Sneak Peek at Nickelodeon’s Upcoming Animated TMNT Show

Via Scoop.it — Adven­ture Games

We’ve known for a while that Nick was plan­ning a new ani­mated Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles show for 2012, but today we finally get some screenshots!

Some stills of the new TMNT CGI car­toon have turned up on the Toyark. Though some designs of the show were revealed at last week’s Toy­fair, this is really our first look at other char­ac­ters’ actual appear­ance on the show.   The show which will pre­miere on Nick­elodeon, still has no clear release date other than it’ll be show­ing up some­time in 2012. A sneak pre­view has been con­firmed be shown some­time after the Kid’s Choice Awards on March 31, 2012.

Via www.theouthousers.com

Click the link above to check out the full set.

Is Jim going to cheat on Pam tonight? [The Office]

You know, I’ve been say­ing how bor­ing Jim and Pam are get­ting lately.

Last week’s episode of The Office ended on a very inter­est­ing note, which you may not have noticed unless you stuck around to watch until the very last three sec­onds.  In the final scene, Kathy is over­heard talk­ing on her cell­phone about Jim, and pretty much flat out said she plans to try to sleep with him.

Jim and Kathy are part of a small task force of Dun­der Mif­flin employ­ees (which con­ve­niently doesn’t include Pam) who were cho­sen by Dwight to go on a busi­ness trip to Tal­la­has­see, Florida, to help open up a chain of new Sabre stores.  Hmm, let’s see—the beach, hotel rooms, and Robert Cal­i­for­nia.  Obvi­ously this is the per­fect setup for infidelity!

Kathy Simms (pic­tured right), oth­er­wise known as “the new girl”, was intro­duced ear­lier this sea­son in the episode clev­erly named with the dou­ble enten­dre  “Pam’s Replace­ment.”  Pam has been on mater­nity leave since the birth of her sec­ond child with Jim, and has been notice­ably absent for most of this season.

I was pretty sus­pi­cious right off the bat when Kathy’s char­ac­ter was intro­duced. She wasted no time cozy­ing up to Jim, and in gen­eral just comes across as a back­stab­ber.  The show has dropped a few small hints before that Kathy was kind of into Jim, but noth­ing quite so bla­tant as what we saw last week.

I can’t wait to tune in tonight to find out what hap­pens. The next few episodes should get real interesting

Update 2/17/12:  Well, it didn’t hap­pen last night, but Kathy sure couldn’t take her eyes off Jim. They’re going to be in Florida for a few more episodes, and I’m sure it’s just a mat­ter of time before she puts the moves on him.  And when she does, I have faith Jim will stay true to Pam; that’s a rock solid rela­tion­ship.  How­ever, I’m pre­dict­ing some kind of Three’s Company-like mix-up where Kathy goes for it, gets shot down by Jim, but some­one else catches wind of what’s hap­pen­ing and com­pletely mis­in­ter­prets the sit­u­a­tion, word gets back to Pam, and shit­storm ensues.  Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

Review: ‘Chronicle’ is Surprisingly Good for an Angsty Found Footage Teen Film

Chron­i­cle is a sci-fi thriller about three teenage boys who come into con­tact with a strange, radioac­tive sub­stance found in a well near their Seat­tle home, and weeks later dis­cover that they’ve devel­oped telekinesis-like abilities.

The story cen­ters on angsty high­schooler Andrew Det­mer, who begins doc­u­ment­ing his trou­bled life with video.  He con­stantly gets picked on, his dad is an abu­sive drunk, and his mother lay dying of can­cer.  It doesn’t get much worse than Andrew’s life.  And so he finds solace behind the cam­era, con­stantly film­ing at every oppor­tu­nity (much to the annoy­ance of his friends and classmates).

The first part of the film is pretty much what you’d expect: through Andrew’s lens, we get a good intro­duc­tory glimpse of his life, his friends, and his prob­lems. About 12 min­utes in, every­thing changes after he and his friends Matt and Steve stum­ble across the mys­te­ri­ous well.  From there after­ward the boys begin doc­u­ment­ing their pow­ers on video, test­ing the lim­its of their abil­i­ties with gen­uine awe at what they’re capa­ble of, often in humor­ous ways (for instance play­ing pranks on unsus­pect­ing peo­ple).  With the new­found sense of belong­ing that Matt and Steve pro­vide, Andrew’s per­sonal life begins to trans­form as well, gain­ing more con­fi­dence and con­trol in his social life even when things are falling apart at home.

And this is where Chron­i­cle really gets inter­est­ing. Rather than focus­ing too much on the “Hey, look at my awe­some super pow­ers, isn’t this cool?” aspect of Andrew’s story, the film takes a much darker turn as we learn that Andrew’s inten­tions and moti­va­tions aren’t exactly pure.  Tired of being bul­lied and his mis­er­able home life, Andrew beings to rec­og­nize that hav­ing such power also means hav­ing the abil­ity to pun­ish those who would do him harm.  And power in the hands of some­one who is so obvi­ously dis­turbed is a very dan­ger­ous thing.

The film’s unspo­ken ques­tion: if you sud­denly devel­oped super pow­ers, what kind of per­son would you be?

