:: Guy in a Suit Productions ::

Monday, June 30, 2003

posted by Travis at 10:35 PM

This will be kind of long. First off, I bought Star Wars Galaxies. I know that I said I was going to wait, but the cruel hand of fate intervened. All day Thursday, I was getting emails from people asking if I was going to buy it. Guys at work were walking by my cube saying, "Today is the day. Are you buying?" There were sites carrying a story that the new title for Episode III was going to be An Empire Divided, which is actually the subtitle of Star Wars Galaxies. So I was constantly being reminded of its release. The final straw was when my friend Shane messaged me and asked me if I wanted to buy a copy. He had gotten one as a promotional item and said he'd send me the game and a strategy guide if he could find one. So I broke. I paypal'ed him the money and the game should be here tomorrow. It is getting some fairly negative reviews, but I guess that doesn't matter. We all knew I was going to buy it. You can't change what you are.

Over the weekend, Kim and I flew to Denver for a wedding. An old friend of mine who was an older brother to me for about 5 years in Michigan was getting married. I had not seen him in probably 10 years, so we flew out. My family met us there, so it was good to see everyone and relax. Congratulations Jason and Jennifer if you're reading this.

Kim and I just got back from seeing 28 Days Later at the new AMC theater in Burbank. It seems like a nice place, although more showings will tell the tale. 28 Days Later is kind of an indie zombie/horror movie about a virus decimating the population of Great Britain. Not your typical zombies though, because these guys aren't dead and they aren't slow. Also, the movie has a touch of social commentary, which was nice. I really enjoyed it. Kim wants me to write a full review, which I may do...but not tonight.

While flying around this weekend, I was able to finish Dune Messiah and get started on the original version of The Gunslinger. Dune Messiah gets much better near the end when things pick up and the meetings slow down. I'm rereading The Gunslinger so that when I read the updated version of it, I will know what has changed. I'll then reread the other books from The Dark Tower before reading the 5th book, Wolves of the Calla. I think that will do it for now.

Thursday, June 26, 2003

posted by Travis at 9:08 AM

Hmm...Blogger has upgraded. Lets see how this goes.

Star Wars Galaxies is out, and I have not bought it. I'm going to wait for some reviews and player reaction. The most frustrating thing for me while playing the beta was the server instability and the lag, so if they can control that with the influx of new players, I'll probably get it. Thinking back, the times that the beta worked, it was fun. I beat Age of Mythology a couple days ago, so I downloaded the free bonus campaign and I'm playing that. After that I will probably jump back into Neverwinter Nights and try to finish that up. There has been talk of playing some multiplayer. I still haven't picked up PlanetSide yet, so between that, the NWN expansion, and the Warcraft III expansion coming in early July, there is some good stuff out there to play.

Monday, June 23, 2003

posted by Travis at 8:26 AM

Kim, Mike, and went to see Hulk yesterday. I liked it, maybe not as much as X2, but then I was never really a Hulk fan as a kid. So the fact that I like the X-Men characters better weighs heavily. All in all, Hulk delivered exactly what I wanted, but didn't blow me away. I thought the action scenes were great, and the Hulk himself was very convincing. It will be interesting to see where all these comic book franchise movies take their characters after the first movie.

Thursday, June 19, 2003

posted by Travis at 9:56 PM

Instead of watching Army of Darkness last night, we watched Swingers. Kim felt very strongly that Mike should watch the Evil Dead movies in order and who am I to complain. So we added Evil Dead and Evil Dead II to Mike's list. While watching Swingers, I had to point out the references to Reservoir Dogs (which is also on his list) and Good Fellas (which has now been added to his list). This was our first good score in the film festival so far, so I guess he is worth saving. Sometime I will post his list in its entirety on here and update it as we move through it.

Speaking of Mike, you should read his latest entry about setting a litter box on fire. Good stuff.

