Rants and Ravings!

Krej News, Movie Review and some more rantings and ravings...

Hero Sandwich - Hannah has finished character designs on Captain Deluxo and Turbo Tom. And they look amazing. Jerry did some coloring that somehow made them even better. I also got to see some early concept work for Titanium Cranium (Don't know who any of these characters are yet? Don't worry you will soon). I am exceptionally stoked about this project, it's going to take time but should be worth it. Keep your eyes open thar may be a "Hero Sandwich" poster soon!

In more Krej news Jerry and myself started working on an outline for a new summer project. The concept is still in it's rough form. We want to incorporate lot's of motion graphic effects and an existential/absurdist* story. My concern is it might be to "out there", even by my standards.

In even more Krej news, Steven has begun working on a mock-umentary script for summer production as well. I am tempted to go into more detail, but I think I will let Steven himself do that. I will say this, he is basing a character on me who speaks with a very thick french accent.

Movie Review

Saw Kevin Smith's new film "Cop Out" today. It was pretty good. Not "Mallrats" amazing, but also not "Jersey Girl" trash either. Tracey Jordan really shines, his comedic chops are borderline immaculate. Something did seem to be missing from this. I don't if it was the fact that Smith didn't pen it or not. At times the plot seemed overly complex (for a comedy anyway), and the extra stuff took away from the truly funny.

The Tracey Jordan/Bruce Willis combo was a sight to behold. They worked very well together. The opening scenes show this very well, but as the movie trails on some of that magic fades. My hope is this will propel Mr. Jordan to a major movie comedian, he clearly can hold his own with Willis. Over all I give this flick a 7/10.

Other ranting and ravings...

Been watching a lot of "Man Vs. Food" as of late. I enjoy the show, but at the same time it is a good example of what has become wrong with us as a society. Gluttonous America is in all it's glory. I can't imagine starving kids in poverty stricken areas of the country or the world would appreciate this show. But enough ranting.

Now for some raving!

How about all these natural disasters. Maybe the end of the world is coming. Probably not though. It's highly important to note George Carlin's view on the end of things. "The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked". That's the absolute truth, it wouldn't take long after humanity ceases for Earth to fix itself and be "normal" again.

Which means all those environmentalist are going about this the wrong way. They should launch a "Save the Humans!" campaign. A source close to me assures me the dolphins are working on that though (get it? 42? Don't Panic? Hitchhikers? Thanks for the fish?).

Lastly and certainly most importantly, The Grub bequeathed us with a new word this week. In his infinate genius he decided the words otherwise and either/or needed to be fused together. Thus The Grub spoke and we were given "Eitherwise". How does one use this, an example. "We gotta stop ruining this planet "eitherwise" we will find ourselves on the wrong end of extinction". Thank you Grub for allowing us to be privy to your insanity and general loathing of the English language.

Well that's all I got in the tank for now. Going to work on a script for my new short and some storyboards for the same project and "Hero Sandwich".

*note this is in reference to the absurdist philosophy, which is connected to comedy style but not necessarily comedic in it's raw form.

Here You Go... Hot Off The Presses...

Ok, so I was gonna wait a little while to unleash this news, because I knew the press would just have a field day when the big announcement breaks, but since Jerry already “leaked” it in his last blog post, I figured I’d go ahead and man up.

The rumors are true. Young Trenton and I are starting a Comedy Gangsta Rap group. We don’t have a name for our group yet, so we may like to hear suggestions, if you got any. We do however have our individual rap names: I am henceforth to be referred to as Baby-J and Trent will answer to T-Lean and/or Caveman.

We’ve been working on some material. We have 2 songs completely written, and several more concepts for songs. We’re doing all the music and beats ourselves, with a little help from Josh Thompson (who you might remember as Kevin from Tim and Katie), a fantastic musician in his own right. We’re planning on cutting a demo (I understand that’s Industry Talk for Recording a Demo) at KREJ headquarters in the next couple weeks. We suspect you might be able to download the EP straight from the KREJ website (Psst… Jerry start working on that technology!!).