Shock­u­men­tary hor­ror films like Blair Witch and Clover­field that favor the shaky, first-person hand­cam method to tell the story as if it were “real” footage usu­ally come across as highly unbe­liev­able because, hon­estly, what kind of fuck­ing idiot would keep the cam­era rolling in ter­ri­fy­ing life-or-death sit­u­a­tions? (For what it’s worth, REC was one of the only films to get the ‘found footage’ for­mula right.)  But In a non-horror film like Chron­i­cle, the found footage style makes more sense to me. In the age of YouTube, I have no prob­lems believ­ing that a bunch of bored teenagers who sud­denly develop super pow­ers would want to film all the awe­some things they can do.

That’s why I was pleas­antly sur­prised by how well Chron­i­cle works. Direc­tor Josh Trank, who is only 26 years old, by the way, is to be com­mended for putting his unique twist on the found footage trend with this direc­to­r­ial debut. Rather than mind­lessly mimic the first-person shoot­ing style like so many other films have done, he cre­ates char­ac­ter sit­u­a­tions that allow for dif­fer­ent film­ing per­spec­tives, bet­ter cam­era angles, and more inter­est­ing frames of reference.

For exam­ple, there’s a pretty insane action sequence toward the end of the film where we get to wit­ness the events unfold through traf­fic and secu­rity cam­eras posi­tioned all around down­town Seat­tle. In some other cases, how­ever, it felt like the film­ing sit­u­a­tions were far too con­trived.  But over­all I think the direc­tion was appro­pri­ate and var­ied enough so that you don’t feel like you’re trudg­ing through loads of raw footage wait­ing for some­thing cool to hap­pen (fuck you, Para­nor­mal Activ­ity).  Cool stuff def­i­nitely hap­pens in this movie. I don’t want to give too much away, but I can promise there are some fan­tas­tic “WTF” moments that come out of nowhere, and awe­some action sequences that must be seen to be believed.

I believe Chron­i­cle is an amaz­ing achieve­ment in low-budget film­mak­ing.  If you can put aside your expec­ta­tions of what found footage films are typ­i­cally like and just let your­self get immersed in the story, this movie can be a lot of fun.

ShezCrafti’s Rat­ing:

7 out of 10 stars.

New ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ Live Action Film in the Works, Jonathan Liebesman to Direct

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Hey, remem­ber a few years ago when we heard there’d be a new live-action Ninja Tur­tles film in 2011 and I got all excited about it?  Just when I was start­ing to give up hope, I saw the news this morning:

Para­mount is in devel­op­ment on a live-action reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles. It has been a rough tran­si­tion so far from comic to fea­ture, but the stu­dio is tak­ing the project in an unex­pected direc­tion. Michael Bay, Brad Fuller, and Andrew Form of Plat­inum Dunes—the pro­duc­tion com­pany behind hor­ror remakes such A Night­mare on Elm Street and Fri­day the 13th—are shep­herd­ing the reboot. The stu­dio assigned the script to Josh Appel­baum and Andre Nemec, the writ­ers who most recently penned the whip-smart Mis­sion: Impos­si­ble – Ghost Protocol.

Now Vari­ety reports Jonathan Liebesman is in nego­ti­a­tions to direct. Liebesman directed Bat­tle: Los Ange­les, and his next project is Wrath of the Titans. He’s the up-and-comer you call when you want a big action film. Tone will always be tricky when your main char­ac­ters are anthro­po­mor­phic tur­tles who know mar­tial arts. But if they can rein­vent TMNT on the level of, say, Bay’s Trans­form­ers… well, that sounds like a blast.

Via collider.com

Cow­abunga says it all.

Is ‘Doomsday Prepper’ Kellene Bishop a Scam Artist?

After Tues­day night’s pre­miere of  National Geo­graphic channel’s new show Dooms­day Prep­pers, I was com­pelled to write this humor­ous blog post pok­ing fun at some of the crazy prep­pers fea­tured on the show, com­par­ing their ridicu­lous stock­pil­ing habits to that of hoard­ers.  Kel­lene Bishop is one of the prep­pers I wrote about, whose Orem, Utah home is prac­ti­cally a labyrinth of hoarded food stashes.

Kel­lene prides her­self on being self-reliant and finan­cially inde­pen­dent.  She makes her liv­ing as owner of Pre­pared­nessPro, a prep­per blog and com­mu­nity site “devoted to pro­vid­ing guid­ance and encour­age­ment for Peace­ful Pre­pared­ness,” where she also sells expen­sive video-based classes on top­ics such as cheese preser­va­tion, sur­vival san­i­ta­tion, and cook­ing with solar ovens.  She also teaches self-defense classes to women for rape pre­ven­tion, cit­ing that when soci­ety falls apart it is often women who are the first victims.

Watch­ing Kel­lene on Dooms­day Prep­pers, I got the sense the lady was a lit­tle kooky, but I could appre­ci­ate what she was try­ing to do and even admired her sense of pur­pose in help­ing other peo­ple to prepare.

But that was before I heard Kel­lene Bishop might be a scam artist.

Today a ran­dom blog reader alerted me to this Ripoff Report about Kel­lene Bishop’s shady past run­ning her own com­mer­cial lend­ing bro­ker­age, in which she appar­ently swin­dled peo­ple out of hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars.  She later filed for bank­ruptcy to the tune of 2 mil­lion dol­lars in 2009.

