Various and Sundry

Animation Break… with Pizza

Apart from contemplating whether to see any component of Barbenheimer in the theaters, I didn’t have anything I was planning to see until my kids announced they were unanimous in wanting to see the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film aka “Wait, there’s another TMNT movie?!?” This was a surprise because, to the best of my knowledge and theirs, they have not seen any previous TMNT movie. They also have not been around long enough…

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Acting Voiceover

Slim Chance of Escaping The Killer Mine

I’ve been fortunate enough to record parts for several audio fiction pieces this year and the first one to drop hits me right in the vintage radio feels. It’s a great reworking of a episode of Escape starring perennial Gunsmoke voice actor and the iconic Paladin of Have Gun, Will Travel, John Dehner. Escape is one of my favorites of those old shows and is similar to the more long-running, better known anthology show Suspense.…

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Acting Writing

Teeny WGA/SAG-AFTRA Strike Follow-Up

More people than I expected read my Thursday update about the WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes, so I figured I should do a brief follow-up. For one, I didn’t read the Deadline article closely enough as it turns out the WGA and AMPTP were just meeting about meeting (I’ve made a correction to the Thursday post as it’s still getting some clicks). Sadly, but not unexpectedly, the meeting did not result in agreeing to resume negotiations. In the…

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Acting Producing Writing

WGA/SAG-AFTRA Strike Update

So, it’s August and both the screenwriters and the screen actors are still striking. The WGA is meeting about returning to the negotiating table this Friday, but that doesn’t mean their strike is ending and, at the time of me writing this, there’s no news on AMPTP talking with SAG-AFTRA (though per that article, they’d be happy to). I’ve gone back and tagged all my relevant posts about the strike(s) for ease of reference, but…

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Various and Sundry

Swedes Take Distress Calls Seriously

I’ve been working on an update on the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, but I saw a meme of the photo above and felt we could all use some good news about humans helping humans. Basically, a small sailboat lost its rudder and called for distress. Naturally, the closest ship came to their aid. It just happened to be a 788-ton 1:1 replica of an 18th century sailing vessel: the Götheborg. Looking for more information than…

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Acting Producing

When Actors Ain’t Got Time for Your Drama, Ya Done Wrong

As of Thursday, July 13th, SAG-AFTRA is on strike, joining the WGA, which has been on strike since the beginning of May. Considering I posted about that strike, it made sense to post about this as well, but boy howdy has there been a lot in the past 10 days or so. In terms of overall covereage, Alissa Wilkinson, over at Vox, has one of their excellent explainer articles. Kim Masters and Matt Belloni banter…

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Various and Sundry

Is a Pirate’s Life for You? Ask the Expert!

I’m going through my final round of Netflix DVDs and this weekend’s entry was the 2012 mini-series of Treasure Island with Eddie Izzard as Long John Silver. The short version? Izzard delivers a great Silver, but the mini-series takes some odd diversions from the source material that are far from satisfying. My wife actually suggested, knowing my penchant for ranking, that I rank all the different version of Treasure Island, which is very tempting –perhaps…

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Reviews Various and Sundry

One Last Ride into the Sunset: Red Envelope Reviews

Not quite three months ago, I, along with a couple million other people, got the sad news that Netflix was finally shuttering its films-by-mail service aka, the DVD rental business with “no late fees” that started it all. Now, there’s also over 200 million other Netflix subscribers who likely didn’t realize you could still get DVDs and Blu-Rays by mail. That doesn’t change the fact that this Postal method was and is a great way…

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Various and Sundry

Bond, Historical Bond (A Retrospective)

Having done villains last week, let’s take a look at heroes. Okay, James Bond is something of an anti-hero as established from the get-go in that “you’ve had your six” moment in Dr. No. But still, he is working for Queen and Country as well as saving the world (sometimes as a sad clown). This is a fun overview of how James Bond has changed with the times that Fandom released just before No Time…

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Writing

Sometimes, You Just Need a Good Villain…

Going from studio villains from earlier this week to the villains writers concoct for studios, I stumbled across this article by Tom Smyth for Vox about villians in Disney films… or the recent lack thereof. I have to admit, villains are very much on my mind of late as I try and and finish writing season 3 of my space opera, Rogue Tyger. The season includes the introduction of a “big bad” villain only hinted…

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