Algebraic!

Greetings, people. Not many of you, but one is better than none! I’ve been recently calibrating an idea I had a very long time ago concerning doing a more life-like but super-accurate translation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s texts for “The Lord of the Rings” (or any of his narrative writings in the world of Arda). Being a very nerdy fan since seeing the 2001 Film adaptation of FOTR in 2002 (yes, I missed watching it in theatres), I’ve ever since been inspired by and felt pretty happy when reading Tolkien’s “stuff”.

With that said, I have thought it would be a cool idea to read chapters from (right now, anyways) “The Lord of the Rings” and, not only that, but try to dramatize it as much as possible. Obviously its all me, and I do not do a great job on all the voices; however, not only do I try that, I also try adding sound effects and music (by Howard Shore of course) to it as well.

Click this to see BIG.

It’s called “soundscape” because it sounds fancy and its kind of a hybrid between an audio drama and an audiobook.

So far, I’ve got one chapter down (which is an hour long)… and trust me when I say this: Its not perfect. There are many glitches and mistakes. As you know, having just one guy doing everything is really not very convenient.

So without further ado, here’s the first chapter of the only chapter I have so far finished.

Oh yes, I also painted the “concept art” for the parts. So, you have something to look at that’s not just a screencap or a logo. Have fun! Hope you enjoy it.

Click Here to Subscribe or look at the other videos where the Soundscape Audiobooks are located.

It's been way too long.

Hi! It’s been what, 4 months? Regardless, I’m back to complain. Yes, complain. Complain about what, you ask? Complain about this:

Everyone knows about the goofy-named “Youtube” channel. Obviously.  Everyone also knows how the creators of this popular, and convenient page chock-full of useless videos (including ours) sold it for a billion dollars. To call them cheapskates is an understatement. Well, since this gigantic monopoly we all know as Google (I mean, sure they make some pretty good products and devices, and I still like them) started running things, Youtube has improved a lot since the “elder days”. I remember them. Such great days where there were no other overdubs but ours (no, seriously!)! Allow me a reminiscing sigh of “aaaaaahh…”

However, this year I’ve been seeing this “new youtube” layout snaking its way to everyone’s computer screens. Sneakingly worming and digging through the very nice and perfectly fine old youtube system we all were very used to. However today, I was forced into suffering through their new (and horrid) updated design system. Their biggest and most apprehensive change was the star-rating system. Apparently they received many complaints (which were probably just complaints from their pre-teen children and relatives) that its “not working properly”.  So they created something that works even more ineptly which is the cheesy “thumbs up/down” system. The fatal mistake with this, is that you cannot see how good a video is until you rate it. Which means we’ll have to torment ourselves by endlessly watching RickRolls much longer than we’d like. Will this be fixed, or is it going to be like that from now on? And if it will… why force this new design on us if its not done yet?

Please, don’t tell me that there are benefits from this. I know there are. There are a few really good features on the new Youtube, but the really good features they’ve REARRANGED and perverted aggravate me more than anything. To summarize this rant of JUSTICE, I give you a guy who’s name is only “Andy” and who wrote this very clear and concise complaint about the new Youtube… and I quote:

It is now officially impossible to distinguish videos that are worth watching on YouTube from ones that aren’t, as they got rid of the perfectly user friendly five-star rating format that has been in use for the last five years. They replaced the rating system to a “Like” or “Don’t Like” system that doesn’t actually appear to do anything. It does not give any statistics on the actual number of likes or dislikes, and it does not measure the quality of the work. Now, one can only attempt to discern good videos from bad ones by looking at the hit count. This means the videos with the most hits already will get more and more popular, while nobody will click on the videos with under a thousand hits because there’s no way of telling if it is going to be complete crap or not. I know I wouldn’t want to waste my time watching a video with fewer hits when I could click on one with a million, even though the only reason people are watching the million-hitter is because it had more hits in the first place. It is a sick cycle that can never be broken.

