I’m trying not to get too excited about this but it looks like the film Hot Tub Time Machine is shaping up to be THE FINEST FILM EVER MADE.

With reviews like “Hot Tub is a balls-to-the-wall Hard-R comedy complete with tasteless humor, nudity and foul language” (cinemaobsession.com), “Hot Tub Time Machine…succeeds beyond any expectations suggested by the title” (Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) and an “idiotic movie to go with its willfully idiotic title” (Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune) it’s shaping up to be the film your girlfriend moans most about being dragged to see!

Check out the trailer below or, if you’re not in work, the cruder red-band version below that.

In sci-fi films the s**t usually hits the fans around about the time that the computer or robot becomes ’self aware’. Well photoshop has become almost self aware except this new tool is called ‘content aware’.

This video from Adobe shows how the new tool goes beyond the usual retouching tools to actually reimaginging and creating imagery in your picture where there wasn’t any before.

The first photo example shows how handy this tool will be, but skip along to towards the end and the last two examples. It’s gets a bit creepy for me.

I’m sure you remember the wonderful rendition of Afternoon Delight by Ron Burgundy and the rest of KVWN-TV’s Channel 4 News Team from Anchorman…

So anyway there I was, last night, at the Apollo Sessions in The Bleeding Horse on Camden Street in Dublin, shooting footage of singer-songwriter Pete Fagan playing some of his new work. When he finished, I packed up my cameras, stuck them in the car, parked up and headed back to the pub for a drink.

Then, towards the end, an unassuming American was invited on stage. It turned out to be a Mr Bill Danoff who wrote the well known Country Roads (seen here performing it with John Denver) and the even better known Afternoon Delight! he starts off the song explaining how it ended up in Anchorman (Will Ferrell and the guys were waiting around on set and started singing) and all I had on me at this stage was my iPhone…

Still, I wasn’t expecting that from a Sunday night in Dublin. By the way, that’s not my voice you hear singing right next to the phone!

The song really reminds though me of this scene from one of the best TV shows ever made Arrested Development!

It’s a universal remote control that also opens beers. Keep it simple, stupid.

(Via Gizmodo and Myclicker)

Let’s set the scene; The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is the third movie in the billion dollar grossing series of films based on the Twilight novels and isn’t due for release until June of this year.

Meanwhile, The Eclipse is an Irish film directed by Conor McPherson and shot in Cobh, Co. Cork. It gets a limited U.S. later this month.

Now guess which one of these films the Irish broadcaster R.T.E. showed on St Patrick’s night and guess which one of these films R.T.E’s graphics department thought they were showing on St Patrick’s night…

**SHAMROCK SHORTAGE SOLVED.**

In the meantime, Ireland’s harsh winter has left the country looking like 40 shades of brown and, according to the U.S. media, a lack of shamrocks. However, news comedian and Irish man Stephen Colbert has found a substitute. A five leafed, mind altering substitute…

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Viddler video.

**AND FINALLY…**

Well it’s not really St Patrick’s Day related, but I think someone wasn’t at all happy to be stuck in work, manning the newsdesk at R.T.E’s website that day. Click below for a snap of a story the site published and it’s accompanying graphic:

Couldn’t the person publishing the story have gotten some stock pictures of chickens on a farm or something? Chickens are strange looking enough but chop their heads off and strip them naked…well all I can think of is this:

Yes it’s St Patrick’s Day again, the one day of the year that the western world aligns itself with the Irish so it has an excuse to go on the beer. It’s Paddy’s Day at Cheers and hostilities between Sam Malone’s bar and Gary’s Old Town Tavern have kicked off again to see which bar makes the most profit that night. Sam hopes the Irish band he has hired to play rebel songs will kick start the craic…

EVERYBODY! “Limey scum, limey scum, I toss a bomb and still they come…”

The National Library of Ireland yesterday launched their refreshed, online archive of pictures. Now available to search and view are 34,000 pictures of Ireland and its people from 1860 to 1954. You can start here and have a glance back at just how miserable we all looked…

First up, now one was seriously hurt during this incident, so sit back and enjoy the noisy destruction! A crane collapses at a coal mine in Queensland, Australia, to a magnificent sound. This includes the Aussies attempt at problem solving by saying ‘Aw Fuck’ a few times and then the sound of the start of AC/DC’s Hells Bells. Oh I only hope the end comes with this soundtrack!

(via liveleak)

Here’s a very funny but telling clip from The Daily Show last week about the web site Chatroulette. As Jon Stewart explains, the site allows you to randomly meet strangers via your webcam, but it has also led to loads of people getting their kit off. It’s like flashing without having to got out in the cold with only a rain coat on. But it’s the old media’s reaction to this website and it’s ‘dark side’ (as a journalist calls it) that Jon lampoons so will. Here’s what’s interesting about this clip:

• It saddening how most of the old media treats the new media like it’s both a threat and a passing fad. They seem kerfuffled by all the facebooks and twitters, which most regular internet users have taken to no problem, and it undermines the authoritative air that is the cornerstone of broadcast journalism. In the clip below you can hear the news anchors say things ‘look at this thing’ and ‘the latest craze’. Even the way Harry Smith pronounces the internet like ‘The Inter-Net’, as if it’s the crazy new toy that the kids are crying out for. I’ve seen many times before how the civil-service journalists of Ireland’s national broadcaster, R.T.E., seem so out of their depth on everyday lifestyle issues, it’s hard to watch.

• There’s the ‘almightier than thou’ attitude that the journalists adopt to the website’s ‘dark side’, yet they give it acres of coverage. It’s like the tabloid tactic when raunchy pictures are found of some TV presenter or upstanding citizen and they go ‘look at these disgusting pictures. You can see for yourself how disgusting these pictures are in our full colour, 2 page pullout featuring them’.

• But on the plus side, the clip shows the journalists that are willing to have a laugh with the personas that they and their colleagues put across, something that The Daily Show and it’s correspondents have done for some time.

• Plus there’s Jon Stewart at his funniest, I always get a laugh out of someone looking down a fish-eye lens!

I’d forgotten about this little video. Back when The Stylebitches first appeared (on something called bebo, ahem) the then anonymous and mysterious ‘B’ and ‘L’ decided to sit down with the gormless reporter ‘Jack Clancy’ (me doing a little combination of Pat Kenny and Stephen Colbert).

Shot about 5 years ago, it was done without a script but with a few pointers and guidelines. Blanaid and Laura are brilliant, sharp, witty, catty, it deserves a follow-up I think!