Oh hey, remember that kickstarted webseries that people freaked out about because a woman was talking out of turn about man things, then decided it was actually a “scam” that would never actually come out when that didn’t convince people that she was the antichrist?

Well, it came out. Here’s a link. I’ll chime back in later with what I actually thought of it.

Here’s the thing: I (and I’m speaking strictly of my self-produced/funded stuff like TGO and American Bob here, not the Escapist gigs) and others working on the YouTube/Blip series side of this medium are generally A.) Making this stuff FOR the amateur/indie circuit and B.) using primarily materials we already have or can be “donated” either by ourselves or aquaintances. In my specific case, I’m not outputting OR shooting in HD, the shows themselves are not of “broadcast caliber” and I don’t pay professional wages to the people who help out. If I did, the INCREDIBLY low-ball $6,000 pricetag she originally set (don’t forget: the donations were so HUGE because people kept donating as a “screw you” to her detractors) would MAYBE cover 2 – 3 average-scale TGO episodes, tops.

I’ve noticed that people in general have a skewed view of what independent video/film production actually costs because a lot of guys on the indie/fanfilm scene (no, I won’t be naming names) like to brag about how low their production budget is – the problem being that A LOT of the time these are guys who have “day jobs” in the professional film/video business and thus access to equipment and facilities that they would otherwise be paying substantial sums to rent or lease; or they don’t include what they would normally charge a client for their services in their own productions, OR they have friends in similar circumstances who are “donating” their time/services and not listing what that would cost on a real job. For example: If “Game OverThinker” had the EXACT same schedule and final-quality but I was paying real industry-standard fees and wages for locations, facilities and crew; $10,000 would be a low-ball estimate for every episode.

 Having watched the video itself: She’s shooting and outputting in HD/broadcast-quality (this has clearly been designed for classroom/seminar presentation moreso than the web video) and most the MASSIVE amount of game footage looks to have been captured from either original sources (I’m assuming MAME or download-service copies for the retro stuff) – which requires both expensive equipment and the expense of the systems and games themselves. Also, I don’t know if she does her own graphics and animation, but her transitions all look like original work; and even if she did do them herself the “going rate” for that kind of work can get pretty damn high especially if you plan to buy or license it in perpuity. 

 ALSO: I don’t know what else she does for a regular living, but I DO know the relative man-hours of putting a project like this together and they are substantial – thusly, if the ONLY thing all the Kickstarter money did was pay her bills and living-expenses (via supplmental income) while she cut down on her regular paying work so that she could free up the time to actually play/record the games, write the script and make the video I’m frankly perplexed that she ever somehow thought a paltry sum like $6,000 was going to cover it. She’s currently operating out of San Fransisco, one of the most expensive places to live – even modestly – in the United States; so when you factor all that in… trust me, the expenses for this kind of production are much more substantial than most would imagine.

…looks about as good as the last one, which is to say pretty damn good.

http://movies.yahoo.com/video/iron-man-3-theatrical-trailer-030044893.html?format=embed&player_autoplay=false
Not much “new” on display, but at least better looks at stuff that only flew by quickly in the previous trailer. Of particular note, though: “The Mandarin” does, indeed, seem to be called simply “The Mandarin” – which means that the proud Marvel Studios tradition of straight-up lying about this stuff is alive and well. I’m liking that they seem to be doubling-down on the “Ten Rings” as Al Qaeda angle from the first movie, with Mandarin looking more and more like a slightly more theatrical, pan-Asian Bin Laden with each new

If I had to guess, I’d imagine the “Iron Army” bit at the end involves remotely-operated “empty” suits; which sounds both like a fun idea and an interesting workaround to the issue of “will people be satisfied with ‘only’ Iron Man after seeing him with The Avengers?” The big lumpy one at the very end is, obviously, supposed to make you think of The Hulk – but I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be specifically the “Hulkbuster” armor from the comics – which everyone wants to see at some point. (Sidebar: Given that War Machine is already wearing Captain America/Iron Patriot colors, it’d be a fun detail if some or all of these other suits are specifically designed to be “supplemental Avengers.”)

Also: The shot of Pepper Potts in some kind of harness (and is that her in the sports-bra at 2:01?) returns, though this time it looks like she’s actually in the same aparatus we see Guy Pierce’s character strapping a bunch of burly henchmen into elsewhere. “Extremis,” the storyline this is partially based on, involved turning people into bio-weapons, so take from that what you will.

ALSO: Yes, I’ve heard all the same gossip about the ending as everybody else has. I dunno whether to buy it or not, but I’m not seeing many indicators of it here.

Now let me be.

