My Video Hell

I am right now (in between other, more decisively-deadlined jobs) hard at work on the next episode of "The Game OverThinker." It MIGHT take a little longer than I wanted it to take, read below to learn why...

Every episode of "Game OverThinker" from the beginning until right now have been made entirely using two programs - one for manipulating images, one for arranging and editing video files - made by the same Very Famous Software Company. I won't use their name here because it's still slightly plausible that the problem might be my doing (not looking likely), but let's just say they are Very Famous and are named after a type of building material.

ANYWAY!

I've spent about a full week (in total hours) shooting footage and building FX for the ending sequence of this next TGO episode (the middle part I'm doing last so everyone can get their "Ask Ivan" questions in) and have managed to finally this afternoon cut it together into proper format. It's a complicated sequence - one actor playing about a dozen characters via greenscreen with a lot of effects and sound elements - but also a short one, not even five minutes in length.

The "Media Encoder" that Very Famous Software Company's video-editing software allows as it's SOLE option for exporting those elements as one solid video file refuses to complete that task - constantly crashing a few seconds through the timeline with no available description of what's causing the crash or what can be done to fix it. My assumption is "too many elements," but A.) I cannot be certain because this is apparently 1983 where it's still "okay" for software to give error messages with no troubleshooting and B.) for the amount of fucking money these programs cost (seriously, figure out who I'm talking about and look up how much they ask for their products) this should NOT be an issue... especially for less than five minutes of footage not even in HD.

Now, normally, this is something you'd fix by calling a customer service person. Oh! But, you see, Very Famous Software Company doesn't have reps available "overnight" (because, as we all know, if people with jobs that involve the use of high-end video-editing software are known for anything it's for keeping reliable 9 to 5 business hours) ...or even in the evening. Or even on weekends. Apparently I can order a Domino's pizza at 2am but I can't get service for a product I'm paying... egh. You get the idea.

SO! After many hours of self-research (because, y'know, no customer service whatsoever) it seems that a seperate "effects specific" product ALSO made by Very Famous Software Company might handle this sort of project better AND I can just pop the "raw" timeline from it's current place into THAT with little difficult. Okay, cool... granted, it's another HUGE chunk of change and there's no garauntee this is going to fix the problem (sure would be nice to talk to a fucking customer service person about that, huh!?,) but it's something...

Wait! Wait! Very Famous Software Company knows their products are expensive, so they graciously offer downloads for FREE TRIALS on their website! Well, that's good news! So I go to download it, and instead of just downloading immediately via that little "do you want to download ______?" window like every other website on the fucking planet it instead asks me to install Very Famous Software Company's PROPRIETARY downloading service (which requires a login ID) onto my system. Of course it does, it's Very Famous Software Company. So I download the proprietary service that I need to download the free trial... and it won't work. Error message after error message. There is nothing wrong with my internet service. More error messages.

I have other priorities to get to at that point, so I set about those while periodically trying to make this proprietary downloading service work. Several hours later, my work is done and the download service still doesn't work.

But wait! There's another option! Very Famous Software Company offers a "Cloud" service whereby you pay a monthly fee and get to use various versions of their products... which includes the trial you've been trying to download! Hurray! And there's even a free trial of the "Cloud" service itself - double hurray!

...except once I've signed up for the "Cloud" trial, I don't see the option on it's "Apps Menu" for the product I signed up to gain access to. It turns out that the "free" trial of the product I signed up for is ONLY available through the paid version of the "Cloud" service. Of course it is. It's Very Famous Software Company.

I'm angry at this point. Like, Incredible Hulk angry. My Twitter looks like the private diary of an intern for the Romney campaign. Just burning up with hatred for Very Famous Software Company, their products, my inarguable professional need to keep using their products and most of all for the fact that once again something I was actually really enjoying doing (I honestly love doing what I do on this show, and this sequence was coming together spectacularly) has now been drained of it's joy and may even need to be scrapped altogether because of all this. I work hard on this stuff, and the parts of it that are fun are often the ONLY fun I really get for days on end.

So... fine, fuck it. It's only money. I sign up for a month's worth of paid "Cloud" service. The level I paid at lets me have full access to ONE product. I pick the one I came looking for a 4th of a DAY ago. They process the transaction. It goes through. The "order summary" pops up with a big button for "DOWNLOAD." I click it...

..."DOWNLOAD" takes me back to that same useless "Apps" menu on the "Cloud" service. The option that I'm looking for, that've now paid them to let me use for a MONTH... is not there. I sign out. I refresh. I sign back in. Try again. No change. My account, billing summary, email reciepts, etc show that I paid to be able to download this and it's not letting me download it.

And there's NOTHING I can do about that tonight. Or tomorrow. Or until Monday. Even though that means two days out of 30 that I've paid for will now be wasted.

Because I can't call their service line and ask why I am not able to access and use this product because Very Famous Software Company cannot be bothered to have a customer service line available on evenings or weekends.

Because, apparently, it is acceptable for a software company that operates a Cloud-based download management service that caters specifically to people who need constant, ready access to products and material to run their customer service on fucking BANKER'S HOURS. ...Oh! Except that term is no longer accurate, because I can call my bank 24 hours a FUCKING day.

