Take Nolan's Dick Out of Your Mouth!

Christopher Nolan's a good guy. He's been a total gentleman: treated you well all evening, opened all the right doors for you, pulled out all the right chairs. But just because a guy buys you dinner, that doesn't mean you owe him a blowjob. Even if that dinner was The Dark Knight.

And let's not kid ourselves. The Dark Knight is the only reason Nolan's balls are resting on your chin right now. You're not teasing his glans with your tongue because of Tom Hardy's Bane.

He caught your eye with Memento. Wow! This guy, he seemed so deep, so intellectual! Then he flashed you that sultry, seductive, Batman Begins smile, and you were hooked. Your heart raced. This guy might finally wash away those awful Bruckheimer years! Nolan was so raw, so confident! Was it getting warm in here?

Well, by the end of The Dark Knight, you were starting to feel a little drunk. It's okay, it happens to the best of us. That Joker is some pretty potent stuff.

But everyone looks better through that intoxicated cloud. So you overlooked the signs, the little red flags that said maybe Nolan wasn't really all that. You excused his pretentous posturing while he rambled through Inception. Did your best to ignore his boorish, chest-thumping bluster during The Dark Knight Rises.

Now you've made it to the end of Interstellar, and, well...

Well for fuck's sake, you'll give the guy head just to shut him up and get this night over with.

But you don't have to do it! You don't owe it to him, and you're not doing either of you any favors!

Sure, the evening could have gone better, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a wash. Who knows, maybe your earlier impression wasn't far off. Nobody who makes The Dark Knight can be all bad, right? Sure, the writing got a bit clunky at times, and the morals were alternately ham-fisted or oddly ambiguous. But that fucking JOKER, right?

Maybe Nolan's worth another shot. Maybe he just got a bit flustered and overeager to follow his best moment with something equally impressive, rather than moving slowly, deliberately, and letting this courtship progress naturally.

One thing's for sure, though: he's got no incentive to do better when blowjobs come this easy.

So how about you pull that thing out of your mouth, wipe off your chin, and politely call it a night? Give the both of you a little time to cool off, get some distance, and come back fresh at a later date. This guy needs to slow it down and consider his next move with more care.

Maybe this time the he could try taking a little longer than two years to churn out another "masterpiece".

Who Shat First?

God knows why, but somebody roused Harrison Ford long enough to ask him "who shot first". As though he alone held the secret truth. That somehow all conclusive evidence has been washed from the earth and our last hope is for testimony from the man who held the prop blaster almost four decades ago. His answer, equal parts appropriate and unhelpful, was "I don't care".

Lucas has so thoroughly soiled the franchise for me that I don't care either these days. Cleansing Solo's record of one premeditated murder isn't even a drop in the oceans of blood fans have wept over the past fifteen years. But one thing I still care about is the notion that matters of indisputable fact are treated as "opinions" to be "debated". Climate change is a fact. Evolution is a fact. Dan Aykroyd should have been the first dead Ghostbuster: fact.

Allow me to push my glasses up and suck the excess spit from my retainer.

*AHEM*

Han shot first. In fact, he was the only one who fired at all.

Many years later, a pussy son of a bitch who unironically called himself "George Lucas" forced a CG artist -- at knifepoint -- to add a blast from Greedo to "justify" Han's use of lethal force. "George" then masturbated to the revised footage until he reached a massive, body-rocking climax. His muscles contracted so hard that he sprayed shit all over the floor. The shit was collected into wet, runny piles, then distributed in theaters as "prequels".

And that's the story, motherfucker.

Sex, Lies and Cloud-Based File Sharing of MP4's

Sex Tape
Directed by Jake Kasdan
Starring Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel and a bunch of actors who've come to terms with where their careers are at these days.

Remember that time when you and your spouse, the two of you struggling to rekindle the fire of your early years, recorded yourselves having sex? And remember how your iPad sent that video to the Cloud, seeding that lusty video to the bundle of iPads you got from Costco to give to all your friends and family? What a hilarious time you both had as you scrambled to retrieve those tablets and remove all evidence of your suburban debauchery from the internet!

