Finally a Script Writer... of Sorts

So after not being paid for many, many moons and throwing in the towel and going through little else but chaos (separate blogs pending) I finally have my first freelance corporate video script... and it's due tomorrow morning. I've worked on it since last week including the shoot itself (which was way cool) but today I've been hit with a cold hard dose of reality.

Normally in a corporate video script you have anywhere from 15 to 30 second interview clips you can drop in at random which quickly eats up a five minute video. Now imagine a video that is ALL B-ROLL and NO INTERVIEWS.

Yeah, that's the first one I have on my plate. Lovely.

So spend an entire day pouring over every shot of a six hour shoot and you'll be ready to shoot yourself. I'm up to 4.2 minutes of footage so here I go back to plugging away at it. At this rate I should be done in another hour (or three). Yeah!

Also...

I've been jacking with the templates since some yahoo on Google's end opted to make alterations to the design I've used for the last three years without notification. As such, my profile was splashed all over the top of the screen instead of on the right hand side where I preferred it. Pardon my mess while I go through additional templates to find one that doesn't annoy me.

A Brief Recap...

Alright, in no particular order here are the following things that have happened to Yours Truly since the first week in July:

1) I quit my job since the fools running it hadn't paid me since April. Some might call be an optimist for hanging in there that long sans pay check and they wouldn't be wrong. You just keep hoping and hoping that the people running things will get their act together, but the worst things were the further up their own behinds their heads went. As such, I went out the door and haven't looked back. Yes, the Texas Workforce Commission has been notified and all appropriate steps have been taken.

2) I worked to set up my own business but as it was a media company and July is the worst possible time to do so it fell apart. The pieces will be picked up this month but we'll see how things shake out in the meantime.

3) I had major sinus surgery at the first of August. You know your sinuses are messed up when the doctor looks at the CT Scan and says, "WHOA!" Most times when doctors perform this type of surgery they're going in to fix one or two things. Here was my list: Correct deviated septim that looked like it was designed by Zorro since it had a double-S curve (instead of being straight it was wavy and folded back on itself), remove fragments of this which had grown into my actual sinus cavity, remove dime-sized cyst that had formed in said sinus cavity, remove/drain polyps that had formed in the sinus cavity, expand air way so that I could breathe. Yeah, that wasn't what I'd call a fun day.

4) My Fair Lady and I bought a house and put our town home on the market. Anyone interested in a two story town home should feel free to contact me.

5) I have locked down my first paid freelance writing job with the promise of more to follow. In addition, I might have an interview next week for a full-time position all so I can bring in money to Casa de Skim which I haven't been able to do since near the end of Spring.

6) I'm on page 62 of a book I'm writing and nearing page 30 on a screenplay I hope to be able to pitch in a few weeks.

Oh, and my backlog on film blogs has grown exponentially since I finally burned through The Prisoner and My Fair Lady and I are working through the entire set of The West Wing. So yeah, these past seven weeks have been more than a little full and stressful. When you hit a certain point in your life you have to ask yourself what do you genuinely want to do with your life. For me, it's writing full-time and getting paid to do so and this first gig might lead to that and a little more. Hopefully it's enough to pay off debt, afford the mortgage, and help support the both of us since My Fair Lady has been doing all the supporting for the last several months.

In short, there are a great many blog posts and stories about to hit here over the next few weeks. So keep your eyes peeled, Semi-Constant Reader.

Nuts

As I've said in the past, I don't think that Penny Arcade is a funny comic. Well, lo and behold they actually made me laugh this afternoon courtesy of this gem. In short, it's funny if you're a) a gamer; b) a guy who loves action movies.

The reference is to the upcoming John Woo Presents Stranglehold which is the video game sequel to legendary action film Hard Boiled. Both star Chow Yun Fat as Hong Kong uber-detective Tequila along with ninteen thousand other guys whose sole purpose is to be canon fodder. I watched the movie again the other day and it's the definition of a highlight film. By that I mean you can't help but flip from one action scene to the next because all the in between stuff is simple filler.

It doesn't get any better than knowing the last 45 minutes of the film is one long sustained gun battle between every cop in Hong Kong (or Earth if you think about it) and tons of heavily armed criminals hiding in a hospital that comes fully stocked with patients.

