Trance

I remember the first time I ever saw a Danny Boyle movie. One of my friends had come over with a copy of Shallow Grave, and simply said, "We're watching this," as if the matter wasn't up for discussion. The film turned out to be a chilling, disturbing psychological thriller that felt like something Hitchcock would have done if he could have gotten away with it in his day. Since then, Boyle has gone on to make films of varying genres, such as crime, romance, horror, family films and stories of personal struggle, sometimes mashing the genres all together. Yet, he hadn't returned to doing a straight-up psychological thriller until Trance.

Trance revolves around three central characters. There's Simon (James McAvoy), an employee at an auction house, Franck (Vincent Cassel), ringleader of a group of thieves, and Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson), a hypnotist. The film opens with Simon explaining to the audience the security procedure for when somebody tries to steal from an auction house. If possible, take the most valuable pieces of art, and drop them into a time locked vault. Don't be a hero. He reiterates a mantra, "No piece of art is worth a human life."

Yet, when Franck tries to steal a painting from under Simon's nose, Simon violates his most basic rule. He tries to attack Franck, but instead takes a severe blow to the head for his efforts. Franck runs off with a case containing the painting, but later realizes that all he has is the frame. Simon is the only person who knows what happened to the painting, but because of his head injury he can't remember what he did with it. Franck then hires Elizabeth, the hypnotist, to help him remember where he put it.

It quickly becomes apparent that there's more going on to the story than initially appears, especially since Elizabeth, a professional, shows little reluctance to assisting a gang of thieves with locating a piece of stolen artwork. Even though Simon, Franck and Elizabeth are working together to figure out what Simon did with the painting, they may be trying to manipulate each other for reasons that aren't initially clear.



The story gets increasingly twisted as the film progresses, and I mean that in two different ways. It's twisted in the sense that the film is loaded with plot twists, and twisted in the sense that there are some rather disturbing moments of violence peppered throughout the film. It may not come across in the ads for the film, but consider yourself forewarned about the violence. It's not constant, but when it happens it can be rather cringe inducing. Hell, while I'm giving you a heads up about things, there's a fair amount of sex in the movie too. Just trying to spare you a few moments of awkwardness that might come up if you were planning on seeing this with your family.

But getting back to the plot twists, sure you might be able to figure out a few in advance, but there are plenty that are going to catch you off guard, even if you've got your eye out for them. They're well thought out too. No cheap shots are pulled here. I don't want to say too much and risk spoiling things for you, but I will say it merits a second viewing to get a better understanding of what you missed the first time around.

Of course, being a Danny Boyle movie, Trance is filled with slick editing and plenty of techno music. It works for the film, but I worry the music may make the film feel a bit dated later on down the road. Going back to the other Boyle film I mentioned earlier, Shallow Grave, there are moments that serve as a time capsule for what must have been the height of mid-90's house music in the UK, and somewhat distract you from the horrifyingly intense thriller you sat down to watch. I don't recall the music in Trance as being that overt, but then again, 10 years down the road it might start to stand out from the rest of the story.

Overall, Trance proved to be a genuine, unexpected surprise. I say unexpected, because as a guy who follows movies intently, I didn't really hear anything about Trance until about a month or so before its release. It was rather nice to see a trailer for a movie I was excited about, and not have to wait months for it to hit theatres. I say genuine, because it's a movie that was clearly thought out front to back and back to front. It somehow manages to be a mix of fun, suspenseful and disturbing all at the same time.

Coincidences

Last Sunday, This American Life did an episode on coincidences. Some of the stories involved truly mind-boggling coincidences, others made for great stories, even if the coincidence in the story was a minor one at best. A few weeks prior to the show, they asked listeners to contribute stories of their own coincidences, and as a result they were able to find trends in people's stories. For example, for a lot of people, their most memorable instance of a coincidence occurred when they were in their twenties.

Personally, I'm not one that reads much into coincidences. Of all the random encounters we have with people and information every day, there are bound to be connections between them, even if they aren't significant. I've had a few notable ones, such as the time when I worked at Best Buy, and had to look up a customer's Reward Zone information and realized they lived at my old house, but there was one that really stuck out in my mind the moment I heard the This American Life episode. Of course, it was something that happened when I was in my early twenties.

One of the first things I did when I started college was to audition for the fall play, which was a production of Macbeth. I landed a minor role, and as a result met another girl in the freshman class who was also in the play. Her name was Alli. We hung out a fair amount freshman year, but as school went on, we both started travelling with different circles of friends, and didn't really keep in touch with each other.

