‘Movies’ Category

  1. mirrormask

    October 15, 2005 :: 10:29 pm

    Category Movies | Tags: | 1 Comment

  2. episode iii: the backstroke of the west

    July 27, 2005 :: 7:11 pm

    Long time ago in the faraway galaxy…

    Star war.

    when translated from english to chinese, and then back to english, “revenge of the sith” becomes “backstroke of the west.”

    Category Movies | Tags: | 1 Comment

  3. logan’s island

    July 24, 2005 :: 9:33 pm

    looks like they remade logan’s run, except this time logan is called “lincoln six echo” and carousel is referred to as “the island.” clones on the run!

    “the island” is quite pretty (thanks to ewan and scarlett, and oh, that beautiful cinematography too) and flashy (hello, epileptic seizures, anyone?), and it’s been, as doc said when referring to the new battlestar galactica series, “surgically de-cheesed” from the original. i do realize there’s only so many movie plots in the world and thing get recycled with new skins and new details all the time, but this was remarkably transparent as a remake.

    logan: logan 5 and jessica 6.
    island: lincoln 6 echo and jordan 2 delta.

    logan: horrible catastrophe/contamination in the real world forces remainder of humanity to live in a contained society underground.
    island: horrible made-up catastrophe/contamination in the real world forces remainder of humanity to live in a contained society underground.

    logan: smart sandman comes to realize that there is life beyond the society he lives in, and takes a beautiful girl on the run with him to reach the outside world, which he finds has been safe for a very long time.
    island: smart clone comes to realize that there is life beyond the society he lives in, and takes a beautiful girl on the run with him to reach the outside world, which he finds actually exists and was never contaminated.

    logan: all members of society must go through carousel ritual when they turn 30. they believe it is a wonderful experience of rebirth and renewal, but in reality they die.
    island: some members of society go through lottery ritual. they believe they are going to the utopian paradise of the island, but in reality they die.

    logan: logan returns to destroy the master computer system that runs the society.
    island: lincoln returns to destroy the master system that produces the clones.

    see my point?

    i mean, it was a fun movie and i’m glad i saw it, but they should’ve just called it “logan’s matrix 1138.”

    Category Movies, Sci-fi | Tags: | 2 Comments

  4. we took bronze!

    June 2, 2005 :: 9:21 pm

    i can’t believe i forgot to mention it — our short film “watchmaker” took 3rd place in our division at the finals of the 2005 dallas 24-hour video race! there were 24 films in our division, and we got 3rd. amazing! especially considering that my personal goal for the project was merely to finish on time, nevermind what the actual film looked like. we won free passes to the dallas video festival in august, a gift card to cuba libre, and a very cool trophy constructed from a CD, a VHS tape, and some bronze paint.

    WATCH US ON TV

    our film will be shown on TV! watch us on friday, june 17, at 10 p.m., on KERA-TV channel 13 in dallas.

    Category Art, Movies | Tags: | No Comments

  5. frame of mind

    June 1, 2005 :: 8:54 pm

    watch our short film, “watchmaker,” on KERA-TV channel 13, on friday june 17, at 10 pm!! if you miss it, it will repeat at 1 a.m. on sunday, june 26.

    Category Art, Movies | Tags: | No Comments

  6. we won!!! sorta!

    May 17, 2005 :: 9:55 pm

    i knew it! i knew we were gonna win! our very first short film, “watchmaker,” has advanced to the finals in the dallas video association’s 24-hour video race competition!!!

    last saturday, doc, lori and i participated in the competition. at midnight friday night we were given our requirements: a theme (“first class”), a prop (saturday’s issue of the dallas morning news’ crappy commuter rag “quick,” and hey guess what, they were also a SPONSOR, how about that bullshit!), a location (mailbox), and a line of dialogue (“i thought that was fixed a long time ago”). at that point, we had 24 hours to write, storyboard, script, cast actors, shoot, produce, edit, and finalize our film. we had to turn it in by midnight saturday night.

