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Welcome To NoBrainerBargains Blog
Thursday, July 3, 2008
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Jack Nicholson's Joker was a blast. Heath Ledger's Joker is as dark and anarchic a figure as Randle McMurphy in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the role that brought Nicholson his first Academy Award.  People who have seen Heath Ledger's "Dark Knight" performance compare him to the great screen villains.  1 of 2   Ledger's performance in the Batman tale "The Dark Knight" is so remarkable that next January 22, the one-year anniversary of his death, he could become just the seventh actor in Oscar history to earn a posthumous nomination. "I do think that Heath has created an iconic villain that will stand for the ages, and of course, I would love to see him get an award," said Christian Bale, who reprises his "Batman Begins" role as the tormented crime fighter. "But you know, to me, you can witness his talent, celebrate his talent within this movie. Anything else is gravy." Superhero flicks usually are not the stuff Oscar dreams are made of. Yet Ledger delivered so far beyond anyone's expectations that he could end up as the second performer to win Hollywood's top honor after his death. "He may be the first actor since Peter Finch. He may even win the damn thing," said Gary Oldman, who co-stars as noble cop Jim Gordon in "The Dark Knight," which hits theaters July 18. Finch is the only person to win posthumously, earning the best-actor prize for 1976's "Network" two months after he died. News of Ledger's death at age 28 from an accidental drug overdose broke just hours after the Oscar nominations were announced last January, darkening what normally is one of Hollywood's happiest days. The nominations next year fall on the same date because they were moved back two days from their traditional Tuesday announcement to avoid conflicting with the presidential inauguration. With nothing remotely like the maniacal Joker among his credits beforehand, Ledger had been a surprising choice to fans, some feeling he was too young, others sensing he would not live up to the campy but earnest performance Nicholson gave in 1989's "Batman." (The role earned Nicholson a Golden Globe nomination, though he did not make the Oscar cut.) As filming progressed last year, word began leaking from the set about the feverishly psychotic persona Ledger was creating. Don't MissWith a marketing campaign heavily focused on the Joker, the movie trailers that followed presented a Joker with sloppy, ominous clown makeup that looked as though it had been applied in a windstorm. The brief footage revealed a character whose cackling humor cannot conceal the malevolent soul beneath. "Whatever Heath channeled into, he's found something quite extraordinary," Oldman said. "It's arguably one of the greatest screen villains I think I've ever seen." Fans were hooked, but some were skeptical when Oscar buzz for the performance started circulating after Ledger's death. Comic-book tales and other big action flicks rarely are taken seriously by awards voters, who are willing to honor them for technical achievements but generally not for acting. Skepticism dissolved once Warner Bros. began screenings for "The Dark Knight." iReport.com: Will you see 'Dark Knight' because of Ledger? "Heath Ledger didn't so much give a performance as he disappeared completely into the role," filmmaker and lifelong comics fan Kevin Smith said on his MySpace blog after seeing "The Dark Knight." "I know I'm not the first to suggest this, but he'll likely get at least an Oscar nod (if not the win) for best supporting actor." Ledger's performance is surpassing even the sky-high expectations hardcore fans have going in. "He was better than I thought he was going to be," said Bill Ramey, founder of the fan Web site Batman-on-Film.com, who caught an advance press screening. "I think he legitimately would deserve an Oscar nomination, not just out of sympathy to his passing, but because he was just fantastic in the movie. ... It's right up there with Hannibal Lecter," which earned Anthony Hopkins an Oscar for "The Silence of the Lambs." Along with Finch, past posthumous Oscar contenders include James Dean, who was nominated for best actor twice after his death, with 1955's "East of Eden" and 1956's "Giant." The other actors nominated after their deaths were Spencer Tracy (1967's "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner"); Ralph Richardson (1984's "Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes"); Massimo Troisi (1995's "The Postman"); and Jeanne Eagels (1929's "The Letter"). The aura surrounding Ledger since his death is a sign that, like Dean, he could endure as a mythic figure of talent silenced before his time. Ledger had a best-actor nomination for 2005's "Brokeback Mountain" and was considered a gifted performer just coming into his own. That will not necessarily improve his Oscar chances. Dean had two