NiallOK’s Blog

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“The Voice” has been silenced. Don LaFontaine died on Monday from “complications from pneumothorax, a collapsed lung that causes air to build in the pleural cavity” (youch!).

Don’s name is known by pretty much everyone in the media business - be they presenters, producers voice-over artists, whatever - he’s done 30+ years of voice-over work in the entertainment industry and has been the official voice of Paramount Pictures - one of the most recognisable voices in the business, along with literally thousands of trailers and ads - and he was best known, probably, for his trademark baritone intro “In a world…”

Still don’t know who he is? Watch this:

and then this (ABC News special report)…

R.I.P. Don.

Here’s my ‘attempt’ at a short tribute (including “In a world…”, “One man…”, and “Now!…”):

*ahem*

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I find myself in the all too familiar territory of agreeing entirely with something Twenty Major has said… the Irish blogging scene does feel a little dead at the moment. It’s like we’re in the middle of a lull. A sort of blogging recession, if you will.

Mind you, it’s not like I’m doing much to combat that as my own blog has gone a bit quiet of late… I guess I’ve just not had much to say, really… must work on that. Especially if I’m going to be in with a shout at the 2009 Blog Awards (ha!), which are being held in Cork.

Here’s what Tommy Tiernan thinks of the Cork accent, by the way:

So… um… what’s happening with me ?…

Well, I scored a few goals tonight,- real ones,- playing football down in our local sports & leisure club, before coming home and being beaten 10 - 4 in FIFA ‘08 on the PS3 by my brother. He was Argentina, I was Liverpool (with newly added Robbie Keane ).

Saw The Dark Knight on Saturday in the VIP cinema in “movies @ Swords” and there’s very little I can say about it that hasn’t already been said. It. Was. Awesome.

Not much else going on with me… how are you?

A friend of mine named Ken from Galway (one of planet Earth’s better cities to hail from, in all fairness!) is a massive movie fan.

His favourite types of movie would seem to mostly emanate from the far east - Japan or Korea - “world cinema” (- Seven Samurai and Yojimbo are “must see”s, apparently) - or basically foreign or eclecic/eccentric movies which don’t fit into the common view of “popular culture” - such as Animé -… one example being the apparent masterpiece, Spirited Away.

He’s a big fan of David Lynch and has a particularly special place in his heart of hearts for macabre or gory horror films or thrillers, but the main things which drive him when choosing and assessing a movie are intelligent writing and good acting. So he wouldn’t be averse to watching big summer blockbusters - in particular superhero movies (as long as they do the original comic book justice, of course), while at the same time would admit to thoroughly appreciating diverse and not-so-butch movies such as the likes of My Fair Lady and Amélie and would personally go against god-knows-how-many Top 100 lists which the put forward the thought that The Godfather (which I’m not a fan of, personally, - he is!) was the greatest movie ever made by saying there’s “no freakin’ way [he] could ever pick a greatest movie ever” (even if someone had a gun to his head demanding he do so).

All that said, there’s no genre of movie he won’t watch and be subjective about when giving his opinion on, whether it be entirely his cup of tea or not. Apart, perhaps, from the likes of Dirty Dancing… (he’s not a fan!)

All this makes for a bloody good movie reviewer and, since December ‘07, a bloody good movie web site creator. He’s responsible for the increasingly popular KarlHungus.com (named after a character from The Big Lebowski) - a site which has been featured recently on the front page of the Internet Movie Database and which, in my roundabout way I’m finally getting around to highly recommending. It’s an excellent movie review site - a great source of info on movies, both upcoming and classic, the home of some brilliant interviews (with the likes of Uwe Boll and Robert Kurtzman) - and it’s free to marry my sister any day.

Two thumbs up!

Now this looks like FUN! … can’t wait

Feel that shiver run down your spine when the music kicked in?

Shaun of the Dead was on last night on ITV and during it, one of the characters (I forget which one, I was on the Guinness) posed the theory that “Dogs can not look up”…

(… oh, I remember now, it was Ed who said they can’t - Shaun says they can… see, in this video here:)

Well this, of course, sparked off a bit of debate between myself and the missus last night and again this morning, where we used our dog (her name is ‘Sasha’, nickname ‘Bonzo’ - she’s pictured here, guarding the dishwasher before it was installed) in experiments and I came to the conclusion that:

… at least that’s my theory anyway - and I’ve added it to the answer on WikiAnswers.

I had to go and google it though and it seems we’re far from the only ones to have the debate. There’s been a flurry of activity on this single blog post about the subject for nearly four years now, and a guy on this thread on the Spaced-Out.org forum seems to have posted proof in the form of a photo of a dog actually looking up (although my theory still stands - the dog isn’t looking STRAIGHT up ).

I’m sure there are other animals that cause such debate … the humble pig, for example comes under scrutiny here.

Jeez,… you’d think I’d have something better to talk/blog about or debate on my day off!