The Surgeon General of Beverly Hills!



Best wishes to the illustrious Bruce, on this, the day of his birth. If the movie gods could get you into Ghostbusters 3, I’d sacrifice some various small mammals in thanks, a cat, maybe some rabbits, couple of children, you know whatever was on hand.

In the meantime, I’ll keep rewatching Brisco County Jr. and hoping for a Sam Axe spin-off.

INDY IV review: it doesn’t make me homicidal.



I think I’m done with long-form movie reviews. My reactions are a strange, skewed, subjective mess and unless I’m taking things apart from a hard theory critique standpoint and making the effort to support my thoughts (which sure as hell ain’t gonna happen at this hour), it’s essentially the same wank seen anywhere else online. So I’ll briefly stick to my reactions here at 3AM…

Indy IV doesn’t incite teh blood rage. Certainly a good thing! I was nearly prepared to go all Starkweather and scourge the knowledge from human existance if it turned out to be an atrocity. It wasn’t. But make no mistake, this is not your stock Indy flick. There has been some heavy chop-shop action done to structure whereby introductions and building momentum are done away with in favor of a ’such and such, skip to the end…’ approach. I’m okay with it, but it almost creates a sort of vacuum that leaves things thin or unnecessary in places and insincere in others.  Feels almost like all 3rd act which is somewhat better than none. Plenty of good stuff though and no major weak character issues for me except a few beats and one character who no doubt would have immensely benefited from a nice well-crafted first act. Go into it with the first three movies as your intro & building momentum and you’re good to go. (Plus a little AG… and also consider CEot3rdK an epilogue.) 

you people are screwing with my hermitage



So busy. This, accompanying pages and pages was the weekend before last:

Mmmm, Paul Newman. Ocean’s 13 is hiding under that Lupin III disk, excellent pairing fyi. The Doctor Who disk is season 24 & 25, which I like to have running around 4AM when I abandon the french press for Coke liquid candy. The Ashes to Ashes has now become a compulsion. Last night I watched it again while reading the script. Matthew Graham is just butter. Delicious, awesome, steal-worthy, hate-inducing butter. Why yes, Gene Hunt + angst does addle my brain, phaseolus limensis. (Angst more so in the first script than the episode itself, but my mouth waters for new episodes). Untouchables after Fear & Loathing was hysterical deluxe awesome. Nominations for this weekend are now open if you’d like to leave a comment…

Week was dedicated to pages, realizations, more pages.

Past weekend was lost to people, booze and party-like activities. I’m having trouble remembering exactly what went down, except that Bart will never construct a functional computer and Cory brought some season 2 LOST and I got to watch some proto-Locke, Swan Hatch action. Cowboy Bebop was in there. Also there’s a hole in my floor now, bastards. So much for knuckling down…

Here, we see Baby Fritz does not suffer fools:

Pushing onward though.

Finally, I get to save the Earth with deadly laser blasts instead of deadly slide shows!



Happy Futurama day, meatbags! Today, November 27th, marks the release of the first new adventure for Fry, Leela, Bender, Hermes,  the Professor, Scruffy and the lovable Dr. Zoidberg in OVER 4 years, 3 months and 17 days! That’s 224 weeks– 37,680 hours– 2,260,800 minutes– 135,648,000 seconds even! Much, much too long for something with as much heart-warming brilliance as Futurama. I can easily remember the frustration of trying to loyally watch each new broadcast episode on Sundays only to face repeated NFL overtimes and poor, lazy Fox scheduling bumps. Who’s laughing now, bastards?! Bwahaha! Well, okay, I’m sure the DVD distribution depts are probably drooling since I really expect Bender’s Big Score to do well, but let the weasels have their money, I’m just happy to have more of what one of the finest works of modern American animation. Matt Groening, Ken Keeler and David X. Cohen– you’re truly princes among men.

Speaking of the esteemed Mr. G, here he is pounding the pavement with fellow scribes. I mentioned that I might eventually blog about the strike, but I don’t have anything relevant to add that hasn’t been said elsewhere. With this week marking the first full month since pencils down I thought that today I’d pass along a few links that cover most of the recent developments. If you’re a stickler for details there’s a good look at the numbers up at the Huffington Post that breaks down all the points, percents and payments. Variety reports that talks resumed on Monday and the early hubbub sounds hopeful. Everyone’s gotta be excited that things could possibly be worked out by the Hols, so here’s to hoping.