YouTube also decided to get rid of the “More From This User” sidebar. This makes finding videos from the same person a tremendous pain in ass, because you have to navigate through their profile to find what you want to watch, instead of just effortlessly clicking on the links right next to what you just watched. By taking out that sidebar, YouTube made more room to put related videos which in most cases aren’t actually related to what you are watching at all.

Please join me and tell those apparently  design-inept people at Youtubeland to please, if not revert this monstrously unappealing layout, at least leave the positions of the menus, and rating-system (5 years, people. It was used without complaints for 5 years.) on the same spot.  This new layout is less convenient, less fast, and has a lot of bugs to boot. So why even shove this down our throats to begin with? I’m very disappointed, and will have a harder time uploading, let alone WATCHING videos thanks to it.

not like my single-voiced speck of an opinion matters, but

Change it back.

A new post!

Well hello there! Christmas day has come and gone, and that’s all I have to say about it. I hope your New Year’s party will rock!

After reading my “review heap” of the first-half Summer movies… I decided to return the favor and give you my thoughts on the holiday movies! And the two other summer movies I had to watch in summer that I never wrote. Brace yourselves.

So, first let’s get the older movies out of the way; namely: “Transformers 2” and “Half-Baked Prince“.

Let’s start with “Transformers 2:  Revenge of the Fallen“. Okay, for starters: way back when I heard the title of this film, and then saw the teaser poster, and later the trailer… having not much knowledge of the comic, toys, or TV shows (not a very big Transformers fan, as you can see); I thought the plot would revolve around an elite group of decepticons who come from space (think super-scary high-level efficient robot assasins) and slowly overwhelm and massacre the autobots while creating havoc over the earth. I thought the “revenge” being talked about was of Megatron against the autobots, or the supposed elite group of super-evil satanic decepticons called “the fallen”. (My presumption was that the fallen were Megatron’s finest group of decepticons . Think Frieza’s The Ginyu Force from “Dragonball Z”or Emperor Palpatine’s Royal Guards. The best of the best.).

Anyway, that was simply my presumption based on the trailers. I know nothing about Transformers-Lore, you see. The actual plot was much, much worse. I almost cried watching this film. It was that painful. I couldn’t believe people actually payed to have this sorry thing

admit it: Megan Fox, and those two things under her face was the REAL reason you went to see it.

made! Michael Bay was

apparently given more freedom with this sequel; which, for an actually good director, means that the movie would turn out better! Not in Bay’s case, ladies and gentlemen. There were so many things wrong with this movie, I can’t even begin to name them, or this post would be twice the length it is now. Let’s just say, this movie was horrible; unbelievably unimaginative; primitive; disguising; mediocre; and quite literally stupid. The only good part was the CGI, but that was directed so badly, it was most of the time just jumbled motion blurs all the time! Not only that, but each action scene was so drawn out, it fatigued every time. The Good: Big explosions, fights, and some nice CGI  The Bad: Horrendous plot, primitive directing, unimaginative acting, very long fight scenes, badly handled fight scenes, and two explosions are quite enough. I very much disliked this movie, and wonder how anyone COULD like this movie, since it was so… well… stupid. Stupid! Am I done now? Let’s move on!

So now we have “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince“. Unlike the masses that enjoy watching and reading Harry’s whimsical little escapades into the world of magic and witchcraft and always saving Hogwarts (I still think its a horribly cheesy name) every year, and never getting any real thanks for it; I do not. Okay, okay, I kind of do; but it usually incorporates a commentary track by us really good guys, or a commentary track by other really good guys. As far as these Potter movies go, I still think “Prisoner of Azkaban” is the best of the 8 movies (never read the books, of course). After seeing Movie Nr. 6, I still do. In fact, this is my “Crap-Meter” of the crappiness of each Potter movie (best to worst)

1. Prisoner of Azkaban
2. Order of the Phoenix & Goblet of Fire & Half-Blood Prince
3. Philosopher’s Stone
4. Chamber of Secrets

I’m horrible aren’t I? Seriously, though. There is one word for “Half-Blood Prince”, and that is simply: FILLER. Below is a review I wrote right after watching this particular movie.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

To call it a good movie is a gross overstatement. What was unfolding on the screen, before our eyes, was a film not unlike other films that emerge out of the film industry’s impassable doors. Except that this one has a track record of 5 other films that preceded it – let alone 7 books it was based on – to make up for dysmal storytelling, and soften the hard suckage of a movie that was witnessed on July 15, 2009.

