wakefresh

Three hours with an intermission?! That's like a play, almost. I also like that in the rural parts of India, people treat the new releases as really big deals. Everyone gets dressed up and goes to the theater, flirt with each other, catch up with people in the other town across the way. Its like a big party.

For a little while, I lived with a friend from high school who was in L.A. doing the struggling screenwriter thing. I didn't stick with it, he did, and is in pre-production for a film he wrote. Can't wait to see it and scream my ass off when his name shows up in the credits. The little I know about screenwriting comes from him and hanging around those UCLA extension classes. You're right about comics an video games -- they have the visuals front and center, while in a movie, the visuals are tacked on after the words are written. And I even remember my friend saying that no one wants a script that has heavy visuals; they want a script that is a good read. The director is going to put together the visuals and add that stuff in during rewrites. If you think about it, the screenplay is a very rough draft of a movie -- all of the other elements come together on set where I'm sure there are quick changes made here and there to account for the actors portraying the character, the director, the location where you are filming, and the technical limitations of special effects. Its a crazy dynamic with alot of cooks in the kitchen, which is why a lot of movies aren't that good (I'm hoping my friend's movie bucks this trend though). With comics and video games there are less cooks in the kitchen, but not necessarily less people working on the project. Like, the game producer doesn't have to listen to the creative input of the senior tools programmer. No one cares to hear about their ideas on the game's theme. Just make sure the asset pipeline is working, dude. The writer and the artist don't need to listen to the inker's story ideas. Just make sure those cross hatches are good, dude.

Thanks, Cat & Beard. I say you have an encyclopedic knowledge of movies across all genres, whether foreign or domestic. Were you a film student at one time (or currently)? Are you involved in the film industry in some capacity?

That's a deep cut. Would you recommend this movie?

Yeah, all the spinoff covers scream "PICK ME UP! LOOK AT THIS! SOMETHING WEIRD IS HAPPENING! DON'T YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY THIS WEIRD THING IS HAPPENING?!" So, if you were to revive the adventures of the F.U.C.K.E.D. crew, you would have to follow this time-honored tradition. Maybe have Rush Limbaugh in a schoolgirl outfit with a crown of dildos while Godzilla is leans against a building smoking a blunt. And then have one of the F.U.C.K.E.D. crew exclaim, "Gee, who would have ever thought voting for Ross Perot would have turned the world into this?! We have to do something!" I'd pay more than 15 cents to see how that story turns out.

I bet you $100 that the plot of that issue is that Superman won't give her any super-loving while she's a black woman, so Lois tries to change back, but something goes wrong, and she asks Superman can he love her, even though she's black (like its a genetic malady of some kind)... At which point, Superman throws her from a cliff.

There was a site called superdickery.com that had a bunch of these old covers on there. Apparently there was a spin-off comic for Jimmy Olsen as well. I remember seeing a cover for that comic where Superman is using his eye-rays to melt a present that Jimmy had given him for his birthday. The speech bubble from Superman was something like, "I should have never adopted you as my son, Jimmy. You're a failure!" I don't know why, but that one cracked me up something good. The caption by the webmaster was funny as hell too. BTW, don't go to superdickery.com. It's full of viruses and they got a lot of infestation going on there. There's a tumblr that I pulled those previous two from with the same name.

I don't know the interview you're talking about, but where these the comics that they were referencing? To me, this is the funniest one.

Yeah, Joseph Campbell's Monomyth comes into play, but I don't see the "threshold guardian" character in alot of movies -- this is the character that sort of mentors the hero leads them up to the threshold of the new world and then is never seen again until the end of the story (or never, if they die). In Star Wars, the threshold guardian is Obi Wan, but who is the threshold guardian in a movie like Elysium? What about How To Lose A Guy in 10 Dates? I never heard of the 60 minute rule either. I looked at some movies yesterday, and it was freaky how well it was applied. There are so many methods and ways people teach screenwriting, I'm interested in hearing how they explained it to you in your classes. They told us that there should be three turns in a screenplay -- the first turn transitions into what the actual story is going to be about; the second turn raises the stakes/ hero makes a decision; and the third turn closes up the story. First five pages or so should introduce characters and the last five pages or so should act like an epilogoue, giving people a hint as to how the actions in the movie are going to alter the character's lives (for good or bad).

LOL, Jesus, Chris!!!

Poor Coolio! He was cut out of Daredevil but was included in Leprechaun From The Hood. Dude, has bad, bad luck.