shots after his death and lost both. "The fact that only one actor has ever won an Oscar from the grave tells us that in general at the Oscars, the feeling is when you're dead, you're dead," said Tom O'Neil, a columnist for TheEnvelope.com, an awards Web site. "Maybe the point is that the Oscars are all about hugs. Nobody wants to hug a dead guy." Oscar voters tend to hand out the trophies for heroic or sympathetic roles, so Ledger's supremely evil characterization could prove a drawback along with the action-genre stigma. Yet there are notable instances when actors playing villains made such an impression that academy members could not resist voting for them. Besides Hopkins as cannibalistic killer Lecter, bad guys who won include Fredric March in the title role of 1932's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"; F. Murray Abraham as Mozart's mortal enemy in 1984's "Amadeus"; Kathy Bates as a novelist's demented fan in 1990's "Misery"; Denzel Washington as a corrupt cop in 2001's "Training Day"; and Charlize Theron as a serial killer in 2003's "Monster." The last two years have brought Oscar wins by Forest Whitaker as brutal dictator Idi Amin in "The Last King of Scotland," Tilda Swinton as a murderously ruthless attorney in "Michael Clayton," Daniel Day-Lewis as a savage oilman in "There Will Be Blood" and Javier Bardem as a psychopathic killer in "No Country for Old Men." "When a performance as a villain is that memorable, it can be held up as being that much more special," said Chuck Walton, managing editor of online movie-ticket site Fandango.com. "Oscar voters have a lot of respect for actors willing to really let themselves go and inhabit darker roles." Warner Bros. and the filmmakers are profuse in their praise of Ledger but have been diplomatic about the Oscar talk. Awards publicity generally pads a movie's box-office and DVD receipts, and the studio has cautiously avoided any appearance of profiting from the added attention Ledger's death has brought to the film. "The Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan sidestepped the Oscar question, saying that he was simply happy that early viewers were responding to the performance the way Ledger would have liked.Labels: Heath Ledger, Joker by: NoBrainerBargains 0 Comments Links to this post  
Thursday, April 3, 2008
 
by: NoBrainerBargains 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, March 20, 2008
We thought it would be fun to show this sneak peek of what the next Elmo doll will be able to do. Clearly, this one makes the others seem, well, limiting.
by: NoBrainerBargains 0 Comments Links to this post
Monday, March 17, 2008
The chase is on. We're not talking about the number of golf tournament victories that Tiger Woods has now under his belt, tying Ben Hogan and surpassing Arnold Palmer. Nor are we talking about how many majors Tiger Woods needs to have the most by any golfer in the history of the sport or the fact that Tiger is the most dominating athlete in any sport right now.
The chase is on at the collectible level. While his autograph is skyrocketing on ebay and golf collectible websites such as Upper Deck, there is a collectible that is shrinking fast that still can reap rewards the more records Tiger breaks: Upper Deck Golf Cards. About a couple of years ago, Upper Deck announced they would no longer be making golf cards. No one else produced these cards and no one has since then. Golf cards were made from 2001 through 2005 by Upper Deck. Thanks to basic economic principles, the value of these cards have gone up. Soon after the announcement, we bought a sealed hobby box of 2001 Upper Deck SP Authentic that features Tiger Woods sequentially-numbered autographed rookie cards for $55. Today this sealed box containing 24 packs of golf cards is valued at $250. While the packs of cards we are now offering on our website are not from this hobby box, they are from 2001 and are retail packs but have the same odds as the 2001 Upper Deck Golf hobby packs. No Brainer Bargains is offering lots of 10 sealed packs, each pack containing 5 cards at only $5.99 per lot.  2001 Upper Deck Golf is the only place to find the true Tiger Woods rookie card. This card product is loaded with inserts, great autographs and shirt cards. Not to mention other rookies such as David Duval and Sergio Garcia. Here are the odds for the insert cards: Tiger's Tales 1:1 pack Labels: Product Review, Tiger Woods by: NoBrainerBargains 0 Comments Links to this post
Friday, March 14, 2008
We are having our first flash sale right now for the Griffin Tunebuds for the 1st Generation Ipod Nano. The sale price is reduced to $1.99 for a limited time.
Labels: Flash Sale by: NoBrainerBargains 0 Comments Links to this post
During graduate school, while my dad was working on his dissertation, he would store his penciled pages in a file box that he lined with asbestos and kept the box in his refrigerator. It was the best thing he could do in case there was a fire and it gave him peace of mind.
