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Well, it has been quite some time since I have posted, mainly due to school finishing up and getting my summer started and all. Regardless, I wanted to go back and review “Iron Man 2” since I had been looking forward to the release of that movie all last school year.

Iron Man 2 starts out with Tony Stark being the superstar he always had been before he was Iron Man. He enjoys his new life, especially the part where he refused to hand over the Iron Man technology to the government, supposedly in the name of “privatization.” Through his new life, people saw him as becoming more and more invincible, and he even began to convince himself of this. But, unbeknownst to everyone else, he was slowly becoming poisoned by the plutonium required to fuel his life-sustaining electromagnet that kept the shrapnel in his chest from entering his heart.

I really enjoyed this movie, but probably not for the reason that most people would anticipate. There were plenty of action sequences, special effects, and gadgets, but I enjoyed most the development of Tony Stark’s character. Tony showed us that although he definitely had a life changing experience which caused him to help the world become a more peaceful place, he was still affected and enamored by the “glamorous” lifestyle he had lived even before his change. He did come to realize, though, throughout the movie, how temporary and precarious life is, even for someone as strong as Iron Man.
There is no doubt that Iron Man was a great movie. But in the same manner as I thought about the first Iron Man movie

 Iron Man 2 is not the best movie ever, but it is definitely a fun, enjoyable movie to experience.

Last night I watched a movie that I have long been told I would enjoy, “Minority Report.” I did enjoy the movie, and I could see why people thought that I would like it.  There are really several areas of the movie which I think it excelled at, including story, art direction, and effects.

I am a huge fan of Sci-Fi, so of course I enjoyed the futuristic component of the movie.  However, I especially enjoyed the technology, with everything from the cars to the computer interfaces being intriguing to me.  However, one thing kept bugging me throughout the movie: why carve the victim and assailant’s names into wood spheres?  Yes, I realize that the idea was uniqueness (referencing wood grain), but it just seems like a waste of digital technology.

The discussion of free will was especially engaging, including the look at personal choice in the face of a predetermined future.  It also made me think twice about how incidents in the past can influence events in the future.  Regardless, the movie was an excellent commentary on the exploitation of a few for the “good” of many.  Is the end result really “good” if it comes at the expense of others?  Also, can we safely “prove” a person’s behavior in advance through social scientific mechanisms and then make absolute assumptions based on those “trends” and propensities?

This was an entertaining movie with some compelling assumptions.  The conclusions the movie reached are similar to the ones I have reached, especially when regarding the preciousness of life.  Also, it also affirms my uncomfortability with knowing the future.  I would rather life my life as it is, and find out about it as it goes!

Further thoughts?

I know I said it would be Sunday before I posted again, but I just finished a project that I have had a lot of fun with!  For our “Inspirational Design for Digital Media” class, we have been redesigning old “Monster Movie” posters with our own twist to them.  For mine, I was assigned the “Cosmic Monsters” poster, which I converted to “Cosmic Humanitarians.”  Part of the assignment was to weather our poster.  We also submitted the posters in an online contest.  Below is the description of my entry for the contest.

“COSMIC HUMANITARIANS” revolves around the late William Booth who is just starting the Salvation Army in London. Booth, played by Norm Forrester, is visited one night by the ghosts of the great humanitarians, Mother Theresa (Andrews) and David Livingstone (Scorsese), who encourage him to start the band and hold tryouts. In a move reminiscent of “High School Musical” and “The Music Man,” Booth pulls together a band that takes London and the world by storm. But when Booth meets a futuristic being, who can say if the world is large enough to contain this formidable force?

This poster is based off of the poster for the movie, “Cosmic Monsters.” Instead of having monsters, I exchanged the main characters for humanitarians. The central characters of the movie are great humanitarians, such as the guy on the lower-left corner of the poster, William Booth, who started the Salvation Army. Building off of the Salvation Army theme, I included a drum major in the top-left corner and a top view of band members throughout the middle of the image. For the actor names, I researched various humanitarians, especially movie stars. The star, Norm Forrester, is actually the mascot for my school, and the reason I chose Julie Andrews and Martin Scorsese for the next two actors was to emulate the names on the original poster which, when next to each other, reminded me of my own name, “Andrew Martin.” Finally, instead of using “a DCA Release,” I used “MCA,” since that is a prominent building for the arts on our campus.
Layout, typography, style, and color are all closely based off of the feel of the original “Cosmic Monsters” movie poster.

Click on each of the images to see larger versions!

Andrew

Hello everyone!

Thanks for viewing my just-launched blog!  I am excited about this new space, especially since I have seldom ventured into the blogosphere in the past.  However, I intend to use this space as a consistent location for my thoughts and insights.

Some things that you can expect to see on here in the future include movie “reviews” (thoughts on movies I have recently viewed), new animations I have created, software and other technological finds, barefoot waterski news, and possibly some Huntington University news.  Look for my first actual post very soon.  I hope and aim for it to be sometime during the day on Sunday.

A final note in closing, throughout the rest of this semester, I will be continuously working on my whole website and theme.  I have started from scratch with the entire HTML code and CSS theme, using PHP and WordPress for certain portions.  As you can see from the navigational links, I have a couple of other pages planned in the near future, as well as moving my video pages into my own site.  Oh, another tidbit for those of you interested, I have extended my final project from my databases class last semester into the backend of my website; my final project will be driving the management of essentially my entire media gallery collection.

Alright, enough technical details.  Feel free to leave comments with requests and feedback; I cannot make any promises, but I will try the best I can to accommodate requests!

Andrew