So is Obama Palpatine or Vader?

Posted by Wheezy

He'll just never learn.

Where Are They Now: Girl from 'My Girl'

Posted by Wheezy

I'm trying to introduce a new segment here at Immediate Regret called "Where Are They Now?". It could just as easily be called "Wheezy looked It Up on IMDb." Maybe they'll give us a sponsorship one day.

Anyway, today's subject is that girl from 1991's My Girl, Anna Chlumsky.

The most interesting sounding movie of Anna's post My Girl achievements (aside from My Girl 2 of course) is Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain (1995), costarring Christina Ricci (fresh off her role in Casper). The title of this movie is a bit misleading by Kanye's standards, but here's the trailer for your amusement.

I believe I also caught a glimpse of a young Jewel Staite of Firefly and Serenity fame.

Of course this segment isn't called "What'd they do Right After the First Time You Saw Them?", but rather "Where Are They Now?" Well 'Girl from My Girl' has recently made a triumphant return to prominence in Season 1 of 30 Rock (2007) as Liz Lemler.

And there ya have it. 'Girl from My Girl' would later be fired in that very episode by Liz Lemon. So I guess she's looking for a job again. Best of luck "Girl from My Girl".

Parkour Animation

Posted by Wheezy

Either that, or it's the most complex paper fortune teller ever made, and only answers the question "What is the one thing I should never try to do that I really really want to try?"

And since the word "Parkour" came up...

The Terrorists are in Alaska

Posted by Wheezy

And they've apparently purchased a collegiate hockey team. Don't risk their wrath against luxury cruise liners, just let them have the ... trophy... thing. Whatever they give college hockey champions.

Alaska Nanooks 2010 Hockey Intro from Szymon Weglarski on Vimeo.

Maybe our agent in the north can handle this. What's that? She's a FOX News Contributor now? Nevermind.

via MikeIndustries & @bradley

Why I want to like Extract

Posted by Wheezy




There's a new movie coming out this Labor Day by Mike Judge, creator of the seminal "Beavis and Butthead", the adored "King of the Hill", the hilarious "Office Space" and the mediocre "Idiocracy". It's called "Extract" - and there are several reasons I want to like it.

First of all, despite my severe disappointment in "Idiocracy" - I'm a huge Judge fan, and willing to give just about any of his stuff a shot. I think part of the reason I hated Idiocracy so much is that I had such high expectations going in (where as I had never even heard of Office Space when I went to see it the first time. Thanks Kevin!)

Jason Bateman of "Teen Wolf 2" fame is in it, which should be reason enough, but in addition to that the supporting cast is a phenomenal mix of J.K. Simmons, Ben Affleck, Kirsten Wiig (who has been in a lot of movies lately but none to the extent that I would like to see), the Sparkle Motion lady from Donnie Darko, and Mila Kunis. Enough blathering though, here's the trailer.

Will it be good? Only time will tell I guess. What do you guys think?

Old becomes new again... Animated Christian Bale

Posted by Wheezy




I know it may seem like that Christian Bale sound clip has about as much comedy wrung out of it as humanly possible, but the guys over at Spline Doctors created a contest which put animators out in the world up to the task of making what was already ridiculously funny even funnier.

Definitely jump over there and check out the winners.

H/T: Spline Doctors

Most Regrettable Christmas Box Office Blunders

Posted by Wheezy

Hey there Christmas Hop-Ons! Wheezy here.

Well, 'tis the day of family, gifts, and that Savior fella, and I hope you're having a good day thusfar. I know I am.

I don't know about the rest of y'all, but every Christmas my family has a tradition of opening presents, then sitting in front of the TV all day watching whatever movies are being shown on the various cable channels available. At some point we eat, of course, and then usually we make our way to the movie theater. 

So in the spirit of that tradition, we here at Immediate Regret have decided to bring you some of our favorite, most regret-worthy Christmas movies of all time. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but rather just a few off the top of our heads. 

The first on the list is the Arnold and Sinbad gem "Jingle All the Way". Just so you don't have to go to Hollywood Video (open on Christmas last I checked) and rent it, here it is summed up in about 5 seconds.

If for some reason you do decide to pick this movie up, keep an eye out for Vern of Mini me fame, prior to the Austin Powers phenomenon.

Then of course, you've got the "Santa Clause" trilogy. The worst offender being "Santa Clause 3 - The Escape Clause".