Here’s a sam­pling of some of the claims made against Kel­lene Bishop and her hus­band Scott, which I’ll let speak for themselves:

“It is offi­cial! The ugly cou­ple have had their ille­gal debts dis­charged!  They had over 2 mil­lion dol­lars dis­charged after offer a course that guar­an­teed $750,000.00 dol­lars a year to their cus­tomers! My oh my how the Ter­ri­ble Two know how to man­age money!  SHE NEVER CLOSED A COMMERCIAL LOAN IN HER LIFE AND PORTRAYED HERSELF AS A GURU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“Kel­lene Bishop, a scam­mer who ran a course called Com­mer­cial Career, now runs Preparednesspro.com.  She recently wrote a despi­ca­ble blog about the hard money world and the loan com­mit­ment fees involved.  THIS CRAZY PIG DID THE SAME EXACT THING AND MORE WITH HER COMMERCIAL CAREER COURSE. SHE TOOK HUGE RETAINER FEES THAT THE HARD MONEY PEOPLE COULD ONLY DREAM OF AND DIDN’T HAVE ANY SOURCES TO FUND THE LOANS!  She then claimed bank­ruptcy for over TWO MILLION DOLLARS!”

“What did the Big K do after she got sued by hun­dreds of peo­ple whom she took huge retainer fees from?  She claimed bank­ruptcy for 2 mil­lion dollars!”

“Take a look at the bank­ruptcy papers. Her list of cred­i­tors were a mile a long and she scammed every sin­gle one. She lied to Nat Geo about work­ing in Cor­po­rate Amer­ica because she never did. She ran scam busi­nesses out of her house that was worth less than $200,000.00.”

And here are some of their reac­tions to Kellene’s appear­ance on Dooms­day Prep­pers:

“Kel­lene Bishop has been filmed show­cas­ing thou­sands of dol­lars worth of food at her home in Utah. She does not men­tion that fore­clo­sure pro­ceed­ings have started and the fore­clo­sure on her home fea­tured in the show is highly prob­a­ble.  Once again, she has por­trayed her­self as being a right­eous and self-relying per­son yet the truth is the com­plete oppo­site. She claims the end of days are near. The real­ity is that her days are num­bered in her home because she spent all of her money on food instead of ful­fill­ing her oblig­a­tion to pay her mortgage.”

“It is ironic that Ms. Bishop has stock­piled enough food to fill a super­mar­ket because she has come up with the per­fect recipe for her dis­as­ter.  Why on Earth would Kel­lene actu­ally sign on with Nat Geo to allow them to film her stock­piled food so all of the good­ies saved for dooms­day can aired on national tele­vi­sion after claim­ing Chap­ter 7? Think about it because her bank­ruptcy papers do not lie. They clearly show that her new busi­ness, Pre­pared­ness Pro, did not make any money as recently as 2009. The ques­tion for her cred­i­tors, the attor­neys for her mort­gage com­pany and the bank­ruptcy trustee should be: Where did Kel­lene & Scott Bishop get the money to buy that much food?”

“Per­haps Nat Geo should do a fol­low up on the Bish­ops when the fore­clo­sure is com­pleted on their home in Utah. If might turn into a Dog Day After­noon when Kel­lene and Scott defend the bun­ga­low like it is the Alamo when the bank shows up to take it back. They clearly demon­strated how they are heav­ily armed and ready to com­mu­ni­cate by Morse code under the cover of darkness.”

Did National Geo­graphic fail to do a back­ground check on this woman?  Is it eth­i­cal to put Kel­lene Bishop on a national tele­vi­sion show where she’s por­trayed as a cham­pion of moral­ity, self-sufficiency and finan­cial freedom?

Fur­ther read­ing:  Scar­ing Peo­ple for a Liv­ing — Kel­lene Bishop

Doomsday Preppers vs. Hoarders: Who Will Survive the Apocalypse? [Poll]

Did you catch the series pre­miere of Dooms­day Prep­pers on National Geo­graphic chan­nel last night?  Talk about bat­shit.  Did the pro­duc­ers intend for the show to be this hilarious?

(skip ahead to the poll)

Watch­ing the show and see­ing how most of these peo­ple live, it’s hard not to draw com­par­isons to Hoard­ers.  You might even call the Prep­pers’ lifestyle “hoard­ing with a purpose.”

Take prep­per Kel­lene Bishop, for exam­ple, who gave view­ers a tour of her Orem, Utah home.  She eagerly pointed out her mul­ti­ple food clos­ets: one for canned goods, one for snacks, one for meat… Yes, she has a fuck­ing meat closet.  She was also keen on spout­ing off ran­dom fac­toids that I assume were meant to jus­tify her food hoard­ing habits, for instance, how the price of cocoa has “risen 300% over the last few years.” (It hasn’t.  As NatGeo’s help­ful on-screen info­graphic informed us, it’s actu­ally gone down 30% since the end of 2011.)

