Jack Remick at Jack Kerouac's grave

“The Final Cut” ends the year strong with friend of the show author Jack Remick. Jack came on the show to talk about how the city of San Fransisco and the beat poetry movement influenced his life, pop culture today and his new book “The Deification” which has a very funny and yet oddly touching meaning behind it’s name. You won’t want to miss this fun episode featuring poetry and Jack himself reading an excerpt from his book. You can listen to the episode here or visit the official page of “The Final Cut”. don’t forget to subscribe to us on itunes and to join our facebook page.

Now there is some slight misinformation going around that this is not a prequel, ignore that. It is a prequel in the sense that it takes before the events of “Alien” in the same universe and could perhaps even give us clues and or explicitly tell us who the mysterious space jockey was from the first film. The movie stars: Noomi Rapace (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Sherlock Holmes 2), Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class, Shame) Guy Pearce (Memento, The Count of Monte Cristo), Idris Elba (Thor, RockNRolla) Logan Marshall-Green (Dark Blue, Brooklyn’s Finest) and Charlize Theron (Monster, Young Adult). I’m excited about the cast I like all of these actors, and it will of course be a shame that most likely most if not all of them will die during the film. The “Alien” universe is known for being pretty cold and cruel.Side note: according to Indie Wire Scott is planning to show Fox a PG-13 and R version of the film for people the studio to decide on. I hope its R, what would be an “Alien” movie without the brutality and bleak violence?

I personally love the trailer, some people have complained with all the hype surrounding the film that not enough has been shown. I say to heck with those people, it did the trick it showed enough to pique my interest. Not every studio has to tell us half the film like “The Avengers” or “The Hobbit” has done. I also love the homage to James Horner’s original score in the trailer mixed in with the very nostalgic “Prometheus” font coming across like in the opening credits of “Alien”. I think that is just perfect and I’ve already watched the trailer about 10 times now. It’s worth seeing for yourself if you haven’t already. This is for sure a piece I’ll be viewing opening night, it’s shaping up to be an exciting 2012.

Jade Heasley

Author and friend of the show Jade Heasley dropped by for this episode of “The Final Cut” to talk about her new book “How to Rule the World”. The book is about a 19 year old woman who has returned home to her small town for a what she thinks will be a slow and relaxing summer. And it turns out to be anything but that. Jade also talks about her writing style and how authors are able to interject themselves into their work. You can listen to the episode here and you can also download the episode by subscribing to “The Final Cut” on itunes, visiting the official website and or “liking” it on facebook.

Nick Compise

“The Final Cut” returns from hiatus with mentalist Nick Compise. Nick got his start in of all things martial arts but from there ended up transitioning into performance mentalism. Nick talks about how he got his career going and all the pressure involved with each show. With “The Final Cut” back over the digital air waves you are gonna wanna download this really cool episode. Remember to subscribe to the show on itunes, fan it on facebook and don’t forget to visit the official page of “The Final Cut”. You can find out more about Nick on his official website as well.

"Hey kids want to spend your Saturday pretending you're in school?"

It’s taken me a long time to find some legit free time to write this latest installment of the DSAM production blog, and I hope you’ll find a few minutes to spare in order to read it. There have been 4 shooting dates since I last posted so there is a little to catch up on.

For Thanksgiving I went home to Cincinnati to see one my best friends get married. I stayed in my hometown a bit longer than the break and so I was on a plane when the 2nd shoot of DSAM ever took place. I was still doing a lot of producing work while in Cincinnati over the computer and one of the major issues was a very small crew and problems finding an appropriate location for the scene. Eventually Jenn Marlis, the director realized that we were in a frenzy for no reason and suggested her apartment right off campus for the shoot. Brilliant, one of those “why didn’t I think of that?” kind of moments. Anyway the shoot was set up though not having a key grip proved to be the most difficult issue. There was a lot of stress as I was miles above the earth in a plane waiting to land in L.A. I just wanted to know how the shoot was going, if all the cast and crew were comfortable, if everyone was getting along, how long was it all taking? All I could do was watch the Samuel L. Jackson version of “Shaft” which I had forgotten featured Christian Bale in it. Anyway the point is I was worried and I knew I wouldn’t know how the shoot had gone/was going until I landed in Los Angeles.

When I landed I knew I had a long day ahead, I had to take the public bus back to Pepperdine and if you have ever had to take the public bus in L.A. you know that involves a lot of smelling dried urine and avoiding awkward conversations about how the government wants to harvest fluid from our spines to feed a master alien race. (This is a real conversation I had on the bus in ’08.) When I got back I found out that problems with lighting had slowed down production but that the shoot was finished and that everything looked good. Again the key grip was not on hand for the shoot, thus proving how important every role is on set. I finally got to see the footage the following day and it looked real solid. Good performances from the actors and really well done cinematography and set design. A key set design note I wanted in the story had to be cut out due to lighting difficulties so that was slightly disappointing but in the end I was very satisfied with what I saw. I’ve already started mapping out an editing plan for DSAM so it is encouraging to see that everything is looking good.

If only we could control time....I guess technically we can.

