Go Iceland!

Check this band out, Sigur Ros. Especially check out two videos on their site - Hoppipola and Glosoli. Both are amazing videos for simply beautiful songs. Inspiring. Wow. The videos for these songs are incredible.

Surf their whole site for more info on the band.

Icelandic rock!

Update

On Friday, a producer requested one of my scripts, Shuttlecock!. He found my listing on Inktip.com and liked the synopsis. I gave it a polish over the weekend and off it went (in the mail today).

I'm waiting to hear about my Cricket Hill script, this was the one where the development dude LOVED it so now I'm just waiting to hear if everyone else did too. He requested 2 additional scripts (A Couple Of Joes (Family Comedy) and The Flight Of Barnaby (Romantic Drama) so I sent those off as well.

I've got a couple things out to some competitions that I'm waiting to hear back on, a few will announce quarter-finalists, etc in March & April. I'm hoping to still be included in Fade In when they announce the Semi-finalists in March.

I kicked ass with my new script, Zucker, all last week. I took a break from it to give Shuttlecock! a nice polish, which ended up being more involved than I had planned, but now it's in great shape so I'm happy. Then I moved over to The Rave At Danny Carter's House which I'm finishing a polish on now, then I'll go back to Zucker.

For any of you out there looking for good competitions to send something in to, check out The BlueCat Screenplay Competition (deadline is 3/1)which is run by Gordy Hoffman (yeah, Phillip Seymour Hoffman's bro) and Scriptapalooza (deadline is 3/3). Also, Austin is accepting entries.

Eye Candy

Note - this post is inspired by Scriptweaver.

Ah, Charlize & Rachel. Does it get any better?

Music That Rocks Us

I was driving today and Purple Rain popped on the ol' radio, so, as one should when they hear such an epic, I blasted it. Amazing song. Chills. And it was back when Prince made good music, as opposed to now when he seems to be writing all his lyrics using his penis.

It got me thinking (no, not about Prince's meatstick) but to those amazing, epic songs that stick with us. Like Purple Rain. Or........

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Our House
Jackson Browne's Running On Empty.
Van Morrison - Into The Mystic
U2 - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, With Or Without You, Exit, Bad, Where The Streets Have No Name, One
James (excellent UK bad, broke up a few years back) - Sit Down, Seven, Sometimes
Warren Zevon - Lawyers Guns & Money
New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle, Your Silent Face, Temptation
Rolling Stones - Ruby Tuesday
The Monkees - Daydream Believer
The Who - Baba O'Riley
Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down
The Beatles - In My Life, Yesterday, Hey Jude
REM - Fall On Me, Cuyahoga, Superman
The Innocence Mission (from Lancaster PA) - Now In This Hush
10,000 Maniacs - Verdi Cries, My How You've Grown

And Yellow, by Coldplay. Here's the scene - It was a few years ago, my son (then around 2 years old) and his cousin were bickering as they normally do, getting out of hand. My wife & sister-in-law were chattering on about something, and then, on MTV2 comes this pretty neat video from this new band, Coldplay, called Yellow. The sound of those guitars, the haunting lyrics, and that amazing one-long-shot video along the beach floored us and we stood there (even the little ones) hypnotized by the song/video. Of course the next day I bought the CD, but anyway, it just goes to show how transending, crippling, beautiful, astounding, and just plain awesome music can be when it gets to you.

2005 - Best & Worst - UPDATED

Long overdue, here's my best & worse of 2005. There's a ton of movies missing, but hey, I've got 2 kids and I miss a lot of movies at the theater. I'm sure if I had seen some of the top contenders they'd be on here, too. I HAVE NOT seen Brokeback, Good Night/Luck, Syriana, History of Violence, and a bunch more. But, based on what I have seen.........

The Best:
1. Jarhead - This movie rocked me.
2. King Kong - Too long? Yep, but still - Wow.
3. The Constant Gardener - Powerful stuff here.
4. Crash - Wonderful.
5. Thumbsucker - Great cast, really well done.
6. Munich - It's no Empire Of the Sun, but still a great film.
7. Batman Begins - Great jumpstart, can't wait to see more.
8. Layer Cake - Daniel Craig owns this!
9. Zathura - See previous post. Terrific movie.
10. Serenity - This is what the Star Wars prequels should have been - Good story & acting, actual chemistry between the actors, etc, etc.
11. Chumscrubber - Great script & direction, and I like where the story goes.
12. Wedding Crashers - Vince Vaughn always makes me laugh. He killed me here.
13. Lord Of War - Excellent direction, eye-opening.
14. Just Friends - I laughed like every 10 seconds. Seriously.
15. 40 Year Old Virgin - Funny as hell.

