List

Ok, so the summer is pretty much over, although because I'm not in school anymore, the changing of the seasons seems considerably less significant than it once did. Even so, I'm going to take this opportunity to enumerate my favorites things I did, saw, experienced this summer. I'm going to pick ten things, but as I write this sentence I really have no idea how many things I'm going to come up with, that number is subject to change. Also, these things may or may not be in some sort of qualitative order, because, as I said, I'm just coming up with this things as I go. So, without further ado, a list by me.

10. Race for the Galaxy

Matthew bought this game on a whim, and it quickly became our favorite game of the summer. Well it was my favorite game of the summer. It's super complicated when you're first learning to play, but tons of fun and with loads of replayability, it's a great little game.


9. The 48 Hour Film Festival
Although I haven't spoken about it much on here, I participated in the 48 Hour Film Project with some of my classmates from the film department. The movie we made sucked a lot, but it was a lot of fun to make, and it lead to me reconnecting with Brian Mayer, who graduated last year and was my greatest ally in the filmmaking process. I also worked with him briefly on his project Chester's Tales.

8. Reading. Lots.
I read more this summer than I probably did in the totality of my college career. Sadly, that is not much of an exaggeration. I read the last 3 Harry Potter Books (which I may have mentioned once or twice on this blog), 2 Chuck Klosterman Books, 2 Lev Grossman Books (more on this guy later), American Gods and a whole bunch of Trade Paperbacks (This isn't a pretentious way of saying comic book, by the way. A comic book would be a single issue, a trade paper is a collection of a run of issues in a single volume). Reading. It's not for breakfast any more.

7. Night Riding.
This is one of the few other things I've mentioned on this site before, but in case you missed it, usually Matt Buchheit and I take a leisurely bike ride around Cape Girardeau in the dead of night (which in case you didn't know, is between 8-10pm). There's just something about riding during the night that is more fun than riding during the daylight. Also riding with a friend is much more fun than riding solo. I recommend it.

6. Writing with Bobby Dianora.
Rob D and I wrote a spec script of the Office for a writing competition. It was fun writing with someone who is almost as competent a writer as I am (just kidding... not really though. But seriously, Rob's a good writer. But seriously, I'm better). It was also nice to know that I actually can write an entire episode of a TV show (with help), since that's kind of what I want to do for a living.

5. Buying an Electric Guitar.
I have an electric guitar. His name is Claude Teschreddes. Pete and Kaylen are his godparents. He is currently a very a quiet lad, because I have yet to buy an amp for him. One day he will find his voice and on that day, the world will be rocked.

4. Return of Food Night.
Toward the end of the summer, Food Night came back with a vengeance. We've been batting 1000 since we started cooking again, and by only having a food night every couple of weeks or so, we're not getting tired of them. Hopefully this trend continues.

3. The Magicians.
I read this book called the Magicians. It was amazing. It was like Harry Potter if Harry Potter wasn't for kids. Actually, I don't think that's really a fair assessment. Lev Grossman, the author of the Magicians, wrote a book about what would happen if magic existed in the real world. The world we live in. JK Rowling wrote books about what would happen if magic existed in a world where fantasy novels didn't exist. JK Rowling didn't have a lot of rules for her world, and those that she had, she usually ignored when convenient. Lev Grossman had rules in his world. He had real people in his world. People that had to face the burden and ethical implications of near omnipotence. It's an amazing book. Anyone who's a fan of fantasy or good books in general should read this book.

2. Movies.
I saw a lot of good movies this summer. To name a few; The Brother's Bloom, 500 Days of Summer, Away We Go, GI Joe (Yes, it was good. Deal with it) and Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. Every time I see a movie like this, it makes me realize how much I love making movies, and how much I miss that process.

1. St. Louis.
I spent a lot of time in St. Louis this summer. I am, by my own choosing, underemployed. For the majority of the summer I was working twice a week and since I had so much free time, I spent significant amounts of time hanging out with my friends and family in St. Louis. Specifically, hanging out with Pete, Kaylen, Steve, Mary and their friends was hella fun. St. Louis is a fun city to visit and has many restaurants that I would eat at all the time if I lived there. The City Museum is an incredible place to visit, as is the Zoo and the Brewery. Yup. St. Louis roolz.

So yeah. That's my list. If I forgot anything that was awesome that I did this summer, let me know.

5 Movies

I've seen 5 movies in the last 7 days. Not quite as impressive a feat as what my good friend Pete is trying to accomplish, but Pete is a far more ambitious, and let's face it, better, man than I.

Tuesday, August 4: "Five Hundred Days of Summer"

I was super excited to see this movie, mostly because of the leads; Mr. Jo Go Lev and Zooey "the Face Crusher" Deschanel. Ever since my first viewing of Brick (which was followed by what can only be described as the most epic running through an alleyway I've ever participated in), I've been securely nestled in the Joseph Gordon-Levitt camp. He is an incredibly gifted actor and can elevate the credibilty of a movie just by being in it (more on this later). Zooey Deschanel is pretty amazing too for the obvious reasons. Anyway, the movie... yeah. It was good. I imagine a lot of reviewers use the word quirky when describing this film, they would not be wrong. Long story short, I liked this movie, but not as much as I thought I would. It made me like Zooey Deschanel less, because her character is such a... I really don't know how to describe her. She's not evil. She's just sort of mean, but not on purpose, or not really maliciously. Anyway. Good flick.

