Legend bloodies up the Regal Winter Park movie screens.

Posted on by Thor

I went to a free screening of Legend at the Regal Winter Park 20, 510 N Orlando Ave, Winter Park, FL. Gladys West from Elite Animation Academy somehow always gets me hooked up with these advanced screenings. I got there several  hours early so I could complete a sketch before standing in line. Terry didn’t want to see a gangster movie. She was going to see a co-worker’s baby. The ticket taker didn’t want to let me in the theater, since the line for the movie would form outside. I had to talk to the manager to let him know that I needed to finish a sketch for my report. Inside I sat at one of fire empty tables to sketch the concessions stand. 

Star Wars, The Legend Returns banners announced that movie’s opening in December. Recent Star Wars films have been rich in digital effects and short on story. With Harrison Ford back in the franchise, I’m hoping some of the original magic might return. A dark robotic villain is barely visible behind his high saber. I hope the film lives up to the hype.

A huge candy machine kept coming alive, belting out its sickly sweet song. It’s hard to ignore concessions when they keep shouting for your attention. Terry showed up since she was denied access to the baby. The mom had simply forgot. She still didn’t want to see the movie, so I was confused as to why she came. She spent some time on her phone as I finished up the sketch. Then she announced that she was leaving. She realized that she was in a fowl mood after not getting to see the baby, and she didn’t want project it on me. Maybe ten minutes after she left, the sketch was done. I went outside to see how long the line was for Legend. There was no line. With time to kill, I decided to get Mexican food at Lime next door. As I ordered my surfer tacos, Terry said hello. She had also stopped for a taco salad, so we got to have dinner together. we talked about trolls, Nazis and gun control. My tacos were fantastic. I will definitely be returning to Lime.

After dinner,  I went back to the movie theater and went straight inside. The theater was 3/4 full. Perhaps because of Thanksgiving most people were home. The security lady told us all to turn off our phones. The lady two seats from me kept texting, clueless. The security lady shouted that is is very easy to spot an illumined phone in a dark theater. She marched over to the texter and stood in from of her saying that if she needed to text she could text in the lobby. When the texter stopped the audience clapped and hooted its approval. 

So, the movie, Legend had the Suave, charming and volatile, Reggie Kray (Tom Hardy) and his
unstable twin brother Ronnie (also played by Tom Hardy) leaving their mark on the London
underworld in the 1960s. Using violence to get what they want, the
siblings orchestrate robberies and murders while running nightclubs and
protection rackets. With police
Detective Leonard “Nipper” Read hot on their heels, the brothers
continue their rapid rise to power and achieve tabloid notoriety. The film was better than I expected. It was narrated by Reggie Kray’s girlfriend an then wife, played by Emily Browning. Just like in the Godfather, Reggie dreams of going straight as a club owner, but he can’t give up his East End London criminal past, he is just too good at it. The violence is graphic and insane, so don’t bring your kids. It is a story of brotherly love and the pain that comes from loving a gangster. I gave the film 7 out of 10 hammers.

The Visit offers redemption laced with fear.

Posted on by Thor

Gladys West from Elite Animation Academy gave me tickets to see a free test screening of M. Night Shamalan‘s “The Visit” at Cinemark Movie Theater in Artegon Marketplace 5150 International Drive Orlando FL. The free ticket warned that attendees should arrive early since the screening was on a first come basis. I decided to arrive early and sketch the line as it formed. 20 people were already in line. I asked the couple who were last in line, if I could squeeze in behind them after I finished my sketch.

People at the front of the line talked about the latest roll playing game. It made me wonder if there was a Comic Con in town. One guy in line sort of looked like Jesus, and his friends joked that he should audition for the roll of Jesus at Holy Land. Since he is an atheist, he wasn’t the right man for the job.  A security officer from Burbank California looked over my shoulder to check out the sketch. Her job was to make sure everyone turned off their cell phones before the movie started.

