Random Acts Of Violence

Random Acts of Violence is about Gung Fu, the misuse of skateboards and good old fashioned action. This short was made for $75, which is what it cost to feed the cast and crew fast food for two days.

Director/Editor/Choreographer MICHAEL VELASQUEZ
Cinematographers MARK WATERBURY, MICHAEL VELASQUEZ
Camera Ops MARK WATERBURY, ZEKE PINHEIRO, MICHAEL VELASQUEZ
Original Score DERRICK VELASQUEZ

Cast
SAM BIRDSONG
MICHAEL VELASQUEZ
JEREMY SINCLAIR
TOM BAUMGARTNER
STEVEN DROUIN

Clarity x10

about 8 or 9 years ago, near the end of my college days, i was going through a breakup with sharon, and my little brother, derrick, who's musical tastes have always been years ahead of my own, gave me a few albums to help me through the trying times. one of those was jimmy eat world's 'clarity'. in the cliched way that music seems to define important moments of our youth, clarity was the soundtrack for every angry, heartbroken day of that breakup as well as my eventual recovery. unlike a lot of the music i listened to in college that seems embarrassingly silly and contrived in retrospect, clarity has only become more touching and insightful over the years, as if we were growing up with each other. it seems fitting then, that when i find myself going through another breakup with sharon, jimmy eat world is doing a 10 year anniversary tour of clarity and playing a show in our adoptive home, los angeles. this breakup has been vastly different in tone and drama from our last one, allegedly thanks to having become mature tax paying adults and growing apart slowly as adults tend to do, but it's still been an unexpectedly rough transition for me, especially during the last few days as she and i strive for that balance between being ex's, close friends and roommates. i originally wasn't even going to buy tickets. i had missed pre-sale and by the time they sold out, individual tickets were easily costing upwards of $100. but i figured i would regret missing out on my favorite band of all time playing my favorite album of all time more than i would regret increasing my credit card debt. i had purchased the tickets before sharon and i broke up and the concert happened two weeks after. i suppose it would make sense that we not go together, but our relationship over the years has always defied reason so it's not surprising that our break up be unique as well. and the music of jimmy eat world has as much defined our good times together as it has our bad times apart. so within the context of my love life coming full circle at the same time as this anniversary tour, last night's concert was perhaps the most significant musical experience of my life. as distant as sharon and i have been as a couple lately, once the music starts i instinctually take her in my arms, the closest we've been to each other physically in months. catching her scent off her skin, feeling with certainty that this is the last time she and i will be together like this, knowing that this ending is what's right and good and necessary for both of us, i'm in tears before the first song, table for glasses, even hits its stride. it's a good cry though. the relieving kind of cry that you can't remember why you were holding in so hard once it finally comes out. by the time goodbye sky harbor begins, i'm so exhausted inside i can barely stand. but sharon is still in my arms. when the show ends and the house lights and top 40 music comes back on, sharon and i return to our roles as roommates but perhaps not as far from each other as we were before the show began. it's as good a swan song as one could hope for to a relationship spanning over a decade. heres to anniversaries and endings. here's to clarity.

Wolverine review

expectations: very low
expectations met: mostly

I did not hate Wolverine nearly as much as i was expecting to. actually, i did not hate the first half of Wolverine as much as i was expecting to. the rest of the movie is like being forced to re-live all the parts of X3 that could have been great but ultimately ended up sucking. You would think making a cool film about wolverine is a no brainer. there's a ridiculous amount of material from his countless comic books to choose from and huge (yes, i wrote huge on purpose) jackman has shown that he can play the character with the respect and badassery he deserves. actually, the acting in Wolverine is the least of its problems. most of the actors do a credible job with the roles and lines they're given but none can overcome the general silliness that surrounds them. there's a cheese factor to the both the action and the dramatic moments in the movie that always stop it from living up to its potential and it feels like the filmmakers thought these moments were cooler and more important than they end up being on screen. the visual effects in wolverine are also worth noting because they are terrible and amateurish. the effects are so bad that they manage to make wolverine walking away from an explosion look stupid. and what was up with the crappy cgi on wolverine's claws? the cinematography is also pretty bland throughout, especially when you compare it to the first two X-Men movies, which i doubt anyone involved with this film actually saw.
i was surprised that i kind of enjoyed Liev Schreiber as victor creed. i think it's that voice of his, but i thought the way he runs like a gazelle when attacking looked ridiculous. gambit also didn't piss me off as much as i expected he would though he doesn't reach even a fraction of his coolness from the comics. my favorite performance, and it's a small one, is by kevin durand as fred dukes. something about the delivery of his lines is downright sincere. overall, this movie mostly sucked, was not quite good, and barely entertained.

here's something kinda fun to do: go to imdb and look up the resumes of the director, writers and cinematographers and tell me it isn't obvious that Wolverine was gonna end up being mediocre.

