2010 of movies

Hey friends, did you have a SpoooOOOOooOOooooky Thanksgiving?  I sure hope so. I've held off on a lot of movie postings because I thought I was saving them for something else.  That may or may not be true.  Last year, I threw darts at the upcoming movie schedule, and checked on my predictions for the year before.  I bet I'm about to do it again!

I saw 27 releases of 2010, according to IMDB, and two of those are movies I worked on, so they might not count. I was so deluged with work in the second half of the year that my own movie-viewing took a real dive.  Collecting links to my projects is another subject, but the output from this year surpasses previous years in quality.  I'd recommend actually checking some of this stuff out!  This year, I managed to see ZERO of the movies on my 'not interested' prospectus, and almost everything on my A-List, with an appropriate gradient in between.

Okay, so top ten? Keeping in mind this is going to be more than a third of the new releases I saw this year, and I apparently haven't seen most of 'the critics'' favorites for the year:  The Town, The Book of Eli, Shutter Island, Buried, Inception, How to Train Your Dragon, Iron Man 2, Knight and Day, and...let's say Red and Scott Pilgrim. [[UPDATE:  Very happy to say that some late entries, True Grit and The King's Speech, certainly belong on this list more than some of the original entries]]

Worst Thing? The Last Airbender.  There's an essay from around the time of its release that I'll tack up here soon that elaborates, but it would be a remarkable feat for any other film to make so many perfectly wrong choices.  The source material is wonderful, and this was staggeringly un-wonderful in every way.

I just don't understand... Exit Through the Gift Shop & The Social Network.  At least with the latter I can comprehend how people can like it, although perhaps not why folks I've met have very seriously compared it to Citizen Kane.  With the former, I just couldn't find what was supposed to be awesome or surprising or...interesting.

Kind of disappointed by... Carlos, Frozen, Monsters, The Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Exactly what I might have hoped for... Catfish, Kevin Smith: Too Fat for 40!, Machete, Predators, Red.

2009's from last year's list I caught up on... include Whip It, In The Loop, Big Fan, 9, and The Road, in approximate order of enjoyment.

2010's I apparently missed... Toy Story 3, Black Swan, The King's Speech, Greenberg, Ghost Writer, The Fighter, Waiting for Superman.  I'm just guessing by now.  It doesn't seem like I've heard anyone talking about movies they've liked that I need to go see.

Coming soon: 2011 picks, bottled up one-line reviews and longer movie writing, roundup of places to see my stuff online, and a framed picture of a moose!  And I might watch Lost next year.

And by the by, my movie count seems to be at or near 1,740, which indicates that I got through about 228 movies this year, along with several TV series (which include Walking Dead, Rubicon, Eastbound and Down 1, Trailer Park Boys 1-4, Better off Ted 1, QI 1-2, An Idiot Abroad, Community & Modern Family, Avatar 1, Battlestar Galactica 3-4, The Wire 1, The Daily Show, and undoubtedly some others), and most of that was in the first six months of the year, prior to busy-ness with business.

The Others.

I watched this movie on my only trip to Andrew Norton's house.  I ruined it for him and Ben, because I jokingly guessed the twist in the first 20 minutes or so. Andrew, are you out there somewhere?  Anyone know where he might be?  Last time we talked he was en route to the middle east.  The e-mail addresses I had are bouncing back, but I'm hoping that's just because by now he should be home, discharged and doing something else.

Let's catch up, won't we?

After a slow start to the year in which I was ready to start making rent as a professional gambler, I landed some jobs doing video editing instead. Most of the prominent and interesting stuff is UCB-centric, including demo reels for turning live shows you can see at the UCBTLA into TV shows, including things called "Back Talk" and "Live Green or Die." I think those were in June, as was the start of an hour-long special for Comedy Central called "This Show Will Get You High," which bled over into July and was followed up by some work on a feature film adaptation of a UCB stage musical, Freak Dance.  I saw / taped the stage version at least half a dozen times and I'm jazzed to be part of the movie version.  That's going on now and probably will for a little while.  I'll also be shooting a pilot for a web series sometime next month.

New episodes of Better Radio are written and await recording.  We've got some great guest actors, well, not booked, but in vague agreement to do the show.

Some other stuff's getting written, just to keep me busy.

As always, other projects are brewing and broiling.  Shot a new short a couple weeks ago.  Contributing somewhat to Better With Thriller, had a question read out on Answer Me This that got Olly in trouble with his mum, folded a million t-shirts for Maximum Fun, trying to rev up something new which is the #1 reason you haven't seen 2-line reviews of the last 60 movies I've seen (I reckon we're up to at least #1681: Daybreakers), although I've written a couple longer essays about some movies that will go here or there, if there becomes a place, and I'm still doing some standup, although not with the frequency and drive that someone who's going to get anywhere doing standup ought to be getting up.  It's good fun though.

What else, what else?

If you're here in LA this weekend, I have honestly zero idea of what you'll get, but SOMETHING I've written will be read out at a place called Wordlab, this Sunday, Aug 1.  It's found at 3191 Casitas Ave, #156, Los Angeles, CA 90026 (EDIT: NO. NO IT WILL NOT.  THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELED.  DON'T GO TO IT.  IT'S NOT GOING TO BE THERE.  YOU'LL THINK YOU TRAVELLED THROUGH TIME AND THEN GET CONFUSED AND THEN QUIT YOUR JOB AND THEN SELL YOUR CAR AND THEN YOU'LL TURN TO THE STREETS AND NEXT THING YOU KNOW YOU'LL BE SELLING IMPORTANT SECRETS TO THE RUSSIANS.  DON'T MAKE THIS MISTAKE AGAIN.)

I don't think I know anyone in Chicago, except maybe a couple actors from Carpet Kingdom, and I don't think they check the site too often, but if they did, they could go see Matt Walsh and say hello in a week or two:

MaxFunDrive 2010

In a burst of productivity, I made three videos for the MaxFunDrive 2010 Blowout Finale Bash Marathon.  I shot almost everything on Wednesday afternoon and put 'em together Thursday evening.

I threw out my first idea as too impractical to shoot of and by myself and made this one instead, featuring three tropes-of-me.  All three were shot on my phone, and final cut had no problem with that.  It didn't like the HD stock footage from artbeats though.  That stuff caused a lot of problems.

This one is a video of the serious and heartfelt variety.  It's still a little bit silly.  As a video professional, I managed to shoot this with my camera/phone in portrait mode, rendering my travel to the actual locations where I listened to the episodes I mention useless. This also lead to the layering effect, so as to do something more interesting than EXTREME letterboxing.

A third video idea that came up during the first two, this is as deliberately low-fi and late night hack infomercial-y as can be.  I've attempted to keep continuity to a minimum, and it doesn't, strictly speaking, make a lot of sense.  I've been waiting ages to find a use for all these gigantic diamonds though.

It made me happy that all three had extra stuff I ditched to keep the time down, that they all went together quickly and easily minus dumb [GENERAL ERROR]s, and that I got such a reasonable looking product out of a telephone.

Also, today is the last day of the MaxFunDrive, so if you haven't given, you oughtta give. Every new person that gives takes one more nickel out of my pocket as part of the New Donor Challenge, which is rapidly exceeding the amount of spare change and bills I've been able to find around the house.

MaxFunCon 2 Zine

Hey MaxFunPals, here's the video of that thing.