Got Game

I'd like to say we avoided the shopping mall on Black Friday... but yeah, we went there. 

We finally got to see Wreck-It-Ralph, which was playing at the mall's multiplex. Like Brave, the other animated movie we had seen in the last week, we were slightly underwhelmed by the film... it was fun, but I guess our expectations were too high (mine for Ralph, Sarah's for Brave). 

As expected, the best part of Ralph was seeing the recreation of the old-school video games... the ones that I sunk many a quarter in back in the Chuck E. Cheese days of the early 80s. There was a certain charm and quirkiness to these games, and I think the movie captured a bit of that spirit... even in the fictional title game. Ralph does his best Donkey Kong (I think they even game a cameo to that mullet-haired King of Kong game-master), and Fix-It-Felix is our man Mario. The voices for the movie were wonderful... the always pleasant John C. Reilly plays Ralph... I think I have yet to "see" him in a bad film--his voice brought the quality of this mainstream Disney fare up a notch... Jack McBrayer from 30 Rock does his best "golly gee whiz" for Felix, and Glee's Jane Lynch does her best Sue Sylvester in combat gear as Sergeant Calhoun--here's a fun trailer I just found with her giving a bit of history about gaming and the movie:



Calhoun represents a character from the second wave of games, which upped the pixels and violence... in real-life, this is the time I began to lose interest in video games... I preferred the quirky, stylishly designed Japanese 8-bit creations (still hold a soft spot for Q-Bert, Dig Dug, and Pac Man.... all represented in this movie, by the way). Nevertheless, I enjoyed seeing these characters from different ages and style interact. Where I thought the film started to drag was getting stuck in Sugar Rush, a candy-coated, children's game, which holds much of the plot and action for the movie... I think I would have preferred to see more turbo-ing... or, not to give anything away, game-jumping.

For the most part, Wreck-It Ralph was fun... the filmmakers obviously had a love for the subject matter. Celebrating that old school vibe, I double-checked and yes... that was members from the old Buckner and Garcia band who perform the title song... I still remember their early 80s cash-in Pac Man Fever... I have to admit, I have that album somewhere... and I still enjoy doing the Donkey Kong...

Game Changer

I've got chills... they're multiplying... but it's honestly more because of the election than Hurricane Sandy... having said that, it looks like there are a number of school closings in the Berkshires, so I am unsure what my day is going to look like tomorrow... 

Today was spent catching up on some work, the gym, the World Series (currently watching) and Meet The Press. While watching the latter (great roundtable discussion), I saw a preview for this upcoming film, which looks really entertaining... I hadn't heard of it before:

Wreck-It Ralph is Disney's newest 3D CGI movie, and it looks like a fun ride through some familiar territory for me... video games! Of course I'm talking about the "old school" days, when I handed over much of my free-time to such characters as Ms. Pac Man, Q-Bert, and Donkey Kong. Ralph in this movie is reminiscent of the king Kong... a bad guy, preventing the character from fixing a building in their game. The twist is that Ralph is having an existential crisis... he tires of his "job" and wants to be recognized as a good guy. From the trailer it looks like he jumps into a number of different games to find his way... what a creative concept, and fun to see some familiar games from the old days making cameos. 

The New York Times has a cool article in today's edition about how the filmmakers strived to make the old school video game look like it did back in my middle school days... wonder if my buddy Ralph Baer has heard about this film... Here's the link to check out the article.

Huh... just when you think it's "game over" for the movies, there is a whole slew of interesting, creative concepts on the way... from presidential biopics (Lincoln and Hyde Park on Hudson); the awesome James Bond, Daniel Craig (Skyfall); to movies about shih tzus-! (Seven Pyschopaths)... all look pretty entertaining.

Speaking of which... the San Francisco Giants just swept the Detroit Tigers! Wow, talk about getting your game on...

Related Links:

disney.go.com/wreck-it-ralph


"Disney’s New Hero Is So 1982: How ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ Revisits Retro Video Games," New York Times, October 26, 2012

Turning Over a "New" Leaf

I came across a pretty interesting movie trailer this morning, for one of the upcoming feature films from digital animation giant Blue Sky Studios:



I was impressed by the hint of well-executed CGI and enticing story, and then realized half-way through watching it that this looked mighty familiar! 