Wednesday August 5: "Knocked Up"

People kept telling me to see this movie. They said it was Judd Apatow's best movie. That it was really good. After seeing it, I've decided that I don't really like Judd Apatow much. I really like Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd, so I enjoyed the movie, but I felt it was a case of putting funny people in front of a camera and hitting record.

Thursday August 6: "Funny People"

I was not bored during this movie because, again, Seth Rogen is a funny man, but this was a bloated, long, self-indulgent film that seemed more about name-dropping and showcasing the "dramatic range" of Adam Sandler than having a particularly interesting or entertaining story.

Sunday August 9: "GI JOE"

This movie was much better than it had any right to be. It was a really decent action movie. Do not believe the trailer. It is not about robot suits. It is about Jospeh Fucking-Gordon-Fucking-Levitt (-Fucking). That's right. Jo Go Lev is in GI Joe. You know who else is? Jonathan Price (that actually used to mean something at some point I'm sure, but now having J-Price in your movie is almost like having Jon Voight in your movie, but slightly better). Anyway, this movie is all about the bad guys. Sienna Miller is totally hot the entire time. Storm Shadow is totally a bad-ass the entire time and Christopher Eccleston is totally Scottish the entire time. They kind of steal this movie away from that Stockard Channing dude (who isn't that bad, even though he is totally a dude).

Tuesday August 11: "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"

This movie is still good. I've seen it three times. I really like watching this cast work. It is just a ridiculously talented group of people, and I'm super excited to see what Bill Nighy brings to the table in the next installment (Prediction: A whole heaping helping of kicking your ass in the face).

Potterwatch 2009

I finished book 7 last night. It was the second time I had read the book and there were a lot of things that I had forgotten from my initial read, which happened 2 years ago, in about 14 hours.

I was pretty hard on Deathly Hallows after I first read it. I was pretty angry at the ending, and the way Mrs. Rowling handled a lot of the exposition. I'm still not thrilled by either, but I didn't hate the book as much the second time. One thing that bothered me greatly was how passively the plot moves for the first half of the book. Until about halfway through the book, we are subjected to a plodding, slow moving slog of a plot. Everything that happens to Harry and co. is because of something they happened to overhear, or something they guessed about and got lucky enough to get right. It sort of feels like they are treading water until they are, inexplicably, tossed a bone by the writer, at which point the plot sort of ambles forward, then halts again. This kind of writing bothers me. I dont' think it's necessarily bad, I just don't care for it. I like my protagonists to know what's going on, and if they don't know, then they at least should have the good sense to be entertainingly flustered. That being said, there are a lot of really cool scenes in Deathly Hallows. I just wish they were as tautly paced at the beginning of the book as at the end.

I understand why it has to move slow, mind you. Voldemort's regime change, to have any sense of legitimacy, has to move slowly. So that's why they spend weeks in Grimmauld Place and months in the tent. This gives some crediblity to a secret coup that happens within the magical world.

The info dump at the end of the book is going to be somewhat problematic when it comes to adapting this book into a movie. There are pretty much three straight chapters of exposition at the end of the book, all fairly interesting exposition, some of which we've been waiting for since Sorceror's Stone, but yeah... that's going to be tough. Also, Harry's speech to Voldemort at the end is pretty much bull shit. The revelation that Draco Malfoy was the true "owner" of the Deathstick, pretty much completely diffuses the tension of the scene by making it a Scooby Doo moment. Really all of the wand nonsense in Book 7 is a bit troublesome. I suppose that wandlore is a fairly niche branch of magic and it probably wouldn't be covered much in Harry's previous magical education, but still, for a concept that is so important to the events of book 7, and is apparently a somewhat basic concept of wands, it seems like poor planning to have never mentioned it until this book.

I've said it before, and I shall probably continue to say it every time I talk about this book, but the fact that Aberforth is first introduced in book 7, even though he's apparently been in Hogsmeade for the duration of Harry's education is beyond ridiculous. Surely someone would've known of Aberforth's connection to Dumbledore and at least mentioned it at some point during Harry's 6 previous years at Hogwarts.

Anyway, I liked Deathly Hallows much more this time than my first time, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what Steve Kloves does with the source material.

Scenes I'm most looking forward to:

1. Graveyard in Godric's Hallow (They better not be polyjuiced during this sequence. This could be a real tearjerker of a scene if we get to see the kids, and not some actors we have no connection to).

2. Xeno's House (The desperation and sadness in Xeno's betrayal of Harry could be another extremely potent scene if handled with the kind of subtlety and emotion that these filmmakers demonstrated so ably in HBP).

3. Gringotts Break-in (Goblins! Dragons! Action! Burning Treasure!)

4. Battle of Hogwarts (No explanation necessary)

5. Dobby's death (Probably the most heartless killing in an entire book or heartless killing).


Things they need to change from the book for the movie not to suck:

1. The fact that Harry and Co. are either polyjuiced or under the invisibility cloak in every scene.

2. Ron and Hermione's kiss. ( I am of the opinion that Ron should sack up, and put the snog on Hermione and not the other way round).

3. Wand nonsense.

4. Harry's ridiculous speech to Voldemort.

Anyway, I'll try to go easy on the Potter posts for a while. I'm pretty sure when Deathly Hallows part 2 comes out, I'll re-read the whole series and have all kinds of new insights (but more likely, I'll just make the same observations I've made previously and act like they're new).