Fifty years later, we are still trying to find peace of mind when preserving what we write in a computer. We hear horror stories of computers crashing, hard drives going awry and viruses that prevent us from accessing what we consider a daily part of our lives. Since owning our first computers we are left to our own devices to figure out how and when we should back-up our computers so that "saving" becomes another part of our daily lives. We started with floppy disks, flimsy as 45 record sleeves followed by a smaller, hard-plastic version that boasted more memory capacity. This was followed by the CD that had even more storage capactiy for our dissertations and novels. But thanks to the ever-growing memory demands of today's software programs, even that 700 Megabyte disk can sometimes be inadequate if not confusing to "burn."  One thing is clear when it comes to backing up our data: the device needs to be easily accessible and almost fool-proof. And for the purpose of this blog entry, a "no-brainer." Enter the flash drive memory stick. It looks like a stick of gum but thicker and and it sometimes has a cap as if it were a pen. It connects to your computer the same way most things do nowadays, via the USB port. When you insert this stick into the port, your computer quickly identifies it as an external drive and it's just a matter of copying files you want saved and using the paste command to transfer them into this flash drive. The available flash sticks on the market have an impressive range of memory from as low as 128 megabytes all the way up to 16 gigabytes. Remarkably, you can't tell their storage capacity at first glance. They all look relatively the same in length and width whether they are less than a gigabyte or multiple gigabytes. No Brainer Bargains is offering a flash memory stick with 8 gigabytes. We think it will be awhile before this memory device will be left in your basement collecting dust, awhile before your computer tells you the stick isn't large enough in memory to save what you want backed-up and awhile before something the size of your molar goes on the market with the claim that it will save your entire hard-drive in under 4 seconds. Our memory stick is black and swivels into a silver-metal casing and is attached to a keychain for your convenience. It is compatible with Windows XP, 2000 Professional or Home Edition, Windows Me, Windows 98, and Mac OS 9 or higher. It is probably the best and easiest external memory device you can use to save your data and get into the habit of preventing data loss. It is available at No Brainer Bargains here. Labels: Product Review by: NoBrainerBargains 0 Comments Links to this post
Thursday, March 13, 2008
When you were 9 years old, on a Saturday morning you would turn on the television in your home and flip through the dial until you found a cartoon to watch. If it was 1973, you might have found this:
If you liked dogs, this would have been a wonderful show to watch, especially if you liked the most famous American canine, Lassie. When Lassie's Rescue Rangers aired, Lassie was already part of the vernicular of American culture to mean loyalty, friendship, helpfulness and a best friend for any boy or girl growing up. From 1954 to March of 1973, the television show Lassie touched viewers across generations until it was taken off the air. In 1972, the ABC network aired the Filmation movie The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie: Lassie and the Spirit of Thunder Mountain. In 1973, Lassie's Rescue Rangers followed as a spin-off from this movie. Each episode depicted the Turner family (Ben, Laura, Jackie, Susan and Ben Jr, the youngest) and Lassie saving Thunder Mountain park and its visitors with their Rescue 1 helicopter. Helping the Turner family and Lassie were the Rescue Rangers, they were a group of eight animals, including Groucho the Owl, Old Toothless the Mountain Lion, Musty the skunk, and Robbie the Raccoon. Also of great value to the Forest Force was Gene Fox, a Native American, who was Ben Jr.’s friend. Gene knew the Thunder Mountain National Park better than even most of the animals, making him a strong ally for the Turner family as they struggled to protect the environment and save lives.  While supply lasts, No Brainer Bargains is featuring more than 50 animation cels from this television show depicting a scene involving the main characters in action. Each comes with an accompanying background production page that was used in the making of the cartoon. An animation cel (short for celluloid) is a transparent sheet in which characters or objects are drawn or painted to make a cartoon. The character is hand-painted on the sheet and placed over a scene or background. Usually a painted cel is just one of thousands that are used to make a cartoon. This process was modus operandus in animation studios until computers assisted in the process starting in the 1990s. Each of the cels we have available for sale are 10.5 x 12 inches and the background page that accompanies each cel is approximately 11 x 17. Each purchase includes the background page with the cel. Each background page and cel remain joined together as they had been thirty-five years ago by scotch tape during production of the cartoon. For some of the cels that have close-ups of the character or show a character in motion, there are three cels that look like one, the finished product. These layers show how a character was created in production- one for the body, one for the character's facial outline and hair and one for the facial features. Each cel has its own certificate of authenticity in the form of a sticker that is on the cel itself. Your purchase will be shipped in a sturdy flat envelope first class.  We hope you will agree that these animation cels will make a great addition to you or a Lassie fan you know and will bring that person back, if not ephemerally, to when they were 9 years old again. Labels: Product Review by: NoBrainerBargains 0 Comments Links to this post
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