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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Free film school!


Sometimes I wonder "Should I have gone to film school?" After reading Robert Rodriguez' A Rebel Without A Crew, I knew film school wasn't for me. I mean, I was....shit, I AM a product of higher education. Now, don't get me wrong: College is important. I mean, one needs the discipline in order to learn the basics of whatever field you decide life is telling you to go in. Nurses, accountants, engineers: their fields are based on these basics and they never change. But an art-based field such as graphic design, film...that's a bit more organic (shit, I sound like a hippie, don't I?). You develop a style, a sense of working. You never hear about a surgeon who has his own style of doing open heart surgery, right? (Except for House....that foo is CrAzY!) That's the reason I wouldn't go back to school as a filmmaker. Instead, I plan on watching people make mistakes and learning what little I can learn from the Fox network. I'm talking about "On The Lot." Now I hardly ever watch TV, much less reality TV. But I've been really wanting to see this show and after the first episode, I'm hooked. I love to see these "creatives" butte heads as they try to find a solution as to how to light a scene. Fucken hilarious. It's great to see the gears turning in the contestants heads. So if you want an education in film, read Robert's book, rent some of your favorite films to see what you should do. And see this show to learn what to not do.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Local Boy Does Good....Again


So, Mr. Bryan Harley, your everywhere these days. If it's not designing award wining Web sites, making films or winning contests....it's appearing in the online edition of the NY Times. After giving the man crap for standing stoopid holding giant "I AM" cutouts, I have been pwned. He won some cash and now getting publicty for his mad video skills. Congrats, Mr. Harley. He's available for weddings and birthday parties as well (he loves doing those)....actually, if were to do those, he'd probably win some kind of award for those, too. Fucken guy.....this why I've tagged him to shoot Blur for me! Sir, if you can win awards for this, you are truly a god!

Click here to see the award winning entry for you lazy bastards!

Friday, May 18, 2007

Interweb Gold



Such a great song from the late J-Dilla and an awesome video from Daniel Garcia. Simple, effective and heart warming. Lovin' this shit!

Thursday, May 17, 2007

My "funny book" history Pt. 1

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It's over. Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch's brilliant run on Marvel Comics' The Ultimates has finally come to and end and I'm a bit saddened. With this book, these guys reinvented comics and injected the often misunderstood world of comics with a dose of gritty storytelling, artwork and reality based credibility and will forever live , in my book, as one of the greatest series I've ever read. Always viewed as kiddie material, comics these days are far beyond that. Quite frankly, I'm not sure if I would of been able to understand today's comics back in the days and it's almost as if the industry has grown up right along with me. I started reading comics back in the early 90's when I was at a Madera Johnny Quik on my way home from a visit to the hospital (I can't quite remember for what, though). On the rack there I saw it and it jumped out at me. I remember thinking, this has to be the stupidest thing I had ever seen up to that point in my life: NFL Superpro #1. Yup, that was my first comic book, or "funny book" as my dad used to call them. I bought it and I laughed my ass off for all the wrong reasons. That shit was absolutely horrible. But, it was that book that lead my to start reading comics and the more I read them, the more I was pulled in by the Marvel Universe and it's many inhabitants. As the audience and creators got older and became bored with this universe, they began to create comics aimed at an older audience. A revolution was started and the mid-90's brought us the Image Universe, a creator owned imprint that would let artists work on characters spawned from their own imaginations and not have to worry about decades of back story and continuity issues. As good as it sounded, the end result wasn't what everyone thought it was going to be. The creative freedom didn't do much but create second rate characters with female sidekicks adorned with giant boobs and wraped around with shiny chromium hologram covers. Anything to sell books to my adolescent demographic and sometimes it worked, but I quickly lost faith. As did most people, it seemed. In turn, the industry was almost killed. Marvel was in shambles. DC was worse. And besides the brand name artists, Image was sucking big time. I went back and read my Superpro and thought "Geez, we haven't progress that much further than this, have we?" I flat out stopped reading comics.

Autobots! Roll out!

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I'm a child of the 80's so I'm loving this stuff. Check out the new trailer over at yahoo.com

New Transformers Trailer

Oh Mr. Bay....I hope you did us good with this one, I really do.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

And so it begins....

Welcome to my corner of the room. For those of you who know me, I apologize: You got jacked when God was handing out friends. I'm a gregarious, sarcastic asshole who will, no doubt, get on your nerves every once in a while but I hope not enough to stop listening. "So why should I even start listening to you?" you might ask. Well, maybe your friends with me already, maybe I saved your life one time or another, maybe I owe you money and your waiting for me to give out my exact location so you can come and rape me, I don't know. So what's the reasoning for this blog? Well, not one thing in particular, just another way to get my projects out there and release pent up anger and what not. Hopefully I can provide you with a laugh from time to time, maybe begin a discussion and hopefully not ignite a malestorm of hate towards myself or my crew. NYUP!