Did I mention that practically everyone you see not names Tequila gets blown away in some form of glorious slow motion? It's great and the game looks spectacular. Also, wives and girlfriends should expect to be the one frowning in the comic because every guy on the planet is going for that achievment for better or worse. Why?

Because if we get to finally play as Inspector Tequila, then we're going to blast the holy hell out of every single body part we can point at. It's a guy thing.

Where am I?

Still here, albeit buried under more frustrations/issues/giant locusts than I know what to do with. I prefer not to speak of personal things unless I can bring the funny to it(see also any story here referencing law) but big things are afoot in my life. The result is I've completely neglected this blog and that will change. Here's a slight hint - it's taken me the last month to get through the 10 discs of "The Prisoner" but I should burn off discs seven and eight tomorrow with the finale next week. That's primarily what has kept me from posting additional DVD reviews, in addition to My Fair Lady and I burning through "The West Wing" from the beginning. We're up to season three now and when you combine the two I wind up with no additional movies to review.

Oh, and kudos to CDS reader Sara for reminding me that I actually have readers.

Cheers, and more posts to follow.

Now Playing: The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

I have a serious man-crush on crime cinema from the 1970s. I love the genre, I love the feel of everything, I love the funky music, and I certainly love the actors. Quentin Tarantino obviously loves this genre as well considering how much he rips off pays homage to it in everything he does. There is just something about seeing how things were back then and the naturalism used by film makers at the time. There were no big ILM-generated special effects, it was simply the good guys versus the bad guys and each set would try to outwit the other. There is something refreshing about it, and I get a charge whenever I find one that I’ve never seen. Such was the case with The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

I’d heard about this film for years but never actually seen it until recently. Tarantino most famously ripped it off paid homage to it with Reservoir Dogs because this is the film where the villains are named after colors. The setup is that four men, under aliases such as Mr. Blue and Mr. Grey, take a commuter train hostage one weekday afternoon and demand $1 million in cash be delivered in exactly one hour.

The Netflix packaging confused me because it said the bad guys threatened to carve graffiti on the passengers’ heads if their demands are not met, which is bizarre because Mr. Blue quite clearly states that they’ll kill a hostage for every minute the money is late. But the authorities are puzzled because since the bad guys are trapped underground on a commuter train, they have nowhere to go even if they get the money.

In short, the movie is fantastic. Robert Shaw is terrific as Mr. Blue and he’s calm, efficient, and utterly ruthless. Shaw was great in practically everything he did and the man was unfairly taken from the world far too early. He’s a very slick villain here and he’s matched by Walter Matthau as the hilariously put-out New York Transit Authority supervisor who is guiding a tour through the Authority’s offices when the hijackers call in. He then works with the cops and the Authority to bring down the bad guys who somehow manage to stay one step ahead of everything the cops do.

It also has a genuine classic final shot and one that had me laughing my head off. Oh, and did I mention the movie is absolutely hilarious at times? Matthau gives such great gruff that even in the midst of a crisis like this he brings the funny. The cast is also filled with tons of New York character actors and it was especially amusing to see Jerry Stiller as one of the transit cops who gets roped into things.

This is one of those films that perfectly captures the look and feel of just how skuzzy New York City was back in the 1970s. Plus it has that great period music and equally great actors who seem to relish the cat-and-mouse nature of the story. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is definite viewing material if you’re even remotely a fan of the crime films of the 1970s.

Nope, PA Still Isn't Funny

In short, the point of the following commentary is that I don't think the website/comic Penny-Arcade is funny in the slightest. I'm stating this right from the outset so you know where I stand regarding their sense of humor. One, I don't think it's funny at all (I can count on one hand the number of times I've laughed at their comics) and two I think they're more than a little high on blatant thesaurus usage with their news and commentary.

Basically I think they're hugely unfunny and more than a little full of themselves. But considering their massive success I've accepted the later as a fact of life that's been earned.

The PA crew put together their own game and this month PC Gamer has five separate "collector's" covers to choose from. The caveat is that when you open the front page you'll find this editorial written by known fool Greg "The Vede" Vederman, the mag's editor-in-chief. When he was the hardware editor and even before that, Vederman repeatedly proved himself a fool so when he writes that he doesn't like PA and hopes the magazine fails so he can feel a sense of vindication it leaves a bad, albeit familiar, taste in one's mouth.

