The Onion News: TMNT Sneak Peek
Looks like The Onion News outdid themselves with this “ComicCon Exclusive” look at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Might be a little NSFW…
New Bass
I bought myself a used Fender Squire Jazz Bass for my birthday.
It complements the Fender Squire Stratocaster that I bought about 25 years ago.
Thanks to Rocksmith 2014, I’ve really improved my guitar playing and it made me want to try my hand at playing the bass. After messing around with the guitar/bass emulator, I decided it I liked it enough to pick up a modestly priced bass. Instead of buying it off the Internet, I went to my local music store, Tall Toad Music and got some great help and advice from them and walked out of there a happy customer. 🙂
I got home and hooked it up to Rocksmith and gave it a try:
Not bad for my first time on a real bass.
Pacific Rim early test screening reviews!
There was an early test screening of Pacific Rim Saturday night. Here are the audience reactions.
This is great to hear. It’s really going to help keep us fired up as we head into the heavy crunch period. There’s nothing worse than putting in tons of hours working late nights and weekends on a project you KNOW is going to suck.
Book Giveaway: Non-Compliance
My cousin wrote a pretty awesome book and she’s GIVING away free copies of it!
Click on the link below an enter for a chance to win one of them. What have you got to lose?
http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/42014-non-compliance-the-sector
Pacific Rim Trailer #2
Here’s another trailer for Pacific Rim that includes some of my shots from the sequence I’m supervising where Gipsy is fighting one of the Kaiju in the middle of the ocean. I’ve seen these shots day after day for months and its great to finally see them with the sound effects added in.
ILM: Behind the scenes with The Avengers
Entertainment Weekly has a nice posting about the effects work that ILM did on The Avengers, including some behind the scenes clips of how the work gets put together. I especially like the sound effects of the models as they come together. 🙂
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2013/01/07/avengers-ilm-visual-effects/
Les Misérables review
I understand this is a famous book and stage play, beloved by many, so when I got a screener of this in the mail I figured I’d check it out. Its much cheaper than paying upwards of $100 to see the stage play.
Apologies to any English Lit majors whom I might offend, but this was awful. SPOILERS BELOW
So let me get this straight….
Maximus has a hard on for Wolverine and chases him around the world for over 20 years because Wolverine:
A) Is a dirty mutant and must die
B) Killed Maximus’ family
C) Stole a loaf of bread to feed his starving family.
Some eight years after Wolverine skips out on parole ( after spending 19 years in jail for stealing a LOAF OF BREAD!) he’s remade himself into a respectable gentleman and runs a spinster shop where ugly women chastise poor
A) is hot.
B) has a sick kid.
C) A & B
So Cat Woman loses her job ( ’cause Wolverine is too busy dealing with Maximus to notice the only hot chick in the office is getting canned). She’s kicked out into the street and before you can finish one song (Jeez I wish they’d stop singing EVERY SINGLE LINE ) she goes from poor little Cat Woman to full on hooker.
Eventually, Wolverine finds her (which is impossible since he’s a Marvel character and she’s DC and if Joss Whedon couldn’t get Spiderman for a cameo in The Avengers, there’s no way Tom Hooper should have been able to get these two together). Just as she’s dying from a bad haircut, she tells him about her poor child living with an inn keeper and his wife. So Wolverine promises her that even though he’s on the run from Maximus for stealing a LOAF OF BREAD and might be killed at any moment, he’ll take care of the little rug rat.
Wolverine finally tracks down the rug rat at the inn run by
Ali G (Respect!) and Tim Burton’s creepy wife. Where they sell the little girl to him for like 15,000 pounds and then bitch and moan that they could have gotten more. By this time my wife had gotten completely bored and decided it would be more fun to take the dogs out to poop. She never came back.
I’m a little fuzzy about exactly what happened next but suddenly its like 8-9 years later and the rug rat had turned into Linda Lovelace
At this point I’m starting to think maybe its a good idea the wife left.
…but then Linda just falls in love Freckle Boy as soon as she lays eyes on him. Well who wouldn’t?
Rich little Freckle Boy has turned his back on his unbelievably wealthy family so that he can:
A) escape from the mafia.
B) start a social media website and get rich on his own.
C) starve to death like the rest of the French people.
So Freckle Boy and his buddies decide it would be fun to start a revolution and they’re *pretty* sure that all the other starving people will join them when the shit hits the fan ( even more spoilers – HA!)
So that’s just what they do and guess what. It doesn’t go so well. For starters, one of these dip shits lets Maximus (remember him? The big time military guys with a penchant for pursuing pan de muerto pilferers ) join in with the revolutionary so that he can spy on them.
Eventually Oliver Twist here points out the error of their ways and Maximus is captured. Hurray!
Wolverine then sneaks into the Revolutionaries bitchin fort (nice security you got there – he was dressed as a French Soldier at the time!) to try and find Freckle Boy. He sees they’ve captured Maximus and offers to put a cap in his ass. To which all the Revolutionary Frat boys say “Uh, sure!”. Then for some unknown reason, Wolverine lets Maximus go – even though Maximus says “I’ll keep hunting you down and kill you for stealing that poor little LOAF OF BREAD.” Wolverine says “Whatever” and pretends to shoot Maximus as he runs away. Then shit gets real and the French army shows up with LOTS of guns and cannons and make mincemeat out of the fort. As expected, none of the starving French people show up to help get shot. Wolverine does find Freckle Boy all shot up and decides that the best thing to do for someone with open wounds is to drag him through the sewers. As he’s pulling this poor guy through pools of human waste, guess who they run into? Ali G! Still bitching about money but he’s nice enough to tell Wolverine how to get out of the sewer. Well, he says “Go that way” which is a big help since it looks like whoever designed the sewer system also designed the hedge maze in The Shining. Eventually Wolverine gets out of the sewer and who just happens to be standing at the exact exit he stumbled across? Yeah, you guessed it – Maximus. Maximus says “I’m going to kill you if you drag that half dead Freckle Boy another inch” and Wolverine is like “Whatever” and walks off. Of course Maximus doesn’t shoot him (which wouldn’t matter since Wolverine has super healing powers) and instead he climbs on to the roof somewhere and contemplates his existence. I guess he didn’t like what he saw since the then (Spoiler!) kills himself.
Good riddance Maximus.
So to wrap this up, Freckle Boy is nursed back to health, decides that being poor sucks and goes back to his rich family and gets married to Linda Lovelace. Wolverine decides he’s had enough of this 2 1/2 hour movie and dies. The End.
My retirement is secure….
My son ( the math genius) has been telling my wife and me for years that one day he’ll be so rich that he’ll have rooms in his house just for storing his shoes ( separate rooms for left and right by the way). So for Christmas this year, he let us know that he’ll take care of us in our old age by awarding each of us this legally binding certificate…
P.S. I guess he was feeling generous since he moved us up to the right sandal room…