The Targ Is Back! At Last!

Holy moly!  It's been darn near a month since I've had a chance to sit down and record a new episode of U62: The Targ!  But I found the time, and for I've got Episode 5.20: Backed Up.

First topic is explaining what the heck happened to me this past month, followed by a desperate plea to you, my listeners.  We then go through some epic comic book crossovers that are coming up, and then work though my podcast prep file, which includes tidbits on Titanic 3D, McDonald's in France, and the richest duck in the world.


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Fishing in the Discount Bin - Avatar

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, the ol' segment that I used to do on my podcast that I decided to resurrect on my blog because I didn't want my old notes to go to waste, and it's nice to always have content.  I think, with this one, we finally run out of the ones that I actually produced for my podcast, and get into the ones that were gathering cyber-dust on my hard drive.  And it's too bad, because we finally get to the #1 movie of all time, Avatar.

This review is originally dated November 21, 2010.

2 New Trailers!

Two new trailers went online in the past couple of days, and let's get too them, because my blog is starting to skimp on content!

First up, the latest adventure for those real American heroes, G.I. Joe: Retaliation.  I've already blogged many times how I'm looking forward to this.  Granted, the first movie was a rather cliched comic book action film, but OMG SNAKE EYES WAS REAL AND TOTALLY DOING REAL NINJA STUFF!!  *ahem*  Sorry, my inner child got a hold of the keyboard.

And it looks like Retaliation ramps up the ninja action by resurrecting Storm Shadow from the dead and throwing Jinx into the mix.

Trailer time!







So...plot hole the first I'm raising from this trailer.  How come no one raises their hand and says, "Umm...Mr. President, how come our new elite strike force is the evil army we were fighting last time?"  Other than that, it still looks very much like the first film and I'm looking forward to it.  In theatres June 29!

Next up, it's the new one from Pixar, Brave.  Again, this is another one I'm looking forward to, because I love me my Pixar.  We've been told it's their first fairy tale, set in medieval Scotland.  But for the Pixar fans like myself, we hope it'll get rid of the memory of the pure sellout that was Cars 2.






Not gonna lie...the more I see of this one, the more my expectations drop.  I'm starting to see more and more of the Disney Princess cliches popping up in these things.  But, who knows?  It's Pixar.  Maybe they'll do some totally awesome deconstruction of those cliches.  We'll find out on June 22.

The 2006 Magnificent River Rats Festival

Something a little different for my radio experiment today.  Well, I guess it's not really an experiment, because I actually went out and did it on the radio.

Today marks a very special day for me.  For today is my 6th anniversary of living and working in Athabasca.  When I first started here on April 24, 2006, I was not the wacky  morning guy that I am today, but instead, I was an intrepid reporter, working in the newsroom.

I had a somewhat contentious relationship with news when I was going to NAIT.  I knew from the outset that I didn't want to do news for my radio career.  When you do the news, you spend a lot of time running...a lot of time chasing.  You're chasing stories, you're chasing leads, you're chasing down people to interview...you're always on the move.  And my impressive gut should be proof enough that I don't like to run.

But even though I didn't want to do it, I was good at it.  Or at least, that's what my news prof kept telling me.  She was always encouraging me to go into news.  As my time drew to an end, her gentle nudges were starting to turn into forceful shoves.  Back then, I was still passionate about writing, too, and figured a good way to pick up a few extra dollars would be by writing for the school paper.  I mean, hey, I was chasing down and writing news stories anyway for news class...why not get paid for it?  I remember impressing my writing prof one day because, I was facing my deadline, and in writing class, during the 15 minute break, while most everyone went outside for a smoke, I sat down and started frantically writing my contractually-obligated three news stories for the paper.  When the paper came out a couple days later, my writing prof was impressed.  Not by the fact that I wrote all three news stories in 15 minutes, but that I wrote them in 15 minutes and they were good.  As her final act to convince me to go into news, my news prof sat me down and said, "Between what you've done in the paper and what you've done in news class, any radio newsroom will see you as an asset."

