The Fear
Nov 30 2003 - 2:07 p.m.

I had one of those bad, bad, bad, bad, bad writerly experiences just now. I sat down with my nice big multi-draft printout of Night and was going through it with my trusty pen and highlighter. I worked on it for about an hour, and when I was done, I actually felt sick to my stomach. I had the shakes. I was having what can only be described as a "panic attack." Not because the script was particularly poor per se, but just because as I was sitting there working on it, the enormous magnitude of things that had to come together at this stage, and the next stage, and the stage after that, and all the other stages yet to come, just started rolling around and around in my brain, like the stainless steel marble in that big plastic funnel, that just goes around and around and around and around and around, picking up speed and going faster and faster and faster and faster until ZA-DONK down through the hole in the bottom it goes, so fast it might as well be travelling at the speed of light.

I was listening to MP3s and Leonard Cohen's "The Stranger Song" from McCabe came on and it's a five minute song, and for those five minutes I just had my head in my hands, staring blankly at the page in front of me and letting the rolling fear wash over me, as my brain extrapolated causes and effects into a myriad of possible outcomes, all of them bad, until my mind was full of webs of sticky taffy that was keeping normal thought from flowing, and even impeding regular functions like the motion of my eyeballs and my control of my own tongue.

And yesterday was such a good day.

No worries, there's rum for problems like this, I got myself damn good and sorted watching Octopussy special features and reminding myself that everything is one step at a time, and that the great lesson of 2003 has been the use and application of courage, and like it says on the pig, "What's the worst that could happen? They can't kill us!"

This post is dedicated to Daniel (A) and Dave (T), who talked me off the ledge pretty much without knowing it, because really, the only cure for a good panic attack is a good interruption.

Now go listen to the song, and feel the last of November's wind.

Trials
Nov 30 2003 - 12:02 p.m.

Yes, I'm trying to figure out how to polish my lightsabre. Shut up.

So how's this: on Thursday, my brother had his iPod stolen right out of his hand! He was on the bus and some asshole just came up, grabbed it, and took off out the doors! Can you believe that shit? That just pisses me off to no end. I mean, I was livid when my parents told me about this. I hope the damn thing explodes in the thief's hand... right now. Power of shadow, appeeeeeeeeear!

(Wow. Even I didn't see a Supergirl reference coming into all this.)

I know what I should be doing, and I know what I want to be doing, and goddammit, why can't creativity just run in straight freakin' lines?!!

What's the big deal? I'm an animal
Nov 30 2003 - 1:37 a.m.

I'm still faintly buzzed from a really nice day, although Master and Commander did a lot to kill my high. I just couldn't get past the ludicrousness of the premise: who on earth thought to do a film where the pirates are the bad guys?!

I actually wanted to see Elephant; I got home from Guelph in such a frenzy that I just wanted to be out of the house doing something interesting, hoping that something even more interesting would happen. Unfortunately, Movietickets.com fucked me over again - this time, they didn't even get the theatre right! So, Russell Crowe it was instead, and... well... arrrhhh.

Guelph was awesome, though; the Force guided me there cuz my directions sure didn't, but what surprised me was discovering that in the 8 years since I was last in the town, it completely reshaped itself. It's not the same town at all! Now I'm anxious to get back to Waterloo and see if the same thing happened there, too. Cuz that would be a hell of a rural Ontario phenomenon to blog about.

Here's what's great about Guelph: 10-year-old boys crowd around rottisserie chicken cookers and cheer mightily as one of the chickens becomes disengaged and falls into the dreary vat of drippings. Or: there are books called "Walter the Farting Dog." Or: it brings out the romantic in me, albeit in a tremendously expensive way. At least it encouraged me to read.

Yeah, I can see why Bex is so sleepy out there.

Well anyway. It was a good day. And in the car on the way home I hatched a truly brilliant mad scheme that might be just a bit more than I can chew, but I'm going to chew it for a few days anyway and get back to you.

Bloggers of the world, untie!
Nov 28 2003 - 12:02 p.m.

Right now I'm on hold with Jason, who is talking to Matthew. Unity, trinity, all that.