Skip ahead to my junior year, when I was studying abroad in London. The first month I arrived in the city, there was a production of Macbeth going on in the West End. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have bothered seeing in, since having already performed in the play, I had heard the dialogue enough times to be a bit sick of it. However, this particular production was starring Sean Bean and Samantha Bond, who respectively played Alec Trevelyan and Moneypenny in the film GoldenEye, one of my favorite all time movies. I couldn't pass it up. (For the record, the guy who delivered my lines in this production did a much better job at them than I did, sad as it is for me to admit.)

At intermission, the moment the lights went up, I heard somebody call out my name. It took a second or two to process what I heard as actually being my name. First of all, Allister is a Scottish name, and Sears is a British name, so while its an uncommon combination of names in the States, I imagined it wasn't as uncommon in the UK. Second, I had only been in London for a few weeks, and hadn't really met anybody outside of the program. On top of that, back then I always introduced myself as "Al," not "Allister," so it seemed unlikely that it was a friend from my program who happened to be at the same show as me.

So, for a moment, I concluded that somebody was calling out for a different Allister Sears, although I suppose two people with the name Allister Sears at the same play would have been a strange coincidence on its own. 

My friend pointed out the source of the voice. A few rows ahead of me was Alli. Now like any good coincidence story, here's where I point out how unlikely all of this was. For one thing, I didn't even know she had studied abroad, let alone in London. So somehow, we managed to run into each other, in another city, on a different continent, where we both happened to decide to see the same show, the very show we had been acting in when we first met in college, on the same night (a weekday night, mind you) and that she managed to spot me in a crowded theatre.

I might as well also point out, that we both have the same initials, A.S.

Cloud Atlas, Makeup and the Oscars

There's already much that's been written about the 2013 Oscars. Of course, there was talk about Seth MacFarlane as host, (I thought he did a good job, personally,) and there was talk about the excess of musical numbers from movies that came out years ago, (which also resulted in the exclusion of performances for two of the songs that were actually nominated,) but I want to take a moment to call attention to one of the often overlooked categories.

As the Oscars were going on, a friend pointed out that not only did Cloud Atlas not win for Best Makeup, it wasn't even nominated. I found this surprising, as the extensive makeup and prosthetics were one of the most talked about aspects of the film. In fact, of all the films to come out last year, Cloud Atlas was the only film I could think of where there was anything particular notable about the makeup at all.

If you haven't seen the film, Cloud Atlas has six interwoven storylines, each set in different eras and parts of the world. As a way of uniting the storylines, the same core cast is used in each timeline. However, since the stories are set in such varied locales such as a 19th century merchant ship, modern times, a futuristic Korea and a post apocalyptic Hawaii, the actors appearances had to be changed dramatically for each setting.

Although the makeup team's talent was quite evident with Hugh Grant's characters, as he was practically unrecognizable in all six of his roles, what make their work really stand out was the transformation of the British actor Jim Sturgess to a Korean character for the Neo Seoul scenes. The work was so convincing, that if nobody told you about the prosthetic work in advance, it would be easy to assume that Jim Sturgess's role had in fact been played by a Korean actor.

I have two theories about why Cloud Atlas was snubbed. One theory is that not enough Academy members even saw the movie to even consider it for a nomination. The other theory is that the Academy wanted to avoid the controversy about having white actors made-up to look like non-whites. It's a controversy that started to build on the internet before the movie's release, but I think it died down once people who saw the movie realized that prosthetic work didn't just involve putting whites in non-white roles. Black and Asian actors starring in the film also underwent prosthetic makeup jobs to portray characters of different races. Also, Sturgess (whose race-swapping was most prominent in the film,) didn't pander to the sort of negative stereotypes commonly associated with white actors playing other races. In other words, we're not talking about Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's. 

Unfortunately, this leads me to conclude that it didn't get nominated simply because not enough people saw it, which is a shame, because it suggests that much of the pre-awards season lobbying actually is necessary to be nominated for awards. However, for the life of me, I'm still not going to understand how the movie that did win, Les Miserables, beat out the other nominees in the category. Les Miserables was up against The Hobbit, a movie that transformed a crew of actors into goblins, dwarves and Hobbits, and Hitchcock a movie that transformed the famous faced Anthony Hopkins into the famous director. The makeup in Les Miserables, simply involved dirtying up some actors faces and cleaning up the others. It's not that they didn't do a good job at it, but there was nothing terribly stand-out about the makeup in that film at all, at least compared to other period pieces. 

