Star Trek Into Darkness(2013)

Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Simon Pegg, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch

Directed By: J.J. Abrams

(Relatively Spoiler Free)

Warning: I was always a Star Wars kid. I was aware of Star Trek growing up, but the concept didn’t really appeal to me until 2009, when the reboot shot into theaters. Fast paced with a great plot and cast, it was everything that I wanted from the Star Wars prequels but didn’t get. Once the credits rolled, I was so eager for another adventure that I went back and watched a handful of the films and a large chunk of the original series and Next Generation (thank you Netflix). But that still wasn’t enough. I was dying to see what else J.J. Abrams had planned for Kirk and his crew. After four long years, the wait is finally over.

Star Trek Into Darkness wastes no time getting back into the groove of its predecessor. From the opening moments we see the entire Enterprise crew on a mission to study a developing race on a jungle planet. Of course, things go awry when they interfere with the planet’s volcano, exposing their ship to the native inhabitants, who mistake the spacecraft for a god after witnessing it rise from the ocean.  This break from the “prime directive” puts James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Spock (Quinto) into hot water with Starfleet yet again, demoting one and stationing the other on a separate vessel. However, after an attack from within from the mysterious John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch), Kirk and Spock are placed back on board the Enterprise with one mission: find Harrison and blast him out of existence.

Yes, this mission goes against Starfleet protocols, and many of the crew have varying feelings about the mission. Simon Pegg’s Scotty has an excellent scene where he argues with his captain over the morals of their mission, and the always logical Spock is at odds with his best bro many times throughout the film. The overlying not so subtle message behind the film is “how far should one be willing to go for justice?”, and leads to some great moments in the film, of which there are plenty. The action scenes, while probably infuriating for Trek purists, are a blast, and easily upstage the ones we saw last time with Kirk and Co.

The cast is in top form here, even if some of them get the short end of the stick screen appearance wise. Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) have maybe twenty minutes of screen time combined, and I really wanted more of Leonard “Bones” McCoy (Karl Urban), my favorite of the crew. Even though he only gets to spout off a few one liners, they’re still great and some of the best parts of the film. Uhura’s (Zoe Saldana) profile has risen since the past film, and she gets to kick some ass in the finale of the film too.

Our newcomers to the cast are Alice Eve as Carol Markus, Peter Weller as Admiral Marcus, and  Benedict Cumberbatch as our mystery villain, John Harrison. Of the three, Cumberbatch is easily the stand out. His performance exceeded my expectations, which were already high. My hopes that the Sherlock star will gain a higher following after this film will most likely be realized, as I’m sure his agent is fielding calls for villainous roles to keep him busy for the next few years. Cumberbatch is calm, cool, and extremely menacing in a performance that will stay with you for quite awhile after the credits roll. No one can do righteous fury as well as he does.

Into Darkness does have a few problems, specifically when it comes to balancing the amount of characters it has. I mentioned it before, but there were some that get pushed aside for the sake of the  story, including Alice Eve’s character. The conclusion to the film is a little rushed, but the moments leading up to it are fantastic. Abrams’ makes some nods to a very well-known installment in the franchise which is causing a lot of debate amongst viewers.  I, for one, thought it was a cool acknowledgement of the past of the franchise that put an interesting twist on this new, alternate reality. Some things may play out similarly, out of sequence, or not at all.

Longtime Trek fans are pretty split on their opinions with this film (just like the previous one). Many feel that this doesn’t feel like the Star Trek they’ve followed for much of their lives. While I can certainly see where they’re coming from, I’ve loved this new take on the franchise, and it’s done the impossible: gotten me to care about Star Trek in all of its forms.  My views on the film are coming from the place of a Trek newbie, one who has only a base understanding of the world and characters.  While purists may scoff at Abrams turning the franchise into “just another Sci-Fi action flick”, I admire him for taking something that many had written off and turned in not one, but two stellar films.

Star Trek Into Darkness is bittersweet. J.J. Abrams has jumped ship to his preferred Star franchise,(the one ends with Wars), and the future of the franchise is up in the air. While I’m in the same position as I was four years ago, I’m now more cautious about the third installment.

But at least I know that Episode 7  is in good hands.