Then there are prep­pers like 20-something Megan Hur­witt, whose tiny apart­ment is cov­ered floor to ceil­ing with her “bugout” sup­plies.  She’s got duf­fel bags full of knives, MREs, suri­val kits, and con­doms, which she seems to feel are impor­tant in an end-of-the-world sce­nario.  Then she casu­ally jokes how when Shit Hits The Fan™ she’ll have no prob­lem putting a bul­let in her cat’s head to spare him the agony of liv­ing.  How about just set­ting him free, bitch? I’m pretty sure if shit ever does hit the fan, cats will long out-live any human sur­vivors. Later in the episode she puts her own sur­vival skills to the test and fails miserably.

Prep­pers vs. Hoarders

Who will sur­vive the apoc­a­lypse?  My money’s on hoard­ers. Here’s why:

#1. Hoard­ers are already liv­ing in a dooms­day sce­nario.  The Prep­pers may have more food and guns stashed away, but don’t Hoard­ers already have the edge when it comes to sur­vival? In many cases, their gas, elec­tric­ity and water has already been cut off.  They’re used to liv­ing day-to-day, scrap­ing by on what­ever (prob­a­bly expired) food they have stashed around the house. And when that runs out, there’s plenty of stray cats around.

#2.  Prep­pers are too fat. It’s hard not to notice how obese most of these dooms­day prep­pers are. Do these peo­ple look like they could eas­ily run?  Is David Sarti a.k.a. “the Hill­billy Prep­per” going to ride his trac­tor to safety?

#3. Hoard­ers are cra­zier. Yes, the prep­pers are pretty bat­shit, but hoard­ers can get down­right scary con­fronta­tional when they feel threat­ened. I wouldn’t fuck with those people.

#4. Have you seen how dis­gust­ing Hoarder homes are? Between the dead cats, feces, and rot­ting food, who would even want to go scav­eng­ing there? Like whales that shit in the ocean to ward off preda­tors, human filth is a hoarder’s most reli­able defense mechanism.

#5. Keep on prepping—I’m tak­ing notes.  By being a prep­per, you’re mak­ing your­self a tar­get for the rest of us. Thanks to Dooms­day Prep­pers, we now know who these peo­ple are and where they live.  When shit hits the fan, guess whose house I will be raid­ing first?

‘Breaking Bad’ Gets the 8-Bit Treatment

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

FACT: Sell­ing meth is more fun in 8-bits.

Col­lege Humor has pro­duced a fan­tas­tic faux role-playing game ver­sion of the twisted AMC meth cooker hit. Too bad it’s not the real thing. But beware: Spoil­ers lie within.

Via news.cnet.com

Watch the video below to watch Walt & Jesse kick some pix­ely ass (but BEWARE MAJOR SPOILERS if you haven’t’ seen all of the show):

5 New Midseason TV Shows for Geeks & Comic Book Fans

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

ComicBook.com has a good round-up of 5 new(ish) TV shows that comic book geeks would prob­a­bly enjoy.

The hol­i­day sea­son is over, which means the Char­lie Brown Christ­mas spe­cials are done, and new episodes of return­ing shows and mid­sea­son replace­ments are start­ing.  Of course among return­ing TV shows, comic book fans have The Big Bang The­ory, Fringe, and The Walk­ing Dead.

How­ever, the excit­ing news is that there are sev­eral brand new mid­sea­son shows that should be of inter­est to comic book fans. Here’s our list of the top new TV shows for comic book fans.

Via comicbook.com

Here’s what’s on the list:

• Napoleon Dyna­mite (pre­miered Jan. 15 ) — The quirky ani­mated com­edy series based on the pop­u­lar movie, voiced by the orig­i­nal film’s actors.
• Celebrity Appren­tice (pre­miers Feb. 12)  — Why is this on the list? Mainly because this sea­son stars Lour Fer­rigno & George Takei.
• The River (pre­mieres tonight/Feb. 7) — A new paranormal/horror adventure-ish series that takes place along the Amazon
• Comic Book Men ( pre­mieres Feb. 12) — Another new AMC show, pro­duced by Kevin Smith. Must-see TV for comic book fans.
• Alca­traz (pre­miered Jan. 16)  — This JJ Abrams & Jorge Gar­cia “Lost-esque” show is based on the dis­ap­pear­ances of over 300 inmates and 40 guards, and gov­ern­ment cover-ups sur­round­ing the mys­te­ri­ous prison. Looks awe­some, but I haven’t had the chance to see it yet.

I’d also add to this list Touch, the new super­nat­ural show on Fox that stars Kiefer Suther­land. It pre­miered on Jan. 25 as a “spe­cial pre­view” and will begin reg­u­larly on March 19.

Are you watch­ing or do you plan to catch any of these? I want to know your thoughts about them.

‘Room 237′ Documentary Explores Fantastic Theories Behind Stanley Kubrick’s ‘The Shining’

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

The Shin­ing is one of my favorite hor­ror movies of all time, if not favorite movies, period.  Room 237 is a doc­u­men­tary about The Shin­ing that recently debuted at the 2012 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val, and it sounds sim­ply fascinating:

“If Stan­ley Kubrick were still alive, Room 237 would make him extremely happy. Directed by Rod­ney Ascher, the exper­i­men­tal doc­u­men­tary gives the leg­endary film­maker a ton of credit, maybe too much at times, as it explores sev­eral wild, and not so wild, the­o­ries about his 1980 hor­ror mas­ter­piece The Shining.”

