Welcome to Steve

If you find yourself reading this, I just want to say thank you. The photos and videos on this humble blog are some of my best and favorite works. I’ve always been fascinated by visual effects. Star Wars sparked that interest in me as a child, and as an adult I look for every opportunity to produce that sense of wonder and excitement.

Ideas spark easily for me, but are all too fleeting. Handing me a problem is like lighting a pack of firecrackers in my mind. Unfortunately, a lot of those ideas are lost like tears in rain. The ones that do survive, plant and grow. Most of my ideas never stop growing, even to the point where they’re too big to conquer. Those are the ideas I pour my soul into, the ideas I will never stop pushing to accomplish.

Unfortunately, you’ll see none of those ideas here. They’re tucked away safely until they’re ready for the world. What you’ll find here is a collection of my visual artwork and captured moments. Among those captured moments are my favorite event to cover, Comic-Con. I could talk for hours about the wonderful things that happen at cons, but it doesn’t compare to seeing it with your own eyes. If it weren’t for photo and video coverage of SDCC, I never would have known the joys of a convention as I grew into nerdhood. I’ve always prefer to be behind the camera rather than in front… and since I love to share my joy with others, I decided that my con experience would be through a lens.

St. Louis ComicCon 2014

April of 2014 marked the second year Wizard World has graced St. Louis with a ComicCon. It’s been going for years in other cities like San Diego and New York, but St. Louis is new to the game. Last year was a learning experience, and I thought I knew what I would be getting into this year. Fortunately for you and anyone watching this video, that wasn’t the case.

The registration floor.

Before carpooling down to the city on Saturday, I was surprised to find that my company would be in costume. Specifically, seeing James step out of his car dressed as Mario made me realize that the day would be anything but what I expected.

After about 10 minutes of watching James and Devon act out their characters, I decided to film this. I hope you enjoy watching it as much as I did filming it.

This year was a lot of fun. There were a few complaints we had about the logistics of the costume contest (mainly the fact that they had an entry cap but didn’t have a screening process). This year’s contest was subject to many duplicate costumes. I swear, every couple wants to dress as Joker and Harley. There were at least two of each modern incarnation of Doctor Who. I mean I love Doctor Who, but no Doctor is ever going to win a costume contest. Come on, it’s just a suit and a sonic screwdriver… about as much work as a store-bought costume.

Despite the disappointing aspects of the costume contest, there were quite a few gems in there. I was caught unprepared when it came to getting decent photos from my seat, but I can tell you that the costumes that won the awards really deserved them. Especially the female Demon Hunter from Diablo III. I really wish I had gotten a photo of her, because she was head-to-toe legit. Completely hand made clothes and armor, built to look exactly like the Demon Hunter’s armor.

And as we do every year, we discussed costuming possibilities for next year. I’m a little hesitant though, because cosplaying at a con is a really involved experience. Any recognizable character or impressive costume will be subject to literally dozens if not hundreds of pictures over the course of the day. Enough so that it’s hard to do anything else (like shop around the con floor or get to panels on time).

But despite my hesitations, there are several ideas in the works: Super Smash Bros. group costume (with Mario & Luigi of course), Borderlands vending machine costumes (No refunds!), Venture Bros. group costume (probably made up of random characters from the show), Revan & Malak (the Sith Lords from Knights of the Old Republic), and my favorite idea, the Imperial Mafia (which would just be people in pinstripe suits and Stormtrooper helmets).

48 Hour Film Project – 2013

The 48 Hour Film Project… two days when a group of film geeks from around the area get together, drink unhealthy amounts of caffeine, and force their imaginations into 7 minutes of creative expression. Under certain criteria, of course… For those of you that are unfamiliar with the project, it’s a collection of short films all written, shot, and edited in 48 hours or less. The project takes place in cities all over the world, and the best 12 have a chance of going to the Cannes Film Festival.

In each city, all of the groups are assigned certain elements they must include in their films: a character, a prop, and a line of dialogue. Each group is also assigned its own genre to work in, forcing the participants to adapt to whatever they are given and to vary the films. Here were the elements for this year’s project:

Character: Paul or Paula Sweeney, substitute teacher
Prop: An umbrella
Line of Dialog: “I don’t recommend it.” (Or “I do not recommend it.”)

This was my first year participating in the project, although I have wanted to do it for a couple of years now. I just hadn’t happened to fall in with any Lindenwood group willing to do it. Who I did group up with this year was SoYCD, a collection of students (both current and former) from Webster University led by independent film makers Stephen Jones and Devon Raftery. I met Stephen through a mutual friend and ended up helping him out on the production of a short film called Life Cycle, which was a very interesting project that told the story of a man’s life in his first house through one continuous shot.

