brain out loud

Warner Brothers and DC continue to have problems with the DC Extended Universe, and if things don't turn around soon the ambitious slate of films may get scrapped. There is still no director attached or finalized script for the The Flash movie which is expected for 2018, and after a turbulent month or so during which Matt Reeves, who was the front-runner, withdrew his name only to re-enter it has officially been attached to direct the stand-alone Batman film. Star of this proposed Batman film, Ben Affleck has yet to debunk rumors that he no longer wants to portray the Caped Crusader. Varying reports suggest his contract covers two Justice League films, not a solo Batman film. I also suspect, with the popularity of the character, Warner Brothers would like Affleck for cameos in nearly every other DCEU film. Why do I suspect such a scenario? Justice League Dark from DC was first published in 2011 and starred characters with supernatural powers including John Constantine, Swamp Thi...

Toy Fair, the annual industry trade show took place over the weekend in New York City, and many new and exciting additions to dozens of toy lines were revealed. However, only one of those revelations concerned GI Joe. The second wave of delightful, vinyl figures with oversized heads from Loyal Subjects were on display and they look great. The lack of GI Joe content at the biggest toy industry trade show in the country is not surprising. Fans and collectors already know that a large retail roll-out of a new action figure line is contingent on the GI Joe film franchise from Hasbro Studios and Universal. In fact, most if not all of the toys that line the shelves at the local department store are supported by a movie or television show. That said it does concern me that my favorite assortment of action figure, vehicle and play-set merchandise relies on a horrible movie franchise that's struggling to find an audience and is routinely blasted by critics. Plus the major reveals ar...

Hard at work on my third GI Joe novel for Kindle Worlds, while at the same time doing what I can to promote the first two. I have messed around with video production on and off, my first job after college, the summer I bought an Apple Mac and now with Hit Film 4 Express. Even though it is free Hit Film 4 Express is very powerful. My PC just meets the minimum system requirements, which is enough for me to learn the basics of the software. Maybe after a PC upgrade and purchasing the more advanced version I can make some more impressive movie magic.  My first GI Joe fanfiction novel for Kindle Worlds, Into the Clutches of Cobra-La, is a deconstructed and re-imagined version of GI Joe: The Movie from 1987. Making a teaser for the tale was as simple as splicing up the animated film and arranging the clips in sync with the music. Free music, usable under a creative commons license from freemusicarchive.org. Making a promotional video for my second GI Joe fanfiction novel, Mindbende...

Just a couple of weeks ago Affleck dropped out as the director for the solo Batman film. A film, by the way, which has yet to be officially announced, nor any release date set. Now, on the most recent episode of Collider Movie Talk host John Campea claims that Affleck no longer wants to be involved at all. It's important to note that Campea has been wrong before and his "inside sources" may not be completely reliable. In other words, this is an unsubstantiated rumor. On the other hand, the Collider video did stream live on YouTube yesterday afternoon and so far no rebuttals have been issued from Warner Brothers, DC Films President Geoff Johns, or Ben Affleck himself. DC is currently lining up a director to replace Affleck, with Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) the front runner. Reeves has mainly directed sappy television melodramas like Felicity, until 2008 when he directed Cloverfield. Even though I hate "shaky cam/found footage" ...

Things have kept me from posting regularly, I have been working on my next GI Joe book for Amazon Kindle Worlds, I have picked film editing back up, my work schedule is absurd, and then everything came to a screeching stop with a catastrophic hardware failure. My PC has a 500Gig hard drive. I didn't think that was enough when I got it so I also bought a 1 Terabyte external. I foolishly used the 1 Terabyte external as more storage, not as a backup as it was intended. File upon file of Photoshop projects, folders for my story ideas, years worth of pictures, all my music and more was on the external, and I had no backup. Then, a few weeks ago the external stopped working. I immediately freaked out, feverishly trying to get the most important of data transferred but nothing was working. I jumped online looking for a solution, made a few phone calls but everything suggested that the external hard drive had stopped spinning. The good news was that the data still existed. My only opt...