The sun is about to come up here, and I'm fucking done for the night. The lone "upside" to this nightmare is that this is, fortunately, NOT happening to a show/project with a contractual deadline - if it was, I'd be losing my mind for real right now.

I'm telling myself it might just be some kind of service delay and I'll be able to access it tomorrow, but I know that's bullshit. I know I'm going to spend monday morning/afternoon on the phone with Very Famous Software Company working this out, either getting the trial that I paid for actually downloaded or at least getting my money back... money which will then go into the fund for the many, many hundreds of dollars I'll be spending to buy either a better computer (who knows, maybe this heap just isn't "strong enough" to render that biiiiiig scaaaaaary 4 1/2 minutes of video!) or to buy the full version of this Very Famous Software Company's "Effects" program because apparently it'll help and I'll be damned if all this work I've already done go to waste.

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Escape to the Movies: "The Master"

You've heard correctly.

"Intermission" is about the Summer's big surprise hit.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : The Master

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"Vamps"

I keep wanting to make the usual joke about whose blood Alicia Silverstone has been bathing in to still look exactly like she did over a decade ago today, and then I remember she actually is playing a vampire in this movie... which I can't make up my mind about: Does this look terrible or weirdly good?

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"South Park" Ribbing

I'm a "South Park" fan, but everyone could use a little dressing down now and then.

Honestly, I whipped this up one night awhile ago and never put it on The Tubes because I didn't think it came out AS cutting or funny as I wanted it to be, overall. But the music I found makes it work out better, I think... but maybe I'm wrong. You tell me...

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"Fat Kid Rules The World"

Bullied, overweight kid in Seattle is rescued from suicide by a sketchy slacker, who then decides they should form a punk band. Matthew Lillard directs.

I get the sense that this will be a teenage movie I will actually like. I'm getting the sense that Lillard is turning into an interesting talent again.

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Big Picture: "The Prophecy of Freakazoid"

"Red underwear man... PRETTY!"

The Escapist : The Big Picture : The Prophesy of Freakazoid

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"Crave" Hits at Fantastic Fest

"Crave" is the feature directing debut of Charlie de Lauzirika, who's been one of the top-tier DVD producers for years now. The film was just awarded the Best Director (Next Wave) prize at Fantastic Fest.

Big fan of his work, never met him personally (in reality, anyway, we'd had some friendly interactions on a long-gone movie chat outlet maybe ten years ago) but he's always struck me as one of the good ones. Good to see him make it.

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Mumblecore Beatdown

You may have heard that Badass Digest helmer Devin Faraci and "mumblecore" darling Joe Swanberg participated in one of Fantastic Fest's infamous "debates" over the weekend. If you're not familiar with the format, FF lets participants lay into eachother verbally in a conventional debate... then the opponents put on boxing gloves and settle up for real.

Swanberg won the physical matchup rather definitively (you can see the footage after the jump) - he's a big guy with almost a foot on his opponent, and in Devin's own words he got "the piss beaten out of him." The whole thing is more-or-less for show; but these two guys don't like eachother and for my money Faraci won the war of words with this brutal slapdown of the "mumblecore" movement:

"Mumblecore is the opposite of everything that's great about indie film. It's the laziest form of filmmaking. It's a bunch of middle class and upper class white kids whining about their ennui and their middle class white lives in front of a camera, without a script, without good actors. Here's what you need to make a mumblecore movie: a sense of entitlement, white skin, and Greta Gerwig, and that's it."

"To me, the word "core" at the end of mumblecore, sounds like it should be something punk rock, something amazing, something edgy. Instead it's the blandest, most self-indulgent bullshit, aimed only at the narcissists who make it. Your only audience, pretty much, is you."

I'm not always Devin's biggest fan or even "defender," but I can't help but give a colossal FUCK. YES. to that.

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What Is "Lee's Adventure?"

I'm being told on good authority that a Chinese film called "Lee's Adventure," billed as the big breakout vehicle for Jackie Chan's son and just screened at Fantastic Fest, is the next great "movie about video games." Based on an animated short, plot concerns a teenager with a bizarre mental affliction attempting to complete a game which he believes will allow him access to time-travel. Trailer below the jump:

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That Time The Muppets Met Mario

Something fun, for your Sunday.

I think "Muppet Babies" might be (by default) the closest to "overrated" any of the mainline Muppet productions ever got, mostly because it was probably a certain generation of kids first exposure to the characters. Absolutely not a BAD show, by any means, but watching it again now it's kind of unnavoidable that the ratio of preschool-moralizing to actual humor is a bit lopsided in the not-as-funny direction (also, yes... having all the character voices pitched so high starts to grate after a bit.)

But, fond memories I still have; particularly of the handful of episodes I had on tape and watched incessantly as a kid. One I only think I saw once, however, was (for obvious reasons) burned into my head just enough that before you could look these things up on the internet there was a period when I thought I'd imagined it: "It's Only Pretendo."


If you're not familiar with (or don't recall) the premise of the show, the Babies would play this or that make-believe game, which would flip back and forth between the "real world" of their nursery and elaborate visualizations of what they're pretending is going on; often using mixed-media additions of movie and TV footage (usually public-domain, but sometimes big stuff like "Star Wars" which is why this isn't on DVD yet.)