Ten Best Movies of 2012 (That I saw.)

There's no getting around it. 2012 was a fantastic year for movies. There were a few highly anticipated ones that faltered, (I think Prometheus actually gets worse with each subsequent viewing,) but so many of them matched or beat my expectations of them. In fact, there were so many great movies to come out in 2012, that in addition to the usual problem of whittling a list down to the 10 best of the year, I wasn't even able to get around to see many of the films that were generating acclaim. So, when you don't see films such as Beasts of the Southern Wild, or Life of Pi on here, it's because I just haven't been able to get around to them. That being said, I'm not going to call this an absolute list of top ten films of 2012, but rather the top ten films of 2012 that i've seen.

Lets not pretend that all of the best films of a given year have to be Oscar gold. So, kicking off my list are a few films that are fun for the sake of being fun, and are bound to be heavily rewatched in the coming years. That being said, this year produced some pretty dramatic fare as well.

10. Dredd
I kept expecting this film to rally and become a sleeper hit, but I think it was hindered by the fact it was almost exclusively shown in 3D. I had to hunt to find a 2D showing. Dredd proved to be a dark and gritty, sci-fi take on Die Hard, with a bit of The Wire thrown in. It managed to toe the line between over-the-top violence and campy without going over it, and Karl Urban's take on the lead character was definitely a call back to the 70's era of cinematic anti-heroes. It's on DVD now, so no excuse not to catch it now.

9. John Carter
For the life of me, I really can't figure out why critics hated this movie, but without question, Disney botched the marketing on this movie. For one thing, shortening the title from it's original title of John Carter of Mars, left it sounding like just another generic movie title name, like Michael Clayton or Larry Crowne, instead of a classic sci-fi story. The marketing also shied away from pointing out that the source material was the inspiration for many sci-fi classics of today. Not much else to say other than that John Carter manages to take a pulp sci-fi premise, and weave a tale full of fun and adventure that makes you forget we know damn well there aren't any great civilizations on Mars.

8. Marvel's The Avengers
It's weird to think that this movie spawned out of an Easter Egg hidden after the credits of Iron Man, a movie that most people didn't even expect much out of until they saw the first trailer. Well, it turned out that Iron Man was awesome, and the cinematic world is better for the movies that followed in its wake. Avengers was more or less everything fans hoped for. Yeah, there could have been more story or character development, but what we really wanted to see was the Marvel hero's we'd come to love from 4 years worth of movies uniting to fight a common enemy in a slew of epic battles, and in that sense it certainly delivered.

7. Skyfall
I loved Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace, but Skyfall seemed to resonate with audiences even more than the other Daniel Craig James Bond movies did. Maybe audiences were more receptive to it, because it didn't have to fight the uphill battle Casino Royale did of proving it wasn't going to be the silly, borderline parody version of Bond last seen in Die Another Day. More likely, it's because Skyfall moved past the mythos-building nature of the other two movies, and instead presented a more established version of Bond. It united the more realistic and gritty feel of Casino Royale with some of the more fun and lighthearted aspects of other classic Bond movies, such as the long awaited return of Q-branch. It also helped that a stellar cast joined this outing, including Ralph Fiennes, Javier Bardem, Naomie Harris and Ben Whishaw, and at the helm was director Sam Mendes.

6. The Intouchables
Now here's another movie I expected to become a sleeper hit, but there were so many good art house movies this year, it seems The Intouchables got lost in the shuffle. It's a French film about a wealthy quadriplegic who hires a live in caretaker, a man with no actual caretaking experience who just showed up to the interview to keep his benefit checks coming, but is the only applicant to treat him like an actual person, and not a burden. There's a good mix of comedy and drama throughout the movie, and François Cluzet and Omar Sy deliver fantastic performances as the lead characters. It's a beautiful, honest and funny movie about two people working to make each others lives better.

5. Lincoln
The title is somewhat misleading, as this isn't really a biopic about Lincoln as much as it is a story about the passage of the 13th Amendment, the amendment to abolish slavery. When watching this film, you realize how we tend to only remember the Cliff's Notes version of history, and think of the North as being absolutely united against slavery. Spielberg's film shows how in reality, how the abolition of slavery was viewed by many Northerners, not as an absolute necessity, but as a political tactic to potentially bring an end to the American Civil War. While the entire cast of this movie is great, it almost goes without saying that Daniel Day Lewis delivers a phenomenal performance as the President. As usual, he does the two things he does best: make you believe that he is genuinely the character he portrays, and make you forget that you've ever seen him play another character in a different movie.

