CinemaStudios Intro[Expanded]

I decided to post this here since this blog is already dead and I didn't feel it was necessary to fill a single Facebook page with a long tirade. I don't use FB much so the reason my self-description was so scamp was because I don't want to be on. But I don't want to be chided for not doing what I'm supposed to do so:

I'm moderately skilled in video editing for the past 4 years and I only started getting better two years ago. I had pretty shoddy equipment (e.g. poor camera with poor mic) so that hindered me until I could afford an HD camera. As an editor, my biggest hurdle of all are deadlines.

At a point, I fell into the craze of reviewing movies/video games, which you can find on my youtube page (I'm not particularly happy with the final products). I grew out of that phase but I believe the actual video making process is the most joy I get out of it all so I'm never too far from making another video game review.

My more serious projects:

1. I was working on a short independent film/black comedy (a la Tarantino style) which had troubles getting off the ground because of some "drama on the set".
   
2. A sketch comedy show was in the works but as the only remaining actor, that didn't go anywhere.
   
3. There is a horror film I've worked on since the end of high school and budget-wise, it's not going so great.
   
4. My latest work is a short 2 minute film about my dogs, which is in essence a narration-less documentary. It's not done yet but it makes me happy working on it.
   

I've done camera work, script writing, sound editing, acting and video editing so I'm moderately experienced in this sort of thing.

I took the course because I want to delve further into film making and use what I already have. I've considered a career in this before and I still haven't ruled it out entirely.

I don't consider myself a film snob but I've been described as one. Mostly because I'm very blunt about the movies I watch. With that said:


I truly disliked the pacing of Salesman. It wasn't the fact that the film was relatively old (black and white films can be great) and I wouldn't have minded if there was some consistency or coherence to what was going on but I honestly could not grasp the point of the film. The message that the film was TRYING to get across was that the salesman's life is one full of struggles, but what the film ended up conveying was that they are the embodiment of mundane, awkward silence. The editing was just unfocused.What could've easily been a condensed 20 minute film about the salesmans' hardships ended up being a long 90 minute mumbling of unintelligible dialogue and constant silence.

Update [02-02-2010]

It was a sad day when I learned that this blog would be going down foreve- Yeah, fuck it. I'm not gonna be all sentimental since I heard from the Midnighter like a week ago about the change. Hope the new site's up soonish and hope you enjoy it. Akira out.

Final Fantasy VII: On a Way To a Smile Denzel [Review?]

So, as I was randomly going through my list of anime to watch, I noticed that I had accidentally downloaded a Blu-ray special that apparently came out on the FF7 Advent Children Blu-ray disc. Let me just start off by saying that this special, or OVA or whatever you want to call it, can go suck a sperm flavored popsicle because it is bad. Very bad to be frank. Why you might ask? Let me say it in as few words as possible. NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT DENZEL. Seriously, he never even existed until they made Advent Children and that movie wasn't that great either. It was basically about 40 minutes of fighting and 50 minutes of lame talk with some chase scenes included because those are always fun to watch. Anyhow, back to this shit special. It sucks.

Denzel is some little cunt who has the geostigma disease and is picked up by Cloud randomly while visiting Aeris' church. It's shown in Advent Children, but in the special it's explained why he's there in the first place. I hate Denzel... I mean, he has no personality. It's like he can be replaced with a diseased brick and you'd get pretty much the same thing. This whole thing is centered around him wanting to enter some kind of WRO which isn't explained anywhere in the FF7 series. So the recruit makes him tell his life story in which I really don't give a fuck either. His parents die. His 'protector' dies. He meets some lady. She dies. He meets some other dude who saves him. That guy dies. He joins some group of kids. They all mysteriously disappear. He meets Cloud and basically ends this whole recollection. Thankfully...

The main problem I have with this piece of shit is the fact that they try to throw in new people that no one really gives a fuck about. Like:

and

or maybe even

WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE AND WHY SHOULD I GIVE A SHIT IF THEY DIE?! Thankfully they all do die and we never hear from them again...except for the first guy... He's the recruit.