Honorable Mentions - Sky High - Fun family movie. The teachers deserve their own spin-off.
Also, The Weatherman - What a gem of a movie, directed by Gore Verbinski. Cage scores, and I really liked the script on this one.
The Worst -

**A Lot Like Love - A Lot Like Shit
**Son Of the Mask - I looked up diarrhea in the dictionary and a picture of this movie was next to it. The movie would have been saved, however, if the Tripod Aliens from War Of The Worlds made a cameo and started vaporizing.
**Elizabethtown - Ugh. I love Cameron Crowe. Orlando can be really good. Kirsten Dunst is yummy. But this movie sucked balls. A nice enough concept, but it fails all over the place. Liked the name of the band in the movie though - Ruckus!
**Sith - Yeah, it had some good scenes, but the more I think on it, the better ideas & F/X in the Star Wars prequels are likely thought up by ILM and not Lucas himself. It was the best of the prequels, but that's like saying I'd rather have Cancer than AIDS.
**Kingdom Of Heaven - Kingdom Of Boredom. They took an amazing, fascinating topic and completely drained it of all passion. Orlando Boom's knight was in mourning - so was I, for my 2+ hours back.
**Broken Flowers - I wanted to LOVE this movie. I love Bill Murray, and I thought this was a cool concept. What a waste of a movie. Jesus Christ. Filled with pointless scenes, unrealistic, boring dialogue. And that ending? I thought it might at least pay off at the end. Did I need some Hollywood happy ending? No, but SOMETHING, man. I like Jeffrey Wright as the neighbor, but besides him, this was a complete waste of time. Pointless.

Overlooked, award-worthy performances - Peter Sarsgaard - Jarhead
Also Joan Allen in the Upside Of Anger (Costner was great in that, too).

Movies that were fun/good - War Of the Worlds (yeah, it ended with a fart but there was some excellent stuff before it), Mr. & Mrs. Smith - Brainless? Sure, but a good popcorn movie.

Zathura

I'm late on the bus for this, just bought the DVD for the kids, but DAMN what a terrific, SMART movie. Wow. Great on all levels, but the real stand-outs are the kids (THESE kids are PERFECT) and the script. It feels like it was written by these kids (in the way they speak to each other).

"Go get me a juice box, beeyotch." My six year old's favorite line. The movie is filled with great, real dialogue by these kids.

The F/X are good and all, and the story is neat, but the kids rock. The older sister is spot-on in her role, the middle kid certainly gets it right, and the youngest boy is also perfect (yeah, he's cute as a button and all, but not annoyingly so).

Dax Shepard is also terrific as The Astronaut, and Tim Robbins is fun as the Dad (a small, but well-written part for him). It's really cool that the movie rests on these five shoulders (no other cast) - and most of it is on the two brothers.

It's a shame when a movie like this gets practically ignored and stuff like Harry Potter & Chicken Little rule the box office. Not that they are bad, but Zathura is a real stand-out, and among my favorites of 2005.

You can't quit Bert & Ernie

I thought this poster made a better poster for Brokeback. Short post tonight. I've finished tweaking my script White Gold and I think it's ready to go out for some critique. I'm happy with it, it's fun and could be shot ultra-low budget if desired. I was going to work on a drama next, but when I came up with a newer idea (It's called ZUCKER) everything just sorta fell into place (story, characters, the outline, etc) so I had to jump on it and strike while the inspiration was there! I thought of huge chunks of dialogue and scenes while listening to Weezer's latest, Perfect Situation. Great song, it'd be perfect for the end credits.

F'n Snow!

I used to love snow. Loved it! now that I have to shovel it, I despise it. Despise it! Especially THIS MUCH! 12+ Inches!? C'mon!

On the brighter side, the development guy at the company I sent Cricket Hill off to LOVED the script. I like when people LOVE my stuff. So, he's going to send it forward and see what his peeps think about it. My fingers are violently crossed. He also wanted loglines of my other scripts so I sent him 13 of my best.

We'll see what happens. The guy was super nice, smart, and what the hell, he loved my script! Of course we know how these things can go, his other guys might not like what he sees in it or something like that. It's happened before, not with Cricket Hill but my script The Money Shot. If you scan back a month or two of postings you'll see my posts on that. Basically, the guy who read it loved it but the other guys wanted a lot of changes, which I would have done, but there was no $$ offered, and they wanted a page 1 re-write.

Anyway, hopefully this won't go down that road. At the very least, it'll be a good contact to have - They've produced a slew of projects and have some amazing ones coming up in the future that are actually going to see theater-time!

I'll keep y'all posted.

