Monday, May 10, 2010

MY LA WEEKEND

Hey- slammed with work so this is gonna be fast.

Went to LA on Friday to do a playtest and now am back with a trunkful of very useful notes. Gonna spend most of the day getting those on lists and then sending off to Utah to see which ones we can/should/want to address and which notes we want to let go (always a tough a call after a play test: which comments to incorporate and which to throw back).

But a few things about my trip- if I may:


#1- I SAW KEVIN SMITH!
Caught the Kevin Smith Q/A live at the House of Blues on Sunset. Me and my brother went and it was...ok. Yeah, just ok. I dig the Smith a lot but his schtick is feeling tired and no longer feels genuine. I get it tho- I feel for the guy. I am a fan, to be sure. But you see the same kind of 'tiredness/struggle' in his movies as well: where he's been trying since Jersey Girl to step away from his View Askew stuff but has not had a lot of success with that and so keeps going back to his old vibe because (just guessing here) it's either safe/feels natural and/or it's lucrative. I don't begrudge the man- it's tough to grow creatively and I wish him the best. But we left the show 2 hours in (he's known to go on for 3-5 hours sometimes). Nice and kind a guy as he seems, the show just dragged and got pretty dull. Still, cool to see he can pack a house. As I said: I'm a fan, so good for him!

#2- IRON MAN 2=IRON MEH 2
Yeah, I wrote that...whatever! Would have been happier catching this on Blu Ray when it hits in 4-6 months. It was fine but nothing close to being special. IM1 was crazy fresh and had a heartbeat that was incredibly attractive and charismatic and the story was so tight and smart. This one just felt...corporate? Serviceable? Certainly not a BAD movie in the scheme of things. It was solid for sure but it just was not special enough to merit me spending 2 hours of my life at a theater. As I get older, I still love movies but I get a lot more picky now and this one - for me- just didn't cut it as a full price,  big event deal. Watching at home or catching with medium expectations at a matinee= the perfect way to watch Iron Man 2.  Come on Marvel Studios...don't start slipping on us now!

#3- FULL CIRCLE!
So I caught IM2 at the fantastic GROVE in L.A. with my brother. Before the flick we browsed the amazing Barnes & Noble superstore that they have there and check out what I found!


How cool! I had seen early versions of this at the studios, but to see it on the stands (last copy left too!) was just crazy neat! I grew up loving comics and still buy and read comics and hell, some of my personal inspiration for God of War 1 came from my love of comic books. And to see a comic based on a story/world/character that I had a huge hand in crafting? And to see it as a REAL comic in a REAL store (vs. a one off comic that is done JUST for promotional purposes and handed out at trade shows and such?)...Well wow man. That's just amazing to me. How cool is that?!?!

#4- PHYSICAL MEDIA IS DEAD TO ME
Got the ipad. LOVE the ipad. Read comics, books, magazines on the thing all the time. I've spent way too much cash already on ipad digital media that used to fill my house as physical media. Man, it's all nice and tidy and simple to carry around on my little ipad. Totally rocks. I love it. But having all that digital media on the pad made it odd going into Barnes & Noble Saturday cause I LOVE bookstores. Always have. And mega book stores like the B&N at the Grove make me crazy happy and I could spend hours in there just browsing and getting lost. But now that I've had a week of buying and reading magazines and comics and books on the ipad, a real life book store just seems archaic to me. I know some peeps will always love their physical media (and I get it...I LOVE to smell new books and fold magazines and carry around a weathered paperback that I'm working thru)...but once you go digital with this stuff, the waste of space and death of trees and mega effort to create and store and sell and buy real life paper media just seems...stupid.

#5- SPAM- Hate all the spam the posts have gotten as of late. Turned on the spam filter which means if you want to comment you gotta enter in one of those little code words they provide you. Sorry about that. I know it's a pain. But it beats having 50 messages about buying some bullshit this or that.

Ok, tons to do! Later ya'll!

David

17 comments:

Archminion said...

has Mort from TMA sent you scans of the TM2 comic yet?

i got it a few days back

David Jaffe said...

Oh man, he has not! I need to ask him for those! Would love to see them and post them on the blog. Have not seen them in YEARS!

Archminion said...

well Mort will be sending them over soon I reckon.

I aint tellin you how much I paid for this damn thing mind. lol

Kenny said...

I'm normally a physical media kind of guy, but last month I picked up a 32GB memory card for my PSP and I haven't looked back. The fact that I can have a whole library of games at my fingertips is awesome.

By the way, did you see the Little Big Planet 2 trailer yet? Looks amazing, you should check it out if you haven't yet!

P.S I agree, IM2 wasn't that great but hey, we're only like a month away from Toy Story 3, so its all good!

Alex said...

I don't totally agree with you about not having physical media anymore. I can understand the advantages of having a completely digital version of something, but at the end of the day, something that is based only on a computer is much more susceptible to loss or corruption.

For me, I'd rather have a hard copy of everything to go along with my digital copy, simply because a hard copy can last forever. If something happens and we have no more electricity or computers, then all of those books you bought are now gone, never to be read again.

But that's just me.

I hope the game is going well man!

Rex said...

Iron Man 1 felt more heroic, think about it... on IM2 we see a sloppy Stark who eventually have a meaningful fight at the end, and he wasn't alone. THey detroyed their enemy in like what.. 5 minutes the most? I look at this movie as a bridge to 3. Like.. lets just cross this and go to the end of it.

I liked KICK ASS way more.

And about physical media.. well it makes sense nowadays specially moving to a small apartment in San Francisco. But its always good to have the original copy of things for any reason. For now Ill just balance stuff. My computer games mostly are digital media thanks to Steam, Good Old Games, Big Fish and GamersGate.

And of course the awesome games of XBOX LIVE ARCADE.

TrevDogg said...

very cool to see the God of war comic book! I may have to travel to oxford comics here in atlanta just to see if they have them in stock :-P The artwork looks fan-fucking-tastic!

Unknown said...

iPAD is cool but the blue waves of light hitting your eyes and straining them cant be good for reading books/comics.

Exophrine said...

It's okay, David.

They're called recaptchas...they're very handy, and they keep those nasty bots out. Only humans can post now. :)

VikingofValhalla said...

What kind of digital protect does the iPad have? As in, if it dies after buying all the media for it.

Unknown said...

Sorry for the off topic but could you please either disable or move that little "follow me" to the right? My browser window is small so it gets in the way of the actual blog content!

Scott said...

David... What version of the iPad did you get? Wi-Fi only or did you get one with 3G Network as well?

Mike G said...

That's cool you're enjoying the iPad for print stuff... Reminds me I still gotta give the comic store on PSP a chance, seems like it might be more trouble than its worth.

G said...

Personally, I really dislike this whole transfer to digital media. It's representative of the Human race; we're entering an age where our most valuable materials, for all intents and purposes, don't actually exist. It gives me the impression of a really cold, electronic future. Can you really beat the look of a bookcase filled with powerful, valuable texts? I understand it from a practical point of view, but I guess I have more poetic views on the subject.

Wow, that sounded pretentious! xD

Unknown said...

I was disappointed with Iron Man 2 as well. It seemed like Marvel pushed for too much of what was successful in Iron Man 1. Downey got a little annoying to me at times even, which I thought would never happen.

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