I just storyboarded the very final scene of The DSR.
It's actually gotten me a little emotional.
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
End game
Monday, 30 March 2009
Unexpected variations on a Bond theme
You know what? I actually like this:
I know I shouldn't. I know it's bad for me. I know the conjoined warblings of Jack White and Aloseya Keys JUST DON'T FIT. But hells teeth, I just like it.
And I refuse to deny it anymore. Even to myself.
QUOTE OF THE DAY - Thornton Reed
"Cool it Sanchez or you'll get a knuckle supper! Look Dagless you're an excellent doctor, but you're also a livewire maverick, who when he's not bucking the system, is biting the hand that feeds, which in your case, is this hand. Now I'm not about to tell the immediate family of the deceased that we're going to have to burn what remains of his body in order to close the portals to another dimension. I just won't do it. This hospital's got a reputation, which I intend to keep. I've yet to see any demons on the ward, and I'm particularly observant. So go back to your lab and make a pill that can cure madness, or I'll kick your arse so hard you'll be able to build a pool in the footprint. Understood?"
-- Thornton Reed aka Dean Learner (Garth Marenghi's Darkplace - 1x01 'Once Upon a Beginning)
Leia Mais…
MAYBE WATCH THIS FILM! - The Fountain
There are some things in this world I just don't get.
The appeal of Russell Brand is one. Why people seem to like tomatoes is another. I'd also put 'art' on that list, which is a pretty broad claim. I don't get art. Well, to put it more succinctly, I'm perhaps not intelligent enough to get it. I was tempted to say pretentious, but that's unfair. Not everyone who appreciates Matisse or Turner wears a fashionable scarf, drinks pinot grigio and have a regular box at Wimbledon. No, I just don't think I have the smarts up top to actively want to trundle round the Tate rather than visit an arcade and play Time Crisis.
Which is probably one of the reasons why I didn't really 'get' The Fountain.
It's really quite a movie, in fairness. Beautiful doesn't come close to describing it. Darren Aronofsky has always been a talented guy and here he gives us his Solaris - a thoughtful meditation on life and death wrapped around a pretty epic timeframe and serious science-fiction leanings. I say this because one of the three threads that make up the narrative involve a bald Hugh Jackman travelling through space in a bubble with a massive tree. Either Aronofsky is a genius, or he was on some heavy-duty crystal meth when he was writing this. I'm sure most would say the former.
Point is, I found it much more a piece of 'art' than a movie itself, and this is where me and the interest level part company.
I was genuinely engaged by the performances. You can't not like Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz is never anything less than radiant (I once met a girl who was the spit of her, but that's a story for another day...). The scenes involving 15th century conquistadors wrapped up in Mayan mythology are also truly thrilling and mystical, to the point I was disappointed when we cut to the worryingly slow present day thread or Jackman and his Future Tree. There's a lot to recommend here - this is genuinely film-making. It's ideas. It's beauty. It's acting. It's something that should stand the test of time.
But it's not for everyone. It's not really for me, by and large. I just don't have the bus fayre. I can't be doing with 'art'. I never have, I doubt I ever will. Therefore, while leaving me deeply respectful of all involved, The Fountain also left me cold. I suggest you check it out and see what it does to you.
Leia Mais…
A Very Bad Idea
Business and pleasure do not mix.
I wonder who first came up with that expression. Maybe 'Gordon Bennett', the poor chap who spawned years of people shouting his name in shock at an occurrence, probably with lots of exclamation marks. Or the chap who once stood 'by George' and who's surprise at whatever was there triggered equal decades of random squeals of disbelief. Fuck knows. Whoever it was, anyway, they were bloody right.
I've recently suffered at the hand of this fickle beast, the work-based romance.
Suffered, as in the fact you could right now trigger a nuclear holocaust with Russia before leaving a freshly stoked turd on the doorstep of the Kremlin after you've just blown the shit out of St. Petersburg, and relations would be BETTER than they are right now between me and the woman I was involved with at work. Yep, it's that bad. So bad she has erased me from existence. Literally. Eye contact is never made, she talks to everyone but me, blanks me in the corridor when I walk by (even when I volunteer a hello).
She has her reasons. They're perfectly valid and I won't bore you with them here.
