Currently...

Currently listening to:
Back on the MF Street and First Aid Kit by Disco Ensemble
Hello Master by Piestess
Dethalbum II by Dethklok

Currently reading:
The Internet, and believe me, it's not worth it.

Currently playing:
Gran Turismo PSP (PSP)
NHL 10 (Xbox 360)
Need For Speed: Shift (Xbox 360)

Currently...

Currently listening to:
Ruination by Job for a Cowboy
Shogun by Trivium
The Dark Knight (soundtrack) by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard
Dying to Say This to You by The Sounds

Currently Reading:
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Currently Playing:
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP)
Final Fantasy VII (PSP)
Metal Gear Solid (PSP)
Prince of Persia (Xbox 360)
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (Xbox 360)

Currently...

Currently Listening To:
The Protomen by The Protomen
Street Fight, Round One by Man Factory

Currently Reading:
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Currently Playing:
Final Fantasy VII (PSP)
Metal Gear Solid (PSP)
Need for Speed Most Wanted (Xbox 360)
Ninja Gaiden (NES)

The Ballad of John Connor or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Judgement Day, Part 2

I guess over the years I've seen so many movies that some things that go on behind the scenes become apparent, even when seeing the movie for the first time.

Le'ts talk about Bale's freakout. Apparently the Director of Photography, Shane Hurlbut, was walking around behind the camera making sure the lighting looked good while they were filming, and it was distracting Bale. I can see where Bale's coming from. Having a lot of shit going on behind the camera is tough, but not 4-minute f-bomb tirade tough. After hearing the whole thing via YouTube, I didn't think that Christian Bale was particularly a bad guy for that. I mean, yea, he overreacted, but we all have bad days, and when you're a movie star, everybody knows when you have one.

The rumors that then surfaced about the major changes to the story because Bale demanded them now that he was signed on to play John Connor and how unprofessional he was on the set were getting out of hand. Honestly, when you get a guy like Bale to play the role of John Connor, you expand it because you want to get asses in the seats, let alone because you now have one of the best and hottest (star-power wise) modern actors playing the role.

I encourage you to go to YouTube and listen to this diatribe if you haven't. I want you think about what you hear and what you don't hear. There is somebody trying to speak up over Bale, but he sounds like a little mouse, or a scared child trying to stop an argument between Mommy and Daddy.

That little squeaking? That's the director of the film, McG. The director.

I've watched a few interviews with McG. I can't really say too many bad things about the guy, with the exception of the fact that he's a little delusional as far as his filmmaking ability. So he's got a bit of a douchey attitude, but I can almost say with certainty that it's mostly atrribute to his delusions that he's a great filmmaker. That shows right there, that he doesn't completely know what he's doing when he cannot control two people on his set. Two professionals at their craft, and he can't even get one to sit still long enough and then subsequently can't get Christian Bale to shut up. What's more is that when it's over, McG wants to have Christian take five and cool off, but Bale just screams at him that he's ready and wants to finish shooting the scene.

To me, that kind of sums up the entire movie, philosophically. McG just didn't have control. It was disconnected by the script, the very plot itself. It's somewhat fast pace made it hard to control and show character growth while still advancing the plot at a reasonable enough pace so that it A) Kept the attention of the audience, and B) Concealed the weakness of the script. This, to me, is such a vicious cycle that it really made it hard to see the film as a serious part of the franchise, which is funny considering how pivotal and serious the happenings in the film are to the franchise.

Naturally you ask "whose to blame?" Naturally again you look at the douchey director, McG. But nay, I say, look to the piece, as a whole. Look at the screenwriters, the team that gave us Catwoman, The Net, Primeval, The Net 2.0, and of course, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. I implore you to consider that there were 17 different producers on the film with very limited filmographies. Finally, I ask you to consider the very plot itself. You have 115 minutes to tell a story about one of the first T-units (Marcus Wright), Kyle Reese's introduction, subsequent capture and rescue, and John Connor's story about being a "leader or men", unpopular with the resistance generals because of his almost religous following and the fact that he's right all the damn time about the future. Now you have to take those stories, make sure your characters arc, and then intertwine them in a culmination that sets the stage for the events of the first Terminator film.

Obviously, with 115 minutes, you're going to have to cut some corners. The problem was that story was cut out to make way for the action, which probably wasn't the smartest of ideas. All of these things together made what ended up to be a rather weak movie. Philosophically the movie served it's purpose to further bridge the gap between the future and the past in the franchise, but didn't deliver that in a mental and emotional punch, just a popcorn sort of jab. It also didn't help that we were bombarded with this movie from a PR standpoint.

All I'm saying is that sometimes it's not all the director's or the stars' fault. I'm not saying that you shouldn't not call the movie bad. I'm just saying that after watching the movie, you should think about it for a minute, consider it's purpose, it's intent, what it delivered or didn't deliver, and then make a judgement. And when making that judgement, take a deep breath, relax, and remember: it's just a movie.

A Summer movie.

The Ballad of John Connor or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Judgement Day, Part 1

On Memorial Day, I went to see Terminator: Salvation with Jimmy and Jared. This flick was hyped all to hell and back and there was some internet buzz created when audio ended up getting leaked that had a very upset Christian Bale chewing out the Director of Photography on the film.