Verdict: 5 proton torpedoes out of 5

MOVIE REVIEW!!!

Iron Man 3 (2013)

Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Sir Ben Kingsley, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce

Directed by: Shane Black

Any film being released after The Avengers was going to face an uphill battle. Luckily for us, Tony Stark has never been one to worry about following anyone’s act. Finally facing off with his main villain The Mandarin, Iron Man 3 is not only the first film after Earth’s Mightiest Heroes took over the box office, but also the start of Marvel Studio’s “phase two” films.  So, as the start of the next block of films that will include Captain America: The Winter Solider, Thor: The Dark World, and Guardians Of The Galaxy, does Iron Man 3 start strong out of the gate, or are we in for a rocky road to Avengers 2?

Well, I can say this: it’s great, even with the weird plot twist that has already divided Iron Man fans right down the middle.

Taking place after the events of The Avengers, Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) latest adventure finds him still coming to terms from the events of the New York City attack that brought the team together. He can’t sleep; instead doing everything he can to keep himself busy. When he starts having panic attacks, his closest allies, including now girlfriend Pepper Pots (Gwyneth Paltrow) and James Rhodes (Don Cheadle), start to take notice of his moods and worry about him. Not only that, but he also has to deal with Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce) moving in on Stark Industries with his controversial Extremis project, a biological computer component that amps up disabled and injured citizens, but with a side effect that causes them to become insanely powerful cyborg hybrids.  But, when a terrorist named The Mandarin (Ben Kingsley) starts attacking points in the United States, Tony has to take notice, especially when Happy Hogan (Jon Farvreau) is caught in the blast.

Iron Man 3 crams a lot of plot into its reels, and at two and a half hours it definitely strains, especially in the middle act of the film. However, there’s more action in this film than in the previous two solo Stark adventures. There’s plenty of things to keep viewers interested, but there’s that twist I mentioned that I have…. mixed feelings about.

It’s hard to explain it here, especially with this being relatively spoiler free, but its a divisive twist that I’m sure you’ve probably heard some sort of news about it. Even if you don’t know the specifics of it, you probably know who or what it revolves around. I myself found it to be pretty disappointing at first, but then pretty hilarious as it went on. I should’ve probably prefaced this with the fact that I’m a casual Iron Man fan and only really started regularly reading him after the first movie, so my opinion on this particular twist will most definitely differ from a die hard shell head fan.

Outside of the twist, I found the rest of the film to be very enjoyable. Director Shane Black, who previously helmed Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, does an excellent job balancing the humor and action one expects from an Iron Man film, though there are times where it seems like the film goes too far into the broad comedy area.

However, all things are washed away in the action packed finale, which more than makes up for the lack of concluding action in the previous Iron Man films. I myself found this third installment of the Tony Stark saga to be better than Iron Man 2, but not as good as the first time we met Tony Stark.  Still, at this point, if you’ve seen everything other Marvel Studio film, you’re going to see this one too. As long as you’re not too beholden to some aspects of the Iron Man character, you’ll have a good time.

Final Verdict:

Four and half repulsor blasts out of Five

ALSO:

It seems like it should be a well-known fact at this point, but there’s an after credits stinger that I found to be a lot of fun. So, even if you’re ready to bolt or the large soda you chugged halfway through the movie is hitting you, make sure you stick it out. It’s well worth it.

Annnnd we’re back. We took a month off in between seasons one and two to collect our wits and start planning for the future. And boy do we have a BUNCH of fun things coming up. This first sketch is something born out of watching too much Mythbusters for my own good and my first crack at writing since “Do You Take Jace” all the way back at the beginning. As usual, I asked Chris for a bit of help but this time around, the dialogue is PRETTY MUCH just me. We had a big plan to film this one over the first part of the week that Jon and I had off from teaching for “spring break” but due to circumstances WELL beyond our control, that had to be put off. The twins only had one free weekend to come down and help us with this though, so we had to bring in one of our “B” camera operators to run point on this sketch and help out. All things considered, I think Kyle did a pretty bang-up job for his first time.

