Monday, May 28, 2012

Find what you're looking for...

Alright, so last week I gave you a little behind the scenes sneak peak at my upcoming movie, but this time I wanted to show off just a little bit more of a finished product. So here's a few character posters for you to admire. I'll just let them speak for themselves...







See you next week!

Monday, May 21, 2012

Getting Made Up



So, strangely enough, the release of my teaser trailer only made people even more curious as to what I was actually up to with this whole movie thing. So I've decided to compile a select few behind the scenes photos to maybe give you a little more of an idea as to what went into the making of this movie, and what you can expect from it.


Here we see our awesome makeup artist, Rachel, hard at work making Caroline look like a star.


See, now isn't she prettiful?


Oh, and who's this handsome cat getting worked on now?


Looks like this shy guy isn't quite ready to show his face on camera just yet.


And hey, JP got made up, too! You can sort of see the inspiration behind his look on the computer screen in the background.

Well okay then, so I think that just about wraps up this little preview for the movie. Except... oh, fine, if you insist, one more picture:


Oh yes, and for those who missed it, check out my aforementioned teaser trailer, now available on youtube. If you haven't been able to figure out what it's all about by now, this should answer any of your remaining questions:




Or not.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

I'd go gay for...



So I was inspired to tackle this topic after melting in my seat every time Tom Hiddleston appeared on screen throughout a second viewing of The Avengers. Pretty self explanatory, I'm going to countdown the Top 5 guys who I'd go gay for, complete with pics that should speak for themselves. Simple enough, and it feels relevant enough, so let's do this.

#5

Michael Fassbender





(That one hurt a little.)

#4

Robert Pattinson





The best part is, Robert Pattinson likely agrees with that assessment.

#3

Gerard Way



That's right, I'd go gay for Gerard Way.



#2

Ewan McGregor



Well, Loki?



#1

Tom Hiddleston



As if this wasn't obvious enough by this point. And as you can see from the picture above, like his brother Thor, he, too, demanded a horse.



So yeah, pretty gay post, right? Well how about we fix that a little and straighten things up a bit to send us off. So then, on that note, I'll now present my personal picks for the Top 5 hottest ladies in pop culture today.

#5

Hayden Panettiere


#4

Olivia Wilde


#3

Kate Beckinsale


#2

Emma Watson


#1

Tom Hiddleston


... Wait, what?! But-



Well played, Loki. Well played...

Saturday, May 5, 2012

The Avengers



So we actually got The Avengers. And no matter how good or bad this movie is, just the fact that it exists is awesome in and of itself. Nothing quite like this has ever been done before in film, and to see it happening now is really just a pretty cool deal. The fact that it's actually mostly good overall just makes it all the more awesome.

The last hour is especially a tremendous achievement. Last year, everyone wanted to talk about the last hour of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, clamoring about how it was the best action sequence they had seen in a movie. I whole heartedly disagreed with that assessment, though I would gladly apply that notion to this movie's last hour. The action is just so picture perfect and clear, and the camera sweeps with the motions in flawless fashion. Everybody gets their time to shine, and everybody looks great in action. But none moreso than The Hulk.

This is, by far, the best theatrical interpretation of The Hulk yet. They just had so much fun with him, and most of the movie's biggest laughs and cheers came as a result of his smashing antics. Mark Ruffalo did an awesome job playing The Hulk, and I really hope that this time the actor gets to actually stick around for the next flick.

But as much as fans have been applauding The Hulk's performance in this movie, I personally felt that the standout MVP was Loki. Seriously, it's ridiculous how gorgeous of a man Tom Hiddleston is in this movie. He was by far the best villain in the prior movies, but he outdoes himself here, adding on new layers of crazy that I just couldn't get enough of. His outing here may well make him one of my all time favorite movie villains. He is just so magnificently maniacal, so deliciously devilish, and I just wanted to eat him up anytime he was on screen.


*Drools*


But yeah, great as the movie was at times, it wasn't without its flaws, though granted, most of them are pretty minor. For instance, Thor's entrance in the movie pretty much went entirely against the big sacrificial ending to his own movie. How he managed to arrive on Earth was sort of just waved away with the most meager of explanations. Though, while this does devalue Thor's ending, I do have to wonder if his sudden appearance was perhaps an acknowledgement that the ending to Thor was complete and total BS.

I think my biggest problem with the movie came in the way it handled death. At the beginning of the movie, Loki uses a power to take control of several of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s agents. And later on, he turns those agents against S.H.I.E.L.D. and The Avengers, who all seemingly have no qualms whatsoever about killing their own men. Not just trying to take them out of commission, but take them out for good. The biggest offense that really bothered me was when Captain America just nonchalantly tossed some of the guys overboard, sending them plummeting to their terrible deaths. That was completely out of character for the Cap. These are their own people who they're killing in such brutal fashion! Yeah, they're under Loki's control at the time, but they can't help that! I don't know, but that just really bugged me during the movie.

And I won't give it away, though there was an actual named character who gets killed off during this sequence which I felt was entirely unnecessary. And despite the fact that they just got through killing so many of their own guys, since this particular one just happens to have a name, they actually take a time out to mourn for him and him alone. It just didn't sit quite right with me. It didn't add the emotional punch that it was going for, and I thought it actually took away from the movie.