Then Scott Kurtz at PVP wrote up this response which I actually agree with. I still don't think PA is funny, but I will never begrudge them their success which is more than just financial.

Penny-Arcade's Child's Play charity has raised millions for children and for that act alone I would support their website from now to the end of eternity. In addition, their gaming expo PAX has gained such prominance in recent years that once E3 died, it was assumed PAX would take its place.

Not bad for a couple of guys who based their living on writing a web comic.

So I will say congratulations to PA for their roaring successes and I do genuinely wish them well with their game and with all future Child's Play events. But I still don't find them funny nor do I understand how anyone could.

Different strokes I guess.

Now Playing: The Venture Bros. Season 2

"IGNORE ME!"

Season two picks up right where Season one left off, with the Venture clan not especially torn apart over the last-second deaths of sons Dean and Hank. Heck, even the opening credits star Venture patriarch Rusty along with bodyguard Brock Sampson and neighbor/necromancer Dr. Byron Orpheus. The show basically hits the ground running and the hilarity is out in full force this year.

Once the kids’ death is explained away courtesy of a side-splitting montage, the Venture clan is reunited once more and on to new adventures featuring recurring villains like Baron Underbheit, Phantom Limb, The Monarch, and dozens of other characters with classic names such as Manic Eightball, White Noise, and the mysterious Grand Galactic Inquisitor.

The fiendishly-voiced Dr. Girlfriend also returns as do HELPR, Richard Impossible and the Impossible Four (the target of one hilariously off-the-cuff snarky comment), Monarch henchmen 21 and 24, Master Billy Quizboy, Mr. White, The League, and new characters Jefferson Twilight and Dr. Henry Killinger.

Yes, the insanity continues at full speed and if one joke doesn’t make you laugh then three more will hit you in the face in the next 10 seconds.

For my money though, nothing prepared me for the hilarity of "20 Years 'Til Midnight" which introduces the famed Grand Galactic Inquisitor and kicks off with Brock finding a video tape from Rusty’s father, Jonas Venture Sr. As it turns out, Jonas Sr. stashed special equipment all around the world that must be assembled at a certain time and in a certain location or else the fate of the world would be at risk. Naturally, the specific time is a day after they watch the tape so the race is on all while under the watchful eye of the Inquisitor. I never saw the ending coming and laughed so hard at the final rant that I practically passed out.

Equally funny was the episode where Molotov (name deleted) trains the boys in the ways of hand-to-hand combat and heavy weaponry while Brock is out on assignment, although several moments in the Scooby-Doo spoof "Viva Los Muertos!" rocked the comedy scale pretty dang hard. Creator Jackson Publick has a knack for skewing about as juvenile as is possible to go, but then teeing off a home-run of a punch line at just the right moment.

The result is a gaspingly funny series that I am now convinced is the funniest thing Cartoon Network has on its schedule. The downside is that season three won’t hit the network for probably another year, with season four hitting the year after (or so). In the meantime, definitely check out this and season one if you like your comedy bizarre, fast, and furious.

"I’M STILL LOOKING FOR THE SCARS!"

Now Playing: Gojira

The first Godzilla film hasn’t been available in the United States since it was originally released in Japan back in 1953, and the only way we’ve seen it since then was the hacked together Hollywood version starring Raymond Burr. Last year it was finally released as a two-disc DVD set with the original, uncut film on the first disc while the Hollywood version was put on the second disc. A pamphlet included in the set explains how the film was brought over to the States by a couple of producers who saw value in the monster movie appeal but decided to jettison pretty much everything else.

What stunned me was just how powerful all the excised footage was.

This revelation was akin to watching Jaws 4 for years and thinking all the rest of the films were like that, only to see the original for the first time and think, "Oooooohhhh..." Gojira was written in direct response to the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings in only eight years before and as such the film is a powerful commentary on the dangers of nuclear bombs. Godzilla himself is, in essence, a giant metaphor for the inescapable devastation nuclear bombs cause and I was simply floored at how bleak a film this was.