Terminator: Salvation is the fourth film in the Terminator franchise. This is the first film that takes place post Judgment Day. It follows the stories of John Connor, a leader of a group of resistance fighters, and Marcus Wright(played by Sam Worthington), a former convict who's been given a second chance. Without giving too much away, Marcus comes across a teenage Kyle Reese(Anton Yelchin), and he and Marcus attempt to get out of a dilapidated Los Angeles and find John Connor, who is also looking for Reese.

If that sounds like a lot is going on in the story, you're right, that is a lot. Sadly, it doesn't really show in the film. With those two storylines having to eventually merge, the movie goes rather quick and doesn't give you the ability to gain much attachment to the characters unless you're already familiar witht he recurring characters, and even then, they aren't really themselves, at least not in the sense we last saw them. I'm not sure if I could even blame a poor script for this, either. It just feels that they may have tried to cram too much story into two hours worth of movie. There was no real focus on either character, Marcus Wright or John Connor. This left a lot to be desired in the character development. The acting was pretty good, even if the script didn't give them much to work with. You could see that the main characters understood and felt what their characters felt at the right moments, even if the audience didn't, although I'm not really sure why Bryce Dallas Howard(who played Mrs. John Connor) and Moon Bloodgood(playing Blair Williams) were even in the movie. Their characters were kind of to serve two small purposes that could have been done by nearly anyone, so I'm not sure why they were cast, especially when looking at their screen time to star power ratio. Well, maybe not Bloodgood, she fit. Okay, forget I said that at all. Still, you don't get to see certain things in the characters and therefore do not completely understand what is emotionally motivating them. You only see what the story is driving them to do.

The action suffers from being a little bland, and just overall not very exciting. The special effects were good, but with the lack of real intensity in the action, they weren't as creepy or as scary as they've previously been. It seems that Skynet kind of became a little less ruthless than it previously had been as well. There was no real logical hunting pattern for the self-aware machine network, and it seemed that people could hide in the most obvious of places and survive.

All in all, I can't really say the film was particularly bad, it just wasn't too good. It's sort of popcorn feel didn't really help or hurt the franchise, per se, but the overall philosophy behind the Terminator series is a little less deep thanks to failed rescue attempt of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines by Terminator: Salvation.

It's Been Almost Six Years and Maybe I've Finally Stopped Being an Idiot

I have finished my first semester of college. It certainly wasn't what I expected. I probably didn't do as good as I could have, but I think of this as a test run to see if I would even like school again. Turns out I do like it and plan on staying for a while.

But the reason I'm going is not totally for the education, or the stupid little piece of paper that I'll dive deep into debt for. It was for the challenge, connections, and the experience.

Ever since graduating high school I've spiraled into a sort of social phobia that seemed completely incurable. I felt alone socially, artistically, and philosophically.

Testing the waters of a real job happened after a year or so of working with my father. Sure it was a laid back place and my mother worked there, but it was a legitimate job. I felt comfortable with the people that worked there, but then again, most of them were adults, and adults seem to like me for some reason. At one point, we did have some people fresh out of college, a little older than me at the time, and they scared the life out of me. For some reason, people my age make me nervous. Like I'm not somebody they'd like.

I've always kind of felt that way about the people my age. I still do. I'm not sure I'll ever be over it.

So five years after completing high school I decide it's a good idea to go back to school. It was November 2008, I had just been laid off from only my second legit job I've ever had, and the economy was in the drink, so I figured I didn't really have much to lose.

The interesting thing is that for four years I said I wasn't going to go to school for film. Then I sat in that counselor's office and she asked, "Have you decided on a major yet?"

"Film," I replied.

Because I realized there is nothing else I'd really like to do.

So my first semester started with the basic classes: Algebra, Comp, Humanities, and an elective. This elective, a film study class called Introduction to Motion Pictures, has pretty much changed my life.

It wasn't so much the content, or the teacher. It was pretty much a single person, another student in the class who thought the class was an introduction to producing a movie. His name, Wil Magness.

Wil is like me, a guy who wanted to make movies and maybe thought going to film school would be a good idea. Only real difference between us was that I knew that this class was a film study class. Oh, and that he had made a couple short movies already.

This difference led to his brilliant idea: Use people from the class to make a movie. The teacher also thought it was a great idea, and he commenced with putting together a cast and crew, etc. I told him I could pretty much do any job behind the camera, but the poor audition turnout put me into the unknown territory of being in front of the camera.

I know that I had learned a lot in my four years of theater in high school and all the books about filmmaking I had read, but I still wasn't completely ready to have a camera shoved up my nose. I learned a lot about the mentality of everyone in the crew. I learned about finding things inside and understanding the difference between the way your face feels when you're happy and the way it feels when you're sad.

Most importantly, I learned that I wanted to make movies for the rest of my life.

In a way, making Finals with Wil was an awakening. I learned once and for all that it's really as easy as just going out and shooting. I learned that I have the knowledge, and now it's time to apply it and really become a filmmaker, what I've always wanted.

To be honest, the rest of my classes didn't particularly teach me much else about myself, except that I'm a lazy jerk who should really consider trying for a change.

Currently...

Currently Listening To:
Crack the Skye by Mastodon
iwrestledabearonce by iwrestledabearonce
Mono's discography

Currently Reading:
Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting by Syd Field
Faranheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller/Klaus Janson/Lynn Varley
Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughn/Pia Guerra

Currently Playing:
Bioshock (Xbox 360)
Final Fantasy (PSP)
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (PSP)
NHL 2k9

Things Up Next:
World War Z by Max Brooks
A History of Violence by John Wagner/Vince Locke