Link Dump

No news to report today, I’m puttering away at a few writing projects and starting to edit the new Spoiler Alert video.

I will link to this AV Club article from yesterday, because it’s on the subject of spoilers and it takes a very interesting position.  I don’t want to ruin the ending for you, though, so read it and we’ll talk about it later.

Actually, I’m very happy with the AV Club’s summer TV Review schedule.  As a TV snob and someone who has lots of downtime at work, I’m glad they’re writing about some of my favorite shows: Alias, Six Feet Under, Arrested Development and Cowboy Bebop, as well as their ongoing series on shows like The Sopranos, Seinfeld, The Simpsons and Star Trek:  The Next Generation.  Add to that my faithful following of their coverage of Treme, Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad and True Blood, and I’ve got my summer reading cut out for me.

Now if only I could pick up a goddamned book I’d be set.

-Carl

Update:  Check this out, the Gregory Brothers did a new video.

They Shoot Actors, Don’t They?

Filming day today!  Filming what, you say?  Well, let me tell you a little story:

In rehearsal for Misprint, I got to talking to my good friend Erin about a little movie bomb called Burlesque.  After being surprised that I hadn’t seen it, Erin remarked that it was just the kind of super campy, so-bad-it’s-good glitter fest that I would love.  “But Erin”, I said, “I already have a movie to fill that place in my heart.  Showgirls!”

And only moments after I finished that sentence, I knew what had to be done.

Stay tuned for Annex’d Presents Spoiler Alert!  Burlesque

Here’s a primer:

-Carl

A computer can not be killed. It was murdered.

I have returned from yet another visit to my hometown, which I now refer to as the ‘Fax Machine.

The only notable thing I did there was murder my computer. It died in a blaze of glory : a spill on the keyboard followed by 9 hours of building Winterfell in Minecraft.

Not having a computer shot more than one video project in the foot, but I’ll get some of them done next time I visit!

As for Carl’s exciting summer plans…. I’m excited, aren’t you excited?

- Kev

Are You Ready For The Summer?

I sure am.  For those of you who haven’t been living in Toronto the Beautiful for the last month, it’s basically been raining here for, oh, three straight weeks?  Finally, FINALLY the weather seems to have turned, so in celebration I’m taking to the Annex’d Blog to pledge to the internet just how I’m going to seize this summer by the balls.

My non-Annex’d goals for the summer:

• Write.  Every morning, before work.  Guess when I wrote this post?  That’s right, 8 AM YESTERDAY (oooh!)
• The Gym, baby.  4-5 times a week.
• Get outside – Cooper and I already have plans to hit the beach basically every weekend.  Or, really, I have plans to use Cooper’s house whether he wants me to or not.
• Go Back to Edmonton – briefly in July, then for a while in August.  No real goal here, except to see my friends and actually spend some actual time in that city.  Oh, and to beat Anna at all board games.
• The fruits of my writing are going to include two pilots and two plays.  I won’t promise they’ll be done, but I will promise several drafts of each…

And my Annex’d Goals for this summer, or, What Annex’d You Will Have By September:

• Another Spoiler Alert!,
• 4 Lip Dub Music Video Things,
• At least one other short, and
• an Annex’d one-act – working title:  Annex’d Live (get it?)

Dare I say…that it’s going to be a fun summer?

-Carl

Annex’d Shorts : Grindr’d

Kevin and Carl return in an Annex’d short involving romance, the gay community, and the future of information technology. All products placed were Apple products. Therefore we deserve free iPhone 5s.

A Teaser.

Read this.

And this.

And watch this.

And this.

And this, for good measure.

And then stay tuned on Tuesday.

There’ll be a new Annex’d short.

-Carl

Merry Christmas Everyone!

It’s a good thing that you can just flat out say Merry Christmas on the 25th. The jews really blew their load early with Hanukkah this year anyway, so we could avoid that “seasons greetings” and “happy holidays” stuff.

Also, HOLY SHIT CHRISTMAS!