I can completely understand why American producers at the time figured that the public wouldn’t accept anything outside of a giant lizard stomping through Tokyo. The producers re-cut the film and inserted Burr to give it an American perspective that makes it an entirely different film. The American version is little more than a generic monster flick, albeit one that introduced Godzilla to the world. The uncut Japanese version though is an entirely different animal altogether and one that I, frankly, was left stunned by.

Godzilla films do not feature a terrified mother clutching her children to her as she assures them that they’ll be with daddy in heaven soon. Godzilla films do not feature incredibly cute kids sitting shell-shocked in a hospital as doctors watch helplessly as their Geiger counters spike when near the children. This is a deadly serious film that was created by people who were intimately familiar with the two dual bombings and it is a powerful anti-war and anti-nuclear message.

If you have the chance to watch the original version of Gojira then by all means do so. It is a little hokey in parts due to its age, but the message has only increased in power as nuclear weapons have proliferated across the globe. Don’t miss this.

Now Playing: Stranger Than Fiction

I’ll tell you what is truly stranger than fiction: The fact that I loved a Will Ferrell movie. Personally, I don’t find the man funny in any capacity but I was amazed at how exceptional a performance he turned in here as Harold Crick, a lonely tax auditor who starts hearing voices. Actually, he starts hearing one voice that belongs to a woman who appears to be narrating his life. It bothers him constantly, but then the voice makes the off-hand comment that events have been set in motion that would result in his death.

Naturally, he freaks out.

The narrator, as it turns out, is a novelist famed for killing off her main characters. The writer, brilliantly played by Emma Thompson, has been suffering writer’s block for a number of years and her publisher has sent an assistant, Queen Latifa, to oversee the final work. Meanwhile, Harold tracks down a literary professor (the great Dustin Hoffman) to find out what sort of story he’s in and how he can get out of dying. Harold also has to audit a neighborhood baker who is, shall we say, resistant to the idea of paying taxes.

Surprisingly, everything works in the film and the fact that I not only didn’t want to cut my own throat every time Ferrell was on screen but that I actually came to like Harold Crick speaks volumes about how good he is. Apparently, the man was born for drama which is probably why his screaming fits on SNL and his other movies never struck me as funny. He makes Crick a very lonely person who has isolated himself from enjoying what life has to offer. He’s always followed his own specific schedule and never varied from anything because he was born a rule follower. But as he begins to realize his life suddenly has an end date, albeit in a form he never expected, his eyes open up to everything he’s missed.

My Fair Lady wasn’t as big a fan of the film as I was. In her words, "It was just weird." It speaks to writers though and was very clearly written as a love letter to the craft. The commentary about how writers are all thieves stealing from each other among other things cracked me up while My Fair Lady sat on the couch emotionless.

If you’re even remotely familiar with writing novels or scripts or stories in general, then you’ll have a ton of fun watching how Crick comes to terms with the very literal nature of his own life. It’s a fantastic drama with only one truly wrong sight gag that doesn’t belong in the film. But since there is only one gag like that, and the rest of it is pure gold (especially the way they handle Crick’s fate and the emotional punch it packs), this is a film that comes highly recommended.

Now Playing: Secondhand Lions

To my dying day, I will swear that this film was undone by a weak marketing campaign and a bad (though appropriate) title. It’s a shame such an excellent film practically vanished at the box office. I remain amazed at how ultra loud, obnoxious films like Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End continually find vast oceans of unassuming film goers yet a true classic (yeah, I said it) like Secondhand Lions goes completely over looked and unrewarded.

The film follows the adventures of a young kid, played by Haley Joel Osment, who is unceremoniously dumped by his flakey mother (Kyra Sedgewick) at a farm belonging to his two distant uncles. The uncles, played by Robert Duvall and Michael Caine, are both old hell raisers who have seen better days and want to be left alone. They have no experience raising children, let alone socializing with people, yet they are constantly swarmed by both traveling salesmen and distant relatives who all want a glimpses of their treasure.

Apparently, the uncles have untold millions in riches laying about somewhere on the farm and their scheming relatives want to make sure that they are the ones who inherit the wealth, and not some know-nothing kid who was just dropped off on the farm.

