Going Rogue

"Going Rogue" is Going Rogue.

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The Movie Cell Phone Rule

Any character in a movie or TV show will not say, "Goodbye" at the end of a conversation on a cell phone. You say something important, they say something important, you say something, etc. and then you close the cell phone with no warning. Every character in the history of media on a cell phone telepathically knows exactly when the conversation has ended. In addition, not one has ever had any emotional sentiment toward salutations.

Jimmy Fallon Call of Duty Outtakes

Since the newest Call of Duty game is set in present day, the makers of the game invited Jimmy Fallon to act out a character and improv some topical references for inclusion in the game. In the end, I don't think his footage was used but here are the outtakes from his day of filming:

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Taste the Rainbow.

Top Ten

A somewhat historic Top Ten List the other night. The Late Show aired the first ever Top Ten List with no category. Quoth Dave, "This will make no sense, this will get no laughs."

Top Ten

10. Replace beef with Canada geese -- it's a Sullen-burger

9. "Words George W. Bush Can't Pronounce" for a hundred, Alex

8. Claimed she could see Russian dressing from her house

7. Vibrating underpants

6. Don't look now but Kate Hudson's dating the Balloon Boy's crazy dad

5. Screw Thomas Edison -- this blanket has sleeves!

4. Idiots who answer the phone, "Yello?"

3. You're not Mrs. Paul and that's no fish stick

2. Is there anything in the health care plan to help Sammy Sosa's face?

1. So desperate to get out of town you'll fly Northwest

History, and yet maybe something not so new. A few years ago they collected random Top Ten entries from random lists that weren't good enough to air and assembled them in one list as "Top Ten Leftovers" or something. I suspect this is the same thing.

That's Impossible... Even For A Computer.

We can all remember where we were when we first saw the amazingly realistic CGI on the first Star Wars movie.

In this video, the main man Larry Cuba, explains how it was all done:

The special effects for this shot, and the techniques used for pretty much every special effects shot in Star Wars, had to be invented as they went along. In case after case, people set out to create something without knowing how it can be done and then invent ways to do it. The creative process is usually interesting but the special case of "Special Effects", for me, approximates magic more than almost any other.

The creative solutions revealed in this video are surprising for two reasons:

1) How high tech the solutions were. I would have guessed that these were the days before 3D software and digital-pen-like interfaces but clearly both were available. The computers were even powerful enough and the tools were already developed to manipulate 3D images real-time which, again, I would not have guessed.

and

2) How low tech the solutions were. How do you take images from the computer and put them on film? I don't know, put a camera in front of the monitor and take a thousand stop-motion pictures of the screen, I guess.

Classic Roots Choice #10

I might have to change the title of these entries from "Classic Roots Choice" to "Obscure Roots Choice" though I'm not sure. It seems they make good decisions every night but I really only comment on the most strange and obscure. I'll think about it.

Last night, Jimmy had Troy Polamalu on the show. For those of you who don't follow the football, Troy has a Head and Shoulders Shampoo endorsement deal because he looks like this:

So for his intro music, the Roots played the jingle for "Soul Glo", the fake hair product seen in the movie "Coming To America":

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