I will admit though, some parts of this pile of ass made me laugh. Like this part:

and

Kid... seriously? Poor people eat rats? Nice one.

There's not much else to say about this. I think I already pointed out its major failures. Oh wait, I forgot the most important pic!

Cloud's hairdo always did look weird with its one big spike in the middle, but this looks ridiculous. It looks like he went super-saiyan...

Public Enemies [2009] Review

I've journeyed across the country from one end to the other on one of the most uneventful six hour rides ever experienced in my life. Perhaps it was the painstaking task of reading an assigned text whose context is so fallible that you're wondering whether you're either too stupid to understand the words or too logical to actually suspend your reasoning skills to side with the writer for all the nonfactual bullshit. Or perhaps it was that the complimentary television service was watered down with the types of shows I deliberately try in vain to keep off my radar that vexed me into madness [except House--that man is the shitz].

No. I'll place all the blame on a complimentary movie that was featured on the flight. Considering that I am a typical moviegoer and your average run-of-the-mill critic, when you give me a list of movies that have already gotten onto DVD or Blu-Ray, chances are I've already wasted two to three hours on each movie on whatever list you give me. Passing up some gems like Paranormal Activity and Funny People, I suppose there was a part of me that just wanted to see something that I have not seen yet. So passing up on some obscure Japanese movie that is probably botched by the Engrish translations, a movie just barely managed to catch my attention. I don't know how it didn't.

Public Enemies. It's a story of John Dilinger and the chronicles of his escapades across middle America, robbin' banks and makin' an ass out of the law enforcement. And wouldn't you know it but the notorious Dilinger is played by Johnny Depp, a reputable name in the movie business and standing oppositie him, fresh off his hit roles as the Dark Knight and John Connor [Ugh...I guess], was Christian Bale as the archetypical antagonist/good-guy-you-don't-want-to-win.

So it's Sparrow vs. Batman. Todd vs. Bateman. Wonka vs. Connor.

No. It's nothing like that. It's not even Roe vs. Wade territory. It's ketchup vs. mustard. Pourage vs. Cereal. Dull. dull. dull.

You know, I had high standards for this movie given that the top built actors were two of the most recognizable men in Hollywood. I felt bad. I felt like there was a great injustice to watching this dullfest. If it were just me, I would've had gotten to a certain point and thought that the movie had not lived up to my expectations and that Michael Mann has no grasp on how to make a flick that doesn't involve the occasional twenty second shot of a guy staring into an empty space to accentuate the actor's expression. I get it. He's mad someone shot his friend. Cut away to the next shot. I leave to go to the lavatory down the aisle, come back and Depp is still staring blankly into the camera with the same damn expression he had before I got up.

So I felt terrible but this wouldn't have been such an immense wad of suck if I were alone in watching this and decided to just rip the headphones out and just brace the tranquil sounds of the plane engine roaring and my ears collapsing to the air pressure. What made the whole ordeal worse was that before the movie, I suckered someone else to watch it with me to make the film that much more enjoyable to be able to share in the experience.

This was the cognitive process of the movie:
"Do you find this movie interesting?"
"Eh...kinda...I wanna know what happens."
"They're just talking. And it's not good dialogue."
"Shh! I finally hear the action! I hear gunshots!"
"I hear them too. Turn the screen back on!"
"I didn't turn the screen off!"
"Then up the brightness. I can't see shit!"
"This is the brightest it can go!"
"Wait, if you squint hard enough, you can see people with guns."
"This must be the exciting part. Look, the camera is on Depp. Now it's on Bale. Now Depp. Now Bale."
"Look, Depp got captured. This is like the fourth time but he's gonna die now for sure, I bet."
"No. He escaped."
"Man, they keep letting this guy escape. I bet they're holding back a really climactic ending that'll make it all so clear why Depp had to escape all those times."
"No. Some cop just shot him."
"..."
"That movie was 2 hours and 10 minutes"
"Bull shit. That movie was three hours."

The entire time I was simply questioning if this movie was even slightly interesting. The slightest nod--even of uncertainty--made me hesitate from turning the channel.

