12Jul02 (Monthenor): Here's your comic. Reign of Fire good, Halloween: Resurrection BAD! Me so tired...fatigue gives me -4 on my save vs. poor grammar.
Imagine yourself as a block of wood. Now imagine that, somehow, you have been given the powers of speech... well, just barely anyway. Then imagine you have the *snicker* privilege of having a scene with the infamous Busta Rhymes. Now imagine the utter horror of everyone in the theater unfortunate enough to witness the most wooden acting since Pinocchio.
In one particular scene... which I like to call The Origins of Pain... the director decided to employ a little-known and seldom-used technique known as the "dialogue double". Since some scenes require intense interpersonal interaction (like "talking", "listening", and "responding"), it can really be strenuous and even dangerous for the actor. Hundreds of tiny muscles in the face have to jump through flaming hoops to pull off complex sequences like Arching the Eyebrow, The Lip Curl, Furrowed Brow, and the most dangerous sequence of all... the Pursed Lips. To alleviate the actor's stress... and keep the insurance vultures at bay... a double is used.
Now, no one in their right mind would film a double's face performing these complex moves... that's just silly! Then you would know it's not the same actor. So they use a mannequin, or a blow-up doll, or a cardboard cut-out with some hair slapped on it. To what end? To simulate a conversation, of course! This way all the tricky details of the axis of action and dialouge cause-effect can be maintained, without any actual interaction of the characters.
Just continuously (not continually, which is the method in which this god-forsaken piece of celluloid crap sucked) film one person covering their parts of the conversation, then switch to the other person doing all their lines. The dialogue dummy is still in the shot—which becomes much easier since you don't have to move the camera all the time, or worse yet, use two cameras—so it looks like the actor is talking to someone.
Unfortunately, you get the impression that someone is a mannequin, or a blow-up doll, or a cardboard cutout... well, you get the idea.
Tune in next time for another episode of When Hollywood Attacks, where Morgion will disclose more secrets of Halloween: Resurrection, including the back-alley brawl between Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver over the rights to use "Resurrection" as a movie subtitle. And who's name should be spoken with a Norse accent.
13Jul02 (Monthenor): I'm a little more coherent now, which is good. I should really have known better...my butt was dragging so low last night that I had a can of Jolt with dinner. I hadn't had caffeine in weeks, but I needed to stay awake for SciFi Prime. I forgot how bad Jolt tasted.
So anyway, I stayed awake for Prime, and then I stayed awake a LONG TIME AFTERWARDS. I tried to go to bed, but I kept tossing. So I actually started doing situps in bed to tire me out, but after about seven my belly said "What the hell? THIS isn't bacon!" and convinced my back to start hurting with it. So then I'm tossing and turning in pain. My solution was to get up, re-dress, and go to the grocery store for eggs, milk, and butter -- mmmm, brekkist.
I'm feeling much better. Well enough to tell you how much pain Halloween Resurrection is, and how good the rest of it really was. Take a look.
"This isn't bacon"... no kidding kids, this is how it's like everyday at GerbilMechs Central.
So that's where the eggs came from. I was concerned. I was fairly certain that you don't get more eggs if you put a bunch together in the fridge. Silly of nature to not allow that... it's almost as silly as a super-race of mythical fire-breathing creatures eating ash and having only one male in their entire species. That still doesn't explain how they went from one to a million. Damn dragons, stop defying conventional biology.