This week has been crazy for those of us in the DC/VA Metro Area with an earthquake and a downgraded hurricane/tropical storm. But myself and my family have been relatively unaffected by the bizarre weather. I have been super busy with coursework and work so I have not been able to be as active with the show and the blog this season as I’d like to be. But I am alive and well. =) Provided that no more flying car pieces fall off in the middle of the highway and roll under my car, my car might even survive what’s left of the summer.

The most overwhelmingly disturbing thing about my experience to watch “Insidious” in the movie theater with my husband and my 4 year old, Victor, was not the movie itself but the 3 people who came into the movie 15 minutes late and sat behind us. I swear that they found a way to do everything in their power to disturb the people around them- they ate their popcorn with the loud rustling of the paper bag; the loud smacking of lips; and the loud crunching of their chewing. Did their rudeness end there? OH NO. They had to TALK through the entire movie. It’s a said state when adults cannot behave themselves during a movie but my 4 year old can sit still and be QUIET through the whole thing.

I digress. “Insidious”‘s plot was fairly straight forward, a young family moves into a new home and then their youngest son falls into a coma. After the son falls into a coma, the mother starts seeing people and things happening into the house. Eventually, she seeks out a psychic/medium/paranormal researcher who tells them that the house isn’t haunted but the son is. Obviously, there is more to the story than that but not by too horribly much. We get very little character development or really get to know the family being terrorized.

It honestly felt like a throwback to the older thriller horror films with no real background music except for deliberate parts where “Tiptoe through the tulips” becomes creepier than it was initially. And we don’t actually see the monsters/ghosts except for good, fleeting moments when it’ll jump out and startle you the best. When we actually get to see the demon it’s not really all that scary. My son was telling me that there wasn’t even a monster in the movie.

The movie’s pacing is very incredibly slow and the interactions between the family members is minimal. I’d say that this is would be a feat for the mother to conquer as the housewife, part time composer who is frustrated with the trials of having a newborn and moving into a new home but she gets no actual support or help from anyone that’s an adult.

I’d say that if you are looking for a slow, creeping, thriller type of scare “Insidious” is right up your alley but if you are used to faster paced modern scares, this is really not your scene.

4 of 10. – Slow paced, throwback with jumps that’s worth the rental.

Before I roll into my review of this very weird action/drama/mind trip movie, I wanted to say that I’ve been happy to be back on the show again although I keep my questions generally to a minimum in most interviews since most of my questions tend to be general concept questions or world specific questions. But if I have the time to prepare for a show, I actually try to read through the archives of whichever webcomic artist we happen to interview. In the case of Dirk Tiede, I had the opportunity to actually meet with and talk to him at Intervention before his interview with us which was incredibly helpful and it would have been awesome if I had not been up since 2am that day or working overnights at the office. I sincerely hope that I get a chance to talk to Dirk again to redeem myself. =)

There are ton of great action superhero movies coming out in the next few months with the NEW Captain America movie, Thor and the new X-Men movie on my “to watch list” to see what movie offerings the now Disney owned, Marvel can give me for my comic nerd fix to torment my husband with. Yesterday night/early this morning, my husband and I managed to catch the midnight premiere of “Sucker Punch” sans our son, brother in-law and sadly, most of our friends due to scheduling and the desire to watch the movie a little bit closer to home.

In anticipation of the movie selling out (which it did in most of the theaters last night and today) I bought our tickets online before the showing dropped completely from the movie ticket website’s listings entirely. The showing wasn’t sold out since there maybe like 20-30 people in that theater so I don’t know why exactly they dropped the listing from the website. The real lesson to be learned here is to buy your movie tickets early and online as soon as you entertain the thought of going or else you may the chance to be that first person in your circle of friends to watch the newest gem that Hollywood has to offer.

“Sucker Punch” follows 3 alternating realities of the main heroine that we only know from the 2nd reality as “Baby Doll”. In the first reality, Baby Doll and her little sister have just lost her mother whom leaves her vast wealth to her two daughters; much to the dismay of their greedy stepfather. The stepfather goes on a drunken bender and sets out to rape Baby Doll until she fights back, then he decides that it’d hurt Baby Doll more if he rapes the younger sister so he locks our heroine in her room and rampages across the hall to the little sister’s room. At this point in the first 5 minutes of movie, we are struck by the notion that Zack Synder isn’t too horrible original with writing a villainous stepfather and has stuck to the safety of the arch-typical evil stepfather. The most striking thing about this sequence, besides the stark almost completely gray color palette, is the fact, that this entire first segment of the movie is done without dialogue- it’s a long music sequence with a heavy handed female song version of “Sweet Dreams” done in the style of Marilyn Manson’s cover.