Yeah, that old chestnut.

Thankfully, writer Kate Angelo has breathed fresh new life into this age-old premise, in this year's best film inspired by an awards show swag-bag. Not since the Palm Pilot-based Brittany Murphy vehicle Little Black Book has a film so daringly embraced a short-lived fad as its core foundation. (I'm speaking of the Palm Pilot, not Brittany Murphy.)

All sarcasm aside, this movie looks to be another artless, heartless, soulless space-filler. The trailer alone is dripping with contempt for the viewing public. The only good thing I can say from what I've seen is that Jason Segel's been eating less, and Cameron Diaz has been eating more, and they're both better off for it.

But that's no reason to sit through this shit. The best moments of the film are in the trailer, and they're not much. Better to watch some legitimate porn. The writing and acting, admittedly, will be (marginally) inferior to Sex Tape, but at least porn is honest. Everyone knows the score. But this, this thing... it's a calculated, cynical dodge to pad studio pockets. A formulaic, paint-by-numbers smirk-fest built from a screenplay seminar algorithm.

This movie doesn't deserve to make money, but chances are it will. Just don't let it take yours. Don't encourage these people. After two decades of Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, have we not learned by now that nothing good can come of a sex tape?

"Crisis" Averted

"Crisis"
Sundays 10pm, NBC, starting (and hopefully ending) March 16, 2014
Gillian Anderson, Dermot Mulroney, Rachael Taylor, Lance Gross

So. Crisis. It's crap.

This particular show has been done over and over and over now. The giant conspiracy, where everyone's a suspect, the stakes are the the world itself, and somebody has an impossibly elaborate scheme to do something stupid that doesn't need to be done at all.

This time it's a professional kidnapping of the teenage kids of a dozen different high-power families. Tycoons, diplomats, the US president... you know, the kind that are always going on field trips together. On a fucking bus. But it's not gonna be for ransom, that's for sure. No, this is all in service of a much larger design, some plot to take over something, control something, destroy something, whatever who cares. Tune in each week for another reveal that goes nowhere!

Hack writing. Canned direction. No characters, just actors hitting their marks and reciting their lines. Which is sad, because there's a handful of actors in Crisis who are better than the material they've been given.

I've seen this show before. The Event. Flash Forward. The Nine. Revolution. Vanished. So many times, over and over. And I've never stuck with any of them. This is paint-by-numbers TV, and I just don't have the time.

Well, maybe I'll watch one more episode. Just to be sure.

Dammit.

The Wire: VERY Late to the Party

Well what the hell, why not.
Sure, the show ended six years ago, sure it started twelve years ago, but I'm finally gonna watch The Wire this week. Everyone in America's already seen it, which I know because all 300 million of them have recommended it to me at one time or another. Yet somehow I have remained spoiler-free (since '93!), so this should go smoothly.
Wish me luck, see you on the other side!

Would Everyone PLEASE Stop Dying!

This is getting ridiculous.
Fuck the rule of threes. People are dropping like fucking flies now. Every week there's a new batch of dead entertainers who really contributed something.I'm not sure why Harold Ramis is the one that put me over the edge, but he did. Maybe because he was so instrumental to many of the films that I loved growing up.

THE DEAD (Just in fucking February, which ain't over yet btw):
Maximilian Schell
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Shirley Temple Black
Sid Caesar
Ralph Waite
John Henson
Malcolm Tierney
Harold Ramis

No small number of them died younger than they should have, from overdose or rare illness. And for the record, just to  put into sharp relief the injustice of it all...

THE LIVING (and still working)
Lindsay Lohan
Kirk Cameron
Stephen Baldwin
Charlie Sheen
Chelsea Handler
Corey Feldman
Dane Cook
Rob Schneider

Seriously, fuck this shit. I quit.

I've Sinew Naked Too Much Already!