And it turns out I had exactly the right amount of flour and butter. Like, empty the bag and boom - it's 2 cups. No rain-walk for me. The Force remains on my side.

My kung fu is better than anyone's.

Quote of the day
Nov 28 2003 - 10:40 a.m.

"What good is piracy if you can't get what you want?"
                      - Matt, staring in dismay at a disappointing Kazaa search result

More rain; Matt make bread
Nov 28 2003 - 10:04 a.m.

There's only one cure for this insufferable downpour... banana nut bread. I've got the bananas, I've got the nuts, but o vile fate, I must venture into the deluge to get flour and butter. Because I'm at that annoying "I have some, but not quite enough" phase of the precise-o-thon that is modern baking.

This thing with my cat sleeping in my bed is becoming a problem because she just doesn't know how to stay out of my way. For those who haven't had the pleasure of sharing my boudoir, I'm a thrasher. (Like the Dreadnok.) So twice last night I rolled over and found myself with my hand up the cat's ass. And to my astonishment... she didn't move. She just sat there like, "what? You think this is my problem?" This is a cat who, in the daytime hours, goes screaming for the hills if I twitch my foot in her general direction.

Well internet, it's been a strange week of little substance. Lots and lots and lots of work on Monday and Tuesday just getting things back to the normal in the Festwake, with an unusually high amount of actual work on top of it just to make those days excruciating. And now... not so much. Things are back to normal but it all seems frightfully tame.

And that wayside my writing has been on? Remains sideways. With one month to go before my self-imposed deadline, I think it's time I cracked open that box and saw what's the what... Not that I'm particularly relishing the process of finding the half-mil or so I'll need to shoot my epic science-fictiony adventury life-happens coming-of-now story. Why doesn't money just fall from the frickin' sky?!

Lord of the Blogs: The Power of Blog, Part 3
a.k.a. Outwit, Outlast, Outblog
Nov 27 2003 - 8:50 p.m.

Let's get one thing good and clear: I was here, blogging, before the fad, and by god I'll be here long after the fad and all its faddists are dead. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!

In the meantime, check out the blog o' Matty Price.

Wow, this could actually lead to a community of blogs of my friends, as opposed to just a community of blogs of a) people I obsessively stalk over the internet but wouldn't have the stones to introduce myself to in real life, and b) people I dislike whose blogs are used for the purposes of counter-intelligence.

Yeah, we geeks really needed another way to out-geek ourselves, because the massively redundant group e-mails weren't nearly geeky enough. Boy howdy, there's nothing like reconstructing a conversation across three different blogs.

It's a beautiful world! Welcome to the fold, Matt, you are a beautiful daddy. Even if you did make Max look all squishy and weird while in real life he's actually a lovely, three-dimensional child.

(Wow: getting out of the shower a few moments ago, contemplating the spread of the blog, I actually laughed maniacally for several minutes.)

'Nuff Said
Nov 27 2003 - 5:23 p.m.

Well...

...yeah.

The Power of Blog, Part 2
Nov 27 2003 - 5:11 p.m.

Perhaps owing to my earlier veneration of the Power of Blog, Jason has opened his own blog. This represents a crucial move - the bold forward motion of a rook, in fact - in my ongoing efforts to set things so that I never have to talk to anyone, ever again, but can nonetheless browse their daily goings-on at my leisure, through the anaseptic safety of my home computer.

Also good, in that the crazy ol' internet just got a bit more inter, what with the zinging connections and meta-meta-meta-referencing between blogs and other blogs everywhere.

The Power of Blog
Nov 27 2003 - 2:50 p.m.

When Jason has a big realization, he speed-dials me and tells me about it. When I have one, I put it on my blog. Now does everyone understand the Power of Blog?

Realizations of the afternoon:

1. Based on my experience of tallying Film Fest votes, there are people out there with way funnier e-mail addresses than me.

2. On the same basis, generally speaking, the funnier a person thinks their written suggestions for next year's theme are, the less funny they actually are. Double-ditto for clever.