Titles

What comes first? The title or the story? For me, most times, it’s the story, I‘d say 80% of the time (or I‘ll think of a plot and the title comes seconds later). But there have been times when I came up with a cool title, then the plot came later. This happened with my scripts Under Indiana (currently writing, it’s a crime drama) as well as Headshot (horror/comedy) and The Sex Scene. With The Sex Scene, however, I realized that title was a bit lame (although it IS about a film crew attempting to shoot a sex scene) and came up with another one - White Gold. It’s just catchier.

Also, a script I wrote a while back, Food Fight, happened that way. Actually, it came together when myself and a buddy of mine noticed our local supermarket kept changing its name. We pictured an internal struggle, a "food fight" of sorts. My script’s plot is a bit different (it’s about 2 supermarkets in the same shopping center that go at it).

But the one title I’m super proud of comes from a script I wrote (It’s one of my quarter-finalists at Fade In).

Here’s the logline: “Desperate for money after his financial aid is discontinued, Kenny and his fellow college buddies decide to secretly make an adult film and sell it for a quick buck.” And my title?

The Money Shot. C’mon, it’s perfect!

How about you guys/gals out there? Ever come up with a kick-ass title that you just HAD to write?

Hoo-ray

Quickie update - No love from AAA competition, not even a consider. Nothing from Zoetrope. Still waiting on Script Magazine/Benderspink contest.

BUT! I'm a quarter-finalist for Fade In Magazine's contest. I'm pretty happy about that - I sent a script there last year and got nowhere, I sent 3 in this year (Jablasco, The Money Shot & The Rave At Danny Carter's House) and all 3 are quarter-finalists.

Now, it's still early, so I'll hold off on the parade down my street, the scripts have to get through 2 more rounds (semi's & finalist rounds). And I'm certainly not the only multiple quarter-finalist (I think 2 people had 4 scripts listed!) and I'm in with about 400 other scripts, but considering they got around 2000 scripts, I do feel pretty damn good today about it. I mean, it's a big contest and they've had a lot of success with past finalists/winners getting their scripts made, etc.

Anyway, we'll see. I should know if any of the 3 will move on in March. That would blow me away. Fingers and toes will be crossed.

Also today, a producer found me on inktip.com and requested 2 of my listed screenplays (The Money Shot (comedy) & Headshot (horror comedy)) so I'll send them off to him and see what he thinks.

Now only if the Seahawks won this week would be perfect!

Script Update

The poster's got nothing to do with my post, it's just funny.

Here's my update, a mixture of good news/bad news......

Putting the finishing touches on my new comedy, WHITE GOLD. It's done, I'm just going through it, removing typos, punching up the funny, etc.

Got word from the AAA competition, and it's a bust. No quarterfinalist for me. Waiting to hear if I'm a "consider" which bascially is like saying I was almost a quarterfinalist, so it's better than nothing, but not much better. We'll see.

Also got word from Zoetrope. Nada. They told me to pound sand. I'm not to surprised by this one though, I sent an older script that I liked, but the more I thought about it after I sent it, it needed work and I should have sent something else.

My Rave At Danny Carter's House screenplay ain't setting the world on fire, but based on some terrific notes by Scott The Reader, I'm gonna fix her up a bit and she'll be ready to go. It did place as an honorable Mention in December's Comedy Screenplay Competition, which isn't too shabby. But not a win, darnit. I'll be sure it's ready for Scriptapalooza, Austin, and Philip Seymour Hoffman's brother's screenplay contest, Bluecat.

I did have request for a script, however, thanks to a listing on WinningScripts.com. they requested Cricket Hill, so I sent that baby out this morning.

Now I'm waiting to hear from Fade In (I heard they'll announce on 2/6) and Script Magazine's last contest (Benderspink) - they said it'll be within the 1st week of February.

Over the next week I'm gonna go fiddle with The Nine Lives Of Dalt Stickle and my new epic, The Battle Of Thunder Hill. When I'm not in the mood for funny, however, I'll be working on Under Indiana, a new crime drama that is coming along nicely.

Now go write somethin' dammit.

Copycats?

Okay, now, I can't be the 1st to notice this, but somebody is copying from somebody here, and it's between Pixar/Disney and Dreamworks Animation. Listen up.

I'm not going to go into release dates or anything, just the movies:

Pixar - A Bug's Life (adventure with ants)
Dreamworks - Antz (adventure with ants)

Pixar - Monster's Inc (loveable monster guys)
Dreamworks - Shrek (loveable monster guy)

Dreamworks - Madagascar (animals get loose, etc)
Disney - The Wild (animals get loose, etc) See poster above.

Pixar - Cars
Dreamworks - I swear I read they were working on a Route 66 movie.

Over the Hedge - Dreamworks
Open Season, Barnyard, ah fuck it.

See my point though? It just seems like somebody is swiping these ideas, sure this happens all the time in Hollywood, but most of the general plots for these movies are pretty much exactly the same.