Archive for Blogging

  • “Love The Way You Lie” music video

    August 9th, 2010

    On Music Mondays I write about music.

    “Love The Way You Lie” by Eminem feat. Rihanna. Who’s that in the video? That be Megan Fox and Dominic Monghan. Warning: this is an intense song and violent video. What do you think?

    August 9th,2010 Blogging, Music Mondays, Video | Sections: , , , , , | No Comments

  • This one time, at Bandcamp…

    August 9th, 2010

    On Music Mondays I write about music.

    Last week I introduced you to Bandcamp and posted my single “Last Dance” on there. Now I’ve listed all my music to date on Bandcamp, which I love for its amazing ability to drop the song into Facebook, MySpace, WordPress, Twitter, Typepad, Blogger, LiveJournal and more.  In the case of your blog, you can select different sizes and even little visual players.

    For example, check out the equalizer that plays with “Disguise, bubbles with “(Nothing But My) Heartbeat”, abstract 3D art for “Dirty Step Upstage” and the flowers that pop up with “Who’s That Girl”. Just don’t play them all at once or you’ll have an awful racket!

    August 9th,2010 Blogging, Music Mondays | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments

  • August is production month

    August 8th, 2010

    Funday Sundays is a diversion from the rest of the week.

    This month is turning out to be quite the whirlwind. After a family holiday to Maine, I had a four day trip to my parent’s home in Minnesota to help out at the house and do a tiny bit of relaxing.  Now the vacation is very certainly over and I have found myself racing at full speed until my graduate program in New York starts in September.

    After spending the last two days packing up most of my stuff, this is what the rest of August looks like for me:

    August 9-14: You’ve heard of my Catwoman Summer Project right? Well, it requires costumes, props, locations, crew and talent. I’ve been slowly working on all that, but this week it will get DONE!

    August 15-18: Assuming all of the above is completed, this will be the time to focus on fine-tuning the scripts, drawing storyboards, making shot lists and call sheets. It’s the blueprint from which the shoot is based.

    August 19: Location Recce with my crew.  This is where you go and check out the places you want to shoot and work out any lighting or sound issues.  Hopefully it will be a pleasant day full of Chicago sightseeing.

    August 20-25: The shoot. A day per production, plus two days for a Girl In The Red Dress music video we’re shooting. That’s four separate productions in five days.  Did I mention that I’m ambitious? Hopefully not insane.  Not yet anyway.

    From that point on I have a couple days of post-production, a bit more packing and then I’m kissing Chicago goodbye and getting on a plane for New York to begin my school’s orientation.

    Part of the reason I’m telling you this is to share the filmmaking process. The other is to warn you that my blogging may be a little sporadic this month. When I can, I’ll turn the blog into a production diary for the month of August, so come back when you can to hear about what I’ve been up to and if we manage to get these productions off the ground!

    Thanks for tuning in.

    August 8th,2010 Blogging, Funday Sundays | Sections: , , | No Comments

  • Catwoman #3 story contest and guidelines

    August 6th, 2010

    On Fan Fridays I write about fandom.

    Happy Fan Friday! My schedule is filling up with pre-production for the Catwoman shoot, coming up in two weeks.  So much to do, so little time!

    First, what you’ve been waiting for.  The third and final Catwoman costume.  Based on popular demand, I am happy to select the rarely seen costume from Catwoman #18 Catfile Four:

    Here’s the official August 2010 poster:

    Inspired by the wedding dress, I’m going to change the writing contest for the last story.  Instead of a script, I’m accepting music video one page treatments for a story that links this costume and my song “(Nothing But My) Heartbeat”.

    For lyrics go here.

    Here’s the official guidelines for Catwoman #3:

    We will shoot a short fan film to accompany the photo shoot and we need YOUR story. You’ll have a little under ONE week to write a  one page music video treatment for the purple suited Catwoman plus wedding dress. We’ve had a lot of fantastic submissions for both Catwoman #1 & #2 and I hope to see even more this month.

