Amazon Pilots: Onion News Network

Not at all what I was expecting. I thought the ONN would be a news show much like Jon Stewart’s immensely popular The Daily Show on Comedy Channel. Instead, it’s a scripted show about the ugliness of the daily news cycle. It stars an adorable set of characters in various stages of neurotic and reminds one more of a Legend of Ron Burgundy without charisma. The main character is a poor shmuck imported from Indiana (a stand-in for rural America) to the Big Apple, where he wants to make it big in news. Continue reading

Chasing Mavericks (2012)

<youtube>jh09vEGNrXc</youtube>Everybody had been telling me I should watch Chasing Mavericks, but I somehow didn’t feel inclined. Surf movies – and movies about surfing, which is not the same thing – tend to be depressingly fictionalized. They portray the world as a surfer would love it to be, and not as it is. The waves are always perfect, the bros are always on a spiritual quest of communion with the ocean, and somehow there are always more ladies in the water than anyone has witnessed in a lifetime. Continue reading