This episode is built around playing "Pretendo," which you'll gather is supposed to be a video-game console (the "lesson" turns out to be "play friendly and share" rather than "put that down and go outside," UNHEARD OF in any other cartoon of the era where gaming was involved!) Aside from the obvious, I think the reason this one probably stuck out to me as a kid was that you almost NEVER saw video games being played by characters on TV and you definitely never saw reference to ACTUAL games. But that's what goes on here, as the main part of the show is essentially wall-to-wall reference to Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros, Zelda, Frogger (of course) Q*Bert and even The Power Pad(!) plus relative obscurities like Keith Courage and Fantasy Zone.

Enjoy! Part I   Part II   Part III

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Has LEGO Revealed a MAJOR "Man of Steel" Spoiler??

Everyone else is running this, so I figure I might as well get my clicks while I can.

In one of those developments that I'm sure I'll be hearing about as the "symbolic death of film journalism" at the next critic's meetup; major movie news has once again been (potentially) made by the release of a toy company's product schedule: LEGO has been giving retailers the heads-up as to their 2013 licensed products, and references therein seem to have let some possible-surprises slip a little early.

One of them isn't all that much of a surprise (pretty much everyone has figured out who/what Ben Kingsley is ACTUALLY playing in "Iron Man 3," yes?) but the other MAY have given away the game for Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan's "Man of Steel."

All speculation at this point, but still... POTENTIAL MAJOR SPOILER AFTER THE JUMP!

Last chance to turn back, kids:

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The last entry on LEGO's product list for playsets reads as follows: 76009: SUPERMAN BLACK ZERO ESCAPE. If there's an especially well-versed DC Comics fan reading this in the vicinity near you, it may be wise to give them a bag to breathe into.

Who or what is "Black Zero?" Well, to give you an idea of why this could be the mother of all spoilers for this particular movie, the Silver Age (1968) story that introduced the first iteration of the character/concept was called "The Man Who Destroyed Krypton."

Yeah.

In the story (now long-deleted from "official" Superman canon by a Crisis or fifty) Black Zero is an alien "space saboteur" who specializes in causing the destruction of entire planets; and reveals that while Jor-El had been right about Krypton's demise being probable, the "internal pressures" issue would actually have worked itself out had Black Zero not given them an extra shove. When Zero turns his attentions to Earth, Superman is forced to release a Kryptonian supervillain named Jax-Ur from The Phantom Zone in order to defeat him.

In post-Crisis continuity, "Black Zero" is the name of a terrorist organization that was part of a clones-vs-natural-borns Civil War on ancient Krypton whose superweapon "The Destroyer" set in motion the milleniums-long chain reaction that eventually. resulted in the planet's ultimate demise. There's also been a "Black Zero Computer Virus" and the original's name/costume were adopted by an alternate-universe doppleganger of the post-Doomsday Superboy.

So, then... assuming that this is legit, what is "Black Zero" in "Man of Steel?" Is "what destroyed Krypton?" part of some big overarching mystery in the film? Is it a character? An organization? Just a "shout-out" for fans? Mucking around and "over-complicating" the Krypton backstory has been sketchy territory for Superman adaptations in the past... but it's also something I can easily imagine Warners aiming at to give the character some Batman-ish angst; and it'd be VERY typical of the ultra-literalist, mechanics-fixated Nolan Bros. to want to tie the end of Krypton in the backstory to the main story (re: Superman has to literally protect Earth from the same fate his father failed to prevent on Kypton.)

I'll be honest... neither of those theories sound like particularly good ideas to me, but I'm intrigued.

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Devin Faraci Muscles In On My Territory

I kid, I kid.

So, BadassDigest has joined the ranks of web video shows, and I think the result is pretty slick: Faraci, Amy Nicholson and Jeremy Smith breaking down the overall pretty-meh Summer 2012 offerings. Check it out:

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Escape to The Movies: "Resident Evil: Retribution"

It could've been worse.

"Intermission" is about retail stories.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Resident Evil Retribution

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Whoa... who woke up Harrison Ford?

Below, the trailer for "42," a biopic of Jackie Robinson (why haven't there been at least sixty of these by now??) with newcomer Chadwick Boseman in the lead and Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey. It looks good. The only thing worrying is the April release date - the pedigree (biopic, issue-oriented, aging legend playing historical figure in showy supporting part) practically screams "Oscar movie!!!;" so why is it opening after this years show and so long before next years.

In any case, the film is due in April and they're already running trailers starting today; which means I will be called about 10 to 15 times between now and then by my dad to ask if I've seen this yet and if it's any good.

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Man Lynches Chair in Texas

I'm inclined to believe (at least partially) Clint Eastwood when he says that his surreal performance at the Republican Convention was mostly him fucking around at the expense of both the President and the people "dumb enough" to invite him to their convention. Okay, fine.

That said, his "Invisible Obama" sketch has, intentionally or not, given Republicans a new racist effigy it can use to get it's point across i.e. rage at the Scary Black Man in the White House and long, long, long overdue un-bleaching of America he represents to them.

And, sad to say... yeah, this shit does probably get to be part of Eastwood's legacy now - live by The Right, fall by The Right.