Stephen asked me to step in an help him as a preliminary editor to put together a first cut of the film while shooting, also to bring a secondary camera for production. My editing laptop is the most updated of all our available resources, so we thought it would be good to make use of it. I didn’t add input on the writing process, mostly because I assumed Devin and Stephen have their own style of doing things, and I really didn’t want to clash with them or impede on it. I figured it would be better to let them (who have a couple years’ experience with the 48 Hour Project) work out the script.

Our group got the genre “Mistaken Identity”. Granted, I’m sure you’re thinking “Isn’t that more of a plot device?” I thought the same thing too. I found that genre was more of a general theme to the film rather than an actual strict genre. And we were allowed to mix genres as long as we included the one we were assigned. When I was informed of the elements and genre for our film, my mind started going in a direction somewhat along the lines of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic North By Northwest, mostly because I had watched it with my roommate the night before.

I had some theories about how to work the elements and genre into a coherent script, but they were pretty premature by the time I heard Stephen’s ideas. SoYCD’s entry for this year’s project, Accept No Substitutes, is centered around a (most likely) escaped mental patient who poses as a substitute teacher in order to convince a bunch of impressionable students to do something they definitely shouldn’t.

Overall, the experience shooting and editing the film was fun. I got to meet some great people who I hope to work with again. We learned some lessons, and hopefully we can glide over those speedbumps in the future. It got pretty close in the end when we had to turn it in, but Stephen Jones pulled a miracle out of his ass to get it in on time. Accept No Substitutes ended up winning the award for “Best Use of the Character”, which was in my opinion definitely deserved after seeing how other films didn’t really focus on the character too much.

Here is SoYCD’s entry for the 2013 St. Louis 48 Hour Film Project:

St. Louis Comic Con 2013

So I’m a nerd. What of it?

So anyone that knows me can say I’m a huge nerd. I mean, I hear it said to my face at least once a day. Honestly it used to bother me when I was growing up. Now my early childhood was pretty much dominated by four things… Star Wars, Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Batman. Being the only kid in my class (of about 20-25) who was in love with Star Wars kind of forced me into hiding t

he fanboy Steve. Not until late high school and college did I feel comfortable displaying my affection for all things Star Wars.

Hell, now I have a total of eight lightsabers… EIGHT! When I was buying them, I was always thinking of using them to make fan films. Because come on, who needs eight lightsabers? Apparently I do. And I’m probably going to buy more in the future. And a Jedi costume… and some Boba Fett armor.

But I digress… Comic Con (any Comic Con) has always been something I’ve wanted to experience. I can’t really remember when I first heard of it, but since that moment I have thought of going to either San Diego’s or New York’s every year. For someone like me who loves to observe and document (whether through photos or videos), a massive gathering of people who have great passion for art and creativity is pretty much the promised land.

Needless to say, I charged up my camera and got out there. I snapped over 400 pictures in two days, met and talked to a lot of cool people, picked up some pretty sweet art prints, and got to see some of the celebrities I grew up watching on TV… all with a lightsaber hanging from my belt.

My First Con Experience

Some awesome cosplayers from Twilight Comics

Friday

Being a fan of movies, television, art, and comics make it easy for someone like me to thrive in an environment like Comic Con. Some people go there only to see the celebrities or only to check a couple things out, but I ate it all up. The pictures I took can certainly vouch for that.

I charged in with a full head of steam. When I looked up tickets, I immediately bought the weekend pass because I figured why the Hell not? Three days of nerding it up is better than one! Definitely didn’t think that Sunday would be a freaking blizzard. I couldn’t even get my car out of the parking lot behind my townhouse. Maybe it’s time to invest in a snow shovel…

But still, two of the three days was a lot better than none of the days! I had a blast. On Friday, my friend James and I spent most of the day dipping my toes into the different booths. We’d stop by, take a look around… maybe take a picture of the booth babe if there was one, then move on. We ended up spending the most time checking out the art booths, since they usually had two or more books full of prints for sale. James bought prints from several different places, but I waited to scan my options first.

Billy Dee Williams!

Then we hit the celebrity booths. The Wizards World employees were circling them like sharks… Sharks who yell at people trying to take photos of the celebrities. That didn’t stop most people, and didn’t even hinder me. Unfortunately, most of the celebrities were surrounded by so many people that I couldn’t get a good shot, but I did manage to get a decent picture of Billy Dee Williams (Star Wars), James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China), Henry Winkler (The Fonz himself!), and Jason David Frank (Power Rangers). I got quite a few pictures of Jason David Frank because he was one of the judges for the costume contest Saturday evening. I really wanted to get a picture of Laurie Holden (The Walking Dead) and Morena Baccarin (Firefly), but they were pretty obscured. Laurie’s booth was packed the whole time and the picture I got of Morena is pretty obscured.

