Where I Traveled in 2017

 

2017 was the year Ana and I had baby Ember in July so some travel leading up to, and certainly, was cut back substantially just as I bolstered our PR efforts on Screen Rant to cover more in our main verticals.

Still, despite having to pass up dozens of exciting opportunities, I managed to do attend some incredible events throughout 2017 and knock a few items off my bucket list. Here are the highlights, in order:

  • February 2017 – New York – For Hugh Jackman’s last movie as Wolverine, Fox let me host a contest and bring a fan to New York to interview Jackman for Logan. His name is Sean Harrigan and we’ve been pals ever since. You can catch his writing and hear him on the radio on Cinescape.
  • February 2017 – Atlanta – I got hear frequently for set visits since its one of the top production destinations and this one was for another Marvel Studios feature: Black Panther. Since Atlanta’s Pinewood location was full for other movies (Avengers) this one was actually being shot at Sony Studios and right next door was the cast of Stranger Things shooting season 2.
  • March 2017 – San Francisco – I finally got to visit Pixar Studios! Every year there’s at least one Pixar movie in theaters and therefore, one long-lead interview event to preview the film and chat with its amazing creative team and artists. In previous years, I’ve sent various members there for The Good Dinosaur and in 2018, sent someone for Incredibles 2, but I went for Cars 3. The day after our time in the studio, we went to Sonoma Raceway for interviews, press conferences, and racing!
  • April 2017 – Orlando – Last year I traveled to London for Star Wars Celebration Europe and my first ever Celebration event. This year, less than a year later, I got to do it again but in Orlando and participate in my first ever Galactic Nights event at Walt Disney World. This was my second time a the theme park having gone with Ana the previous February for the Zootopia junket.
  • April 2017 – Iceland – One of my top three go-to destinations that I’ve never been to before was Iceland and I got to go for EVE Fanfest 2017, but first to spend a few days in the countryside with Ryan and Angela who rented an SUV and got an amazing AirBnB near one of the hot tourist sites.
  • May 2017 – Los Angeles – Disney Parks Canada reached out for the first time ever and brought me out to Disneyland California – also a first – to participate in the grand opening of the Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout! ride. It was amazing and I got to have a conversation with Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige while there.
  • June 2017 – Atlanta – It’s become an annual event travelling to Atlanta since Marvel Studios made it their home for film productions. This year was the biggie though and we got to see the set of Avengers: Infinity War and grab some great photos along the way!
  • September 2017 – Budapest, Hungary – Working with National Geographic (NatGeo) for the first time allowed me to visit the set of Mars season 2.
  • October 2017 – New York – It’s been a long time since I went to my first NYCC staying at my business partner Ben Kendrick’s place many years ago. This time he wasn’t able to make it but we had our own giant media room and film crew in the round table VIP area. This was a wonderful learning experience for next year.
  • October 2017 – Montreal – I travel to Montreal all the time for work, and this year, 3-4 other times for Valnet, but this time I went to visit an Electronic Arts studio for the first time. Specifically, the new studio EA Motive where the story campaign for Star Wars: Battlefront II was being developed.
  • November 2017 – London – In 2016 I visited the set of Justice League during E3 2017 so had to fly to London from Los Angeles. I did that trip again, but this time with my mom, for the Justice League junket. We attended the screening and a cocktail part in the Warner Bros. lot in LA and checked out the Chinese theater before flying to London for a wonderful dinner, a preview of the Justice League setups (featuring a room for each member of the JL) and then did the press conference the next day. Wonderful food and great people, and I got to visit my mom’s home country with her! We even did the London Eye!
  • November 2017 – Hawaii – Another first for me, visiting the beautiful Hawaiian islands. I went for the Jumanji film junket and got to visit the ranch where Lost, Kong: Skull Island, Jurassic Park and many other greats were shot. And I got to interview The Rock, Jack Black, and Kevin Hart on camera!
  • November 2017 – Orlando – visited Walt Disney World just for a day to preview the Star Wars Galactic Nights events coming in December.
  • December – Orlando – I had the opportunity to visit Disney World two more times at the end of the year, first in November for a preview event of the next Galactic Nights, and then in December I brought my brother as a Christmas gift and ‘thank you’ for his work helping paint my home. We did Galactic Nights and spent three more days visiting all the main attractions at all the parks.

