Homeland Pride

Anybody see previews, the movie, or commercials for Escape from Planet Earth?
Here's another question, do you remember the show Reboot?
(Image from http://reboot.wikia.com/wiki/Binome)

Okay last one: what do Escape from Planet Earth and Reboot have in common?
They're both made by the same animation studio. What's different is Escape is their first feature length film! Congrats, Rainmaker Entertainment. Good milestone.
This Canadian-based animation studio has made a lot of stuff. If you've got a little sister then you may have seen one of their Barbie films.
Anyway, can't say the film based on the trailer looks that incredible, but I hope to be proven wrong. The current rating for the film is just over 5 stars on IMDB, around average for CG kid films.
Go Canada!

 Image from http://www.apnatimepass.com/escape-from-planet-earth-movie-picture-26.php

Escape from Planet Earth (2013)
Directed by Cal Brunker
Cal is newer face on the film director scene, this being his 2nd time directing a feature-length film. His film work dates back only to 2003. He's been a writer, storyboard artist, and more. Perhaps this will be the beginning of him sticking with the directing role. But only time will tell. Go, Cal, go!

Can my funeral please be as cool as this?

There's this awesome Kurosawa film Dreams. In school we studied it for it's use of colour, then yesterday I head the funeral march song come on from some room and I ask the guy near the door "Are they watching Dreams?"
"I think so."
"Cool." And I nod in approval. Yes, I only watched it for the first time because in my studies it came up, but it honestly is amazing. I love it and watch it voluntarily now!

Here's some film details:
Dreams (1990)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
You may recognize his name since he's the amazing director of other highly regarded films like Yojimbo and Seven Samurai.
Kurosawa has since passed only two years before the turn of the century. He's arguably Japan's greatest director.
Dreams is somewhat of a mesh of reality and fantasy, as dreams usually are. The film consists of several vignettes into events that may of may not be related. We see some repeating themes and characters, but not necessarily a string of consciousness that binds all the tales together. It's not a really dialogue-heavy film either which can be nice. So much more can be conveyed through the set, lighting, color and the body language. After all, words can only say so much.

Image from http://taxi11.blogspot.com/2012/09/akira-kurosawas-dreams-1990-yume-dvdrip.html

YOU NEED TO SEE THIS

If you thought your life was complete, it's not. Not unless you've seen this stuff:

The timing for this was perfect cause I was up listening to Slender Man creepypastas last night and drawing while listening to the Harlem Shake song, and then to see this video! It's like itwuz made for meeee!

Boggy Creek

Boggy Creek (2010)
Directed by Brian T. Jaynes
Written by Brian T. Jaynes and Jennifer Minar

Meah. Meah. Just meah.

This was a semi-sasquatch tale involving hot young people and camping in the woods. That should be enough for you to decide if it's something you'd want to watch or not.


A group of young people (presumably around 22-25) are at a friend's cabin on Boggy Creek, TX. Even after a warning from the neighbor, they decide to camp in the woods anyway. The beast of Boggy Creek attacks them in the night, killing the two men, and taking the two girls to mate with. The end of the film reveals there are tons of these beasts living around the area, so they were outmatched from the beginning.
It was one of those nobody-makes-it-out movies. If you like a resolution with your films, don't watch this.

Shavon Kirksey as Maya from the film.

