Vacation

Tomorrow I'm off to Australia via Tahiti via LA. 1 day in LA, I think 4 days in Tahiti and then to Aussie.

Also, I placed 17th out of 1447 in a $10 tourney. That means in the past 48 hours I've gone from 40 dollars in my account to 183. Not a bad run. Too bad vaca will cool me down.

Well, ta for now. Back in 3 weeks. As Mike Sexton always says, "May your cards be live and your pots monsters"

Peace

I can't believe I'm watching this, but...

"Cool as Ice" is a movie that needs to be seen by everyone. Right now. Mainly so I don't feel like the only person on Earth who's seen it. Lemme break it down for you.

This is the snippet that my DVR says: "Cool as Ice - Tepid biker-meets-girl tale starring rapper Vanilla Ice". Dude, for real. Made in 1991 and directed by a guy who was a Playboy photographer, here's the plot so far: Vanilla Ice and his motorcycle gang friends (3 overly stereotyped Black teenagers, to the point that I find it offensive) drive around and one of their bikes breaks down in this small town. Where Ice meets this girl, Kathy. He then proceeds to wow everyone, including her 10 year old younger brother, with his ability to rap, huge colorful parachute pants and yellow motorcycle. Currently on the screen is a montage of Ice and Kathy "dancing"/"playing"/"flirting" in an unbuilt housing construction site.

Seriously, this movie needs to be seen by everyone. There's also some sub plot going on where some gangsters want to kill or extort Kathy's dad. But they just kissed in a great 360 degree rotation shot. So that's not really important. Except I'm sure in the near future the subplot will come back and effect the plot in some fashion. But Kathy's kind of hot, Ice lost his shirt, and all I can wait for is another outfit for him to wear. I really want them to have sex just so he has to put another pair of pants on.

Just look at the poster, you'll see :



Please see this movie so you can talk about it with me. Or make a drinking game out of it with me. Or help me find it on DVD. Or help me write letters to make this a Criterion. Or to make me feel less like a loser.

"Submit" became clickable

A couple things.

First, my facebook account has been locked or suspended, or whatever they do to facebook accounts. I'm not really sure why. I sent them a complaint a few days ago asking why my profile picture keeps getting smaller and smaller (anyone else notice this?) and I received this e-mail today:

Hi,

I would be happy to look into this matter further, however, Your account has been suspended because the information you provided indicated that you may be ineligible to use the site. Please reply to this email with the following information, and we will reevaluate your status:

-First Name
-Last Name
-Your Correct Birth date (month/day/year)

Once I have received this information, I will gladly reactivate your account for you and assist you with your original inquiry. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Thanks for your understanding,

Zoe
User Operations Analyst
Facebook

I'm not really sure what this is about. Maybe someone found my Conan pictures offensive? Maybe I've lost at Scrabble so many times I'm suspended? Who knows. Either way, all is not lost. I have a friend on the inside who will look into this for me. It pays to have friends in high places. Thanks Skip.

In real news, I submitted my proposal for a government grant tonight. I won't get in to many of the details, but suffice to say I've been spending the past few weeks working on it. Tonight the word "submit", which has been greyed out on the very old PC grant input system, finally became bold. It took me a few minutes to actually click on it. I hadn't realized it, but this has been why I haven't been able to sleep recently. At least, I hope it is so I can finally sleep again before my vacation. This is just one of those things that, if it happens, my life will be so completely different. And if it doesn't, well, then you move on to the next hand.

Because in the end, it's like the old sports adage, "It doesn't matter if you win or lose, it matters how you play the game."

I'll leave you with this:

I Don't Like the NBA but I like this

La Papillion

If you know me at all, or if you just read the prior post, you know I'm famous for always watching terrible, underthought, lacking movies.  I'm here to report to you that I actually do have some taste, and I want to talk about one of the more fantastic films I have ever seen, "Le Scaphandre et la Papillion" or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.  The film tells the true life story about Jean-Do, a journalist who suffers a stroke and develops a rare disorder that destroys his ability to move anything except his eyes.  The story told here is how he goes on his life and more incredibly how he dictates a novel.  

The film is very stylistically French, and it works so well for this story.  Most of the film is told through his point of view, including his blinks, his tears, any blurred vision.  We don't actually see Jean for a good 15 minutes into the film.  I don't need to get in to how the technique brings you in, that's fairly obvious.  I want to talk about how moving and beautiful it was.  I'm not an emotional person, but that's the only word I can think to describe what this film is.  Emotion played out on film.  There's fear, anger, frustration, love, happiness, success and by golly, you go up and down with every character in this damn film.  

I'm rarely actually affected by a film.  So I've thought back to the past few times a film has had a real affect on me and I've found a common thread.  French films have a way of getting under my skin, as thick as it is.  Papillion has nestled an immediate place inside of me, and not too long ago Jacque Tati's "Playtime" also became one of my favorite movies instantly.  Then of course there's "Jules et Jim", "Rules of the Game" and I realized a few months ago, when I watched it again on the big screen with only myself, a friend and a teacher, Eternal Sunshine has a special place inside me as well.  Now, there are a lot of French films I detest (Science of Sleep, this one about three people I saw with Brandon once, some others), but for some reason, sometimes, they get to me.  

Don't let me fool you.  I'm still the old, bitter, jaded man who will watch I'll Always Know What You Did Last Summer (yeah it's real, apparently).  But if you want to try and evoke emotion out of me, do it in French.  