    The rules are as follows:

    1. Write a one page music video treatment. Here’s a great outline on how to write a treatment by Jeff Clark.

    2. Location is open. Try to write as generically as possible. Tricky, yes. Impossible? Ha! Get creative.

    3. One character: Catwoman/Selina Kyle. But there are three possibilities: Selina in the wedding dress, Catwoman in the purple suit. Catwoman in the purple suit & wedding dress, shredded.

    4. Keep it low-budget.  That means no explosions, special effects, green screen, foreign locations, or other things that would make my producer panic. Try instead to keep it simple and creative. It could be funny. It could be dramatic. It could be surreal.  How do you see Catwoman?

    5. Keep it Safe For Work!  ;-)

    6. Post your submission on the Facebook Discussion Page, just title it “Catwoman #3:” followed by the title of your piece.

    7. Turn it in before Friday, August 13.

    You can submit as many times as you like!

    Because of time constraints we won’t have time to open the rewrites to the public. So, this is your last chance to submit your writing for Catwoman Summer Project 2010!

    Many thanks again and good luck!

    NOTE: The winning author will be credited on the finished piece, as well as all other creative contributions that we use.

    August 6th,2010 Blogging, Catwoman, Fan Fridays | Sections: , , , , , , | No Comments

  • The A-Team review by Tim Hayes

    August 5th, 2010

    Mr. Hayes is not only the ALMT publicist and lead editor,
    but also contributes film journalism and reviews to Critic’s Notebook and Cinemattraction.

    Tim Hayes on Theatrical Thursdays

    The A-Team (2010) dir. Joe Carnahan

    Studio: 20th Century Fox
    Screenwriter: Skip Woods, Joe Carnahan, Brian Bloom
    Starring: Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, Sharlto Copley, Jessica Biel, Patrick Wilson, Gerald McRaney
    Genre: Action, Adventure
    MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of action and violence throughout, language and smoking)
    Official Website: ATeam-movie.com

    “The A-Team” tries hard to be as manic and crazy as the cool kids, and at least proves that not every Hollywood hero has to be aged 18-35. But it is getting difficult to tell all these films apart. When the A-Team fall out of the sky in a tank, is it because the writers want to let Hannibal Smith (Liam Neeson) show he can remember his trigonometry in a crisis, or is it just because Charlie’s Angels did it with a truck?


    In the TV show the team mostly fought for the little guy, but in this extended origin story their troubles are all down to fallout from the fall of Baghdad and a mercenary army called (not Blackwater but) Black Forest. You’re not going to confuse this film for one with George Clooney in it, but having the A-Team’s rampage across Europe be a post-Saddam hangover does give this thing something a bit like a political point. If you squint a bit.


    The third-best thing in the film is a gag involving Jessica Biel and 3D glasses (not what you’re thinking). The second-best is a moment when Hannibal, backlit by the golden light of reason, quotes Gandhi to the pacifist BA Baracus (Quinton Jackson) and converts him back to the path of violence – at least I hope it was supposed to be funny since I laughed for an hour.

    The best thing is Liam Neeson. I’m biased: this is Liam Neeson’s planet and we’re just borrowing it. Always a convincing tough-guy going all the way back to “Excalibur”, Neeson turned into something unique around 1990 by moving seamlessly through films by Clint Eastwood and Neil Jordan and Sam Raimi and Woody Allen in a single stretch. No actor currently breathing can call on such infinite sadness or humanity, and no one else could have done the comic-book mentoring thing in “Batman Begins” on the back of the heartbreakingly fallible sex researcher in “Kinsey” just the year before, one of the most profoundly moving pieces of acting you’ll ever see.

    If he chooses to roar towards his sixtieth year in a new niche as an agent of mayhem, sticking two tons of Semtex up a few movie cliches while jumping up and down on the laws of physics, that’s fine by me.

    August 5th,2010 Blogging, Film Reviews by Tim Hayes, Theatrical Thursdays, Video | Sections: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | No Comments
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