While looking at the footage several things came to mind, the first being that shooting interrogation scenes can be challenging and I wasn’t even on set but I saw that Robby Devillez the cinematographer had to get creative with some of the shots. Of course he made everything look fantastic and without a true key grip to help him light everything. Jenn pointed out a problem that will need to fix when Haven Nutt’s character Savannah White is being questioned there is a digital radio and clock right next to her, the problem is that because of different cuts and multiple shots the clock changes time several times. It’s a small mistake but something that will constantly need to be tweaked. Via editing cleanup I might be able to hide it, perhaps even fix it. We’ll have to see but its one of those editing mistakes that once seen on screen cannot be unseen so I want to cover it up as much as possible.

The next shoot was that Saturday, it was going to be a long day we all knew that going into it. We were slated to shoot for 7 hours and that is asking a lot of people. (Was there a lunch break? Of course.) I expected cast and crew to be testing the levels of their patience but everyone seemed fine. Then again maybe they were just you know…acting….The point is everything appeared to be fine despite falling an hour behind due to some set issues, which I’ll get into later. Robby and I were grabbing all the equipment for the shoot which would have several inside and outside shoots which was going to require: light flags, c-stands, audio equipment, reflectors etc. So were carrying them up to the CCB when I receive a call from one of the actresses Samantha Smith she has shown up an hour before her call time and is asking if WE need help. What an awesome approach, its a shame it was her last day shooting its always so cool to have a performer on set who wants to go the extra mile for the cast and crew. In fact after Robby and myself made it onto set we found out she had brought the cast and crew donuts. Off to a good start for the shoot.

Say what?

I can’t reveal everyone who was on set for the 1st shoot because of plot reasons but it went well and all the actors did a good job. We had to deal with some major wind issues but thankfully Michael Montgomery is our audio guy so I had little to worry about. Me and Jessie Jolliff one of the set/production design heads went down to the 2nd location to help get things set up. A recommendation to any indie filmmakers who are shooting multiple locations on one day: have some sort of 2nd unit. It makes everything go faster when you have a team no matter how small there to get everything prepped before the primary cast and crew.

For this particular scene we needed to create a classroom. Sounds easy when you’re shooting on a college campus, but it’s not that simple. You see we only had a limited amount of extras two of which were just passerbys who were kind enough to work with us. That meant we had to take a very large room with an overabundance of chairs and make it seem like a normal sized classroom. This was not easy for me and Jessie as we needed to also give Robby a good field for his camera work. We couldn’t reveal too much and yet also enclose the shoot so much it looked disproportionate. So Jessie decided the best thing to do would be to put the desks in a corner so that way the center of the shot would be the corner of the room thus making the room look smaller but also making it look like a more full classroom. It looks great on camera and when seen in the context of the film nobody in the audience (except perhaps the ones who have read this blog) will be the wiser.

Shooting this scene required a jib. Basically a piece of camera equipment that allows the camera to pan up/down/left/right in a smooth manner and also can allow it to dropped lower than most people can go and higher than most. Setting up for the scene proved to take longer than expected, as it became a little complicated to block, but Jenn worked with the actors until they had it down. A little side note about this scene: we decided to create a little story within a story involving two of the extras.  Matthew Ontiveros our co-producer and Jessie Jolliff have been made into “the happy hipster couple.” I can’t exactly remember who came up with it. I feel Ontiveros and Jessie came up with the idea and then Jenn fleshed it out. In the script during a scene there is a specified  happy couple that is seen. The idea is that these two extras will play that couple earlier in the film before we see them in their “big moment.” So Matt and Jessie can be seen now in several scenes progressing through meeting each other, dating and then becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. I have no idea how many people will actually pick up on it but it’s nice to widen the depth of this movie’s universe. Of course little plans like this and also needing to figure out some more complicated than expected blocking put us behind by about 45 minutes.

HOPPA!

After lunch we all got to work shooting several scenes that are part of a montage. The hard thing about shooting a montage that takes place in multiple locations even though you have very little to shoot, you have to move around a lot and the actors need to keep changing costumes. Jessica and Samantha were fantastic with this, its a lot asking someone to change at least 4 different times in one day and asking that each outfit fit a different situation in time. They had perfect outfit choices for each scene and did a fantastic job acting. In one scene Jenn directed them to ask naturally and then Robby while only signaling to me recorded both Sam and Jessica without them knowing so they were joking with each other being natural and didn’t even know the camera was rolling. It looks great on film.

Another piece of advice for indie filmmakers that I cannot stress enough is to make sure that you have CONFIRMED extras. Extras apparently flake out more than dandruff on a dry scalp. Extras are hard to find but thankfully a few people actually did show up to help and for that I truly am grateful. But you can run into problems on a shoot that requires extras, because you can’t shoot the scene until people show up to fill in, and you can only use your crew as extras so many times.

"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is so hilarious and heartwarming!

So the time came to shoot a scene that took place in a movie theater, we went into our school’s auditorium and came across a mini-miracle. There were just people hanging out by the auditorium so we asked them to be in our movie and they agreed and the scene looks great because of it. Robby used a nice trick to create the feel of a movie theater and held up a LED light and with the help of Assistant director Nick Law flashed a thick light flag over the light to create the flicker effects a screen makes in a dark room. Jenn was of course directing the actors to act out a range of emotions. I really love that clip of the montage, not exactly sure why. But I love it.

