May 21, 2015

Hello, blogosphere, it's Neil. My experiences at Berks Career and Technology Center were interesting, to say the least. Many things that happened were some of the most stressful things to ever happen to me since my time at Little Keswick School and frequently challenged my ideas of right and wrong against other people's. Many more things that happened, however, expanded my skill set and began to show me some of the valuable skills I will need in my desired industry for work. The first skill I learned was how to make full studio short films. While I will have a lot of work to do before those skills can be perfected, I think that I have a good idea of how to get started on making both short and long films, animated and live-action. The second one was blogging and podcasting. There are many different activities I would like to do over this summer, such as binge-watching television, films, and videos on multiple streaming services, binge-reading various books and comics I'm interested in, binge-playing many video games, creating practice videos for Vimeo, YouTube, and maybe even Facebook, jotting down ideas for my original concepts in personal notebooks, going to the pool with friends, editing many wikis (mainly movie wikis, but I'll edit other kinds of wikis as well when it suits me), participating in discussions on fan forums, writing nonromantic fan fiction for various things I like, and blogging on various wikis, with the wiki blogs being about whatever the blog is about, a personal blog about anything on my mind except movies, and an audio podcast about only movies. There is a strange good feeling about getting your opinion out about whatever you want with the slim chance that some stranger will notice it and think you're cool, so if I can get the time in for all of this, that will be great for me. The third was that you are going to deal with people you can't stand. OK, I somewhat already knew that, but working here really hammered that in for me. There were two students here that said so many obnoxious things that I was positive that their removal from the program would tremendously improve my experience, and it probably would. But, that's not how it works, and the best you can do is pretend that those things don't bother you and work together like you have no problem with them. Berks Career and Technology Center is a fine establishment, and I am excited to learn more in the next two years at this facility. Only one question remains- where do I go from here? That question will be answered next year, when I continue to make the future.

Neil Rush's The Abnormal Film Critic- Episode 1: Avengers: Age of Ultron (a better version of my first podcast uploaded to Podbean)

May 18, 2015

This is a better version of my original review of "Avenger: Age of Ultron." Due to a misunderstanding about how much time I had to make that one, I rushed through it and made something I'm not very proud of. Fortunately, I was given a second chance to make something good, and I certainly hope that it is good enough. This is the style I want to make my podcast about movies in as a pre-career to my desired career, and I hope something like this can happen.