Next up is a suggestion from our very our MajorLB. I haven't actually seen this one, but if you check out the trailer I think you'll agree that this one was probably worth missing.

Any good "Bad Christmas Movie List" would be remiss if we didn't have the perennial favorite "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." For the sake of not ruining your Christmas, I've decided to include the MST3K Episode (abridged) for this movie instead of the movie itself (which, if you like, can be seen in its entirety on YouTube).

Rounding out IR's list is a movie that doesn't involve any major actors suddenly growing fat, but rather the exact opposite. Our final entry in IR's Most Regrettable Christmas Box Office Blunders, we have The Hulkster in: "Santa With Muscles".

We're not the first nor the last to put together a list of bad Christmas movies. What's on your list?

Merry Christmas Everybody!

Other Lists of Bad Christmas Movies:

Film School Rejects
/film
Family Education
State Hornet
pennLive.com

Immodest Alternating Current Connector Round 2

Posted by Wheezy




Hey there Hop Ons. Wheezy here. I'll keep this short.

Well, I said that you hadn't heard the last of this, and I meant it. There are only two days left in the aniBoom Awards 2008. So if you haven't at least watched my reel yet, I implore you to take a minute and twenty seconds to do so. Just watching through it once helps me out.

And if you REALLY want to get on my good side, take a quick jaunt over to my video over at the aniBoom Awards and rate my reel. Yes, it involves creating an aniBoom account - but there's lots of great stuff over there to see that I haven't made you watch a billion times.

All right, that's it. I'm done. Have a good Friday folks.

eChef Review - Better late than Never

Posted by Wheezy

Well, it's better late than never. I was supposed to write this review back when eChef actually sponsored Immediate Regret, but some other things kept me a little too busy (Have you gone and voted for my Demo reel yet? Help me break the Top 50!)

Anyway, I'll tell you what you need to do. Go to echefsoftware.com and buy two copies of eChef. One for you, and one for your mom. And not just because Pacman is the official sponsor (check the logo!) Once your mom has a copy, then you should have the rest of your culinary life covered.

Essentially, eChef is just as Andrew described it. It's iTunes for recipes. You load in all the ingredients, directions, and a picture of the final product. Where the convenience of this software comes in is in the abundance of meta data that you can add. Difficulty, preparation time, genre, time of day for which it is appropriate... just about anything you'd need to know about a given recipe. And of course, like any good software, you can add custom categories and use this data to filter your results.

This means that when I wake up on a Sunday after a night of "spirited" enjoyment, I can sort by difficulty, filter for my custom category "Hangover", and voila!

I have the perfect match for my current situation. Why I bothered entering "Ramen Noodles" into eChef is a mystery we'll have to address at another time.

But the real genius of the software is in two other features.

First of all - sharing. Gone are the days of writing down recipes by hand or even printing out lists of directions from the web. If you want to share a recipe with another person, eChef has a convenient "Email" button that can be used with ease. You can also import recipes in eChef's own .eat format or MasterChef .mx2, and export in .eat, .rtf, html, iPod notes and Outlook notes. I don't even know what iPod notes are, but this software can export to it. This is where the part about buying a copy for your mom comes in. Once she enters in all of her recipes into her copy of eChef, all of those childhood favorites are just an email away. And if you don't get your mom a copy, there are eChef Google Groups where you can find new eats.

The second feature that really sells this software for me is the ability to create a shopping list. Any given day of the week, if I'm going to cook then I have to go to the store and buy the specific ingredients I need. I may have some of the spices, but otherwise my pantry consists of some bread and Ramen. I don't plan anything.

Well with eChef, you just drag the recipes you're going to cook for the week into your "Shopping List" (think Playlist in iTunes) and eChef compiles and categorizes all of the ingredients you'll need to buy. Now you have a shopping list you can print off, and instead of wandering back and forth between the meats and the vegetables, you know everything you need to grab in each department as you go down your list. Not only that, but if you have recipes that contain the same ingredients it combines the quantities. That way you won't find yourself buying a can of beet juice only to find that ten items further down your list you need another two cans of the same thing. (You don't buy beet juice?)

As far a the downsides go, it's really more a wishlist than anything. The biggest problem I have is with the data entry portion. This is of no way a fault of the software or UI, I'm just lazy. Entering ingredients and directions takes time, and I prefer to use my time elsewhere (you know... Animating and talking to my unemployment buddy Ross on the phone). Ultimately, the benefits outweigh this, but what would be really nice is if eChef had an online database of recipes to search, or could automatically parse pages over at Food.net. Another wish list item would be to pull down an average price for grocery list items from some source online. That way I could keep within a particular budget as I made my weekly shopping list.