4. Cloud Atlas
Cloud Atlas is an ambitious film that took three directors to make, (technically Tom Tykwer working solo, and the Wachowski siblings working as a team,) a slew of big name actors, and last I heard, only earned back a quarter of its $100 million dollar budget. Still, it's an amazing movie, even if not an easily marketed one. I was a bit surprised that it was completely snubbed for Oscar nominations, since "everything is connected" movies tend to be ones the Academy fawns over, even if they're not always very good. (Remember Crash and Babel? Remember the last time you gave a damn about either movie? Me neither.) I suspect many people were confused by the way this film interweaves period pieces with science fiction stories. The film takes many unexpected turns over the course of its nearly 3 hour journey. Admittedly it does get a bit slow at parts, but when it gets going, its absolutely engaging. Cloud Atlas definitely warrants repeat viewing, but like almost any movie with the Wachowskis' names on it, you're missing out if you didn't catch it on the big screen.

3. Argo
Man, when you watch this movie, you really feel bad about that time when nobody took Ben Affleck seriously because he was making action movies and dating Jennifer Lopez. At the same time, it makes you remember that there's a reason this guy got an Oscar 15 years ago. Argo is an intense espionage story that almost literally will have you glued to your seat in its second act. To be fair, Affleck pulls a few cheap shots to build as much suspense as possible until the absolute last minute. On the other hand, with only 2 hours to tell the story, it really does convey how tense a situation it was for the individuals involved, who have to pull off a very improbable escape plan, with no real training on how to get out of that kind of situation. Bonus points to Affleck for giving the film the visual look of something filmed in the 70's.

2. Perks of being a Wallflower
This was a movie I actually went to see based on good word of mouth alone, having not seen anything from the trailer except for a fleeting shot of actress Emma Watson standing on the back of a truck as it drives through a tunnel. I ended up feeling more of a deeper emotional connection to this movie than any other one on this list because it really hit home for me. The story follows a kid named Charlie who starts out high school without any friends, but ends up befriending a group of seniors who take him under their wings. As the title of the film implies, these are not the cool kids, at least not in the typical high school parlance. They are the fringe society of high school, but they're also a group that Charlie fits in perfectly with.

Part of what I loved about this film was how relatable the characters were. I felt like this film captured so much of what high school in the midwest is like, for better or for worse, if you're a kid who isn't exactly in the mainstream. It's about those moments where you discover that good music exists in places other than top 40 stations. It's about unabashedly adopting pretentious behavior and reveling in it. It's about being around people who are really into Rocky Horror. (Hey, I did theatre in high school. Sue me. If they weren't singing Rocky Horror they were singing songs from Rent.) Best of all, they weren't just archetypes of characters. They were fleshed out individuals that felt less like characters in a movie, and more like genuine people that you, as a viewer, were peeking into their lives.

That being said, there's also some very dark moments to the story, as Charlie has some issues with mental illness. Actor Logan Lerman's performance as Charlie is one of the more underrated performances of the year, and I was a bit surprised his name didn't get thrown around for Oscar nominations. However, if there's an underlying point to the film, it's that the worst of high school is something that can be survived, (and the characters do go through some genuinely bad experiences,) and that no matter how far from the mainstream you are as a person, that there are always others like you out there. Quite frankly, without exaggeration, I feel like this film ought to be required viewing for anybody entering high school.

1. Les Miserables
I really went back and forth about whether or not to put Les Miserables at the top of my list, not because I wasn't sure that it was deserving, but because I had trouble deciding between this and the other top three or four films on this list. Perhaps part of what pushed this film to the top was sentimental reasons. I saw the broadway version as a kid, and was blown away. I have been anticipating a film adaptation of the musical for so long that I'm afraid to admit that I brushed off the 1998 non-musical version, starring Liam Neeson, simply because it was only based on the book, and not the musical.