Link to the podcast site

May 14, 2015

Hello, blogosphere, this is Neil again. For my next TV review, I will be reviewing a show that I just can't stop thinking about- Disney's Gravity Falls. It first aired on the Disney Channel in August 2012, with reruns airing on sister channel Disney XD frequently. Season 1 ended in August 2013, and Season 2 did not start until August 2014. In November 2014, the show moved exclusively to Disney XD, which I find to be much more fitting. Disney XD tries to be "Disney for boys," (even though I don't believe in gender rules of any kind in any media, if you like something, you like it, whatever) with its large amount of action, sci-fi, fantasy, and superhero shows compared to the normal Disney Channel's large amount of family and teen sitcoms, and airs more animation in general. I feel that Disney XD is the best channel for modern kids' animated programming, far better than Nickelodeon and even Cartoon Network, which has so many critically acclaimed programs currently on the air, like Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball, and Steven Universe (which, while acknowledging its good qualities, I feel is underwritten). I first started to want to watch it more regularly after a peer in drama frequently talked about it with me. He did suffer from much social immaturity, but his tastes seemed otherwise good, so I decided to give him and the show a shot. Created by young animator and voice actor Alex Hirsch and based off of a CalArts graduation project he produced, Gravity Falls follows twelve-year-old Dipper Pines (voiced by Jason Ritter), a character based on himself, and his twin sister Mabel (voiced by famous comedy actress Kristen Schall) a character based on Hirsch's real-life twin sister Ariel. The two of them travel from their hometown of Piedmont, California, to the fictional town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, for the summer. They live with their great-uncle Stan Pines (voiced by Alex Hirsch himself), or as they call him, Grunkle Stan, the owner of a gift shop and skilled conman, and regularly hang out with Soos Ramirez (also voiced by Hirsch), Stan's friendly but fairly unintelligent handyman, and Wendy Corduroy (Linda Cardenelli), a fifteen-year-old levelheaded tomboy that works at the Mystery Shack and Dipper has a crush on. Dipper likes mystery solving and wants to solve as many mysteries behind the bizarre occurrences that go on in Gravity Falls as possible. Mabel is eccentric and girly, and lives for her stuffed animals, her pet pig Waddles, her scratch-and-sniff sweaters, and vampire romances. There are plenty of antagonists that the gang frequently comes into conflict with, such as L'il Gideon Gleeful (voiced by creator and star of old Cartoon Network show The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack Thurop Van Orman), a psychotic nine-year-old boy that wants to rule the town, Bill Cipher (also voiced by Hirsch) a transdimensional reality-defying psychic triangle that takes advantage of Dipper and Mabel's fears, and Pacifica Northwest (voiced by Jackie Buscarino), Mabel's vain and pretentious rival. Through all of the bizarre things that happen to them, Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Soos, and Wendy stay together as family does and try to solve the town's mysteries, the biggest one currently being what Stan's past is and what happened to his twin brother. There are certain word and picture codes at the end of each episode that fans have discovered have special meanings, and Hirsch even allegedly designed the theme song to say a special phrase when played backwards. I take things like that with a grain of salt, even when the creator confirms them, because people say that about a lot of songs and just overthink things in general. While I think the mystery angle is fairly clever, I'm more attracted to the show for its humor, much of which is a lot edgier than you'd expect from anything made at Disney Television Animation and even makes me question the show's TV-Y7 rating at times (and I mean that in the best way possible), likable characters, deep storytelling that doesn't sugarcoat many harsh realities of life even for a children's audience, strong relationships between its characters, subtle references to real-life internet memes, and frequent guest stars, such as comedian Patton Oswalt as a golf ball man in "The Golf War," Lonely Island comedy rapper Jorma Taccione as Mabel's sock-puppet fanboy crush Gabe in "Sock Opera," and acclaimed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as Waddles when he gains supergenius-level intellect and the ability to speak in "Little Gift Shop of Horrors." The animation is some of the best traditional animation I've seen put to a cartoon produced in the 2010s, rivaling the animation quality of Steven Universe, and only slightly inferior to Star vs. The Forces of Evil. And the most recent episode, "Not What He Seems," may very well be the best thing to have ever aired on Disney XD. Being Part 1 of the two-part Season 2 finale, with Part 2 to air sometime this summer, it creates a rift between Dipper, Mabel, and Stan, with it not being truly certain if Stan can or should be trusted for anything ever again, Mabel losing much of her innocence, Dipper losing faith in his entire family, and the mystery of Stan's past and the identity of his brother to finally be described in detail. I've seen more of Season 2 than Season 1, but I can assume that Season 1 is pretty good, even though Season 2 feels better. In conclusion, Gravity Falls is a rare piece of comedic family animation that I hope future cartoonists take inspiration from. I certainly will, though I find a way to take at least a little inspiration from every animated program I see. Maybe one of the different versions of "Geekz" that I have in mind will take more inspiration from Gravity Falls than the rest, but for now, I'll focus on making "Geekz" the best series it can and let the influence from other sources come naturally rather than trying too hard to make sure it's influenced by something else. Another word for trying to make sure that something is influenced by something else is "plagiarism" (OK, not really, but it can come close). I give Gravity Falls a 9/10. This has been Neil Rush, telling you that you can watch Gravity Falls almost every day on Disney XD, during late-night hours on Disney Channel, Comcast Xfinity On Demand, Amazon Instant Video, and Hulu, and find it available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play TV.

The Abnormal Film Critic Buster Of Blocks Podcast- Episode 1: The Review of Avengers: Age of Ultron

Link to the PodBean.com page on which the podcast exists
This is the podcast on which I will be both reviewing new and old films and talking about news in the film industry and my takes on them. The normal Blogger blog is where I will be talking about anything else on my mind that's not movie related. Of course, I may need to buy studio sound equipment to use at home to record the podcast, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. I'll also have blogs on all of the different wikis that I edit that I have accounts on in which I will discuss solely that wiki's topic and my takes on various things within that topic. Hope that you read and listen to everything I have to offer that you can.