I speak of Murphy’s Law a lot when I write these things because, let’s face it, the old guy is relentless when it comes to filmmaking. We arrived on set with one car with a busted thermostat (which set me back over 100 dollars) and another car that was too low to the ground to achieve one of the effects we wanted. I went to get our “A” camera out of my trunk and realized I hadn’t packed the tape which meant I had to use our “B” camera (my DSLR) as our primary means of filming. This meant no external microphone, no familiarity, and at least one shot that was woefully out of focus (but I think I made it work). The post-production wasn’t particularly difficult on this one seeing as how our audio didn’t need correction. I’m not exactly THRILLED with it given that the levels are all weird but without our boom, I’m just not going to worry about it. Live and learn.

Once again, I have to attest to Kyle’s stamina as a camera operator. Jon and I both have backgrounds in improv and when we can’t remember our lines, we tend to meander WAY off script. I know Paul, at least, is driven INSANE by this as a camera operator but Kyle just ran with it and kept the camera pointed at us until such time as I deemed to say “cut.” The DSLR isn’t the easiest camera to work with either because there’s nothing that makes it “feel” like it’s recording video. Kyle’s finger kept landing over the mic pickup as well so it’s a VERY good thing we broke our “never play the footage back” rule too. The biggest change you’ll notice for season two, and the one we’re most psyched for is we FINALLY moved to HD output. You can now enjoy our ugly mugs in GLORIOUS 720p! A note on that, though, if you’ve been opted into the HTML5 beta on YouTube, you won’t be able to view our videos until you turn that option off (or use Safari or IE). The WebM format isn’t something I’ve played with before so I’ll be looking into it as we move into the future. If you’re using FireFox or Chrome, and are seeing an error, there is a link on THIS page to opt out. Either way, please enjoy “Manifold Destiny 2013.”

Manifold Destiny 2013
Starring: Zach Denoncour, Jon Waugh
©2013 Coalition Films Ltd.

Summer is just around that corner, and with that comes one of the best times of the year. No, not going to the beach: summer movies! Specifically summer movies based on comic books, the greatest thing on God’s green Earth. This year sees the return of Tony Stark (without his Avengers buddies), Kick-Ass and Hit Girl, and of course, ol’ Canucklehead, Wolverine. It’s not all sequels though, as we’ll also be seeing Pacific Rim from director Guillermo Del Toro, and R.I.P.D. with Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges. In fact, just looking at the number of releases this year is daunting. With this many movies to choose from, how can one pick? Well, I’m here to help. So without further ado I present to you the films I’m most looking forward to this summer!

Iron Man 3 (May 3)

Fresh of his stint in The Avengers, Tony Stark returns to the skies, except this time against the Mandarin (played by Ben Kingsley), who looks to be a formidable enemy and a nice change of pace from the previous techno-villains (even if he doesn’t have his power rings).  This is the official start of “Phase two” of the Marvel cinematic universe, and I can’t wait to see how the events in Avengers will shape the next films to come. While I did find it strange that Stark refuses to call in his teammates to help him against Mandarin, the recent TV spots have played up Tony’s desire for revenge against his new enemy, and it is keeping in line with his characterization.  After the less than great Iron Man 2, it looks like Marvel has learned a few things when it comes to Tony’s solo adventures, and I can’t think of a better way to start the summer.

Pacific Rim (July 12)

Giant monsters vs. giant robots. Directed by Guillermo Del Toro. What else do you need to know?

Elysium (August 9)

Director Neil Blomkamp’s follow up to District 9, Elysium is another futuristic sci-fi tale, except with an “occupy Wall Street” bent. With the upper class living in a ring around the planet, the rest of the world is stuck living on Earth. When Matt Damon is sent on a mission that requires him to go to the titular ring, he embarks on a mission that could reshape the divide on Earth. I’m a huge fan of District 9, and have been waiting to hear about Blomkamp’s follow up since the film was nominated for an Oscar. All signs point to this movie being another hit for a director who could become one of the next big things.

The Wolverine (July 26)

Finally adapting everyone’s favorite Wolverine story (well, everyone except Ralph from Jetpack Comics), the follow up to 2009’s abysmal X-Men Origins: Wolverine will hopefully redeem the character after his CGI cash grab. Taking place after X-Men: The Last Stand, Logan travels to Japan, where he meets a man he once saved back in World War 2. Hugh Jackman is back as Logan, and somehow he looks even more insanely ripped than before. The trailer already looks a hundred times better than Wolverine’s last solo movie, and the prospect of him taking on an army of ninjas guarantees that the theater will be getting my money.

