You may have noticed on Tuesday I ran a little competition giving away from DVDs from Warner Bros. Well, the response was amazing, with literally hundreds of entries over two days, but it is now time to announce the winners! As I said in my previous post, there are two winners, one pack of movies on Blu-Ray and one on DVD, and so without further ado, I present the winners:
Blu-Ray
The first winner is Paul Jenkins, otherwise known as @Aeoth on Twitter. Want to know why he won? Check out some of his fantastic entries below!
This one got a little cut off, but is still brilliant:
DVD
Now, the second winner may be recognisable to some of you - he in fact was also one of the winners of the last competition I ran. I used an independent panel to help me chose the winners of this one though, consisting of a coder, a comedian and a poet, and they all agreed that the winner of the DVD pack could no one other than Mick Attard, better known as @MetalHeadMick on Twitter.
Notable Mentions
As with any competition, there are lots of runners up. Below is collection of some of my favourites. I wish I had more prizes to give away, you all did great, but feel free to tell me I owe you a beer next time we meet! In alphabetical order:
Once again, thank you to everyone who entered! Hope we can do this all again some time soon, and be sure to sound off in the comments below to complement the winners, runners up etc
Well, it’s now the Monday after I cast my plea for help to the social media winds. You can read all about it in the previous post, and I’m going to writing here with the assumption that you know what I asked for, and how people responded. What I want to cover here is a look back at what I consider the key points.
Firstly, thank you Telstra. A lot of people I’ve spoken to since the blog post went up and the storm of crazy happened haven’t realized that they responded in almost under an hour. The hardware was mailed that afternoon, arrived the next day and worked perfectly. They even included a reply paid envelope for ease of return. There were a number of people at Telstra who helped, not simply limited to Kristen Boschma and the @Telstra team, but to all of you: thank you.
However, there were some further developments: firstly the funeral was pushed forward from Saturday and is actually going ahead today; secondly, during this whole process we were obviously also talking to the hospital and in the end they came through, putting together a team, ambulance, donating oxygen and equipment needed for Doug to actually attend the funeral.
While this does negate the need for the tech, obviously I’m just happy for the best case scenario to be achieved. Regardless of if the NextG cards from Telstra are used, they still demonstrate a fantastic gesture. The goal was to get Doug as involved in the funeral as possible, so I think this is definitely a win.
Some other important notes:
Telstra wasn’t of course the first person to say that they could help, nor were they even the first to get me on the phone. That award goes to Maralyn Kastelfrom The Detail Devils. Maralyn immediately contacted some of her clients in Orange and started trying to help co-ordinate if any of them could help out with equipement and support. Thank you Maralyn, you’re good people
While some of you may have seen this story get a write up on Mumbrella and on Trib’s blog, it also permeated the mainstream press. This resulted in two interesting outcomes. One, a paper that wanted photos and approached the situation with the sensitivity of a brick to the head. The other is a bit stranger: reportedly the ABC contacted the hospital directly to offer to help with the hook up, having “seen something on Twitter.” This is coming to me second hand, and to be honest the hospital staff were, naturally, just thoroughly confused. Certainly nobody from the ABC contacted me, but
This brings me to my next point, how to handle this: I think Telstra, and specifically their social media crew, have demonstrated an extremely high level of competence for how to handle delicate situations like this. The paper mentioned above? Terrible. They swanned in, clearly ignored the reality of the story, and topped it all off by wanting to invade the privacy of the family during a horrible time for nothing but personal gain. Had the story been, like the Mumbrella article, about the response, fine, happy to talk – but as I actually mentioned in the first post, I’m not offering sponsorship or media rights to a funeral. The ABC I can’t really comment on other than to say: next time, contact the person, in this case me, who you heard from first, don’t complicate the issue.
Some people have also raised the question of whether this would be as successful if I didn’t have a large number of people following me on Twitter. It’s the same question that was raised after @OtherAndrew’s story earlier this year regarding gaining a flight to New Zealand after missing his plane due to surgery. While I am stoked about the response, and don’t think it reflects on Telstra’s or anyone else participation, the possibility of a two tier system based on how loud your voice is, bothers me. That is a whole blog post in itself though, and I’ll be putting up my thoughts on this in the next week.