Some argue there is this magical thing called “character development” that is used to make us feel, and experience this story and the situations through the eyes of a unique observer that has access to not only the lives of the characters, but their souls as well. To feel for them and essentially simulate the notion that one has grown up with and known them; seeing their personalities, and human qualities – that us as the audience subconsciously relate to – develop and grow.

"Sir, is this 'memory vial' thing just your way of telling me you have Alzheimer's?"

Jake Dragash, a respectable and bright film viewer, felt that the film itself was “a piece of junk” and felt like “I was watching a 45 Minute [TV series] episode, with a somewhat different ending.”. “It was incredible.” Says Tim Majersky “Right after Harry drank from the liquid luck thing, the film starts to turn into some [kind of] insane acid trip, where a very stoned-looking Harry follows [an equally] stoned Professor Guy (Jim Broadbent) to Hagrid’s place only to be present in a hilarious scene where three people who look like they’re on drugs pay respects to a giant spider that tried to kill and eat Harry 4 years prior. You should have seen that whole part where they get drunk and act like stoners!” Particularly exuberant laughing took place when Draco Malfoy “after coming out of his wooden portapotty teleporter” says Jake, encounters Harry as he enlists a rather easily misinterpreted spell heard by both Tim and Phil Dragash as the “Sexy Zebra!” spell, that apparently creates holes in the victims body and causes him to bleed incessantly; but the advantage of this is that it is allowed to keep a PG rating.

If you say this (character development) was present in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” you are either so engrossed by the source material, no matter how poorly realized, remembering the events that happened in book-form and using it as a placeholder to what is being viewed on-screen (this can also be given into account if one hasn’t read the books as well); or you are simply incapable of noticing what makes a film a film.
During the – what seemed to be – over two and a half hour run of the film, most of it was focused on sitcom-inspired dialogue and situations many falsely identify as character development. It was not. There are characters, they are talking; but nothing is developing. One can argue that it was development since the character’s relationships “developed” to what they were realized into at the end of the picture. That wasn’t development. That was a spontaneous explosion of sequences of predestined events that was forcibly and artificially implemented at certain points in the film. The result is the pacing of a road accident that has not died yet. It lies on the road, suffering and miserable; then gathers a little strength to attempt (in vain) to move and run; it fails; and falls over and continues suffering. This has eloquently been the pacing of the film throughout the 2 hours of teenage-drama sitcom events.

There was nothing powerful, nothing nostalgic nor familiar about it. The sequences of events are almost exactly the same as with the previous film: “Situation establishment. New character. Hogwarts. Filler. Conclusion”. It wasn’t as much another experience as it was inorganic repetitiveness. “I’ve seen this in the last movie! Continue already!”
If one were to watch a Harry Potter marathon, one could easily skip this film, as the only seven important plot points could be summarized like this:

SPOILERS…

“HP6? Here’s what happens. Harry and Ginny are together. Ron and Hermoine are together. Dumbledore dies. Snape killed him, and he’s the double-agent half-blood prince. Oh yeah, and Draco is one of the Death Eaters. Surprise Surprise. Next movie.”
The 574-page book was condensed to a two and a half hour movie, but could easily be condensed to the paragraph above. To summarize this 6th venture into the quirky world of Harry Potter, one must only say one word: Filler.

don’t agree? That’s okay.  Just one man’s observation.

"Bonjeeeuuuurrrnoe!"

Oh yeah, SURPRISE! You know what I thought of “Inglorious Basterds“? It was hilarious. I liked it. Stupidity at its finest. The only downside was thatthere was a little too much dialogue, and a few illogical directorial decisions, but hey… “DO NOT QUESTION THE CINEMATIC GENIUS OF QUENTIN TARANTINO!”

On to DECEMBER!