Via www.slashfilm.com

And now for the bad news: Room 237 may not ever get a the­atri­cal release, due to uncleared footage, copy­right issues, and other pieces of red tape.

Must Watch: ‘The Hunger Games’ Epic New Trailer

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Jen­nifer Lawrence, Eliz­a­beth Banks and Wil­low Shields come together in an epic new trailer for the Hunger Games. It pro­vides a fresh look at the dreary cap­i­tal of Panem and some new action shots of Kat­niss, and we also get to hear more of the film’s score.

Now I REALLY can’t wait to see this movie!

Via www.theimproper.com

Amateur Documentary ‘IRL’ Tackles Online Game Addiction

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Count­less doc­u­men­taries have inves­ti­gated gam­ing addic­tion and the sup­posed dan­gers lurk­ing in mas­sively mul­ti­player titles, but it’s not often that some­one who’s expe­ri­enced an addic­tion talks about it him­self. Third year film stu­dent and ex World of War­craft junkie Anthony Ros­ner looks back on his six years in the game in a new short doc­u­men­tary on the effects of MMO addic­tion. With help from friends Dave Novis and Arron Amo, Anthony pro­duced, directed, wrote, and edited the film him­self, ensur­ing that he had the oppor­tu­nity to tell his whole story and tell it from his own per­spec­tive.
Via massively.joystiq.com

‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ Meme is Now a Movie

One of the great­est inter­net memes of all time is now a movie.  Safety Not Guar­an­teed is a film based on the mys­te­ri­ous real clas­si­fied ad pic­tured above, which first appeared in a weekly Dan­ish news­pa­per.  The ad was later paired with the accom­pa­ny­ing photo of a rather serious-looking young man who seems to have stepped straight out of 1986, mul­let, turtle­neck and all.  The orig­i­nal YTMND that started it all has over 1.2 mil­lion views as of Jan­u­ary 2012.

What will a movie based on an inter­net meme be like?  The film, directed by Colin Trevor­row,  is about two mag­a­zine employ­ees (Aubrey Plaza & Jake John­son) who set out on an assign­ment to find and inter­view the quirky man who placed the clas­si­fied ad seek­ing a time travel com­pan­ion (Mark Duplass).  Accord­ing to an early review in Vari­ety,  Safety Not Guar­an­teed is “a sci-fi-tinged odd­ball com­edy about love as the ulti­mate risky adven­ture” that fea­tures “some nice soul-searching moments along­side a steady stream of laughs.”  Indeed.

Does axl­bon­bach (the per­son who cre­ated the orig­i­nal YTMND) deserve com­pen­sa­tion?  What about the unknown man in the photo?

I sup­pose it’s only nat­ural that the film indus­try would start min­ing the annals of the inter­net for movie ideas, since they seem to have exhausted most other resources.  Last month we heard about Bad Ass, a movie star­ring Dany Trejo based off the “Epic Beard Man” viral video.  It’s hard not to feel like these types of movies are only being made to cash in on the mil­lions of hits and social media buzz these dig­i­tal curiosi­ties have gen­er­ated over time.

One of the best doc­u­men­taries I’ve seen in the last few years is a film called Win­nebago Man, in which the film­maker sets out on a quest to find out what became of the tem­pera­men­tal, potty-mouthed RV sales­man whose unin­ten­tion­ally hilar­i­ous sales train­ing video out­takes ended up on the inter­net and became wildly pop­u­lar.  It was a heart­felt and fit­ting trib­ute to a sim­ple man who did not real­ize the extent of his own fame, but whose recorded moments of weak­ness gave us so much joy.  It’s doubt­ful that movies like Bad Ass and Safety Not Guar­an­teed have their sub­jects’ best inter­ests at heart.

My Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2012

I hope you’re pre­pared to fork over a lot of cash to Hol­ly­wood, because 2012 is going to be a kick-ass year for movies.  Our first year of Life After Harry Pot­ter™ will be one filled with promise.  New trilo­gies will begin, beloved trilo­gies will end, and some of the biggest and best direc­tors are expected to unveil mas­ter­pieces. If the world’s going to end on Decem­ber 21st, at least we’ll die sat­is­fied know­ing we’ve finally seen The Hob­bit.

Here are the 2012 movies I’m most look­ing for­ward to:

(ordered by release date)

The Woman in Black

Release  Date:  Feb­ru­ary 3, 2012 
Direc­tor:   James Watkins

Based on the 1983 novel by Susan Hill, The Woman in Black is the woe­ful tale of a young busi­ness­man, Arthur Kipps  (Harry Pot­ter Daniel Rad­cliffe), who is sum­moned to the Eng­lish coun­try­side to set in order a deceased elderly woman’s affairs and estate when he soon becomes haunted by a men­ac­ing pres­ence.  I love atmos­pheric hor­ror films, espe­cially when they take place in big, secluded old man­sions.  If you’ve never seen it, I also highly rec­om­mend the orig­i­nal British made-for-TV film ver­sion from 1989, which oozes atmos­phere and dread.  I have high expec­ta­tions for this mod­ern remake.