Your Mama

last week there were some fraudulent charges made to my ATM card, all to those swarmy internet businesses that typically advertise with web banners and spam. i filed a claim with my bank and it's in the process of being taken care of. today my mom calls me.
"hi, michael, it's mom."
"hey mom."
"soooo, is everything all right with you?"
"uh, sure. why do you ask."
"well, i was just wondering why we got all these packages in the mail today."
"they're addressed to me? what are they?"
"yes, um, body solutions, enhance and enlarge.com, quality health, hair growth direct..."
"oh my god, mom, there's a perfectly good explanation for all that."
"hmmm, this one says glow.com. i want to open it. can i open it? i want to see if it's a glow in the dark dildo or vibrator or something."

never underestimate how freaky your parents can be.

Watchmen review

expectations: low
expectations met?: i was pleasantly surprised

i may have underestimated director zack snyder and his crew. considering that snyder's last film, 300, was just a bunch of men running around and stabbing each other in slow motion while yelling about democracy, i was worried about his ability to tell a story of this size. i'm a fan of the comic series. it's one of those complex stories i can reread every few years and discover new things in. after a wonderful montage introducing the history of superheroes in the watchmen universe i was continually surprised at how well watchmen translated on screen, and knowing how much they had to consolidate into such a short amount of time i thought it was well handled. i saw this with sharon, who has never read the comic, and i asked her if she felt that anything was missing or if there was any confusion about the world the film takes place in and she had no complaints. this is not meant to be a full blown endorsement mind you. too many of the actors were giving B-Movie performances and it hurts the weight of the story. I think the exceptions are jackie earle haley (who voices rorschach the way christian bale should have voiced batman, minus the grammar), patrick wilson and to a lesser extent, jeffrey dean morgan. billy crudup also did a great job with the voice of dr. manhattan and i think the decision to go all digital with that character was a good one because he looks human but doesn't quite move, behave or emote like one. it's like watching those creepy digital actors in the polar express, but intentional this time. also, the old age makeup effects are distractingly laughable. i thought the soundtrack was interesting. very eighties feeling. it's difficult to separate myself from the comic and any plot points that were skipped, changed or glossed over might have been automatically filled in by my memory of that story, but i think the movie stands on its own. this is a very different super hero world that's been created here and just because it's not as grounded in reality as the dark knight, i think it's a fully realized alternate universe that is handled with seriousness and sincerity. opinions have been across the board on this film. fans will see it regardless but i hope non-comic moviegoers check it out because i'd like to see more alternate worlds that aren't just trying to recapture the feeling of iron man and the dark knight. as for the change in the ending, it didn't bother me. if you've got a studio breathing down your neck saying you absolutely cannot have a giant alien squid in this movie, then this was a well thought out compromise. though it still bugs me that dr. manhattan never tells ozymandias "nothing ever ends". in my opinion that moment is perhaps more important than the possibility of rorshach's journal being published.

Avatar review

UPDATE 04/17/10 - This weekend they re-released Avatar in 3D to promote the home video release (we don't really say "home video release" anymore do we?) and i went to check it out for my 4th time in the theaters. I came away with these thoughts. yes, avatar is a rehashed white savior story that has been told better in the past and with more nuance. the anti-corporation and pro-environment elements are about as subtle as a tour bus, but dammit, this is the kind of stuff i would want my kids growing up with so they don't turn into cynics who dismiss positive messages in the media unless they pander to our need to feel sophisticated and clever. avatar says something important about where we are, where we're going and what kind of mentality we need to adopt if we want to change. also, i still couldn't take my eyes off the screen. i wish i'd updated this sooner to tell people to see this at an AMC rather than the arclight dome. the arclight may have installed all the latest technology required to show avatar as intended but somehow the execution fell far short. the last 2 AMC's I watched this at, even at the overpriced "IMAX experience", have been a revelation to behold, with bright, sharp, nearly blur-free 3D. also, since i've seen it so many times i was able to focus on the background subtleties of the film and it's crazy how much thought went into the details. for example, you can see that the holographic maps of pandora are being projected by a series of tiny RGB projectors arranged in a circle, pointing toward the central viewing area and something about that just seems so plausible. my favorite character by far has become stephen lang's colonel miles quaritch, who's single minded badassery had me cheering out loud for the guy almost every time he's on screen. i'm curious to see how avatar holds up on home video and how much my enjoyment of this film will be tied to the awesomeness of its 3D technology on a giant screen. and for what it's worth, i think they should have split the best picture and best director oscars between this and hurt locker. it would have satisfied oscar politics because hurt locker might have deserved one award, but not both.