In retrospect, I really, really, REALLY should have listened to her.  After NAIT began the period I like to refer to as "The Great Year of Unemployment," as I pounded the pavement, looked for announcing gigs, and getting turned down left and right.  But, at the end of my rope, as the Great Year was drawing to an end, that's when I started applying for news gigs.  And I got callbacks.  And I got interviews.  And I got hired to go to Athabasca.

It's always tough when you move to a new town and your job is to do the news.  I mean, how can you tell people what happened today when you don't know anyone or what's going on?  So it always takes some time to get up and running.  But luckily, I did have one big thing coming up on the horizon...Athabasca's Magnificent River Rats Festival.

Covering the development and the planning of the festival was always a good story.  And then, when the festival came, I was in love with it.  I knew I had to do something special with my news coverage, and that led to doing the kind of radio news that you don't get to do too often in a small market...the kind that's elaborately produced with ambient background noise.

I was a little worried about how this news story would be perceived by some of my colleagues...when I first started, I had a co-worker who told me that the mere concept of interviewing people was too "hard-hitting" for a small market.  But I went and did it anyway, and when I sent out the story to the sister stations, I did get a couple of e-mails back from my fellow newshounds saying that they loved it and they ran it in their own newscasts.


But perhaps the greatest compliment was when I sent it to my news prof to show off how I was doing in the real world, and asked the humble question, "So, umm, would this be something I put on my demo?"  And she replied with two words:  "FUCK YES."

So, here then, to celebrate my 6th anniversary in Athabasca, is my news coverage of the 2006 Magnificent River Rats Festival.



The Magnificent River Rats Festival 2006 by Mark Cappis

Fishing in the Discount Bin - River of No Return

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, a feature for my podcast that I worked really hard on until it started to eat up too much of my time.  Rather than let all my notes go to waste, I decided to start posting them here on my blog.  For this entry, we get to the Marilyn Monroe classic River of No Return.  This entry is originally dated November 2, 2010.

How the Mainstream Media Works, Part 27

The sad truth is, I seem to be running out of old radio experiments on my hard drive.  When I made the transfer from my beat up old laptop to my shiny new desktop a few years ago, it looks like most of my experiments didn't make the transfer.  I'm tempted to get my old laptop out, fire it up, and see if I can find some, but I also think first I should try to get my laptop fixed.

I dunno about my laptop...I think I picked up a virus or something.  I've deleted pretty much everything that's non-essential from it, and it keeps telling me the hard drive is full.  I wouldn't mind getting my laptop operational again, if only to use as a netbook when I'm on the road.

But I'm still finding one or two things to blog about.  A few weeks ago, when I first started this, I began with my dramatic rendition/production of How the Mainstream Media Works, Part 26, which was a blog entry by writer Todd Babiak when he still worked for the Edmonton Journal and wrote a blog there.  I always did like Mr. Babiak's writing...I really should saunter on down to the library one of these days and check out his novels.

Anyway, it turns I adapted another of his blog entries into a dramatic reading/one-man radio play thingie.  I chose the very appropriate How the Mainstream Media Works, Part 27.

I really did like his series of How the Mainstream Media Works blog entries...I do remember wanting to attempt to produce a couple more like this before I got distracted and moved on to something else.

But anyway, here's my reading of How the Mainstream Media Works, Part 27 by Todd Babiak.



How the Mainstream Media Works, Part 27 by Mark Cappis

Brave Art

When it comes to animated movies, I love concept art.  It's just the artists, cutting loose, trying to figure out the look for the film.  You see familiar designs in its earliest forms, and you see some really unorthodox ideas that never panned out.

Pixar's next movie is Brave, and I stumbled across this bit of concept art of the film's heroine, the Princess Merida.

And here's the finished design, as it appears in the film.  It's toned down, softened, and I admit, I kind of miss the "crazy eyes."

I sure hope Brave is a return to form with Pixar.  Like a lot, I wasn't too impressed with Cars 2 last year.  I'm liking what I see so far from this film.  Some online are already claiming that it rips-off How to Train Your Dragon.  I guess that's just the fate of Pixar and DreamWorks.  Ever since A Bug's Life and Antz came out so close together, they'll always be accused of ripping off each other.

In addition to these pics, Disney also released this neat featurette about the character of Merida.