Unlike a lot of White Comedy Rap artists, such as The Lonely Island, we’re not really going for the whole “white 80’s rapper/Vanilla Ice/Beastie Boys” sound. We’re slightly closer to the Rap/Hip-Hop stylings of such artists as Outkast, Eminem, Ludacris, Dr. Dre, Goodie Mob, and Busta Rhymes, all of which we’re huge fans of (Not to say we don’t enjoy the Lonely Island, we do a good bit, but Come on, we’re from the A).

T-Lean and I are really excited about this new undertaking. We have another band who we understand is looking forward to having us play some shows with them. We’re planning on getting the EP out of the way first, and then doing some local shows here and there. And, since we do tend to make films and whatnot occasionally, there may be some music videos heading your way soon. We don’t have any shows scheduled just yet, but stay tuned, because you’ll hear it here first.

Sincerely,

Your boy Baby-J

P.S. This in no way affects the work we are doing with KREJ Productions. We still plan on working on our scripts and films and all that, even when we blow up like Hiroshima. :D

Waffle-House-Control to Major Tom,

I posted this on my blog, but I figured I would share with you some KREJ news, and a story of what my weekend was like.

I had a pretty crazy time this past weekend. on Friday night, I made a trip to Criminal Records to see a band I really like, Surfer Blood, play in-store before their actual concert. I bought some records, and then I talked to a homeless guy for like 15 minutes about music on the way back to my car. I went home and then headed back out to Midtown Art Cinema to see 'Creation', a great little flick about Charles Darwin and his internal/external struggles while writing The Origin of Species. It was a pretty good film, and I enjoyed it for the most part, though I wish they would have shown even more of the conflict between him and the church, and the impact his book had, though it was still pretty interesting to see how much his studies conflicted with his wife, who was in actuality, his first cousin, played by Jennifer Connolly (<3).

Then Saturday night, I went with some friends to East Atlanta Village to try and get in The Earl to see a sold-out show featuring a great soul/blues band, called Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears. That didn't turn out so well, and in 5-10 minutes we were headed back to our car to leave and find something else to do. It was then, that we discovered in our brief absence from the car, someone had placed a boot on my friend's wheel. We were then notified that not only was a tow-truck on the way, but it would cost us $75  to get the boot off there and then, and $200 total if we were towed. So we hit up an atm and got the hell out of there. We came back to my apartment, and decided we would go to a nearby gentleman's club. So that was pretty entertaining, albeit nowhere near as cool as a Black Joe Lewis concert. But my friend was pretty bummed about getting booted, and this seemed to lift his spirits.

Upon departure, we all agreed we could eat, so we headed to a Waffle House in Buckhead. When we arrived we were greeted by an elderly man in police-uniform with a cowboy hat. He was policing the line and making sure people didn't skip, because the place was packed!! It took forever to get our food, and our server confused mostly everyone's orders, except yours truly, so it was nice to finally be done and ready to head home. As we were standing at the register waiting to check out, it was then that a large group of 7 people decide they would piggyback onto a table that these 2 other people had already sat down at, even though nobody knew anybody else. Well Ole Major Tom(I like to think his name was Tom, but the people who worked at the Waffle House kept calling him simply:"Major". But come on, Major Tom? That just makes this whole story even better doesn't it?), he wasn't having any of this line-skipping, standing around a table cause there's no seats left business. He walks over and starts berating the offenders, and one of them, a very afeminite Hispanic young man started to give Ole Major Tom some lip. It was then that Tom started yelling and slamming his hands on the table ordering everyone there to the back of the line, which was practically out the door. This didn't seem to really convince any of them to get up and move, so Ole Tom pulls out his handcuffs and slams them on the table and yells some more. It was then, finally, that the offenders figured it would be a good idea to listen to Tom.

Absolutely hilarious.


In other news, nothing KREJ-ey going on lately, Trent and Grantz are kinda doing their own thing and starting their rap careers. So look forward to hearing samples of that some-time soon. It's starting to look like nothing really big will be going on this summer, which is a pretty big bummer. Hero Sandwich is moving along but I had really hoped to do another feature-length film this summer, as it was a lot of fun to get lots of friends and friends-of-friends involved in something everyone could be proud of. But here we are.