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April 30, 2018

2016 Movies That Deserve More Attention

2016 was a year where many box office records were set, but also a year where many franchises died or disappointed. Looking at you, Alice and Wonderland sequel, Suicide Squad, and Assassin’s creed.

Thanks to Netflix and home video options, the movies that once could make a decent run in theaters in the ’90s, have a home, but deserve more attention. Here are some I’d rather have seen in theaters over what I actually did see in theaters in 2016.

  • Snowden – Weird voice by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but strong message and exciting thriller.
  • Criminal – Goofy but badass with a great cast. Deserves sequel.
  • The Accountant – Great action and cool ideas, hurt only by overly convenient plot that has too many holes. Deserves sequel.
  • Marauders – Buddy from Entourage (Adrien Grenier) and Christopher Meloni in super B level movie, but Meloni is legendary and the main three characters get cool backstories to the point where I’d see another straight-to-vid sequel.
January 11, 2017
X-Men: Apocalypse Review

X-Men: Apocalypse Review

X-Men: Apocalypse is the most X-MEN comic book movie event yet  and it covers a lot of ground for better or worse.

As a followup to X-Men: Days of Future Past tt of course brings back all of the key First Class players and adds a ton of newcomers and does a great job in doing so, staying faithful to characters, designs, details, and locations from the comics and previous films.

The new young team, bolstered by the return of Quicksilver in a bigger part, is awesome and bolds well for the future of the series. Nightcrawler and Storm have their appropriate accents, keeping in line with Colossus 2.0 also getting his proper accent in Deadpool. Bryan Singer and the studio are finally embracing the diversity and international flavor of the mutants that they shat on in most of the earlier movies (Looking at you Banshee, Colossus, Gambit, Pyro, etc.).

The marketing for X-Men: Apocalypse was notoriously bad and does a major disservice to the franchise’s biggest project yet because it’s simply way better than that. If you’re a fan of the series you’ll enjoy it, and if you’re a longtime reader, there’s a lot more to enjoy too – a lot of EPIC things I was surprised to a see all in one movie. Not everything was spoiled in the trailers…

What X-Men has always done best is ground itself in reality with its harsh look at the awfulness of historical world events (racism, sexism, Cuban Missile Crisis, WWII Nazism, etc.) and uses that with personal connections to help rationalize the motivations of its antagonists. That’s why Magneto and Stryker are better developed and better utilized villains than anything the other rival franchises have.

And the titular villain this time around, Apocalypse, has a bit of that too – especially when he gets started. Ultimately though, he’s not as epic he should be given his stature in the source material. The concerns over Oscar Isaac being wasted were warranted. He’s just sort of the big bad guy who can do anything but not all the time… and when he converts/recruits his horsemen those key characters become blank, personality-less slates, and not for too long.

That main story, which should be grand in scale, is partly forgettable due to being overshadowed by the tangential plots which can make for their own spinoff movies, but much of it is familiar. Perhaps the rushed nature of it all and nods to the past were all intentional to ensure the series rewrites history in a way that Singer and producer/writer Simon Kinberg wanted it to for the future of the brand and for the fans. They’re clearly trying to rush through a lot to make up for several of the previous films and to again re-establish the norm for the next movie which we’ve always known would be set in the ‘90s. That’s undoubtedly the one that will shoot next summer in Montreal for a summer 2018 release and New Mutants could come before it.

For the most part, every time you’d ask why a character does or doesn’t do something, the filmmakers do a commendable job in playing it properly though there are a few things left unanswered by the end (like the alien tech powering En Sabah Nur). With so many characters, most of them have a role to play, even if some are stuck on the sidelines and are underutilized (Angel, Psylocke).

X-Men: Apocalypse definitely delivers as a theater-worthy blockbuster even if it’s seemingly mostly setup and rewriting of familiar territory. Bring on the next one!