3. Assuming that at least one American movie features the Oval Office every year (not to mention The West Wing), why don't the major studios just get together, build the definitive Oval Office set, and share it?

That's... Fast
Nov 27 2003 - 10:45 a.m.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh man. They made with the first Making of Episode III documentary on the starwars.com, and ... ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh man. There was a pair of guys. With aluminum sticks. Wailing on each other. Ohhhhhhhhhh man. That's really, really fast.

Guess what internet? It's that holy time for yours truly to buy his Return of the King tickets. Now that I've abandoned myself to the belief that the "short cut" will absolutely suck, I feel rather relieved. And vis a vis that "short cut," it was very disappointing to hear that Christopher Lee didn't attend the film's premiere. I mean, I know how disappointed he must have been but one would think that the experience of the trilogy as a whole would have been enough to make him want to show a little solidarity.

Along the Minute Film Fest lines, I did not win Viewer's Choice, which is hardly surprising... if I couldn't convince my own father to vote for me, I think the rest of the audience was probably a dead loss!

The Art of War
Nov 26 2003 - 2:53 p.m.

Over a year and two months after my last custom action figure update, I have a new one: General Kenobi in Clone Trooper Armour (with Speeder Bike). This one turned out shit-hot. Almost enough to vault me back into the hobby altogether. Oh, I also made a Commissary Clone out of spare parts and am considering a variety of generic cannon-fodder Jedi as well.

Sense and Sensitivity
Nov 25 2003 - 3:09 p.m.

The fest's over, so I guess that means I can finally post Sensitivity in the Tederick.com Theatre for all to enjoy!

At Last
Nov 25 2003 - 10:13 a.m.

That's it, there's snow on the ground, I'm going snowboarding! You ain't gettin' another piece of me, chumps!! So long suckers!!!

And I'll Probably See You Naked Again
Nov 24 2003 - 2:16 p.m.

Boy. Work sucks.

This morning in the shower, I ran out of shaving cream after shaving only the left side of my face. The evenness of the split was such that I decided to just leave it like that, to give the girls down at the Shoppers a larf. Mission accomplished.

Today was the day I had my "ugh... gasp... Christmas shopping!" moment. I'm just not anywhere near in the mood, y'know? And I know I'll leave it till just the wrong moment, and end up at the Eaton Centre having a rolling panic attack. But on the whole I love the holidays, so I suppose things could be worse. It could be February.

I watched On Her Majesty's Secret Service last night, which, it turns out, was exactly what I needed.

On the whole, I'm not convinced that this post is post-worthy.

Everything Dies
Nov 23 2003 - 7:44 p.m.

Here I am, in the post-film-festival funk. I'm ecstatic with the way everything came off, no doubt, but somewhat overwhelmed with the ongoing details and also the "oh yeah, back to normal life" aspect of returning to normal life.

But Thursday night was awesome. I mean, really, it was all just a gigantic monument to the brilliance of Meredith. That's what really came through for me on the evening itself. I'd spent the whole week, kind of just in my own head, fighting with making the show reel, gaining an exaggerated opinion of my own importance to the whole thing. And then I arrive at the theatre and it's just like, yeah, I'm responsible for the DVD. I made the DVD. And everything else is because of Mer. The around-the-block line, the well-honed volunteer staff, the crazy coverage in the papers and on TV and the radio, the fact that we're at the fucking Bloor for crying out loud - all a result of the festival coordinating genius of my dear friend. And that felt great, getting back to that understanding of the magnitude of what's been done here - I am so honoured just to have been involved. Me and Mer darting across the street, a half an hour before the show, to slam back a quick whiskey, finding the bar populated by the casts and crews of all the films about to be screened... that's something I'm going to remember for a long, long time.

Hosting the show was a nice grace note on the whole process, to be sure, because otherwise I might just have felt too... anonymous, too techy. I've never been much about the techy, and I'm tremendously pleased with the response Sensitivity received - I got a number of nice compliments about it after the show, and in the few days since. It kind of dragged me back to the "oh yeah, artist first" frame of mind with which I started the whole process. I mean, I signed on for this thing back when it was five friends doing a project. And now I'm totally jazzed on it; I'm just in love with making one-minute movies. I'm working on one right now, as I mentioned, which is going to take a really long time and involve learning some new skills, but I think I should make a couple of these things a month just for the sake of keeping my output high.