Kick-Ass 2 (August 16)

Dave Lizewski is back in the green jumpsuit and ready to take a bite out of crime. Since the events of the last movie, Kick-Ass has sparked a superhero movement, inspiring dozens of ordinary citizens to dress up and fight crime. As one group, lead by Jim Carrey’s Colonel Stars and Stripes, attempts to convince Kick-Ass and Hit Girl to join them, Red Mist is secretly plotting his revenge for his father’s death in the last movie. I was skeptical of the sequel to the first film, especially when original director Matthew Vaughn left, but after seeing the trailer I’m definitely seeing it. The film looks to have kept the same tone as the original, and Jim Carrey looks hilarious. Hopefully we get enough interest for the third entry, which hits comic stores this May.

This Is The End (June 12)

I’m calling it right now: This is The End will be the funniest movie this summer. Centering around the likes of Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Danny McBride, who are all playing versions of themselves, this film looks to see what happens if Hollywood was the center of the Apocalypse.  The first trailer is hilarious, and early buzz on the film is extremely positive. Hopefully we’re not let down by it.

Man Of Steel (June 14)

This right here, is my must see of the summer. There’s a lot riding on Man Of Steel, although I’m sure the cast and crew wasn’t aware that their film’s success would ultimately decide the fate of the cinematic DC universe while they were filming it. While I’ve never been able to follow Superman in the monthly comics for longer than 4 issues, I’ve always liked the character and his origin story. Everything new piece of footage I see has been better than the last, and despite all the “Deadliest Catch” jokes, I found the original teaser released last year to be extremely moving  (especially the Russell Crowe voice over). With a phenomenal cast that includes Michael Shannon as General Zod, Henry Cavill as Superman, and Kevin Costner and Diane Liane as Jonathan and Martha Kent, Man of Steel has a lot going for it, and I for one am excited for a Superman movie (which surprises me, to be honest).

Star Trek Into Darkness (May 17)

There’s a ton of secrecy behind Star Trek Into Darkness, the sequel to the phenomenal 2009 reboot of Star Trek. J.J. Abrams is back in the director’s chair, and perhaps for the last time (he’s taking over a little-known franchise called Star Wars). So far all we know is that Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the Enterprise crew are going up against John Harrison, played by the amazing Benedict Cumberbatch.  Even with three trailers, no one knows who Benny Batch is actually playing, and numerous sites are still believing that he’ll end up being Kahn. Abrams’ isn’t telling anyone, so we’ll have to wait until May 17 to find out!

Another day, another Justice League movie rumor. It seems like I’ve written the same column about Warner Bros.’s continued adventures to bring their super team to the big screen, and before you go through my backlog of posts, I know that I have. However, this week the news brings us the best and worst thing that could happen to the project:

Christopher Nolan is producing, and rumors have it that Christian Bale will return as Batman.

Now it’s no surprise that WB would want Nolan involved in this film. He’s behind their biggest success for their DC character based films, and early buzz on Man Of Steel, which he’s producing, has been overwhelmingly positive.  Snagging Nolan to essentially be their Joss Whedon (or in the case of Fox, Mark Millar) is a brilliant idea, assuming that A) Nolan isn’t tired of dealing with capes and B) he finds something interesting in the rest of DC’s stable of characters, something that may prove difficult for him when he looks at their roster beyond the “big 7”.

However, there’s a drawback to having Nolan and Bale enter the Justice League fray. As it’s already been established, the “Nolanverse” that was set up in his films doesn’t exactly lend itself to having characters that fly around in red capes, or being Amazonian princesses. Working the realistic interpretation of Batman into the Justice League film is very risky, as it could conceivably undo what makes the Nolan trilogy work. Not to mention the fact that if Bale does play the same Batman from the Dark Knight trilogy that he would be a lot older than his teammates, although that could work if they wanted to put Batman in a leadership role.

