Greg Hardin's Miscellaneous Blog

Wreck-it Ralph

2012-11-04T22:22:00.001-06:00

The previews for this movie made it seem like Monsters Inc meets Toy Story or something, but something about it still grabbed me. I took the day off on Friday to go to a Food Network convention thing with Ashley (free food of all types at every table!) and then we went and saw Wreck-it Ralph. I LOVED this movie! Everything about it is fun and fresh: the ideas for the worlds and characters and gags are awesome, the storyline for the movie is inventive and fun, and the animation and design of the movie are outstanding. The movie has tons of heart and I was never bored and I got lost in the movie--something that rarely happens to me any more.

This is the most entertaining animated movie I've seen since the first Kung Fu Panda movie, or maybe Pixar's Up. I can't wait to get this on Blu-ray when that day comes. You don't need to take a kid to see this movie, you can take your significant other and have a great time. I have nothing but huge enthusiasm for this movie and plan on recommending it to everybody. Great job Disney!

Disney and Star Wars

2012-11-03T14:00:00.000-05:00

I'll always remember that I got to be the one to break the news to everybody at work that "HOLY CRAP DISNEY JUST BOUGHT LUCASFILM!" I had refreshed my news page and saw that headline come up and I was dumbfounded and I yelled that out. Of course, there were gasps in the office, nobody could believe it. And then we read that they had Episode VII in development due in 2015? Well, we all stopped what we were doing and had to talk about the news and the possibilities. Within minutes the news had spread all over Facebook and the internet and the whole world was collectively gobsmacked.

At first it was tough for me to comprehend--I was floored when Disney bought Pixar and again when they bought Marvel. But now Star Wars too? Holy. Crap. This is is beyond huge! However, as I thought about it more the more excited I got. George Lucas was handing over control of Star Wars to somebody, anybody else, which meant that we wouldn't have to suffer through his dictatorial view of the Star Wars universe any longer and could finally get some passionate people making these movies again. And we could get a Star Wars land at one of the Disney parks. So much cool stuff could happen to finally get Star Wars relevant and making imagination-stirring adventures again.

And then Lucasfilm and Pixar are under the same roof again...that's nuts if you know their history.

Any time I get to thinking this is a bad move for fans of Star Wars or Industrial Light and Magic or any of the great things Lucas owned, I remember to tell myself that Lucas isn't getting any younger and that if he didn't willingly sell it to Disney while he's alive that it all could have been ruined by his children after his death. This was the best move for Lucas he could have made unless he figured out how to make Lucasfilm continue on privately after his death, like Walt Disney did. If George didn't want Lucasfilm to survive solo as a private company, then this was the best way for his life's work to continue on without him. I'm good with it.

Now the wait begins to see what director they hire for Episode VII. I bet it's gonna be a huge name!

Fan pro-looking Star Wars anime

2012-09-19T20:06:00.004-05:00

This is AMAZING. This is the kind of quality surprise you just don't see on the web much any more, and it's exactly what George Lucas should be doing with the Star Wars franchise instead of all of that stupid kiddie stuff. I'm knocked out by this!

Article about the clip

Bedfellows

2012-09-19T20:04:00.001-05:00

3-minute horror film. Fun!

Ha--this one is great too:

McFarlane art sold

2012-07-31T12:46:00.002-05:00

Whoa. This Todd McFarlane original art for The Amazing Spider-man #328 just became the most expensive piece of comics art in the world, sold for $657,250.

This issue of Spider-man is an important one for me too, in that it's partially responsible for me becoming an artist. I remember looking at this issue in high school and realizing that I had a long way to go if I was going to be a comics artist, much less a regular-old artist. I was blown away. "Spider-man can beat up the Hulk now? When did that happen?"

I saw that McFarlane's cover of "Spider-man #1" recently sold for $358,500 too. I wonder why the flood of McFarlane-drawn Spidey art now? I know Todd used to keep all of his original art and not sell it at conventions--maybe he's now letting some of it leak out. update: I guess Gareb Shamus, the former publisher of Wizard magazine, collected this art and is selling it now.

Superman Classic: Bizarro

2012-07-29T19:04:00.000-05:00

Man I love this stuff! This is Rob Pratt's second personal project take on Superman (first one HERE).

These personal projects people do are always awesome because you're seeing how they'd do something if gotten the chance. It happens a lot more in comics than it does in animation, so it's even more special to see stuff like this.

Comic Con 2012

2012-07-29T15:52:00.004-05:00

I got back from San Diego Comic Con two weeks ago (my sixth time attending, but first since '07), and hadn't put up any photos or anything except for on Facebook, so here we go.

I bought a couple of sketchbooks and even a children's book, "The Halloween Kid" because I loved the art. I picked up the new third story in the "Blacksad" graphic novel series, and picked up Doug TenNapel's new one "Cardboard" as well. I even got lucky enough to get a free black & white press proof copy of Amulet 5 for free!