After exploring the convention floor Friday afternoon, we decided to take a break from the crowd and check out the gaming room. There were several tables of people huddled over cards and game boards. One large table held a massive pile of torn wrappers from Magic: The Gathering booster packs. Since magic is a game that my high school friends and I still play, we figured we should get in on that the next day when our friends Sam and Richard were also there with us. We stopped over in a corner to try out a game we’ve never played. Android: Netrunner is a card game set in the universe of a cyberpunk noir Clue-styled board game called Android. I had heard of Android before, which was listed pretty high in a list of the best of science fiction board games, but had never played it. Being a pretty big fan of the movie Blade Runner, these games really stuck out.

Netrunner was pretty fun, being made by one of the guys that helped create Magic: The Gathering, but was just as complicated and had a whole slew of terms to learn. The game is also made for one on one play, which would probably be a little problematic for recreational play with an odd number of players. One player has control over a corporation, which has the goals of building its empire through the combination of setting up and protecting computer servers and enacting agendas. The other player is the “Runner”, which is a representation of a hacker (described to us as one of the good guys in The Matrix) or cyber-terrorist attempting to bring down the corporation. The Runner’s objective is essentially to hack into the corporation’s servers and use their own agendas and assets against them… And to keep the corporation broke. As I found out in my game with James, a broke corporation dies pretty quickly. Whichever player gets to seven agenda points first wins the game. I believe James bought the starter pack for it, so I’ll probably be playing more in the future.

Saturday

This is probably the most fun I’ve ever had packed into one day. I think it may have even beat the trip to New York with my old National Broadcasting Society group. I probably won’t be able to top it until I go to a San Diego or New York Comic Con.

The day started off pretty early. We had originally planned to get breakfast at 8 a.m. and show up around 9:30 to park and start the day. That went out the window when 8 a.m. rolled around and I was the only one that was even awake… We managed to make it to the convention center a little before 10 and dove right in again. Since all the same booths were still up, I decided it was a good time to start buying some stuff.

I’m pretty sure all of us bought prints from this vendor called Musetap Art Studio, since they were selling some pretty amazing 11″ x 17″ prints 4 for $20. I ended up getting seven prints, six for myself and one for my brother. I got a two-piece sketch of the heroes from Arkham City (Batman, Robin, Nightwing, Catwoman, and Gordon), a couple of awesome Star Wars crossovers (Boba Fett standing over a bleeding Predator and Vader slicing up a bunch of Xenomorphs from Alien), and the last copies of a Ninja Turtles print and a “Women of Mass Effect” print.

After buying up a bunch of prints, I decided to look for someone to do a commission sketch. Bryce Oquaye of Mad 100s Studios was offering sketches for $8, so I asked him to do a quick sketch of Lilith and Maya, characters from the Borderlands video games. It came out looking pretty awesome, with the two Sirens fist bumping in the center of the page and energy bursting out from it. I was planning on asking him to do another commission sketch of Bender from Futurama, but was unable to go back to the con on Sunday.

The 50-foot smoker used to cook up a world record.

After asking for the commissioned sketch, we walked over to Kiener Plaza for BACON FEST! Bacon fest was centered around an attempt to break the world record for the biggest bacon explosion ever made. Vatterott College built a 50-foot long smoker to cook the 500lb log of sausage wrapped in bacon, and it was raging pretty hard when we stopped by. The food booths were each serving a few bacon-themed items and each booth had a line nearly 50 people long. We managed to try a few things, but definitely enough to fill us up for the walk back to the convention.

When we got back to the convention, we decided to go to the Jason David Frank Q&A session. I managed to snap a couple pictures of him, then asked the question “If you, as the Green Ranger, could fight any fictional character, who would it be and why?” I was sort of expecting him to pick some obscure comic book martial artist character or something from an old Kung Fu movie, but Jason said he’d like to fight Wolverine because he sees that fight as the ultimate test of the Green Ranger’s skill… beating an invincible opponent. The question and answer got a pretty good response from the audience, so I was kind of happy to bring everyone that nerd thought.

The Costume Contest Judges

After the Q&A session, we wandered for a little longer taking more pictures and whatnot until the costume contest was about to start. The contest was hosted by Jarrett “The Defuser” Crippen, winner of Stan Lee’s Who Wants to Be a Super Hero? reality show and featured special guest judges Jason David Frank and Jesse Snider. I have to hand it to these people… some of these costumes are amazing. The whole time I was thinking about making fan films because the quality of the work just blew my mind. Even the ones that weren’t so great… the sheer fact that those people gathered up the courage to get into it and walk up on stage in front of 200+ people was commendable to say the least.