Once again, thank you to everyone who helped by blogging, tweeting, commenting and sharing the word. You guys were great, and it’s certainly been a wild ride. Feel free to leave a comment or your thoughts on how this all happened below. Did I do the right thing? Did Telstra? What are the ramifications of stories like this?
For the record, simply to make it easier, we removed anyone who didn’t use both hashtags and the link - even with that we still had hundreds of tweets to troll through, so this was actually just a way to make it easier for myself and the Board of Shadowy (but also lazy) Figures who I recruited to help judge.
So, the winners are:
The Blu Ray Pack
The winner is @Glebe2037! There were lots of fantastic entries, and this was really hard to pick, but we all agreed that the fact @Glebe2037 hit not one but multiple Home Run funnies meant he deserved to take top place. Here are some of our favourites:
Lawrence of a Labia (starring Quagmire) #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #BR http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (seen here)
Apocalypse Cow starring Meg Griffin #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #BR http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (seen here)
The Quag the Crip His Neighbour & Danny Glover #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #BR http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (seen here)
There were many honourable mentions though, and I will be happy to buy a beer for any of the following people. Congratulations guys, you rock!
STEW-E, in which he cleans up Earth, then follows a girl baby off in to outer space. #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #BR http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (by @StewartHeys, seen here)
12.874752kilometer (a metric adaption of 8mile starring stewie as “rabbit”) #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #BR http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (by @Bigclick_Dean, seen here)
The Passion of the Chris #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #BR http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (by @Leslie_Nassar, seen here)
The DVD Pack
For the second pack there was a similar problem with the entries for the DVD pack - there were too many good entries, which made choosing a winner very difficult. DAMN YOU ALL! In the end though, the winner was someone who submitted a number of winning entries: @MetalheadMick.
“An Offer Peter Didn’t Really Care For” (The Godfather) http://bit.ly/6El5QJ #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #DVD (seen here)
“Almost too old for this shit” (Lethal Weapon) #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #DVD http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (seen here)
Peter Griffin’s: The Life of Brian #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #DVD http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (seen here)
Honourable mentions in the DVD section, all of whom can also claim I owe them a drink, included these:
Quahog Dogs staring Stewie as Mr Blonde and Peter as “Nice Guy” Eddie #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #DVD http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (by @JoelyMac, seen here)
25 (Remake of 24 starring the mathematically challenged Chris) #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #DVD http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (by @NickCorridon, seen here)
Stewie Griffin’s Day Off - Stewie calls in sick to pre-school, and explores Quahog with Brian #FamilyGuyRemakeComp #DVD http://bit.ly/6El5QJ (by @Lukeii, seen here)
So congratulations @Glebe2037 and @MetalheadMick - your respective prize packs, a picture of which can be seen below, will be on there way to you soon! And thanks everyone who entered
So, some of you may have read my review of Something, Something, Something, Dark Side, the second installment in the Family Guy remakes Star Wars saga. You can read what I thought of the film here (spoiler: I thought it was pretty wicked kick flippin’) but I also mentioned in that post I’d have prizes to give away.
That day has come.
Thanks to the good people at FOX (and the bad people I guess, I mean, they seemed nice enough, but I wouldn’t go on oath that they don’t secretly kick kittens) I have two, count them TWO, big packs of merchandise to share with you Internet people. The prize packs look like this:
That’s a pic of the Blu Ray pack, but all up I have the following to give away:
1 x Blu-Ray Box Set RRP $75.00
1 x Limited Edition Box Set RRP $70.00
The DVD version looks exactly the same. How do you win one of these? Well, it’s simple:
With Family Guy already working on a remake of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, to be titled We Have A Bad Feeling About This, you simply have to post on Twitter what series/movie/novel/interpretive dance you would like to see get the Family Guy treatment next. This could take the form of simply suggesting a title, to adding a spin to it yourself: for example, Beverly Hills Cop becomes “Quahog Hills Cop starring Cleveland.”
Me, and a panel of judges, will chose the best entries by the end of the 23rd December so get cracking! It couldn’t be easier to enter so have a go, tell your friends and have fun
We sit. Twenty or so people hushed in a small, low lit room. We’ve been lured here with promises of entertainment, of prizes, but for now we wait. Someone nervously shifts a few aisles down. Then, like a bolt of lightening, it occurs to me:
The Star Wars universe is one COMPLETELY devoid of OH&S.