Something I'm going to pick up down the line that I saw at Comic Con is "A Tale of Sand," which is a gorgeous graphic novel based on an unpublished feature-length screenplay by the late Muppets creator Jim Henson. I'd have bought it when I saw it but I'd already gotten plenty of things to carry around in my backpack. It'll be on my birthday list.

However, probably the coolest thing I picked up didn't cost me a dime. Chris Sanders is the creator of "Lilo and Stitch" and he directed "How to Train Your Dragon." His next movie for Dreamworks is "The Croods," about the first family of humans during the fictional "Croodaceous Period," a time when evolution hasn't quite figured everything out yet so there's a lot of hybrid creatures. Sanders created the image on the poster, and Dreamworks gave him 3500 Comic Con-exclusive prints to give out. I got mine autographed by him, and it's going to be framed and put on my office wall.

Here's some photos I took from the con:

Costumes
Displays/Locales
Celebrity panels

Big Idea owned by Dreamworks now

2012-07-28T13:07:00.000-05:00

I'm catching up on a bunch of blogging this weekend. So last week Dreamworks bought Classic Media, and therefore Dreamworks now owns Big Idea ("VeggieTales,") a place I worked for eight years before getting laid off with most of the rest of the creatives in the company at Christmas 2008. Obviously I'm pretty interested in this story.

Big Idea was lost by its founders to bankruptcy in the early 2000s due to a lost court case, and sold to Classic Media. Classic kept the company for a few years and then sold it to London-based Entertainment Rights. Entertainment Rights' stock soon plummeted and the original owners of Classic Media formed a new ownership group and re-bought the company back from ER at a much lower price. Now Classic has been sold again to Dreamworks. What a crazy roller coaster ride Big Idea has been on.

Amazingly, there are still a very small number of people at Big Idea who have survived through every iteration of ownership. I wonder how Dreamworks will choose to continue on with Big Idea now? I'll definitely be paying attention.

Drawing above by Tim Hodge, one of Big Idea's former heads of Story.

Dark Knight, Spider-man movies

2012-07-27T18:44:00.002-05:00

Movie review time, haven't done this in a while. I think I skipped doing The Avengers all together, but c'mon, everybody thought that movie was awesome.

Brief reviews though. Batman: I'd give it a solid A. Enjoyed it a ton and it was really tense throughout, but I didn't like it as much as "The Dark Knight," the Heath Ledger movie. Loved the movie slamming the Occupy movement too. Definitely see this one in the theaters.

Spider-man: I'd give it a B. I liked the actors, and I thought they brought back some great things about Spider-man, namely his webshooters, slight physique, and the one-liners he'd crack while beating up the bad guys. But the Lizard villain was pretty forgettable and the story was lacking. Also, I really didn't need to see Spidey's origin on film again. However, I think the makers of this movie are on the right track and I think the sequel will be better than the original, or at least I hope it will be. Anyways, if you've got a big screen TV and a blu-ray player, it'll be a great rental.

Riggle's KU opening at the ESPYs

2012-07-17T12:24:00.002-05:00

Brave

2012-06-24T13:06:00.001-05:00

I haven't been posting much to this blog lately because of busy-ness, putting things on Facebook instead and also because I hate the new way Blogger composes posts. They've made what used to be a simple process of posting an image and putting text underneath it into a challenging exercise that I still can't quite figure out how to do right.

So: "Brave." I thought it was extremely average. The reviews I'd read beforehand said this would be a great movie if it were made by Dreamworks or Sony but I don't think that's true. Dreamworks has been on a roll lately--the Kung Fu Panda movies and How To Train Your Dragon were excellent, and I loved Sony's Surf's Up and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

With Brave, I felt like I'd seen this movie before so many times. I've seen the "family member turns into a bear" idea with "Brother Bear." I've essentially seen the Scottish thing (I know, I know, it was Vikings) in How To Train Your Dragon and then also Braveheart. I saw the archery stuff in Robin Hood (down to the arrow splitting another arrow idea). The arranged marriage thing felt like a mix of The Princess Bride meets Monty Python's Holy Grail. The Will-o-the-Wisp thing felt straight from a Studio Ghibli film. About the only thing that felt fresh was the visual of Merida's amazing bouncy curly hair. I can't think of any sense of wonder I felt during the movie or any big scenes I need to recommend, unlike so many of Pixar's other films. I'd say you could wait for the Blu-ray on this one.

I love to rank Pixar's films--I don't do it with any of the other animation houses. I guess that shows how highly I esteem their work. While I feel that Brave isn't essential watching, I still think Pixar is the king of animation and I still greatly look forward to their future movies.

My updated ranking of Pixar's movies:

1. The Incredibles
2. Monsters, Inc.
3. Ratatouille
4. Up
5. Toy Story
6. Toy Story 3
7. Toy Story 2
8. Finding Nemo
9. Cars
10. Brave
11. A Bug's Life
12. Wall-E
13. Cars 2

The Credible Hulk

2012-05-30T12:47:00.002-05:00

Saw this on Facebook last weekend.

