Coloring contest entries from the Homefront and/or Denver!

Two more entries just rolled in, and I was super pleased to see that they’re from my brother Dan Gibbons and Lake Forest, IL hometown hero Will Dugan, who goes to college in Denver with my broseph.

Here’s Will’s wonderful entry…

Sidenote: If you ever meet Will, make sure to ask him about any number of stories he has involving strippers. The one he’d told me from Vegas is particularly good…maybe not entirely true—who knows?—but a good story is a good story, dammit!

Here’s my broheim Dan’s hilarious entry (which I should mention, for the record, won’t be up for winning as it’s more of a photoshop job than a coloring)…

I recently got Dan and his fabulous girlfriend Zorana hooked on BSG via what we’re calling “Jim-Flix,” which is much like Netflix but features me doing the DVD sending. Dan sends me text messages and IMs here and there when stuff pops up on BSG that is crazy and/or mysterious, my favorite one so far referred to Starbuck and went something like, “Crazy and angry blonde pilot chick…are you hot or aren’t you?! I can’t tell?!” Good chuckles all around…but for the record, despite Dan’s questioning, Starbuck is officially extremely hot according to Loudest Monkey mandate.

Ok, asides aside, let’s keep those coloring contest entries rolling in!

Contest Entries Galore!

And the coloring train keeps on rolling down the tracks!

Two new entries came in, both from the good people over at the WUMB, this first one’s from WUMBer Tomer Soiker a.k.a. Spidey_82, the first (ever!) international entry in the Loudest Monkey Semi-Annual Coloring Contest (all the way from Israel!)…

I love that Scalped cover!

And, from Clay Stooshnoff, better known to WUMBers as (._Y_.), another rad entry…

Keep’em comin’, folks!

Also, the first entry for the War Heroes Cover Competition is in…and it’s pretty freakin’ awesome! Head here to check it out!

Three, OH! It’s the magic number!

The WUMB’s Thundermatts is the man behind the third entry in the SEMI-ANNUAL LOUDEST MONKEY COLORING CONTEST!
Another fantastic entry, thanks T-Matts!

Is it wrong that after seeing all these rad shirts on my monkey body that I realize my real life warddrobe is totally lame? Damn, I want some of these shirts!

Second entry in…and hilarious!

Courtesy of the WUMB’s Dr. Nightmare, this one gave me a literal LOL i.e. I chuckled..HARD! Well done, sir!

Click here for Firefox or IE

First entry’s in, folks…

And it’s fantastic!

KrpyKrwly from the WUMB got his in first and it is…AWESOME!

Click here for it on Firefox and IE

If I can continue to hope for and receive entries like this…well, I am in for a treat! Thanks for kicking things off, Krpy!

It’s time for…THE FIRST SEMI-ANNUAL LOUDEST MONKEY COLORING CONTEST!

Alright folks, get your crayons out!

Partially in honor of our awesome War Heroes cover contest and partially ’cause I just love coloring, I’m officially announcing the first ever—and semi-annual—Loudest Monkey coloring contest!

My good buddy Seaby Bess worked up my rad logo and the I love it in classic black and white, but I’d love to see some color on this baby!

Here’s the skinny…
• Take the above Loudest Monkey image (or click HERE or HERE (to DL the image if on Firefox or IE) for it) and color it in any way that strikes you as fun and original (I’m partial to crayon, but any form of coloring is not only more than fine, it’s encouraged! Go nuts on photoshop or MS Paint…whatever!). Clicking the picture to enlarge the image and then printing it should work pretty well. It’s a pretty decent file size, so it should work out alright in electronic formats too!

•Send your image to TheLoudestMonkey[AT]gmail[DOT]com. All entries must be electronic, preferred as a JPEG no more the 250KB (get your crayon versions and painted versions scanned folks, or just take photos!)

• I’ll run each and every entry on the blog (barring it’s covered in profanity), so check back to see the entires!

• All entries must be received by June 10, and make sure to give me your mailing address in the email with your entry, because….

After the entry cutoff date, I’ll pick out a few of my favorites and send out some prizes to the lucky winners!

So, keep checking back in to see some rad coloring, and I hope to be able to decorate my desk area with numerous awesome entries just as I did to cover up the ugly pink walls of my room back in college!

This…this is one of those walls!

When iron boys become IRON MEN!

Hey folks, just wanted to leave you with one last blog post from the pre-”Iron Man” Jim Gibbons, because in a matter of minutes I leave Wizard HQ to head into the city for an early press screening of the ol’ Shellhead’s flick! I can only assume it will be a life changing and awesome experience (as I’m an optimist—and know that trailers as kickass as “iron man’s” can only mean, “Yo, get psyched! This sh– is for real!”), so savor the innocence of the post, as it’s my last I’ll write from a world where I haven’t seen Iron Man shooting repulsor rays on the big screen.