At the end of it all the actresses had to shoot a really emotionally tough scene, when I wrote the script it was one of my favorites. I really wish I could reveal what went down, but I’ll just say that both Jessica and Samantha are tremendous actresses and I am so happy with their performances. As I stated in my last blog post I don’t like dissecting an actor’s performance too much while a movie is still going on, not unless I’m the director. Since I’m  not I guess we will just have to wait until the DVD commentary for me to reveal my full thoughts.

Will Bouton as Marty Edwards

The shoot ended up taking about 8 hours, something Jenn, Robby and myself were not happy about. We were about an hour overtime, we really wanted to knock down on all those long shoots, but hopefully we’d get better. The next day we had another shoot, that went….okay…the first scene went pretty darn well but the 2nd scene had a major blunder, and its 100% my fault it happened. See when I changed the shooting schedule I sent the new schedule to the actors but I never made it clear enough where scenes had been moved around. Or rather not clear enough, two of my actors just didn’t know it had been switched and so we had to cancel the rest of the shoot because they weren’t ready for it. Not their fault at all, they are top notch actors if they had known they would have nailed it I’m sure. But everything ended up working out, the crew was tired and so they had no problem with ending the shoot that day, maybe it all was for the best.

The next shooting date featured Will Bouton who plays radio shock jock Marty Edwards in the film. He really embodies the character and on our last shoot of the semester (but far from last shoot of the film) he had to really be unhinged and just filled with rage. Will really had a mark on this its hard for an actor to really just let loose and be angry while not going over the top but he did it. It was a small set, one that also required Jenn to be in the men’s bathroom so we had to have Nick Law stand guard on the usually empty bathroom so we could shoot everything. Jessie and Genevieve Smith did all the set design work and Genevieve also took photos for the scene that were very important to the plot. We ended the shoot 15 minutes ahead of schedule and so we all felt good, we had done a good scene and we had done it fast. Doesn’t get much better than that.

So that’s it for a while most likely, I’ll continue to keep you update once we start shooting again in January. Really looking forward to finishing this film, we also now have an official premiere date: Friday, April 6th. There will be a red carpet, suits, dresses, photographers, heck who knows what else?! I’m excited for it all! If you want to look at more photos from the shooting dates check out the gallery below and don’t forget to become a fan “Death Suspects a Murder” on its facebook page. More updates to come soon!

Click to view slideshow.

On set for DSAM.

Written by Matthew S. Robinson “Death Suspects a Murder” or DSAM for short is a feature length film that the Pepperdine Film Society, my friends and myself are currently working on. DSAM is a neo noir murder mystery surrounding a string of murders taking place at the secluded Chaplin Christian College. Believed to be the work of a serial killer two LAPD detectives and a top level campus safety official must work to find the killer before s/he strikes again. That is just a little background on the film, the main purpose of this post is to blog about the ongoing production of DSAM. This will log my personal efforts and the work of others throughout the roughly 3 month production schedule of “Death Suspects a Murder”. As the writer of the movie and as one of the producers I will stick to mostly talking about what I know. Hopefully within the next few days both the director Jenn Marlis and the Director of Photography Robby DeVillez will join in blogging about their experiences on set. One thing I should make clear: My blog posts will feature NO SPOILERS! I wouldn’t want people to stop reading because they felt I would divulge too much information and I wouldn’t want too many people reading thinking this will spill major secrets. But enough formalities let’s talk DSAM.

On Friday November 18th I was a mess. I was running on just over an hour of sleep, I had work, school, a premiere for a sketch comedy show I work on (“The Randumb Show”), more work and the very next day the first day of shooting for DSAM. Talk about stress headache, it was a wild day and I just wanted to take a breath and sit down, but that was a luxury I could not afford: there was work to be done. DSAM had been in pre-production since basically May and it was now coming down to this. I still remember when Jenn and I had been talking about making a feature length film from the very start we were on the same page with all the major factors. The first being that we wanted to make something that wasn’t a comedy. The reason that is important is because this film was to be a Pepperdine Film Society production and Pepperdine in recent years has a reputation for most films being comedic in nature. There are of course certain exceptions like the beautiful “Eleven Eleven” but in a general sense it’s about the humor not the drama. And even “Eleven Eleven” is something I’d consider somewhat of a dramedy. So I was very happy to hear that we’d be going for more serious subject material than usual.

