Home of filmmaker, improviser, and decent dude Geoff Ross.

These few stills from my shoot on March 9th were themselves shot by Julie Reizes.

I loved Avatar.  Not like I love my girlfriend, but more like how I love nachos.  And I LOVE nachos!  For those who don’t know Avatar is about a parapalegic former marine who gets to go to the forest moon of Endor Pandora thanks to the untimely death of his twin brother and walk around the lush environment pretending to be a 10-foot-tall Blue Cat Person that the film insists on calling the Na’vi.  ”Isn’t this FernGully?” you ask.  Well, no, it’s more like Dances With Wolves, but that’s beside the point.  It’s entertaining.

Like pornography.

My Xbox 360 Avatar. Sadly not in the movie Avatar

In fact it was better than pornography, sort of, because not only was it nice to look at, but it had a story worth following.  Although there wasn’t a money shot (Not yet) Avatar did have the odd distinction of getting me and the rest of the audience to root AGAINST humans and FOR some Blue Cat People that were, in reality, made in a computer.  That’s impressive.  What James Cameron and his crew of, I’m guessing here, trillions accomplished was a spectacle.  For that he and the film should be commended.

It wasn’t a perfect movie.  As hinted above it treads on themes that have been walked on before even by James Cameron himself (corporate greed = bad, science = good.  See other Cameron films: The Abyss, Terminator 2, Aliens), the movie runs a half-hour longer than it needs to and, honestly, the 3D presentation was OK not mind-blowing.  But I was entertained, I left the movie theater smiling and, frankly, I can’t ask for anything more.

Except a sequel.

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I’m not totally sold on James Cameron‘s latest movie Avatar.  The recently released teaser trailer is interesting, but it hasn’t won me over.

The sketch video shoot, Osama Bin Lovin, went off without a hitch. Here are some photos from that adventure in New Jersey.

The schedule with Greg and Devito for the sketch video project is coming together. Progress, no matter how minor, feels fantastic.

It looks like the transcript situation is resolved *crosses fingers*. At the very least I’ve done what I can about it. In other news I am giving serious thought to putting a new short film into pre-production. The script, The Cardboard Spaceship, was written for my application to Columbia. I ended up liking the whole thing and, at three pages, it seems doable.

I almost failed out of college. I don’t know if many people know that so I’m just gonna tell you. I was supposed to graduate in 2005. I even took part in the 2005 graduation ceremony. But, I didn’t graduate. I still had incompletes to finish. I had convinced myself that I could do that.

I was wrong.

I did not finish the incompletes. The volume of missing work was just too large for me to handle. When you don’t finish incompletes they turn into failures. I ended up taking a leave of absence for the entire ’05-’06 academic year. It was a very dark time for me. I lost the majority of my friends during this period: an element that still echoes to this day. But, I was determined not to fail. So whatever dignity and self-respect I had left got tossed out the window and I basically begged the university to take me back. I knew it was going to be a tough sell. All I had to offer was my word that I would do better.

But, I did do better.

The university was reluctant to let me back so I offered a trial: I would take a class during summer ’06 to prove that I could pass a class. It was a course about music in film and television. I aced it. That was enough to convince the university to let me back. Knowing that even the slightest hint of a screw-up would get me kicked out the door I committed myself to finishing school. Also I took classes like the Cultural History of Ancient Egypt because I like to torture myself, apparently. After that fall 2006 semester back I averaged a 3.7 gpa. Which is much better than failing, let me tell you. Before I came back I had given up on the idea of ever making another student film again. It was late in that fall semester that I realized I still had a chance. That chance became my ridiculous short film Poop Jokes Are Funny. It was difficult to make for two reasons: 1. Many of the friends I had either had already abandoned me or simply weren’t interested in the project. 2. since I had been away from film school so long I barely knew any of my fellow students. I ended up doing far more roles on that project than I would have liked, but we did get it done. Got an “A” for that one. In fact, my entire spring semester 2007 was a 4.0 gpa semester. I don’t recall ever having a 4.0 gpa semester so it was pretty big deal for me. Who am I kidding? It was a massive deal for me.

I graduated! Leaving with a 4.0 semester nonetheless!

Of course, I didn’t have too many people left to celebrate that victory with, but my family was proud of me and that meant the world to me. Unfortunately, I still owed the university a great deal of money. Five figures that I simply didn’t have. Because of that I didn’t receive my diploma in 2007. Even though on paper I was a graduate I didn’t have a physical object to prove that. So it always felt a bit fake. A bit like I was pretending. But, as of about a week ago my debts have been paid. I finally have my diploma! I know the cynics amongst like to say things like, “it’s just a piece a paper,” but it is far more than that to me. It’s a symbol of my own resilience and achievement that I won’t let out of my sight any time soon.

Now all I need is a frame.

The Dark Knight on IMAX was awesome. But, not so much so that I think you are truly missing out on something remarkable. It would be a much bigger deal if the whole film had been shot on IMAX rather than a handful of action scenes (which add up to almost 30 minutes of the movie). If you’ve got money to burn or if you haven’t seen The Dark Knight at all then, yeah, go ahead and see it on IMAX. However, if you’ve already seen it on 35, the IMAX experience isn’t necessary. It is something, but not a necessary something.