Not-so-much KREJ-related, but yesterday I rendered a clip of my in-progress animation I've been working on off-and on for my reel:




Hope you all have a great week, and you enjoyed my story.
-Matt

Thus Spoke Kaminski

In honor of the upcoming Oscars, I am going to rant a bit about the films of 2009. Don't worry most of this will be praise.

To start things out, let's talk about how many movies got made last year. Approximately 7,000 films (yes this including indies, most notable Tim and Katie) were produced and in some way made it to theaters. Of which I paid good hard money to see around 20.

Of that 20 here is a breakdown of my top 10 (I will do my best not spoil anything).

In no particular order...
Moon - Duncan Jones (Son of Davies Jones, or as he is known to the world...David Bowie) directed this under 10 million sci-fi flik (hard to believe they can make one so cheap). An excelent look at loneliness in space, with Sam Rockwell acting very good with himself.

Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus - Terry Gilliam goodness. In a weird way you can see Heath Ledger still has some of his Joker mannerisms. Oh and Tom Waits plays the devil perfectly.

That Evening Sun - Probably haven't heard of this one have ya? It was way under the radar, thank some deity for indie cinemas or I never would have seen the trailer. The story follows an elderly man dealing with the changing of the times.

District 9 - Great story, amazing special effects and an unknown actor. This sci-fi came in at around 30 mill (thar be a point to me mentioning budget in relation to sci-fi's, so bear with me). The movie is an excellent allegory for the apartheid in South Africa.

(500) Days of Summer - I traditionally avoid Romantic Comedies as they are rarely realistic in anyway shape or form. But damn if this one didn't nail it on the head. A unique aspect of the film is you can take the male protagonist and female antagonist and switch them. Thus making the female our hero and the story would still work.

Zombieland - Excellent use of horror and comedy. Plus Bill Murray making an amazing cameo.

The Hangover - Got to see this one in Vegas, which somehow made it even better. R-rated comedies got a shot in the arm thanks to Todd Philips.

Watchmen - Mind blowing. Zack Snyder is proving to be one of the most visual directors of our time.

Hurt Locker - Intense, anything could happen at any second. At no point do you believe your heroes are safe. Want to know how to write a script, look at this movie.

By my count that's 9 films. I know I said I wouldn't put them in order. But I half lied, as I have saved the film I felt was the best, for last.

The Road - I don't know where to begin with this one. Again most of you probably haven't heard of it. Flew right under the radar. Which is fine as this movie wasn't intended for the masses. It's a story about a father and son trying to survive a very bleak apocalyptic world. Very loyally it follows the book it is based on.

Viggo Mortensen was robbed by not even being nominated for this film. His performance is one of the best of the decade. He is authentic as a father trying to protect and feed his son. The pacing is a bit slow, but it's believable. A must see, and read.

Honorable Mentions
These films were good, but not the best

Sherlock Holmes, 9 (the animated one, not the live action), Star Trek, I Love You Man, Observe and Report

Now their were a few films that slipped through my fingers, I blame the economy. Here is a list of movies I really wanted to see, but haven't been able to

The Fantastic Mr. Fox. Public Enemies. Where the Wild Things Are. The new Harry Potter. Youth in Revolt. Anti-Christ. Drag Me to Hell. Big Fan

I hope I can get around much sooner then later to viewing all of them.

Snubbed! These films I saw but felt were moderately overrated (I enjoyed them, but alas something was missing).

Bruno, Inglorious Basterds and Avatar.

I typed a full review on Avatar in an earlier blog. I would like to take a second and point out that visually it is AMAZING. My complaints were with the story and Sam Worthingtons wooden performance. Plus the budget was insane, 300 million! Moon/District 9's budgets put together were roughly 35 million. And both had excellent/unique scripts.

So what does that leave left? The horrible films that for some reason I paid to see. The following were all hollow and over produced Hollywood shit.

Terminator Salvation, GI Joe, Wolverine and Transformers 2.

All 4 garbage with at best mild redeeming qualities. I felt especially scorned after watching Wolverine. Having been a fan of the character since I figured out what comics were, I wanted to see a Wolverine movie. And in all honesty I would rather it never been made then what we got. Don't even get me started on the Deadpool character.