Check back later tonight for my review of the film on Wizard Universe, or just head back here later for a link to the review!

“Son of Rambow,” and the telling of my trek into New York for its screening in New York

A few weeks back, I got the chance to head down into Nueva York to see a private screening of a little British film called “Son of Rambow.” While I loved the movie and will elaborate a bit more on why I did later, I figure a review or synopsis of the film is only going to tell you something that at least nine other Web sites could tell you. So, because I’m still new enough in this game to have the stars in my eyes after getting to see a “private screening,” I thought an account of my professional movie-going experience might be a little more interesting (other journalists and media folks, feel free to turn and leave the blog now or scroll on to another post—you’ve heard this song or danced this dance before).

“Son of Rambow” is a great film (don’t take my word for it, take the Sundance’s) about two young boys who become unlikely friends when they try to make their own action movie. One boy is from a religious group that forbids TV, and when he tries to help out a bully—who’s shooting footage for a young film makers competition and is being raised by his jerk brother since his parents have all but left the two alone—he watched a bootleg copy of First Blood as his first taste of the movies and becomes obsessed. The bully with the drive to make the film and the camera teams up with the goofy fount of imagination released from this timid kid after he sees Stallone in action and the two form a friendship and go about creating their film. Throw in a crazy French foreign exchange student, he production problems that hit every film managed by 11 year olds and the inevitable humor that comes along with it and you’ve got the supremely enjoyable “Son of Rambow.”

It’s got the laughs, tender moments and serious aspects to make it an extremely diverse film—I partially loved the film because it could access all those emotions—but in the end its a tale about childhood friendship and limitless imagination and a love for movies that we can all draw back to our youth. It was a really fantastic film, and as I first described it afterwards, “If you have a heart, you can’t dislike this film.”

Now, as to how my attendance at this screening went down, here’s how it went:

Entertainment Editor Rickey Purdin got an e-mail asking if he wanted to send anyone to the screening. He asked, I said sure and so I was set for a trip down town.

The day of the screening, I left the office a bit early with staff writer Kevin Mahadeo—who was set to see a screening of Jackie Chan and Jet Li’s “Forbidden Kingdom”—and we headed into urban jungle.

After traffic and a search for parking, we arrived at the Dolby Building on 6th Ave.

We signed in, Kevin headed to a large screening room on the first floor and I head up to the twenty eighth floor where my smaller screening room was located (smaller movie, smaller screen).

Now here’s where it gets pretty cool….

So, i checked in again at the screening and pick up a press packet all about the film. The window in this office looks out on the city, twenty eight stories up and I realized this is the highest altitude I’ve watched a movie from short of an airplane and the occasional trip to Denver (which, sea level-wise is pretty high, though I wasn’t in a twenty eight story building).

After heading the the bathroom—for which I had to use a elementary school-style “bathroom pass” key, and yes, it was a rather bulky reel of film replica painted blue for the men’s room (pink for the ladies!)—I walked through two large doors into a small picture house that looked much like a nice home theater…only nicer…and twenty eight stories high.

I cozied up in one of the cushy armchair seats in the front row and sat amongst the other press scattered throughout the 20 seat room waiting for the film to start.

The film rolled, I enjoyed, I took an elevator down twenty eight floors and went home with a smile on my face after seeing such a pleasant movie.

That’s about it. It’s not the most super glamorous thing in the world but it’s still one of the fun little perks of the fourth estate. Hope that little window into my job was entertaining, and really do make an effort to see “Son of Rambow!” I’m a sucker for little indie films that leave you feeling good, but even if that isn’t your bag, everyone can relate to those childhood years of limitless imagination, friends without questions and the awe that all movies inspired then before we grew up, sat back and decided we’re all critics.

Let the Brawl begin!

It’s gonna be a heckuva week.

Wizard World LA isn’t so much on the horizon anymore, as it is barreling down on all of us at Wizard HQ. So, preparations are being wrapped up, schedules finalized and—in my case—laundry’s being done so I have some clean undies to wear in the City of Angels.

My Pops is coming in for a quick visit tomorrow night, so laundry must be done tonight. And while more blogging could be done, I just got my copy of Super Smash Brothers Brawl! So between rinse cycles and the tumble drys, I plan on getting some practice in so I can lay some mad Nintendo smack down on some WUMBers come next week when I have some free time to spend glued in front of my television wailing on suckas with my master sword!

Stay tuned for plenty of blog posts from LA by week’s end, but for now, let the brawl begin!