SHANE CARRUTH MAKES ANOTHER MOVIE

extra, extra, read all about it!!!!

the bastard

holy crap. so quentin finally makes a good one.
and all these years i've been stuck thinking, 'quentin is a one-trick pony'. but he showed his chops with 'bastards'. it's not often that a filmmaker re-discovers himself, and am i not saying that quentin has done it. but if he makes a few more like this one, maybe i can forget the last few.
good job man.

The Blind Side

the 'blind side' will be the biggest film of the year.
easily.

mark my words.

EDIT
ok. ok. avatar was bigger... yeah, yeah. but blindside was huge. really huge. would have been biggest of the year for sure. definitely cinderella story.

mexico nightmare

in mexico actually working on a show and haven't even had time to watch ten minutes of television since i arrived on the 30th, let alone a feature film.
hope all is well out there. when does 'public enemies' hit theaters?

just watch it

if you haven't seen the mighty boosh, you really are missing out. i was introduced to this show long before adult swim, by a girlfriend. initally, it felt like too much, but as i relived the episodes i realized just how right the show really was. every scene is well rounded, the humor is genuine and the chemistry between howard and vince is pricless. i saw them pull something from an old red skeleton sketch and was really touched. very well done.

great, great stuff. of course it's from the u.k.

the spirit of jazz with his hat on fire is absolute genius.


*****

what recession!

looks like i was wrong... kind of....

how families can afford to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars taking the kids out to a movie when the unemployment rate hovers around 9% is astonishing! well... during the great depression i believe the most successful business model was... salons?! i think.

forget that. where are the fresh voices? even what's remaining of the indie world isn't doing anything right now. the only thing selling in town is sequels, prequels and the like. that's it. how many scripts have sold this year.... twenty? thirty? it's a terrible time to be working in the dream factory folks. just an awful time. and as long as the Transformers movies keep doing $200 million dollar five-day weekends, michael bay will continue to make movies and scream at people. and isn't that what's wrong with the world right now? p-13 movies? michael bay? i know i'm not alone out there. and anyone who thinks that bay is half the filmmaker Clouzet is, then they are FOOLING THEMSELVES.
OK. here it is. i'm going to give you 250 million dollars. i'm also going to provide you with the most talented special effects people, demolition experts, stunt men and craft service in the universe. then, i'm going to give you talented actors, two years or so and all the resources of a multi-national conglomerate. just come back with something that works.

michael j. fox had a great line in 'the american president'. he said 'People don't have a choice!... People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.' of course the response is, "People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.'

politics, art, commerce.
people don't change.

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DIRECTING A $5,000 MOVIE LESSON #55
don't overshoot it. work out the blocking sketches in rehearsal but be prepared for things to change on set! if you're using two cameras, make sure you have someone taking notes and pay the $100 dollars to get a guy to be binning and labeling everything (assuming you're shooting to disk, which you better be.) you don't need to make five clone copies of the movie once it's done. just make sure it's broken down into scenes so you and your editor.. or just you most likely... can find everything quickly. if you don't, you may spend three times longer in post then you expected. making money on movies is about making movies. so if you only make one movie every two years you're at a disadvantage. also, and more importantly, being a good director is about making movies. you have to make a lot of them. you just do.

the success of nitro circus

nitro circus is amazing. it's stunning. it's fantastic. i couldn't hope for better television. sure, i love godard. yes, i love atom egoyan. but nitro circus rocks my little world. first of all, people on the edge of death is fantastic entertainment. second of all, the music is amazing. and thirdly, the cinematography is great by itself but because of the editing. great editing. the tempo is strong. they cease to amaze and aghast with every episode, and that is what it's all about. like it or not, fewer and fewer small shows are getting made. it'd the big stuff that has a shot.

i had a manager tell me recently, "fuck the small stuff. go big. instead of 2 million, tell them you need 25. instead of two movies, tell them you want five. go big."


TELEVISION MARKETING LESSONS
someone will pay me for this stuff someday. i'm sure of it.
PAY ATTENTION TO MTV. a few weeks ago, during the mtv awards, some genius in marketing suggested that the company run adds for the ceremony during the most intense moments of the most interesting programs. voila. that's it. now television is completely run by advertisers, controlling and manipulating the most sincere moments you, the audience, can have in your viewing time. very soon we will have adds for tylenol during the death scene in house, coca-cola adds over the bomb scene in 24 and ebay adds during the ribbon crossing moment in the olympics.
mark my words. it will happen.
pay attention to mtv.