Even for non-sentimental reasons, this film is deserving of the top spot. To start with, there's Tom Hooper's directing. Even though the only other film of his I'd seen was The King's Speech, he has a very distinctive visual style that felt perfect for this film. He staged the performances in such a way that I felt like the plot actually makes more sense in the film than on stage, if only because the way the film showed characters in their most intimate moments helped clarify the film's many character relationships.  The way Hooper had the actors perform their songs may have sparked some controversy. Instead of singing the songs cleanly and loud enough for the back row to hear it, they sang softly, and in many instances stumbled through the songs. It wouldn't work on broadway, but it's perfect for the film as it helps the audience truly get inside the characters heads. When Fantine sings "I Dreamed a Dream," she's not just singing a lovely ballad. She's singing a cry of hopelessness from a woman who found her life ruined in a way she never imagined it could. When Jean Valjean sings "Who am I" it's truly the inner dialogue of a man battling his conscience, deciding between escaping to an easy life or sparing a stranger from his life of hardship.

Speaking of Fantine and Valjean, Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman deliver incredible performances in their respective roles. Daniel Day Lewis may have been convincing as Lincoln, but Jackman is absolutely moving as Jean Valjean, a man who selflessly spends his life working to help others, at the expense of his own comfort and happiness. When his story reaches its end, you almost want to petition the Church for his sainthood.

On the other hand, Russel Crowe proved to be extremely disappointing as Valjean's nemesis, Javert. Had this been a non-musical version, I wouldn't have argued that he would have been perfect for the role. His singing voice isn't that bad either. (I use Pierce Brosnan's performance in Mamma Mia! as the ultimate example of good actors singing badly in a musical.) The problem is, it felt as though somebody forgot to mention to Crowe that he was in a musical version of the story. As a result, he seems to play the role as a man who finds himself in a city full of singing, revolutionary Parisians, and is doing his best to play along as if there isn't anything weird about that. Unfortunately, this means that his big solo number, "Javert's Suicide," a big emotional number where realizes how he was hellbent on destroying a virtuous man, is instead a scene where a man recites a broadway showtune while perilously walking along a bridge.*

Still, this is a phenomenal adaptation of a phenomenal stage show. I'm not sure why they waited 30 years to bring it to the big screen, but considering how it turned out, it's a damn good thing they did.

*If you think I'm going to apologize about spoiling plot points from a 30 year old musical, based on a 150 year old book, you've got another thing coming. 

How The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Trilogies could have ended.

There is one line of dialogue that, if added, would easily shave about 7 hours off of Peter Jackson's Hobbit and Lord of the Rings Trilogies respectively

GANDALF:

I suppose I could just summon some of those giant hawks to take us straight to the mountain. 

The Hobbit in High Frame Rate

I suspect a few of you out there, less nerdy and obsessed with movies than me, might have noticed that one of the showings listed for The Hobbit said something like "HFR 3D" and wondered what the hell that means. HFR stands for High Frame Rate. Normally movies are filmed at 24 frames per second, but for The Hobbit, Peter Jackson filmed it at 48 frames per second.

In theory, this is supposed to make the film look more detailed and lifelike, since 48 fps is closer to how we see things in real life. In execution it yields mixed results. If you're wondering how noticeable the HFR is, the answer is that you will notice it the very instant that the Warner Bros. logo flies in at the start of the film. It looks astonishingly clean and fluid, but at the same time you might feel like something is a bit off.

One of the main problems I felt watching scenes that involved either a lot of movement was that in HFR, it felt as though you were watching the movie on fast forward. This was really problematic at the start of the movie, where there is lots of bustling action. Even minor things, like Bilbo cleaning up his house, felt as though they were happening too fast to be at normal speed.

Also problematic was the very look of the film itself. At many times it looked as though you were watching either a BBC sci-fi show from the 80's or the cut-scene in a video game. I suppose that isn't too surprising, since video games, and things shot on video (such as soap operas, 80's era BBC sci-fi shows, and essentially anything broadcast live) are shown at a higher frame rate than things shot on film. The thing is, it's hard not to associate the look of video with the types of things generally shot on video. Even though this movie has a massive budget, at times the HFR made it look like a British made for TV movie.

When it came to CGI heavy scenes, that's where it really felt like a video game. In one particular scene, an orc has a monologue while CGI rendered fire burns in the background. I'm sure it would have looked completely convincing had I seen it in a regular 24 fps showing, but at 48 fps, I felt like I should be picking up a controller because at any moment it would be time to start mashing buttons.

