Honestly the ham is the thing that weirds me out, pineapple is awesome.

Oh nice, I went to school in Van, I miss it.

I've grown accustomed to the idea that if I haven't seen something inside 2-3 weeks after release, I'll know at least most of the major plot points and characters just by browsing this forum, regardless of if it's a specific thread or not.

Picked up my new happy fun times lens today. Olympus 17mm F1.8.

The obligatory "shooting what happens to be directly in front of me at the time I get home" tests.

I love this thing.

Personally, Blomkamps 5 minute, or whatever it was, Halo short film was more than enough to prove to me that it would work in spades, but the studio still pulled the funding and refuses to put it back. So we sit and wait for them, as usual, to get their head out their ass.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-

-facepalm-

No, I watched all of them. But I'm just saying when you're part way through the series, you literally can't step back and see the whole story to understand that specific films place in the overall arc, which is the only way it will make sense on a first viewing. And yes, I realize what I just said is a paradox, which is the point.

You just assume I refused to engage? I went into this desperately hoping I would love them, I tried, I wanted them to be awesome. But what they gave me was so obtuse and impenetrable I couldn't. There was nothing there to engage with.

Now, and here's where I think we might be missing each other. I'm not saying all that stuff ISN'T there. When you watch all five, then step back and think about it for a while and actively try to deduce what was going on, sure you could probably parse something similar to what you said earlier. But my point is, that the actual films, that 25 minutes of actual movie they gave us, had almost nothing inside of it that actively engaged me or made me want to invest my time to figure out what was going on. There was nothing I could actually hook onto to make me interested. So when all was said and done I had 5 short tableau's that made no sense, no characters I could be interested in, and nothing to make me care about anything that happened.

Honestly the more I'm thinking about this, the more these feel like an improv game we used to play in high school. You would quickly come up with a story and then have 4-5 stationary tableau's to tell the story. The problem is the story this is trying to tell is way to complicated, with way to much unexplained backstory, that each individual tablaeu just becomes this mess of bodies flung over top of each other. And sure if you go into it expecting a Sherlockian mystery that you are going to have to sit down and parse apart each individual persons costume, movement and facial expression in order to understand whats going on, then I'm sure you had a great time. But I didn't, I don't think you should HAVE to put in that much work to understand even be mildly engaged with whats happening.

Granted, that probably puts me in a lower class of film goer (In some peoples minds. I had a friend in high school who would absolutely be calling me a simpleton and a mindless splosion movie lover for what I just wrote), but I guess it's just personal taste and what you happen to believe a movie is supposed to give you vs. what you should be expected to read into a movie.

As far as Ark, well... it has actual characters that we meet and can be interested in, so that alone puts it ahead of this (for me )

This.

The Underwater Realm. (Spoilers Ahead)
http://theunderwaterrealm.com/

I debated not even talking about this, but I think there's at least a little bit of something to discuss here.

The underwater realm is a series of 5 short films set in various time periods going back in time, from Modern Day back to 149BC, all with the same general structure, someone falls in ocean, they meet "mermaids", end of short.

From what I hear this was shot on a shoestring budget ($200 thousand something like that) and all the underwater stuff is practically done, apparently the bts stuff is pretty cool. I'm going to go watch it after I finish writing this, namely because I don't really think a film should get a pass on anything simply because it was hard to make. So on to the actual films.

Are they good?

Simply put... no.

They are intensely ambitious in their technical aspects, but from a story standpoint it feels like something I would have written in high school. They very clearly have an entire world built up that they know and understand as far as the culture and society of these "Mermaids" (<more on the quotations in a sec) but almost none of that is actually translated to the screen, and what is there is bogged down in it's own obtuseness. It very much feels like the filmmakers forgot the audience hasn't read the world building bible.

So what we end up with are these very short films (With nearly no dialogue I should add because....water, you know) that have almost no substance to them. The first one, the modern day one, is set up as a found footage thing, that is nearly 3 and a half minutes of this couple freediving about 6 frames of a mermaid, and another minute of the camera being put on a shelf. That's it.

And it really doesn't go anywhere from there. As you move through the films you begin to see more and more of the Mermaids, and they start to interact with the humans that have drowned, but it's all superficial or so bogged down in it's own world building that it either means nothing, or is so confusing as to be effectively a coffee and bagels moment (Of which there were many).

Now about the "Mermaids", when I first heard of this project years ago, I had hoped they were going to do some sort of really cool thing with the Mermaids, maybe make them dark and terrifying (Which thankfully it seems, that slot is still open for me, HAHA!) or at least do something different. But alas, as far as I tell, their "Mermaids" are essentially Ocean Vampires. They are simply tribalish humans that live underwater, and they can turn humans into mermaids by...  cutting them and then...uh... making out with them...really really hard... and maybe there has to be a ring of other Mermaids singing Kumbaya around them...like I said, they very clearly have a whole lot of world building done... that makes zero fucking sense or is useful in any way in these films. So the so-called Mermaids... are really just not... I don't even fucking know man, just not a good thing.

