Hope you live on a hill

Because it’s been raining for 5 days now. It drizzles, then stops, then rains, then stops, then poors, then stops. 5 straight days without seeing the sun, this is a horrible way to end the summer. I hope that hurricane doesn’t fuck up the east coast too bad.

Also, if anyone is looking to buy a wedding dress, please contact me. I got it posted up on craigslist for North Jersey.

Brick

I watched Brick a few nights ago and it’s easily one of the Top 10 movies of the year I’ve seen. It’s a modern day film noir. Meaning it’s a detective story with really wild dialog. Think Max Payne and Sin City as recent homages to the genre.

The star of the film is Joseph Gordon-Lewitt who is best know as the kid on the TV show 3rd Rock From the Sun. He plays Branden, senior (I think) in high school who finds his ex girlfriend dead and tries to find out why and who killed her. That’s the basic premise of it. The tale quickly careens you into fantastic characters and situations with Branden leading the charge. He’s a complete bad ass as he digs for the truth, holding back to get more info when he needs it and beating ass when duty calls. It’s wonderfully shot, the cast is awesome (Levitt is my new favorite actor now), the editing is tight as can be and the dialog drips cool. I’m rambling like a fantatical movie critic, but I really love this movie.

BUT- if your the type of person who can’t follow a plot and has to ask people “what did he say? What’s going on?” this might not be the movie for you. The style of dialog takes some getting used to, they speak fast and use a certain type of vocabulary that is thick with code words. You can easily watch this movie a few times and still pull out stuff you never noticed before. Also, if you don’t buy into the premise, that these high school kids are operating in the type of world they are in (a young drug cartel), you won’t like it. If that sense of disbelief is there, it won’t have the same effect.

Buy it, rent it, do whatever you have to to see Brick.

West Side!

My sister and nephew are visiting from CA. Their 3 week visit started last week and it’s been an interesting week so far. Having a 2 year old in the house has made things much more lively around here. Even the dog seems extra alert.

So 2 year olds are interesting little beings. It’s like the purest form of a human being. They don’t really know anything, simple things are exciting, talking is used but rarely understandable. There is a very smart man just waiting to grow up in Danny.

He loves to swim, except he doesn’t know how to. He’ll jump face first, wiggle a bit and someone will pull him above the water so he can breath. Had to remind him a few times to close his mouth when he jumps in. You do things for so long you don’t ever remember learning the seemingly obvious stuff.

Dealing with a 2 year old also brings out the authority in you. Not just keeping him from hurting himself (jumping down stairs, the dog knocking him over, running into furniture, choking on food because he tries to put too much into his mouth), but in hostage like negotiation. Danny likes to think everything is his “that’s mine” and is very impatient. I was an impatint bastard when I was a kid, took along time to improve that, so I can relate to that one easily. It’s like if he wants something, like juice, when he should be eating you have to say he can have juice if he takes another bite of food. Take that scenario and apply it to just about anything. A complex web of negotiation, vibs and bait and switches. And don’t you dare say bedtime. That’s offensive. I totally relate to that one though. I’ve been a night owl since I was born so that must be genetic. Bedtime was a very offensive word to me when I was young.

He does a lot of funny stuff too, but I’ll save that for another post. I need to take more pictures too, I’ll upload those to flickr and let you know it’s up right here.

Worst Driver in the Tri-State Area

She (suprise!) had NY license plates on her minivan. I was going to work on Thursday, I’m making my way through Hillsdale and I come to a light where I want to make a left. She’s coming towards me and makes a sloooooow right hand turn, so she turned onto the street I’m turning on to.

She creeps around the corner and I am now behind her, following her. You know what this idiot does? The road we’re on is straight, and it has 2 streets that meet up with it. One on the right about 100 feet from he traffic light, and the next one is another 100 feet after that (a four way intersection, we have the right of way at both intersections).

We get to the first intersection and the woman STOPS. No blinker, she wasn’t turning. She stopped in the middle of the road to let the guy waiting for us to pass (he’s got the stop sign) so he could turn. He was on our right, he wanted to make a left onto our street, so he was going th opposite way. So I stop behind the genius and let out a WTF. We sit there and the guy wanting to make a turn looks dumb founded too. He figures it out and turns. The Stupid Woman continues foward. We come to the next intersection and she does it again.

No blinker, no warning, nothing, she just STOPS right fucking there to let someone who has a stop sign go. It was the dumbest, and most dangerous thing I’ve seen in a long time. This Stupid Woman has the right of way and is stopping at every fucking corner to wave people on! The guy behind me honks and I layed on my horn like a fucking crack fiend and let out a string of curses that would make a pirate do a double take. She takes the fucking hint and continues down the road as I make a right hand turn, still cursing.

