film

Things you can do with a camera

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Also, do you recognize the name Bragi Schut? No? Well, he’s the screenwriter who wrote SEASON OF THE WITCH, the new Nic Cage movie currently getting 5% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. Unfortunately for Mr. Schut, his name is on the movie, but much of what’s up there is someone else’s… stuff.

FYI: The spec script for SEASON OF THE WITCH won the 2003 Nicholl Fellowship, which is THE big wannabe screenwriter competition. The winner gets $30K to write a new script, plus a whole slew of Hollywood meetings. The problem is that once the script gets a lot of interest, it also gets a whole lot of people who want to change it, and those people aren’t going to defer to the original writer’s expertise. He’s just the dude that wrote it, after all.

Rumor is that this is pretty much what happened to DRAGONHEART. The writer teamed up with a director to put together a story idea. The writer wrote it. Producers loved it, some being reduced to tears when reading it.

Suddenly, it becomes this “big” project, much too big to be entrusted to the people who created it in the first place. The producer passes it off to a director who Doesn’t Get It, the whole thing is miscast, the dragon is introduced with a “Heeere’s Johnny!” bit of dialog, and they tried to make a pivotal scene “funny” by having starving villagers trip over a whole herd of pigs.

It’s one of the reasons I’m glad I write novels now. The people asking me to change this or that are good with story. From what I’ve heard, the whole third act of SEASON… is stuff the producers demanded.

Development kills.

There’s one more shooting day left for the Twenty Palaces book trailer. I’ll post pictures if I can.

Also, my son has gone back to his stop-motion animations. (Yay!)

Randomness for 1/12

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1) Commissioner Gordon is a Jerk.

2) What’s it like living in Playboy Mansion? Apparently, the answer is: rigidly schduled.

3) Drill Close to Reaching 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake.

4) Hoping for a big time Hollywood deal? Hah!

5) Muslims protect Christians.

6) Don’t buy your comics from this asshole.

7) “Inland tsunami” sweeps away cars in Toowoomba, Australia. Video part one. Video part two.

Five things make a post

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1- It’s snowing. This isn’t going to be one of those big storms that hit other parts of the country, but it’s still pretty. (Added later: coming down harder now)

2- I’m a little behind where I want to be on the copy edit, but I’m well ahead of where I need to be to return it to my publisher on time. The rush is mostly about productivity (without letting quality suffer).

3- No one needs to find a backlog of Glenn Beck shows on the AZ killer’s TIVO to speak out against the rhetoric of violence in modern American cultural/political discussion. Personally, I’m sick of it and yes, at the moment this is a tactic that conservatives are using. I wish the heads of the G.O.P. would speak out against it the way McCain [tried to, badly, when Obama was accused of being an “Arab” by a woman who almost certainly meant “Muslim”] during the last presidential campaign.

4- As a not-so-side issue, I’m also sick of the way we as a culture denigrate our government. Most every candidate runs as an outsider determined to change the way things are done. Obama certainly did. I’d rather see us have a clearer view of our public servants; no, they’re not always great. They are often quite good, though, and doing their best to serve the constituents who voted for them.

5- Watched SHARPE’S RIFLES yesterday. A pretty good movie, but those Chosen Men sure did reload quickly when the camera was on other people. My wife leaves for work in an hour and my son is still sleeping. Hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze in IRON MAN 2.

Randomness for 1/02

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1) Five skiffy death sports you can host in your own home. Reader, I lol-ed.

2) “America sends its best hunks to save the Earth.”

3) Dwayne’s Photo, a little family-owned shop in Parsons, Kansas, is closing down. They were the last processor in the world who could handle Kodachrome film, which Kodak stopped manufacturing in 2009, and now their equipment is going to be sold for scrap.

4) When are we happy? When are we not happy? Video. This one is long, but very, very interesting.

5) How It’s Made: PASS-ta. Video.

6) Robots Speak Out Against Asimov’s First Law Of Robotics.

7) The Most Epic Use of Google Docs Ever (aka Google-doc-based animation). Video.

Well, this post took a while to put together.

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The book trailer shoot for my Twenty Palaces series is still ongoing. A couple weeks back, the good folks at Wyrd posted more set pix and frame grabs from the shoot. Pics behind the cut. Continue reading

Randomness for 12/25

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1) Bronte Sisters Power Dolls! Video.

2) Burglar posts a photo of himself w/ stolen loot on his victim’s Facebook page. The cops were notified, but said burglary is such a low priority they wouldn’t bother with the case. Luckily for the victim, his dad writes for the Washington Post.

3) How A Christmas Story should have played out.

4) Rudolph (You Don’t Have To Put On The Red Light) Video.

5) The True Meaning of Christmas at Everything is Terrible. Video.

6) Santa Clause is Coming To Town, recut as a horror movie trailer. Video.

7) Comics writer Bob Haney’s version of Batman Saving Christmas.

You get your Christmas video early

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Ho.

Ho.

Ho.

Randomness for 12/18

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1) Oh no, it’s the Daleks!

2) The Gawker Media security breach gives us a chance to see the 13 most common passwords.

3) Ten building converted to bookstores. Very cool photos. via @victoriastrauss

4) Wikileaks cables turned into comics.

5) Eleven weird D&D questions from The Dragon’s “Sage Advice” column.

6) Why you should never fry gnocci. Video.

7) Yogi Bear is like District 9 but way more depressing. A really interesting review of a really uninteresting movie.

Randomness for 12/15 (w/ extra content because I was offline)

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1) The Suck Report. WTH, internet?

2) Musical PVC. Love it. Video.

3) Apparently, the latest thing in NY is “Crack Pie.” Meh. Call me when someone adds bacon.

4) “Warning, overfeeding can cause some pigeons to become aggressive.” Video.

5) The Assassination of Yogi Bear by the Coward Boo Boo. Video.

6) How the London riots demonstrate the tactics of ancient warfare. NSFW because of language.

7) All the tricks and stunts this dude does are awesome, but it’s the over-the-top music that makes it. Video.

7+1) The World According to Freshman Comp Papers (a poem)

^ WordPress turns that into an emoticon if I put the number 8. That’s why these always have seven entries. UNTIL NOW

9) Man makes his Christmas light display into an interactive game for his neighbors. Video.

Hooray! Welcome back, site! I missed you! ::hugs website::

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So, my website was down for most of the day. Apparently, my excellent host site, sff.net, has been getting customer service runaround from Verizon. No matter! It is back!

I revised the hell out of a really difficult scene this morning, and only after I was done writing for the day did I realize it needed more work. Ah, well. I also took a long damn walk, returned books and DVDs to the library, and made split pea soup. And bread. And other good things.

Anyway, this has been a good and busy day, but I want to talk for a moment about last night. We watched A Town Called Panic. Here’s the trailer. (Facebook users will have to click through)

It was crazy. As the trailer shows, the plot kicks off when Indian and Cowboy realize that it’s Horse’s birthday, and they don’t have a gift. From there it completely spins out of control and becomes completely insane and hilarious. We loved it. The stop-motion technique was wonderful–not trying to be realistic at all, which was just fantastic.

Watch it! You will be glad you did (sez I).