I didn't know that he played a slob on that show (I never watch it, so how could I?) In "Moneyball," he looked like he was in-shape. He played the replacement first-baseman.

Cat & Beard, if you love your wife, beg her not to see the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. She will literally explode. It is sort of equality and sort of not, imho. The males on screen are portraying power, so they gain size. The females in movies are the love object, so they are not really allowed to have muscle, but instead are expected to have exaggerated sexual organs and to be much smaller than the men. Gaining lots of size and losing lots of size are both physically draining, but the end goal of them is very different. In addition to having Werner Herzog and Arnold Schrawanegger do audio commentary for each other's movies, if I had a lot of money, I would bankroll a film with Gina Ginaro(sp? from Fast and Furious 6) as the action star lead and have her love romance be someone like Micheal Cera. The villain in this movie would be a female bodybuilder (not those fitness model contestants, but a real-life woman bodybuilder). In fact, all of the villian's lackeys would be other women MMA or bodybuilders that Gina would have to fight off, Game-of-Death style. And at the end, when the Gina and the main villain are fighting, one of the lackeys would show up with a beaten Cera. His eye is black and his shirt is ripped. Gina asks what happened to him and the villain does a creepy, slow laugh. This gives Gina the final push of energy overcome and defeat the villain. Plus there would be plenty of one-liners ala "Raw".

This ep might as well been titled "For those who like Adele..."

The other spoiler was that Sandra Bullock has diarrhea and almost drowns in her shit-filled spacesuit. C'mon man!

As Wesley Snipes said: "You always bet on black!" [media='']http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn8FPOt2uZM[/media]

I don't get it, but maybe there was some sort of big adultery scandal in the news at the time? This movie's marketing was great though. I remember all of the talk shows, morning shows, radio shows, etc asking the same question: "would you let your spouse have sex with another person for one million dollars?" I put this movie in the same category as "Fatal Attraction" -- it's a movie that captures some innate fears that people have of vulnerability, partnership, marriage, etc.

Well, what does that mean for the Batman movie? It seems like there is a literal arms race to make sure the guy playing the superhero has 25-inch biceps, washboard abs, and shoulders the size of watermelons. And Topher Grace is miscast in everything where you don't want a likable, quippy, semi-nerdy dude. If you can't see Micheal Cera being in that role as well, then its not good for Grace either. They should have made Brock more of an asshole instead of a pathetic hanger-on. Chris Evans would have been great in that role, but it would have broken the Marvel Universe --- The Human Torch and Venom are the SAME PERSON!!!!! I always thought they shot around them being the same height, but I haven't re-watched the movie yet. I will do that tonight.

I want this mask for next Halloween.

Oh shit! I forgot he was in this. I think he was on his way to being a big star. He was in that movie "The Farm" or "The Recruit" with Colin Farrell and Al Pacino. And I would bet good money that he considers "The Spirit" a low point as well -- that bomb probably set back his career a bit more than Sam Jackson or Scarlett Johannsen.

Also have to say, everyone should check out How Did This Get Made podcast because they have reviewed a couple of "passion" projects that directors wanted to do that turned out to be complete shit. In the case of Toys, the director had been tinkering with the script for 10+ years. Obviously, the director/actors/crew/etc have to want to do a good job, but if you are too into a particular story, you can't see how the material plays to other folks. And in some cases, don't give a shit as to how it plays to other folks.

Loved this episode! Just want to say that in my writing classes and books, they always call screenplays "dramatic shorthand". The format isn't fit to do a lot of things that novels can do (enter character's minds and thoughts) or that live theater can do (the audience's senses aren't hindered by the frame of the camera). That's why for the most part the book is much better than the movie, and the play is more exciting than the film. I do disagree with one section when it seemed that Jason was boo-hooing the very idea of hope. If someone is at a low point, the hope of something better is the very thing that is driving them to make attempts to change their situation. And let's face it, the attempts to change are the only way that they are ever going to turn thing around; without it, they will just resign themselves to their conditions.

This was a low point for everyone involved.

Awhile back, there was a Amazon review that stated Sleepaway Camp was the perfect movie to have on in the background while you're ordering pizza and doing laundry. I disagree. I can confidentially say that I have done my best laundry/folding and ordered a great sausage pizza while this movie was playing.

The best parts about this movie are Jon Faverau and Micheal Clarke Duncan. If it had just been Ben Affleck and M.C.D. fighting each other with Jon throwing in funny quips, it would have been a great movie.