    our film ended up being a very cool, esoteric artsy piece. the basic plot, if you can call it that, is that there is something broken with reality, and super-sensitive people on our plane of existence are noticing it. the reason that reality is broken is because the “watchmaker” — our term (that we’re not quite happy with) for a creator didn’t receive his invoice from first class existential services for scheduled maintenence on reality. he didn’t pay the bill, so reality was breaking down. once it was paid, repairs were made to the universe, and everything went back to normal.

    so we stayed up for more than 40 hours straight working on this project. we came back to our house, made some coffee, got some red bull (nasty, and never again) and potato chips, and went to work. leslie came by about 1:30 a.m. to hang out and help us. there was an awesome thunderstorm going on. we got our idea worked out, and leslie drew the storyboards for us, and we figured out what dialogue we needed. doc set up his microphone and we all read our lines, and he recorded them. we got this finished by about 5:00 and decided to get a tiny bit of sleep before starting shooting. i laid down in bed and my whole body was just vibrating, maybe from the combination of nervousness, excitement, coffee, red bull, and chocolate covered espresso beans. anyway, i laid there until 6:30 when the alarm went off, and got maybe 20 minutes of sleep the whole time. i think doc got maybe 1-1/2 hours.

    we met at leslie’s house at 7 a.m. from there we caught a dart train northbound at mockingbird station, and rode all the way to the end of the line and back, filming leslie’s role as “disgruntled commuter.” lori nearly got assaulted by a crazy woman on the train, and then another woman turned to me as she was getting off at her stop and said “you know, you should try doing this when it’s not rush hour.” i said “i apologize if we inconvenienced you [we didn't, there were plenty of seats], but seeing as how it’s saturday at 7 a.m., we thought there’d be fewer people on the train.” and she gave me this fuck-you look and said “you know, some people WORK on saturdays” and then stepped off the train. so we thought about calling our production company “some people work on saturdays productions”.

    after the dart train scene was done, we drove out to east dallas and filmed a scene that we didn’t end up using underneath a rusty abandoned train trestle. then we went to the railroad museum, paid our $5 admissions (i was hoping they’d let us in free to film for 10 minutes, but no such luck), and filmed doc’s repairman scene using some rusty gears and bolts on the side of a locomotive.

    this whole time, i felt like i was on the verge of throwing up. it got dicey from time to time. it was probably a combination of lack of sleep, caffeine, and actually having some sort of mild stomach illness (which i think i have had since last wednesday). anyway, all day saturday i felt like i had an awful hangover.

    back at our house, we set up our watchmaker scene using a felt-covered table and a lot of doc’s cool old estate sale finds, such as an old microscope, a 1920s era smith-corona typewriter, tiny paper dolls, tiny scissors, a crank-style counter, old books, my old brass mailbox from college, and some other really neat stuff. we filmed all of our watchmaker scenes and were done with that around 3 p.m.

    lori went back to her house to capture the video, while doc and i worked on the music and the titling, respectively. we got the files to lori as quickly as we could so she could add them in to the video. she did all the editing work. we came over to her place about 8, and we did some last minute editing tweaks, rendered the video, copied it to DV tape, and raced it down to fair park to turn it in with 30 minutes to spare.

    we were only the 24th team to turn our video in, so there must have been a rush at the last minute because 82 teams ended up finishing on time.

    “watchmaker” was shown onscreen at the angelika tonight, and we are now advancing to the finals!! our film will be screened again on thursday night, and then we’ll find out if we win. i’m nearly certain we won’t come in first (a team called “dropped on your head” did a really fabulous job with theirs; i think they’ll win), but i’m not ruling out 2nd place as a possibility.

    i still can’t believe we got to the finals on our very first film!! amazing.

    please come out to the angelika on thursday! tickets are only $3 and you can stay for as many of the films as you like. our film will be shown at 8:30 sharp.