I beat Grand Theft Auto: Vice City last week, so I'll probably list it on ebay soon. It is very good, but I'm not great about replaying games. Since my PlanetSide trial ran out, I have not been able to play that. My character still lives on their servers, though, patiently waiting my return. I'm still trying to decide if I should buy it or not. Since Kim is finally finished with it, and I never got to beat it, I've gone back to Age of Mythology. There is an expansion coming out for it in October. That reminds me, the Neverwinter Nights expansion Shadows of Undrentide is in stores now, so I may need to pick that up. We rented Enter the Matrix for Xbox, and it started out OK, but got exponentially worse as I played through it. I'd say it is barely worth a rental.

After reading this post, Kim will tell me, "Instead of playing those games, you should be writing your script!" She's right, too, but playing games is easy and writing can be hard work. I just need to do one final pass through about 75 pages of script to clean it up, and then I'm sending to my friend Paul, who is going to give me feedback. Paul's a comedy writer and this is an action script, so his feedback might be, "Make it funnier!" However, I'm excited and terrified about him reading it. Since I'm plugging Paul's imdb appearance, here is mine!

Wednesday, June 18, 2003

posted by Travis at 9:31 AM

Laziness...that is my excuse for not updating. I have a final-ish version of my script ready. Kim read it and really likes it (surprise, surprise), although she wants me to add a girl. I've also heard this from her mother and Pajaro. I feel that in order to make it more marketable, I should probably buckle and sacrifice artistic integrity. That is what selling spec scripts is all about. I wouldn't want to be pitching it and have them say, "Yeah it's great, but where's the girl?" So, I'll have to integrate a female character, which was actually the original plan in my 5 page version. She just didn't make the script.

On Monday Kim and I went to the Arclight to get our tickets for The Hulk, but they were not selling tickets for Sunday showings that were not in the dome (the reason we are going on Sunday is because we don't usually go to Friday night movies and I am working all day Saturday). We don't like the dome because the seats are too close together and the screen is too big. I know that saying a movie screen is too big is like saying, "I have too much money," or "Apocalypse Now is too long," but in this case, it really is just too big. I think the picture suffers. It's like watching a movie projected onto the side of a planet. So we'll see it on one of the other screens. While we were there, we caught a screening of the Chinese horror movie The Eye. It was OK, but not as scary as I wanted it to be.

I think we are screening Army of Darkness tonight for Pajaro, although we may go with something a little more contemporary.

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

posted by Travis at 8:40 AM

Yesterday we had Mike over again to watch another movie in his list. He chose The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension. I don't think he hated it like Big Trouble in Little China, but there was little love. I don't know what to do with this guy. We may have to go with something a litte more mainstream for our next showing. I fear his reaction to Army of Darkness could be violent. As compensation, he took home Clear and Present Danger to watch.

Over the weekend, Kim and I went to see The Italian Job. It was OK, but would have been better as a rental. We were treated to spontaneous violence in the movie theater when some kind of scuffle broke out in the aisle. However, one of the combatants fled through the emergency exit at the front of the theater before it got too interesting.

We also watched Darkness Falls a couple days ago. I'm a horror fan, and I usually find something redeeming in almost every horror movie, but this one was just shit. I couldn't believe the dialogue as I was hearing it. I realize that horror movies are not known for their dialogue, but this was 8 year old writing. And The Tooth Fairy is a lame villain.

Thursday, June 05, 2003

posted by Travis at 9:58 PM

Recently it came to my attention that my friend Mike has not seen several movies that I believe are required viewing. I took it upon myself to begin a film festival in order to make some attempt at educating him. We kicked off the festival with Big Trouble in Little China. He hated it. Now, perhaps this is because he saw it as an adult and EVERYONE ELSE saw it when they were kids. Whatever the reason, he didn't care for it. This doesn't bode well for some of the other titles, but I'll persevere. He took home Equilibrium, so we'll see how he likes it.

Mr. Pusateri has got me hooked on PlanetSide. I've been playing with his 7 day trial version and my 7 days are almost up. I may have to buy because it is damned fun.

I am borrowing Yoshi's Hellboy graphic novel collection so I can get the original story before the movie comes out. I'm about 3/4s through Hellboy: Seed of Destruction and I like it so far. I am still fighting through Dune Messiah or as I prefer to call it Dune: Lets Take a Meeting. There just isn't a whole hell of a lot going on in that book.

I think that's all for now. I want to get in some PlanetSide before bed.