What makes things fun is how the two uncles gradually take a shine to the boy. They soon realize that he’s just as much a stranger to common folk as they are and that he’s their one relative who wants absolutely nothing to do with their money. Caine eventually tells Osment stories about where they came from and what adventures they had when they were younger, and these stories are rife with imagination and adventure.

Duvall’s character is played by Angel-alum Christian Kane during these sequences and it’s amazing how charismatic he is while battling evil sheiks and thugs in the Middle East during the 1920’s. He comes off as a though the writer combined Indiana Jones with Conan the Barbarian. The result is a series of adventures that are bigger than life, and Osment knows it when he hears them. But he decides to run with it to get to the end of the tale, which proves to be a harder ending than he expected. In the meantime, he learns how to stand up for himself and be a man.

This is an absolutely wonderful film about how family is what you make of it, and how the choices people make tend to echo through several generations. If you haven’t had the chance to see this yet then it is highly recommended.

What the...?

Dallas/Fort Worth just had a hurricane blow through which blackened the skies and dropped roughly three tons of water on us inside of half an hour. Oh, and the wind was so strong and vicious that trees weren't the only victims. I drove home at lunch in case my house was flooded (fortunately it wasn't) only to get the feeling I was driving through a war zone. Trees, billboards, road signs, and all manner of leaves were blown every which way. A co-worker's apartment complex was struck by lightning and when he went home to check on things he called me saying an electric pole was on fire. While it was still raining, I might add.

If anyone has a direct line to The Powers That Be then please ask them to hold off on the crazy rain storms for at least the next month. Thanks.

Star Wars - Happy 30th Anniversary

I've told this story before in a review or two but I'll repeat it here. I first saw Star Wars at my grandparents' lake house in Shreveport, LA. Prior to this my dad took me to see The Empire Strikes Back but since I was 3 years old and had no context for what the hell was happening in front of me I just sort of sat there watching it and not understanding a single thing. I asked dad if we could go home right about the time when Darth Vader and Luke were squaring off in the bowels of Cloud City because my little patience had run out. To his credit, Dad said "Sure" and we walked out.

A few years later when I was spending a week with my grandparents, they took us to the local video store to rent a movie. As I walked through the aisles my eyes rested upon a distinctive box with spaceships and a familiar looking helmet. I picked it up and thought it looked cool so I asked if we could rent Star Wars. They said sure and when we got home I popped it in and sat down on the couch.

I watched it three times back-to-back-to-back that very night. I didn't watch a movie. Someone shot me in the head with it and thus was born a new fanatic for the Force.

George Lucas has taken his fair share of grief over the years, first with the Ewoks and most recently with pretty much everything in the prequels. But he gave us a singular vision of an entire universe we'd all love to live in and he practically gave me my childhood. After seeing that first movie I immediately wanted to know what else there was. It was then that I rediscovered The Empire Strikes Back and having the context of the first one I totally got why I didn't understand it before and why my dad thought the Hoth battle was one of the coolest things he'd ever seen in his life.

George Lucas gave us Star Wars and I cannot think of a single film that has so permeated the entire world to the point that his little independent sci-fi flick has. Everyone in every walk of life in every corner of the world has heard of it and if you're one of those lucky ones who were part of that first run then you probably recall how chemical it was.

I've only read about it but from what I understand the people who saw it during that first run were evangelical about it. It got inside them and made them want to take all their friends and family back to see it, then to see it again. Crowds roared at the jokes. The Death Star battle had everyone on the edge of their seats. People cheered when Han Solo swooped in at the last second to save Luke's ass.

Seeing Star Wars on the big screen isn't like seeing another film. It's a religious experience where literally everyone in the theater is committed to it fully. When Lucas released the special editions in 1997, Crayola and I went to see the preview screening one cold January morning. It was around 10 a.m. but the second the fanfare began and the words STARWARS blasted onto the screen, we were both wide awake and back in that universe.

I also had the opportunity during the '97 run to do something that I'd never done before, and that was to share something that meant the world to me with my younger brother. I'm eight years his senior and as such he'd never had the chance to see the first film on the big screen. I took him out to the AMC Grand in Dallas and we sat down in one of the bigger auditoriums. He, of course, had seen the film multiple times growing up and loved it like most everyone else but he'd never seen it on the big screen.