Some movies and some help

So I've been trying to figure out what to start writing, if anything.  And I'm looking for inspiration in...well, the usual places.  Here are a couple movies I've seen recently for the first time:

"Big Nothing" starring Simon Pegg and David Schwimmer.  This was a very odd movie.  It's basically about Pegg convincing Schwimmer to go along with him on a scheme to blackmail a priest for a boatload of money.  Then a cute blond girl gets in on the deal.  Then everything starts going wrong.  They go to the priest's house and Pegg is held up at gun point, Schwimmer messed something up and gets to the house and sees the priest on the ground and with no signs of Pegg, drags him and dumps his body in a septic tank.  Then it turns out he wasn't really dead, then they find more dirty secrets, then a cop shows up, then the girl shows up, etc etc etc.  It's basically, what I like to call a snowball movie.  There's no real plot per se, it just keeps escalating and moving along.  It's all cause and effect.  Much like movies I have made.  In fact, this was so reminiscent of things I have done in the past, I even started to notice lines and jokes that I've used in scripts.  I'm not sure if that says good things for me or bad things for this movie, or both.  But it's pretty much the kind of movie you would expect a recent college graduate to make...if they could get Simon Pegg and David Schwimmer.  It's actually an interesting role for Pegg, who's just a sleeze ball douchebag, and good at it.  Either way, it's the perfect "if it's ok TV on a Saturday one afternoon I'll keep it on while I do something else" movie.  

"Countdown" starring Tank Girl and the London brother that wasn't in Mallrats.  Also, it was just on.  It's about a 30 something white male, London, who threatens to blow up a large chunk of some city and Tank Girl, Lori something, is the edgy female cop who's going to take him down.  I've started to really pick up on this one aspect of movies - whether they sound like movies or whether they sound like people.  This sounded like a movie.  It's something I was taught, subconsciously, but pick up on.  Like a guy who's supposed to be a crazed, genius uni-bomber asking a cop "so what do you think love is", is just, well, a little...dumb.  Don't see this movie, it's not even witty.  Nor does it have Simon Pegg.  

"Lucky Number Slevin" starring Josh Hartnett in a bathrobe, Bruce Willis is a miscast role, Ben Freaking Kingsley playing a rabbi and Morgan Freeman being evil.  Nothing bad right?  Eh...kind of.  It's a pretty standard gangster type movie.  Josh Hartnett gets mistaken for his friend and then has to kill someone and owes Kingsley a lot of money.  Mobsters, guns, Lucy Liu for some reason, and eh I guess quirky clever dialogue.  It's a lot of that for about 75 minutes.  Then there's about 15 minutes of action.  Then there's about 30 minutes of explaining this whole big twist.  Basically, here's what probably happened:  the writer said, I have this cool idea for a story but I want to seem really smart, so I'll just make everything in the entire movie seem like it was building up to this one twist.  That's all it is.  You can watch the last 25-30 minutes and get the same experience as watching the whole thing.  

See, it's all about where you want to start your movie.  Do you want to write it for a character?  For a story?  Or for one gimmick?  Big Nothing seems like there was no goal in mind, like it was written on the fly, again, like I wrote.  Slevin seems to be written just to seem smarter than it actually is.  It reminded me some of Smokin Aces, in that there's no real reason for the plot to unfold until the last 10-15 minute "explanation" section of the movie.  I'm not sure when that became part of the 3 act structure, but it should be removed fast.  So I've looked over my list again and I'm still not sure which one I want to start.  After relooking, I have one core thing I want to get at in each one...I think.  Instead of picking numbers at random, which served its purpose of making me rethink all my ideas, I'll give a brief theme for each and then ask you, the reader, to see which one intrigues you the most.

1.  Drama, character based, dark.

2.  Horror, creepy.

3.  Drug movie, NOT Requiem.  

4.  Romantic comedy, my way.

5.  Revenge movie.

6.  Drama, character based, no plot.  

7.  Poker movie, road movie.

*8.  Crime, thriller.

Ok, now, give me something to do.

No Pills

So this is the, oh I dunno, 4th or so night in a row where I can't seem to fall asleep at a reasonable hour.  Normally it's ok, watching a movie till 4 or so, going on the internet till 5 or so and then waking up around 2 or so.  But I gotta tell ya, it's not all it's cracked up to be.  Especially coming off of a semester where I was up, out and productive by 9am.  I was a regular Dunkin Doughnuts coffee, bagel sometimes muffin guy, 2 eggs on a roll, tea and I'm good for the day guy and it wasn't so bad.  If it was possible for me to not sleep...ever, I'd just go with that.  

But this isn't the fun kind of I'm staying up all night and having fun, or I can't stop writing or I can't stop playing video games fun non sleep.  I want to sleep, I just can't.  I've been out partying until 8am before, but at least I was doing something.  Now I have no where to go out to.  I am making Danny go out somewhere with me tomorrow, probably just to a movie, but I gotta get out of houses.  I want to sleep so I can do stuff tomorrow and I won't take pills, mainly because Wren told me to try not doing it.  She also recommended tea which I have yet to purchase.  Then again, she also suggested yoga, something I don't think I'll do.  Maybe I will, seemed to work for her.  

Or I can try something else.  Someone reply with a number 1 through 7.  I have 7 different screenplay ideas I want to write, but don't know which one I want to write first.  Someone decide randomly for me.  That would make life easier, possibly.  Or someone can edit my movie for me.  That'd be nice too.  Either way.  

I'm gonna open up the edit file and see what I can do.  Or maybe I'll lay down next to my fan again.  We'll see what happens.