World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

This is a really good short film, primarily visual effects (Bruce says it was a one day shoot, and two years of effects) that tells the story of a man and what he’ll do for his true love when she is in a coma (Or at least that’s what I took out of it).

Bruce is best known for his work as a digital artist on Ghost Rider, King Kong, Serenity, Sin City and 405 among others. Spent aproximately $2,500 (According to IMDb Pro) to make this project, but I’m sure if you count the time he spent working on the visuals as part of the budget, it would be much larger.

It’s done really well, but the only problem I have is that at some parts you can see the green spill around the actor that he couldn’t quite get rid of. I’m sure with more time, a better keyer or a better green screen it would’ve looked much better. The only reason I’m knocking it, is because Bruce has worked as a Compositor on a lot of major films and owns his own Visual Effects company. To let something like that slip through is odd.

But other than that, it’s a great short and I commend Bruce for his work on it and the time he spent to make it happen. Great concept, great execution, A+.

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All-in-One Gestures

All-in-One Gestures is a mouse based gesture system that allows you to control everything in the browser with a quick mouse gesture. The thing that really makes this awesome is that you can customize your gestures. This is awesome for speedy web surfing, and especially awesome for people with a mouse that lacks a forward/backward button (like my MX518 mouse has). You hold down the right mouse button and drag in a series of directions. You can do everything from go back and forward, open a new tab, a new window, close a tab or go full screen.

AnyColor

AnyColor allows you to change the colors of your tabs, and the overall look of Firefox. Customizing the colors to, well, pretty much any colors. It comes with pre-designed themes, one of which I use. But you can customize it to any color scheme you like.

Tab Mix Plus

While Tab Mix Plus doesn’t do a lot for me, it does one thing that is a MUST have. If you’re like me, you have a ton of tabs opened up at once and having to scroll through them with the built in Firefox scroller, it takes up a lot of time and can be annoying. Tab Mix Plus allows you to have multiple rows of tabs (with a maximum that you can decide on) in addition to that you can make it highlight updated tabs or scale the tabs down to fit a certain width. It’s incredibly powerful, and I only scrape the surface of it’s features.

Delicious Bookmarks

This is only useful if you use del.icio.us bookmarks — and you should be, the ability to bookmark anything and then take it with you (and share it with friends) is a great tool. This plugin allows you to quickly view your bookmarks and more importantly, bookmark a page with the click of a button. Not only that, but if you bookmark something to your browser bookmarks it will ask you if you want to bookmark it to del.icio.us as well.

Download Statusbar

One of the things that is cool about Google Chrome is the ability to view downloads in the browser without having to have that pesky downloads box open up. Download Statusbar does this, and allows you to click on it in the bottom of the browser to open the file.

FoxTab

This is an amazing addon. With a quick keyboard shortcut (Control-Q by default) you can see a graphical representation of your current open tabs. Not only can you customize it to what you want it to look like (From the iTunes movie scroll look, to the giant TV monitor look that I use) but you can also sort the tabs by what site you have open. So if you’re like me and havefive google tabs open and two Life Hacker pages, you can quickly navigate to them.

PDF Download

A really simple addon that works really well, and is really easy to use.  Instead of downloading to your browser each time, or automatically downloading. PDF Downloader gives you the option of what you would like it to do. Really nice if you do a lot of online PDF viewing.

Speed Dial

Speed Dial is amazing. It replaces your new tab box with a setup similar to Google Chrome.  But with this you can setup different tabs, and the best part? Right click and “Open All in Tabs” will open all the windows in that tab into new windows. This is a great tool if you are doing something like checking 50 Freelancing websites, or checking all your gaming sites at once. You can have as many rows and columns per tab as you want, and as many tabs as you want as well.  I put it up to as much as 20×20, but that was pretty slow and pointless. But hey, to each his own.

Alright, that about wraps it up. These are most of the addons I use on a daily basis, what addons do you use that you couldn’t live without?

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With that being said, watch “The Office” on NBC this Thursday, I worked on the episode (It’s the Season Finale, titled “Company Picnic”). So my name MIGHT appear in the credits, but then again it might not. Either way, I had a lot of fun on that set and look forward to Season 6. Hopefully I’ll get a call back.

In the coming days, I’ll write more about what I’ve been up to, what I’m looking forward to, and whatnot. I have a LOT to cover, as I’ve been working with Visual Effects and a few new Web Series’ that I’m producing.

Sorry for the lack of content today, but check back for more tomorrow and I promise there will be something more worthwhile.

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The story is about two energy drink promoters journey to find themselves and fix their relationships after they crack under the pressure of life. Wheeler (Scott) and Danny (Rudd) find themselves given the choice of thirty days in prison, or thirty days community service working in a big brother program called Sturdy Wings.

The two choose Sturdy Wings, only to want to change their mind after the first encounter with the kids Augie (Mintz-Plasses) and Ronnie (Thompson). Augie is a a nerdy teenager who has a passion for LAIRE (Live Action Interactive Roleplaying Explorers), the films own version of LARP (Live Action Role Playing). Ronnie is a wise cranking kid that goes through big brothers like normal people go through Keelex.

Act 1 was a little big long but it worked and that’s what matters. We’re setup with the story and we get to see the characters in their normal world. But it does seem to drag on, albeit hilariously. They could have tightened it up a little and trimmed a few small bits of fat from the opening act but despite that it was hilarious through til Act 2.

This films antagonist and protagonist as well as it’s central theme is a little hard to follow. In the beginning of the film it seems more about the relationshp between Danny and his girlfriend (Played by Elizabeth Banks) but as the film goes on it becomes more about Augie vs the King of LAIRE. It seems as through the relationship with Danny and his Girlfriend was more of a subplot and less of the main plot, which it appeared to be in Act 1. Wihle this isn’t a bad thing, the story is told hilariously and everything is wrapped up neatly for us, I would’ve liked to see the opening a little bit more about Augie and develope his relationshp with Danny and the game he plays.

Paul Judd and Sean Williams Scott play off each other hilariously, every joke is well timed and keeps you laughing through the entire film. Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Bobb’e J Thompson make the movie what it is. Thompsons witty remarks and quick comebacks keep you laughing til the very end.

Overall, this is an amazingly funny film with a well throught out story. A must see for any comedy fan, and a must buy when it cmoes out on Blu Ray and DVD.

Overall Score: 9/10

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