Some more cellphone pics... more elegant and simple this time through.


The last one is my favorite. :)

I got a newish cellphone a couple of days back and it has a camera. I always liked the idea of being able to take random pictures while I'm off on my day. You can come across many interesting things on a walk, or in a subway station.
The quality of the phone's pictures suck, of course, but at least they're at a high resolution (640x480). I can make them look unique by using photoshop and a couple of basic tricks. While I'm not too great with photoshop as I use it to do little things here and there with pictures, I've been able to make my phone's pictures look quite interesting. See what you can do with a few minutes of photoshop editing.

Here are the pictures as they were when I took them:


Here are the finished ones:


See what you can do with so little?

Thanks to Pineapple Express, we have an earthly aroma in our theatre every night at seven.

I saw a pre-screening of Pineapple Express last night, and I liked it. The story's premise is very reminiscent of The Big Lebowski, but not much else. The movie is a bunch of fun and the characters are great. I've heard some bad things a month back about this movie, such as there being too much action and too little character development, but I wouldn't agree. And, as many of you guys are likely aware, I'm very critical of these sorts of things in stories.

At first, during the first scene where Rogan and Franco are together, the movie feels very concentrated on pot and Franco feels like an ordinary typical drug dealer. I felt like the movie was going to be dry, but things change as soon as the inciting incident hits - it's pure fun form there on. You see the contrast between the ordinary rutty life of Franco and Rogan, and you learn more about them as the movie goes along. The emphasis changes from pot to friendship very early on in the movie.

The action scenes were very fitting and filled with humour. The characters were fantastic - the Rogan-Franco friendship felt very natural and original and, to those who are skeptical, was nothing like anything in Lebowski. The dynamic between Saul (James Franco) and Dale (Seth Rogan) was great and the banter between them was as well. The third player in the friendship, Red (Danny McBride), was very amusing and brought something different to the screen, even though he isn't with Rogan and Franco for the majority of the movie. What's funny is that the poster kind of spoils whether we think he dies or not during some scenes, as we see him in a neck brace while holding a shotgun, but it didn't really deter from the experience.

I'm not even a pothead and I enjoyed the movie, so you can take those skeptical thoughts of the movie to the dumpster as well. It's a movie the whole family can enjoy! As long as everyone in your family is at least 18 or older.

It was a good movie and, while slightly darker than other Apatow movies, was still a really fun ride.

There aren't many things that do this, but THIS really pisses in my soup.

Meaning it pisses me off.
Doing a live-action movie of this show is just... urgh. But hey, it's not like Hollywood hasn't already done many equally shitty things within the past five years.

I'm not angry because I'm afraid they won't do the show justice, I'm angry because of the state of the film industry's creative division (as much of a back seat is has taken, it's still the most prominent). Of course, this isn't news, but they always find a way to make it feel like they've taken it to another level.

"Fuck original ideas. Let's find shows that have done well and take advantage of their popularity, audience, characters, world, and style, which were all laboured over for years so WE DON'T HAVE TO."
It's unbelievable, and it's getting more and more difficult to muster up some respect or, at least, some indifference towards this overwhelmingly pathetic (fitting word, no?) aspect of the industry.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll find something close by to use as a stress ball...

At my new job at a movie theater (yippee, right?), I got to peek in and see parts of Wall-E, Hellboy II, and Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Now, I haven't seen these movies in their entirety, but I stuck around to watch full scenes and saw I saw things in the special effects department that I liked. However, there were also things that I didn't like.

First off, Wall-E looks great and visually stunning. My only gripe is that the fat humans all look eighteen years old, but it's cutesy looking and I liked it. I started watching when Wall-E and Eve were being chased by security bots and Mr. Captain was fighting with his Hal-esque steering wheel. I stopped watching when Eve repaired Wall-E and he seems to have lost his memory.

Journey to the Center of the Earth looked great. For a videogame. I started watching when Brendan Fraser was fighting the venus plants, and I stopped watching when Brendan and his nephew found the blonde in her dinosaur-skull boat.


It would've been more exciting if it wasn't all CGI. I mean, sure, most of the things were pretty fantastical, like the magnetic rock scene (try doing that without a green screen), but there were so many things that didn't need to be done in CGI. The venus plants, for example looked like snakes due to how CGI makes everything move like rubber. They're PLANTS, for Murphy's sake. Did they have to be CGI?
Also, the whole fighting scene between them and Brendan was confusing and felt kind of silly. At the end, a venus plant wakes up behind Brendan. As you guessed, Brendan punches it with the back of his hand without turning around, but this sequence was confusing. It looked like the plant was 6 or so feet behind Brendan, not right behind him. I asked the fellow employee who I was watching this with, "Did he just punch that?"

But my big gripe was the T-Rex. It was 100% CGI and looked 100% worse than the T-Rex in Jurrassic Park. You know, the movie about dinosaurs wreaking havoc in their top-secret zoo. The movie that is 15 years old. Journey's T-Rex scene lasted around 3-4 minutes, and was clearly placed into the movie for novelty's sake (like most of the other things I've seen in the movie).
.
Even the frigging bird that was guiding Brendan's nephew was CGI. A bird. And we're not talking about a hawk or eagle or anything, it was a frigging blue robin. Not only that, but it used human expressions. That's right. It shook its head when the nephew was giving up when spelunking over the magnetic rocks, and cheered when he made it across the void. Yippee.


Aside from special effects, Brendan had some lame one liners. For example, there was a sequence where the T-Rex makes the ground below him collapse, and it falls down into the void along with Brendan Fraser.

Well, that's what the camera angle suggested. Of course, he was hanging onto a rock or whatever, just like Indy, Jack, and almost every action character ever. It's a suspenseful moment that we see often. However, what was SHITTY about this scene in Journey is that the camera was focused on the ledge for a full 5 seconds before they reveal that Brendan didn't fall, and the nephew is staring at the ledge the whole time while... well, waiting for him. Just like the audience was waiting for him.
As for the terrible one-liner that I was meaning to tell you, upon pulling himself up and onto his feet, Brendan says, "I HATE field work!" I suppose it's a piece of exposition for the character, as I suspect he... well, doesn't like field work. Bullseye!

Indiana Jones said similar lines in the Indy movies, so, while these types of lines work only in certain circumstances (I felt Brendan's line was cheesy), I'll let this one go as to be less anal. Happy? :)




The next day I saw a bit of Hellboy II. I started from the scene where the man in the hazmat suit let his gases open the door to the marketplace, and I stopped watching after Hellboy kicked the Ogre's rearie.
I really liked the special effects during the marketplace scene and the fight scene. Why? Because it was mostly animatronic. The only time I noticed some CGI is when they did a full shot of the Ogre, which is understandable, and it looked alright and wasn't immersion breaking (unlike everything in Journey).
Of course, I know there is likely loads of CGI in the rest of the movie (the door that the hazmat man opened was cgi, although the keepsafe wall in the map shop was real), but at least they didn't make the humanoid standing-on-two-legs creatures CGI. That's generally where I draw the line. Rubber Harry Potters, Neos, and Hancocks? No thanks. Of course, the Hulk is an exception, unless they want to cast Hulk Hogan and paint him green.
Please don't.