There’s talk that Bale could be playing a different version of Batman as well, one more in line with the comic book version of the character as opposed to the hyper-realistic take that he played in Nolan’s films. Sure, this could also work, but it may confuse some viewers, especially when you look at the conclusion of The Dark Knight Rises, where Bruce Wayne was living a quiet life with Selina Kyle. Of course, when you watch Rises it’s easily the most “comic book” of the three films, with the bomb plot in Gotham City, “The Bat” flying around, and Wayne’s quick recovery from a shattering back injury.

With this in mind, you could see that there’s a gradual progression of the “Dark Knight” world slowly becoming like the DC Universe we read about every month, and would take the themes of escalation that are talked about at the end of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight to a whole other level. How would the Nolan version of Batman react to someone like Superman arriving in Gotham (especially if he flew in and saved Batman from the bomb that went off at the end of Rises)?  That’s an interesting angle that could play out really well, depending on how carefully it’s done.

Justice League is happening, regardless of if I think it’s a bad idea or not. While it’s good that Warner Bros. still sees this movie as a priority, I still think it’s being made just because WB is green with envy over all the money that Disney is making with their Marvel films (and what they’re destined to make now that they also control Star Wars). While I was personally hoping for a Batman more in line with the Arkham games appearing in Justice League, I’m okay with Bale’s Batman showing up, especially if Nolan is serving as a producer. As long as Nolan thinks he can help guide the project to where it needs to go, and isn’t burnt out of Batman yet, then I’m behind him.

Of course, now that I’ve written this entire column on the matter the rumor will probably be debunked by the end of the day.

Here we are. I never thought we’d get here but we’ve finally arrived at the conclusion for season one of Another Let Down. I’m so proud of our little team for getting twelve well done films produced and uploaded to YouTube. Of course we had to get a little nostalgic on this last one and call back a few of our favourite jokes from the sketches we’ve produced thus far. On the topic of nostalgia, though, Paul and I thought it appropriate to go through our archive and talk about what we’ve learned through this adventure that we can carry with us into season two. As that will be the topic of the site update for spring, I’ll save that commentary until next week. Instead, I’m proud to present to you: “PHONES WITH BENEFITS.”

This was a sketch born from the *cough* relative insanity of the Chris machine. I was playing on my iPhone at the Boston studio the other night while we were discussing another project we’re working on (one which Paul has forbidden me from talking about) and Chris wondered aloud if Siri would watch a movie with us. Needless to say, I had to try. Siri didn’t do her usual snide, backhanded “I don’t know” answer. Instead she simply offered to look something up. Chris wasn’t satisfied and instead we started riffing some better lines she might offer. Sooner or later, we found ourselves in front of Celtx scripting this bit of nonesense. For obvious reasons we didn’t want to try to take the time to create screen images so the first thing I needed to do was find a way to illustrate that the voice Chris is conversing with actually coming from the phone. Solution: re-introduce Lauren! You saw her briefly all the way back in “Do You Take Jace” and “The Deader You Get” and now you get to hear her a bit more. Albeit with some heavy modulation. I’m particularly proud of the technical aspects of this film including the lighting and the sound mixing in post-production. The light rig was simply a spotlight and a standard 40 Watt incandescent bulb duct-taped to a PVC rig and placed behind a curtain for diffusion. We’d like to build something a bit better in the future and possibly buy a few soft-boxes come summer when we’re all more or less gainfully employed but for now, our screen worked pretty well. There’s still some glare off the posters but we’re not anywhere near as worried about it as we would have been if the stupid low-hanging chandelier that Paul is overfond of had been the only light in the scene.

Astute viewers will catch some pretty creative bits of scripting in this sketch too. We’ve made reference to a number of neat bits of nerdery including a failed TV pilot from the creators of “Scrubs” (which Paul has been enjoying of late and will doubtless be a new installment of “Netflix: Declassified” soon), a classic bit of Sci-Fi cinema, and even Sesame Street! I’m really proud of a lot of this sketch and I feel like this is a really suitable way to head into PAX season with a full season of Another Let Down in the bag. Finally, we have a significant amount of content to show off!

Phones With Benefits
Starring: Zach Denoncour, Chris DiPastina, Lauren Maynard
©2013 Coalition Films Ltd.

