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So cool!

The MPAA ownz0red your TV.

Do you know your rights today?

I’ve been posting on a forum lately about the Casshern trailer (linked several posts ago), and someone responded to one of my lengthier posts by saying “Dont u luv it wen ppl think they are film critics…”

I responded:

Um, I am a film critic. I’ve been studying cinema critical theory for four years. I’m writing a twelve page paper on the use of sound in King Kong, The Birds, Diva and several other films right now.

Mu hu ha ha. Do not meddle in the affairs of film majors, for we are know-it-alls and quick to show off.

Just a question to all my friends in other states: Do you ever walk out your door and have some crazy homeless person on your lawn, digging through your trash, taking all your recyclables?
I have two or three, they usually show up on Sunday afternoon (pickup is Tuesday morning). They’re pretty territorial, though, so it’s generally just this one Vietnam vet guy who keeps screaming to himself about bringing down the government. How digging through my trash accelerates his plans, I don’t know.

I can’t help but think my mom would be concerned if I told her about this.

Photoshop contest for surprise endings to The Passion of the Christ. Some funny stuff in there. I particularly like the “lifting Jesus at Iwo Jima” one.

Girl born who feels no pain. Ahhh. Read through this, some nasty stuff in there. Just because she doesn’t feel it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen…

Okay, so I know a lot of my friends from KY may have no idea of what in the world I’m up to nowadays. So here’s the skinny of the day-in, day-out:

This is my last semester, and the first one I’ve taken anything less than the maximum number of units I can without paying more money to USC. My classes are:
1) CTCS 473, Film Theories
This is a high-theory cinema class, dealing with people like Bazin, Kracauer, Munsterburg, etc. Goes fast, in depth, fairly intense. If USC hadn’t spent the past 3.5 years teaching me everything they’re going over in this class, it’d probably be pretty difficult. But because they teach the same things over and over again in all the classes, well, it’s pretty easy.
2) CTCS 411, Sound Theory of Film
This is pretty interesting. It’s a class taught by my friend Bill, who is a rockin’ dude and an SCFX alum, at that. It’s cool because the last time anyone really wrote about sound in film was in the 30s, and it was mostly saying “The coming of sound will destroy film.” So yeah, nobody thinks of film as, wow, a construction. Since starting this class I’ve already started noticing stuff — for instance, if you see Kill Bill, whenever Go-Go Yubari’s morning star flies straight at the camera, they layer in the Godzilla atomic breath-scream sound. Gotta love Tarentino.
3) Japanese 6.
Yes, I am in the 6th straight semester of Japanese. I’m alright at it. It’s funny, because I’m one of the class’s resident smartasses — the other day, Tamanaha-sensei asked the class, “What sort of things make someone appear rich?” and I answered, “If one wears a lot of bling-bling, one appears rich.” Tamanaha-sensei looked puzzled and asked, “Buringu buringu tte nandesuka?” (“What is bling-bling?”) I answered, “Mimi ga itaku natte akarusugiru yubiwa touka eapiisu no youna koto desu” (“Things like earrings and finger rings that are too bright and hurt your eyes.”)

I’ve also been doing computer graphics (as usual) in my spare time. Latest example is here.

One more thing — this movie’s trailer is awesome.

Daniel Maas is teh p1mp.

This guy actually worked with my Uncle Frank on an “entomopter” project. Basically, Uncle Frank knew of these army guys who were trying to make fly-shaped robots that would be able to spy on enemies and whatnot. Problem was making them small enough. He also knew some NASA guys who were having problems with their Mars probes — basically, they were launching cameras into space that would spiral around Mars and take as many pictures as they could until crashing into the ground and dying. They needed something that was capable of independent action and was self-sustaining in harsh environments.

So Uncle Frank put two and two together and put forward a proposal to NASA put giant robotic insects on Mars. Daniel did the computer-generated previz for it. It was really quite astounding, I wish I had a copy of it somewhere…

…really need something else to do other than post to this thing while my frames render… maybe I will keep up with production sketches for my forthcoming webcomic…

Everyone should take a look at this.