UPDATE I: Just about the only other guy in the geek-o-sphere as well-informed (or better) than Latino Review’s crew is Jeremy “Mr. Beaks” Smith of AICN; and he’s chimed in on the story with what sounds like a soft-confirm of LR’s reporting: Warner Bros. is willing to empty the bank if it’ll get Henry Cavill’s Superman and Christian Bale’s Batman into a Nolanverse-canon “Justice League” directed by Zack Snyder and produced by the Nolans.

UPDATE II: Forbes.com chimes in, claiming that Latino Review’s reporting lines up with a lot of their own. Interesting difference: They stop short of specifying “Justice League” as the project being talked-up, instead describing a team-up film “possibly/probably” featuring other characters. Call me jaded, but chickening-out on a full-blown DC Universe and just doing “Batman Meets Superman” (“this will be a test – see if people are ‘ready’ yet…”) would be a VERY Warner Bros. move, at this juncture.

Continued after jump:

I maybe sounded a little too negative in the original post, but just to be clear: Bale/Nolan being back on makes me sigh for no other reason than, frankly… as much as I really did ADORE “Begins” and “Dark Knight;” I was effectively ‘over’ Nolan’s Batman about an hour before “Rises” had wrapped up. That being said… I can’t stress enough just how good the buzz coming out of “Man of Steel” is. If it’s really that good, then who knows – maybe this “cocktail” of Nolan the Stern, Joyless Manager and Snyder the Perpetually-Adolescent Firebrand is some kind of special magic.

I just keep going back to ONE thing, though: Think of the most “out-there” DC Universe thing you might hope to see in a movie and ask yourself… “Is Christopher Nolan likely to say YES to this? OR to not water it down into ‘realistic’ slurry?”

Anyway, original post follows:

Latino Review are the guys for Hollywood scoops-that-aren’t-really-just-press-leaks right now, and their batting average is pretty high especially with Warner Bros. movies. So when they say something is in the works, it generally is – whether it makes it to the finish line or not.

They’re latest possible scoop doesn’t concern stories or characters, but rather business dealings: While Warners is known to have scuttled the current “Justice League” pre-production (re: looking for actors and a director for a now-junked script by Will Beale); it’s now an open secret that “industry people” – Warner executives, investors and some higher-level licensing-partners) have seen Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel” and are jumping up and down over it. I don’t have LR’s sources by any means, but I’m hearing much the same – at least in terms of “huge action, probably a massive hit.”

According to LR, what Warners has chosen to take away from this apparent good news is confirmation of something they’ve believed all along: That Christopher Nolan is the magic-ingredient that makes the DCU “work” onscreen. More details/rumors/claims in the video…

Bullet Points:

This is partially a “panic-reaction” on Warner Bros. part to Whedon re-signing for “Avengers 2” and agreeing to shepherd the next phase(s) of Marvel’s slate.

Christopher Nolan “godfathering” production of future DC Universe movies.

Snyder being courted to both produce and direct “Justice League” based on “MoS” performance.

Christian Bale being sought  Dumptruck full of money being sought to get Christian Bale back into Bat-Kevlar, thus making “League,” “MoS” and future DCU movies canonical with Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

“League” may or may not still be on schedule for head-to-head with “Avengers 2,” other DCU movies may come in the meantime.

Egh.

For a lot of people, I’m sure this all sounds pretty great. Me? I’ve never hoped a Latino Review scoop was WRONG more than this. Nolan is a hell of a director/producer, but everyone has their limits and blindspots. I find it entirely plausible that Zack Snyder has made a great Superman movie, but I find it equally plausible that he’s done so despite working under a producer who could not be more wrong for that or any other DCU project that isn’t Nolan’s own drastic reworking of Batman. (Yes, I’ve heard/gleaned a few tiny bits about “Mos” story/script versus it’s visuals. No, I’m not judging or speaking on it now because it’s way too miniscule and hearsay-ish, even for gossip.)

I like Nolan, I love his movies, but my opinion remains unchanged that he should have as little to do with DC movies as humanly possible at this point. Putting him “in charge” of the whole thing is akin to making me the lead developer on Madden 2014.

As for Bale… I understand why they want him back, it makes business sense. But retroactive-canon or not, his (and Nolan’s) version of Batman can only look ridiculous sharing space with even a “gritty” Superman (to say nothing of Flash or Wonder Woman – though since this is a Nolan project, I’d half expect Wonder Woman to either not even show up or only be onhand to take dictation…) and that’s by design of Nolan’s movies. I sincerely can’t picture a likely scenario whereby Bale-as-Batman wouldn’t both drag down any crossover he’s present in and lessen Nolan’s films by association – just what were all these other metahumans doing that one time a doughy muscleman/dandy in a gas mask was threatening a whole region with a nuke, again?

