Lazy.........

Damn... been almost two weeks since a post; unforgivable. Here I am creating a blog to write more, and I'm slacking off after only a month or so.

I'm going to post some quickie thoughts on several happenings to catch up with some business.

BLIZZARD

I'd say about 15-18 inches fell throughout the day yesterday, and it was a ball. Stayed in all day (except for a middle-of-the-blizzrd McDonalds run for lunch) -- read a little, watched some Olympics, played with the kids. All in all a great day.

NIGHTWATCH



I finally caught up with the fabulous Russian fantasy, NIGHTWATCH (Russian title, NOCHNOY DOZOR), directed by Timur Bekmambetov. I watched a bootleg DVD purchased at the Chiller Show a couple of weeks ago (I know, I know... I have a very strict moral code concerning "pirated" material. It's something I'll write up at some point.), planning on just sampling the quality of the print, but after mere seconds I was hooked, pausing only once for some orange Hi-C.

The film deals with the forces of Light and Dark; warring factions that centuries ago had established a truce. These two sets of "Others" exist in our world -- one set, the Dark, are referred to as "vampires"; the other, The Light, are apparently a policing force of some kind, keeping these vampires in check. Because of some vague events concerning the coming of age of a 12 year old boy and some "curse" a woman has let loose in the world, the truce starts to break down and the war begins anew.

Narratively, the movie is an interesting mess, made more problematic by the langauge and cultural barrier. Specifically, the movie looks so beautiful that I often found myself admiring the imagery while giving short shrift to the subs. The disc may have had a dubbing option (the menus are in indecipherable Russian), but that probably would have distracted me even more.

The photo above is from a wonderful sequence where the protagonist is struggling to find a vampire's reflection while stumbling around an old (beautifully set decorated) warehouse.

It's possible that I would have a lesser opinion if NIGHT WATCH were a domestic film, but for $4 million and its Russian origins, it's a serious piece of work deserving of a world wide audience.


THE WESTERN MASS HORROR SHOW

So, I helped out on some short films. It's something I do a lot of, probably too much. But about a year ago I realized that I had access to lots of gear and resources, and I had a handful of friends who had always wanted to make some horror shorts. There was a Fangoria Blood Drive film contest coming up, so I had my buds write some scripts and gave them an opportunity to direct a short film. The result was three pretty good little flicks. None of which were chosen for the contest, but we do own them and would like them to find an audience. So, I thought I'd play around with Photoshop and design a sleeve, and play around with DVD Studio Pro and author a DVD, and just kind of put it out there; maybe up on the Glowing Screen website or Jeff's Undertaker's Lounge site. See what happens.

I also decided to include a short film another one of my filmmaking buddies had created, as well as a horror short I shot in college that has a certain shlocky charm. I'll try to find an evening in the next weekor so to author the DVD. Should be fun. The films are:

COVERED IN BLOOD by karl Konopka
RAW MATERIAL by Mike Weaver
NOW SHOWING by Jeff Allard
WAXING SOULS by Brian Jackson & Scott Kittredge
THE HIDDEN ALIEN BLOB THING by Marty Langford

They probably won't ever be at a store near you, but they'll be out there somewhere... and when they are I'll let you know about them here.

WALLACE AND GROMIT in THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT

Wonderful viewing, especially with the kids. A superlative family film made by fine artists and craftsmen working at the top of their game. A precision of execution is easily matched by the perfection of performance, set design, score and direction. I can't say enough about how much I, and my family, enjoyed this film.