Brave hits theaters on June 22.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Ghostbusters

Time once again for Fishing in the Discount Bin!  So, I was doing this thing at my podcast where I'd rant about one of the many movies in my DVD collection.  Life got in the way, and I started finding the feature too labour-intensive, so I gave it up.  But, I wrote so many reviews before I produced them into my podcast that I didn't want them to go to waste.

So I'm posting them to my blog!

Today, we get to a movie so awesome it leaves me speechless...Ghostbusters.  This entry is originally dated October 30, 2010.

Blasphemy

Nothing fancy with this week's radio experiment...just a little bit of music editing I wanted to try.

The Newsroom Trailer

I wish I could be all hipstery and say I was fan of Aaron Sorkin before anyone else was, but that would just make me sound all hipstery. 

I'm sure you're familiar with the name of Aaron Sorkin by now.  He's gained quite a bit of fame in the past years for writing such Oscar-winning and -nominated scripts for hit movies like The Social Network and Moneyball.  I guess if I wanted to be all hipstery, I'd point out that I was a fan from when I first saw A Few Good Men, which he also wrote.  But no, I became familiar with him through his television work.

His most recent TV series was Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and while I did thoroughly enjoy it, I lament that it never really found it's point.  His best known TV series was The West Wing, where he was the creator and pretty much wrote every episode in its first four seasons.  Got to admit, I never really got into The West Wing.   Don't know why...but what little I saw, I loved.  I still absolutly adore his first TV series, Sports Night.

Seriously, dudes, if you've never seen Sports Night, check it out.  That show is just freaking brilliant.  I watched it in its first run...I picked up the special 10th anniversary complete series boxed set a couple years ago, and re-watching it, I kept thinking, "I forgot how amazing this show is."  I'll totally loan you my DVDs so you can watch it.  And that's how awesome I think it is and that you should watch it.  Because I never loan out my DVDs. 

And Sorkin returns to his Sports Night/Studio 60 fascination with the behind-the-scenes workings of television with his new TV series The Newsroom.  This time around, he takes behind the scenes of a cable news show.  And I just discovered that the series is drawing some ire up here in Canada because Sorkin totally stole the title of one of our most critically-acclaimed and revered TV programs.

Regardless, Sorkin has assembled an all-star cast for this one.  Jeff Daniels (yup, the Dumb and Dumber guy) is our lead anchor Will McAvoy.  Sam Waterson (still best remembered as Jack McCoy on Law & Order) is the president of the network.  British actress Emily Mortimer is news program's executive producer.  And some how, amongst all that talent, Olivia Munn snuck in there. 

It premieres on HBO in the USA this June, and HBO has released a trailer. 




Some online are already drawing the comparisons to the opening minutes of Studio 60 in this trailer...looks like both series open with a renowned television personality having a very public meltdown about the current state of the world, sending their respective networks into damage control.  But it looks like that, unlike Studio 60, which then led to the television personality being fired, The Newsroom sees the personality get to keep his job and try to make the improvements he feels are neccessary. 

Truth be told, watching this trailer, I'm seeing more in common with Sports Night, if only because the shots of the cubicals and TV controls rooms and in the office of the president of the network just look awfully familiar  And if this show winds up being Sports Night 2.0, I'll be more than happy with that. 

It starts up on HBO on June 24...no word on who's airing it in Canada. 

Ted Trailer

Well, may as well use this holiday Friday to blog about more of those trailers I was talking about earlier in the week!  Here's the first couple of trailers for Ted.

Seth MacFarlane is the creator of Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show.  And I've got to say, I'm not as big a fan as I once was.  Don't get me wrong, whenever I see Road to Europe come on in reruns, I will sit down and watch it to the end because it's still one of the funniest half-hours ever.  But earlier this year, when they did their big hurricane crossover, and Family Guy's episode was that one where they're all trapped in their house so Meg finally confronts her family about why they pretty much abuse her, and in the subplot, Brian tries shrooms and has a bad trip...yeah.  That was one of the ugliest half-hours I'd ever witnessed.  Stopped watching Family Guy soon after.