Whelp that about does it for my ranting. This was all my opinion, and in most cases NOT the opinion of other Krej members. I only ask that this year you take some time and visit the Indie Cinemas in you're area.

My Pencils are the hotrods, my paper is the tarmac.

And they're speeding along to get Hero Sandwich character sketches on their way.

Character design is a fun way to work, especially when you're working with people you like and have just as much fun as you do. You get to dive in, create, and learn. This is especially interesting for me since I am a very detail oriented person and this kind of work has to be fairly simple in design and structure, so it turns on another part of the brain.

So far I've worked on a few sketches and things are moving smoothly along!

And of course, working with friends also helps. But I already said that.

And the winner is...

Yes, I know. I haven’t blogged in a minute. Been way too busy watching way too much LOST. So, I figured I’d take this opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: to give an update on what’s going on with me, and to announce the January Winner of The Douchebag of the Month Award (albeit a few weeks late). Last things first…

The winner of the KREJ Douchebag of the Month for January is… our very own Trent Whitmire (naturally). You can come claim your prize of an old trucker hat I found, a bag of Skittles, and a good old fashion ass whoopin at KREJ headquarters.

Ok, so as for me, I’ve had some crazy stuff going on with me lately. I got a new car yesterday, and it’s about time. I forgot what it was like to have a car with working windows, seat adjusters, ac vents, and an overall lack of old rain towel stank. Now, I just need to get the stereo replaced with the one in my old car. Luckily, the dealership said they’d do that for me for free. I know Trent won’t mind taking another trip up there, seeing as he has a fondness for a certain ”Baby Girl” that works up there.

I just had some family in town, so I haven't been able to get too much writing done. I did however get to spend some quality time with my ten-year-old cousin, Nick, who you may recognize from the Cheese Bit in the Behind-The-Scenes Doc from Tim and Katie. He's almost a bigger fan of zombie movies than I am, and most definitely a better video gamer than I.

Lately, I’ve been working on getting the script for the Tim and Katie Redux up to snuff. I’m gonna do one more formatting pass, and then all it needs is a good dialogue pass. After that, it should be ready to shelve and move on to the next project. As for my next writing project, I’m not sure what it will be. I’ve got a few different ones in the works.

The voice recording for the very first Hero Sandwich short went very well and was a lot of fun. You can see evidence of all the fun had at the below link: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=694285532&ref=ts#!/profile.php?v=app_2392950137&ref=ts&id=694285532

And lastly, Trent and I took a little Valentine’s Day trip to the park. We took an assload of pictures which we’ll be uploading soon. Stay tuned. It was cute. Warning: NSFA (Not Safe For Anywhere)

That’s all for now. I just bought Skate 2 for the XBOX 360 machine, so I’m gonna go play the shit out of that until the sun comes up... or at least until I finish downloading every episode of "I Didn't Know I Was Pregnant."

Word to the biggest bird,

-Grantzy

Wish Granted!

I have a habit of drawing, which requires paper, which of course for me requires a forest. This evening the great G$ (my husband, he chooses the most absurd, if not fitting nicknames for himself) and I made our rounds about town and I now have my grubby bony hands on...

The official Hero Sandwich Sketchbook.

What does this mean? Well, probably not much to some- but for me it will be the treasure to tote around and work on, specifically for character designs. Heck, I may consolidate Hero Sandwich and KREJ conceptual illustrations into this one, singular, amazing and sadly empty sketchbook.

That's really about it. I figured I'd rub it in. The fact that I have a blank sketchbook...


AWHAAWH.

This thing on? Hello?

With the New Orleans victory over the Colts we find ourselves in a pickle. No sports to watch, got a full month until Spring Training starts (Braves fans keep an eye on Jason Heyward). Doubt I will watch the Winter Olympics. Guess I will have to focus and keep writing instead of being distracted.

So whats the action here at KREJ HQ?

