Student films suck

The UCF Film School Capstone Screening was tonight. Don't know if I Capitalized that right, but them's the breaks. Capstones, as far as I can tell, are the final film projects for the production students at the college. Matt, my roommate and future filmmaker, went first with his capstone "Macguffins & Monsters," which I helped write. It turned out pretty well. There was a last minute rewrite that I wasn't aware of until I saw the movie, but this pass added centurion whales so I can't complain much. I asked Matt for a copy to send to Dan, but Matt apparently isn't done tweaking with it yet.

Unfortunately the films continued after his. The film following Matt's was a woman staring into the distance for twelve minutes. For those of you who have never been to a student film screening, don't. There are two possible outcomes for any given student film: either it'll try to be funny, or it'll try to be depressing. The former may succeed in actually showing some form of competence for comedy, while the latter may succeed by driving you to cut yourself to get out of watching the film in its entirely. Thankfully there were 100% less films involving suicide than we were forced to experience in recent years' screenings. To compensate, this batch included 100% more flying bone pinata dildos.

This round of capstones included documentary films, of which there were blessedly few. They were tolerable, but someone's idea of a film was fifteen minutes of their vacation to China without any hint of a narrative. One subset of the film students experimented with 3D. That's all well and good, except when the 3D doesn't work. This goes double for the last of the 3D filmmakers, whose project consisted of him doing jumping jacks while the director swiveled one or both of the cameras around. The last film before the intermission was a beautifully shot piece that had something to do with elephants where nothing at all happened.

After a dozen or so we had an intermission where free hotdogs and hamburgers were served; this was not enough to sway Andrew or me into staying. We went to Bojangles instead. I had a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit which was pretty good, and Andrew ordered the adamantium berry biscuits. Matt mentioned the kids from the capstones were going to see Star Trek after the screening. I agreed with Andrew that might be more movie in one day than we would really be willing to experience.

I'm not very good arguing a point

In an effort to link this post with one preceding it: Coraline was good. It took chances other films aimed at similar audiences don't take, but stretched out in the middle making me wait for shit to kick in gear. Interestingly enough, the average age of the showing we went to was around 22, with a solitary six-year-old bringing down the average a little while also being the only person there under the age of 18.

After seeing Coraline, the realization came to me that there's nothing I want to see until Watchmen comes out. For some this might be seen as a boon - I could be doing anything else besides blowing $10 to sit still for two hours - but for me it's a down note. I like going to see movies. I like going to see movies with my friends, I should say. I'm severely disinclined to go to the theater alone; I may as well stay home and pop in a DVD. Meanwhile, not seeing a movie does not mean I will do something else instead. Eliminating cinema does not equate to me taking up mountain biking, for instance.

Soon after defining the movie-going void that stretched until 03.06.09, I found this piece concerning views voiced by Alan Moore, creator and writer for Watchmen. My enmity for this man deepens as time goes on. Is there a bigger hypocrite in comics? Please, tell me so I can add to my repertoire of vitriol. His points are essentially: 1) movies suck, 2) comic book movies suck, and 3) comics themselves suck, with two additional inferred points 4) you suck for liking them, and 5) I rule.

Y'know, I was gonna get angry. Angry over the words of an old English hippie. Mr. Moore may have been burned by the movie industry for his entire professional career (either due to or despite his decisions concerning his involvement), but at the end of the day he's going to get a fat residuals check for the work on a movie that he didn't do. Moore spent 0 hours on the set coaching the actors, 0 hours consulting the director or producers, and 0 hours editing, fine-tuning, or even writing the screenplay. If the Watchmen movie is bad, he can say he had nothing to do with it; if the Watchmen movie is good, I can say he had nothing to do with it. Either way, he gets paid*.

He's a detractor, not a creator.

* To be fair and a bit more precise, Dave Gibbons (artist of Watchman) gets paid, as Alan Moore will abdicate any money he'll receive from the film to Gibbons, the same situation that occurred with V for Vendetta. Gibbons was heavily involved with the shaping of Watchmen, so if anyone deserves praise or residuals for their work on the movie, it's him.

Gonna see Coraline tonight in 3D

EDIT: Damn this YouTube. I had to edit my blog template to make this video fit.

EDIT2: Further damn Blogger. Now I feel the need to customize everything.

What blogs were made for

Went and saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this afternoon. I had to leave work in a mad dash because the showing I was invited to tag along to was at 5:15. Unfortunately they had me hauling around $50k worth of computer equipment and I didn't get done until around 4:45, and I had a half-hour drive ahead of me. Luckily my roommate bought my ticket and left it at the service counter, so at least I didn't have to worry about that. Not that I had to worry about ticket availability; there was maybe two dozen people in the theater, which was nice.

Anyway, IJatKotCS (a.k.a. Indiana Jones and the Longest Acronym and Movie Title for an Indiana Jones Movie Since Temple of Doom) gets a 3 out of 5 from me. It was good but not great - which for an Indiana Jones movie ranks it just above the aforementioned Temple of Doom in the Tal Lexicon of Cinema - and lost points for good but out-of-place CG and unoriginal sci-fi elements in a pulp action movie. I don't have a problem with Shia LeBeouf as an actor - since I haven't seen him in much because he hasn't been in a whole lot yet people seem to have a LeBeef with him.

Afterward we went to dinner at Sonny's. For the uninitiated, Sonny's "Real Pit B-B-Q" offers a variety of barbeque items, from sliced pork to pulled pork to pork on a stick. Most of their meat selections have an all you can eat offering for some amount of money more than the regular dinner. They were advertising a special, "All You Can Eat Pork & Chicken $7.99". I don't know about anyone else, but I interpreted this as being what, if I wished, I could get either pork or chicken all you can eat for like $3 off.

I was wrong. The deal was AYCE pork and chicken. As in both at the same time. Cue the following:

Me: "So if I'd gotten chicken that I wasn't going to eat anyway, [my bill] would be cheaper."
Waitress: "That's right."
Me: "So can't you give me half a bird and knock like three bucks off?"
Waitress: "...I'll see what I can do."

At least she was cool about it. It just killed me that, for getting food I didn't intend to eat, it was cheaper than paying for the food that I actually wanted.

I hope this blog doesn't turn into my escapades with food. That wouldn't shoot my self-esteem all to hell or nothin'.