Back to School

Ahh. Back to school. We had a read through for Beyond Therapy last Wednesday. It went quite well and got me pretty excited for the show. As I am getting settled into my schedule and new apartment, I have been catching up on TV shows ad Movie news while getting back in touch with everyone. I am taking a film analysis class (so far we watched The Big Legowski) which is going to be excellent, a technical directing class which will be focusing on the business side of set building for shows, an intro to creative writing course and an intro to radio and television production to finish off my Mass Communications minor. It should be a fun semester with a bunch of work, but nothing too overwhelming. I had a couple days of working at the Wildey this week. Mostly just setup and changeover work, but Friday night I ran sound for the St. Louis Diva Kim Massie. It was a great night of excellent jazz and blues music. On Saturday we went into the city to hit up the City Museum. It's like a giant jungle gym for people of all ages.It was great to let go and enjoy it. Afterwards we went to get some Pi and some comics from Star Clipper.
I picked up some issues of The Sixth Gun and The Fury of Firestorm that I'm missing. These are my two books that I'm picking up in single issue format. The Sixth Gun follows a man in civil war times that possesses guns of mystical power. When the long lost sixth gun is found, Drake Sinclair goes to retrieve it in order to prevent the evil bastard General Hume from getting his hands on it and doing unspeakable evil with it. The book follows Drake through the old west on his journey. There's magic, voodoo, good vs. evil and so on. The writing is excellent and the artwork shows the raw gritty feel of the book perfectly. The story and art are by Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt, two excellent creators local to the St. Louis area.
The Fury of Firestorm: The Nuclear Men follows two teenagers who get radioactive powers from a mysterious "firestorm protocol." This book is one of DC's New 52 books. They re-imagined their entire universe of comics and this book is a new look on the classic, not very popular hero of Firestorm. The story by Ethan Van Sciver and Gail Simone is incredibly intriguing and masterfully introduces classic pieces of Firestorm continuity in a fresh way without it being overwhelming or redundant. The art by Yildiray Cinar is beautiful and totally makes the nuclear reactions believable.
Well those are the comics I'm looking forward to this year. As for movies, there are far too many to look at all of them, so I'll just look at a few. I am looking forward to The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, just like the rest of the world. I think Joss Whedon will do justice to the characters set up in the other movies Marvel's been putting out over the last several years. On the other end, I firmly believe that Christopher Nolan will again give us the best Batman movie to date. Haywire comes out soon and stars Gina Carano (Crush in the new American Gladiators series), Ewan McGregor, Channing Tatum, Michael Fassbender, Michael Douglas, and Antonio Banderas. This spy flick doesn't look like anything innovative or new, but still looks quite an enticing spy flick. Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman are both movies taking different directions on the classic Grimm tale. They both look like they have merit. Cabin in the Woods is a Joss Whedon tale of the classic horror genre with a new twist. I've been looking forward to this movie since late 2009 when it was scheduled to be released in Feb 2010. It was originally postponed so they could convert it to 3D, then MGM went bankrupt , so Lionsgate got a hold of it and now have a release date.
Not only is Joseph Gordon-Levitt going to be in The Dark Knight Rises, but he will also be in Premium Rush (an indie film about a bicycle messenger in NY who has a package that a corrupt cop (Michael Shannon) wants. Gordon-Levitt is also going to be in Looper, a science fiction/time travel/mob movie that also stars Bruce Willis. Interesting concept. I hope it plays out alright. Warm bodies comes out in August, and is supposed to be the Twilight of zombies. This should be extremely interesting and probably hilarious. Hunger Games looks quite promising. The Woman in Black sets out to let us see if Radcliffe can act outside of Harry Potter. Jack the Giant Killer and Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter are new takes on fairy tales and history respectively. They should be interesting. And of course: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Peter Jackson takes us back to Middle Earth and then back in time to this epic looking prequel to the award winning trilogy.
Now onto sequels, since there are many of them. The first one being Underworld: Awakening. Another film in the epic vampire/lycan war franchise. This one looks alright. The release of Star Wars Episode 1 in 3D! Alright, this isn't a sequel. It's a re-release of a prequel, but it needs to be noted, even though I am ashamed by it. G.I.Joe Retribution looks quite excellent, despite the not so great first one. The Bourne Legacy stars Jeremy Renner as a new agent that's in a similar position as Jason Bourne. This will be another good spy movie for sure. The Expendables 2 looks to take everything in the first one and making it bigger and more of it. It should be a great action flick. Another Resident Evil movie (Retribution) will be pretty fun as usual. This is the most successful video game movie adaptation franchise, so another film is inevitable. Next we get Skyfall! Daniel Craig's third 007 movie. These movies are one of the longest running franchises ever. I haven't heard a whole lot about Skyfall yet, but my hopes are still pretty high. Finally, we get Breaking Dawn: Part II. I know, I know. I shouldn't be excited for this movie, but I am. You know why? This means that Twilight is done! For good! Until Stephanie Meyer writes a new book. This means we get to move on to the next really annoying Hysteria.
This is definitely an epic year for movies. I hope the world doesn't end before we get to see all of them. Well that's about it for now. See you all next time.