Anyway, I’m sure you’re wondering what I thought of AVATAR, right? RIGHT? HUUUUUH?!

Well, unlike most of you, I did not come out of the cinema going “best movie ever.” nor, did I come out of the cinema going “It was amazingly well done.”. I simply came out of the cinema saying “It was pretty good, but the story was so overused.”. I cannot tell you how many people

Blue Cat Group!

already scolded me for saying this, but, this movie isn’t as good as its made out to be.

Don’t get me wrong, I liked it. I really did! It was pretty, it was very entertaining, it had nice effects, and some nice acting. James Cameron still knows what he’s doing when he makes a movie (unlike that other moron who directed the movie with the big robots going “kaboom!”)…  But can’t you understand that its worth is nothing beyond being a very fun screensaver? Think about it! There’s nothing new in terms of narrative, nothing to think about, nothing unexpected. Its a very placid and dare I say it, cliche storyline. As Youtuber Blunty3000 clearly states: it’s like “a can of beans in a really pretty wrapper”.

I happened to have brought a notebook with me while watching the film, and I wrote notes on my thoughts for many scenes in the film. To see these notes, I think you have to be my friend on Facebook.

So, I think that about covers it. There are a few more movies I saw, but I think this is getting a bit too big. I have yet to watch “Princess and the Frog”, and a few others… but rest-assured… I’ll write more about them later. Have a wonderful end-of-the-year everyone!

It's been too long.

old news, but I haven’t written anything for a few months. Yikes. Anyway, you’d be pleased to know that the DVD (remember DUAL-LAYER format…. 8.7 GB) is all but finished… let’s say around 98% done. Here’s the cover. It will be available soon and you can print it at your local FedEx/Kinko’s or whatever. Also, the DVD will be available for download incredibly soon. Or you could go for mail-order, by sending in an empty 8.7 GB DL Recordable DVD (two of them, if you want the bonus disc, full of more dubs and extras) and *IMPORTANT* shipping fees, so I can return the DVDs (with the dubs on them) to you!

Here’s the DVD Cover as it should look like in its box.

DOWNLOAD THE SUCKER RIGHT HERE… ON THEPIRATEBAY.ORG!

(click for a bigger image)

also, quick question: anyone know Douglas Darien Walker’s physical address?

anyway, here is the FULL 300dpi DVD Cover for you to PRINT OUT! Enjoy! Murry Christamasa!

CLICK THIS!

in case you didn’t know about this tragic news: Read It. It will break your heart.

And, even though this is a pretty extreme example… it is very much possible for them to do just this.

Do these gigantically fat media conglomerates really have to gobble up anything and everything to further drive their never-to-be-satisfied hunger for more and more and more money? I understand when a company gets too big, it needs to do more to survive, but this is rather… I don’t know… wrong?

This may just be spontaneous negative reaction. I know Bob Iger is a better guy than Michael Eisner, but I’m a concerned individual and I enjoy the priveledge that is diversity. One giant company buying out smaller ones decreases this vital existence of diversity in the world, and makes many lives much bleaker in the long run.
]]> http://dubs.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/wolverine-meets-hannah-montana-in-a-3d-concert-now-in-theaters/feed/ 1 Phil disney marvel posters http://dubs.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/pokemon-likes-to-kill-you/ http://dubs.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/pokemon-likes-to-kill-you/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 03:08:30 +0000 Phil http://dubs.wordpress.com/?p=312 ]]>

I do not like them as much as I used to.

Yup, you just keep squeezing all that money out of it.

Seriously. I’ve really had it with Shogakukan Inc. I tried to be friendly, I tried to respect them… but no. A friend of mine, – who, if you’re a Pokémon (or ex-Pokémon) person, will know as Youko from “Show Me Your News” or the “WTF Pokémon” show – just had their Youtube account annihalated due to copyright claim by none other than Shogakukan.

They own the Pokémon TV Show.

As fair as this may seem, my issue with this is the sheer and total neglect that is usually displayed on their side. I’ve never seen any other copyright holder so downright “infringeophobic” as they are. It seems any fraction of a frame you include in a video that’s meant for purely nothing more than celebrating, paying homage to, parodying, or even PROMOTING the show; is instantaneously found, targeted, and murdered.