Now I was a little embarrassed when it came to taking pictures in the costume contest. All of my friends decided to sit in back of the room, but I just had to get up close. I went over to an area on side of the stage where there were a few press guys set up and just blended in… The embarrassment came about 3/4 of the way through when my camera died. Shooting all day drained the battery and I didn’t have a spare, so I kept turning the camera off and on… The camera would turn on for long enough to snap one picture, then die again. There were quite a few times when I acted like I was snapping pictures just so I didn’t look like a dick… But I did manage to get pictures of a lot of the people I was unable to photograph in the contest.

Best In Show, Captain Jack Sparrow

I’m sure you want to hear the winners of the contest, but I’m not going to post all of the pictures here. Those will all be in my photo album from the con. I put them up top so you guys can see them.

Best Group Costume: The Predators
Best Female Villain: Mary Poppins, Vampire
Best Male Villain: Jack Nicholson’s Joker
Best Female Hero: Rapunzel
Best Male Hero: Link with Mirror Shield
Best In Show: Jack Sparrow
Honorable Mentions: Mord-Sith, Voltron, Nibbler, Kato, Ant-Man and the Wasp

There were also a few really cool ones that I have to bring up as well…

Spartans… one was dressed as Master Chief and the other was a generic Spartan, but she had built her arm guard to hold her iPhone as a datapad-type feature which I thought was really cool.
Jurassic Park Ranger… Very simple costume, but I really just wanted this dude’s hat and vest because it was pretty awesome.
Borderlands Characters! Didn’t get to see a Lilith or Maya, but this crew that got together was pretty sweet… Mordecai, Gaige, Mad Moxxi, and a Psycho… there was also another group that did Dr. Tannis, Gaige, Axton, Scooter, and Handsome Jack
Colonial Marine… This guy did a great job of converting a steadicam mount into a machine gun mount. Other than the lack of customization to the armor, he looked like he was ready to jump into a movie and blast some aliens.
Assassin’s Creed… There were quite a few of these, but they were all really well done and just about all of them had working arm blades. My personal favorite was the Ezio gray with fur outfit.

After the costume contest was the after party… which was pretty epic. Kato pretty much led the whole party, starting dance circles up when people started to get bored. Now, I’m no dancer. I can move to a beat and that’s about it. When Kato started pulling people into the circle to dance or show off, I figured I should get my lightsaber. I knew it was my only way to wow the audience.

Kato did a lot of this at the after party.

The party was starting to die down and I figured this was my last shot so I walked out into the circle, lit up, and started mesmerizing everyone with my spins and throws. When I noticed the Best In Show winner, Jack Sparrow, was taking an interest, I quickly made a move that ended with me pointing my saber at his chest as a challenge. The circle roared with excitement when Jack whipped his plastic sword from its sheath to join me in the circle.

I really wish I could have been on the sidelines taking pictures of this because Kato brought us both in to start the spin off (swordplay version of a dance off I guess). After our first round, Jack and I swapped weapons to continue. Kato had the crowd cheer for each of us and then had us go again at the same time. After a few seconds, Kato took the weapons and had the crowd cheer again before declaring a draw. The guy playing Jack Sparrow, gotta hand it to him, had not dropped character all damn day. Even after the fight, he shook my hand and said “Good show, mate.” into my ear in the Jack Sparrow voice. It was definitely an awesome experience, and it also ended the after party.

Now if you managed to make it all the way through this post, I just gotta say thanks. Comic Con was an amazing experience for me and I am very happy to share it with you. Oh, and to those of you I met at the con… Thanks for checking out my blog and keep in touch!

Link to Photo Gallery

Link to Photoshop Project Gallery

It’s Been a While

It has been a few months since I’ve posted anything. It hasn’t been a lack of interesting things in my life, but rather a chaotic torrent of events, projects, and of course the holidays keeping me busy. Now that I’m finished with my Master’s degree in Communications, I believe I am just about completely finished with Lindenwood University… at least academically.

Graduating feels weird. This is the first semester in my entire life that I’m not going to be joining any classmates in studying whatever. I don’t mind it, though… Since this last semester just felt like a grind. It definitely seemed to be the quickest semester, as all of my projects and loose ends needed to be tied up. It was a great semester though… I spent most of it writing a massive, 44-page thesis paper on Star Wars, modeling and animating a space ship, studying the directing style of Alfred Hitchcock, working as a Grad Assistant for the LU Film Series and getting a new job. It wasn’t all work though. I did meet a lot of awesome new people, discovered some great TV shows, saw the Hobbit in IMAX 3D, and started getting caught up on video games.