Seriously though: It's a god awful movie. I missed out on this review half a year ago when it first came out because I didn't see it. NOW I KNOW WHY. WHY DIDNT I CONTINUE TO LISTEN TO MY BRAIN?

Public Enemies. Top 5 of worst movies of 2009. Say what you like about New Moon, at least I can laugh my fucking ass off in that movie. "What type of vampire can walk in broad daylight and glow?" A shitty movie like that you can just rip to shreds and actually appreciate the drab mess that it is. Public Enemies was an attempt at something GOOD and it BLOWS. Good luck doing your rifftrax for this piece of shit. You'd have an easier time conjuring jokes at the children's hospital for the terminally ill.

Winter 2009/2010 Impressions Part 2

I'm back after watching some new shows and boy some are hit and miss. Here's the scoop.

Cobra the Animation

Goddamnit, I got about 2 minutes into this when I realized what I was watching. 007 James Bond the anime. Sure, the main character's name isn't James Bond, but dear Christ, the Opening song to this anime is so Bond-esque it's not even funny. It's pathetic. And to top it all off the main characters name is Cobra. Why would you name your kid Cobra for God's sake. Main this show really pissed me off. I'll give you the details. Basically we start off with the bad guys chasing some chick who has a key that they want. What does the key do? Fuck it, who cares. So then after about 2 or 3 minutes we find our main character driving what I assume is supposed to be a cool car, but I digress. Shit happens and no one knows what brakes are in this show so the two cars collide in a tunnel. Bad guys come and kill the driver of the tank-like car. The girls lives somehow. Cobra takes off his left arm, I shit you not, and shoots a light, which I presume to be a laser bullet or something, killing one of the flying death machines. Note that the bullets that flying machines were shooting him, completely missed. yeah, he's so good at dodging he doesn't even need to move. So the cops come and they're taken to the hospital.

I eat cereal all the time too, but when I get a broken bone I dont suddenly 'get better'

Cobra has several damaged body parts but has the body of Superman because he can recover at the speed of...a Gecko? The nurse calls him a gecko... Whatever. The bad guys come back again, but Cobra uses his gun arm to make 'em go away. In typical Bond style, the bad guy retreats laughing. It's like, "I LOST! MUWAHAHAH! I WILL GET MY REVENGE! KUKUKUKU!" I never got that. They're running away, but laughing maniacally. It makes no sense. Then we see a short cutscene of Cobra getting drunk and Secret, the girl, get undressed out of a dress. I swear, animators need to stop fapping off to their own work. There are so many goddamn shows that feature at least one titty scene in every episode. The episode ends after they get to their destination and some hooded fellows start appearing around them. I guess this is supposed to be a dramatic scene, but it's somewhat undermined by the preview showing that they're the good guys just coming to retrieve the Key of Shiva. Thanks for the tip animators, I would've never wanted to wait a WHOLE WEEK before knowing that the hooded guys were good. I'm a decent type of guy and if the first episode doesn't impress me, I'll give it an extra 2 episodes to make up my mind. If it doesn't shock and amaze me by then, it'll be in long list of dropped anime.

Yeah, even Bond's one liners weren't this lame...

Durarara

I have no idea why they named it this, but seriously when I saw the name I almost face-desked so hard that it almost broke in half. As per my motto, I give every anime a shot even if it has the worst names in the world. I was pleasantly surprised with this one. It was fairly boring for the first 5 minutes as we meet the main character, I think, and his best friend. All they do is walk around the city talking retardedness. Eventually we sort of switch to a crime in progress when we see a girl get kidnapped. That's when the show starts to pick up for me because in my head I said, Lady, NEVER GO WITH STRANGERS! I mean seriously. It's nighttime and you're an underage girl. Why would you go with some dude you've never met. Anyhow, she gets kidnapped and transported to some parking lot. The bad guys are waiting for the pickup when suddenly some....thing (?) appears out of nowhere on a motorcycle.

Say what...?