I'm willing to admit that part of the problem may not be that there's anything wrong with the HFR, and it's just that viewers tend to associate things shot at high frame rates with forms of entertainment that are inferior to movies. On the other hand, there's no getting around the fact that things shot in HFR look as though they are being fast forwarded, and I think part of that may be due to the fact that HFR reduces the amount of motion blur that occurs, which may be key to tricking your eye that what you're seeing is at normal speed.

I definitely understand the interest in showing movies in HFR, since there are times when watching movies filmed normally that I've been aware of their inferior quality. For example, next time you watch a movie in the cinema, pay attention whenever the camera pans across a scene. You'll notice that in those moments, the image gets blurry as hell. All of the detail gets completely washed out. In The Hobbit, in scenes where the camera panned, it still maintained sharp levels of detail.

I think it was a daring move on behalf of Peter Jackson to not only show the movie in HFR, a controversial new format, but to show it in HFR on top of showing it in 3D, itself a controversial format. Now, many of my friends have heard me voice my complaints about most 3D movies, but with The Hobbit, I think that the HFR greatly added to the 3D effect. I never felt the sort of eye strain I usually endure when watching a 3D movie. It was actually surprisingly comfortable to watch in 3D, aside from the fact that I had to wear glasses on top of my glasses. That's good, because The Hobbit clocks in at almost 3 hours long.

There were some moments where the 3D combined with HFR actually made the movie feel genuinely life-like. In some shots I actually felt as though the actors were standing right in front of me. At other times, it felt as if I was watching some absurdly immersive stage version of The Hobbit, and that the actors were on a stage, just a few feet away. It also helped that Peter Jackson seemed to know a thing or two about how to direct a movie in 3D, and the shots he chose had a very natural feel to them, as opposed to the eyeball gouging feel of Transformers: Dark of the Moon when seen in 3D.

This new HFR format is going to take lots of getting used to, and I suspect that we're going to see more of it in the future. I'd definitely be interested to see a 2D movie shown in HFR, preferably one without lots of CGI effects. Then, I feel, it will be easier to evaluate the format on its own merits. It's a bit hard to do now, because I think it's possible that CGI artists may have some work to do to catch up to the new format.

So, if you're a die hard film buff, I'd say its worth checking out The Hobbit in HFR, just to see what the next big thing in filmmaking looks like. If you're a more conventional filmgoer, I'd recommend seing a non-HFR showing, just so you don't get distracted by the radically different look of HFR. I myself plan to re-watch The Hobbit in a 2D non-HFR showing, so that I can focus more on the actual story, and not the look of the movie.

Kickstart a better Cincy Comic-Con

For three years now, the Cincinnati Comic Expo has been Cincinnati's local comic-con. It's been good, but there seems to be a large group of people that thinks it can be much better. Yes, I know, a Cincinnati comic-con is probably never going to be as big an event as the ones in San Diego or New York, but that doesn't mean Cincinnati can't put on a big enough event for it draw crowds to the area.

So, a group of local artists, shop owners, and other business-minded nerds have decided they want to put on a local comic convention of their own, aptly named the Cincinnati Comic-Con. From what I understand, the people managing the Cincinnati Comic Expo haven't been as receptive to outside ideas as some would like, and more importantly, haven't made as much of a point of trying to bring current big names in the industry to the expo. Yes, they've brought many veteran writers and artists, and there is plenty of rising independent talent, but there's been been a notable absence of current writers, artists and other people who are working on big projects in the comic industry and other nerd-related things.

The Cincinnati Comic-Con is separate from the existing Cincinnati Comic Expo, but the goal is to make it a bigger event that gives comic fans more of a chance to meet with comic creators and other like-minded nerds.

And that's where you come in.

They've started a Kickstarter page to raise funds to put on the Cincinnati Comic-Con, which you can support by clicking here.

For those of you unfamiliar with how Kickstarter works, essentially the project creators set a financial goal, and you offer a pledge to help them meet that goal. Depending on how much you pledge, usually some kind of incentive is offered. If they meet their goal, you pay them and you get your prize. If they don't meet their goal, you pay them nothing.

For the Comic-Con project, the rewards offered include things like signed artwork and sponsorship opportunities, (something those of you with small businesses may want to consider). Even if you're not necessarily a comic-nerd type, its a worthwhile project to bring people to the Cincinnati area for a weekend.

If you're a Walking Dead fan, I do want to point out that Tony Moore, who did the art for volume 1 and many of the covers has some cool swag he's offering to backers.

Anyway, enough of my spiel. Head over to their Kickstarter page and help them out.