To say it blew his mind would be putting it gently. His jaw was on the ground during the TIE Fighter-Millenium Falcon escape sequence from the Death Star. He was rendered slack-jawed again by the Death Star battle. The sense of speed and energy and excitement these scenes in particular deliver on the big screen can never be understated.

I hope that Lucas re-releases all six films in the theater this year to celebrate the anniversary because I would kill to see them again. My desire for a gargantuan TV screen and home theater/entertainment center has less to do with bragging rights and almost everything to do with being able to see Star Wars the way it was meant to be seen. I plan to watch it tonight in honor of its birthday and will do so once My Fair Lady gets home from work. I can't think of a better way to spend the night than re-watching it for the millionth time. Thank you, George, and may the Force be with you.

Are You a Clicker?

My Fair Lady recently revealed a side of herself to me that I’ve historically found annoying in other people: She’s a "Clicker." These people are the bane of IT personnel the world over because of their incessant whine, "It’s not moving faaaaassssttt enough!"

As such, they open a single window on their computer screen and when that window takes more than five seconds to open (whether it is an email or browser window is beside the point) the "Clicker" tries to re-open the initial window even though the first one hasn’t opened yet. When this second instance fails to open IMMEDIATELY, all hell breaks loose.

The "Clicker" will then proceed to relentlessly click on everything on the screen in a futile attempt to make the computer jump through so many hoops at once that it will just give up and open everything instantly. In the real world, the insides of the computer experience a core meltdown as application after application sucks up memory like a hurricane would over a small lake. The "Clicker" continues to furiously click convinced in their own irrational fury that the very next click will be the magic one.

I’ve seen gnomes with a better grip on reality.

"Why isn’t it opening?" demanded My Fair Lady. Meanwhile, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes.

"I’m going to take a nap right now," I casually said. "When I wake up, you’d better have learned how to use a computer or I’m taking it away from you."

"But it’s my computer and nothing is opening!" she wailed.

"Since when are you a 'Clicker'?" I asked.

"Since this thing WON’T OPEN!!!! Fix it!"

"What do people like you expect people like me to do in this case? Wave our magic circuit board and miraculously your computer will open everything faster than you can blink?"

"Duh," she replied. "Here, I’m gonna brush my teeth. Fix it!"

With that she stormed off to the bathroom. At fault was her remotely accessing her work email, which is on the large side to begin with considering she’s an attorney. This would be at 10 p.m., by the way, which is normally when people have at least started to let the day go. But not My Fair Lady, oh no. At this point she’s all in favor of logging into her work email and reading through correspondence, getting worked up, then wonders why I refuse to acknowledge her after she blows a fuse over something.

So naturally, I just closed my eyes again and waited for her email to open. After a few minutes of restful quiet, I hear the bathroom door open and My Fair Lady pads down the hallway back into the room.

"Hey, you fixed it!" she exclaimed. "What did you do?"

"Such is my power," I replied. "Now quit clicking wildly or I’m going to have to restrict your mouse usage."

"Okay..." she sheepishly replied. She read through the open email, then closed it and clicked to open another. Nothing happened. So she double clicked it again.

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU?!?!?!" I thundered.

"GAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!! It... won’t... open..."

I think at this point she was on the verge of tears from anguish. She hung her head in dejection, then stood up and walked towards the bedroom.

"Fine, you mess with it. I’m going to bed."

"What do I want to see your email for? I wanted to surf for a bit, but oh no. You had to go and click 'til it dropped. Where’s the benefit to me, I ask you?"

"Let me tell you something, mister," she replied with a huffy tone. "This stuff works fine at the office and I can click all day until the cows come home and everything pops up just as quickly as I need it to. What do you have to say to that?"

"I say that you need to start counting down the days, Clicker, because soon the machines will revolt. They’ll stand up as one and shout, 'We can only process so fast and need not be clicked repeatedly!' Then they’ll take over and you’ll spend the rest of your days being clicked by a Terminator as punishment. What do you have to say to that?" I replied.

"Hey look! My email just popped up! Can I read just one more?"