For the record, though, I should finally note my top five of the 48 films screened, mostly because the vary so widely from the jury selections:

1. Thru the Wall, the standing masterpiece of my man Dave
2. Bill, the "other voiceover story" by the "other Brown"
3. Monopolyville, which is fucking flawless comedy, totally in my style
4. Denominations, because Daniel Cockburn is the Antichrist
5. Bleach, for all the obvious reasons.

I want to relate something that I touched upon the other night, which was me getting onto Hot Air in grade 10. Hot Air, for the uneducated, was the morning announcement program at my high school - a 5-10 minute slew of miscellany for which about half a dozen students were picked to be readers. Now, the clincher for this was that there has never been a more shy kid than me, ever - I literally refused to do presentation projects when I was in grade school because I was just so terrified of the whole process. So, when Mark and Andrew were on their way to the Hot Air auditions in grade ten and I tagged along on an absolute whim, it was a huge deal. The fact that I got on the crew and proceeded to prostrate myself before 1400 people every morning for the rest of my high school career is basically one of the foundational reasons that I am now able to stand up, reasonably confidently, in front of an audience and do shtick... and not even care if they don't laugh. So in case I'm not patting myself on the back enough tonight, I am so proud of myself for hosting the show on Thursday. It's hysterical that people think that this is something that comes naturally to me, is all. It's been a gigantic, scary, uphill slog and it's one of the big hat-hangers in my sense of self.

Okay. So that was the show. And because Everything Dies, today was also the last day of soccer. And of course, we lost. I mean, we've had an intensely frustrating season. Our team this year would have destroyed every other team from the first season I played, yet this year, the competition is just that much harder. We're losing a lot of close, single-point games, which is damned annoying the first few times, and soul-destroying by the end of the season.

I learned a new trade this season, so to speak, abandoning my traditional defencemanship in favour of a lot of experience in midfield and even offence. And what's surprising the hell out of me... I can run. I'm not Eric-fast, or even Steve-fast, but I can actually run, which is something I could never do. I mean, I got the little "participant" doohickey back on Participaction days at Blythwood. I think the highest I ever got was a bronze, and that was for something like long jump. (As I've said many times in the past, yay puberty!)

So now the season is over, and I can't help but say I'm glad. It's been a lot tougher than the previous years, and at the end of the day, not as much fun. I'm hoping to hit next season with a slightly different approach - and hopefully, make a real game out of it. I'm sick of coming in last.

I feel like I've been out every single evening since the turn of the century, and since I have evening plans for every night this week, I ditched tonight's evening plans and came home to write this for you fine people. I've got a nice glass of scotch beside me (rum is such a summer drink), I've got the Kill Bill soundtrack going at full blast, and I'm going to watch The Simpsons in fifteen minutes. Still a bit blue, but I gotta admit... life is good.

Too old to play, too cold to die
Nov 23 2003 - 9:44 a.m.

So guess what I did yesterday? I watched three full games of hockey. I now have a keen, razor-sharp understanding of the hockey mind. I may, in fact, have a hockey mind myself now. I didn't want to offend either Dave or Chris for the third game, between the Leafs and the Canucks, so I flip-flopped based on who had most recently scored the goal. It worked out rather well: GO LEAFS GO!!!

Also, because the duties of a film festival technical director are never over, I spent most of yesterday fucking around with the final screener DVD of the show - which, after one last desperate test burn in the middle of the night, is finally done. Which means I can clear the sucker off my drive this week, and start editing Razor Burn. I've also got a bug up my ass on a new one minute movie - and I'm not even waiting for next year's fest theme to do it. Two words, though: Grace Jones. 'Nuff said.

Knotts Landing
Nov 22 2003 - 2:01 a.m.

