Simply Marvelous

Still animating, still making progress. After doing that action scene, I've realized that, though relatively much simpler, animating dialogue-heavy scenes is painfully tedious and pretty boring. Just gotta get them done and get to the meat.
Our internet is finally up and running again, though I'm thinking I may continue to lay low with my online activities a bit longer to keep focused on Fan Film.

Mom and I went and saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls on Thursday night. I was surprised that there was nobody else in that theater when the movie's still so new, but it's always nice to have a whole theater to yourself.
As I mentioned before, I'm not the hugest Indy fan. I only saw the movies a couple times when I was younger, so I guess the nostalgia factor most people have with the movies isn't quite there for me. I recently rewatched the original trilogy and though I enjoyed them, they didn't fully do the trick for me. I get and appreciate that they're a big nod to the old serials, but the cheese level kept getting pretty high at times (especially in Temple of Doom) and that always tends to bug me. I think without Harrison Ford's performance, I probably wouldn't have liked them much at all, but that's just me.
That said, I really enjoyed Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls. Sure, there were things I didn't like (the nuke scene, all the CGI animals, the killer ants, and everything between the Tarzan bit and the waterfalls), but I did end up really liking it. I won't give any details incase anyone reading hasn't seen it yet, but it was fun.
It amazed me how it was such a big gathering of sci-fi/fantasy movie stars. I mean, not only do you have Ford, who is both Indy and Han Solo, you've got people representing Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Transformers, Beowulf, Hellboy, and possibly my personal favorite brief appearance, though not sci-fi or fantasy, was the Janitor from Scrubs himself, Neil Flynn. That cracked me up.

Yesterday we went and saw The Incredible Hulk. I was nervous, I didn't like any of the trailers for the movie, I thought they were terrible. To my surprise, I loved the movie. I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed it. I thought the effects were great, but I'm worried how they'll look on DVD. CGI almost always looks better on film, but then looks really fake on DVD, in my opinion at least.
I even had a nerdy moment during the final fight when I realized I was sitting there slackjawed.
I'm surprised I'm saying this, but The Incredible Hulk is right up there with Iron Man. The movies share the feeling of a deeper world by acknowledging the existence of other superheroes and even appearing in each other's movies. It opens thing up SO much. Before this, the closest thing I can recall is a mention of Metropolis in one of the Batman movies and a mention of Gotham in Superman Returns. The result is that instead of just having Marvel movies, we now have a series of movies taking place in the Marvel Universe. I can't wait for The Avengers.
It's time for DC to step it up. I loved Superman Returns and Batman Begins and The Dark Knight looks amazing, but it's time to open up the Universe.

I got a surprising and awesome note on MySpace the other day. It turns out I was the 20,000th friend added to Stan Lee's MySpace page and will be receiving a personalized autographed prize signed by Stan Lee himself. How insanely cool is that? Expect pictures when it arrives.