Andy Bowland (left) and Karl Andrew

There were a few minor things Jenn and I had early differences on. I for example wanted the lead detective to be female or perhaps a male lead detective and female rookie cop for his partner. Jenn wanted two male detectives for the leads and honestly now it’s hard to imagine the same script with different genders for the characters. Everything seems to fit. Robby DeVillez a fellow Randumb Show producer quickly joined onto the project as well. Robby is a craftsman when it comes to cinematography and also has a keen sense of story and acting performances. I felt he was the obvious choice for the film’s director of photography and as a producer. Robby also contributed several key elements into the story including fashioning the killer and certain character motivations. It’s hard to find a director of photography you can truly trust. I’ve directed several short films and even one feature and I find that DPs can sometimes ruin the on set atmosphere. Directors, actors and DPs are by nature at risk for being the biggest divas on set. Maybe it’s a stereotype but you just don’t hear much about the audio master or key grip going on these huge rants/meltdowns on set. Maybe in private but rarely while shooting. So it was important to have a DP I could trust with the script I was writing and with the director. Jenn pretty much right away wanted to direct DSAM, after all it was her concept so it seemed right to have her at the helm. As a producer I have no problem stating that I feel everyone on crew is the right person for the job. The point being that a director and a DP have to work well together, and the DP can’t take over the project from the director and vice versa. DPs find the right shot, they create the image we see as an audience onscreen. The director makes sure the image is worth seeing. DPs can have huge egos at this level of filmmaking, and it’s hard for them not to. To compete at the Indy level you need good camerawork and a DP can supply that. A DP (and I write this with some hesitation) is somewhat indispensable once they have gotten on the project. All DPs have a certain distinct style and or signature. It’s nearly impossible to mimic so once you have your cinematographer you are pretty much stuck with him/her. Sure you can fire the DP and find a new one but that almost always means re shooting everything for consistency purposes. What makes Robby a great DP is his willingness to be a role player, focus on the task at hand and not let his ego get in the way on making a good scene come to life. It also helps that he’s probably one of the best cinematographers I know and a personal friend. Him being easy to work with is almost a bonus.

Michael Montgomery, unsung hero of an outside shoot.

After the story was plotted out I began work on the script, it took me about 4 days to finish the 90 page script. I was on fire during those few days writing the final 60 pages within one rainy day in Cincinnati. Once the script was fine tuned in August we started looking for more crew members. Most people selected were Pepperdine Film Society members or were made members by their participation. The first additional producer brought onto the project was Michael Montgomery, having worked with him on “The Randumb Show” I know he’s a hard worker and I also value his opinion. Plus Montgomery is one of the few people I know who actually likes doing audio work on sets. And boy did we need audio on our first shoot, but I’ll get to that in a moment. Other producers were added throughout the course of pre production: Matthew Ontiveros who has shown a real passion for the craft and Whitney Coleman who also doubles as the productions’ stunt coordinator. For music the talented Houston Fry who works under Academy award winning composer Hans Zimmer also signed onto the project. Fry is just a joy to work with in every way. For any aspiring film maker you will learn that musicians and composers can be often difficult to deal with, luckily for me most of my recent experiences with composers have been positive. Fry is such a hard worker and his music sounds beautiful, I cannot wait for the complete soundtrack to finished. I’ll probably listen to it on my ipod for the rest of my life, and that’s the honest truth. Several other people joined the team but I’ll mention them at the appropriate times.

Casting was very important, this was actually the first time in my life I had proper auditions for movie roles. Up until this point I generally cast whoever I knew was available and fit the part to some degree in my mind. Now there were actual tryouts and it was a nerve wrecking but ultimately fun experience. Jenn Marlis and Robby DeVillez also led up the audition process. There were several occasions where I was alone with Robby or Jenn during the casting stage and it was interesting to hear their thoughts on each performer. Robby is very curt with his critiques, he rarely dances around what he really wants to say. Sometimes he even tosses diplomacy to the side for honesty, it’s a good trait to have when you are selecting actors. Especially actors that you know on a personal level. This made casting difficult, you have to eventually say “no” to someone you like perhaps even admire and not necessarily because they are bad actors, just not right for the part. But in the end everyone we chose for the characters I felt good about. There isn’t one link in the cast in my opinion and they truly seem to have a command over their performances.

Robby uses me as a human tripod for a tricky shot.

So on Friday I’m sitting there at 10.30 at night with Robby and Jenn mulling over the first scene we will shoot, one of the first scenes of the movie. Without spoiling anything of importance it is the crime scene that is the starting point of the film’s plot. The detectives Chris Michaels and James Summers meet with head of campus security Rachel York and police photographer Jerry (we never gave the character of Jerry a last name feel free to make one up for him) as they try and piece together what happened to the murder victim. I personally wanted this to be one of the first scenes we shot because it sets the mood of the movie so well, it gives the actors and the crew some perspective. I feel in retrospect that it worked and that people have an idea of the movie’s tone. Still it was not an easy shoot, as I said it was 10:30pm and the next morning at 5:45am the crew had to report on set.

Some might say that having such an crack of dawn type shoot so early on in the production might hurt morale but I think the opposite is true. Try and do one of your most demanding sets first, that way your actors when they will probably be at the peak of freshness with the project will be motivated and afterwards any other shoot you do will seem like comparative child’s play. How many crew members or actors are truly going to complain about a 10am call time after a 6am one?