Apparently, if the countless youtube comments proclaiming so are to be trusted, they already have several feature length scripts in this world that they are trying to get funded, which doesn't surprise me.

And to which I say... hell yes, you guys. I probably won't watch them unless you show me some serious improvement in the story department, but god dammit you guys go make your super ambitious indie movies.

I will say though, for being an indie project on a super tight budget being this ambitious, they are rather pretty for the most part. You can definitely feel the tight budget in the lighting and camera work (*cough*acting*cough*) but on the whole they are very pretty.

In conclusion, I would say give these a pass if it weren't for the obvious technical achievement of making nearly 25mins of movie, most of which is shot practically underwater. If that is of no interest to you, you can pretty much just move along content in the knowledge you haven't missed much.

A bunch of us were chatting about Tron Legacy in the chat yesterday and it gave me a hankering to rewatch it. So I did.

It's been a while since I rewatched it, so it's kind of interesting actually.

First off I actually really rather like this movie. It's stunningly gorgeous, the soundtrack is obviously one of the best music-type-things ever made, and the production design is b-e-a-uuuutiful...  and Olivia is smoooking hot and yet ridiculously cute throughout.

Although the movie is beautiful, when it came out I remember there being a huge out lash from people about the CLU/youngening of Flynn CG, and at the time I didn't think it was that bad, I actually defended it pretty extensively. However now, I do see it, it's not great, it's very "Mass Effect 4", good work, but decidedly video gamey. (However my argument of it not being as big of a deal for CLU because he's meant to be a program still holds a little bit of water for me personally, although there's now that little voice in the back of my head going, but why is he the only program that looks like that? Which is fair enough. It's a tough call.)

One thing that really stuck me this time though that i hadn't noticed before is how... playful... innocent... neither word really captures it, but just adorably cute Quorra is. She has this wonderful innocence to everything she does. She definitely has a huge Kaylee factor (in that if she believes something is real and happening than I damn sure believe it too) throughout which really helps some of the more ridiculous stuff she has to do...and coat over the less than spectacular acting of Sam.

Now on that note though. I don't think that's entirely the actors (Sam's) fault. Nothing else jumps to mind that I have seen him in besides this so I can't compare, but I did really notice this time around how much of the "dialouge" is entirely pointless screaming "NOO" "STOOOOP "GIVE HER BACK" etc etc that really doesn't lend itself to not being campy. I'm not sure if I've just matured since I last saw this, but thoughout the entire movie there were constantly moments where the moment would have worked infinitely better as just a look or a nod instead a full out line, it honestly started to really bug me part-way through.

That being said, I don't think the story is AS WEAK as a lot of people make it out to be, it's definitely not amazing and hits a lot of stock beats, and definitely slips up at the end, but there is a complete story under there (which is more than a lot of movies can say) and I do really enjoy it.

Also "I fight for the users." works like so much gangbusters it's almost scary.

We had an absolutely beautiful day here, so I thought I'd try out my newest toy on the walk to work.

The Olympus 15mm F8.0 Body Cap Lens. I love this thing. I really do. If you don't know what it is, it's a micro 4/3rds lens that is nearly literally just mounted inside a body cap. The end product is a little bigger than an actual body cap, but not by much. It's got a little focus slider under the lens for when you want to focus in close, but it also has an infinity focus lock that'll pretty much put everything past a meter or so in focus. So you can basically just throw it on, and walk around shooting everything without having to worry about this massive bulky lens sticking off the front off your really nice camera body. Basically it turned my GH2 into a point and shoot. The only downside is that it's locked at F8.0 so you really need to have some light in order to get anything decent, though I hesistate to say it's really a huge downside because the awesome thing about this lens is that it only costs 50 bucks (I got mine for $42, sales baby!).

So anyways, thought I'd run it through some paces and I gotta say, I'm really impressed. It's probably not a lens that's gonna win you any awards, but to be able to just turn your really nice dslr body into a point and shoot to just wander around with it without worrying is amazing.

Here's the top pick from the walk to and home from work today. Most of them are kinda blurry, but that's because 90% of the photos are took while literally walking down the street, not even stopping, so that's on me, not the lens (But I wasn't really trying too hard, I was having fun)

(These are touched up and pushed pretty far colour wise with RAW cause why not, if anyones curious I can post the untouched versions)

Image dump (Click for bigger):

And probably my favorite from today:

Like I said, I'm really rather impressed by this little doodad.

I also did a quick test with this thing on one of my extension tubes and it looks like it could be really nice for doing some super macro stuff. Will update when I have a chance to do some proper tests.