I associate the sub-mediocrity of the film with the fact that it looks like it's only Jayne's second time directing, and Ferrick Hallaron and Teddy Hallaron aren't that wonderful at their roles as the sound department in this film.
The music is fine (Brandon Bentli), but the audio for dialogue and ambiance is pretty bad. Tons of times in the film the environment overpowers the dialogue. I mean that as in no one was miced and for some reason there weren't dubs, or maybe not even double system sound recording when the group is sitting around the fire; instead you hear some dialogue but your ears are assaulted by the snapping and crackling of wood in the fire. The audio spikes were never taken down. I guess a -12db average was just a rule thrown out the window for this.
In honesty I'm not trying to make personal assaults on the sound folks or the editors, just making observations and putting two and two together.
Pacing was also pretty bad. It had the pacing of a sophomore or junior film student; that pacing where you don't want to cut all that beautiful footage, that pacing when you haven't learned that you cut whatever you need to cut for the sake of your vision and your story.
Editor Christian Remde had only edited for one film prior to this one. Hopefully this was a great learning experience for him. Based on his IMDB Brian T. Jaynes, the other editor, had no other professional editing experience.
Basically this is a beginner film. If that's the case, it's something to be proud of at the time. It's also something to look back on and laugh with your bros and be all like "Dude! Can you believe we did that? Can you believe we let this thing go on for an hour and a half? Can you believe we didn't bump up the dbs on some of that dialogue and lower other audio spikes? Ha!" At least they made something.
On another note, actress and main protagonist of the film Melissa Carnell, also acted in another Jaynes film, Humans VS Zombies.

On a good note, actress Shavon Kirksey, the other female lead, is very beautiful. She reminds me of Eartha Kitt, Catwoman from the 60's batman. They both have that great smile and those striking eyes.
The end.

The Gloaming

The Gloaming (2011)
Directed by Nobrai
Written by Niko Nobrain


A pretty crazy short film
in a good way

Image from http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/the-gloaming-animated-short-film-by-sabotage-studio/

Watch it here http://www.nobrain.fr/the-gloaming-online

It's a lot to put in under 15 minutes--religion, war, politics, and more. This short film has everything from sex to explosion to bulbous hydra human beasts. If that's not enough to draw you on, it's also a mix of many different animation styles.
The Gloaming is 3D, 2D, stop motion, rotoscoping, and probably more that I'm not smart enough to spot. Anyway, just the mix alone is cool, let alone the topic of the film.

So we're in a desert when we meet our protagonist, a sleeping man turned deity. The man awakens, then walks along dunes to find a semi liquid blob on the ground. Upon picking it up it reacts, comes to life, and forms a planet complete with humans.
The man watches his planet progress, and indeed time passes insanely fast on this planet. We go from early man to future enslaved humankind in minutes.
From the beginning of civilization on the planet the man observes how quickly humans take to jealously, greed, and violence, as the first early man covets another's partner so much he kills him just to get her.
Giving up on that part of the world the man spins the planet to find tribes at war. At first when they notice him their war stops to worship, but soon enough they've moved on to destroying each other. The globe spins again and the man observes a civilization more or less something along the lines of the US right now. Families are slaves to processed meat and TV. And on the TV is news about violence.
The man finally comes to a futuristic civilization run by a multi-headed combination of the previous civilization's antagonists. They're harvesting humans for some sort of profit when the man steps in. He crushes one of the mind control satellites only to have another immediately dispatched. The next logical thing is to stop the satellites at the source, so he crushes their dispatch location. This upsets the globular ruler and the man finds himself under attack. He swats at the planet but his arm is stuck. Not only that but the planet begins to consume him! Soon the planet has reverted back to the beige-y blob it started as and it engulfs the man. He's liquified and absorbed, and the blog falls back onto the cracked dry ground it started on. The sun sets.


This film is interesting for a bunch of reasons. Beside the story of the film, the story of Nobrain is interesting too. So you got three homies who worked together in France. They joined forces and created Sabotage Studio. Then they relinquished it in order to take on roles that would allow them more control, from story to style. They became Nobrain, three individual artists acting as one director. Interesting, I'd say.
Also noteworthy is this is a film that transcends language. There's not really any litteral direct conversations between characters. There's grunts and screen and such, and that's all you need in order to understand everything they're saying. Not every wordless film achieves this so successfully.
Favourite scene in my book for this film is pretty much the ending. The man is covered in the sludge and his muffled yell competes against the screeches and screams of the planet and it's dying inhabitants. The rotoscoped look is really fun and intense, and the camera angle is perfect for the action.
Sound team, you're great. Foley is great, music is great. Yup yup.