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ALL-NEW "Game OverThinker" Is Now Live!

Our newest episode is now showing for all audiences on The Other Site and also on ScrewAttack!

In EPISODE 75: "EASY DOES IT", we examine the modern controversy over "Easy Modes": do they really - as the lead designer of "Assassin's Creed III" recently claimed - "ruin games," or is there a vital place for them? In addition, we proudly announce that the next episode will be "Ask Ivan!" - wherein Ivan the Intern will answer questions to posted to the comments sections under the video itself or to this blog post (see episode for details, no anonymous questions please.)

ALSO! You'll see The OverThinker's favorite watering hole, discover the history of The OmegaThinker, witness the shocking origin of RoboThinker, learn something new about Ivan the Intern and watch ME gradually figure out how to properly use my new green-screen! (in all sincerity, I know some folks run hot or cold on the skits, but I'm pretty psyched with how the "ending" bookend for this one turned out tone, FX and timing-wise.)

Embedded episode and spoiler-y discussion after the jump!

*NOTE: QUESTIONS FOR "ASK IVAN" SHOULD BE POSTED EITHER TO THE COMMENTS UNDER THE VIDEO AT SCREWATTACK OR TO THIS POST AT THE "OVERTHINKER" BLOG; *NOT* TO THIS BLOG.



Yeah, I'm proud of this one. The Hutchinson quote kind of fell into my lap as a perfect sort of topic-starter for my little niche here, and it gave me some room to A.) flesh out exactly what it is Ivan is supposed to be doing most of the time and B.) bring RetroThinker back into the picture and try out what might become his new status-quo as "resident old-timey expert guy." He's a fun "voice" to write for, and his "costume" isn't as cumbersome as some others...

As to RoboThinker's origin? I really like how it came out, overall, but it was a winding road to get here.

When I sat down during the "planning stages" for the revamped show as the AntiThinker business was coming to an end, a robot villain named "RoboThinker" was the very first thing I wrote down after deciding to continue the "____Thinker" naming-scheme schtick, but for the longest time that was all I had for him. (FYI, you have been spared the appearance of non-starter ideas like an enviro-terrorist called "Eco-Thinker," a white or yellow ninja tagged as "ElectroThinker" and a flatulence-powered one-off villain named "OverStinker.")

Believe it or not, for a long time my plan was for him to either resemble Robocop or The Borg - which would've been highly unfortunate since this is hitting so soon after "To Boldly Flee." Ultimately, I wanted him to look like a less specific parody, and the final concept ("Super-Sentai Terminator," basically) turned out to be best within my budget/abilities AND to fit best with OmegaThinker's DBZ/Trunks angle (that being DBZ's "Terminator" spoof and all.)

In any case, I hope everyone enjoys this one; and I'm already enjoying seeing people getting into the spirit of "Ask Ivan." If all goes well, you'll get those answers, an explanation of WHY OmegaThinker doesn't want OverThinker doing the fighting and your first taste of RoboThinker's voice and personality next time. Until then, let's hear those questions for Ivan!

*NOTE: QUESTIONS FOR "ASK IVAN" SHOULD BE POSTED EITHER TO THE COMMENTS UNDER THE VIDEO AT SCREWATTACK OR TO THIS POST AT THE "OVERTHINKER" BLOG; *NOT* TO THIS BLOG.

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Escapist Expo: Q&A Part II

This was the "sillier" of the two Q&A shows, featuring Graham making balloon animals and the now-infamous Gangnam Style dance you might've seen on YouTube and Graham making a balloon-animal:

The Escapist : Escapist Expo : Q&A With The Escapists Day 2

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Escapist Expo: "Fanboy Panel"

Mr. Sterling, Mr. Croshaw, Mr. Saunders, Dr. Mark and Mr. Me on the Escapist Expo's "Fanboyism" panel...

The Escapist : Escapist Expo : Fanboyism

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Big Picture: "MovieBob's Forgotten Monsters"

It's almost October, after all...

The Escapist : The Big Picture : MovieBob's Forgotten Monsters

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Escapist Expo: Q&A (aka Let's Watch Bob Bomb A Joke)

Another vid from The Escapist Expo, this was a straight-up Q&A panel featuring myself, "Miracle of Sound's" Gavin, LRR's Graham & Paul, Jim Sterling, Yahtzee, Dr. Mark Kline, "Critical Miss" artist Cory Rydell and Chris Pranger.

There was actually another of these, not sure when that's going up.

The Escapist : Escapist Expo : Q&A With The Escapists

For the record: Here's the way that schticky "local sports humor" bit is supposed to work: 1.) Learn whatever the main "historic local sports rivalry" is. 2.) Do shout-outs to BOTH groups of fans, seperately. 3.) Do a cross-armed-finger-point in two directions and mischeviously-intone "Oh, I'm from [your home state here] so I don't give a damn - I just wanted wanted YOU ALL to know where eachother were sitting." What you're not seeing in the video is that hardly anyone had hands-up for the Blue Devils, which kinda kills the bit (though not so much as my delivery did...)