Thrilling Escape!

But on to more important things… Site updates. I have some of the fruits of my 3D Graphics class posted in the projects section. I don’t have the animation up yet, but I will be posting it as soon as I add the sound effects and music. You can see stills of my modeling process in my “Thrilling Escape” gallery.

I used a design similar to the Millenium Falcon, but made it a lot more streamlined with metal plating rather than the small details sticking out. My decision was partially based on modeling and render time. The ten second animation clips I did already took hours to complete, so the extra detail just wasn’t feasible. And I always thought the Falcon looked like you could just kick it and something would fall off somewhere.

I also had another shoot with Ashley to test out my new Canon Rebel T3i. You can find a couple of the photos in her album, here. I mostly took photos of her playing tennis so I could use them to apply for a freelance gig at the Steel Shop Tennis Club in St. Charles. Since I have wanted to take tennis photos for a while and plan to do more in the future, I put them in a new gallery. You can check them out here.

Now many of the people I know have been kind of expecting me to post commentary on the whole… “Disney buying Lucasfilm” deal. I honestly have no issue with it. Sure, Disney is snatching up intellectual property like it’s playing Monopoly, Entertainment Edition. But so far they’ve done a pretty good job of not interfering so much with the creative directions of those properties. The recent wave of Marvel cartoons aimed toward children was pretty much inevitable when The Avengers built so much hype. Fortunately, that more sensitive and child appropriate material didn’t consume the Marvel comics and movies.

Mickey and the gang join the Force

I think that if Disney can handle movies like The Avengers and Pirates of the Caribbean well, they should be able to help Lucasfilm do a good job with the new Star Wars movies. Many people think George Lucas will ultimately still have say over what goes in to the new movies, but honestly I believe that him selling the rights means that Disney may end up disappointing him. That may not be such a bad thing considering Han Solo’s response to Princess Leia confessing her love for him wasn’t something George liked, and it was one of the greatest lines of the movie.

So far the new trilogy has quite a bit of steam. Fans all over the world are dreaming up what new planets or characters we’ll get to see. Disney and Lucasfilm have already released that the story will continue to follow Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Princess Leia Organa in the events that followed Return of the Jedi. Now, many of us older fans that have dipped our toes into the Expanded Universe know that our heroes from the Original Trilogy get into quite a lot after the war against the Galactic Empire. At first it seemed like Lucasfilm would go with one of those stories as their next venture into the Star Wars universe. With the announcement of the movie being penned by Oscar-winning writer, Michael Arndt, Lucasfilm also announced that it would be an original story. Now while this could mess with story canon, it could also be the best route to take. Trying to recreate one of the stories from a Timothy Zahn or Kevin Anderson novel may stir up some distaste in fans that loved those books. I personally thought it would be absolutely amazing to see the Thrawn trilogy visualized in movies.

The facts that Michael Arndt is writing the first movie of the new trilogy and that he’s been working on the treatment for it for a couple of years already make me feel better about the original story idea. It may not turn out to be an Academy Award-winning movie, but it’ll be more Star Wars. I’m excited about more Star Wars, that’s for sure. Now I just gotta figure out a way to land a job at Lucasfilm…

Why You Should Go See Looper

Three words… Joseph. Gordon. Levitt. This man seems to be lighting up the big screen lately. All of his supporting roles in big movies paved the way for a lead role in a movie like Looper. JGL takes center stage as the looper, Joe. And I must say, he does a very good job of it. It was a little eerie to see his face altered to loo more like his older counterpart, Bruce Willis, but his expressions made it very believable.

Rian Johnson at SDCC 2012

Before I get into explaining the details of the movie and what I liked and disliked, I do have to say that even seeing this movie was the product of a first-time event for me. Peter Carlos, the station manager at LUTV, got me in on a conference call interview with the movie’s writer and director, Rian Johnson. Brittany Velasco and Steve Kornfeld, the hosts of my show Reel Talk, sat with me huddled around my phone on speaker mode as reporters from various universities and publications asked Rian questions about making the movie. It was a pretty great experience for us, Steve and Brittany will be discussing it and the movie on Reel Talk next week.

Okay so back to the story, a “looper” is basically a hitman for the mob. Thirty years into the future, time travel is possible. It is deemed illegal, but the mob has ways of using it still. It’s really hard to dispose of a body in the future, so the people they want gone are sent back in time to be killed and disposed of by a looper… so says Joe in a voice over monologue at the beginning of the film.

