The 31st Starz Denver Film Festival is in full swing and, this year, I’ve had a very inside look at all the behind-the-scenes action. With my new job at the Denver Film Society, I’ve been able to watch this year’s fest grow from a tiny seed into a gigantic tree of cinematic enjoyment.

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While I’m partial to crediting Barack Obama for every good change that’s happened in my life the past few days, this one comes from the peeps at Netflix. Yes, Mac users are now free from the tyranny of having to watch movies with Windows virtualization software.

Today, I received an email in my inbox that broke some of the best news I’ve heard in–well, in a couple of days.

So naturally, I fired up my new MacBook Pro (yes, I have the latest and greatest MacBook Pro, thanks to a very generous donation from my grandma) and decided to try it out. Not only did the movie load in a few short seconds, but the quality was amazing!

With the crazy economy, I had to downgrade my Netflix service to a lower plan to save a few bucks. Now I no longer feel additionally ripped off that I pay the same amount as Windows users, but can’t utilize all the services.

Anyway, this was huge news for me since I love Netflix, but I love my Mac even more.

I could not be more thrilled!

Obama will be president!

Enough said.

Zack and Miri seems to follow the recipe for a great comedy. It takes one part View Askew cynical humor, one part Seth Rogen, a sprinkle of familiar faces from the Judd Apatow universe, and a little bit of romantic comedy sweetness, all garnished with a dash of full-frontal Jason Mewes, to make something that achieves what Clerks II only wished it could.

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Trashwire friend and YourHub main man Eric Lubbers has some pretty rad pics and video of the Denver Obama rally on his blog at brofax.com. You should totally check them out!

Check out Eric’s cool super slow mo video here:

Slo Mo Obama from Eric J. Lubbers on Vimeo.

Rodney King and Gary Busey walk into a bar… Actually, they don’t walk into a bar because they’re both patients on VH1’s Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew.

Yes, this new season brings us another cadre of dysfunctional celebrities trying to get sober, or rather, to get more screen time. The patient list includes Busey, King, model/actress Amber Smith, former American Idol contestant Nicki McKibbin, celeb spawn Sean Stewart, former hood ornament Tawny Kitaen, drummer Steven Adler and even an encore performance from everyone’s favorite bumbling train wreck, Jeff Conaway….

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The other day, I wrote this article for Trashwire:

Let me begin this post by loudly proclaiming my total admiration for Tina Fey. Simply put, she is my heroine-and by that I mean lady hero, not that I want to inject her and listen to jazz. (Watch the “Rosemary’s Baby” episode of 30 Rock if you didn’t catch that reference.)

All spotlights seem to be focused squarely on Fey every weekend as America fervently tunes in to see her portray Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. But is this good for the Obama/Biden campaign, or simply adding more fuel to the Palin mania sweeping the nation?

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Now it seems that SNL has completely sold its soul and given up all integrity to have that horrible woman on the show.

Why do they feel the need to suck GOP dick in a time like this? With less than a month til the election, I am completely horrified and shocked that they would stoop to this low and just let her take over an otherwise funny show.

I guess it proves that people will do anything for ratings, even give unwarranted air time to a psycho right wing moron who deserves to be president about as much as a convicted pedophile deserves it. 

At least Tina Fey didn’t outwardly participate in this pandering. In fact, she didn’t speak a single word to Palin during the intro.

Still, it’s disgusting, disgraceful, and just not funny!

I turned off the show at Palin’s second appearance during Weekend Update because I just couldn’t take anymore. I was so disgusted when she was bobbing her head to the little rap because it seemed like such a clear ploy to try to get black votes–and all this coming from a woman who has been part of one of the most racist campaigns since the 1800s!

I loved Amy Poehler’s pregnant western bar sketch (and who didn’t like the MacGruber sketches?!) but I literally felt like I was going to throw up when I heard Poehler doing the rap. I just felt bad for her, like she had been forced into making light of the situation and paling around with someone whose Vice Presidency (and, god forbid, Presidency) could be a direct cause for the end of the world.

They should all be ashamed of themselves! I honestly don’t know if I will every be able to watch SNL again, regardless of appearances from Tina Fey. I’m taking the season pass off my Tivo and I’m breaking up with SNL. 