INITIAL REVIEW 12/19/09 - i'm pretty sure this is spoiler free. i was a little underwhelmed at the start of avatar. i'd made efforts to avoid most of the media hype but i still had expectations. i mean, it's james fucking cameron. right off the bat, and this almost always worries me, there's a lot of explanatory voiceover setting up the premise. it's intercut with some space sequences, the purpose of which is to get us to the meat of the story in the pandoran forest as soon as possible, and that is where the movie really takes off; once jake sully, our handicapped hero, enters his avatar body. i don't watch many 3D movies so the slightly blurred and washed out image took some getting used to. the use of 3D in avatar, while perhaps being more fully realized, is at the same time subtle and pervasive so it wasn't until my eyes adjusted that i found myself completely enthralled with the world of pandora. i know you're probably gonna see this movie anyway, but if there's one thing i want you to get from this review it's that i literally did not take my eyes off the screen once throughout the entire film. that being said, there's nothing original going on here storewise. this is basically just another retelling of the white savior myth and not a complex one either; but simple stories are easier for audiences to connect to and i'm not going to fault avatar on that. my girlfriend also made an apt comparison to miyazaki's films which tend to center on female characters and balance/coexistence/struggle with nature. i can see how people might think the characterization is two dimensional. there's no sarah conner, Ellen Ripley or even a t-800 here. that's not to say the actors don't do a good job. zoe saldana's na'vi warrior is wonderful and the main bad guy, played by stephen lang, is only two dimensional in the best and most badass of ways. the motion capture and character animation on display is stunning and you can absolutely see how much of the actors performances shines through their CG characters. even if the integration of live action and CGI isn't as completely seamless as advertised, it is completely integrated and at no point was i ever pulled out of the world of pandora because i thought something looked fake or to CG. i have a feeling i'm going to be spending a lot of money watching avatar in 3D several more times. next up is IMAX 3D.

Quarter Life Crisis

i wrote this a few years ago. it's frightening both how much and how little has changed.

On my way home from a family visit the city welcomes me with standstill traffic and thick, yellow skies
I'm not exactly sure when i started referring to this place as home
but it frightens me that i've gotten so used to yelling at strangers on the freeway

i talk to my friend on the phone as i drive and he tells me he's going through a quarter life crisis
26 years old, single, careerless, directionless
and seriously thinking about moving in with mom and dad so he can save up for a condo
nevermind that he makes twice what i do for half the work
he had wanted to be a musician
you're so lucky to be pursuing what you love, he says.
you are so lucky.

in high school you promise to make your first million by the time you're 22 so you can retire early
marry someone way younger than you and spend the rest of your days on the beach
sipping martinis and working on your tan
but 22 turns into 25 and somehow paying your bills becomes a priority over things like traveling, finding true love and changing the world
you make the worst mistake of your life by taking a job that requires you to wake up at the same time every morning
and suddenly you're 28
at which point you're no longer going through a phase you're just kind of a fuck up
and your family speaks in whispers at holiday gatherings hoping you'll at least marry into some money

you see, we are part of a growing social class with more opportunities than we know what to do with
where success is implied but never promised
and love means changing your profile from "single" to "in a relationship"

we strive for a better life, to make our families proud and achieve an acceptable level of comfort
but really, these are just nice ways of saying we need money to have happiness
as if one can't exist without the other
as if money not only makes you content, it keeps you healthy, sexy and young
with minty fresh breath and farts that smell like the first day of spring

but i remember the warm smile of the senior citizen employees at the walmart
who restock the snack shelves like it's the most fulfilling job in the universe
i remember the old man at the comic book shop who lights up like a child over new issues of X-men
even though he has to carry around an oxygen tank just to breathe
and i think to myself, what the hell do they know that I don't?
I'm not so patient i can wait another 40 years to understand the secrets of a happy life
and frankly, I know plenty of unhappy old people
so who can i turn to for advice?
who can i count on to give me a hug, hand me a beer and tell me that everything is going to be just...awesome?

because when you've lived a life of straight A's and merit scholarships, no one really wants to hear you bitch about your upper middle class problems
try explaining to your grandmother who had to evacuate her village during bombing raids that you're just not sure what to do with your life

tell your grandfather who survived world war II, the last male in his family line, that you don't think you're ever going to get married, let alone have kids

or complain to your aunt who was forced from school into internment that you haven't really used your college degree since graduating

i can never forget that struggle is nature's way of separating the weak from the strong
and having struggled for little, it is best to count my blessings and keep on my toes
because i may already be a happy person
I just don't know it yet

so i will make the effort to look forward to my car payments and the rent on my apartment because it beats taking the bus and sleeping on the street
i will teach myself to appreciate credit card debt because it means i've got shelves filled with nifty gadgets and a closet full of jackets
i'll call my parents and thank my mom for buying me my first set of paintbrushes
and for glorifying every single watercolor of she-ra, the thundercats and voltron on our refrigerator door
i'll thank my dad for making me play every sport he could think of and for showing up at all my matches
even after i told him it embarrassed me to have him there
and i'll thank my grandparents for proudly showing me off to their friends and strangers at the mall
and for making sure every girl i brought home saw those naked baby pictures of me that i thought i'd destroyed

I will never be unaware that it is my privilege to concern myself with bullshit like a quarter life crisis, my self esteem and whether or not I can really afford that vacation package to hawaii
I will endeavor each and every day to make sure
that the gifts my family fought so hard for me to have
do not go to waste.