Joe, the looper

The first thing I have to point out is how futuristic this movie is. From the trailers, I couldn’t tell that the ‘present’ time was still thirty years from now. The best part is it’s believable future. The whole of society hasn’t fundamentally changed, but technology has advanced. Loopers use a gun called a blunderbuss, a reference to the old pirate guns. They’re made to be extremely effective within a 15 yard range, making it almost impossible for a looper to miss his target.

We’re led to believe that humanity has been forced to find alternative forms of fuel. There are some crude looking hover vehicles, but there are mostly a lot of modern cars made to look old, retrofitted with solar panels and electrical circuitry. Clothing styles have changed a bit. Jeff Daniels, who steals the spotlight every time he’s on screen, plays Abe, the future mob’s liaison who traveled back in time to start the loopers. His character makes fun of Joe for wearing a tie, as if they had gone out of fashion.

Jeff Daniels as Abe

The second big thing I noticed is the mechanics of the timelines. Now this time travel is only one way, like in the Terminator. One physical change to a looper immediately shows in his older self. There’s a pretty gruesome scene of that happening to someone. Memories from the older self start to change as well. Following that logic, it seems like any big change caused by the older self to the younger self’s life could make his existence disappear. But at the same time, my brain starts overheating when I think too much on the endless possibilities of creating a paradox… If you’re not trying to debunk the whole movie, it’s definitely enjoyable and the timeline logic makes sense.

Story wise, I think everything ties together rather nicely. The kid and his mom on the farm kind of came out of left field, since most of the movie took place in a city, but it ended up leading to some of the most impressive shots in the movie. There’s a periodic mention of humanity developing telekinetic abilities throughout most of the movie, but it’s not explored very much until the end. Unfortunately, while the human race could use the Force, most of them couldn’t do much more than levitate a coin. And the main character Joe didn’t use it so you end up not caring much about it until the movie is hitting its climax.

And speaking of that kid and his mom Sarah, the latter is played by Emily Blunt, the kid is super creepy so right away you know something’s up with him. In the first few shots of him, his face isn’t shown at all. While these characters seemed to be stitched into the later half of the story, Johnson did a good job of making them immediately relevant. There was a brief romance between Joe and Sarah, which winds up rather quickly. Sarah goes from threatening to blow Joe’s head off with a shotgun to her inviting him to the bedroom within a couple of days. But I guess if I lived on a farm with no one to keep me company but my kid, I’d jump on the first attractive woman that came my way. In probably less time.

I’m not sure if the intentions were for this movie to be so funny, but it was. Amidst the gruesome world of crime syndicates and time assassinations, most of the characters got at least one laugh from the audience. The weird dynamic between young Joe and old Joe is pretty great, with the cocky young Joe thinking he has everything planned out and the wiser old Joe knowing that his life was a mess for quite a while. It worked for the all too brief scene they had together in a diner.

Old Joe and Young Joe

One of the reporters in the conference call asked Rian how he went about pairing Bruce Willis and Joseph Gordon Levitt. He said he wrote the part with Joseph Gordon Levitt in mind. While he didn’t think of Bruce Willis specifically for the older version, he knew it had to be someone that stood out as an accomplished actor. Johnson then went on describing the “Bruce Willi-ness” he brought to the movie.

Overall, I think the movie was pretty good. Other than a few minor things I could pick out if I was being harsh, the movie was shot really well and the story kept me interested for the whole two hours. I really appreciate a good mix of science fiction, action, and comedy, and this movie definitely did the job.

The Dark Knight Rises Review

The Dark Knight definitely rose in the last installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. I had some mixed feelings going into this one. The characters Nolan had to tackle this time around were definitely a challenge. Both Bane and Catwoman were disastrously portrayed in their previous appearances on the big screen, so Nolan had a lot of slack to pick up.

THE TRIP TO THE THEATER:
Now before I get too far into my nerdgasm, I gotta mention a couple things about the experience. I saw the movie as part of a pre-release press screening at Ronnie’s 20 Wehrenberg in South County St. Louis. I’ve seen a few of these press screenings there (Red Tails, Project X, etc.) and it’s always been a great experience. The theater itself is wonderful; lively and well-maintained. All of the previous movies I’ve seen there were normal resolution movies. This show, however, was in IMAX… and it was awesome.

That being said, it also presented a problem. An hour and a half into the movie, the frame jumped violently as if the film jumped off the reel. A few seconds of sputtering and the theater was left in darkness. The entire audience erupted in frustration because of the part of the movie it stopped at too. If you’ve seen the trailers, you know Batman fights Bane in some kind of sewer junction underground. The movie stopped literally RIGHT BEFORE the Batman threw the first punch.

“I didn’t know there was an intermission!”
“I want my money back!”
“Do we have to act out the rest of the movie!?”
“Oh my God, I want to know what happens!!!”