Now Playing: W&G: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Confession time: I'd never seen a Wallace & Grommit short prior to seeing the full-length feature Curse of the Were-Rabbit and am now kicking myself for it. The film itself is a loving tribute to the horror classics of yester-year that starred Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney, Jr., and Bela Lugosi and that passion for the subject matter is evident in every frame. The film is stop-motion claymation which is astonishing when you look at everything Aardman (the studio) had to animate. The coffee sloshing around is what floored me, but the rapid-fire editing and subtle character nuances especially knocked me off my feet.

Right from the start, we meet up with Wallace and Gromit, pest exterminators in a small English town. Wallace is a slightly daft inventor deeply in love with cheese, while Gromit is his silent and possibly more intelligent dog/partner. Together, they rid the small countryside of rabbit infestations in order to protect everyone's produce for the annual vegetable fair. Then they get the call of a lifetime when they're invited to the mansion of Lady Campanula Tottington (Helena Bonham Carter) who wants a them to remove the hundreds of rabbits on her lawn.

Where the plot kicks in is once Tottington's evil suiter Quartermaine (Ralph Fiennes) shows up, and Wallace tries to brainwash the bunnies into not wanting to eat vegetables all the time. The results are inspired hilarity as the community is torn asunder every full moon (which somehow lasts for three days in a row) by the Were-Rabbit, a giant bundle of teeth and fury that devours every carrot in sight.

Fiennes in particular tears into his role with relish and is clearly having a field day as the villain. Quartermaine has no redeeming characteristics whatsoever, yet Fiennes' brilliance makes him more than a one-note bad guy. Carter also is funny as the well-meaning though slightly daft Tottington who just wants everyone, human and bunny alike, to get along. The film builds up to a chaotic climax that I still have trouble believing was claymation.

Oh, and this film has a wickedly ribald sense of humor not to mention each frame is layered with gags. Some are on labels, others are where people stand, and practically all of it is staggeringly funny. If you haven't seen this one then by all means check it out, especially if you're a fan of the old Universal monster movies.

Now Playing: Tears of the Sun

Normally I don't fall asleep during action movies, but "Tears of the Sun" was different. First off, it commits the cardinal sin of being a dull film which is tough to imagine when you consider it stars Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci, and a heck of a lot of bullets. Yet somehow director Antoine Fuqua ensured everyone stared off into space for the two hour running time including Willis who primarily looks sullen and in need of a shave.

It's sad when you consider facial hair as the only character motivation we see for him and his team. The story hits the ground running when Willis and his team of SEALs land on a carrier then are immediately given a new assignment by their commander (Tom Skerrit). They're to go into a war-torn African village, extract a doctor (Bellucci), two nuns, a priest, and a partridge in a pear tree if available then hike to the extraction zone and get the civilians out of Dodge prior to rebels slaughtering them. When they get to the doctor's house, the doctor refuses to leave without the 70+ wounded people in her care and Willis makes the decision to march everyone to the rendevous point where helicopters will escort everyone to safety.

Warms your heart, doesn't it?

Personally, I'm getting sick of the African craze Hollywood is obsessed with. Yes, we know that genocide is running rampant and people are starving to death or worse. But if you're going to make a movie about the situation then do it right, like The Constant Gardener, and not half-ass like Tears of the Sun. Turning human suffering into a lame action flick is what Hollywood excells at and the viewer will witness lameness in spades. I fell asleep a few times and when I woke up realized that nothing had changed.

Not helping matters is the fact that we never learn anything about any of the characters whatsoever. They may as well have a floating "Token Character X" floating above each person's head so we know which stereotype the camera focuses on. Also, when writers come up with "road trip films" they need to recall that character development and interaction is paramount because the entire film is, by default, a metaphor for the journey the characters take in their lives. This is the nature of the road tip movie, which Tears of the Sun most definitely is. Other than a slight twist towards the ending, nothing will surprise the viewer other than someone read this script and decided to greenlight a big budget for it.

Save your money for "Live Free or Die Hard" and skip this.

WWII - Now with Mechs!

This is absolutely one of the coolest videos ever made and posted on the internet. Its basically what happens when Nazi Germany buids a giant fighting robot and sicks it on Pearl Harbor during World War II and the awesome only builds from there.

Of course, it also brilliantly pulls music from the repertoire of John Williams (specifically from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as well as from various Hans Zimmer pieces (Crimson Tide closes the film out) and the overall film is just stunning for geeks like Yours Truly. Enjoy.