Possibly the most awesome thing I've seen in the last month happens next in that one of the bad guys decides to attack the being to which he is greeted with the front tire of the bike. He got faceplanted with the tire of the bike. How much more awesome could that be. Oh, I know. Throw the guy into a stone column with the wheel still in his face. I have no idea how the bike stayed in that position for a while because I'd expect it to fall forward and snap the guy in half. Whatever. So the cohorts shit their pants and start panicking to which the 2nd guy goes down. The third drives away with the Masked person in hot pursuit. The 3rd guy tries to take him down by stopping suddenly making the bike go out of control and the helmet to fall off our hero. Presuming it's dead, the guy gets out of the car with a knife. The thing GETS UP WITH NO HEAD! FUCKING AWESOME! AND THEN IT PULLS OUT A SCYTHE FROM WITHIN ITSELF AND KILLS THE GUY. EVEN MOAR AWESOME! I'm looking forward to the next couple of episodes to cement my interest in this show.

Get faceplanted with a motorcycle bitch!

Chu-bra

I'm not really sure what to say about this one. It's one of those lolita shows that takes place with a female cast set in the first year of junior high school...I think... Half the time I can't tell if they're 16 or 6. Especially when you have one chick who's flat as a board and the other as busty as a 21 year old. All I know is, it made me laugh at certain points. There were some weird parts like, a junior high girl being an "underwear monitor" or the fact that she's deeply in love with them. I have no idea why, nor is it explained further. Only that she loves bras and panties. It's one of those shows you hate to love because it's about girls... Doing nothing but talking. It's sort of like Naisho no Tsubomi except a lot longer.

Can I get her number please?

The funnier thing about this anime is that the people around the main characters all think the main character is a prostitute. Lolz ensue. By the end of the episode they see her groping the busty girl's breasts and start spreading rumors that she's a lesbian. More lolz ensue. I will definitely keep my eye on this one. The only thing that saddens me is that the subs for this show are pathetically bad.

I'm sorry, but could you repeat that?

Omamori Himari

NEKOMIMI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Look, I like cats, ok? When I see catgirls in anime, that's already a plus. When I see swords that's a mega plus. When I see perverted catgirls who can swing swords and beat the living crap out of monsters, I'm already almost at my limit before going crazy. So yeah, the story starts off with our main character. He's some regular dude, but is of Monster slayer blood, so all the mosters want him dead. Except for our catgirl friend who swore an oath to never betray the family. The ironic thing about all this is that our main character is allergic to cats. Hilarity ensues. What I don't understand though is that he only gets the allergic reaction when she pokes out her cat ears and tail. Other times he's completely fine.

Ironic, aint it...

We also have his childhood friend character who only pisses me off because it's blatantly obvious she's in love with him and he doesn't know. Yes, it pisses me off when I see that 90% of anime have a girl who's infatuated with the guy, but doesn't say anything but blush all the time. So yeah, definitely worth a watch. Can't wait for the next episodes.

HIIIIIIIIIIIII! DONT EAT ME!!!!!!!

Kaitou Reinya

This one gets a short mention because the episodes are only 3 minutes long, but I did have a couple of laughs at this one. Basically we have some catgirl thing...I think? She's a thief who steals anything gold related. The cops are too stupid to protect anything even when she gives forewarning. This reminds me of Lupin. Anyhow, she has this mouse which gets tortured anytime he says something stupid. She goes so far as to stick him into a microwave and then blend him into fine powder. I didn't think mice could turn into powder. I was expecting something more like a smoothie of blood and meat, but I guess logic doesn't work in anime. The animation is also what drew my attention. It's not your typical japanese type of animation. It reminds me more of the shit America makes. Sort of like comic animation instead of manga like. Feels weird comparing western animation with eastern, but whatever.

It's the new drug. Powdered mice.

More first impressions yet to come since not all of the shows have either aired yet or been subbed. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Akira out.

Back to the Future [Games]

Oh boy. Wait till you guys hear the commentary on this. It's a doozy. The rendering time for this video was ludicrous. And for some bizarre reason--though not completely irrational--the video is 105% its original speed. That tiny speed increase made everything seem a lot more clunky and poorly paced. Then again, I'm making excuses for myself but after ten days of work on this, there's nothing less comforting than seeing your hard work get botched.