These were just a few of the things I heard people yell out as the movie studdered to a halt. Most of us assumed it was just a minor hiccup and the movie would be back on shortly, but the host of our event came out as the lights turned on and told us that the IMAX projector had broken. A tech working on the problem said it would take a good two hours to fix.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to wait that long. Within the hour it took us to get lunch at a nearby Burger King, the crew had converted the theater to digital and loaded an encrypted hard drive with the movie on it. Thank God Warner Bros. gave us a key to that hard drive.

About as brutal as a beatdown can get.

MOVIE REVIEW:
Enough about the five-hour movie trip. The movie itself was simply amazing. Sure it had some faults, but I’d have to be really nit-picky to point them out. It did a great job of tying the whole trilogy together, bringing up the central theme of the first movie which was Gotham’s corruption. Even though Batman beat the Joker’s game in The Dark Knight, the truth that Batman and Gordon fought so hard to hide really did come back to bite them in the ass.

Eight years passed since the events of The Dark Knight and Rises starts out with Bruce Wayne being known as a recluse by everyone in Gotham. With his only love gone and the city no longer needing his protection, he let his body and mind deteriorate. Eight years was more than a believable time period for things to change as much as they had since the Joker wreaked havoc in the last go-around.

The movie of course had its flaws, but what movie doesn’t? They did a great job of giving shout outs to just about everything from the previous two movies, but no one mentioned the Joker. Cillian Murphy even comes back for a couple of short scenes (without the Scarecrow mask), so I was left confused as to why the most iconic Batman villain of all time didn’t even get a name drop. Maybe it was because of Heath Ledger’s passing, but I still thought it would have been nice to honor his last and probably greatest performance.

To prove Gotham’s corruption, Bane reveals the truth about Harvey Dent.

So before I get into my fanboy crush on Catwoman, I have to talk about Bane. Despite the fact that you could barely understand half of what he said, he was pretty terrifying. I would be too scared to ask him to clarify what he said if he was talking to me. Not to mention the fact that he had a kill count that rivalled the Joker. Tom Hardy had his work cut out for him, only being able to use his eyes to show any kind of emotion, but he did a great job of it. The performance was believable all the way through. His ferocity and tactical intelligence definitely paid his comic-book character justice. There was no reference to Venom, but I really don’t think he needed it. He was already more than a physical match for Batman due to various past events. Don’t worry, they’re explained in the movie. Bane was not as interesting to watch as the Joker, but he played his part very well.

Catwoman stole the show just about every time she was on screen. Anne Hathaway did a great job of being a bad ass master thief. Her constant quest for a “clean slate” definitely helped give her much more depth. I honestly thought she’d be in the game with some kind of vendetta or big payoff in the end, but all she wanted was a fresh start so she could escape her criminal record. She played the “good bad girl” role that I personally found myself rooting for her even when she was actively working against Batman. And needless to say, my dreams will be graced with images of her riding that Batpod for a while.

Now before the spoilers for all of you that are dying to see how this movie goes, I’m just going to say that it was definitely a great ending for Batman. The story is wrapped up very nicely and still leaves a few loose ends for a possible continuation. I’d say it is a serious competitor for best movie of the summer. I was dead sure it was going to be The Avengers, but I can safely say that we got a good Marvel vs. DC competition going down. I couldn’t even tell you which one I enjoyed more.

SPOILERS
There were a couple of really great twists in this movie. Most people assumed that Marion Cotillard would be playing Talia Al-Ghul, only to find her credited as Miranda Tate. Well, you can bet your ass that Nolan gave her a much bigger role than one of Bruce Wayne’s business partners. The movie does a great job of blind-siding you with it. If you haven’t followed the internet spoilers surrounding this movie, you won’t see it coming at all.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is freakin awesome as John Blake, but the real surprise builds along with his character. So many parallels between him and Bruce Wayne are brought up that by the end of the movie, when you find out that John Blake isn’t his real name… you’re just like “Shit just got real.” Then you see him discover the Batcave just before the credits… can you say spin-off?

I was really pleased with how Nolan managed to keep all the main protagonists alive in this one as well. I would have been devastated to see Gary Oldman or Morgan Freeman bite it. They held their own though, keeping their value as the movie went on. I think if either character had died, the bad guys would have won.

Liam Neeson gets a pretty cool cameo as well. Bruce Wayne hallucinates while in captivity, seeing his old mentor turned foe claiming to be immortal. He was referring to his legacy, of course… but it was awesome nonetheless.