I left Jenn and Robby after discussing the scene a bit around 11:30pm I needed my sleep and I had to be there before anyone else making sure all the equipment was ready, thankfully the resourceful and very helpful Jessica White was there to help me with her big truck. Jessica is playing the role of a college student named Joanna Jordan in the film and was not in this scene but she came to help anyway as our make up woman, and even helped control the set by making sure foot and car traffic disrupted the set as few times as possible. She even got a tour to postpone viewing our area until we were done shooting. Something tells me Jessica could sell snow to an Eskimo if she wanted to. Everyone starts to show up and I learn that Robby and Jenn didn’t even go to sleep until 3am, I did not envy their positions at all. It was at that moment I was very happy to be a producer and not a director.

(clockwise) Jessica White admires her make up job on Samantha Smith while Jamye Grant, Mitchell Snow and myself joke around.

We had one problem that set us back when we started setting up the scene: the parking spaces. See I had reserved 3 parking spaces by the set because in the film the two detectives step out and then get back into their car. We needed those spots and despite campus safety clearly placing signs in front of the spots saying they were reserved for the film society some jerks still parked there. Thankfully the matter was resolved rather quickly but it still put us about an hour behind schedule. Which was fine as it allowed Whitney and Matthew to run and grab the coffee and food for the actors. Which they didn’t even get to eat until midway through the shoot. Oh well I suppose, next time they’ll have piping hot coffee not just the luke warm stuff.

The shoot went very well, Jessie Jolliff and Genevieve Smith were our set design team and worked hard to erase all tire marks and footprints on the muddy set for consistency reasons. You should have seen them go, they had a bucket, a push broom, a rake and they made miracles with them. I had to double as the assistant director/script supervisor on this particular shoot as our AD was already scheduled in advance to be out of town for this week, it wasn’t a big deal I had fun and I think I would have been bored just sitting around watching things happen. Though in a weird sense I’m looking forward to a shooting day where I get to do more of that. But of course that won’t happen I am naturally too concerned with every detail of the project to get lazy like that.

Producer Matthew Ontiveros

The actors all did a great job on set, I don’t want to mess with their game by making any comments too particular so I’ll just make a blanket statement and say they all acted with sincerity and really brought the characters to life. Two things I will say Mitchell Snow was directed brilliantly by Marlis to portray a sense of near fanboy nerdom towards Karl Andrews who plays Chris Michaels something when I wrote the script was not in mind, but it was such a good acting note that made an impactful difference in the character I much enjoyed. Poor Sam Smith had to lay on the cold ground on a 54 degree morning with a wind chill, it wasn’t like her clothes were very warming either. On top of that she had to deal with your literal garden variety of insects crawling around her and even a bee managed to pass away inside one of her shoes. Jessica did a fantastic job with her makeup, she truly looked dead and it’s harder than it sounds to play dead. The detectives especially when looking back at the dailies look like detectives and that is so important they blend so well together, Robby’s use of a color scheme makes a beautiful effect and he did it all while fighting the sun and with the help of Whitney compensated for the near constant lighting changes.

The only real major problem we kept running into was planes. I had gone out to this location the week before and written down all the times a plane would fly over. I figured it would be the same the next week give or take but I didn’t take into account that it was now the weekend leading into thanksgiving week or that when I first recorded the times it was on a particularly rainy day. Montgomery did his best but I know as one of the editors of this project I’m in for a real nightmare in the editing booth.

In the end everything worked out, we ended about an hour behind schedule, but since we didn’t get started until an hour behind schedule I’d almost consider it a wash, plus it was the 1st shoot things will get better and faster as time goes along and most of the shoots will be indoors which allows better control over the invariables. This is the A-team of Pepperdine, I am so excited to be working with all of them and I think DSAM will be a movie all of us will be proud of when complete. Stay tuned to this blog for further updates on production in the meantime you can see more pictures on the official facebook page of “Death Suspects a Murder”

Battlefield 3 Cover

Hello there readers, the only thing that I can say is that it’s been a long time since I have posted here and honestly, I feel awful as I promised Matthew that I would post here consistently, but well, what can you expect, life got in my way. But I know that all of you reading this, don’t care about this and rather you care about the review, so lets get this under way… oh and just so you know, this was a evaluative essay for my english class.

Battlefield 3 has been a game expected for years, it has always been a game that has attracted PC gamers more than console gamers as it features many things that the Call of Duty franchise doesn’t, such as huge maps, big amounts of gamers online (64 for PC), vehicles such as tanks, jets, boats between others. This is something that Call of Duty has only offered through things such as killstreaks or in single player campaign in certain parts, meanwhile Battlefield offers this on some maps just by spawning and jumping in on them. It is just that element that attracts me to the Battlefield franchise. I’ve never been a huge PC Gamer but I’ve followed the Battlefield franchise on consoles since Battlefield: Bad Company. I played the game and I thought it was madness as I could literally make new paths by blowing my way through houses, walls, etc. This brought me back to Bad Company 2, which wasn’t the best game, yet it was really fun and different from the normal run and gun strategy that I had developed. So obviously, when they announced Battlefield 3, I was excited.

