Home » Headline, Projects 18 August 2008 13 views No Comment As you may recall (if you don’t, never fear) I attempted to write a feature film screenplay in one week (for no other reason than to show how foolhardy I am I guess), and, was reasonably successful, although, the exercise may or may not have contributed to a nearly complete physical and metal collapse I had that lasted several weeks (poor diet and nearly round the clock work every day of the week every week of the year may... Read Full Story

Home » Headline, Movies & Nostalgia 13 August 2008 13 views No Comment Today is Alfred Hitchcock’s birthday (according to IMDB anyway), so it’s worth mentioning a little-known trick that the world’s greatest director perpetrated on those nagging censors in 1960 with my favorite film, “Psycho”. Hitchcock pushed a lot of boundaries with this little low budget film (Hitchcock was known for big blockbusters such as “North by Northwest” and “The Man Who Knew Too Much” at the time... Read Full Story

Home » News 13 August 2008 15 views No Comment (via Boing-Boing) There seems to be something in the air. I mean, how long has it been since the last big absurd claim that fooled some of the top web news sites? At any rate, a lot of sites are reporting that the body of a “bigfoot” has been found by these guys in Georgia (the Georgia Bigfoot Trackers!) who are planning a press conference in Palo Alto this Friday (August 15). From what I understand, Loren Coleman at Crypomundo (whose... Read Full Story

In my seemingly never-ending search for a Mac replacement for the Final Draft screenwriting program (you can see a previous post on this subject here), I stumbled across a free program called, strangely, Celtx (which sounds like some kind of UNIX command line interpreter rather than something creative). I’d looked at this briefly, some time ago, but my thinking then was, “if it’s free, just how good can it be?” At that stage, as well, I seem to recall it was pretty primitive, the edit... Read Full Story

What the hell am I doing with my life? I think I’ve strayed off target. Digital this, HD that, CG something-else. None of this is what I used to be all about. If the events of the notorious Sid Terror — “London After Midnight” kerfuffle (there, he wanted his name connected with the famous, lost Chaney film, now he’s got it) had an upside, it’s this: in an effort to try and figure out how we were all fooled for a short period, everyone from the casual film buff, to a few... Read Full Story

This year alone, I have already mentioned, on the pages of this blog, the passing of at least five creative greats who are no longer with us. I’ve touched briefly on the impact each has had on my life, but one genius I miss practically every month that passes is the incomparable Stanley Kubrick, who would have been eighty today. I can safely say that no other filmmaker has had the level of impact on my life that Kubrick has. Like many in my age group, the first Kubrick film I can... Read Full Story

(via AICN) This is an interesting story and one that I hope is true. It broke, more or less, on the Horror Drunx website today, in a post by “Sid Terror” and tells the hugely-detailed and highly entertaining tale of his stumbling upon a print of this long-lost Tod Browning-Lon Chaney classic in a Hollywood vault back in the late 80’s, fully intact and in good condition. What happens after this and why isn’t this restored film sitting on my DVD shelf right now? Well, I won’t spoil the rest... Read Full Story

(via AICN) The “Watchmen” trailer that accompanies this weekend’s premiere of “Dark Knight” is now online … sort of. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of official page, but here’s a link to the 720p HD version. And it’s a pretty cool trailer, seemingly in keeping with the spirit and feel of the original paper version, but it did lose me at “From the visionary director of 300″. Hey, I’ve got nothing against Zack Snyder, and he surprised me with the very-watchable “Dawn of the Dead” remake... Read Full Story

It’s still agravating. There’s so much about Apple products that work, it’s just those few things that don’t work that ruin everything. Take for example last week’s MobileMe debacle paired with the worldwide rollout of iPhone 2.0. Who in their right mind would plan so many things to all happen on one day? I’m not surprised that there were problems - in fact, it seems that nothing went right. I took it all in stride, though. I wasn’t going to let it bother me. MobileMe (relying on “push... Read Full Story

Well, I finished a screenplay in one week, I’m just not sure it’s entirely the screenplay I wanted to write. Don’t get me wrong, it’s mostly there, but something’s missing. I stayed up late last night, plowing through the massive revisions “Shivering Kings” required, then took some time away from it this morning, then started to read it through again, plugged in a few more minor tweaks, then read it through in detail, patched some holes, and found a few more. Started to read it through... Read Full Story