Ahhh, puns.
Seriously though, is there really that big a market for Willem Dafoe nude scenes? They're everywhere! Google "Willem Dafoe naked", if you dare.
Now I'm not saying the man has anything to be ashamed of. He doesn't. He keeps himself fit and healthy. I have shame, because I've really let myself go over the last fifteen years. But fitness levels notwithstanding, this is one weird-ass body to keep putting onto film.
Picture Dafoe's face: not exactly hideous, but definitely odd; every feature fighting for dominance, bony protrusions in all the wrong places, skin pulled tightly over tendons like wet rubber bands. Now imagine that face has legs and a penis. Because that shit goes all the way down. The guy looks like a novice art student's hastily-drawn figure study crawled off the page and started fucking anything that moved.
I think my first Willem sex scene was a couple decades ago, with Madonna and some dripping candle wax. Not a pleasant memory. But I don't really follow his films, so I didn't realize how common this was. I wouldn't see that pale, vacu-sealed skin again until the first Spider-Man movie. (Thanks a lot, Raimi.)
More recently he was a demon, or the devil, or something (I've said before that I don't do research). The poster showed off his grisly torso from behind with some wood sprite or something wrapping her legs around him, because who wouldn't pay to see more of that in the theater? I'll take two tickets, one for me and one for the nurse who puts moisturizing drops in my pried-open eyeballs!
Now there's Nymphomaniac. It's an ensemble piece, so everyone gets a chance to strip and show their O face. And that's just for the posters. Of course, the producers say, let's get Willem Dafoe! That guy fucking LOVES doing nude scenes! Really, he's done so damn many this must be some kinda thing for him. And once again a crew of honest, hard-working, possibly unsuspecting union professionals shows up on the set to powder, light, and film his puckered, clenching buttocks.
I know I should be focused on Shia "Mutt" LeBeouf being in this film because of all the shit about plagiarism, but...
Sorry, wait. I have to take a moment here. Yes, I said I don't do research, but I did go as far as to look up the proper spelling of LeBeouf just now on imdb, and it turns out there's a Nymphomaniac VOLUME TWO???
Fuck it. Forget Willem Dafoe's freaky alien autopsy physique. I'm done with this one. And no more researching; it only leads to more disappointing knowledge.

Lego Movie: I LOVE That I Love Movies!

The Lego Movie

Directed by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller

Starring Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett, Morgan Freeman, Will Ferrell, and a shit-ton of other people

I know, I've kinda painted myself into a corner with the title and attitude of this blog so far. I've pigeon-holed myself (snicker) as a curmudgeonly malcontent who hates all films while claiming to love the art form. I should especially hate crass commercialism in the form of a movie all about a toy line. But -- and I courageously say this now to the whopping three people reading -- fuck that noise. I can't be pissed off about every one of them, because dammit, I love movies!

The Lego Movie is fantastic. It's fast, funny, and just fun to watch. Go see it. Now. In the theater with other people. It's worth your time and money, and you'll enjoy it so much more as part of a live audience.

I'd love to say more about it, but given how many of my "friends" have yet to see it (I'll drop the quotes when I see ticket stubs), apparently I still have to avoid spoilers. And half the fun of this film is letting its lunacy unfold in front of you.

I mean, I suppose I can say something without giving away details. Most of the jokes in the movie, and jokes account for about 95% of it, are beautifully timed gems. There's a few running gags in the film, and the directors hit them exactly right. The gags didn't get stale, and they always knew the perfect moment to call one back for a surprise extra laugh. Don't chat with your neighbor, don't chew loud foods, don't fucking blink, or you'll miss something good.

Also, this movie, the one made of Legos, called The Lego Movie? The one where all the water, explosions and fucking everything are made of CG Legos? I'm not 100% on this, but I'm pretty sure nobody in the whole film ever spoke the word "Lego". It didn't occur to me while I was watching, only days afterward. If I'm right, though, great call on the part of the filmmakers. Another production team might have used it everywhere, shoving "Lego" in places it didn't even make sense. The way they do with words like "Smurf", or "Wahlberg". Keeping "Lego" out of the dialog allowed the world to feel like its own place, where the characters didn't define themselves by the toy brand, and that helped them feel more real, more like characters unto themselves. Well played. Class act, those director guys.