I just want to issue a public warning to anyone reading that nine times out of ten becoming more than friends with someone you see more, on average, than your friends or family is A Very Bad Idea. If things go well, I'm sure it's a big ball of joy covered in wonderful ice cream. If things don't, it's a big ball of shit covered in anger, resentment, shattered friendships and... more shit, basically. And because I'm ever so slightly masochistic in my approach to life, I know full well I shall traverse this road some day again with someone as equally suited to me as a cat is to a blender.
Just beware. For on this road lies madness, dysentry and lederhosen.
Or none of the above.
Sunday, 29 March 2009
DON'T WATCH THIS FILM! - The Butterfly Effect
Some people hate almost everything they watch. They could find fault in Citizen Kane - this didn't really do it for me, such and such wasn't very good in that scene, blah de blah de blah. I find those people a crushing bore, the kind of people who go through life with one eye scrunched in permanent disapproval. They probably write blogs critiquing the way their mother makes their Yorkshire pudding on Sundays.
I am not one of those people. I wasn't, anyway... until I watched The Butterfly Effect.
This is one of those movies that make you realise, sometimes, you can't simply go in and enjoy the ride. Sometimes you can't help but go through an entire viewing experience questioning almost everything. What hack wrote the terrible dialogue? Why does the whole film never once become interesting? Who thought it was a good idea to devote the first 25 minutes to child actors in one long flashback? And who in their right mind would cast Ashton Kutcher in anything except a cotton sack they were going to throw into the nearest ocean?
I asked myself all of these questions while watching this. And I still don't have the answers.
This could have been very good, that's what's annoying. A unique look at time travel and the idea of chaos theory - how a minute action could have repercussions that could forever alter the future - but on a small, personal scale revolving around childhood friends, rather than something like Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder - which explores a similar idea. But no. This is a plodding, poorly written, poorly directed, poorly paced, poorly acted, just poorly conceived movie across the board, with little exception. And the least said about the unbelievably ridiculous ending, the better.
It has some interesting ideas and surprisingly dark moments, but all are clusterfucked by the utter talent vacuum that is Ashton Kutcher - who if someone ever decided to remake Waiting for Godot as a tale of two planks of wood in conversation, would be perfectly cast alongside Hayden Christiensen. Sadly, Amy Smart is not much better - pretty, yes, but without better actors to play off, she gives us nothing and horribly overacts in places. Presumably to counter Kutcher, who spends the whole film looking like a bewildered man attempting to crap an anvil.
It's just nowhere near worth your time and energy and will leave you wanting Kutcher's character's ability, so you can go back and saw off your hands to prevent putting this into your DVD player and pressing play.
Someone just informed me too that there are two sequels to this. I would rather, to quote Eddie Hitler in Bottom, "watch an entire episode of Telly Addicts with sellotape over my mouth so that I had to swallow my own vomit", than watch them. And on that note... good night.
My Virtual Reality
It just dawned on me that there may well be people out there reading this blog (ha! who am I kidding?) who actually don't know who the Hell I am and why I do what I do, so it's only fair I give a proper introduction.
*coughs*
Hello. I'm Tony. I live at home, I work in a school, I'm not married, I don't have kids and my passion is writing. I love a lot of things, but it's writing I love the most. Thanks, in no small part, to this place:
Monster Zero Productions is basically a source of online fiction in screenplay format, known to it’s fandom as ‘virtual series’. The idea is a place ran much like a US TV network, creating season-long episodes of shows written by teams of staff under the heel of one showrunner (sometimes two). It’s a great network of writers and readers that’s been going strong for five years now, with no sign of letting up.
Fact is, when I found this place in August 2005, I'd already been writing this kind of stuff for nearly 10 years as a hobby anyway. A solitary endeavour before I'd found the Interwebnet. Coming across the VS world was like a cancer-victim finding a cure and getting sucked-off by the sexy doctor who invented it, in the same day. I've never found a better place on the Net and I doubt I ever will. Not only have I written coming up to 100 scripts through it which have infinitely improved my writing skills, but I've read fantastic work by some hugely talented amateur scribes which truly wouldn't be amiss on our telly boxes - and the brick on top of the chimney? I've made four real-life friends out of it. That alone makes the whole thing a worthwhile waste of time.