With the sketch done, I got back in line. The guys behind me were talking about an incident of road rage on an I-4 off ramp. The guy said that if his family wasn’t in the car then he would have killed the other driver. Jesus! I assume that every other driver on the road is as impatient as this guy. Even so you can’t escape everyone’s rage. The line started to move and Terry, my wife hadn’t arrived yet. I had to hope that she would be able to force her way in without a ticket. I put my art supplies in the seat next to me to hold her seat, but as the theater grew more crowded, I got uncomfortable turning people away. Luckily the theater didn’t fill up completely.

“The Visit” wasn’t what I expected. Everyone in the theater was braced for a scare. The film was set up like a documentary shot by a young brother and sister. Their mom had left her parents home twenty years earlier and never spoke to her parents again. Her parents looked her up on the Internet and they wanted to meet their grand children. The two children were sent off on their own by train to visit their grand parents whom they had never met in an isolated farm house upstate. The grand parents turn out to be more than a little strange, if not insane. What gives the film heart is that the young daughter is shooting a documentary in the hopes of finding an elixir for her mother’s guilt. Rather than horror, most scenes were laced with laugh out loud humor. As scenes grew darker and more sinister, laughter offered relief. Like in the “Sixth Sense” there was one unexpected twist that truly had the audience on the edge of their seats. The grandpa turned out to be scarier than Freddy Kruger and the grandma was as creepy as a Japanese ghost. Sun downers was the clinical explanation but she went way beyond that diagnosis. Terry grabbed my sleeve every time the tension built.

The Visit turned out to be a film with true heart. I give the film eight Yatzys. You really need to see the film to believe it. The fact that many people in the test audience had waited hours to get in the theater, meant that we had a very lively audience. The film is scheduled to open nation wide on September 11th.

Elite Animation Academy Keeps the Tradition of Hand Drawn Animation Alive

Posted on by Thor

Elite Animation Academy (8933 Conroy Windermere Rd, Orlando, FL) is located only a few blocks away from my home. I’ve been asked to step in and substitute teach a couple of times and had a blast doing it. I was issued a black polo shirt with the Elite logo that made me feel like a member of the team from the start. The pay is actually better than what I make at Full Sail University so I was happy to step up to the plate.

The first day I interviewed there with Gladys West, I decided to stay and see another instructor, Chi Wang, at work. He was teaching a class on comic book character design. His laptop was open and connected to a large screen TV. Sketches of multiple comic book character heads filled the screen. Three students sketched diligently trying to emulate the heads. Basic proportions were covered and then the students sketched for the rest of the class. As the students worked, Chi, stood at the white board and cranked out an amazing sketch of a Transformer. Students were so involved in their own sketches that they didn’t glance up. I am always fascinated and inspired watching another artist work.

The first class I taught was on perspective. I covered the basics of 1 point, 2 point and 3 point perspective and I got the students involved in studying the perspective in the room around them. The room has vintage Disney Feature Animation Desks circling the central work area. Computers are found in a separate area. I had the students draw a single desk using the 3 principles of animation. Then I had them imagine the desk as a giant skyscraper in a city. I helped as we created intricate city blocks.

The second time I stopped in, I had just finished a huge rushed storyboard assignment, so I showed them the scripts, thumbnails and final storyboards I had created. It was a solid real world crash coarse on what it is like to be a professional artist. I then pitched them a simple story idea and they began doing thumbnails to built their story. I just had three students, but they impressed me with their ideas and execution. We batted around ideas and laughed at the possibilities. One student was working on his own story and I asked him to pitch the story to me. Once I knew what direction he was taking, I made suggestions on how he could make each character unique by giving them a shape that separated and defined them. I suggested he try to draw the male protagonist with nothing but straight lines and then I had him draw the female lead with nothing but curves. His work took an immediate leap.

At Full Sail there are 30 to 40 new students every month that take 10 classes and then move on.  There just isn’t enough time to turn so many students into animators. At Elite it was such a luxury to have a few students that were hungry to learn. Gladys is very aware of my daily sketch routine, and I appreciate that she considers me a valuable asset because of that. With the few classes I taught, I felt that I could truly inspire and  start these kids towards a lifetime of learning and sharing. That is what art is all about.