So, seriously. Go see it NOW. Everything really is awesome.

There, that wasn't so bad! I can be positive now and then. Well done, everyone! Bang-up job!

Yep.

...Okay, if I have to give one negative, I'll go exactly this far: in the opening scene of the film (not a spoiler!), Morgan Freeman sounds like he just woke up. After being drugged. As if the only reason he was in the film at all is because the producers abducted him off the street and kept him doped up in the sound booth. But it's all good after that. Really. He has a scene later on, the nature of which I can't mention because of goddamn spoilers that you don't deserve to avoid because why haven't you stopped reading to go watch this movie yet... and in that scene he's hilarious.

And to be fair to Mr. Freeman, the guy's old. Like, really, really, fucking old. He'll die some day, and probably fairly soon.

Jesus...Morgan Freeman is going to die.

I gotta go think for a bit...

Damn.

Heavensbee, Say it Ain't So!

Philip Seymour Hoffman has died, most likely from a drug overdose. Maybe it wasn't even a typical overdose, as there are reports of spiked, ultra-potent heroin making the rounds. All speculation and rumor as far as I know. I don't research shit.

I can't say I'm shocked by his passing. Disappointed, definitely. He was a very talented actor and, according to many, a nice guy. He never said anything mean to me.

But no, not shocked.

I've been watching Philip Seymour Hoffman's movies for, what, twenty years now? And in that time he's aged forty. The man was candid about addiction, and for the past several years, in spite of the makeup teams of many major studios, he's looked like he already had one foot in the ground. His was the face of a man aggressively abusing his own health.

Like Heath Ledger before him, he didn't deserve to die. And we didn't deserve to lose him. But it is what it is, and there's no bringing him back.

That is, until Lionsgate decides to resurrect him digitally for the next two Hunger Games films! Yay, movies!

Or maybe they could just replace him with Don Cheadle.

Eisenberg is Luthor, and it Doesn't Matter

Jesse Eisenberg is Lex Luthor, and it doesn't fucking matter.

I don't mean that in some big-picture, people-are-starving kind of way. (Although they are. C'mon guys, it's the price of a cup of coffee...in 1983.) No, I mean it makes no difference for the film. Before I explain why, let's discuss the thing people are (wrongly) focused on about the Man of Steel films. Right now, the only notable thing about the upcoming Batman/Superman movie is who they've cast in the--

Hang on. Wait.

Okay, first off, let's stop fucking kidding ourselves. This isn't the next Man of Steel movie. It's the first Justice League movie. It's got Superman, of course. Or Hope-man, or Symbol-on-the-chest Man, or whatever they're going to call him now that they got all that smirky, winking bullshit out of their system last time. And it's got Batman...sort of. Wonder Woman is in there somewhere too. There's even talk of possibly adding Martian Manhunter. And please, good lord please, tell me they'll include DC's longest-running punchline, Aquaman.

Everyone knows that The Avengers raised the stakes -- and the erections -- at the studios with film rights to major comics properties. Fuck's sake, they're making a fucking Ant-Man movie just to help establish more backstory for Avengers 2! So DC fanboys have been waiting on the edge of their folding chairs for the announcement of an official JLA movie. Never mind the fact that, unlike Marvel, the DC films haven't earned it yet by building film characters who stand out in their own right. Who cares? With each new leak about League favorites joining the crew, it gets clearer and clearer that, whatever the movie's title, it's going to at least introduce the future team. Neckbeards, rejoice!

But -- and I'm getting back on point now about the wrong thing people focus on -- each time they announce a new character, whipping fans into a frenzy of casting speculation, they quickly turn around and dick-punch the audience with a baffling choice of actors. We still know nothing of the story (that early tease, where we were led to believe we'd finally see the famous Frank Miller Batman vs. Superman cage match in a live-action film, has since been walked back), so all we have to fuss and fight over is the casting.