So, if you're a writer reading this (be you a newb looking for a place to belong, or a rising star preparing to break into the biz), pop over to MZP - it's a damn good place to develop original work, get honest and fair critique on your abilities, and just to shoot the breeze with people who don't spk lke an idiot LOL!!! or won't take the piss if you want to spend the whole day discussing how awesome Battlestar Galactica is. In other words, it's a snapshot of what our depressingly inane real world should be like.
This promotion ends here. Have a nice day.
Spanish Eric Clapton
I must admit, I was a little surprised earlier when, as ITunes is shuffling through my pretty sizeable musical collection delivering nuggets of tunery into my lugging holes, on came a song from Eric Clapton with a decidedly Spanish twang to it. Observe:
El Clapton - Get Lost
Now despite being a fan of the Clapton - and this song, incidentally - I'm not about to spend a whole post talking about him. No, my point is about when music leaps up, grabs you by the jugular and surprises you.
Fact is, in the last year, my music taste has undergone a true Renaissance the Borgia's would have been proud of. I used to be one of these people who, when asked what music they were into, replied with 'I like a bit of everything - depends on my mood' which translated means they haven't yet found their sound. They haven't yet reached that point of realisation where you go 'YES! THAT'S what makes my ears orgasm' (or something like that). I spent a long time in that wildnerness, accepting the Lighthouse Family were a half-decent part of my musical collection, until roughly 12 months ago.
It's largely thanks to two of my mates - Lee and Paul - who bludgeoned me with literally THOUSANDS of songs from their respective oeuvres, once they knew I already had a penchant for rock - they just didn't know what. I was fed a lot of classic 70's/80's rock, bluesy southern rock, industrial rock, grunge, a touch of metal. And it was probably when I listened to this that my sound hit me - when I fell to my knees and just KNEW. Senses arrested, I was a changed man and I could never go back to the days where I could dance in Oceana without irony or like certain Eminem songs. I transcended.
This probably sounds awfully pretentious but I can't overestimate the impact this discovery had on me. I now can't stomach certain bars/pubs/clubs I once could. I can't hold down a conversation fully with people who openly appreciate Britney Spears (not that I ever liked her music, mind). I now wear rock t-shirts and can't get enough of them. If a day goes by I don't listen to something like this, I begin to suffer symptoms of withdrawal. It's wonderful and I wouldn't change it for the world.
So when I hear Eric Clapton twanging that Spanish guitar, it reminds me again that I know where I belong musically. And forever shall.
READ THIS BOOK! - Dawn of the Dumb by Charlie Brooker
Charlie Brooker is a genius.
The greatest misanthrope of our time (at least in Britain), he writes a column in the Media Guardian called Screen Burn where he basically tears into a multitude of awful British TV shows every week, ripping them to shreds with an inventive razor-sharp wit and a talent for absurd, surreal wordplay that frankly makes me weep with envy.
This book, and it's predecessor the appropriately titled 'Screen Burn', is a collection of the Guardian columns going back to roughly 2005 through to late 2007. Now, you CAN find these columns on the Guardian website (at the above link) and thereby forgoe any need to purchase this or 'Screen Burn' but I urge you not to take that route for two very simple reasons.
1) I got both of them from HMV for £3 a piece - which isn't so much a bargain as an obscene giveaway given we're talking 300 pages of highly amusing commentary.
2) Well, I don't need a second because the first one was so great. Neh.
In getting this book, you'll find diatribes against the vacuousness of Big Brother (and any celebrity who wants to get me out of being a millionare on love island reality bollocks), how annoying David Cameron, the insanity yet addictiveness of 24. It's all there. He leaves very little untouched and much of it is all comedy gold.
I can't quite fellate Brooker on everything mind. His chronic hate for football and the World Cup is one I don't share and disagree with, nor do I feel 24 went quite as crap as he did (though many would agree). However, mostly he's spot on and the older I get, the more of a curmudgeon I get, and I find myself aligning increasingly with Brooker's view - however obviously exaserbated for the purposes of humour.
Buy it, basically. Or if you're a tight bastard, read the column archive. Either will do.
The joy of springing forward
I'm not a fan of winter.
I think it has something to do with the fact I was born slap-bang in June, apparently in the middle of a heatwave so intense the midwife's face was burned to a seared crisp before I forward-rolled out of my mother's womb. I was a summer child and have grown up to a summer man.