We actually don’t get any dialogue until Baby Doll is whisked away to a Mental Institution where her stepfather bribes an orderly, Blue, to have her name expedited to the top of the list to be lobotomized. So now we see the other female patients for the first and last time as patients before we fast forward to Baby Doll’s lobotomy about a week later where we get dropped into the next reality.

The Mental Institution becomes a 1950s era bordello and the patients transform into women forced into prostitution who must dance and serve in order to survive. Baby Doll enters this reality as an orphan sold to Blue, now a pimp, by a priest to be deflowered by a high roller. Does our Baby Doll succumb to her fate?

Of course not, she doesn’t get the inspiration to escape until she is brought to the dance studio and told by Vera, the dance instructor/doctor/madame(?), that she has all the weapons she needs to fight and the inter-strength required to survive but she must firm up her courage and fight. These words strike the proper cord and as Baby Doll begins to dance we are dropped into what I would like to call, “the Happy Place”, where she is a warrior lad in a skimpy mini skirt version of the Japanese School Girl uniform/little girl Sailor outfit. And as this warrior, Baby Doll is able to fight whatever manifestations her real world challenges may be and when she emerges from her Happy Place she finds herself in the bleak stark other realities, the victor.

There are several diverging worlds that Baby Doll enters later on as she quests for the things she needs to escape but she is later joined by 4 other women, Rocket, Sweet Pea, Blondie (who ironically is a brunette) and Amber who help her along the way.

There is so much more to the story but I will not go further. Each reality is visually different from the next, although we primarily only see the Bordello and the Happy Place realities throughout the entire film. It seemed to me that the overall time period that this movie was supposed to be taking place in was the early 1950s, except there were little things that were out of place like the modern coffin used in the funeral at the beginning, or a quick glimpse of an orderly using ear buds connected to an Ipod. The Bordello reality held the most color but again, was maybe supposed to be in the early 1950s. But the Happy Place reality was the most divergent in time period with clockwork, steam powered undead Nazis and steam-powered mecha; or using a 2 prop airplanes airdrop the team of girls to slay a dragon while a siege is ongoing in an orc controlled tower.

What I liked about this movie was the soundtrack, the cinematography was clear with good storytelling and fairly good acting, smooth clear high energy and imaginative action sequences. What I disliked was the choppy pacing, the lack of character development of the other girls and Baby Doll herself and the absence of a deeper plot than say “We must gather a map, fire, a knife and a key”. It really felt like there were huge parts of the movie missing in part to the movie’s PG-13 rating. All the horrible sticky parts of the stories that would have made the other girls’ desire to escape with Baby Doll more compelling was really absent. We just have to take it at face value that the girls dislike dancing on stage and probably having sex with the customers that we never actually see at the bordello except for twice. But there was a lot of things implied in the subtext, like Blue raping/beating the bordello girls/patients but we don’t see it. We see people get killed but not the blood or even the dead bodies except in the Happy Place.

Even though part of the movie occurs in a bordello, we don’t see anything beyond bustiers and long unexposed legs with bottoms mostly covered in typical bodysuit dancer wear. I think the movie was horribly limited by its rating and its desire to catch as many generations’ desires to watch this film. It was a fun watch but it left us feeling unfulfilled and wanting a uncensored version with all the cool stuff they might not had even filmed. Please Hollywood, if you are going to give us hot girls in skimpy outfits go all the way with the sheer win!

3 of 10- Better as a rental, or with a group of friends and a drinking game formulated.

So this new year has found me in the middle of re-envisioning one of my older comics, “Painted Wings” in order to make things flow better and jive better; and of course, brainstorming more stuff for “The Lavenders”. I absolutely love the pages Keith has been producing!

Right now, I am currently doing some training so my hours are more normal but we are hitting the soul-crushing work blocks this week. Hopefully, when I’m not too crushed for sleep or time, I can actually try to participate on the Show again! Just know that my absence is not because of gaming… I actually haven’t played any Dragon Age in 2 weeks. I have been doing a lot of reading again in my spare time at school, I finished “Hannibal Rising”; “The Prince of Tides”; “The Replacement” which was an interesting first novel by Brenna Yovanoff. It’s not often we get modern fantasy/young adult novels with a male narrator and it’s definitely a different for the fact that the main character is a “Changeling” instead of the ever popular vampire/vampire hunter/demon/werewolf right now. It’s definitely worth a look!

On an unrelated note, I found this video on YouTube when I was playing the “Portal” End Song – Check it out:

Well, geesh, it’s been a while folks! I’ve been uber busy making blankets, quilts, curtains, a TMNT costume for my son, running a haunted house and canned food drive, being a mom/wife and working full time with the Navy so yeah… My internet fun time suffers greatly.

I am excited since “The Lavenders” has kicked off great and is now starting into the meat of the story. =) Definitely check it out if you haven’t yet. I wrote this arc’s script under Mike’s guidance but the next Main arc “Year” will be a more collaborative effort between us. Keith’s art of course is superb and we have some awesome pin-ups for a paltry $3 donation fee.