Batman! Photoshopped images flooded the internet, people copy-pasting countless actors' heads onto Batman's body. Many guesses were posted on blogs, many denials were issued by actors' agents, and many friendships were tested. Me, I was kind of partial to the Josh Brolin version myself, even though I knew that it wouldn't matter.

Then we learned that the part was being given to Ben Affleck, and there was a weeks-long period of mourning. Much sobbing, much bile, much support for Ben from that fat director who bought his old house. Even now, people console one another, recalling where they were when they heard the news that the guy from Reindeer Games was going to be the new Batman. But it didn't really bug me, because I knew it didn't matter.

(Oooh, hushed silence.)

After a time, word leaked out that Wonder Woman would join the roster. Holy shit! FINALLY! Sweaty palms dusted off old jpegs of Megan Fox in digital WW gear. Trembling fingers scoured Google Images for the perfect blend of beauty (tits) and strength (bigger tits) to fill the breastplate of the Amazon princess. But then little-known Gal Gadot, from the "Fast & Fuckall" series, was tapped for the role. Once again, people lost their shit. "How could they not cast (insert just about any fucking name)", they cried. Was she too cutesy? A little too slender for the part? Maybe. Maybe not. But it still didn't matter.

(How can he be so calm about this shit?)

And then came yet another soul-crushing blow. Jesse Eisenberg will play Lex Luthor? How dare they cast Mark Zuckerberg in that crucial role? The one that was first made so non-threatening by Gene Hackman, and then so non-human by Kevin Spacey! Why were they doing this to us? Why, God, why???

*sigh*...

You're just not getting it.

It doesn't fucking matter!

(But why doesn't it matter? How could the cast of a movie full of long-standing icons not matter?)

Because Zach Snyder, that's why.

Snyder has a great eye for visuals. He makes beautiful commercials and music videos. But it's the human element that's lacking from his work. The production design is intricate and gorgeous. Costumes, environments, special effects, all come together to paint a stunning picture, which is probably why we're forced to watch half the fucking thing in slow motion.

But Snyder does't connect with his characters. Not even a bit. He doesn't understand what motivates them, or how to convey their personal story to the audience. It may well be the reason his casting choices are often so inscrutable (Ozymandias, anyone?). How do you match actors to characters when you don't understand either? Audiences walked out of Man of Steel not knowing how to feel, other than maybe a little pissed, because the movie never gave them a chance to feel anything. Amazing musical score aside, and despite the best efforts of a huge VFX team, the film as a whole had no heart. Just like every Snyder film, everything was superficial. No real people. No sense of humanity, no matter how much of the dialog was devoted to that very fucking thing. Just 'splosions. But that makes for great trailers, and great trailers get butts in seats.

I'm not a loyalist to Marvel or DC. In fact, I couldn't possibly care less. I don't even read these characters comics, not since I was a teen, and that's an embarrassingly long time ago. I'm just a fan of good storytelling, and that's why it's frustrating to watch people pretend that the films from each camp are on equal footing. They're not even close. Avengers followed a large ensemble cast as their individual arcs interwove through an engaging story with a clear conflict and decisive goal. Man of Steel followed one dude, the most well-known superhero on the fucking planet, and couldn't figure out what the hell it was trying to say. I would listen to Joss Whedon, for ten goddamn hours, describe a shockingly bad stomach flu before I'd ever sit through Man of Steel again.

Start with the characters, then build their story, THEN create amazing visuals to support it. DO NOT start with a bunch of effects-based tentpole scenes, then attempt to bridge the space between them with flimsy plot points, and then eventually get around to the characters as an afterthought. When you do that, no actor in the world can destroy your film, because it's ruined already.

Well, Fuck Me Right Up the Ass

Next up in the line of Films That Don't Need Making, in 2015 we'll get a CG theatrical feature called "How the Grinch Got Ass-Raped for Quick Easy Cash".

Every mention of this that I see online keeps making sure to mention that it'll be "an animated version of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas", and at first I bristled. I thought they were trying to pretend that there isn't already an animated version out there, one we all know very well, one that's played on TV, for free, every god-forsaken HOLIDAY season (come at me, Palin!) for nearly half a century.