The newest episode of the Laser Time podcast network’s “Cape Crisis” comic book podcast just made me feel really old. Their topic of discussion was the 2003 Ben Affleck starring Daredevil, which as of this past Valentine’s Day is a decade old. Instantly I started to reflect on where I was when that film came out. To give you an idea, I was currently in Driver’s Ed when I saw the film with my dad and brother. In fact, if memory serves, I probably drove them all to the movie so I could get the driving practice in. Not only did this make me feel incredibly old, but it also made me realize that after thinking about it, Daredevil isn’t really all that bad. Sure, there are some ridiculously cartoony moments (like the playground sparring match between Matt Murdock and Elektra), but I really like Michael Clark Duncan’s Kingpin and Colin Farrell’s Bullseye. Hell, to be completely honest, I don’t mind Affleck as Daredevil either.

Perhaps it’s because there’s been a huge amount of comic book movies since ol’ hornhead hit the silver screen that my feelings towards the film have changed. Daredevil was one of the first comic book movies, right on the heels of Singer’s first X-Men film and Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. While it can be argued that it was the first one to fail with fans, I think it should also be noted that it’s not as bad as it’s perceived to be, especially when you compare it to the cinematic outings that came after it, like Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, and *shudder* Jonah Hex. Yeah, it’s not great, and the soundtrack is pretty god awful, but there’s a lot of cool moments in the film, and for the first time it made me understand Daredevil’s powers.  Plus, I thought a lot of the fight scenes were well done and pretty, the exception being the aforemented goofy playground fight with matt Murdock and Elektra.

Mark Stephen Johnson’s film (which was his first and best film) easily sits with other underrated comic book movies like Constantine, The Rocketeer, and Spawn. Sure, a lot of these take liberties with the source material (Constantine especially), but these films really don’t deserve the hate that they get.  Setting up Elektra for her own (terrible) movie was probably it’s biggest offense, as it cuts out a really interesting subplot where Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson have to defend a man whom Murdock knows is guilty. Thankfully, this sequence was re-inserted into the director’s cut DVD, which is required viewing for haters of the film. If you watch that and can’t at least see that it’s an improvement over the theatrical cut, then the movie’s not for you.

Marvel recently got the film rights to Daredevil back from Fox, and it’s my hope that they can spin him into his own successful franchise, or even take him to the TV screen. If Arrow can be a monster hit, then there’s no reason why Daredevil can’t be. Half the shows on television are already law dramas, why not make one stand out and have the lawyer also fight crime? If not then, you could have Matt Murdock show up on S.H.I.E.L.D. as a character’s lawyer, or even in one of the cinematic outings. How awesome would it be to have Banner hulk out and be put on trial, and Murdock walks in as his defense lawyer? While I admit I’m new to the Daredevil bandwagon (I only just read the Bendis and Brubaker runs this year), he’s a character that deserves a bigger spotlight, and sure, a better movie. But give the old one a spin, and compare it to some of the terrible movies I mentioned earlier. Maybe you’ll see that you were a little too hard on it when you first saw it.

We’re back after the obligatory holiday break! And what better way to start off the new year than with a new comedy sketch! This one’s a bit different than most of our other ones. Generally speaking, we try only to write about what we know. Sometimes, though, something just strikes you as funny and you kind of have to roll with it. A few years back…actually quite a number of years ago, a friend of ours invited us to play a game of LARP with him. We were intrigued by the concept but mainly because it involved no small amount of violence and the potential for beating each other mercilessly with foam swords. Honestly, we had no IDEA what we were doing but realized quite fast that smacking each other with things was a pretty fun way to pass a Saturday. Okay. Long story short, things went bad on us (I remember lying on my back as Nathan and a tower shield pinned me down so everyone else could mercilessly bash me in the face until I cried) and the “boffers,” as we had come to know the foam weapons as, were put away.

While we were filming “THE DEADER YOU GET” and searching for props in the old basement studio, Chris started riffing an idea to turn our car battery prop into some sort of lightning bolt spell and thus was born the idea for this sketch. We went through several iterations of how this one was going to play out before we settled on the final one. At that point, the director in me kicked in and I decided that I wanted to wait until winter because the snow on the ground would make an awesome backdrop. Disaster struck when we didn’t get any snow last winter. So we stalled. And stalled. And stalled some more. Another Let Down grew and changed and FINALLY, we got a decent amount of snow. Enough to AT LEAST cover the ground we were walking on. So we painstakingly gathered up the crew and filmed what I felt was a complete success!