But I digress. The video's currently on Youtube but I didn't intend to upload to them at first. As you can guess, I have yet another problem with their half assed service. I had to re-render the videos to another format--a format which Youtube stated they cannot support. It worked. The ones they claimed would work didn't.

Winter 2009/2010 Impressions

First impressions of the Winter 2009/2010 season were not good. I saw the lineup and thought to myself, oh fuck this season is gonna suck so badly. Except for a few shows I was looking forward to, I believe this season will suck pretty bad. Although I'm not one to be prejudiced before I actually see the show. Even if the shows do suck, it'll give me material to rant about. I'm all for being surprised and finding some new gems in the ruts.

Sora no Woto

If you don't think this is similar to K-ON, you must be blind from being too retarded. Now, lemme back up a bit. Earlier on in the year a show named K-ON came out. Up until about the halfway point it was about 4 girls eating cakes, drinking tea, and playing rock music. Then, for the next half it was about 5 girls eating cakes, drinking tea, and playing rock music. I am not shitting you. I'm definitely gonna do a review on that show sometime in the future because it's a fairly controversial one. It was you either loved it or hated it. Back to Sora no Woto... Yeah, its basically the same thing as stated above without the eating cakes, drinking tea, and playing rock music. Don't get what I mean? Well, after the first episode I can only say that the art is exactly the same, the characters can be compared to each other very closely, and it's about music. Only in this show, the music is in the military. When the hell did the army make a division solely devoted to playing the trumpet.

Yeah, we all join the ARMY to learn to play music.
I never knew they devoted a platoon to trumpet playing.

Ookami Kakushi

WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!? While watching this episode I was extremely confused for a number of reasons. The main one being, WHY THE HELL IS EVERYONE SO NICE TO THE MAIN MALE PROTAGONIST?! The main character being Keiichi- I mean, Hiroshi. They're too similar to tell the difference. Seriously though, transfer students are not welcomed by every single person in the class and become GREAT friends after only a couple of days. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!? Another WTF moment I had was even earlier than that when the main female protagonist, Isuzu, came out of nowhere and started hugging Hiroshi. Seriously, she just saw him once and started grabbing him as if they were childhood friends or something. This does not happen in real life. Im sorry. Sure it's an anime, but fuck, I don't want to see random crap like this happen. Now another problem I had right off the bat with this show in general is that it's a rehash of one of mt favorites, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. This might be because it's from the same writer, but the characters are too similar.

Hiroshi is practically a clone of Keiichi minus the perverted nature. Isuzu is too closely related to Mion in that they're both extremely tomboyish. Although Isuzu is much more open about her love for Hiroshi, while Mion is extremely secretive of her love for Keiichi. Kaname is a re-tread of Rena. Both of them being outsiders that moved to the city some time before the main character, Hiroshi or Keiichi, move there at the beginning of the anime. Now, Nemuru is a wildcard at the moment because she didn't have many scenes in episode 1, but I believe she will turn out to be a Rika copy. Rika had her inner self that was mature way past her body, Frederika. I'm gonna assume right from the beginning that those 2 are closely linked.

Yeah, this joke has been done before but,
"OH NO! STAIRS! A cripple's one weakness!"

Hanamaru Youchien

I was fairly surprised by this right from the beginning when watching it. I didn't really give it a chance when I was looking at the local listing of shows to be aired. I'm one of those judge a book by its cover but at least give it one episode to impress and that episode did it for me. It gave me a lot of nostalgic factor like when I was watching Kodomo no Jikan. Just without the perverted girls that are constantly harassing the teacher. Although there is a part where the main little girl says, "I want to be your bride." and the mother who's standing there says as well, "I'll do whatever in my power to get him to marry you." To be honest, I'd shit my pants if a 4 year old girl came up to me and said she wanted to marry me. Especially since earlier in the episode he came up to her and she said, "Are you coming onto me?" in an excited tone of voice. At that point in time, I was putting an oreo into my mouth after dunking it in my exquisite glass of milk and proceeded to almost choke on it, since it was totally unexpected and completely random.