But it just occurred to me, in a way that chills my spine: they're reassuring us that it won't be another live-action abomination like the Jim Carrey movie. Because that's exactly the kind of major, filler-heavy overhaul they have in mind.

I know, I know! They want to not make it awful! That's good, right?

BUT!

Just because it's not a horrific, dimly-lit, prosthetic-fetishizing piece of condescending shit filmed entirely through a fisheye lens, doesn't mean it'll be any good. This one looks to come from Illumination, the people behind Despicable Me. Which is fine. That was a cute, touching film that plucked at the heartstrings just often enough to make the core story work. And then Illumination realized that the Minions were the real reason people loved the movie. So much so, that they went from filler device to plot premise in the sequel, and now they're just giving them their own fucking movie next, because story is hard. Minions are the Steve Urkel of animated characters, moving from comic relief caricature to leading role status, leaving the original stars thoroughly upstaged and ultimately forgotten. Seriously, tell me more about the critical romance subplot between teen-girl-with-glasses and barely-latin-boyfriend.

I like the Minions a lot. They're adorable, fun to watch, and make great animated gifs. But what will take their place in the Grinch movie? What will fill the remaining hour of screen time after the actual story is over? Hackney musical numbers? Yet another compulsory tween puppy-love B-story? An entire pack of rabid, mouth-foaming Maxes, all with bloody antlers strapped to their heads? Actually, I could probably get behind that.

But Illumination also has Dr. Seuss street cred, because they did The Lorax, right?

Fuck. You.

I had the good fortune to be so sleep-deprived when Lorax came out (from working on non-Suessian animated projects), that I actually slept through most of it in the theater. I was one of the lucky ones. Others had to sit through one of the good doctor's less engaging and even less charming books, plus about forty minutes of mid-grade filler.

But it was necessary to make that film, because it carried such an important message about conserving the environment!

Yeah! A message barely sold by that movie to start with, then negated by the fact the film was entirely funded by marketing tie-ins with fuel-guzzling SUVs (with cute, eco-friendly names that mean nothing), plastic Happy Meal toys-slash-landfill, and just about any fucking thing that could support an orange mustache.

So get in line, salivating marketing execs! In exchange for carpet-bombing the globe with Grinchy shit on all your buildings, baubles and billboards, Illumination will model a gift under Cindy Lou Who's tree to remind the audience to buy your rabbit-shaped, vibrating dildo!

And you know exactly where you can stick that...

Not Bad!

The World's End. Not bad!

This isn't a movie review blog, and I'm not getting paid, so I'm not going to go all in with a bunch of details. This is a blog where I write about movie stuff that pisses me off, and Edgar Wright's films generally don't piss me off.

The ending seemed totally unnecessary, and honestly, some of the fight sequences were a bit overlong and repetitive... but now I'm just looking for stuff to call out, and that's kinda being a jerk. Like I said, I'm not getting paid for this; there's no quota for me to fill.

Look, it is what it is. It doesn't take itself too seriously, and doesn't ask you to either. The cheesiest moments are meant to be that way, very tongue-in-cheek and all that. Like the two before it, the final film in the Cornetto Trilogy is a spoof of a particular film genre (and to some degree, of films in general), without anchoring itself to every trope of that genre. It takes the core concept -- in this case, the body-snatching alien race -- and then runs in a different direction with it. Usually toward a fence.

Oh shit! Um, spoilers on that alien invasion part. And maybe the fence.

Ahh, fuck it. You should have had all that figured out from the trailers. And if you're the type who deliberately avoids trailers, yet somehow are ALSO the type who waits until it's on DVD... then screw you, douchebag, you had that coming.

Really, though, it was very much in line with the rest of the "trilogy" (for those who are confused: the three films, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World's End are unrelated stories, just made by and starring the same people). There were the usual poignant moments, the brief bursts of sympathy, but only enough to give the characters an arc and help to flesh out the story. Never enough to make you tear your clothing in grief and denial when a key character dies -- spoilers again, woops -- which is appropriate for a spoof.  The Cornetto films are just particularly clever spoofs. Which is why they're not called "Zombie Movie", "Cop Movie", and "Alien Invasion Movie".