The astute viewer will note, however, that this video is not without its fair share of flaws. Mainly, these were due to a damaged lens cover. During the filming of “Hoop Dupe” one of our main crew members (not gonna say any names here, Chris) got tangled in the boom wire and the camera fell off the tripod. Luckly nothing was damaged EXCEPT the lens cover. It got itself trapped in ALMOST every frame of this month’s film and ruined a lot of the footage. As such, I had to do some HD editing that I’m REALLY displeased with but Paul and Chris say came out alright in the end. Nevertheless, this video is EXCEPTIONALLY funny and I have to give a large amount of credit to our impromptu extras, Dave and Katrina. Thanks to so many people for making this one a success!

Hardcore LARP
Starring: Brett Anderson, Kyle Brandt, Chris DiPastina, Casey Head, Jon Waugh
©2013 Coalition Films Ltd.

Okay, I’ll be honest, while I LOVED the Lord of the Rings film trilogy when it first came out, I hadn’t, until recently at the request of my lovely girlfriend, watched it in almost six years following my first experience with Clerks II. Kevin Smith summarized the trilogy so well (albeit vicariously through Jeff Anderson), that I felt no desire to watch them again. For AGES I would arrive at my DVD shelf, pull the disk off the shelf and stare at it for upwards of half-an-hour before ultimately replacing it and grabbing Star Wars instead. That all changed following the announcement of The Hobbit as a prequel series. That’s not to say I wasn’t a bit put off by certain parts of the announcement. For example WHY THE HELL does it need to be any more than ONE film? Frankly, I think that’s a question that we’re all asking ourselves right about now and HOPEFULLY, this review will help shed some light on what MIGHT be something of an answer.

For any who aren’t aware, ‘The Hobbit’ is a fantasy tale from J. R. R. Tolkien now adapted for cinema by the same man responsible for adapting Tolkien’s longer ‘Lord of the Rings’ work a few years ago, Mr. Peter Jackson. The story follows Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman of BBC’s ‘The Office’) as he tags along behind Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and a gaggle of dwarfs as they quest to reclaim their home from the villainous dragon Smaug (voice of Benedict Cumberbatch). ‘The Hobbit’ was no small undertaking as Jackson and Wingnut Films have elected to split the one book into THREE films and include material from much of Tolkien’s lesser known works. Owing in part, I’m sure, to the fact that much of this work was published by Tolkien’s son after the elder Tolkien’s death, it has sparked no small amount of controversy amongst ‘Rings’ die-hards, myself included. In short, Jackson has proven, once again, that he is up to the challenge and is determined to surprise even the hardest skeptic. So let’s get into it, shall we?

With ‘Rings,’ I was, as I am with most films, able to pick out some points that I am not particularly pleased with considering today’s standards. I know. It’s been the better part of a decade since the trilogy first presented itself to us and technology has come quite a surprising distance. Regardless, looking at films even like ‘The Hunger Games’ it’s pretty easy to illustrate where ‘Rings’ fell short in terms of CGI. I was happy to see that much of these problems had been addressed in ‘The Hobbit.’ Most prominently in my mind was Gollum (Andy Serkis reprising his role from the original trilogy). Although he plays a VERY small role in the general overall story this time around, I noticed that he actually looked somewhat natural in his environment this time. There was no unnatural halo around any of the CGI characters this time and it all felt to fit together much better.