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Expo: Hour of Love

It's fittingly humbling that the first panel (that I know of) from the now-concluded Escapist Expo to hit in full-length video is "The Hour of Love;" which is one of the BEST panels (the premise: me, Yahtzee and Jim Sterling are forbidden from saying anything negative about anything the audience brings up, with Dr. Mark Kline onhand to keep us in line)  but also about the least "professional" I managed to come off during the entire show.

Despite what certain seemingly-incriminating photos may have suggested, my reasoning for showing up late was neither colorful or especially excusable: I mis-programed one of the multiple alarms required to get my lazy ass up before noon.

Literally everything else went smoothly (hopefully more videos will be up of the other stuff) and it was a terrific show overall. Looking forward to telling/sharing more about it with y'all:

The Escapist : Escapist Expo : The Hour of Love

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Robocop Has Been Photographed

Hey, remember when we saw "Green Lantern's" horrible costume for the first time and people said "uh-oh, this is a sign that the movie is going to suck?" And then other people said "No, wait and see, you can't extrapolate a terrible movie from a terrible design choice for the main character?" Yeah... "other people" turned out to be WRONG.

Supposedly, THIS is the new Robocop. Presumably it's not a "complete" version of the costume (it comes without saying that there will be CGI components to him, as there were for Iron Man, but this probably gives us a good idea of where they're "coming from" in terms of design. (Supposedly he has a "normal" and "SWAT" mode, people are assuming this is "SWAT" mode.)

I wouldn't have thought there was a way to make the concept of "cyborg police officer" look hopelessly generic... but it appears they've found a way.

 

I like BAD's observation that he looks kind of like a Stealth Bomber, which will likely be the "realistic" explanation for this utterly-uninspiring heap. Helpfully, he pretty-much looks like Christian Bale's Batman without the ears and cape, so it's feeling like susipicions that we were in for a "Nolanization" of Robocop (likely sans the good script/direction/acting benefits of the real thing) are well-founded.

Understand, my issue with this remake (other than the fact that it shouldn't exist, period) isn't that these things are going to end up DIFFERENT; but the likelihood that a film that was exciting, original, creative and FRESH in it's era is going to be reconcieved as generic in this one: A "new" Robocop, ED-209 etc? Theoretically could be cool. A Robocop that looks like Nolan-Batman and an ED who looks like a Bayformer because "that's what's trendy NOW?" Red flag, major red flag.

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Escape to The Movies: "Branded"

Hellooooooo potential worst film of the year!

"Intermission" is about "Man of Steel."

P.S. Apologies for not getting this up later - Escapist Expo is in full swing: 3 Panels today (Jim Sterling and Yahtzee Croshaw are, indeed, seriously cool cats in real life) plus hosting a live-screening (with "riff" commentary by yours truly) of "Flash Gordon" at night. Pretty damn awesome day, but also completely wiped out.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Branded

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Spielberg's Lincoln Looks Like Spielberg's Lincoln

Close your eyes. Imagine what a trailer for a movie about Abraham Lincoln directed by Steven Spielberg would look like, sound like, be paced like. I'll wait.

...

Now, watch this trailer, and tell me this isn't EXACTLY what you pictured - right down to the soaring-on-cue score, large groups of people staring up in awe, slow fades to black as Very Serious Men turn toward or away from the camera:

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Off To Work

I'll be getting on an airplane for The Escapist Expo very soon, which means updates to this blog may be a bit on the sporadic/late side from now until Monday. Stay tuned.

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It Will Happen Again

Below, the trailer for "Texas Chainsaw 3D," which is not a continuation of the godawful Michael Bay-produced remakes but rather a direct sequel to the original 1974 film... not that there's really any indication of what the difference is from this trailer:

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"Wreck-It Ralph" Trailers Again

Trailer #2 for "Wreck-It Ralph" gives us a bigger view of the plot and the characters (John C. Reilly seems to be hitting this out of the park voice-wise) and doubles down on the video-game references: Alongside previously-glimpsed Bowser, Zangief, Robotnik and Q*Bert you can now see Dig-Dug, Tapper, Sonic The Hedgehog and what some people are saying is an Arwing are popping up as well:



People are saying they saw Yoshi in there, too, but I'm not seeing him. Even setting aside the cameos, there's just SO MUCH potential in this premise. And Jane Lynch looks inspired as the Samus/Master Chief hybrid.

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Big Picture: "You Are Wrong About 'Sucker Punch' - Part II

This is the part with the SPOILERS...

The Escapist : The Big Picture : You Are Wrong About Sucker Punch, Part Two

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Memoriam

So... today is 9/11. I'm wondering when it will no longer feel "necessary" for my generation (or the generation right behind mine, for whom this is one of their first truly dark memories) to have some kind of "personal eulogy" for the day. Maybe never. Maybe the 24/7 news cycle and the internet have made that kind of "oh, right - that's today" reaction obsolete.

I lost the last of my grandparents a few months ago. I wonder, now, if this is how they felt during the annual "oh, right..." moments of Pearl Harbor. I wish I'd thought to ask one of them (or maybe I did, and their answer was either so evasive or so unpleasant that I chose not to remember it.)