All in all, this product is well worth the $40 price tag if you're even mildy interested in cooking your own meals. Anytime your a reviewer's negative thoughts (if they can even be called negative) is a list of ways to plus a product as opposed to complaints about what's already there, you know you've got a good thing on your hands.

And if you can get your mom to do all the data entry for you, I'd say that's worth the price of another copy for her (think Christmas people!).

Have a good week!

Shameless Self Promotion - Wheezy's Reel

Posted by Wheezy

Hey there Hop ons. Wheezy here.

As some of you know, for the past couple of years I've been studying Computer Animation at Full Sail University in Orlando, FL. The last bit of time at school was spent working on my first Demo Reel. Essentially a demo reel is an animation portfolio containing a few short scenes that demonstrate what kind of stuff I am capable of for prospective employers. It's what I'll use to get a job - hopefully. Otherwise I'll just continue pitching in on Ross's soon-to-be award winning series of books.

I recently submitted my reel to the 2008 aniBoom Awards Animation Festival. Essentially this is an annual competition put on by the YouTube of the animation world, aniBoom.

So if you have a minute (1 minute and 20 seconds to be precise), and want to watch my efforts, I've included my reel in this very post. After watching it if you have another 10 seconds or so to kill, and want to help your friend Wheezy out, go give my video a ranking over at it's aniBoom page.

Hope you like it! Thanks for taking the time to watch it.

The competition goes through December 14th, so I imagine I'll be mentioning this again sometime within the next couple of weeks. Indulge a poor unemployed animator.

To Tweet or Not To Tweet - Weekly Twitter Roundup

Posted by Wheezy


from calendine

Why be content with mastering fake plastic instruments when you could dominate them on a Huffy?

from Veronica

Not enough calories on your Thanksgiving? Next year, try deep frying that bird. Or tomorrow. You know, whenever you've got some time.

From uglyhill

Who needs 2 hours to watch the Shawshank Redemption. Not me.

From admohr

Perhaps the Onion is more factual than you'd think.

From BrianDenham

Is this a house to avoid or to seek out? Mork and Mindy's home is visible from the internet.

Eat some more turkey. See ya next week.

A Twitter in the Rough - IR's Weekly Twitter Roundup

Posted by Wheezy

From listrophy

Dibs on the first Sno-cone stand on Mars.

From uglyhill

I don't even like Star Trek and I'm excited about this. It probably helps that J.J. Abrams is at the helm.

From justin1383

Looks like Obama is also looking to break down racial barriers in the world of Princess saving Plumbers.

from MajorLB

I'm not sure why this posting is on the Fail Blog. Seems like a great choice in a hero to me.

From swid

Luckily for America, the Patriot Act hasn't made its way to sperm banks yet.

From Malki

Long and easier to swallow if you're not watching. No, this has nothing to do with the previous link you dirty monkey. It's an impressionist on Youtube. His Gandalf is particularly good.

Have a goo week folks.

The Twitter Heard Round the World - Weekly Twitter Round Up

Posted by Wheezy

This week the Twitter-verse was dominated by political celebration, lamentation, or speculation (I could be Don King). For the most part I'll do my part to spare you of all that. And now, the Weekly Twitter Round Up.

from wesleyzero

Turns out this whole "Name the Occupation" happened back in '93. At least in the world of The Onion.

from uglyhill

Begin salivating that will continue until sometime next year. Pixar's "Up" dropped a new trailer recently.


from calendine

Personally I would add "It is what it is" to this list of Top Ten Most Annoying Phrases, discovered by Oxford researchers.

from bradley

Apparently Barney the First Dog of the White House doesn't like that reporters keep infringing on Sarah Palin's freedom of speech.

from feliciaday

Our favorite Dr. Horrible heroine spoke with the Onion A.V. club at length. One of those middle school occupational tests told me I'd be a great AV Tech. No joke.

from doublem

Another article about entertainment favorites. Sorry for all the "reading" this week.

from dwheezy

RIP Michael Crichton. I imagine the movie remake of your awesome book Timeline weighed heavily on you.

from BarackObama

Was there an vote or something on Tuesday? I thought the world felt a little bit different...

Have a good week everybody.