There were two significant changes that I made in the way that I thought of myself, when I was in high school, that carved out a great chunk of the person that I am today. The first was when I followed Mark and Calder to the Hot Air auditions and ended up making the team instead of them - and it's pretty hard to remain shy and stagefrighty when you're talking to 1400 people every morning. The second was when I finally got onto the Improv Team in grade 12.

Now this was some major intimidation. Mark, Smolkin, Matty Pollack, George, Calder... these guys were wicked funny, and had been doing shit together for a while, and I was the new guy, Mark's punk-ass geek cousin. It was a major, major thing for me just to be there - I'd tried out and failed twice before. When I could make someone like Steve or George laugh - like, really laugh - at one of my jokes, I would go home feeling like a million damned dollars. We had some wicked times.

So tonight, me and Mark and Matt and Steve all went up to Casino Rama to see Don Knotts. (George, the weanie, was supposed to attend, but bailed at the last minute.) This was the first time I'd spent any length of time with Pollack in a great while, and I only see Steve sporadically, so it was a big reuniony sorta deal.

The question I've been bombarded with repeatedly all week has been, what on earth does Don Knotts do in concert? Well, the answer is, not very much. Most of the show was given over to an irritating vocal impressionist woman who did just about the worst Cher I've ever seen in my life. The rest of the show was pretty much just Knotts playing straight man to Tim Conway. But who fucking cares? We had an amazing time, it was great to see each other and shoot the shit about the old days and our current situations, and just slip back into some nice old grooves.

Oh: and Pollack sat down at a one-armed bandit and won a hundred and fifty damned dollars. I, of course, was wandering elsewhere in the casino, for if I had been anywhere nearby, my momentous bad gambling luck of the past six months would have caused the slot machine to actually fall on Pollack's head. Thank goodness I didn't gamble, they would have brought me home in a paddywagon.

Boy, I'd intended to flesh out some details on the screening tonight, but.... beddddddddddd goooooooooooood.

Fire from the sky
Nov 21 2003 - 1:36 p.m.

So I'm out for one night, one night only, and the best character on Survivor gets voted out, and the best character on E.R. gets killed. And in the real world, the King of Pop's a child molestor again, and poor Jonathan Brandis has committed suicide. What a night.

My take on the Jacko thing is this: he's so detached, he's no longer capable of distinguishing himself from a 12-year-old. He isn't reasonably able to apply the laws of consent to himself, because deep inside, he really thinks he's the same age as these kids that he has out to the ranch for his little sleepovers. And we all know what 12-year-old boys get into at their sleepovers. In that sense, from MJ's perspective, it all no doubt seems completely innocent and organic.... yet from the objective side of things, the power imbalance is so massive that I have to wonder what the parents of these children are thinking by ever letting them go anywhere near Neverland. I'm not often one to point fingers at celebrities, because obviously, who are we to know what this person's life is really like? But it's become increasingly clear that, if nothing else, this man needs serious psychological help to get him to cope with the realities of his strange, abusive life.

The realities of a strange, abusive life seem to have caught up with Brandis as well, who committed suicide last week at the age of 27. I was never a fan, although I watched SeaQuest for about eighteen months and remember him from the second Neverending Story film. But once again, we see that the path of child stardom can be just utterly destructive to the adult's ability to integrate into society.

Well, I got my tons of sleep and I'm wearing my Minute Film Fest T-shirt and I'm going to see Don Knotts tonight, so that's enough trouble and mayhem for one day. The world of fetishizing celebrity culture probably isn't one I should trouble myself with as much as I do; I'm only helping to perpetuate the cycle.

Gone in 60 Seconds
Nov 21 2003 - 1:30 a.m.

Absolutely, utterly exhausted - in a way I haven't been in a very, very long time. I'll keep this short. It went very well. I threw out all thought of preparing a monologue and just kind of came up with some stuff on the fly, and enjoyed myself thoroughly. The reaction to the show was huge - a very excited, enthusiastic crowd. Sensitivity got a far stronger response than I expected it to, and I got some great compliments about it afterwards. And I met all three of the filmmakers I was most interested in meeting, so that was pretty cool. Sorry that this had to be so short.... I'm just so damned tired.

Very proud of you, Mer! You've inspired us all.