Did you get good stuff? I got good stuff. There were no major gifts like cars, computers, or pet monkeys, but I got everything that I had my eye on recently. I got books and DVDs and chocolate and some digital downloads that I downloaded digitally. Lightning fast review of the first 15 minutes of the Back to the Future game from Telltale Games : “Holy shit the kid doing the Marty McFly impression totally nails Michael J. Fox’s voice”.

As for our little Annex’d Christmas gift, it’s having encoding issues. Every time I go to render or convert the video, it ends up with no sound. Believe me, this video makes even less sense with no sound. This is after my discovery that I didn’t have a tripod here with me in Halifax. I had to buy a super cheapy one just to use while I’m here. I’m on this one though, and all our Christmas traditions are over, so the video will be up before Carl’s post. It’s fucking 40 seconds long, this shouldn’t be as much of an issue as it is.

I hope to have another video filmed and hopefully published by the time I return. I’ve learned my lesson not to hype them so early, I’ll ambush you with them instead.

Anyway, Merry Christmas!!

- Kev

Holiday Plans

Merry Christmas!

My next two blog posts will be from sunny Edmonton (and maybe also Banff), where I will tell you about all the sweet things I’m doing and presents I’m getting but also skiing.  Maybe I’ll also tell you about how great True Grit is.  It’s great!

But until then, specifically until Kevin posts on the 25th, Merry Christmas!

Carl

It’s a re-battle!

Okay, OBVIOUSLY Black Swan is better written than Tron Legacy, Carl. All I was saying is that within the world of the super duper 3D blockbuster light cycle extravaganza, Tron did a good (but not great) job. For the type of movie that it is, it works. Black Swan is not a reasonable point of comparison, even in sarcastic film snob speak. You know what is a good point of comparison? The original Tron, which it is about on par with.

I would hesitate to call Tron Legacy “plotty”, at least under my usage of the word plot. I called it busy, which it is, since it’s a movie that is rather heavy on action sequences. “Plotty” seems to imply something that is overly plotted and intricate to the point where the story loses steam. If you asked me to name a movie that was plotty, I would probably say something like Inception. (Note: once again, Inception is a better film and plotty is not always a bad thing).

Tron, if anything, has too little going on plot wise for the characters to interact with. I mean, it’s pretty much just an extended chase scene, as some critics have noted. With the one small exception of the explanation about the ISOs, which are entirely extraneous to the film, I would not call Tron overplotted. How can you call it plotty when it’s missing a MAJOR plot explanation in the Rinzler/Tron transformation that comes about at a rather pivotal moment in the film?

This might just be a semantics issue.

For those of you who aren’t Carl who are reading this, Black Swan is excellent. If you haven’t seen it yet, do so. It’s probably jumped to my favorite Aronofsky movie and I’m sure it’ll be the contender for a huge amount of awards. And yeah, it’s better than Tron Legacy, though it does have shittier effects

I’m not actually sure Carl and I disagree on this movie. I think this is just a question of expectations and putting our reactions in context. Whoa, Tron Legacy was written by two of the LOST writers (Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis). It’s entirely weird to have me on the less negative side of this equation.

As one last bit of Tron Legacy related business, it turns out I’ve met the dude who plays CLU (pre Jeff Bridges digital fanciness). His name is John Reardon, and he’s always at this Christmas party we go to every year. I feel like I know the dude in the Darth Vader suit or something… it’s cool, but it’s insignificantly cool. But it’s cool!

Also, I’m writing this post from Halifax. Yaaaay.

- Kev

On the other hand…

…I feel ambivalent about TRON Legacy.  Obviously the production values were through the roof.  The effects were outstanding, the music was a blast, and the actors were either pretty or hitting their roles right on the nose (Michael Sheen was a hoot, Jeff Bridges was The Dude).  Maybe that justifies the $17 movie ticket.  Maybe, if I want to see something pretty, that’s how much I need to be prepared to pay.

Because TRON’s only redeeming factor is its cool beauty.  The screenplay was an abhorrent, plotty mess that reeked of being cooked up in a boardroom by people who were misguided in their efforts to improve on the unrealized promise of the original movie.  The characters were broad, fuzzy types who moved from one action set piece to another with barely any inkling of development or causality in their actions.  TRON reaffirms my suspicion that there are no good screenwriters in Hollywood.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch Black Swan.

-Carl