When N3rds Roar

Normally I don't post about things like this because I'm an elitist snob who considers himself above most frays. The key word in the preceding sentence is "normally" because the following story struck my funny bone in just the right way. On Tuesday, Digg.com received a story containing the 16-digit code to crack the HD-DVD encryption scheme. In short, this lets people to play HD-DVD movies on their computers (read: Linux) in the high-definition quality only HD-DVD compliant players allow for. Oh, and people can now copy HD-DVDs all on account of a 16-digit series of numbers.

Like most things posted on the internet, we're seeing the equivalent of releasing a rabbit into the wild. Only replace "rabbit" with "bonfire" because the speed at which it will naturally spread is unbelievable. The Digg.com editors deleted the story, all comments on the story, and banned the user who posted it.

Naturally, all hell broke loose.

The resulting explosion of nerd fury struck down the site since everyone who had the code started posting it in creative means through either new news stories or through comments to existing stories. It only took a day before the site runner posted this mea culpa where he apologizes for not allowing information to be free, yo. It appears that Hollywood went ballistic at their vaunted control scheme getting cracked and demanded that all instances of the code be removed from the internet forthwith.

Of course, then they file court papers and had to put the exact code in the documents so now it's a matter of public record. I expect the AP, Reuters, and The New York Times to have the code in their pages by this weekend and my laughter will continue.

The righteous indignation over something like this on all sides of the argument slays me. Personally, I agree with the Digg.com editor in deleting the story but by the same token I can see how CNN.com or the AP or any other massive news agency would have done the exact same thing. What continues to puzzle me is how Hollywood actively refuses to hire coders or hackers who know what they're doing when it comes to encryption schemes, instead opting for the most Draconian measures available that far too frequently only harm the wrong people.

Of course, at the end of the day it remains funny to me watching a bunch of hyper-active nerds throw a hissy fit over something that maybe one-tenth of them actually understand.

Shifting the Queue and an Update

You know it's bad when you have to re-order your Netflix queue to favor your other half because you're so far behind on reviews that you need a breather to catch up. Right now I'm in the queue stacking the deck in favor of My Fair Lady so as she's watching Monster-in-Law or Sense & Sensibility I can be upstairs with my headphones on catching up on the stack of discs we've burned through in the last three weeks.

It's amazing what happens when your life gets completely booked up and you have no time for yourself. Call me selfish but I genuinely hate it when I'm not in active control of my life. To be fair, were I in active control of my life all the time then I'd probably never go outside, forget to feed myself and to pay bills, and pretty much be resigned to a life as a hermit with a Wii. Ahh well, a man can dream at least.

In the meantime, I'm also speccing out story outlines for a book that may turn into a script. I haven't quite made up my mind yet, though what's funny is an idea I had a few months back but never did anything with fits perfectly into the general story idea I had a few nights ago. Writers are shameless thieves by nature and who better to steal from than yourself?

Speaking of stealing, I'm liberating a phrase Ron Burke of Gaming Trend came up with the other day: "Multi-shirking." The definition of which is "to accomplish two or more goals for yourself unrelated to daytime/nighttime employment while actually on the clock." Grand literary larceny at its finest.

A Different San Francisco Treat

So I'm writing up another Odyssey-esque post regarding the trip to San Francisco My Fair Lady and I took in mid-March when my latest copy of Writer's Digest arrives on my doorstep. In addition to the usual bon mots of wisdom and pointers in how whatever I'm doing now, it's not working on my novel/screenplay/short story, I see their annual contest and figure it's high time I enter it just to see what happens.

But what should I submit, I wondered. Then I noticed one of the accepted articles is a 2000 word maximum personal memoir. I did a quick word count on my Day 1 of the trip and it clocked in at 2500. The punchline is that I'm only three-quarters of the way done. But I figured with some judicious editing and killer cliffhanger then I might have something worth submitting to the contest.

The downside for three of you reading this (hi, mom!) is that I'm not able to post it as a "published" article prior to submission. I will go ahead and finish the trip though and have it available via Word document if anyone wants to read it. I'll post here when it's done and if you want to check it out then email me and let me know.