Battlefield 2 Cover

Battlefield 3 has been a game that has been expected by fans of the original series for over 6 years, as Battlefield 2 was released in 2005. I didn’t play Battlefield 2 on the PC when it was released and I only played Battlefield 2 for about 20 minutes when it was released free to play online. I liked it but didn’t really pull me in like Battlefield 3 did when I played the beta. For those of you who don’t know, a beta in a game is a pre-release version of the full product in which the developers see what is wrong with the game and they can fix it because of these pre-release betas. Maybe it’s because I prefer playing on the sticks than on a keyboard, but still. Battlefield 3 released a public beta about a month before the game’s release date and it gave a taste to gamers of what Battlefield really is. The beta was so successful that it amounted to even more people playing it for three weeks when it was open to public than what Battlefield: Bad Company 2 ever had in its 3 years of active servers. The beta was received with mixed opinions, as it had some glitches that would get you stuck under the original ‘base A’ in ‘Operation Metro’, or just that it was really crappy when it came to getting stuck sometimes overall. But the gameplay feel overall, was really smooth and it got me coming back even to October 24^th (the day before it was released in North America). But enough with the beta and let’s go with the actual review, evaluation.

Campaign Screen Shot

I am going to start it up with the first thing I jumped onto when I popped the disk in: the single player. Now, this is a game that starts as crazy as it can, you start it up in a train where you shoot guys that you don’t know who they are and just pretty much kill them all until you get to the last part, it blows up, you transition to another part of the train, where you get to where the main antagonist of the game knocks you down and leaves you on a cliff hanger. It’s a pretty good level to get the hang of the controls for people who are new to the franchise, for me, it was easy as I spent a lot of time in Bad Company 2, so I felt just at home. But as I said, I didn’t know what the hell was going on until the first cut-scene, and honestly, I hate games like that. I kind of figured out what was going on but even in the halfway part of the game I was lost… I still haven’t finished the campaign on my account, but I did help my friend finish it (mostly because I went straight to hardest difficulty). On the most part the single player campaign keeps you interested and having fun in the first couple of parts, not because of a really interesting or driving story that almost makes you cry in some parts (I almost did in a couple of installments in Call of Duty) but rather because of all the mechanics that are in the game. The movement feels so smooth, from going prone, to climbing over a wall to even jumping over a fence. But this does put you off the single player campaign; because there is nothing that drives you to keep on playing it after one or two missions. The story is confusing because it goes back and forth, pretty much what happened with Call of Duty: Black Ops, but at least Black Ops had an interesting story.  The single player campaign, I would say, is only good for two or three missions, after that, it doesn’t make you come back. The most interesting part was the third or fourth part of the single player when you could play in the jet. As everyone expected, the single player side of it thumped. It is the first installment of ‘Battlefield’ that has a story, but that doesn’t really justify anything much. In short, play the single player campaign for a while to get the hang of the controls then go to where it really shines: multiplayer.

The multiplayer aspect has always been the place where Battlefield has shined. Throughout the years it has defined what an online first person shooter should be like and this installment doesn’t disappoint.  First off, I have to say that the first thing that really boosts this game online are the dedicated servers. For those of you who don’t know what dedicated servers are, it just means that instead of using a player in the match as a host, you get one huge server controlling everything and hosting online gameplay so it doesn’t crash as often. The first thing that you can notice when you enter a Battlefield game online is that its maps are huge. This element in the maps makes way for things like jets, tanks, cars, helicopters. Between the bigger the maps, the more you can put in them, and the developers made use of it to its full capacity. The online gameplay is great, the guns feel as real as they can be, the customization part in the online is one of the best that I have seen in any game. One example of this was when I was playing the game about a week from its release online, it was October 31^st at night, thunder was falling and on any other game my connection would’ve gone haywire and it would’ve been the end of my gaming night, but the dedicated servers made it possible for me to play, I played a couple of matches and the gameplay was so smooth that in a game I started going 0-20 and ended up 50-21 and ended as the MVP in a match. The customization helped in all of this because I was doing okay with the normal guns, but when I decided to take off the scope off a sniper, they all started to drop. The game is insanely fun, as on that same night I played for over 3 hours, non-stop, which is more than I normally play. All of the glitches that were in the beta version such as going below maps without having the ability to come back up have been fixed. There are only one or two glitches hanging by, the one that I seemed to notice was a tactical light that blinds you completely, but that issue will be fixed in an upcoming patch. To sum it all up, Battlefield 3’s online gameplay is probably one of the best online experiences that I have seen, if not the best on consoles at the moment.

Now onto the last bit, the gameplay, graphics and sound. As mentioned before, the game runs really smooth and is probably one of the best showings of both in world dynamic and character dynamics on consoles, everything runs smoothly. The lights, dust, fire and textures are as impressive as ever with the new engine they used for this game, Frostbite 2. The graphics are top notch and you can pretty much do anything you want in this game, which makes it even better. The sound is probably the best war sounds that you can get out of a game right now; everything is recorded as used by the military so you can’t get better sounds than that.

To sum it all up, the cons of the game pretty much revolves around the single player, in it not being inspiring enough to drive you to keep playing it and a couple of online glitches. The pros are that the game has a great multiplayer experience, and in that alone, you will probably spend over 100 hours in it. The graphics are great and the possibilities in the world are even greater than before. There are a lot more pros in this game than cons overall, which makes this a game that I do recommend players getting. Either if you are a Battlefield veteran or a Call of Duty player, this game will feel great in your hands, which earns it 4.5 stars out of 5 in my book.