Quickly going back to Kodomo no Jikan, they both had a scene in which the main girl fell from a tree only into the arms of said male teacher, in which they suddenly fall in love with the teacher. What the fuck? If I knew it was that easy to impress girls, Id always be looking up to see if I saw any falling girls. I hope this show lives up to my expectations in the future.

Er....Seriously...A 4 year old proposed to me...*suicide*

Dance in the Vampire Bund

Well, this wasn't what I was really expecting in episode 1 mainly for one reason. The manga didn't start off this way. Especially in this retarded manner. The whole interview thing was a waste of an episode. It only established the fact that vampires exist which the manga did simply. They just came out on the news and said WE EXIST and paid off the entire Japanese debt in order to build their own country and stuff. Who the hell knows why they would come out in the open after such a long time in the shadows. It's later explained in the manga that the Princess decided that they'd build a city where vampires could come out in the open, but that's "to be found out" in the anime since it only started airing now. Getting back onto the episode, it's basically a true/false show on the existence of vampires. The first half of it is pretty boring as they only talk and crack some really lame jokes. Like this one chick thinks that vampires aren't real because she's anemic. OH HAR HAR HAR, I GET IT! VAMPIRES WOULDN'T LIKE HER BECAUSE SHE HAS LITTLE BLOOD! OH HAHAHA... Yeah, it doesn't get any better than that last one.

What I will say that was awesome was the vampire self-destructing in obedience to the Princess. He stabbed himself with his own arm while screaming like a lil bitch. SO AWESOME! We're also /sort of/ introduced to one of the main characters, but he's only shown for like 30 seconds and by the episode's standard, deemed extremely unimportant. The only reason I know who he is, is because I read the manga before this show aired. This is definitely a must watch for 2 reasons. Naked lolis, which I'm not really expecting since its anime and most anime is so censored up the ass that you cant see any skin behind walls of sunshine or fog or whatever else they can think up. The other reason being this is one of the few action shows that will come on. Especially considering the current trend of new anime to show a bunch of girls doing nothing.

Yes Hime-sama! *commits seppuku*

Ladies vs Butlers

Dear Christ almighty this is a weird one. In the first 30 seconds you have some random dude breathing heavily as if he just ran 30 miles on top of a girl with the longest hair possible. It's also in the most awkward shape of a drill. HOW THE FUCK!? How in the hell could she get her hair into that position. It makes no sense. I mean, I've seen hair drills before, but this one takes the cake. Continuing on though, there are a LOT of BBW in this show. Actually, this entire show is either BBW or DFC, for the nubs BBW = Big Breasted Woman and DFC = Delicious Flat Chest. So, from what I gather about the school in the first episode is that it's a school for maids/butlers to learn to serve their masters, who also go to the school. Makes no sense to me, but we'll roll with it. So basically our main male protag is a transfer student. He comes to school for the first day and makes a big mess of anyone he comes into contact with. I mean seriously, the girls were fainting just by looking at him. He'd run past them and they'd faint... *facepalm*

So eventually after running throughout practcally the entire school, he finally ends up with the girl that is assigned to show him the ropes. Apparently they knew each other in grammar school and what I'm going to say next sounds weird in my head, but was about as weird when I actually read it on screen. She tells the entire group of girls chasing our protag that in grammar school he wanted to group up and become a cute bride. I shit you not. I'll even provide pics to prove it. When I saw that I was unsure if I should cry or laugh because it was just so weird...What I can say though is, this show is pretty uncensored, which is surprising. Near the end of the episode you have literally 20-30 seconds of naked girls taking showers. They're screenshots, but still nipples are shown. A rarity in anime. I'll definitely continue on this show hoping that it wont fail my expectations in being funny as hell.

I hope I can find some gold in those holes...

That's all the time I have for now. Next week I'll have more Winter season impressions. Enjoy...whatever holidays are coming up sooner or later... I need to think up a catch phrase to end reviews with... *Leaves thinking pensively*