dou­ble life as van­quisher of the super­nat­ural.  It’s as nutty as it sounds, but the book was great.  And at least it’s not another god damn remake/sequel/prequel/reboot/etc.

The Dark Knight Rises

Release Date:  July 20, 2012
Direc­tor:  Christo­pher Nolan

The end of Chris­t­ian Bale’s reign as Bat­man, and the final chap­ter in Nolan’s tril­ogy.  The Dark Knight Rises takes place eight years after the events of the last movie.  Bat­man resur­faces when the ter­ror­ist Bane arrives in Gotham City after tak­ing the fall for Har­vey Dent’s crimes. Even though I’m def­i­nitely look­ing for­ward to it, I don’t know if any new Bat­man movie will be able to top The Dark Knight.

The Hob­bit: An Unex­pected Journey

Release Date:  Decem­ber 14, 2012
Direc­tor:  Peter Jackson

It’s The Hob­bit!  It’s the pre­quel to The Lord of the Rings!  It’s directed by Peter Jack­son!  What more is there to say?

Lin­coln

Release Date:  TBA, Decem­ber 2012
Direc­tor:  Stephen Spielberg

Never mind that Lin­coln is being directed by Stephen Spiel­berg. Any­thing star­ring Daniel Day Lewis is fuck­ing win.

Abraham Lincoln Kicking Some Undead Ass In New Vampire Hunter Image

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Not one to be con­fused with Steven Spielberg’s devel­op­ing Lin­coln project, Bekmambetov’s genre splice re-imagines our 16th pres­i­dent as a vam­pire slayer stomp­ing through the Civil War-era United States.
Via www.cinemablend.com

‘Star Wars: Uncut’ is a Fan-made Orgy of Nerds, Memes, Kittens and Light Sabers

The premise:  the orig­i­nal Star Wars movie cut into 15-second seg­ments to be re-filmed by thou­sands of fans and then care­fully edited together into an amus­ing patch­work of fan-generated footage.  The result­ing film is an awe­some retelling of Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope through the eyes and cre­ative tal­ents of Star Wars fans around the world.

Star Wars: Uncut was the genius idea of Casey Pugh, a 26 year old web devel­oper and (one assumes) seri­ous Star Wars fan.

“I was work­ing as a web devel­oper for Vimeo and I was doing a lot of video-based stuff, but I was also think­ing about how I could enable film­mak­ers to cre­ate either short films or feature-length films together remotely,” he says. “I bounced an idea off my friends but I had no idea it would blow up to this scale–it’s just crazy.”

Crazy or not, Star Wars: Uncut earned Pugh and his col­lab­o­ra­tors an Emmy award (the 2010 Prime­time Emmy for Out­stand­ing Cre­ative Achieve­ment In Inter­ac­tive Media — Fic­tion, to be precise).

Despite being a diverse mashup of live-action, clay­ma­tion, stop-motion, kit­tens, hand drawn ani­ma­tions, CGI, hand pup­pets, babies, Legos,  men and women in drag, Pop­si­cle sticks, paper­craft, and prac­ti­cally every other type of style and imagery you can think of, Star Wars: Uncut man­ages to stay true to the orig­i­nal film’s nar­ra­tive and is rec­og­niz­able to any­one who has seen it.

Most of the clips are silly, unre­hearsed videos of the viral sort (com­plete with trash can R2D2s and news­pa­per hats).  But there are also pol­ished, beautiful-looking scenes from tal­ented fans whom you can tell put forth a lot of time and effort.

The entire film was recently released to the inter­net masses and you can watch it right here:

Star Wars: Uncut is a film made by Star Wars fans for Star Wars fans.  I promise it will be the most fun and enter­tain­ing two hours of your life.

MUST WATCH: Amazing Live-Action Short Film Based on ‘Portal’

Por­tal: No Escape is a live-action short film based on the game Por­tal and I promise you it is AMAZING!  It was directed by Dan Tra­cht­en­berg, a Los Ange­les film­maker who, hon­estly, I had never heard of until this project, but will be sure to fol­low closely from now on.

The film is about seven min­utes long, and chron­i­cles the expe­ri­ence of Chell (played by Danielle Rayne) as she wakes up in a bleak,  unknown, pre­sum­ably Aper­ture Science-controlled facil­ity and what she does from there.  Por­tal fans will rec­og­nize all the famil­iar props, includ­ing the blue and orange por­tals, the Por­tal Gun, even a glimpse of the Com­pan­ion Cube toward the end!