The Hunger Games

Release Date:  March 23, 2012
Direc­tor:  Gary Ross

Finally, a  hugely pop­u­lar young adult fic­tion film adap­ta­tion that isn’t Twi­light (with­out candy-ass vam­pires, and bet­ter writ­ing)!  Set in the future dystopian North Amer­ica (now a nation called ‘Panem’), The Hunger Games is an annual tele­vised bat­tle between young boys and girls from each of Panem’s twelve dis­tricts.  These 24 “trib­utes” must fight to the death until only one remains stand­ing.  The story cen­ters on Kat­niss Everdeen (Jen­nifer Lawrence), and her strug­gle to sur­vive.  I prac­ti­cally devoured these books at the beach last sum­mer, and I’m hop­ing this first film does the series justice.

The Raven

Release Date:  April 27, 2012
Direc­tor:  James McTeigue

Being a hor­ror fan from Bal­ti­more means you can’t not love Edgar Allen Poe.  The Raven is a fic­tion­al­ized account of the last days of the writer’s life, in which Poe (John Cusack) tries to track down a ser­ial killer whose mur­ders are eerily sim­i­lar to the ones he wrote in his sto­ries.  Will the film also por­tray Poe’s rag­ing alcoholism?

Dark Shad­ows

Release Date:  May 11, 2012
Direc­tor:  Tim Burton

Another love child between Tim Bur­ton and his go-to lead­ing man, Johnny Depp.  The three or four peo­ple who read this blog already know I’ve been look­ing for­ward to Dark Shad­ows since I first heard about it.  Other than cen­ter­ing around Baran­abas Collins (Depp), the plot descrip­tion on IMDB is dis­ap­point­ingly vague.  But I’m sure we can expect a delight­fully Burton-esque mix of char­ac­ters and sto­ry­lines bor­rowed from Dark Shad­ows’ many incar­na­tions.  Hope I can fin­ish my Dark Shad­ows marathon project before then!

Prometheus

Release Date:  June 8, 2012
Direc­tor:  Rid­ley Scott

Prometheus might turn out to be the film everybody’s been hop­ing Rid­ley Scott would make since Alien.  It looks dark, unset­tling, full of alien crea­tures, and obvi­ously, set in space (although Scott has con­firmed this isn’t a pre­quel, and is only loosely based on his pre­vi­ous Alien films).  A team of explor­ers set out to unearth the ori­gins of mankind, but instead unknow­ingly unleash our poten­tial destruction.

Brave

Release Date:  June 22, 2012
Direc­tors:   Mark Andrews, Brenda Chapman

Pixar does fairy tales.  Set in the myth­i­cal high­lands of Scot­land, Brave is the story of a coura­geous young princess named Merida (Kelly Mac­Don­ald).  Deter­mined to carve her own path in life, she defies an age-old sacred cus­tom, result­ing in a curse that unleashes chaos and fury upon her kingdom.

Abra­ham Lin­coln: Vam­pire Hunter

Release Date:  June 22, 2012
Direc­tor:   Timur Bekmambetov

There are two movies about Lin­coln com­ing out this year, but this one’s bound to be the most fun.  Adapted from the best­selling novel, Abra­ham Lin­coln: Vam­pire Hunter is a mélange of his­tory and hor­ror in which our beloved 16th pres­i­dent leads a secret dou­ble life as van­quisher of the super­nat­ural.  It’s as nutty as it sounds, but the book was great.  And at least it’s not another god damn remake/sequel/prequel/reboot/etc.

The Dark Knight Rises

Release Date:  July 20, 2012
Direc­tor:  Christo­pher Nolan

The end of Chris­t­ian Bale’s reign as Bat­man, and the final chap­ter in Nolan’s tril­ogy.  The Dark Knight Rises takes place eight years after the events of the last movie.  Bat­man resur­faces when the ter­ror­ist Bane arrives in Gotham City after tak­ing the fall for Har­vey Dent’s crimes. Even though I’m def­i­nitely look­ing for­ward to it, I don’t know if any new Bat­man movie will be able to top The Dark Knight.

The Hob­bit: An Unex­pected Journey

Release Date:  Decem­ber 14, 2012
Direc­tor:  Peter Jackson

It’s The Hob­bit!  It’s the pre­quel to The Lord of the Rings!  It’s directed by Peter Jack­son!  What more is there to say?

Lin­coln

Release Date:  TBA, Decem­ber 2012
Direc­tor:  Stephen Spielberg

Never mind that Lin­coln is being directed by Stephen Spiel­berg. Any­thing star­ring Daniel Day Lewis is fuck­ing win.

Abraham Lincoln Kicking Some Undead Ass In New Vampire Hunter Image

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

Not one to be con­fused with Steven Spielberg’s devel­op­ing Lin­coln project, Bekmambetov’s genre splice re-imagines our 16th pres­i­dent as a vam­pire slayer stomp­ing through the Civil War-era United States.
Via www.cinemablend.com

Just What We Need: Two ‘Beauty And The Beast’ Shows In The Works

Via Scoop.it — Shezcrafti

ABC and The CW com­mis­sion pilots based on the clas­sic fairy­tale.
Via www.thisisfakediy.co.uk

Did I ever tell you about the time I watched all 1,225 episodes of ‘Dark Shadows’?