May 7, 2015

Hello, blogosphere. This is Neil Cullen Rush, and I am here today to give my first ever official TV show review. The show I chose to review is the new Netflix show, Daredevil. There will be mild spoilers for this review, and while I'll try to keep them few and far between, I would recommend seeing the show before reading this if you can.
Set in the same universe as the Avengers films, but in a "darker corner" far removed from the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in which there really is no interaction with and very minimal mention of Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Captain America, S.H.I.E.L.D., or any normal Marvel thing, it focuses on Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a law school graduate that has just gone into the business of being a defense attorney with his best friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson). Every night, he goes out into his neighborhood and fights crime in a black ninja costume that is supposed to be a precursor to the well-known Daredevil costume (at least it's not the yellow costume from the 1960s). He struggles to keep it a secret from the rest of the world. One day, Matt and Foggy come across their first client, a woman named Karen Page (True Blood's Deborah Ann Woll) who has been framed for murdering an associate of crime boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), known on the streets as the Kingpin. Matt was blinded as a child after getting an odd chemical in his eyes from saving a man from getting run over. He was the child of a single father, Jack, who had a boxing career and was killed after refusing to throw a fight. This, combined with his enhanced hearing allowing him to hear all of the crime going on in his neighborhood and "motivation" from his blind mentor Stick (Scott Glenn), made Matt decide to become a vigilante. Matt's blindness gives him superhuman hearing, smell, taste, and touch, allowing him to do things like detect things with radar, dodge attacks before they're thrown, tell honesty through heartbeat, and a variety of other skills. Matt uses his abilities and fighting skills to go after associates of Kingpin and bring him to justice while struggling to remain "the good guy" in the situation. He tries to keep his other identity secret from everyone else and knows that what he does as a vigilante that does anything he can to criminals to stop them except kill them isn't much better than what the criminals he fights do. Wilson Fisk is an equally complicated individual. Having killed his father in a fit of anger as a child after snapping from both himself and his mother dealing with frequent physical, mental, verbal, emotional, and psychological abuse at his hands, he knew he never wanted to be without power ever again. As a result, he managed to build up power in the criminal underworld over the years, gained control of most of the police, and managed to run nearly all of the street-level crime in New York City. Fisk even falls in love with an art gallery owner named Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer) and starts an awkward but loving relationship with her, who convinces him to announce himself to the public as a humanitarian that will reform and stop crime in the city, hiding his true criminal nature. This is one of the best things the show does- make its hero struggle to keep from becoming the villain and make its villain the kind of person that, were it not for his brutal methods, violent temper, and unethical dealings, could be seen as the hero. Kingpin is my favorite character in the show, and my favorite villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe besides Loki and Thanos.
The relationships between all of the characters are believable and realistic. Matt and Foggy's friendship is truly heartwarming, which makes it all the more sad when it falls apart after Foggy learns of Matt's double life. This isn't a friend thinking it's really cool that his friend is a superhero; this is more like someone confronting a friend with a harmful addiction. Yes, they reconcile, but things can never be 100% between them ever again. Fisk doesn't have much experience with women, so he constantly stutters when talking with Vanessa, yet she is fascinated by him, pudginess and all, making it all the more bizarre when Kingpin brutalizes his enemies.
The show is definitely better than the 2003 Daredevil film, though I don't think that one is as bad as people say it is. People say that Ben Affleck is why it's bad, though I think that, while Affleck is definitely better at directing films than acting in them, he's not a bad actor as long as he has good material, something Mark Steven Johnson did not provide with his Daredevil film. I do think that the actors did the best with the material they had, and would have definitely enjoyed seeing Jon Faverau as Foggy, Colin Farrell as Bullseye, and Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) as Kingpin in a film or TV show written and directed by someone other than Mark Steven Johnson. Affleck was passable as both Matt Murdock and Daredevil, though was still better as Murdock. I never expected Affleck to want to play Batman after comments he made in a 2006 interview saying he never wanted to play a superhero again due to how uncomfortable the costumes are, but here we are. I think he will be a better Bruce Wayne than Batman, but passable as both, as long as Chris Terrio, David S. Goyer, and Zack Snyder give him good material, which I have a lot of reasonable doubt that they won't.
Anyway, back to Daredevil. With strong acting, thorough character development, a darker tone than most other things set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, just the right amount of comic relief, and Netflix binge-watching convenience, I found myself enjoying this show much more than many other things in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to have come before it, like Iron Man 2 and 3, Thor: The Dark World, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, and even Avengers: Age of Ultron, though probably not as much as the first Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, the first Thor, both Captain America films, the first Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy. If you can stomach a hefty amount of blood and more generally disturbing content in superhero stories, and would want to see a darker side of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I would highly recommend this show. I can't wait for Season 2 in 2016 and the upcoming Netflix series for Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist that go along with this show and are supposed to team up in a Netflix miniseries about the Defenders, and feel that Netflix shows are a good alternative to making films for Marvel's darker characters. I score the show a 9.9/10. Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you again for my next blog post.