Thanks for your time reading and sorry for the long time absent and remember to keep on gaming,

DA 

Candace Hilligoss in "Carnvial of Souls"

15. “Carnival of Souls” A chilling independent horror film made in 1962 by Herk Harvey is a cult classic starring Candace Hilligoss. It’s about a woman who is the only survivor of a car accident. She awakens to find herself in a strange realm of the world, somewhere between the living and the dead. As she tries to solve the mystery of her situation she also discovers that she has become some sort of magnet for spirits. Something about organ music makes everything creepier and this movie has plenty of it. It’s final few scenes are incredibly haunting and you won’t soon forget them. It’s a little old school, heck it was old school for 1962 but it’s a great horror film anyone can enjoy.

14. Rosemary’s Baby Another horror film from the 60′s makes the list with “Rosemary’s Baby”. Ever had neighbors that were always up in your business? Pretty annoying right? What if you had neighbors that told you how to raise your child? Pretty obnoxious I assume? What if your neighbors told you that your child was the spawn of Satan? Some mothers might actually agree with them actually, but the other 15% would be outraged! That’s the plot of this cradle based horror from the cradle robber himself Roman Polanski. All potential jokes aside it’s a magnificent film and considered universally as one of the scariest movies of all time.

13. A Nightmare on Elm Street was one of those movies I saw as a kid that my parents told me not to watch but I watched anyway. And of course had terrible nightmares that I thought were more than nightmares because of the absolutely horrifying premise of this Wes Craven classic. For those who don’t know “A Nightmare on Elm Street” is about a group of teens being killed off one by one in their sleep by the evil Freddy Kruger a vengeful spirit of sorts who was burned alive for being a Roman Polanksi without the classic films on his resume to force film buffs to respect him. This film also started the film careers of Johnny Depp and Sharon Stone but among other things also sadly started one of the worst horror franchises ever made. Still this movie isolated from the rest stands out as a terrifying ghost story.

12. Halloween is the 1978 film by John Carpenter about Michael Myers a hilarious Canadian born actor who went on to portray Austin Powers and Shrek. Just kidding! It’s obviously about a crazy serial killer who returns to his suburban hood to kill fairly attractive teenagers. There is a minimalist sense of the motion picture and the violence is surprisingly tame when its featured on screen and that makes it all the more scary at the end when it becomes Jamie Lee Curtis vs. Myers. It’s a perfect Halloween movie as well. DUH!

11.Night of the Living Dead is the ultimate indie zombie film directed by now horror legend George A. Romero. The 1968 classic put zombies on the map in film and also remains quite possibly the best zombie film ever made (though maybe not the scariest) and paints a very interesting picture about people’s failure to cooperate because of petty differences. The zombies move slow, but they still manage to always over run people who have never played a single game of flag football in their life. There have been other good movies made about zombies but this one is the definitive zombie pic.

10. The Omen Let’s try and forget the 2006 remake and focus on the excellently shot, acted and directed 1976 horror template on all things involving your child being a potential vessel for Satan. First of all if your child’s shadow makes an ominous inhuman figure you should probably give him or her back to the stork it came from. Or leave the kid in a basket with a note for your caring neighbor Rosemary to pick up. Either way “The Omen” starring Gregory Peck has some of the best use of lighting to create a scary atmosphere with strikingly beautiful cinematography from Gilbert Taylor. Taylor also was the cinematographer for “Star Wars” and “Dr. Strangelove”. So check it out if you’ve ever had the itch to be scared while taking great notes on how to angle a camera.

9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers both the 1950′s and 1970′s versions of this tale based on the book “Body Snatchers” are perfect for their genre and both have very scary and unforgettable endings. The plot revolves around alien pods that land in a small California town and take over the population, making them emotionless near zombies that walk around in human skin. How do they take over your body? All you have to do is fall asleep for a few moments and then they have you. Now there was a remake of these two films starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig called “The Invasion” it’s not nearly as bleak as these two originals nor as entertaining. So avoid it, and instead watch these two, you’ll be happy you did as you lay awake afraid to fall asleep.

8. The Sixth Sense you can tell when a movie is good, when people wait years and years to start spoiling the ending in mainstream culture. In quite possibly Bruce Willis’ best performance he plays a psychiatrist tasked with helping a kid played by Haley Joel Osmet in an iconic role work through his emotions as he claims that he can “see dead people”. This 1999 film is one of the few horror films to ever be nominated for an Academy Award for best picture. It is my opinion one of the greatest films of the 90′s and one of the greatest films ever made. It is a horror movie that makes you think, can make you cry and leave you with such a satisfied feeling about life and love. That’s something few horror films can do but make no mistake there are some horrific moments in this film that will send chills down your spine.