Here’s hoping that things will settle out so on my days off over the course of the new year, I can be awake and participate in the shows again! I love talking to our guests and it helps me get into more netisms I didn’t know existed. =)

Hi everyone! It’s been a while but this week we are interviewing artist and writer, Chris Hazelton! He’s better known for his angelic gender bending webcomic, “Misfile” but his other titles include, “Steel Wing Shattered” and “Building 12″. Here’s the rundown on “Misfile” from the Webcomic List series Synosis:

A comedy about how a pothead angel messes up two distinctively different people’s lives. A car-loving boy turned into a girl, and a girl who lost two years of her life. Now they must stick together to fix their problems.

This series touches some of the underlying issues about gender identity and the value of having a second chance to relive about 2 years of your life. If you had the chance, would you try to make the same choices to try to get the same outcome or would you try to live a little bit more? Or what would you do if you suddenly found yourself in a different body and your family relationships are suddenly so vastly different?

Season 3, Episode
Sept. 15, 2010
Be sure to join us here at 10:00 PM EST/7:00 PM PST

http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=45815&cmd=tc

Hi everyone! I am happily back in the States again and unhappily back to my crazy rotating shiftwork again. This means I have a few more weeks of this weird schedule that prevents me from even being home on most Wednesdays to even listen to the show. I am looking forward to the next shift I rotate too because it gives me a chance to actually spend time with my family and provides me a window to actually participate in the show. I miss you guys!

Upcoming projects:

The Lavenders has LAUNCHED? Are you following it? AND WHY NOT?! Keith W./Verias is drawing it, Mike/Macia is shading it this time around and Year One, I got to write with some guidance from Mac. =) Of course, the prologue is up and running so I don’t have a hand in this part but it sheer awesomeness! You should reeeeeaadddd it.

The Haunt at Sunrise Farm is opening for the Halloween Haunting season in October. I just relaunched the site with the new site design but I am still uploading graphics from last year’s show.

Studio HnH is plotting an Etsy store. Katie is going to be putting up some cool knitted Moogles and other handicrafts and I’m going to be putting up some Unique one-off art pieces (namely scratchboards) so be sure to stay tuned for that store’s launch. I am plotting some Salient merch but I have to plan it out a little bit more before I make that announcement.

Salient Caligation – I found my tablet and stylus! With my reinstall of my OS and Photoshop I can make the magic happen with the last page of Salient and hopefully find that Waking page I was working on before I moved from my apartment. o.o

Since I have no new major art offerings at the moment, I am selling off Nick and I’s comic book and anime paraphernalia collection. I have a TON of comics left for sale and you can check out those auctions on ebay.

What is StarArmy.com?

Purpose and Goals of this Site

StarArmy.com is the home of a community of creative, friendly guys and girls dedicated to producing and constantly improving superior original collaborative story writing, role-play, and military simulation. It’s also a fine place on the internet to call home. Let us welcome you.

Our goals:

* Provide an interactive story-writing experience to all competent role-players. Preferably, hours after they join, 24/7.
* Maintain an ever-growing, highly interesting player-made setting, to which anyone can contribute.
* Mentor and stimulate players and game-masters to constantly improve.

If you’ve got some imagination, you should join us. Here’s why:
We Offer Many Interesting Benefits

Star Army offers a wealth of exciting things to do. It is a mature community that has been running for years, yet isn’t overgrown; each person can receive individual attention. Its player-made setting is open to change through your contributions and your characters’ actions; you could literally alter the face of the universe! Star Army provides an excellent outlet for writers, a fun gaming experience for role-players, and a lively, friendly community to visit – we want you to become a regular! Using guides and personal assistance, you can get settled in fast.

Even if you don’t have time to become a frequent visitor, we can still help you. There’s thousands of pages to read for your personal enjoyment, and if you’re an artist, Star Army will commission you to do character artwork!

Creative Writing

As a writer, you get to write as much as you wish among a community you can trust to tell to criticize yet don’t have to worry about things getting too harsh. You can write on your own, or take advantage of the site’s role-playing plots and write as a group either through forum posts or even live online chat rooms. Nothing is more inspiring than an immersing yourself in a group of like-minded writers and artists.

You will improve as you write more. Orson Scott Card once said, “Every writer has 100,000 words of crap” he needs to get out of his system. Well, hey, we’re happy to help you get through that before you start working on published stuff. If you write a little every day, you’ll be through that in no time; writing is not work here–it is entertainment, and when you’re having fun, learning is easy. One of the greatest benefits of a group story-writing/role-play setup like this is that in addition to the usual spelling and grammar, you’ll also develop a great sense of style, plot, and especially characterization.

Season 3, Ep. 10 – Wes Davis – Star Army Online RPG