    Category Art, Friends, Movies | Tags: | 3 Comments

  7. let the wookiee win

    April 18, 2005 :: 4:44 pm

    aah, harrison. a fine, fine actor. a fine, fine man. i don’t care that he’s 30 years my senior. here’s a great collection of him pointing his finger at various people in movies.

    just read that adobe bought macromedia. wow. seems like they’re approaching microsoft with regards to a monopoly. i wonder how this is going to affect dreamweaver. hmm. i like adobe and all, but sheesh, do they have to own EVERYTHING?

    yesterday’s dilbert was GREAT. this is exactly what happens in my office on a daily basis. i wish i had an ejector seat, but i’d have to go through the four floors above me before i broke free.

    kathryn is getting married in thirteen days. i’m trying to remember what i felt like 13 days out. probably pretty panicked. which is dumb, because it is JUST A PARTY, but for some reason even the most laid back and levelheaded among us get antsy and freaked out as it approaches. i guess it’s the whole “making sure that everyone has a good time, not just us” type of thing. at the end of the day, you’ll still be married, which is the important thing. but it’s always difficult, expensive, and time consuming to throw a party — especially one that big with that many people, many of whom have wildly differing expectations. you have to balance wanting everyone to have a good time with not doing something you don’t want to do just because it’s traditional or expected by traditional-minded people.

    Category Friends, Movies, Technology, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  8. über goober

    :: 7:04 am

    “Dallas native Steven E. Metze directed, produced, and financed the feature length documentary Über Goober, and is currently on deployment to Iraq until 2006. Über Goober focuses on the often-misunderstood, sometimes-controversial, and always-kind-of-geeky world of gamers. Not the computer kind of gamer, the in-person-dice-rolling-and-sometimes-dress-up-in-costume kind. Metze examines several different groups including historical miniature gamers, role-players, and those known simply as “LARPers.” The film also explores opposition from religious groups, negative media portrayals ranging from sit-coms to post-Columbine news coverage, and some of the meanest ‘man-on-the-street’ interviews ever committed to video. Meet the gamers, learn their exotic language, see their bizarre rituals, gasp at their semi-authentic costumes, and thrill to the painting techniques on their miniatures!”

    oh. my. god. much as the thought of it makes me squirm, i have to go see this. it is going to be so painfully uncomfortable to watch. i was never into miniature gaming or hard-core play-by-the-rules role playing, but i did play dungeons & dragons from about the ages of 14 to 18, and occasionally did LARP. if you don’t know what that is, i’m not going to further embarrass myself by explaining it.

    so, 14 years later, i still have my dragon dice, and i still know where they are, and that place, for some reason, is not a box in the back of my attic. they reside in my desk, just in case, you know, i am faced with a situation in which i must immediately determine armor class.

    honestly, although there’s a little part of me that’s embarassed to admit i used to play RPGs (with that little voice in the back of my head going “i strike at thee with my plus five battle axe!”), the bigger part of me doesn’t care if anyone knows. as rich said, there are some positive social benefits that come from this form of entertainment, especially for those who are socially awkward to the point where they might not otherwise get too many social benefits. and i certainly was such a socially awkward person, (although by now i think i’ve grown out of it to some degree and become much more comfortable relating to people), and so i’m grateful that i found a group of similarly socially awkward friends.

    Category Geek, Movies | Tags: | 2 Comments

  9. the cat with hands

    March 5, 2005 :: 6:48 pm

    this is a super creepy super cool little short film.