Did you catch the Hall of Fame game on Sunday? You know? The first preseason football game? No? Well, I did. Sort of. I saw some of it. A little bit. Couple of minutes. But, of what I did see I liked. Redskins rookie quarterback Colt Brennan of the University of Hawai’i and a billion NCAA records fame actually, possibly, maybe looked like an NFL quarterback. He was 9 for 10 for 123 yards and 2 touchdowns. Perhaps having an offensive line has helped him greatly…or that he was playing against third-stringers. Either way I liked what I saw. Obviously he won’t be starting for the Redskins unless both Jason Campbell and Todd Collins explode simultaneously. In fact he probably won’t start for any NFL team for quite some time, if ever, but for those two series he did play it was entertaining to watch.

Colts rookie running-back Mike Hart of the University of Michigan and the all-time leading rusher at the school also put on quite the show in the same game…an ultimately a losing effort with the Redskins defeating the Colts 30 to 16. He had 4 carries for 53 yards and 3 receptions for 28 yards. It was a good performance. But, the colts already have running-backs Joseph Addai and Dominic Rhodes and I wonder if Hart will even make it on the final 53-man roster. If he doesn’t, you know, the Bears could always use a running back. I’m just saying….we need all the help we can get.

It took forever, but it’s done: Draft Three of Death Girl is done. Now I am waiting for my WGA registration to come back. Once that happens I will approach my Draft Two readers and see if they are up for another round. Then I will find additional new readers for Draft Three.

And maybe take a nap.

note: Yeah, I pre-wrote this too

I do. The teaser trailer for the Watchmen has hit the tubes. It looks brilliant.

note: this post was written before I left the state.

Hellboy 2 was fun. More so than the first. Hellboy and his compatriots are, for lack of a better word, monsters, but they are the most human characters in the entire Hellboy universe. I think that’s what I like so much about the characters and the stories they inhabit. They’re weird, they’re special, they don’t fit in, but they laugh, love, and cry just like everybody else. I find that appealing. The story of Hellboy 2 regarding ancient elves trying to retake the world from man is okay. It’s interesting enough. But, it’s greatest strength is the relationships between our main characters. Their lives are so believable that you forget that two of them are involved in an inter-species sexual relationship. I guess demon dangly-parts hook up with human lady-parts just fine. Personally, I don’t want to know. That would be a terrible movie. However, Guillermo Del Toro has proven once again that he only makes excellent movies. I give Hellboy 2 and enthusiastic thumbs up.

I’m dead tired. It is definitely time for bed. Which is weird since it is the beginning of the day. Technically. I feel like I owe you a post, but I’m fresh out of brain power, brain energy, brain juice, and brain candy. Maybe that’s why I think a city-wide water war is a good idea.

It’s brilliant.

I don’t like the Hulk. It always seemed like it was a guy who get really sick when he got mad. Violently sick. Most superheroes embrace their superhero-ness. Even Spawn grasped onto his savior role even though, in his case, he was some kind of creation of Satan. But not the Hulk. When he wasn’t smashing things he was the nebbish Dr. Banner who just wanted to be left alone. In 2003 they made a Hulk movie which was creatively titled Hulk. It was directed by Academy-Award winning director Ang Lee and written by Academy-Award nominated screenwriter James Schamus.

It was terrible.

When I heard that they were making another Hulk movie my first thought was, “Didn’t they already make this?”. And once I heard that this was not a sequel, but instead a reboot I was even more confused than before. Why reboot a franchise you had just started? Shouldn’t we wait a little longer before dipping in that pool again? Needless to say I wrote off The Incredible Hulk as a failure before it had even been made.

The Incredible Hulk is directed by the Non-Academy-Award winning director Louis Leterrier. He is a practitioner of modern French action movies which aren’t necessarily in the french-language like The Transporter, Unleashed, Léon: The Professional, The Fifth Element (a personal favorite), and, um, The Transporter 2. I want to call that genre Fraction. The script is written by Zak Penn who brought us X-Men: The Last Stand…the worst movie in the X-Men franchise. Not exactly a recipe for disaster, but not one for much hope either.

I never intended to see The Incredible Hulk. I was going to see The Happening. But, the reviews turned very sour on that film adventure. So, with that option eliminated I went to see the big-budget Fractionâ„¢ that was The Incredible Hulk. What the first film lacked was a lot of Hulk smashing. What it had in abundance was a lot of melodrama. That ratio was skewed the wrong way for my taste and the tastes of everyone else. All this movie needed to deliver was the very opposite of what the first movie delivered.

Oh, it delivered.

In the end The Incredible Hulk delivered on the one expectation any movie-goer had for the green monster: HULK SMASH! And for 114 minutes straight that’s just about all that happened. Yes, it was thin on character development, plot, and spoken words, but, my God, did you see him rip that hummer in half? That was awesome! He beat that guy to near-death by throwing him into a tree. I’m pretty sure he was using an NYPD cruiser as a hammer at some point. It was brilliant. Well, as brilliant as a violently sick person beating the crap out of every would-be assailant could be. That’s still pretty brilliant. I didn’t like the Hulk, but I sure do now. This is a popcorn movie I can heartily recommend.

Iron Man was better, though.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made a few pennies over the weekend. Some of those pennies came from me. I’m glad that they did. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is better than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, but not better than Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. This has been your microreview.