I hope she gets a nose bleed that doesn’t stop.

Comments

For all 3 people that have left me comments, you might notice that it no longer works. I activated an anti-comment spam plug in that is missing some sht so that it doesn’t work the way it should (hense the error you get). At least I don’t have to delete 8 spam messages a day though. So until I get it working the way it should, just fucking email me or something. Emails make me feel special anyway. And if you don’t have my email or IM name, you suck ass anyway. No offense. Except for anyone living in the god forsaken midwest/bible belt.

Random stuff

Some random updates. Script is on page 10. Looks like my goal of 20 pages is going to be easily achieved, some work is going to be needed to the beginning to get it the way I want. Length wise I’m fine but I want to make the setup as good as possible.

I’ve seen a bunch of movies in the past few weeks. Pirates 2 wasn’t as good as the first, but was still a fun movie. Part 3 looks like it’s going to be great as well. Depp kicks ass.

Broken Flowers starring Bill Murray sucked something fierce. Horrendous pacing, a shit ending that made me completely regret watching the movie. I actually fast fowarded though parts it was so boring. And I didn’t have to worry about fast fowarding through anything important because those parts were just traveling scenes. Bill Murray visits 4 ex girlfriends, and he’s shown him traveling to each of them. It had to have been at least 15 minutes worth of “watch Bill get on an airplane and then drive down the road”. You even get to see him get lost, ask for directions, turn around and then drive for another 5 minutes. UGH. There were two good parts that totalled 2 1/2 minutes of screen time. The first was a drug discussion between Murray, his neighbor and the neighbors 6 year old daughter. The second scene was this gorgeous girl (she plays Sharon Stones teenage daughter) who got naked. Totally didn’t see it coming and it was awesome. Almost enough to recommend watching this pile. Worse than Lost in Translation.

Clerks II turned out much better than expected. Got to see some favorite characters from my past, got introduced to some great new ones and shared more than a few laughs with 100 other people in the theatre. Dirty talk like you’d expect from a Kevin Smith movie (along with some safe direction) and writing that only he can do. It won’t convert any Kevin Smith haters, but it was a great flick that told a great story. Thank god it didn’t suck.

July!

Summer, summer time! Time to kick back and unwind!

Some random updates from the top of my head. Script work continues. I’ve tightened up the beginning a bit and added about 3 pages. I’m right up to the killers introduction and in doing so I’ve realized that my original ending (everyone dies) just wouldn’t be satisfying. More than that, I think it would seem like there was no point to the whole story. My whole idea is to make something scary and realistic, avoid as many horror cliches as I can (and still keep it short). So even when I have the whole story done (I think I’ve come up some good work arounds to what I was going to have originally) I’m going to need to really fine tune it. I’ve got the locations down to about 3 places and the cast is small, although I do have a few bit parts that may go. Depends how it goes I guess.

I’m going to see Pirates 2 tomorrow I think, can’t wait to see it. A Scanner Darkley is also out but in limited release so odds are that one is going to have to wait for DVD. Clerks II hits this month too and Miami Vice….I want to see that for some reason.

Game wise, summer is it’s typical slow self. Big game for this month is Prey for PC and 360. Demo was pretty wild and the reviews I’ve seen have been positive. I started playing Burnout 4 again, still alot of fun. I’m currently 58% done according to the game so I still have a lot to do there.

Anyone who likes rock music has to check out the Wolfmother CD. It’s phenomenal. Easist way to describe it is The White Stripes and Led Zepplin. Really great, old school rock feel.

Big news this week, Jen is pregnant so that means I have another nephew or neice on the way. It’d be cool if it was a girl, nice to have one of each I think. That one isn’t due for another 8 months, so lots of exitement to come. Jen and Danny are visiting in August which is rapidly approaching. Summer months always go by so fast.

Alone

My script is officially under way. The title right now is “Alone” and so far I’ve finished the first act. I use “finish” as a loose term. I’m shooting for 20 pages, a horror story that is quick and easy, and with as few horrow cliches as possible. I’m definatly going to redo things after I finish (I actually have some place holder dialog because I wasn’t sure what to put, but just wanted to keep moving) as I want to make this as tight and good as possible. It feels good to get it out of my head and out on the page.

I came up with an idea dealing with Lucid Dreaming, but it looks like a movie that is coming out in the next month or so has done what I wanted to do. Not exactly what I have in mind, but it’s close enough to be annoying.

Side note: will the asses responsible for leaving spam comments please stop, it’s really annoying.