Lucasfilm Ltd. (yes, Star Wars, Willow, Indy, etc.) has a different view. They allow useage of anything copyrighted from them (see the millions and millions of great Star Wars fanfilms on the internet) unless used for strict marketing purposes.

I have a Youtube account too. On this account I usually add the occasional overdub to various movies and trailers I come accross. I’ve never EVER had an infringement placed on any Lucasfilm-owned video. In the 3 years I was on Youtube… this never happened. However, every time I upload something that contains even the most liberal use of their “precious” Pokémon show, I’ve gotten banned. This happened three times. The first one was quite basically a very lovely music video I cut together using footage from “The First Movie”; of which there are BILLIONS of videos on Youtube.

The second one was this little video.

It’s really not fair. I imagine the Film/TV/Animation Branch of Shogakukan (or perhaps the company as a whole) as a selfish little ol’ rolly man with a very lethal desert eagle just itching to find more “Evil doers” that dare to love his Pokémon more than him.

It’s like “I hold the rights to this, and want you to give me money on what I made for you; but I’ll see to it that NONE of you share the same love, even if its far more selfless than my money-making ways, to it than I do!”

Quit being a whiny little pig-baby and let the fans do what you yourself started them to do, alright? I mean, you guys do good stuff… but why hit people with a mallet for liking it?

Phil really tore up his vocal chords for you.

You read correctly. Me and Drew were taking some time off to dub over over 25 minutes off of Ralph Bakshi’s lovable “Lord of the Rings Part 1″ (to which part 2 was sadly never realized… if you are following us, Ralph… PLEASE FINISH THE QUEST! I’d WATCH IT OVER 25 TIMES!)

However, as much as we’d love to spill all of them beans all at once, we will not. I have to tweak a few sounds and each new dub will be released perhaps three or four days apart. Please bear with us as this is the best option. It enables all of you not to overindulge yourselves, and watch them all in their glory in turn. Trust me its for the best.

With that said, we have only 17 minutes left to actually dub and before you know it… the movie is over. It’s such a sweet sorrow isn’t it? I mean, if only Bakshi would finish up the whole thing!

I also really messed up my voice afterward. I hope you’ll really come to appreciate the lengths I take for all of you watching. Because… I-I…. I love you. All of you.

so keep your frackin’ eyes peeled in a few days for the next one… and next one…. and next one… and next one… and NEXT one!

He is totally right.

I don't know, man. I don't know.

HEY PEOPLE! Well, it seems our LOTR dubs are getting produced much faster than expected. Hopefully this will be a pretty fast dart to the finish line. As you have heard, we will be making a DVD (okay, I will). On it will be bonus materials! Many, many things! Such as the incomplete Rankin/Bass ROTK dubs (starring Tim), and a few behind-the-microphone segments. Maybe even a commentary or two. This will be available for FREE (because it’s pretty illegal to be selling something like this) on bittorrent or mail-in (basically, just send an empty dual-layer DVD and I’ll burn it and send it back). Obviously, for copyright reasons… you have to have the original film (The unadulterated Bakshi LOTR movie)… (whatever).

Brilliance on a Disc

Secondly, does anyone use Tumblr? I have no idea what it is, but a friend of mine uses it and I tried it out. It’s kind of fun to be posting random things I do on it, but its kind of fruitless because there is no comment, AND no one really reads or watches anything I post on there! Plus, all Tumblr does is remind me of that inconveniently large batmobile from the new Batman series. 

Also, here’s a link to this really funky guy called Jakerno. He’s the voice of Bilbo in our dubs, and is a generally cool guy. Yes, this is kind of blatant linking promotion… but what the heck, you might find it entertaining.

In other news, I wish I had more people reading this, because I like writing on it occasionally, but I usually don’t have much to say. Wait, did I just answer my own question?

P.S. I might be uploading all the episodes on BLIP.TV … so incase our youtube account gets killed off, you’ll have them all on there!