7. 28 Days Later has recently become a hipster’s guide to making a good zombie movie. Just about any hipster filmmaker you meet who wants to make a horror movie will mention either this film or “Dawn of the Dead” as the inspiration for the film their making, and that’s fine because this is probably the scariest zombie movie ever made. Maybe not the best, but the scariest. It made Cillian Murphy a household name and he’s still only been in about 5 blockbusters if you include a confusingly small cameo role in “Tron: Legacy”. That’s because this zombie film explores the science of the disease itself and finally answers the question “Well what happens if the zombies eat everything?” Part thriller, part horror, part action/adventure it’s the zombie movie for the guy always asking “well why do zombie movies work that way?” Did I mention it’s really scary?

6. The Exorcist I’ve heard many say that “The Exorcist” is an overrated horror film, and that may be so but that still doesn’t mean that it’s not one of the most well crafted horror stories ever made. Even non-religious people find this tale of possession unsettling and let’s just say it that girl is creepy as the Satan possessed head twisting maniac. It’s iconic for a reason, because grown men and women were urinating on themselves as they watched the events of this film unfold. Lesson learned, don’t play with Ouija boards. Also interesting note my dad late one night ended up stranded in Georgetown in Washington, D.C.  and he and his friends found themselves on the steps that were used for the famous exorcism scene. He spoke how eerie it felt just to be on those steps, and I agree. Think of the poor blokes who live there though.

5. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre first off let’s just cut the crap about this movie being based on a true story. It’s not, its almost complete fabrication! Now Leatherface is slightly based on the action of a real killer, but loosely based, very loosely based. So to all my friends who keep making up stuff about this family truly existing and there being only one survivor and all that jazz shut up and read something. The remake of the 1974 classic is quite scary as well and gets added points for having Jessica Biel but it’s still not as good as this frightening version. Any horror movie that can make something scary in broad daylight deserves a lot of credit. The sequels should be heavily ignored.

4. The Shining made in 1980 and based off the novel of the same name it’s hard to argue that “The Shining” has one of the biggest horror legacies in pop culture history. The image above sums up the movie quite nicely, even people who haven’t seen the thing understand the immense tension and fear displayed in this film. “All work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy.” It’s a movie you can’t and shouldn’t watch alone. It became the catchphrase of the late Johnny Carson and made all women afraid to date writer’s who have a tendency to go to remote places to focus on writing. Way to make it harder than it already is for me Jack.

3. The Thing when people ask me which film I think is the scariest ever made “The Thing” is always one of the first images that pops into my head. John Carpenter was not messing around when he made this 1982 masterpiece about scientists in Antarctica who accidentally dig up an alien life form that has been trapped in ice for thousands of years. This monstrous extra terrestrial has a talent, and that talent is killing people and then assimilating into their cells. Then the creature takes over that person, looks like the guy, talks like the guy and perhaps even can mimic the memories of said person. Paranoia runs rampant, the gore is spectacular, the gross out creature shots are a marvel to behold and it remains the movie that can still give me nightmares from time to time. Will I see the 2011 remake? Perhaps, it’s pretty good source material but Hollywood does have a tendency to mess up simple stuff.

2. Alien made in 1979 by Ridley Scott was almost a misfire. Early versions of the scripts didn’t even have the famous Ripley character and instead dealt with a giant tentacle like moth ball that ate anything in it’s path. Think the Kraken mixed with the blob, and also was going to be boldly progressive and hint at male homosexuality among sailo– I mean deep space astronauts. But eventually the script was ironed out a bit and it became a movie that would forever change how aliens were portrayed in movies and create a whole terrifying sub genre in itself. Now part of me wanted to put “Aliens” the James Cameron flick on this list but that is a bit more action than horror and besides “Alien” truly feels like a horror film. The tension, the mystery, the bleak undertones and cinematography complete with a musical score that would make any man look over his shoulder. “Alien” changed movies, that in itself in an accomplishment. But the fact that it is ridiculously scary also is a plus.

1. Jaws when this Steven Spielberg directed film debuted in the summer of 1975 it literally created the summer blockbuster. It caught like wildfire and Jaws mania was everywhere. Almost nobody knew that Spielberg was almost fired numerous times for taking the film over budget and well beyond it’s planned schedule. It ended up being made for 9 million dollars but ended up making over 470 million. Hollywood tends to have a short term memory about budget problems when the movie ends up making an enormous amount of cash. Still “Jaws” to me is the scariest movie ever made because….it could actually happen. As frightening as I find “The Thing” and “Alien” chances are I’ll never run into anything like that. And if I do I have a simple solution: torch it. But on average 4 people a year are killed in shark attacks. Sure most shark attacks are not like in this movie and I should responsibly point out that sharks generally have no desire to eat human flesh. (I did multiple science projects on sharks as a kid.) Sharks can be brutal killing machines and the movie still gets my heart racing even though I know it by heart at this point. I have family members who were afraid to take baths after seeing the film. It also has convinced me to never go more than waist deep into the ocean or skinny dip in shark infested waters. No matter how sexy the woman is.

Honorable Mentions: The Howling, Aliens, Friday the 13th, Car, The Thing From Another World, Paranormal Activity, The Others, Signs, Dracula, Dawn of the Dead, Amityville Horror

Agree? Disagree? Leave your comments below!

–Matthew S. Robinson