That being said, though, I'm still very curious about MacFarlane's debut as a film director, Ted.  In addition to directing, MacFarlane also wrote the script with a couple of Family Guy writers.  I saw MacFarlane on Conan a couple of months ago, and he described the plot thusly: 

"It's about a little boy who makes a wish that his teddy bear would be his best friend forever.  And the teddy bear magically comes to life.  So, naturally, the film takes place 30 years later, when the boy and the bear are all grown up, and spend most of their days just hanging out smoking a lot of weed." 

Mark Whalberg plays the little boy, MacFarlane voices the teddy bear, and Mila Kunis is the girlfriend that threatens to break them up.

As is the case with such comedies these days, there are two trailers.  First up, the green band trailer:


   

And the "red band" trailer, which you only see in front of R-rated movies and has swears and stuff.

Gotta say, I was finding that pretty funny and laughing through pretty much the whole thing.  Ted hits theaters on July 13.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - UHF

Welcome to another installment of Fishing in the Discount Bin.  This began life as a feature in my podcast, but when I got too tired to keep going, I gave up on it.  But, not before I wrote a crapload of reviews to eventually incorporate into the podcast.  Rather than see them go to waste, I'm now throwing them up on my blog!  Today, we get to one of my all-time favourites, UHF.  This review is originally dated October 23, 2010.

Osaka Cowboy

Time to dig through my hard drive and find another one of my old radio experiments to upload and share.

This is another thing I produced many years ago.  I was fresh out of NAIT, just messing around with my home set-up, trying new things, and maybe whipping up some neat stuff to spruce up my demo.

One thing they always warned me about production is that a producer's bread and butter is the "single voice over music."  This is about 99% of the commercials you hear on the radio.  Just one person speaking, with some music in the background.  As crazy as it sounds, I find producing such things to be utterly fascinating.  I mean, it sounds simple, right?  They also warned us in school that it's producing so many of those that drive young producers to seek other careers...they just get so bored making so many.  But, how could you get bored?  So many different kinds of music...so many ways for the announcer to read the copy.  I wouldn't get bored...I would go mad from having so many choices.

And it's still one of the things I gravitate towards when I just want to try something new.  I read something like an old blog entry, slap some music underneath.  And sometimes, I get very...elaborate.

Like this one, for example, where I tell a tale of my time in Japan.  Despite my efforts to acclimatize to the different culture, there were two times where I felt completely out of place...like a total redneck from Hicksville, Alberta.

This is one of those stories.

Total Recall Trailer

Wow.  Lots of great trailers went online this past weekend.  I wish I had the time to sit and blog about them all, but this is turning into a really crazy busy week.

So, if I had to pick one, it would be the entry from the pointless remake file, Total Recall.

The 1990 Arnold Schwarznegger classic gets a gritty reboot...even though the first one was kind of violent and really gritty to begin with.  Colin Farrell takes over for Arnold as Douglas Quaid, the bored factory worker (construction worker in the original) who dreams of something more in life and decides to go to Recall, the fake memory outfit to get the fake memories of an exotic secret agent fantasy implanted.  But, before you know it, everything goes to hell, and he's living out the secret agent life he ordered.  Or is he?

Instead of going to Mars, it all takes place on an overpopulated and dystopian Earth.  Kate Beckinsale takes over for the before-she-was-famous Sharon Stone as Quaid's wife/agent keeping an eye on him, and Jessica Biel takes over for Rachel Ticotin as his true love/fellow resistance fighter.  And Bryan Cranston takes over for Ronny Cox as the villainous Cohagan.

The remake was directed by Len Wiseman, the man responsible for the Underworld franchise and Die Hard 4.  And, in answer to your most pressing question, Wiseman has assured us that yes, the 3-breasted hooker makes an appearance.

It hits theaters on August 3.  Here's the trailer.





I've got to say, that does look pretty slick.  The first one's special effects were pretty cutting-edge for it's time, so this really shows you how far we've come.

Oh, and here's the poster.

Time for Targ!

I think you know the drill by now.  Sunday means it's time to roll out a new episode of my podcast U62: The Targ.  This time around, we've got Episode 5.19: A Lazy Saturday.

I spent the titular lazy Saturday in my PJs, firing up my equipment at home, and rambling about the Canadian, the demise of the penny, and wondering why I don't read more.  I should read more, because books is awesome.

Anyway, give it a listen, and it just may inspire you.


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