This thought is probably inspired by the DVD menu screen projected in front of me showing the cast of Family Guy dressed as the cast of Star Wars and standing on a cartoon rendition of a Bespin landing platform, complete with no handrails. This is why we’re here - the special preview screening of Something, Something, Something, Dark Side, the second installment in the Family Guy remakes Star Wars saga.
I’m serious about the OH&S thing - occupational health and safety is no laughing matter, and under the Republic, the Empire or the New Republic, this is a universe that seemingly yearns for large, governmental bodies. Surely there is someone, somewhere, saying “maybe we should put a railing there, don’t people keep falling off things all the time in this Universe?”
This actually leads me nicely to talking about the film itself. To get an idea of the humour and love of the source material, one need look no further than R2D2, played by Cleveland, rolling through the base on Hoth: “I like how you’ve just nailed these electrical cables to the ice. I’m sure that’s safe.”
If you saw the first Family Guy effort in this series, Blue Harvest, then you really should know what to expect, although over all I think this is actually the superior film, as is, of course, Empire itself (sound off in the comments if you prefer New Hope or Jedi, with reasons. If you like the prequels best don’t comment just return to your cell and wait for the next round of meds…)
Don’t take it from me though, why not watch the trailer?
I will say this: the film is actually funnier than the trailer makes out. I’m serious. I know, I was asked along to the premier which might colour my judgment - I was also at the Sydney premier of Watchmen, and I wasn’t that kind then. When I say Something, Something, Something, Dark Side is a lot of fun it’s because I mean it.
Sure, it’s Family Guy, so you get those long, repetitive jokes occasionally. Yes, some of the jokes weren’t as funny as they obviously thought they were. No, it’s not a masterpiece. What it is though is a really fun take on a beloved film series, and something which breathes new life into Star Wars in many ways. I’ve seen those films so many times that I know them almost by heart - what this, and the Robot Chicken Star Wars specials, do is let me remember how much I love Star Wars while seeing it in a new light.
I did like the FOX representative at the beginning who talked about how FOX is lucky enough to have Family Guy, which reminds me of a father who has twice tried to kill his kids saying he’s so lucky to have them when they grow up to be doctors or lawyers. Family Guy of course picks up on this as well, dedicating a large part of their opening Star Wars crawl to teasing the parent company.
It’s irreverent, hilarious and, at times, just plain wrong - but most importantly, it’s Star Wars. If you like Star Wars, see it. If you like Family Guy, see it. If you like Mint Choc Chip ice cream, go buy yourself some. This is pretty much the extent of my advice on life.
The film drops late this month on DVD and, in what is meant to be a big deal, Blu-Ray (my cries for a Laser Disc edition, however, went unheaded). I’m unsure as to whether it will be shown on U.S. television, but my gut says that regardless of that it will be awhile before we see it on Aussie TV, if at all. So, if you want to see it, buy it, OR…
Tune into this blog, and my Twitter, later this month where I’ll be giving away two big prize packs including a copy of the film and lots of other goodies!!
I know you have questions: What’s in the prize packs? How do you win these prize packs? Is Warlach wearing pants as he writes this review? Unfortunately, just like the film that Something, Something, Something, Dark Side is based on, I must leave you with more questions than answers…
In Conclusion:
Something, Something, Something, Dark Side is a pretty funny film and one that, if you’re its target audience, is definitely worth the time to see. I’d say don’t bother seeing it if you haven’t seen Star Wars, but I’d also say don’t go sky diving without a parachute - some things shouldn’t need clarification. This isn’t like a new Charlie Kaufman film - there’s no need to pick apart it’s delicate, original plot lines, characterisation or score. If you’re a fan of TV Tropes be assured that this is “Exactly What It Says On The Tin” - for everyone else, just know it’s a fun ride.
Comments(2) 
Hey y’all!
I did like the FOX representative at the beginning who talked about how FOX is lucky enough to have Family Guy, which reminds me of a father who has twice tried to kill his kids saying he’s so lucky to have them when they grow up to be doctors or lawyers. Family Guy of course picks up on this as well, dedicating a large part of their opening Star Wars crawl to teasing the parent company.