(I won’t spoil any­thing, but the end­ing was really well done.)

Watch Por­tal: No Escape:

Who wants to see an R-rated Muppet movie?

If you’re a fan of the darker side of Hen­son (Mir­ror­mask, Labyrinth, Farscape) and ever won­dered what an adult Mup­pet movie could be like, you’ll prob­a­bly be inter­ested in the upcom­ing dark com­edy Hap­py­time Murders.

Well, okay, Hap­py­time Mur­ders isn’t really a Mup­pet movie.  At least not in the Ker­mit and Miss Piggy sense. But it’s being pro­duced and directed by Brian Hen­son. And it has puppets!

“Hap­py­time Mur­ders is a dark com­edy that depicts an alter­nate real­ity where pup­pets are sen­tient beings that live along­side humans. The pup­pets exist as ‘sec­ond class cit­i­zens’ to the humans, and when the cast of an 80s pup­pet TV show, ‘The Hap­py­time Gang’, begin to turn up dead, an alco­holic ex-cop pup­pet turned pri­vate detec­tive must solve the mur­ders with his human ex-partner.”

It sort of sounds like Who Framed Roger Rab­bit meets Death to Smoochy meets Cool World. The film, which was picked up by Lion­s­gate last month, is in pre-production, and could begin film­ing as early as Jan­u­ary 2011. The lat­est is that Cameron Diaz might be inter­ested in the lead role.

Source: Screen Rant

‘From Bedrooms to Billions’ is a New Documentary about the Evolution of Video Games

From Bed­rooms to Bil­lions is a new doc­u­men­tary by inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers Anthony and Nicola Caulfield (Night­fall Films) about the hum­ble begin­nings of video games, and how pas­sion­ate gamers have trans­formed them into a bil­lion dol­lar industry.

Here’s the trailer (which, very appro­pri­ately, is set to Pin­ball Wizard):

As some­one who was prac­ti­cally born with a joy­stick in hand, I am very much look­ing for­ward to see­ing this film.  From the press release:

‘From Bed­rooms to Bil­lions’ is a film about the remark­able story of how a small num­ber of indi­vid­u­als from around the world made up of enthu­si­asts, hob­by­ists, school kids, bed­room coders and entre­pre­neurs, whose vision and cre­ativ­ity pio­neered in shap­ing the bil­lion dol­lar games indus­try which today, dom­i­nates the mod­ern enter­tain­ment landscape.

Fun stats time!

• Video games is the num­ber one enter­tain­ment industry
• Over 70% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion plays video games
• By 2011, the world­wide gam­ing mar­ket will be worth $48.9 billion

The film is set to release in Autumn 2011.

DO NOT WANT! A Whedon-less Buffy Movie

In case you missed yesterday’s news, it was announced that Atlas Enter­tain­ment and Warner Bros. will be “reboot­ing” Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer for the big screen.  A new Buffy movie is planned for 2012–and Joss Whe­don has noth­ing to do with it.

“There is an active fan­base eagerly await­ing this character’s return to the bigscreen,” says pro­ducer Charles Roven of Atlas Entertainment.

True, there are legions of pas­sion­ate Buffy fans who are among the most devoted of any fan­dom.  That would be the “active fan­base” Mr. Roven is refer­ring to.  But he’s got the “bigscreen” part all wrong.  It was the small screen that estab­lished Buffy as a pop cul­ture phe­nom­e­non, not that dread­ful 1992 Kristy Swan­son movie–proof that Hol­ly­wood ruins every­thing, even when Joss Whe­don is involved.

The TV show Buffy the Vam­pire Slayer may not have had a huge bud­get with cut­ting edge spe­cial effects, but its lack of pol­ish was made up for by great writ­ing, only made pos­si­ble by a man who attained the cre­ative free­dom nec­es­sary to cre­ate his ideal vision.  So revered is Buffy’s cre­ator and so sacred is his source mate­r­ial that the idea of a new Buffy  movie in any­one else’s hands just seems blasphemous.

So how could this pos­si­bly be a good idea?

Oh, I for­got. Warner Bros. only cares about money.