Not to much, tonight me and lil' Stevie T (who has yet to post here, despite signing up for it) did a touch up on the new "Hero Sandwich" short. Which we will be recording the audio for it tomorrow night. I am really excited about doing an animated piece, should be interesting to see the process happening. Hannah should be starting to crank out some concept art for it soon. Maybe she can post something about what styles she is looking into doing (wink wink).

Been having fun with my script writing software, it has this great function where it will reread the script with various computer voices. Aside from sounding really funny, it is a very useful tool for catching little things you might breeze (or bleeze as the Grub would put it) over when reading.

For anyone looking to get into writing I would highly recommend "Movie Magic Screenwriter". Might be a bit pricey, but totally worth it.

Despite habitual threats none of the other KREJ guys seem to have anything to post about. I will have to double my efforts to get them to speak up.

I feel I am starting to ramble , and Lewis Black just popped on Comedy Central. So I am finding myself fully distracted again, peace!

Your Hero,
Jeff K

Happy Super Sunday!!!

It's that time of year again, Super Bowl 44!! Time for an hour of football and 5 hours of commercials!!
For the record: GO SAINTS!!


But in other news, it looks like Tuesday we will be recording audio for Hero Sandwich. So YAY!! Had a great weekend so far, got to talk to a certain person about bringing them in on some KREJ projects in the future, and talked some more about the future of KREJ (both near and distant futures). Been brainstorming more for ideas for the Weekly Scuttlebutt video blogs we will be producing in the coming weeks, really hope everyone enjoys them! We're bringing back a format we abandoned about two years ago at the fall of our last studio venture(read:disaster). Should have a title sequence for TWS (The Weekly Scuttlebutt) done some time soon as well. It's gonna be too legit to quit.

Scanned in all the Hero Sandwich art and will be getting that in Hannah's hands sometime this week, and then will be working on backgrounds and maybe a quick title sequence for it too.

In unrelated news, I picked up Bioware's newest offering, Mass Effect 2 on Friday: it is freakin' AWESOME!! Even though Grub informs me I have a long ways to go, I've played a couple hours already and have really enjoyed this game. The voice cast alone is impressive: Martin Sheen, Carrie-Ann Moss, Tricia Helfer(Six from the newer BSG!!), Michael Dorn, Adam Baldwin & Yvonne Strahovski from NBC's Chuck, Keith David, Michael Hogan (Colonel Saul Tigh from the newer BSG!!) and even Seth Green. The play style is pretty dope too, its the normal squad setup in Bioware games but it also works as a FPS, which I really dig, cause I have been in dire need of a new FPS to play.

I think I might be getting sick again. Bleh. If my favorite beer is Blue Moon's Spring Seasonal, and it's already out and in the fridge now, doesn't that mean all of this cold weather should eff right off and spring should be upon us? Right, I thought so too. I'm sick of the cold weather. Literally. And I still need to catch up on my most recent of guilty pleasures; USA's White Collar. Don't judge me.

Till next time,
-Matt

Hey again!! We got news!!

Welcome back, time for another installment of The Daily Scuttlebutt!!

A couple of us had a bit of a brainstorming session this evening on the future of this website/blog to come up with ideas to liven things up a bit. We've decided to bring back the ancient art of the weekly news update; in a hilarious manner of course. So in the coming weeks, we'll be bringing you videos with all sorts of news, national and local, from entertainment to technology, social media, restaurant reviews and we'll even be handing out weekly awards to those deemed worthy of our praise. There will be two different awards; one will be the highly coveted/or-not-so-much-coveted Douche-Bag-of-the-Month Award. The other is still being discussed. 

We can't wait to bring you all the important news and updates you never knew you needed; and we hope you'll bear with us and check back often! We hope to have the first episode online in about 2-3 weeks.  

In other news, we're hoping to record the primary audio tracks for Hero Sandwich sometime this week. Then Hannah and myself will begin work on character redesign/ streamlining & background design. I can't freakin' wait to begin animating and I am looking forward to trying out some digital matte painting for the city background(s).

The Tim & Katie trailer will be done relatively soon, and should be up on our IMDB page sometime after that. Rather than try to include parts of all the different excellent songs we had contributed to our film's soundtrack, I scored something simple yet intense, so hopefully people will really enjoy the trailer.

Much love,

-Matt