Bad Art Good Walls

2012-05-27T13:25:00.002-05:00

Portlandia on the nose, as always.

Paul Rudd talks Royals

2012-05-13T16:41:00.005-05:00

This must have been recorded last year. Fun to hear him talking about how people look at him with sympathy for his love of the Royals.

Tron: Uprising

2012-05-02T21:55:00.001-05:00

This looks awesome to me. Looks like Aeon Flux but with more action, maybe as much as a Samurai Jack cartoon. I'll be checking it out.

Super Best Friends

2012-05-02T21:51:00.000-05:00

Fun stuff!

Inflatable Superman suit

2012-04-17T14:19:00.000-05:00

I want one of these for Halloween!

Evil Dead 2 trailer cartooned

2012-04-11T15:53:00.002-05:00

Somebody went through the Evil Dead 2 trailer and drew over top of it (rotoscoped) and it's pretty awesome.

Titanic Super 3D

2012-04-11T15:50:00.000-05:00

I saw this the other day and forgot to put it up. Ashley's been all over this 100-year anniversary thing, I might as well put this up for her!

KU to the National Championship game!

2012-04-01T14:19:00.005-05:00

Man. I never, ever thought this was going to happen this year. After the past two years, when KU had loaded teams full of NBA draft picks and got knocked off by no-name small schools? And then this year, when KU has a weak bench and only one returning starter? Never thought this would happen. And I'm having a blast!

KU's now won 100 games over the last 3 years and have won more games than any other school over the last 6 years. This is KU's second final four during that time and their 4th in the last ten years. I consider myself blessed to have graduated from a school that quite possibly fields the best team in college basketball year in and year out.

So Monday for the national championship it's the battle of the bluebloods, Kansas vs. Kentucky. Kentucky has the most wins in the 100+ years of college basketball, and KU has the second-most. KU coach Bill Self and Kentucky coach John Calipari will face off in the title game for the second time, and that would be so sweet to deny Calipari again, since the coach is generally perceived as dirty (two vacated Final Four runs at UMass and Memphis). That would be beyond sweet to knock off UK in a year when every talking head pretty much proclaimed them National Champs from the first week of the season. That would just be icing on the cake!

Here's KU fans celebrating in Allen Fieldhouse last night after watching the game on the scoreboard jumbotron:

And here's this week's Sports Illustrated with KU on the cover. Let's hope that we're on the cover of next week's too, and for a victorious reason!

FINAL FOUR

2012-03-25T21:56:00.003-05:00

Oops, looks like I missed putting up a post for the Elite Eight! Oh well--we're off to the Final Four! So many great things about this NCAA run, where to start? Is it that our team of zero McDonald's All-Americans beat North Carolina's team featuring six McDonald's All-Americans? Is it going 2-0 against Roy Williams since he left KU for North Carolina? Is it going to KU's 14th Final Four (9th in my lifetime)? Is it that Missouri had supposedly their best year ever and they lost to a 15-seed and KU's in the Final Four yet again? Is it watching Thomas Robinson so happy a year after losing two grandparents and his mother over the course of a few weeks? Yes to all of that.

But even better, I get to keep cheering for the Jayhawks for another week and we're two games away from a national championship. Go Jayhawks!!!! Woohoo!

Sweet 16

2012-03-19T11:01:00.003-05:00

This game put me through the wringer. Purdue finished in 6th place in the Big 10 and yet last night they turned into one of those teams that cannot miss from three-point range and KU was behind the entire game. Purdue senior Robbie Hummel was unconscious in the first half, going 7-of-8 with 5 three-pointers for 22 points. I wanted to kill him.

But our guys grinded it out and stayed close despite Hummel hitting every ridiculous shot he threw up. Finally we got some threes of our own and some breakaway dunks and won the game. I still can't believe we pulled that off. Purdue came out for keeps and it was all we could do to get past them.

So now we're past the first weekend. I feel a lot better about KU now that there really aren't favorites once you get to the Sweet 16. Anything can happen, only 4 possible games to go, take one at a time!

Grantland article on Kansas

2012-03-17T15:48:00.003-05:00

This is one of those great pieces that comes out every few years about the history of Kansas basketball. It manages to talk extensively about Dr. James Naismith (creator of the game of basketball and KU's first coach) and about current coach Bill Self, and about how a KU donor bought Naismith's original piece of paper for $4.3 million detailing the rules of basketball.

KU has a history and mythology with the game of basketball that no other college or pro team has. Great reading. LINK

Norfolk State

2012-03-16T23:59:00.000-05:00

RUIN

2012-03-16T09:06:00.002-05:00

RUIN from OddBall Animation on Vimeo.

This is awesome--a computer-animated action scene set in a post-apocalyptic future. Absolutely worth 8 minutes of your time!