But anyways, like I said, most of those complaints are honestly fairly minor, and the rest of the movie is truly quite good. More than anything, though, this movie has a great sense of humor about itself. There are so many awesome gags throughout that come at you out of nowhere and will just leave you in stitches. And the comedic timing during the action scenes is especially unreal, and compliments the action so well. This definitely tops Thor as the funniest movie in The Avengers series. And gladly, unlike Thor, the comedy isn't the only thing this movie has going it.

I loved all of the interactions by all of these big name characters and actors. Robert Downey, Jr. was just having the time of his life in this movie, pretty much just poking fun at everything and lightening up the mood quite a bit. And I loved the way they played up his and Bruce Banner's intelligence when compared to the likes of Captain America, while never actually making Cap feel like a brawny doofus. One of the biggest worries I had for this film was that they'd be able to get us to believe in Chris Evans as the leader of this group of heroes, but they more than succeeded in that regard.

And like I mentioned before, this movie does a great job of letting everyone have their time to shine. Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow really impressed, particularly during her scenes with Loki. We really didn't get much of a vibe for her in Iron Man 2, but after this movie, I really feel like I know this character, and I definitely would like to see more of her. And Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye was just the walking, talking embodiment of cool. They shoehorned in so many blatant "bad ass" shots of him shooting arrows like it was nothing that it almost became borderline ludicrous, but really, it just worked so well for him.

So yeah, despite some of the movie's flaws, just the fact that they were able to really balance out an ensemble of this magnitude is quite an accomplishment, and one that writer and director Joss Whedon should be proud of. I'm really not sure that anyone else would have been able to pull this off as smoothly as he managed to handle it. I truly had a fun time with this, and the more I think about it, the more I really did quite like this movie. Definitely check this one out.

Updated May 12th:

So upon a second viewing, I found that there actually was a single line in the film that indicated that the agents who attacked S.H.I.E.L.D. were, in fact, not among those being controlled by Loki, but rather, were actual enemies of S.H.I.E.L.D. I somehow managed to miss that line the first time, but as I caught it this time, I will now retract my critiques against the film regarding that particular scenario.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

Rest in Peace, Sean Futrell



So, as is typical for me to do, I decided to go over to Barnes and Noble and use their internet during my lunch break. But while online, I sadly made a very untypical discovery. Sean Futrell, one of my best friends since middle school, has passed away. And ever since that discovery, I've just felt numb all over. I don't even know what to think, really. He was just a few days younger than me, far too young to be taken away from us already. And I had just seen him only about two weeks ago. He seemed in decent enough health at the time, and I never would have imagined that that night would be the last time I'd ever see him. Had I known, I would have said to hell with sleep and stuck around longer. Makes me think of all the other times I dipped out early, or failed to return his calls for whatever reason. Over the past few years we hadn't seen that much of each other, though we always spoke of the need to spend more time together. Damn does this feel like a wake up call...

Like I said, I've been friends with Sean since middle school. We hung out with the same group of kids all throughout high school, and we always got together on weekends to either party or play Halo, or just hang out and do stupid shit. Hell, I was just on a date last week when the story of how we drove around with Sean in the trunk of my car got brought up. Basically, way back when, I was hanging out at the movie theater over by Best Buy with my buddies Sean, Sabby, and Fudd. Somehow we got the bright idea to put on a show for the people waiting in line to purchase their tickets. We pretended that we were kidnapping Sean, screaming obscenities at him as we tossed him into the trunk of my car. We then drove around with him in my trunk, giving him a good ol' ride as we did donuts and such around the parking lots at the movies and Best Buy. I guess we put on a convincing enough act, as it wasn't too long before the cops pulled us over. The funniest part about it was that not only was I, the driver, placed face first on the ground, but Sean, the "victim" in the crime, was also put face first on the ground right beside me. God, those were the days. We did so many stupid things, but at least we had fun doing it.

But Sean was a cool guy. He had his own ideals that weren't always necessarily popular ideals, but he lived his life by those ideals, which I was always able to respect about him. And he was one of those kinds of guys who, even though we weren't always into the same kinds of things, we could still just hang out for hours anyways like it was nothing. I'd let him go on his long talks on subjects that I just could not give two shits about, such as cars, or World of Warcraft, and then he'd turn it around and give me shit for being into something else that he's not into. But it was always cool.

I don't want to get into too many of the personal details, but I'll just say that he's had kind of a rough life. Yet at the same time, he was always able to carry a carefree attitude about himself, like no problem was ever too big to bring him down and keep him there. He was the kind of guy who thought realistically. And realistically speaking, despite all the hardships, I'd like to think that he had a good life, if entirely too short.

In the years after high school we did grow apart. Yet despite that, he was one of the few who, every once in a while, I always wanted to make that extra effort to catch back up with. We weren't the closest of friends, and I can only imagine what his closer friends and family are going through right now. But I keep thinking of all of the other kids I've known growing up who were taken from us at such a young age, and this one definitely hits the closest to home. He wasn't just a face I knew from the school hallways, or someone who was more of an acquaintance than an actual friend. No, Sean was my friend. And he was a damn good one at that. And I'll definitely miss him.

You left this world far too early, Sean. I know you don't believe in the afterlife and all of that, but I'd like to think that, wherever you are now, you're in a peaceful place. I love you, Sean Futrell. We didn't spend enough time together, but I will always cherish those memories from the time that we did have. Rest in peace, buddy.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

I don't know...

So as some of you might know, I'm currently in the process of making my first movie. And throughout the movie making process, I've constantly been asked just what exactly my movie is actually about. So I've decided to put together a little trailer, and hopefully this will suffice to put your curiosity a little bit at ease...

... or not.