No?  Well that’s because I haven’t yet.  But I’m close!  I only have, like, 790 more episodes to go…

My Dark Shad­ows pil­grim­age began back in 2009, a few months before Tim Bur­ton announced his film ver­sion.  It was on the rec­om­men­da­tion of my mom, who used to rush home from school to watch it with her sis­ter (and pre­sum­ably swoon over Quentin Collins, or some­thing like that).  At any rate,  I’m now 435 episodes in.  I fell off the view­ing wagon for a while last sum­mer, but started back up again ear­lier this month.  It’s now my new goal to com­plete all 1,225 episodes by May, when the new movie comes out.

“But Jaime, that’s crazy!” you’re prob­a­bly think­ing.  Who would want to spend that much time watch­ing some old, low-budget soap opera?  Well, I am noth­ing if not a com­pletest.  I can never be the type of per­son who just watches only a few episodes of a TV show, or reads just a few chap­ters of a book–even when it turns out to suck.  For me to fully appre­ci­ate some­thing, I must see/do/read/absorb it all.

Thus, the Dark Shad­ows theme has become part of the sound­track of my daily life.  I like to put it on while I’m work­ing at the com­puter, doing house­work, and I’ll also get a few episodes in before I go to sleep.  I’m aver­ag­ing about 10–12 episodes per day.  It sounds like a lot, but it goes pretty quickly since the magic of DVD means there are no commercials.

You too can over-commit your life to the same mean­ing­less (but ulti­mately reward­ing?) cause with these help­ful Dark Shad­ows marathon view­ing tips!

1. If you want to get right to the meat-and-potatoes of the series, I rec­om­mend skip­ping Dark Shad­ows: The Begin­ning (episodes 1 — 209), which takes place before the intro­duc­tion of Barn­abas Collins.  While I don’t regret hav­ing started from the very begin­ning, I do agree with the gen­eral con­sen­sus that the pre-Barnabas episodes are some­thing of a gru­el­ing exer­cise in endurance.  There are some unmemorable/disposable char­ac­ters, rather thin and unin­ter­est­ing plot lines, and although the gen­eral atmos­phere is creepy, noth­ing overly hair rais­ing ever really hap­pens.  It’s under­stand­able why the show was on the verge of being can­celled.  One can only stand so much of David Collins cry­ing like a lit­tle bitch and storm­ing off to his bedroom.
2. The first 370 episodes are avail­able on Net­flix for instant stream­ing, and the rest of the episodes are avail­able for DVD-by-mail.  But if you decide to fol­low Tip #1, then you can safely start at episode #210.  If you have a smart­phone, some ear buds, and the Net­flix app, it’s a great way to get through long car trips, wait­ing at the doctor’s office, or stealth-watching at church/work/boring parties.
3. Fast-forward is your friend!  Often the first three min­utes of each episode repeats the last three min­utes of the pre­vi­ous episode (remem­ber, this was a 1960s soap opera).  You can also shave an addi­tional two min­utes from each episode by skip­ping the open­ing and end­ing cred­its (unless you really enjoy watch­ing waves crash into rocks…over and over again).
4. You don’t actu­ally have to watch Dark Shad­ows, as in, with your eyes.  You can pick up almost every­thing you need to know just by lis­ten­ing.  The scripts are very straight­for­ward, almost mad­den­ingly so, often requir­ing the char­ac­ters to repeat key dialogue/plot points  many times over.  But of course, just lis­ten­ing to Dark Shad­ows means you might miss out on the endear­ingly cheesy spe­cial effects like float­ing hands,  red corn syrup blood, my favorite plas­tic bat on a fish­ing line.

There’s plenty to enjoy about Dark Shad­ows, if you can look past the campy act­ing, out­landish plots, and fre­quent mis­takes.  Over time you may even come to love these qual­i­ties, as I do.  The impor­tant thing is to have fun and let your­self be entertained.

‘Star Wars: Uncut’ is a Fan-made Orgy of Nerds, Memes, Kittens and Light Sabers

The premise:  the orig­i­nal Star Wars movie cut into 15-second seg­ments to be re-filmed by thou­sands of fans and then care­fully edited together into an amus­ing patch­work of fan-generated footage.  The result­ing film is an awe­some retelling of Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope through the eyes and cre­ative tal­ents of Star Wars fans around the world.

Star Wars: Uncut was the genius idea of Casey Pugh, a 26 year old web devel­oper and (one assumes) seri­ous Star Wars fan.

“I was work­ing as a web devel­oper for Vimeo and I was doing a lot of video-based stuff, but I was also think­ing about how I could enable film­mak­ers to cre­ate either short films or feature-length films together remotely,” he says. “I bounced an idea off my friends but I had no idea it would blow up to this scale–it’s just crazy.”

Crazy or not, Star Wars: Uncut earned Pugh and his col­lab­o­ra­tors an Emmy award (the 2010 Prime­time Emmy for Out­stand­ing Cre­ative Achieve­ment In Inter­ac­tive Media — Fic­tion, to be precise).

Despite being a diverse mashup of live-action, clay­ma­tion, stop-motion, kit­tens, hand drawn ani­ma­tions, CGI, hand pup­pets, babies, Legos,  men and women in drag, Pop­si­cle sticks, paper­craft, and prac­ti­cally every other type of style and imagery you can think of, Star Wars: Uncut man­ages to stay true to the orig­i­nal film’s nar­ra­tive and is rec­og­niz­able to any­one who has seen it.