The last thing I wanted to mention today was some common sense about antagonists… Mike Werb reiterates one of the most important rules regarding villians- make them fascinating. Seriously, please.

Dazzled and tagged



Sadly, being the consumer of culture I am, I often have a hard time fully throwing myself into a movie. This is something that’s bothered me a bit over the last year, as a lot of the bigger fair has left me less than jazzed. Today however I’m happy to say that some big flicks can still kick my brain out of gear and buzz my reactionary instinctive parts in awesome and elemental ways– indeed, the heart of why I fucking love me some movies.

The flick that’s done this is Zemeckis’ Imax BEOWULF. As if I didn’t already think Mr. Z was the man, Beowulf is best described as 18 different kinds of simultaneous awesome. Now I know some may have traumatic Olde English experiences linked directly to this particular required reading (by the third translation and a really excited college prof I’d decided I really liked it so maybe I’m skewed) but forget all that and do yourself a favor and catch this movie. I’m not going to go into much detail (for that I suggest Scott’s review at Cinematical) but the movie is just pulp-hero, epic action with some breathtaking animation. Hell, I’ll even say some fun acting and cool costumes– and I know, there aren’t really any costumes, wtf?! I’ll pass on something that I continue to hear and recommend that if you can, see the IMAX version, because it really is tailored in a way that no other Imax flick I’ve caught before has quite been able to compare to. Zemeckis has set the mark as far as I’m concerned and I hope some folks (I’m looking at you, Pixar) take note and go further.

On another note, Pooks has tagged me with a music meme from Brett of all things, and because, like everything else, I love me some music I’m obliged to respond. (That sentence totally needs more commas) Details:

So here is your assignment for today, dear readers. Find a song that inspires you to write something, whether it gives you an idea for a script or just puts you into a better frame of mind. AND/OR (don’t you love choices) peek into the lyrics and find a stanza that sums up the theme of whatever script you’re working on. It’s quite uncanny how the two circumstances go together.

If possible, post a video of the song to really get people into the mood. (Yep, I’m aware of the irony of using Internet clips during the pissing contest. I like irony as much as bitchiness.)

Then, send the assignment (by e-mail or posting to one of their blog entries) to 5 other writers to do.

Music is a necessity for me and I would say that I put a lot of thought into listening. As far as writing goes it depends on what the situation calls for as lots of songs get me pumped in many different ways. I will do ’soundtracks’, but more often I’ll mentally categorize albums, tracks or artists by character as much as anything else. Whether it’s something I actually think the character will listen to, it expresses the crux of moment between characters, or just has the feel/tone to get me into a character’s head when staring at a blank page, music lubricates my processes. (Not exclusively mind you, the brain is a complex machine dontchaknow!) With that in mind I’m going to share a few tracks and how they fit some character tucked away in the scary recesses of my mind…

Character: Mort Brown from The Mysterium Obscurum of Gallows Gulch
Artist: Okkervil River
Reasoning: Since MOGG is one of the things I’m working on right now and I recently got into these guys with the album The Stage Names and as they’re from Austin while Mort’s script is set in TX– not that there’s much overtly country-western going on with either Mort or OR. I would definitely say there’s slight brooding vibe that the character and the band have in common in my mind. Also both keep changing up on me at any given moment. Really Mort-vibing tracks: Plus Ones, John Allen Smith Sails

Character: Edison Wiley from Nickel & Dime
Artist/Track: Doves - Pounding
Reasoning: Well, I like the Doves and this song is a bit of tribute to the mental state and motivation underlying my protag in Nickel & Dime. While I want a lot of this script to be exaggeration, action and heisty goodness I think the meat of the story is Edison & Max and I can’t help but associate this energetic and comfortably repetitious cacophony with Max & Ed’s ups and downs from the opening words:

I can’t stand by
And see you destroyed
I can’t be here
And watch you burn up
Lie for the moment
And lie as a decoy
So does it matter
If I give in easy?
So why
Is it so hard to get by?

This is a track I come back to ever few weeks or so and oddly enough N&D may end up being the script I never fucking finish as I think I’m officially taking another pass at. WTF man, every time I put it down and start something else something pops into my head to improve. Stupid malfunctioning attention span.

Will add some tags in the morning.