    Category Cool Stuff, Creepy, Movies | Tags: | No Comments

  10. random thoughts on politics, holidays, and the moon

    October 27, 2004 :: 9:27 pm

    we voted early last weekend. not that it matters one way or the other, seeing as how we live in a giant red state. however, something interesting has been happening: i’ve been seeing pro-bush, anti-kerry ads on tv. here. in texas.

    why?

    you’d think that if they thought they had the state wrapped up, they wouldn’t bother spending the money on unnecessary ads.

    unless they’re not unnecessary.

    ha-HA!

    oh, hell, i know it’s a pipe dream. but i can dream, can’t i??

    in other news…
    chris hamilton, a friend who is a photographer, came over and took a bunch of pictures of our cats for a business he’s starting. they turned out great! i don’t think that i can really post any in a public forum (they are his pictures, after all). our halloween party is this coming saturday. on friday, in our new building at work, we are having little preschool kids coming through to trick-or-treat. our office’s theme is “black and white” (even though we just moved and are still settling in, and have had no time to think of holiday decor, the whole building is apparently expecting great things from “the creative group,” so we brainstormed the other day and came up with something). anyway, i’m going to wear my black and white stripey stockings and my short black supermodel wig. man, any excuse to wear alternate hair!!

    the moon eclipsed tonight. we saw it for a few minutes through a break in the clouds. it was pretty cool; it turned this nice rusty red color. actually it’s still going on, but it’s awfully cloudy outside. in fact, the weather has just been horrible lately: incredibly sticky and very very warm. i want my cool dry crips autumn days, goddammit!

    Team America: World Police is freakin’ hilarious!! I highly recommend it, as long as you are over the age of 16 or so. America, FUCK YEAH!

    jon stewart was on crossfire last week, i think — the lesson learned here is, do not fuck with jon stewart; he will make you look like an idiot. he called that bowtied freak tucker carlson a dick! my favorite line, when carlson was poking at him about the quality of the questions he asked john kerry during his daily show appearance: “wait a minute, you are on CNN. you know what show leads into mine? puppets making crank phone calls.”

    Some fun links…
    Give Bush a Brain!
    iFilm political short films & clips (freakin’ awesome site!)
    the U2 iPod

    Category Cats, Halloween, Links, Movies, Photography, Politics, TV, Weather, Work | Tags: | No Comments

  11. sometimes i doubt your committment to sparkle motion!

    August 29, 2004 :: 8:52 pm

    Just went to see Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut. I have mixed feelings about it. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time, but I think that perhaps the things that Richard Kelly added back in kind of overexplain things. Maybe. Part of what I love about the movie is that it leads to a lot of discussion about the symbolism, why certain things happened in the film, and discussions about metaphysics and time travel.

    Oh man. I just found out that Richard Kelly is younger than me. Jeez. Why does that always make me feel like a complete slacker? What had *I* accomplished when I was 26? I certainly didn’t have my own feature film that would become a cult hit!

    Maybe I’ll be Frank for Halloween.

    Category Movies | Tags: | No Comments

  12. village of the creepy clawed warthog-faced red-robed scary guys

    August 2, 2004 :: 8:41 pm

    We saw The Village yesterday. I liked it. It was creepy, not terribly scary, intriguing, and had a cool plot twist. It’s probably not my favorite Shyamalan film (that would have to be The Sixth Sense, which was creepy, intriguing, and had a cool plot twist that snookered everyone in the entire theatre, including Doc, who usually knows how the movie will end by 30 minutes into it). Joel mentioned, however, and he’s right, that knowing there is going to be a big plot twist kind of makes the plot twist itself less exciting.

    I thought it was interesting that the woman who played the character “Kitty” in the movie is the same woman who plays the character “Kitty” on Arrested Development on FOX.

    The cinematography was awesome. I loooooooved the creature costumes. Totally creepy. And I know that the mustard yellow they wore as “protection” has some sort of historical significance, although I can’t think of what it is at the moment.

    I also loved how Shyamalan used the color red again to signify something, much like he did in The Sixth Sense. Adrian Brody did a fabulous job, too, playing a character so different from his previous roles.

    Overall I thought it was a really good film. Not nearly as scary as all the previews would have you believe. Brett, I think you can safely convince Kathryn to go see it — my review this time is glowing. :)

    Category Movies | Tags: | 2 Comments

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