Well hello thar!

I'm still busy but I am thinking about starting this up again.

Hello!

I am alive. I am busy. Thanks for stopping buy.

Client

This is dead on. Welcome to the VFX client vendor relationship.

Nine

If you've been reading this blog for a looooong time, you might remember me saying how much I loved Shane Acker's animated short "9" and you'll know how excited this must make me.


9 - Official Trailer

Face

JJ Abrams has not forgotten the face of his father.

Unfortunately, the way the work in the new Star Trek movie looks, I don't think there's any way this will go anywhere besides ILM. Too bad, I'd love to work on this movie.

Why

OMG. O ... M ... G. Why do things like this only happen when I'm not living in the US? Satch, Michael Anthony, Sammy Hagar and some guy from th Chilli Peppers are going on tour to support their album.


Chickenfoot

On Tour


OMG, how the hell did I not know about this?

Half

So, Mel Gibson is a little crazy, we all know it. Fine, who isn't? Obviously his wife of 30 years knows it, because she wants a divorce, and since the state of Southern California is oh so forward thinking and progressive, and since there's no pre-nup, she gets half of everything. Everything being a billion dollars. Biggest ... Divorce ... Evah. Good for her, she doesn't want to be married anymore, she can walk away with five, hundred, million, dollars. The thing is, she wants spousal support. Are you fucking kidding me? What kind of evil bitch takes five hundred million dollars, and then asks for alimony? Is there some diamond plated house you're afraid you won't be able to buy? Is there a small African country you're planning on supporting? Or perhaps overthrowing? Maybe she could take some of that five hundred million and HIRE A PUBLIC RELATIONS FIRM.

Away

Am super busy.

Trying to buy this house.

more pix

404

Best ... 'Page Not Found' error ... evah

Snap

Some asshole from AIG-FP decided to resign, on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. He made the mistake of trying to play the sympathy card. Big mistake. He gets absolutely fucking told by Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. It's a must read.

Apocalypse

I'm not sure what the hell they were thinking with this title (the original Manga is called 'Apocalypse Meow' and based on the Vietnam War) but this looks interesting.

Cat Sh*t One

Review : Watchmen

6 / 10

Up

Lizst

Hungarian Rhapsody #2 just came up on iTunes. WTF? I'm pretty sure that Lizst either sold his soul, or he had like, six or seven arms. I can play a little, and that song is ridiculous. It's so obscenely complicated that it's almost distracting. I'm trying to listen to the music and all I keep thinking is "how the fuck do you even play that with only two hands?"

40

I just ate a cheese scone ... with butter and jelly. That's about as close as it gets to pouring out a 40oz for my great aunt Al. If it was bread, she put jelly on it. Garlic toast? Pass the jelly. Good times.

Valley

So, it's sometime odd to work in this business, especially when you're working on something like the Lord of the Rings movies, or Avatar. With that kind of film the studio is always walking the line between keeping everything hush-hush to build anticipation and hype for the film and 'leaking' enough tidbits and on-set pictues and general info to keep the fan-boys happy. There's a 3D cinema blog called marketsaw that has heaps of Avatar related posts and it's always fun to check things like that out to see how wildly off base they usually are with their guesses and predictions. Anyway, that blog had a link to a really good youtube video on 'The Uncanny Valley' or 'Why Doing Character Work Is So Expensive'

List

Flight to Auckland : $XXX
One Night Accomodations : $XXX
4th row tickets : $XXX

Crossing Counting Crows off The List Of Bands I Love And Never Got Around To Seeing Live? Fucking Priceless.

May 21st in Auckland. Counting Crows and some British Band, The What? The Where? ....... The Who! that's it, The Who. I suppose we'll stay and watch them as well, unless there's something better to do. Let's see, who's left on the list?

1. Pink Floyd
2. Huey Lewis and the News
3. Aerosmith
4. Brad Paisley
5. Indigo Girls
6. Van Halen w/ Roth
7. Maynard Ferguson (crap I think he's dead)
8. Boston (crap, more dead guys)
9. Smashmouth
10. Bryan Adams

Waves

Last week I bought a couple of kids size wetsuits for RC and RJ. Nothing fancy, got 'em used on trademe.co.nz, a fancier NZ version of craigslist. I wouldn't compare it to ebay, anyway. They've got spring suits, but the spring ones just don't cut it here. Since the suits came, all they want to do is hit the beach with the boogie boards. We went out Saturday for a while to break in the new suits. I was at work for half the day on Sunday, but I was home early enough so we went out to eat and got home at about 7:00pm. "Can we go, can we go, canwegocanwegocanwego?" So we threw the stuff in the truck and hit it until we lost the sun. Not as nice as the three to four footers on Saturday, but still some twos and a lot of threes.

Fast forward to Monday afternoon at work. I get a random email from one of the compositors with the subject "is this you?" well, actually, yes it was me. Turns out that he was down at the beach at the same time taking some pictures and he had taken a few of the boys and me boarding.

Before I get to the pictures I've got to give props to

Karim Sahai, Travel Photographer

whithout whom I could not bring you these amazing pictures

The Boys patiently waiting.

RC and I catching a wave.

RJ dropping in on a nice one.

They're going to be ready for learner surfboards pretty soon.

Steam

Wow


Awesome steampunk case mod

Review : Burn After Reading

I've been pretty remiss in doing movie reviews for the last copule months so I'm going back through some of the one's I've missed.

I was pretty hesitant seeing this after the fiasco of a movie that was the last Cohen brothers offering but hey everyone deserves a second chance right? Especially a second chance with a cast like this. Well they almost lost me with this one, I wanted to not like it. There's quite a few things going on, different plot lines, but the reality is, this is movie about how fucked up people are. Regardless of their station in life, or their circumstances. People are not only fucked up, but they bring it on themselves.

Now, however true that maybe, it's not exactly a recipe for a great movie. Frankly it makes for a stupendously grating movie, no matter how much humor you try to shoehorn into it, it's a movie about idiots. I found myself rather unsympathetic to, well, everyone in the movie. Except maybe for Malkovitch, but his ex CIA agent Osbourne Cox is pretty unlikable anyway. It's a whole movie of anti-heroes.

J.K. Simmons and David Rasche, however, were the saving grace of this movie as sort of the Deux ex Machina of the film, watching the idiocy unfold from afar. They don't have a lot of screen time, but, man, those two were the best part of the movie. Not only that, the way they look at the goings on, helps you look at it in a way that you can appreciate the humor in the situation. J.K. Simmons in particular is brilliant. If you missed it in the theatre, and judging from the box office, you probably did, you should still give this one a try at home.




Five out of Ten