dre in the morning

Senate pushes toward passage of health bill
Jubilant Democrats are ready to push President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul past one last 60-vote hurdle to final Christmas Eve passage, and Republicans concede they’re powerless to stop it. (yahoo)

‘Legal high’ clubbing drugs banned in UK
The substances, including GBL and BZP, become Class C drugs, with a possible two-year jail sentence for possession. (bbc)

Sorry, Vegans: Brussels Sprouts Like to Live, Too
“Plants are not static or silly,” said Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin. “They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk” through chemical signals. Touch, sight, hearing, speech. “These are sensory modalities and abilities we normally think of as only being in animals,” Dr. Hilker said. (nytimes)

The Inevitable Move Of iTunes To The Cloud
Apple undoutbedly spends a lot of money now serving music and movies over iTunes, but it’s for the most part a one-time deal, where a user pays and then downloads the content. If you introduce streaming into the mix, costs will go up. But perhaps that is part of the reason behind Apple’s new massive 500,000 sqaure foot datacenter in North Carolina — which will be one of the largest in the world. (techcrunch)

The proper way to use Photoshop
30 Fotografias Manipuladas Geniais! (dementia)

PARALLAX VIEW: The Incredible Montage
A DVD debut of a stunning piece of cinema. (dvdtalk)

Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler back in rehab
Tyler, 61, said in a statement that he was receiving treatment at an undisclosed facility for pain management and an addiction to prescription painkillers resulting from 10 years of performance injuries. (newsdaily)

Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up
The reason we’re so resistant to anomalous information — the real reason researchers automatically assume that every unexpected result is a stupid mistake — is rooted in the way the human brain works. Over the past few decades, psychologists have dismantled the myth of objectivity. The fact is, we carefully edit our reality, searching for evidence that confirms what we already believe. Although we pretend we’re empiricists — our views dictated by nothing but the facts — we’re actually blinkered, especially when it comes to information that contradicts our theories. The problem with science, then, isn’t that most experiments fail — it’s that most failures are ignored. (wired)

The Conflicted Existence of a Female Porn Writer
Lynsey G. has taken odd writing jobs where she could get them for a few years now, and one day woke up to realize that they were all about sex. (mcsweeneys)

What The Insides Of A Typical R2 Unit Looks Like
Om nom nom nom. (epicwinftw)

If you’re like me, you’ve seen every film on the IMDB Top 250. This is a problem when you want to watch a good movie while scarfing down a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, and the current box office releases totally suck.

With this in mind, I recently googled “best obscure movies” and every permutation of that phrase I could think of, in hopes of finding something new (and good) to watch. I made a list. I watched them. I ate Cap’n Crunch. Here’s my top ten, in no particular order:

Audition This film, directed by the infamous Takashi Miike, makes everyone’s “best obscure” list. It’s a cute little love story with a horrific twist. It’s Miike’s best, and he’s done a lot of good movies (though I have to say, I was disappointed with Sukiyaki Western Django, Quentin Tarantino’s involvement notwithstanding). Based on the Ryu Murakami novel of the same name. The ending is hard to watch. Even Rob Zombie said it made him uncomfortable. That’s a hell of a recommendation right there, as far as I’m concerned.

The Salton Sea Maybe you saw this one when it came out. I didn’t. Val Kilmer plays a meth addict/nice guy/sax player. But not really. He’s just infiltrating the drug scene to find the people who murdered his wife. Vincent D’Onofrio steals the movie playing a nose-less redneck drug dealer. He’s so good in this, I didn’t even recognize him at first. Maybe it’s because he didn’t have a nose.

Primer This one got a lot of attention when it was released due to it’s incredible indie-film cred. The director (Shane Carruth) made the movie on a budget of $7000 and did everything himself. And it’s good. Really good. And complicated. Really complicated. A time-travel yarn featuring garage-entrepreneur engineers who don’t dumb-down the conversation. Film critic Mike D’Angelo said that “anybody who claims [to] fully understand what’s going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar.” I’ve watched it twice, and I’ve still got questions. Like, how did he make a movie this good for only $7000?

Immortel This is like Final Fantasy meets The Fifth Element, without any self-conscious Chris Tucker comic relief. A combination of live-action and CG actors do the whole “performing against a blue screen so we can have really nice backgrounds” schtick. Blue-haired girl is the only woman on the planet who can conceive a child when impregnated by Egyptian god Horus, who needs a human puppet to act as intermediary. Did I mention Horus only has seven days to live, as he is being judged by Anubis and Bastet in a huge pyramid floating over Manhattan? Did I mention the meat puppet Horus chooses is a renegade philosophical revolutionary/political prisoner who’s been incarcerated in a deep-freeze for the last thirty years? Did I mention this film is based on a French graphic novel and directed by the novel’s French creator, Enki Bilal? Did I mention it’s in English? Why aren’t you watching it right now?

Swimming Pool Seemingly dowdy English mystery novelist borrows keys to her literary agents summer home in Provence. Tensions rise when pool is dirty and agent’s illegitimate French daughter shows up and has lots of fun in pool, anyway. Some guy dies near pool. Is it real? Is it only a story cooked up in the writers imagination? Heck if I know but it’s a lot of fun watching Charlotte Rampling eat yogurt and pretend to be “reserved.” Plus it’s got that French blonde who played Tinkerbell in the best film-adaptation of Peter Pan, ever. I give it 5 out of 5 baguettes.

Cypher A Lucy Liu movie you’ve never seen? C’mon, we can’t have that. Stylish techno-thriller with a massive dose of Phillip K. Dick: Who the hell am I and why do people keep fucking with my memory? Nebbish becomes James Bondian super-spy. Several patented Lucy Liu isn’t-she-the-hottest-when-she’s-not-conveying-emotion shots. Sailboat. Close-up of Lucy Liu freckles. I’m in.

Hard Eight Cool old guys are cool. Especially when they know the ins and outs of gambling. Sydney (Philip Baker Hall), a quietly authoritative tough-guy becomes mentor to John (John C. Reilly), a Forrest-Gumpian loser. Gwyneth Paltrow is a hooker. Sam Jackson is himself. Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson before he got way famous.

New Rose Hotel Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento in a movie based on a William Gibson short story directed by Abel Ferrara. That’s it. I really shouldn’t have to tell you more than that. Yeah, it’s a little slow, and no, it doesn’t pay off in quite the same way that King of New York did, but so what? Ferrara nails the dystopian-angst and it’s got Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento in it!

Choke Remember Fight Club? Yeah, that was good, wasn’t it? This was written by the same guy. The one with the last name no one can pronounce. Chuck Palahniuk. Oh, it’s got some darkness to it, but it’s still pretty funny. Sam Rockwell is in it. So is Angelica Huston. Interesting tidbit: It was directed by the actor who portrayed the quiet Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. in Ironman. I think his name is Clark Gregg.

Irreversible OMFG. I can’t watch this. Seriously, I have to turn it off halfway through. Fortunately, the story is presented in reverse, so I know what happens: Boyfriend’s girlfriend is raped and beaten almost to death, and he and another guy track down the guy who did it. Brutal, visceral filmmaking guaranteed to evoke severe emotional response. Maybe you can make it all the way to the beginning. Good luck.

Cop-out
Okay, maybe you’ve seen some of these. But you know how these Top Ten lists work. Anyway, these are just the ones I’ve found recently. I’ve been looking for obscure movies since, well, forever. Got some recommendations? Lemme know, Or try and stump me.