X-Men: Apocalypse is the most X-MEN comic book movie event yet  and it covers a lot of ground for better or worse. As a followup to X-Men: Days of Future Past tt of course brings back all of the key First Class players and adds a ton of newcomers and does a great job in doing so, staying faithful to characters, designs, details, and locations from the comics and previous films. The new young team, bolstered by the return of Quicksilver in a bigger part, is awesome and bolds well for the future of the series. Nightcrawler and Storm have their appropriate accents, keeping in line with Colossus 2.0 also getting his proper accent in Deadpool. Bryan Singer and the studio are finally embracing the diversity and international flavor of the mutants that they shat on in most of the earlier movies (Looking at you Banshee, Colossus, Gambit, Pyro, etc.). The marketing for X-Men: Apocalypse was notoriously bad and does a major disservice to the franchise's biggest project yet because it’s simply way better than that. If you’re a fan of the series you’ll enjoy it, and if you’re a longtime reader, there’s a lot more to enjoy too – a lot of EPIC things I was surprised to a see all in one movie. Not everything was spoiled in the trailers... What X-Men has always done best is ground itself in reality with its harsh look at the awfulness of historical world events (racism, sexism, Cuban Missile Crisis, WWII Nazism, etc.) and uses that with personal connections to help rationalize the motivations of its antagonists. That’s why Magneto and Stryker are better developed and better utilized villains than anything the other rival franchises have. And the titular villain this time around, Apocalypse, has a bit of that too - especially when he gets started. Ultimately though, he's not as epic he should be given his stature in the source material. The concerns over Oscar Isaac being wasted were warranted. He’s just sort of the big bad guy who can do anything but not all the time… and when he converts/recruits his horsemen those key characters become blank, personality-less slates, and not for too long. That main story, which should be grand in scale, is partly forgettable due to being overshadowed by the tangential plots which can make for their own spinoff movies, but much of it is familiar. Perhaps the rushed nature of it all and nods to the past were all intentional to ensure the series rewrites history in a way that Singer and producer/writer Simon Kinberg wanted it to for the future of the brand and for the fans. They’re clearly trying to rush through a lot to make up for several of the previous films and to again re-establish the norm for the next movie which we’ve always known would be set in the ‘90s. That’s undoubtedly the one that will shoot next summer in Montreal for a summer 2018 release and New Mutants could come before it. For…

X-Men: Apocalypse Review

Final Score

A massive comic book event in live-action!

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May 10, 2016

Back in Atlanta For Another Cool Movie

Sony Pictures brought me down to Atlanta two weeks ago to spend a day on the set of Baby Driver, the upcoming action thriller from Edgar Wright. That’s all I’m allowed to say until closer to the release, and at the moment the heist picture has no release date but I’m guessing a March 2017 release.

I’m here again, writing this from the lobby of Lowes hotel on warm spring day in Atlanta for another movie I can’t talk about until early next year.

April 21, 2016

Where I Traveled in 2015

Cleaning office and closet, and going through countless documents and receipts, I had forgotten just how crazy and busy 2015 really was. From our main website being acquired, to my personal website being ripped from me, at least my career afforded me the chance to see cool places and meet cool people. Here’s where I went in 2015…

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April 21, 2016

Hi all,

Quick update! I’m still alive and working hard on screenrant.com and trying to catch up with the surge of new video game titles that just released (I’m uploading a video right now based on one!). As I went to my channel I noticed that even without updating my channel much in the last few months I crossed the 1 million views mark so cheers and thanks for watching. There’s lots of cool stuff on the way!

We Adopted A Puppy!

Last week we adopted a 5-month old puppy named Brodee. He came from a couple who also owned his very-different-looking brother, Finley, and after meeting him twice and walking him in the park, he proved to be the perfect fit for us.

Brodee’s listed as an “Aussie Shepard Mix” and the previous owners told us he’s part Border Collie, but looking at his curvy tail, there’s definitely some other breed(s) in there too.

January 14, 2015

The Book of Mormon Is As Good As They Say

For a while now, getting tickets for The Book of Mormon has been nearly impossible since it began its run on Broadway in 2011 after many years of development. They sellout quickly whenever touring in Toronto and after seeing the show live, we can understand why.

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November 15, 2014