Rock and pool is nice and cool
Nov 20 2003 - 11:22 a.m.

The festival's today, it is, precious! Come one come all, I absolutely insist.

Eat Sleep Breathe
Nov 19 2003 - 7:52 p.m.

Could it be? Is it she?

I'm cracking up. I'm losing it. I was on the final, just-in-case, check-it-one-last-time pass of the DVD of the festival - for tomorrow night, mind you - when I noticed that the only end credit on "Fridge on Deck" was for the music. Problem with this: no music! Never been any music! I went back to the original submission and realized that there was indeed music, and I've just been missing it this whole time. I've watched that fucking movie a dozen times - in fact, I corrected an error on the credits yesterday - and never noticed that the credit explicitly refers to music that isn't there! I never noticed that there wasn't any goddamned music!!!!!!!! Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuusicccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc

I refuse to solve this problem with the liberal application of rum.

Grrrrrrrrr. Argh. Angel break while the whole damned DVD re-renders for the umpteenth time.

(The good thing about all this render time, approximately 4 hours per version, is that I've got myself all the way through the appendices on The Two Towers. No commentaries yet... I'm saving 'em.)

Child
Nov 19 2003 - 10:21 a.m.

I was very sorry to hear that Michael Kamen passed away this week, at the age of 55. His score for Prince of Thieves is one of my favourites, and he also contributed memorable work for the Die Hard films, License to Kill, X-Men, and of course Brazil. He will be sorely missed.

Welcome to the Occupation
Nov 19 2003 - 1:49 a.m.

It took me an hour to figure out a good way to extract the file but I finally got exactly what I wanted - this image:

Fuckin' A. Tonight's Clone Wars hit me where I live, obviously, because it's all about the General Kenobi I've been picturing since I was a small child. That's our friend Obi-Wan, dressed in Clone Trooper armour, riding a speeder bike, and about to lop Durge into about five wriggling pieces. And if that doesn't call for a custom action figure, I don't know what does. The question is, do I do it using regular figures, which would be relatively inexpensive and could be started tomorrow, or do I wait for those astonishingly great Clone Wars Animated figures, which will be hard to get and expensive? Or do I just do it both ways? This is definitely one I'll have on my desk for a long, long time.

My Hyperspace membership sure is paying for itself this week. So far the Clone Wars shorts have been, for the most part, excellent. The Kit Fisto one was a bit goofy and I'm not sold on this Ventress chick (and let's face it, I do a better Emperor than the knob they cast), but jousting on speeder bikes is never a bad thing.

Today was a very long day, working out the final show reel for the festival. But it was tremendously satisfying - just solving problem after problem after problem until my single-spaced printed page of notes was nothing but crossed-out former challenges. Mer and I tested the reel at the Bloor and it was.... well, rather humbling actually. It's all well and good when it's a 5" square on your computer monitor, but when it's up on that big beautiful screen... it's a whole different experience. This is for real. If it all weren't so darned expensive, I'd rent the Bloor for Bone Daddy 2.

Looks like Midnight Madness is indeed going to be therewise next year, which I can totally handle.

I finally went and bought Crocodile Dundee, keeping my promise to you, the reader, that it would not appear in my poll for my 300th DVD, as it did for 100 and 200. And congratulations to Chris for getting to his 300th disk 11.3% faster than me, and for making the Two Towers extendo-cut the disk that crossed the finish line.

Raining, raining, raining, raining....

Doomed
Nov 18 2003 - 10:12 a.m.

Paramount has officially announced the Voyager DVDs to start next year. Not that that's a big surprise or anything. The sets feature ditizy day-glow colours (lime green! hot pink!) that will make them look appropriately silly and cloying next to the more sedate graphics of TNG and DS9. Check these puppies out:

The only really interesting thing coming our way is that the Season One set will actually contain some of the Genevieve Bujould footage - how they got the rights for that is beyond me, but then again this is the Paramount legal department we're talking about (authors of the Paramount pre-nup).

Guess I'm spending my Christmas writing Voyager reviews! Yay to me. Who knows, maybe by then I'll have actually found the time to watch all the DS9's.