On 9/11/01 I was still in college, and on that day I drove there, parked and went to class as the whole thing was still unfolding. It was impossible to process in-progress: I was born in 1981. My memories of "American conflict" were of the Cold War ending with a whimper and of the "bubble" of sustained (relative) peace during the Clinton Years - when America was (we thought) so uninvolved in the wider chaos of the world that a has-been football player killing his wife was "The Trial of The Century" and the question of whether or not the President had gotten head from an intern was considered an Earth-shattering scandal.

As I was driving in, the news was hitting that a second plane had hit (at the time Howard Stern was my "morning drive" audio, and yes his coverage was as uncharacteristically worthy/moving as you've been told) and as I was walking to class you could tell from people's body language and half-heard conversations (good lord... the planes had left for Logan Airport... our airport) that it was slowly sneaking up on us that we might be about to live through something that 99% of use had only ever seen or heard of in movies or on TV. I sat down for class (Film Studies) but the class never started - a professor (or maybe an aide) hurriedly popped into the room and informed us that a state of emergency was being declared and all government buildings (state school) had to be evacuated.

My most vivid memory is walking across the school grounds back to my car. Some people were running. I was walking, partially because I was trying to work this out in my head, mostly because my bag of books was exceptionally heavy. Some folks who hadn't heard the news yet (this was before everyone was expected to have a cell phone at all times) were arriving for their classes, and you could see the same scene one after another: An arriving-person would stop a leaving-person, they'd speak for a few seconds, then both became leaving-persons. What immediately jumped into my head (and I appologize if some people find this "reference" crass, but it's what honestly came to me) is the scene from "Starship Troopers" where Rico is leaving camp and slowly realizes other recruits are running past him frantically - he stops a guy to ask what's up:

"War! We're going to war!"

As I made my way to the lot, one of the late "arriving persons" stopped me to ask what was going on. I remember grasping for words, unable to gauge how much this guy knew about what had already happened.

"We're being evacuated... the planes in New York..." is about what I got out, at first. I could tell on his face he "got it."

"I think we're at war."

I don't know why I said that. Maybe I needed to say it to him to say it to myself.

I didn't want to go straight home, because I knew no one would be there until later and I didn't want to just sit around watching this alone. I also needed to get to a phone (again, pre-cellphone-ubiquity days) so my play was to go to the nearby Blockbuster Video - where I used to work and where several friends (including my best friend) still worked. There would be a phone there, and people I knew (during my free-time during classes, I routinely "hung out" there to bother my pals during work), and the TV would probably be turned to the news.

So that's what I did. I used the phone there to get in touch with my family and make sure that A.) everyone was okay and B.) we were not going to do the "lets all hunker down at home" thing. So I stayed there in Blockbuster with my friend, and we (and the rotating assortment of customers) watched things unfold on TV. The Pentagon hit. United 93. The rumors of the extra "phantom planes." Then the official word started to come in - eventually from the Government but first from the hurriedly-assembled experts on the news. A name started to repeat:

"Osama bin Laden."

It wasn't unfamiliar to me. I'd come across him reading up on terrorism for some half-baked action screenplay or another, and remembered thinking his backstory and "manner" were like something out of a movie. Now the bastard had actually gone and done it.

The aftermath beyond that is kind of a blur to me. I remember being instructed by my parents not to talk about it or watch the news much in front of my younger sister, who had been profoundly shaken by the events. I remember drifting zombie-like into my job at the mall (Suncoast Video) the next day and mostly just listening to the radio with customers. I remember a day or so later, driving home through what turned into a cities-wide "we are not defeated" rally of honking car horns and impromptu vigils and a guy standing on the roof of a one-story liquor store waving a full-sized American flag to thunderous applause from a crowd that had gathered below. I remember a week or so later having a MASSIVE onslaught of customers as America all at once went splurging as a kind of collective "fuck you!!!" to the idea that Al Qaeda could even so much as "interupt" us. And yes, I remember then-President Bush's "I hear you and soon the whole world is gonna hear you!" from Ground Zero and thinking "maybe this guy will work out, after all..."

And I remember saying and feeling things - about war, about military action and... yes, about "Them" and "Those People" overseas - that sound like the words of an alien being to the "me" of today and (I can only hope) to the "me" of 9/10.

Mostly, I remember feeling angry, afraid and finally resolved to a kind of calloused cynicism as the months and years dragged on and the Bad Guys went uncaptured and the very hunt for them seemed to be passed-over in favor of an only vaugely-related adventure in Iraq. And thus, I also remember LAST year, one night in May, seeing the gossip that Bin Laden had been killed crossing my Twitter feed and running to the livingroom to tell my mother to put the news on. I remember calling my younger brother (waking him up, I believe) to tell him to do the same. And I remember walking outside after President Obama had made the official announcement as if on instinct... and seeing that others on my street and the neighboring streets had done the same. I can only assume that it was a mutually symbolic urge for the lot of us - the best way to physically express the feeling of "emerging" from the era of having that bastard as our omnipresent boogeyman. Before long people had moved to line the main street, and every car that passed rolled down it's window to wave or make celebratory fist-pumps.

I don't really know what else to say beyond that.

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Holy Shit! SIFL & OLLY ARE BACK!!!

ROCK!

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Free-Dumb Fighters

There are two types of people in the world: Thinkers and Believers.