Most of the clips are silly, unre­hearsed videos of the viral sort (com­plete with trash can R2D2s and news­pa­per hats).  But there are also pol­ished, beautiful-looking scenes from tal­ented fans whom you can tell put forth a lot of time and effort.

The entire film was recently released to the inter­net masses and you can watch it right here:

Star Wars: Uncut is a film made by Star Wars fans for Star Wars fans.  I promise it will be the most fun and enter­tain­ing two hours of your life.

MUST WATCH: Amazing Live-Action Short Film Based on ‘Portal’

Por­tal: No Escape is a live-action short film based on the game Por­tal and I promise you it is AMAZING!  It was directed by Dan Tra­cht­en­berg, a Los Ange­les film­maker who, hon­estly, I had never heard of until this project, but will be sure to fol­low closely from now on.

The film is about seven min­utes long, and chron­i­cles the expe­ri­ence of Chell (played by Danielle Rayne) as she wakes up in a bleak,  unknown, pre­sum­ably Aper­ture Science-controlled facil­ity and what she does from there.  Por­tal fans will rec­og­nize all the famil­iar props, includ­ing the blue and orange por­tals, the Por­tal Gun, even a glimpse of the Com­pan­ion Cube toward the end!

(I won’t spoil any­thing, but the end­ing was really well done.)

Watch Por­tal: No Escape:

‘The Beaver’ Will Make You Sort of, Kind of Like Mel Gibson Again…Maybe

“Hello. I’m The Beaver. And I’m here to save your career.”

Whether you’ve for­given Mel Gib­son for his self-righteous behav­ior, anti-Semitic tirades, racist rants, and alleged wife-beating ways or not (in which case I com­pletely under­stand), I think it’s a tragedy that one of the best movies of 2011 will prob­a­bly never get the recog­ni­tion it deserves because it stars a man who occu­pies a spot on Hollywood’s per­ma­nent blacklist.

But I’m not here to throw a pity party for Mel Gib­son.  I don’t think any man who hits beau­ti­ful women, dri­ves drunk, and owns an island the size of a small coun­try is deserv­ing of much pity.  But acknowl­edge­ment for his extra­or­di­nary act­ing abil­ity? Sure.

Like the guy or not, I think there are few peo­ple who would deny that Mel is a tal­ented actor.  I mean, not once dur­ing The Beaver did I feel like punch­ing him in his douchey, N-word spew­ing face, and that is say­ing some­thing.  I went in with low expec­ta­tions and a healthy dose of cyn­i­cism, yet by the time the end cred­its rolled I felt ready to take back every harsh word I had ever said against Mel Gib­son.  Well, okay, not exactly…but it kind of felt like that!  That’s how a good actor is capa­ble of mak­ing you feel.

And I have to agree with the crit­ics who are say­ing The Beaver is one of Gibson’s best roles. For 91 min­utes, I was some­how able to com­pletely for­get all about Mel Gib­son the per­son and warmly embrace Mel Gib­son the clin­i­cally depressed hus­band and father of two, who after a men­tal break­down and sub­se­quent sui­cide attempt decides to wear a beaver pup­pet on his arm and com­mu­ni­cate exclu­sively through his new stuffed friend’s per­sona thereby regain­ing his con­fi­dence and abil­ity to func­tion.  It’s all very Lars and the Real Girl (a bril­liant film) except per­haps with bet­ter direct­ing (Jodie Fos­ter), more of a focus on dys­func­tional fam­ily dynam­ics, and a bit of a shock ending.

Though a ridiculous-sounding premise, The Beaver is a thor­oughly enjoy­able dram­edy that just seems to work and the rea­son why it works is Mel Gib­son, who man­ages to pull off two simul­ta­ne­ously demand­ing roles in a sin­gle film.  Despite his sta­tus as one of America’s most dis­liked peo­ple, I am not so jaded by the media’s anti-Mel Gib­son cru­sade that I am inca­pable of rec­og­niz­ing tal­ent when I see it.  If you’re able to sep­a­rate an artist’s abil­ity from his or her per­sonal life and appre­ci­ate their work despite per­sonal short­com­ings, well con­grat­u­la­tions on being a ratio­nal per­son. You know, Polan­ski may be a rape artist but I’m not afraid to admit that I really enjoy his movies. And Michael Jack­son may or may not have been a kid-toucher, but when­ever Bil­lie Jean comes on, I always turn that shit up.

Go see The Beaver. It is a beau­ti­ful film that will make you laugh, cry, and all that good stuff if you just give it a chance. And if you can’t sus­pend your per­sonal dis­dain for Mel Gib­son, well, you just might be miss­ing out on a really great movie.

Guy Turns an Old Game Boy into a Musical Instrument

There are lots of clever ways to upcy­cle an old Game Boy. But THIS is prob­a­bly one of the most cre­ative ones I’ve ever seen.

Check out Sebas­t­ian Bender’s awe­some orig­i­nal Game Boy music video, where repet­i­tive but­ton mash­ing, head­phone feed­back, and car­tridge throw­ing some­how mag­i­cally cre­ates awe­some music.

He sure can play the shit out of those bat­tery springs!