And because everyone in the world is talking about these sketches (and because of my complete and total admiration of Tina Fey) here’s Tina Fey as Sarah Palin from last week’s SNL:

In this episode, Tina was back and so was Chris Parnell. Is this proof that the old cast was better than the current one? When Amy leaves, Wiig and Sudeikis will be the only really rad peeps on the show (besides Samberg, or course, though he’s mostly just in shorts and not in very many sketches these days) and Seth Meyers will have to hold down Weekend Update all by his lonesome.

I don’t know why I love this so much, but I do.

“One time, there was a break dancing contest, and I was a judge.”

Danny McBride is like the bacon on a cheeseburger. Without it, the burger is still good, but there’s just something even more delicious when you slap a couple pieces of bacon on top. Like the extra flavor from the bacon, McBride brings that extra level of funny to everything he touches.

I first took notice of McBride way back in Hot Rod, the critically panned comedy starring the guys from The Lonely Island about a guy with a moped who longs to be a stuntman. McBride played Rico, a crass member of Rod’s crew, and instantly captured my attention with his overly serious and incredibly hilarious delivery.

He was also one of the main reasons I went to see Tropic Thunder, the Ben Stiller/Jack Black/Robert Downey Jr. action comedy about a group of actors who find themselves in the midst of actual warfare. Though I wanted to see the film anyway, I was over the edge when I heard that McBride played a pyro crew guy opposite Nick Nolte. Again, I wasn’t surprised when McBride stole all his scenes, though I was a little disappointed that he wasn’t in more of the film.

McBride solidified his place as my favorite comedy cheeseburger garnish with his stellar turn in Pineapple Express. Like the cheeseburger, the film was excellent to begin with, but every scene with McBride as Red had me laughing so hard I couldn’t catch my breath.

Naturally, I ran home ad added The Foot Fist Way to my Nexflix queue, anxiously awaiting the DVD’s release. Yesterday, I finally received it and popped it in the DVD player. [...]

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These might be the greatest scenes from the greatest episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia of all time. I am in love with this show!

The tag line for the star-studded Coen Brothers film ‘Burn After Reading’ is “intelligence is relative”. Certainly that statement is very fitting for this smart film about stupid people.

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View the red band trailer:

Anyone who watches The Soup knows about the “Spaghetti Cat” incident. About a week ago The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet did a story about binge drinking when they suddenly cut to this:

Well it seems that the strange picture was actually a “bleep photo” used as a cut-to when someone says something that’s deemed inappropriate for tv. A spokesperson for Fox told Media Bistro that viewers could expect a lot more of these bizarre “bleep photos” in the future on broadcast tv.

Media Bistro’s reply:

That isn’t distracting. That isn’t trivializing for a news show. They’re literally going to have dancing monkeys in lieu of a curse word - a cross word - a word?! The future just got a lot dimmer…and suddenly it looks a lot like LOLcats.

I couldn’t agree more. I don’t see how random cuts to strange images are any better than an actual bleep, a cut to black, or just letting the precious virgin ears of America hear a dirty word! I can only hope that it was a mistake and now this story they’ve given is their way of covering up their glitch.

Full clips from The Soup after the jump…
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Last night was the very last Red Rocks event of the year, Cinemocracy Rocks!. Like our regular Film on the Rocks programs on steroids, this time we had way musical acts (including The Apples in Stereo, Murs, Jill Sobule and more) and screened Election starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick.

Of course, the focal point of the evening had to be the top 10 short films (and three special selections) from the Cinemocracy short film competition. In this online contest, people uploaded videos about what democracy means to them. Then the public voted on their favorites and the winners screened at Red Rocks.

I have to give a shout out to my friend Isha Aran who directed “Democracy: A Marriage” and to Ryan Charmatz who created “The Short End of the Spaghetti” one of my all time favorite animated shorts.

I was upstairs in the Visitor’s Center for most of the night running the small press conference/filmmaker interviews. You can see footage from IFC News about it at IFC.com.

For now, though, here’s some pics….

[Show as slideshow]

“Look, Zigmond! Look at the sky! The planets are on fire! It is just as you prophecized! The planets of our solar system incinerating, like flaming globes, Zigmond! Like flaming globes!”