The biggest twist was Bruce Wayne’s fate. By the end of the climax, you’re so certain that Bruce Wayne is intent on dying to save Gotham that it’s actually believable that he bites it when he hauls the nuclear bomb out into the ocean. But nope, Christopher Nolan has to give you an Inception-esque mindfuck at the end when Alfred sees Bruce and Selena in a restaurant in some other country.

Big Changes at Greendale

As some people know, Community is one of my favorite shows. I started watching it when I saw the “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” episode on Hulu. I immediately thought, “Chevy Chase playing D&D? I gotta see this.” Since then, I’ve seen every single episode in all three seasons. I fell in love with the characters and the conflicts caused by their personalities in these absolutely ridiculous settings.

Now I have to stop myself before I give you any meaningless details like who my favorite character/line/scene/episode is, because I could go on for a while about them. I really wanted to give my thoughts on the changes between Seasons 3 and 4…

So, we’ve got some huge story changes. I’d say these are much bigger than the changes between the past few seasons…

SPOILERS AHEAD

We’ve got Troy not only in AC repair school, but basically running it as the “truest repairman”. Britta moved in with Troy, Abed, and Annie. She took the Dreamatorium, which has been reduced to a person-sized cardboard box in Abed’s blanket room. Chang has been revealed to be the psychopathic wannabe dictator that the group knew he was. His outcast will make him much more unpredictable and dangerous. Shirley finally got her sandwich shop, and Pierce has a brother now.

We’ve also got a lot of questions to be answered by the 4th season. Are Britta and Troy living together in the Dreamatorium? Will Pierce end up burning down the sandwich shop? What evil plot is Dean Spreck of City College hatching? Will Abed and Evil Abed have an epic battle that destroys the school? What ridiculous costumes will Dean Pelton come up with next? Will Jeff find his father? We’ll have to wait until next season to find out…

END SPOILERS

Aside from the story, a huge change came behind the scenes. The show’s creator and producer, Dan Harmon, has been booted from helping out with next season. He still gets producer credit and payment, but Sony wants him to stop having any kind of creative control over the show’s direction… What?!?! He created the show! He’s the one that gave us these great lovable characters and the hilarious stories that come along with them. How could Sony think it’s a good idea to keep him from running the show?

This can’t be good…

The cast tweeted about it, most of them seeming pretty upset over the decision. Harmon said on his tumblr that he was pretty much blindsided by the decision, but doesn’t mind the opportunity to sit at home and play Prototype 2… which I would definitely try if I had played the first one.

Feel free to call me a conspiracy theorist, but I think that Sony’s play may be to end the show earlier than “Six seasons and a movie”. It may be why they moved the show to Fridays for next season… because as we all know, the Friday night lineup is where shows go to die.

Now Sony may have their reasons for it and there may be no changing it, but it does suck. I’ve watched some of the group panel discussions with the cast of the show and they always talk about how great it is to work with Harmon and how he’s most of the reason why the show is so successful. I’m not saying the show is gonna suck without Harmon, but it is pretty sucky that he got the boot. But who knows… maybe they’ll give him a spinoff. The Starburns Show?

The show could be about Starburns solving mysteries with Leonard.

Diary of a Brewery

Tucked away in a corner of Cottleville, MO is a relatively new little brewery known simply as Exit 6. The owner, Jeff Britton, is a firm believer of “No Compromise Brewing” which he says is his whole bar’s philosophy. The phrase “No Crap on Tap” can be seen all over the bar, meaning that Jeff will not serve any kind of major brew (like Budweiser or Miller).

In this short video, he gives us an overview of what led him to starting this brewery and what he hopes to accomplish with it. Working over a hundred hours a week seems like nothing to Jeff because he absolutely loves what he does and the people he gets to enjoy it with. All of his hard work, one of his special brews, and even the bar’s name are inspired by his daughter, Ryane.

“I keep telling myself, if I put in the blood, the sweat, and the tears and make this place successful, then she’ll have something when she’s old enough… I hope to one day give her this business and let her run it.” Britton said.

Living On Nature

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Just about everyone makes a living trying to fit into society. Very few choose to make a life fitting into nature. Sydney Crane, the father of a friend of mine, owns a farm in Kingdom City, Missouri. I get the privilege of going to visit with my friend once or twice a year, and this farm is absolutely beautiful. There is so much land that you could easily get lost amongst the wooded areas and open fields. The whole area is so full of life, it’s impossible to go a day without seeing a deer, turkey, coyote, fish, or whatever animal. I absolutely love to visit this location, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to share its beauty.

It’s funny… So many people that live in Missouri (myself included) complain about the state. Every time I get a view at the fairer sections of the state, I shut my mouth and take in the sights. If you’d like to visit some of the more beautiful areas of Missouri, you can check out the Missouri Department of Conservation.