(Look at that. Managed to be just a little bitchy about movies after all.)

And accidentally kinda reviewed The World's End, too. Somebody pay me, dammit!

EDIT: Full disclosure, I enjoyed the movie. My wife and I laughed out loud often. But this blog isn't called I LOVE That I Love Movies.

Get Off the Pot

Enough rambling in the abstract. Time to actually watch a movie! Tonight's selection: The World's End. Hope the final chapter of the Cornetto Trilogy holds up!

ALL THE FRAMES

Thank god Peter Jackson is spearheading the inevitable move to 60fps -- that's frames per second to the uninitiated -- in film production. (I know I'm late on this, but I just opened this blog two days ago, so get off my ass.) After all, that's what's been lacking in the theaters, right? With films like Ride Along, The Nut Job, and Devil's Due opening this weekend, it's clear we've reached a new Golden Age of film. But now that we've reached this pinnacle of storytelling, there's nowhere left to go, right?

WRONG, motherfucker! We can travel inward, into the endless void between those 24 frames! Science stuff makes it clear that there are infinite points in both space and time. Infinite points within a second, and infinite points between each of those points! Think of all the narrative lost in the chasm between frame 1,657 and frame 1,658... I weep for us all when I consider what might have occurred in the time between Bruce Willis punching that dude in the face, and Bruce Willis still in the process of punching that same dude's face.

Sure, maybe it gives people headaches and nausea, but there's always an adjustment period to new technology. Remember all those seizures when they introduced "talkies"?

On a side note, as an animator who's worked on a few films full of CG characters, let me just give Mr Jackson my most sincere thanks. I know that my fellow craftsmen and I have long wished that there were over twice as many frames to fill with convincing, relatable character animation. For no additional pay.

Thanks. Really.

Portal Films are Exactly Like High School Musicals

In my senior year at El Modena, the big Spring Musical was going to be Oklahoma! (emphasis not added). The auditions for that ambitious production were hugely successful, in that a ton of very talented people -- including many who'd never done anything with the drama classes -- were discovered and added to the roster.

But no matter how many ways the producers cut it, they just couldn't match the particular talents of those kids to the needs of the various roles in that show. They knew they had an amazing cast; it just wasn't an Oklahoma! cast.

So they scrapped what they were doing, and spent an entire night digging through dozens and dozens of musicals, trying to find a show that would be a solid fit for this impressive group of earnest kids. They landed on The Pajama Game, and that production turned out to be fucking AMAZING.

Sometimes you have to tailor your work to your available resources. Sometimes that gets you a far better result than what you originally had in mind. The shark in Jaws didn't work right, so instead we got to see a fin and some yellow barrels, and it was fucking brilliant.

For most of 2013, I was trying to make my Portal short film with a group of talented, earnest young artists. But we were spinning our wheels and getting nowhere, stalling out due to a shortage of texture artists, myriad technical hurdles, a bloated pipeline... you name it. And that was just from trying to put out a 30-second teaser. I've been trying to emulate a major studio's production methods, but what I have is an indie production crew. I've been trying to make Oklahoma! when I should be making The Pajama Game.

I don't have a major studio's resources, and I shouldn't try to pretend that I do. What I do have is a group of people with a very specific set of skills. Time to Neeson this bitch.

Kristen Stuart Cannot be Killed

And now Kristen Stuart will star in the romantic comedy, "1984".

I just realized: she's Keanu Reeves. Not really an actor so much as a cipher. A blank face onto which the audience can project themselves. Perfect for epic, plot-heavy, non-character-driven franchises.

She'll work forever.

Fuck.

So I'm Blogging. How Very 2006.

Friends tell me to blog my angry movie stuff, because I rant endlessly about films that piss me off. Unless those same friends keep reminding me, chances are I'll forget I even started this thing. Off we go!