But… whatever. If this goes through, I’m sure a whole bunch of people will be thrilled and if nothing else it’ll be perversely-interesting to see the (presumably continuing) unashamedly comic-esque Marvel slate paired-off against more “gritty realism” from the DC camp. The cash disparity will also be interesting: Marvel is the cheapest studio in town, while Warners is betting on the draw of big names (at least within the genre) for this and that means shelling out big coin for the likes of Bale (and don’t think the Nolan Bros. aren’t looking for a big payday to grin and bear more funnybook projects, too) to show up. They were willing to dump over $200 Million trying to make “Green Lantern” work – who knows what kind of “Waterworld”/”Avatar”-level spending will go down here?

Don’t know how many NFL fans are among my regular readers, but for those who aren’t up on it this coming Sunday is set to become something of a historical date-of-note for the sport: Lauren Silberman, an MIT graduate and former soccer player, is set to get an actual, official NFL tryout at the Regional Combine – making her the first woman in NFL history to do so.

Her chances aren’t considered to be all that spectacular (but then, Tim Tebow has an NFL career so who can really say anymore?) but if nothing else it’s going to be a conversation-piece in the sports world for a bit and a Trivia question in the near future, so… keep an eye on that, I guess.

Imagine if, after “Jackie Brown” wasn’t the biggest thing ever; that instead of taking some time to dig in and truly connect with what he wanted to do with film and what made him “tick” as an artist (results re: “Kill Bill,” “Grindhouse,” “Inglorious Basterds” and now “Django” speak for themselves) …Quentin Tarantino had decided to say “fuck it” and just making variations-on/revisitations-of “Pulp Fiction” and “Reservoir Dogs” while staying comfy on merchandising from films and characters he’d made during a relatively brief period of relevance in the pop-cultural wasteland of the 90s.

Well, if Tarantino had fallen that far AND people were still telling him he was “the man” because he does podcasts and speaking engagements where he tells allegedly fascinating stories about how he almost made a “Superman” that one time… he’d be Kevin Smith. The latest thing Smith Inc. is (correctly) certain that his fanbase will pay live-appearance prices to see on a roadshow is an animated Jay & Silent Bob movie that appears to at least partially be a “Bluntman & Chronic” movie – the one-joke idiocy of which (i.e. making a movie about them) he devoted a huge chunk of “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back” to skewering…

And before anyone brings it up – it took me a LONG time to finally turn around on Smith. I love “Clerks.” I love “Mallrats” in a different way. I respect “Chasing Amy.” I love “Dogma.” “Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back” is hilarious. I even like the “Clerks” animated series and “Clerks 2” has some really powerful/funny stuff in there that at the time signaled he might have “figured shit out.”

But he’s been blowing it ever since, and his “aw, geez” self-promoter schtick was tired for a loooong time before that. His B.S. about film critics and all the nonsense that went down around “Red State”… no, I’m done with him.

…sucks.

“Intermission” already ran earlier this week.

I know firsthand that not everyone likes the way that certain slices of the “Internet Geek Criticism Community” have evolved from host-segments to full-on sketches to characters and continuity; and I’ll be the first to concede that the roster of people really making it “work” isn’t exactly massive. But there’s an energy and vibrancy to the idea of it that I truly, sincerely dig. There are two important “movements” happening in the grassroots of Geek/Fandom Culture right now: The rise of new-gen criticism-as-performance-art that feels very much like the start of a YouTube/Blip-era equivalent to the rise of Cahiers du Cinema in the 60s and the homemade-indie film movement happening across much of the same space; and this is where the two come together. “Those Who Fight,” which now has a trailer, seems to be part of this continued evolution.

http://blip.tv/play/AYOPpBQC.x?p=1http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#AYOPpBQC

I’m not actually privy to much of what “Those Who Fight” actually is, apart from that it’s supposedly in the same vein (though not officially connected to) the various TGWTG “crossover” specials and anniversary movies, and that it’s creators opted to add some scale to the production by shooting some scenes at the most recent MAGFest – scooping up whichever fellow web-personalities they could among the attendees for cameos, walk-ons, what-have-you.

Leo Thompson (“That Scifi Guy”) and Lewis “Linkara” Lovhaug feature prominently in the current trailer. I was only there for a quick bit of it (a big mass-brawl scene, you can see my bald-ish head bringing up the rear around 1:31 and 1:42) but I look forward to seeing how it comes together. For this sort of project, it seems fairly ambitious.

Folks who’re still hoping to see the Justice League on the big screen are, at this juncture, pining their hopes on a pair of miracles: Firstly, that the quintessentially Oscar/Felix team-up of Zack Snyder and Christopher Nolan yields a great film in “Man of Steel” (FWIW, people inside Warner Bros and various licensing-business sources have seen the film, and the current buzz is exceedingly positive – take that as you will) and that somehow Warner Bros then suddenly figures out how to also not screw-up new incarnations of Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, etc.