Hence - I never fail to get excited when we 'spring forward' end of March because, to me, it's a sign that summer isn't far away - despite the fact there might still be a shrill wind and it'll be pissing down. Not that it doesn't do that IN summer, but you get my general wandering potent guff of a drift.
This year, I was indoors when the clock tunneled forward and we lost an hour. Suddenly, I'm rolling happily along at 1am when BANG!, it's getting on for half 2! This is the one and only downside - I could have done so much in that hour! Wrote something, ate something, watched something, drafted another declaration of peace in the Middle East for Palestine - all kinds of things. But no, alas, it's gone.
On the flipside, we can look forward to increasingly drawn out nights, the meridian being at least half 7 now for darkness. Why this pleases me so much, I don't know. It's just more light. You can still do things in the dark. I suspect if I was a mugger or rapist, I'd infact be right browned off at all this Daylight Savings business.
I'm not, in case you were wondering. Right browned off OR a mugger/rapist, that is.
Saturday, 28 March 2009
Shut up and sit down, you big bald fuck
I'm listening to the soundtrack to Snatch and having far too much fun at this time of the morning, quite frankly.
Though I can't help feeling random non-sequitur posts like this are what Twitter is for. So I'll stop.
Leia Mais…
Preparing for the Final Time
I said I'd try and use this blog for scriptwriting updates so that said, let's talk a 'lil about what's currently on my plate:
Another milestone reached yesterday with Season Four officially in the can. I just finished editing the last two scripts needing my touch and, barring final polishes before airing week by week, the season is done and dusted. This pleases my muse. It was actually a remarkably easy season to write, the most painless 20 episodes of VS I've ever produced (in no small part to the guys helping me write it - who obstinately refuse to let me down, the brilliant bastards!). Eight more episodes left to air on MZP and it's out there, done, finito.
Though of course, that ain't the end of the story - Season Five is to come yet and I've spent much of the last month knee (or indeed balls) deep in storyboarding. One is written, one is nearly halfway written, one is a quarter written - all but two or three are now plotted in various stages. This includes the three-part series finale which - in a wee little Blog exclusive - will be called 'The Final Time' and bring the curtain down on arguably the biggest writing project I've ever undertaken, maybe ever will undertake given I genuinely can't see myself doing 100+ episodes of anything ever again.
Plotting this finale brings real mixed emotions. On the one hand, it's genuinely thrilling to be outlining a story I've had in my head for 4 years almost, throwing new ideas into the pot that (hopefully) serve to improve it, taking course-corrections based on those ideas (the demise of a significant character has changed from intended - no spoiler given you KNOW I'm gonna be killing people off in a big finish). On the other hand... it's sad. I've lived and breathed Jai, Mia, Kendall el al... since 2005, seen the show grow and change, made friendships with fellow scribes who helped me bring it to life, sweated torturously when a script or outline wasn't working and how to MAKE it work.
I'll miss that. It won't be quite the same again as the first time around.
I'm consoling myself by knowing the real joy is yet to come, actually WRITING Season Five. It's when I type that final moment of 'The Final Time pt 3' (which I can see in my head now) into Final Draft that I suspect a few tears may be shed. I'll have alcohol, food and ideally a cut-price hooker on hand to relieve me of my woe, but that's a few months away yet.
Season Five will, all going to plan, launch the start of October so then you can judge whether it'll have been worth all the effort and anguish then.
Leia Mais…How to start a blog in a profound and meaningful way...
...I'll be fucked if I have any idea, so I'll start like this.
I've never fully clicked with this blogging lark, I must admit. I dabbled in the days when I wasted endless hours on MySpace - a place I'd now rather eat a razor wire sandwich than frequent - and got a fair whack out of it's blogging application. I remember little about those entries bar them all being, for some reason, named after Lost episodes. I might try that again someday.
Why am I doing this, then? My rational brain says it's to create a little place where I can talk about my virtual scriptwriting endeavours, updates and some such. My ACTUAL brain tells me it'll likely be a place I'll post utter garbage most of you reading won't be interested in and will probably despise me for. Though chances are if you're reading this, you know and despise me anyway, so what have I got to lose?
Will I even use this regularly? I've no idea. Does anyone care? Doubt it. Will I carry on anyway? You betcha. Catch you in British Summer Time...
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