For a number of work and personal life reasons, I haven’t worked on a new short film of my own for over a year. I’ve been playing with a few ideas in my head and I have a couple of partial scripts in various states of incompletion. I have the advantage of no deadlines and no one waiting on me, so I can play pretty freely with ideas for as long as I want to. Without giving away too much, the main ideas are:

• YAHM - Yet Another Horror Movie. Vampire flavor. This one is my most complete script and I think it’s the best I’ve written.
• A story of a man attempting to redeem an act of violence when only the perpetrator holds himself responsible.
• A commercial for a fine product that doesn’t yet exist.
• A compendium of some of the more stupendously bad dates me or my friends have been on.
• A pure action piece
• YAHM - Part Two. The Guadalupe River Monster

Gentle readers, what do you think? What would you like me to work on first?

Once I have the first idea locked down, script written and a moderate amount of pre-production done, I will reward myself with a Canon HV30, Letus35Mini, and a few Canon FD lenses.

I brought this post over from my dusty old MySpace blog.

Here we go…

• The Shining
• Evil Dead 2
• Alien/Aliens
• Silence of the Lambs
• The Thing (1982)
• Night of the Living Dead
• Jaws
• The Devil’s Backbone
• Pan’s Labyrinth
• The Exorcist
• Night of the Hunter
• Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
• A Nightmare on Elm Street
• Phantasm
• Poltergeist
• Rear Window
• The Ring (2002)
• Serpent and the Rainbow
• The Believers
• Signs
• The Sixth Sense
• Them!

Snarkerati posted a pretty cool list of 50 best films depicting a dystopia. I’d argue with some of the ranking (good grief - they included the two worst sci-fi films of all time: Starship Troopers and Total Recall), but it definitely has some good stuff on the list.

I finally got a chance to see a couple of Judd Apatow movies that I’ve been meaning to see: The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. I enjoyed both of them very much. Something interesting was that despite being two very vulgar (though hilariously funny!) movies that my more conservative friends and family members wouldn’t like, they had really warm-hearted and very conservative values at their core.

This movie is not for everyone. In a lot of respects, it is beyond offensive. However, if you view it as a live-action cartoon, it is highly over-the-top and entertaining. This movie is for the people who enjoy Hong Kong style action and can find humor in the macabre. I laughed through just about the entire thing. There isn’t a down moment in the movie - it is non-stop action.

Additional warning: about 10 minutes into the movie, David leaned over and said “This is the most fouled up movie I’ve ever seen.”*

• Or something like that.

I’ve been meaning to post on this since prior to ACL Fest, but here at last is a brief comment or two.

3:10 to Yuma is an excellent western. It doesn’t play revisionist history with the feeling of bad men or downplay the level of violence. The characters are excellently played - great performances from Christian Bale and Russell Crowe. Peter Fonda is hard to recognize as the bounty hunter Byron McElroy but he plays the part well.

This was definitely one of the best westerns in many years. The only thing to compare it to lately is “Unforgiven”, but I liked Yuma even better.

I saw Balls of Fury last night at the Drafthouse. It was fun - I laughed through most of it, though it lagged a bit in the 3rd quarter. I wish they had done more with George Lopez - he was very funny with what he had to work with.

Sunday, I saw The Bourne Ultimatum. It is one of the most non-stop movies I’ve ever seen. There are no slow moving moments in this film until a brief moment towards the end. The action is well staged, there are great twists, turns, and surprises. My only critique would be that I could have used a little less shaky-cam in the action sequences. I think I noticed maybe two shots in the film that may have used a tripod. Everything else, including dialog was shot hand-held. I thought it was really effective in the dialog scenes, but less so in the action sequences where it was difficult at times to comprehend what was happening. Overall, I really enjoyed it.

I saw Stardust this weekend and enjoyed it very much. It is the sort of sweet natured fairy tale that The Princess Bride was, but isn’t very similar other than being in a fantasy setting.

The movie is changed quite a bit from the book, but not in any ways that I found offensive. The changes are either essential compression for movie purposes or are in with the spirit of the book (Robert DeNiro’s Captain Shakespeare is one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen him do). Stardust moves along at a nice pace. You get a good feel for the characters and there aren’t unnecessary lulls in the plotting.

I loved many of little details in the film: the goat turned into a man, Captain Shakespeare’s crew, the choir of ghostly brothers observing and commenting on the story.

Roger Ebert was very wrong in his review. The plot isn’t overly contrived and the deus ex machina that he accuses the film of is part of the nature of a fairy tale. Also, other reviewers who have pointed out violence in the film are being overly sensitive. In comparison, the Princess Bride was a more violent film.

Stardust is a well-made romantic fairy tale adventure. I recommend it for anyone who wants to enjoy a couple of hours smiling through a fun story.

My buddy Travis used my apartment this weekend to shoot a short for the San Antonio Local Film Festival (SAL).

Another home in which my neighbors wonder why zombies are roaming the neighborhood or why guys are carrying a girl wrapped in a tarp down the stairs. Oh well.

Go see this movie. Right now.

I think it’s the best Sci-Fi movie since Blade Runner. It does a great job with believable technology and balances that with realistic characterizations. Definitely see it on a big screen! I have no idea why the film distributors have been so quiet about this movie and why the release has been so small.