My biggest fear when I heard that they were making ‘The Hobbit’ though was not the art. Frankly, I think I’d still have given the film high visual marks even if they hadn’t changed a thing from the first go-around. My dad puts it best: “The Hobbit was originally written as a bedtime story. An adventure. It’s not a war story. ‘Lord of the Rings’ came after and caused a subsequent rewrite to the original source material.” He’s right. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote the original text for ‘The Hobbit’ as a children’s story. Intended to be read to children in hospital. The ring wasn’t originally supposed to have any significance other than to make protagonist, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), invisible. Peter Jackson did such a fantastic job on ‘Rings’ with the epic battle sequences and whatnot that I was, justifiably I believe, nervous that he would try to turn the film into that as well. Now here’s where we get into why the films are being split into three parts. Dwarfs. I’ve been a fan of the Dwarfs ever since I first read ‘The Hobbit’ in fourth grade. My favourite was always whomever was telling a story at any given time. Much of the personality of the Dwarfs is illustrated through their love of storytelling. Is it necessary? Not at all. If I’d been in charge of cutting scenes, the film could have been done as a one-shot. But at this point, following especially Jackson’s botched attempt at remaking ‘King Kong’ we should be well aware of his absurd fascination with detail. Each event not covered by the original text, is illustrated through a story from one character or another. And there’s loads of information to cover. They only really touch on the events to come (that we’ve already seen) once or twice but I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of the foreshadowing. These references and conversations (many of which can be found in ‘The Book of Lost Tales’) add length to the film but not in a way that makes it unbearable. It just adds content and something that most casual fans wouldn’t get.

Okay, so it’s not another ‘Rings’ movie. It’s MUCH lighter in spirit. Sure there are some unnerving scenes. A couple battles (again told through Dwarf stories) and some pretty tense exchanges between Bilbo and Gollum. But that’s great. Jackson really shows off his filmmaking chops here in his ability to recognize a shift in tone and capture it just as well. In the end, yes, it’s just a fourth film of “a bunch of people walking to a flipping volcano” (or mountain in this case) but everything is just so much FUN! There’s no underlying terror to contend with. Honestly, it just feels good to be back in New Zeland and watching a bunch of familiar faces banter with each other once again. Ian McKellen, Ian Holm, Elijah Wood, and Hugo Weaving are just a few of the LotR alums who return and all fit in splendidly. I was impressed and once again, I have to give the IMAX people kudos for actually making 3D work. So how was it? I’m sure Jon will have something to add once he gets around to seeing it but I’m going to give it four hairy feet out of five. Not perfect, but REALLY close. You’ll get excited, you’ll laugh, you’ll almost DEFINITELY cry. Go see it. Seriously. You won’t regret a minute.

Location scouting on short notice is not always the easiest task. During the filming of “Do You Take Jace” we learned that sometimes, it’s just easier to adopt a guerrilla filming technique and just film as fast as possible before you get booted out of your location. Sometimes, though, you work with what you have. In this case, two of our main crew members work at the same place and we knew our boss would have no problem with us taking it over for a few hours on a Sunday night. The only problem is we didn’t decide that we wanted to do this sketch until the last minute. This meant that our filming window was right before release weekend. As it happened, the shooting window happened to fall on Paul and Chris’ birthday. Every year, we try to do something cool for them since their birthday is so close to Thanksgiving and they always seem to get dragged about by their parents on Black Friday so you can understand that we didn’t feel right about bringing them to a shoot on their birthday.

When we arrived at our location, in this case, the Jetpack Comics game room, the owner, Ralph, completely forgot that we were filming there that day. Fortunately Jon was first through the door (quite a bit ahead of the rest of us as he lives much closer) and made sure things were all set for us. Once again, and as you’ll notice when you watch, we spent quite some time fighting microphone problems. We’ve gotten accustomed to checking the mic between every shot but it sometimes clicks in and out during a shot and because we aren’t using noise canceling headphones, we sometimes don’t notice if that’s happened and we’ll print a shot that will end up needing audio recovery later. But we worked through it and for the most part it sounds alright.

The best part of this sketch, other than the subtleties that Paul wrote into the script, is the way that it showcases the backgrounds of all the Another Let Down crew members. Jon has an improv-comedy background which allows for a fluidity that we haven’t really been able to play with thus far and affords a surprising amount of wiggle room in the editing phase. Casey has a background in theater and from that, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to feel quite the same sense of continuity that we did on this shoot. So a shoot not without it’s share of difficulty (especially getting Paul to follow the rule of thirds…) but in the end a fairly successful bit of sillyness.

Ironically Employed
Starring: Zach Denoncour, Paul DiPastina, Casey Head, Jon Waugh
©2012 Coalition Films Ltd.