Last year I took at trip to Blue Sky's headquarters in Greenwich, Connecticut, for a look at the work environment and to meet its talented staff in advance of our Ice Age to the Digital Age: The 3D Animation Art of Blue Sky Studios exhibition. While there, I saw development sketches and character design for a movie adaptation of the acclaimed children's picture book, The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs by illustrator William Joyce. The designs looked fantastic... great, fantasy-themed artwork, and definitely something I could see Sarah enjoying. 


I remember talking to Blue Sky's founder Chris Wedge about the film, and he seemed excited to be directing the project (I guess Joyce has been a collaborator on several of the studio's films). Since then, it looks like they have changed the title of the film to Epic, and it is due to be released in 2013. One thing I notice is that the "style" of the animation looks a little different than what we have come to expect from the studio (i.e. Ice Age, Robots, Rio). It looks like a less caricatured film at times, although I see they still have the sense to avoid the "uncanny valley" effect: trying to make human characters look realistic, but ending up scaring the bejeezus out of viewers.


Well, I haven't read the book yet, but both it and the movie look very promising indeed. Fun to catch the inside look at the development of a feature film... and I thought some of my projects took forever to complete!

Force To Be With Reckoned With

I had a great time in New York City yesterday. The Spoken Word Almanac Project (S.W.A.P.) 2011 encore show went over very well, and we performed in a beautiful theater called Wild Project. This venue had a different feel than the Nuyorican Poetry Cafe, where we had performed our year in review show last month. Both sites had their advantages-- The Nuyorican is a renowned poetry club, where the audience really responded to our work; and Wild Project was more of a theater setting, with stadium seats and a separate lobby area (the venue actually reminded me of the former Main Street Stage theater in North Adams, Massachusetts, where I had performed over the last ten years as a company member).

Wild Project also had a huge back wall, where we projected my visuals. They looked great-- particularly the Debt Ceiling piece performed by poet Advocate of Wordz. For this poem, I chose to run footage I had shot of the debt clock in Manhattan. It was a more simple, "abstract" visual, and I find myself wanting to move more in this direction, when possible.

After our tech rehearsal in the morning, I had some time to kill before picking up Sarah at Grand Central Station. I decided to run over to The Museum of Modern Art and have a quick look at their latest offerings and permanent collection. The Diego Rivera show was interesting, and I also enjoyed looking at some of the Pop Art on display. I think this was the first time I had been back to the museum since their renovation, and the place really looks great. I even stumbled upon a unique video presentation-- it looked as if it was documenting an artist's day on dozens of screens lining the gallery space. I'll have to look more into it. As I said, this was a quick trip to get inspired, and I was happy for the reciprocal program between my museum and others, which lets me take in such things for free.

It was fun to do the show again after a couple weeks off. I spent some time talking with the producers about the next steps for 2012, and enjoyed hanging out with the performers after the show. Sarah and I got back to the Hudson Valley very late, and so today has been a rather sleepy, laid-back day-- perfect for watching movies.

On that note, here is a film-related clip from the December 17th S.W.A.P. performance at the Nuyorican. In 2011, filmmaker George Lucas once again updated his original Star Wars trilogy with enhanced computer generated imagery. Now, a lot of us were greatly inspired by these films growing up, and take great exception to their need to be updated... including yours' truly! I have a lot of problems with CGI in general-- it is so overused, and really distracts from the moviegoing experience, in terms of story and quality. Bring me back to the innovative days of the 70s/80s where such incredible sci-fi films had an organic quality, and just as much care has been put into their story!

The "Open Letter to George Lucas" poem, co-written by S.W.A.P. poets Adam "ShadoKat" Bowser, Justin Woo, and Caroline Rothstein, was a lot of fun to work on. I found some fun images, including a cryogenically frozen George Lucas-- take that! I hope he soon learns that we don't need his "excessive use of Force" (pun intended), and would like our childhood inspirations kept intact.

The poem following this is by the talented Scott Raven Tarazevits, and deals with a recent trip he took to Ireland to shoot an infomercial for the country's Tourism Bureau. As he filmed a scene about the local cuisine, where the producers had laid out an unnecessarily gluttonous feast, he opened the newspaper to find a story about the ongoing famine problem in Somalia. A little different in tone from the Star Wars piece, obviously, but just as interesting. We actually updated this one for the encore show, including a few personal photos from Scott's trip to make it more clear.

So, that's a wrap for another year of S.W.A.P. I once again enjoyed my time being a part of the artistic scene in New York City.