To my overseas readers: If you're ever struggling to understand why Americans behave like we do, it's primarily because our national psyche is fundamentally schizophrenic - we're a nation born in bottom-against-top revolution, and we still haven't quite figured out how to reconcile our self-image ("scrappy underdog") with our post-WWII "Superpower" status.

You can see this divided-mindset in the platform of the Republican Party as embodied (this week, anyway) by Mitt Romney; which bases it's political appeal entirely on telling white heterosexual Christian men - the least oppressed, most culturally-dominant, most unduly-priviliged class of human beings ever to walk the Earth - that other types of people becoming their social/cultural equals or no longer seeing their culture held as the only or most important qualify as acts of oppression against them.

If you've got cable, you've probably seen the trailers for "Last Ounce of Courage" and divined that it's a kind of sappy-looking family movie about the surviving relatives of a dead veteran (angsty teen son and aging-biker grandfather, primarily) getting their shit back together to fight some kind of local corruption. Well... those are the general-release "stealth" trailers - designed to make it look like a real movie when it's actually a Christian-Right propaganda piece. Here's the REAL trailer, in which we learn that the evil our heroes are fighting is one of the favorite boogeymen of make-believe oppression: "The War on Christmas."



I for one can't wait for the innevitable scene where assholes who insist on barking "MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!" back at anyone (particularly service employees) who dares to wish them "Happy Holidays" are lionized like they were freaking' MLK...

Speaking of which, gotta appreciate that they went all-out with "Sinister Black Politician" as the leader of the Christianity-smashing efforts - I can't imagine who THAT'S supposed to remind me of. I also love the little dipshit onstage holding up the American Flag in the middle of a High School Nativity play: A more perfect symbol of present-day religious conservatism I couldn't have imagined.

Film opens September 14th - unsurprisingly, it doesn't seem to be screening for us godless round-Earth-believin' science-lovin' critic types. Ah, well.

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Escape to The Movies: "Fall Preview"

September is what critics call the hungry month...

"Intermission" is about "Batman: The Animated Series" turning 20.

The Escapist : Escape to the Movies : Fall Preview

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Someone Made "Atlas Shrugged II," After All

Huh. Y'know, I kinda thought this project was over and done with when the first one bombed - I mean... The Market had spoken, no?

In any case, they seem to have aquired a whole new cast, and it looks like the low budget is going to be even more apparent now that the bigger scifi stuff starts showing up in the story. For those of you only tangentially familiar with the material - no, believe it or not The MacGuffin seen in this trailer is not a new addition to the story: The supposed "Right-Wing Bible" of American political philosophy really does end up revolving around the good guys having to protect a Green Energy Source.

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Light Our Darkest Hour

Barack Obama... strikes me as a nice guy. Certainly the best viable option to be President, heart in the right place on most things, decent politician, guy I'm almost-definitely going to vote for.

That said, as anyone who watched the DNC tonight can attest... there's still only one King.

(image inspired by tweet from @MichaelKuzmanov)

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The Line

So... Devin Faraci is getting torn-apart on Twitter and on his own website for posting (well, more for posting and being enthusiastic about it) a "no texting during the movie" bumper from FrightFest (horror movie festival) that is, to put it mildly, pitch-dark stuff.

I'm not going to embed it here - not because I believe in "censorship" necessarily but because I DO take things like "Trigger Warnings" seriously and I'm not comfortable putting it up where someone might click it without wanting to. But, this IS one of "the" movie-geek discussions of the day, so if you want to see Devin's original article, the video itself and the subsequent blowup in the comments click HERE. (incredibly NSFW, obviously.)

Description of said video (as said, Trigger Warning) and some thoughts after the jump...



Okay, so...

The basic idea of the clip is as follows: A woman is texting during a movie. The guy behind her asks her to stop. She blows him off. He stabs her in the back of the head with a pencil, killing her (this is, I stress, a horror movie festival dedicated to the extremes of the genre - think "A Serbian Film.") He then unzips his pants and proceeds to perform a sex-act on the stab-wound, literally climaxing with his semen running out of the dead girl's mouth and onto the screen of her smartphone. The End.

Yeah.

Well.

Do I have a problem with this? Kind of, yeah.

I'm not against shock-art, and I don't think the overriding idea of the piece (a bloody version of the "dont text or something bad will happen" bit because it's a horror festival) is out of bounds at all. And, while I'm at a loss to imagine HOW it could ever be done "right," I suppose that if every other form of horrible violence can be fodder for "fun" horror-exploitation rape is "on the table." And while I don't share Devin's enthusiasm (it's not well-executed, enough, frankly - goes on too long) I "get" where he's coming from in appreciating the sheer audacity of it.

What bothers me about this isn't necessarily the rape (though, obviously, that's unpleasant as all hell and goes on WAY too long for it to have any hope of being "clever" or "funny" in even a black-comedy way) but the misogyny behind it. Yes, naturally, male-on-female rape is always automatically misogynist in nature... but the conflating of it HERE with "don't fuck up our movie-watching experience" angle and the "girls are the ones who theater-text" stereotype puts a (likely unintended) extra dimension onto the whole thing that makes it feel like her "crime" was less specifically texting and more being a woman in a traditionally male space - i.e. "stupid girl doesn't know how to act at our Hardcore Horror-Geek FilmFest" with rape/murder as a "put her in her place" corrective.

I'm not saying that was the INTENT of the filmmaker, but it's how it comes off - so, yeah, in that context I can see why people reacted so negatively to the way Devin presented this.

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Happy Birthday, "Batman: The Animated Series"

20 years ago today, EVERYTHING changed.

September 5th, 1992 was one of the most quietly-epic days in the history of not only animation and comics but of the modern-day Geek Culture: the television debut of "Batman: The Animated Series." It was a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of good fortune: Warner Bros. was so eager to get ANY Batman-related toon onto afternoon TV to drive the brand in-between the movies, the production team on this series got an unprecedented level of creative freedom for such an important project... and the results changed not only the animation industry but also comics and even FILM in ways we're still feeling. It is, quite simply, one of the most important popular-culture artifacts of the 20th Century.

"BATMAN: TAS" almost singlehandedly restored "credibility" to the U.S. action cartoon genre, which had been (fairly or not) "ghetto-ized" as strictly the realm of toy merchandise-driven fluff since the 80s. And it struck, to my mind, a perfect balance between a "serious-minded" approach to the Batman mythos and an acknowledgement that Batman and his world still work best when also sharing threads with the more fantastical side of the broader DC Universe - a balance that the actual comics and the ongoing film adaptations are still struggling with. For a generation (maybe two, by now,) THIS version of Batman is seen as the gold-standard of the character.

And think about this: Before "The Avengers" and it's "Cinematic Universe" was even a gleam in a producers' eye, THIS series brought comic-book style continuity into the American mainstream by gradually spawning an unprecedentedly-massive shared-universe of it's own - "Batman: TAS" begat (and frequently crossed-over with) a "Superman" series and an entirely-original DCU-future in "Batman Beyond"... and then all three of those were linked by the two "Justice League" series.

I distinctly remembering seeing it for the first time ("Heart of Ice" was my first episode) after months of buildup, and even as an 11 year-old I knew I was seeing something important. Something game-changing... but I never imagined (how could any of us have imagined?) just how big, long-lived and influential this was. I sincerely hold that without this show and it's success the "Spider-Man" movies, the "X-Men movies," "Batman Begins," "Iron Man," Marvel Studios, "Avengers" and now the impending "Justice League" movie... NONE of that would've happened.

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"Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters" is EXACTLY what you thought it was

There will come a day when even I am finally tired of "Movies that sounds like parodies but played totally straight so that fellow prospective audience-members who aren't in on the irony are part of the joke" filmmaking. But it is not this day...




Y'know what I love most about this trailer? More than HALF of it seems to be shots of weapons being opened, loaded, unfolded, cocked, drawn or assembled. Remember when the joke was that people in action movies never reloaded their guns, and now there's more reloading than shooting.

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The Big Picture: "You Are Wrong About Sucker Punch - Part I"

Overly-combative headline not withstanding...

The Escapist : The Big Picture : You Are Wrong About Sucker Punch, Part One

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Sentient Internet Meme Predicts Obamapocalypse

Has-been B-movie fixture and Total Gym spokesperson Chuck Norris (and the missus) have hit the web once more with a bizzare video message urging Evangelical Christians to turn out on election day and stop Barack Obama (whose name Mrs. Norris intones in the manner of a dismayed peasant maiden lamenting a long-problematic dragon in a fantasy novel) from being re-elected. If their efforts fail, we are informed, America faces "A Thousand Years of Darkness."

So, hey - good job, willing patrons of "The Expendables 2," in kicking a few more coins toward delightful folks such as these...



The nudge-nudge coding at play for the prime audience is surprisingly overt: Evangelicals are the target here because it's believed that widespread distrust of Mitt Romney's Mormon faith within fundamentalist Christianity could keep them home on election day - the "Thousand Years" bit is a reference to certain fundamentalist interpretations of "Revelations" ...in other words, they're wink-winking about Obama being The Antichrist.

Charming.

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What Is "The Comedy?"

I've been waiting on "The Comedy," which now has a proper teaser-trailer, for awhile now - pretty much ever since it caused a storm of walk-outs and furious rebukes at Sundance. I've heard it described as an anti-mumblecore mumblecore movie, in that it's another "observational comedy" about priviliged white male hipsters... where the principal "observation" is that priviliged white male hipsters are frequently such terrible fucking people:


 

The film stars comedian and certified secret-badass Tim Heidecker of "Tim & Eric" (Eric Wareheim is also onhand) as the nominal leader of a group of thirtysomething Williamsburg manchildren who spend their days (and their money) slacking around and treating the world around them - people and all - as playthings they're already bored with. The main plot supposedly concerns Heidecker's character being on the verge of inheriting his dying father's fortune and somehow becoming an even worse excuse for a human being as a result. I'm kind of hoping that it has more to say than "See this? THIS is what you look like!" But we'll see.




Movie hits VOD in October before a theatrical run in November.

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Awesome

YouTube sensation FreddieW has a fun new short up, "Old School vs. New School;" which feels a lot like a mash-up of Patrick Jean's "Pixels" with the third act of "The Avengers." Check it out below:

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