Oh, and: G.I. Joe is getting the seasonal boxed set treatment. I haven't decided if owning every episode of such an admittedly crappy series is really necessary... but if I can't track down the one where Mainframe and Zaranna fall in love, I'm just going to have to go the whole hog.

But right now it's all about Firefly and the Alien Quadrilogy, both, ironically, on the 9th. Because I need to spend hundreds of dollars in one day.

I dreamed of snowboarding last night.

Ten Things I Hate About You
Nov 17 2003 - 10:28 a.m.

I'm learning all kinds of new and interesting things watching the Two Towers appendices. For instance, I now know that my dialogue is not crappy, it's merely "execution dependent." I've also taken a liking to Viggo's shooting mantra, "Adapt and Overcome." Because when you're running across the South Island with two broken toes, sentiments like that become significantly important.

Or, say, when you're five minutes into a playoff game and Steve McKinley power-kicks a ball right into your right orbit from only four feet away, resetting your clock and changing your viewpoint rather significantly. Adapt and Overcome. The worst part about such an infraction is that it basically makes your whole head give up the ghost of maintaining civility in any sort - your nose empties out, your eyes run like Angel Falls, drooling occurs. Apparently "resetting your clock" actually refers to turning you into an infant again for a minute or two. Except without the euforia and clothing-optionalism.

So the film festival is this Thursday, I still haven't written anything for my opening, nor have I completed the show reel. Given that it's still relatively early on Monday morning, I haven't yet developed any of the nice momentum that tells me that no matter what happens, it's all going to fall together. My tasks list for today is about three dozen lines long, mostly because I didn't finish anything on Friday or Thursday. Yay.

But I'm going to see Don Knotts on Friday! And will thus answer my burning question, "what the fuck does Don Knotts do on stage for two hours?" If the answer involves "repeatedly breaking panes of glass and looking befuddled," call my twenty bucks well spent.

"We were making a masterpiece"
Nov 15 2003 - 12:34 a.m.

So said John Rhys-Davies about The Two Towers. The only problem is, we didn't know it until just now. The special edition extendo-cut of TTT is vastly, vastly superior to the theatrical version; so much so that I may never watch the theatrical version again in my life. Of my innumerable complaints about the film, almost all are mended with the additional footage - begging the almost ferocious question, why on earth didn't they release this version in the first place?! 42 minutes longer than the theatrical cut, the extended edition actually feels shorter - the pace crackles, the characters come alive, and everything is just stupendously more interesting and involving. Little moments from the book that I dearly, dearly love and missed terribly last Christmas are back in full glory on the screen - they should have been there all along. This is the film the way it should have been. I found myself becoming quite emotional as I watched it.

The only two major complaints from last year that didn't get repaired were that ending (although it is improved), and the indignities done to our old friend Gimli. Otherwise - this cut is miraculous. David Wenham's Faramir shines as a worthy successor to Sean Bean's work in Fellowship. Eowyn is a fully-realized character. Gollum is better fleshed out. The entire first act works for me, for the first time. Merry and Pippin don't feel like throwaways. This film is incredible.

Dammit, dammit, dammit, why did I have to wait an extra year for this? Now I'm nothing short of livid with terror at what awaits in Return of the King. Why bother with a 3 hour cut at all? Give us the full four, give us the whole story. Or better yet: give us both. Let the audiences prove that we'll take better storytelling, with a padded running time, any day of the week.

It gets worse, Lana
Nov 14 2003 - 10:20 a.m.

Oh my god, it's still snowing. My cat is, of course, thoroughly astonished by the presence of snow outside the window. Her entire lifestyle now revolves around finding new and comfortable places to sit while watching the snow.

I just realized that our entire clock system makes no sense. Ten a.m. follows twelve a.m.? What kind of silly world is this?

For all the times I wanted to see Whitney Fordman disembowelled, I honestly never thought I'd actually see Whitney Fordman disembowelled. Be of the eye-feasting while Bea is of the mouth-feasting:

Crazy. (That's Ginger Snaps 2 BTW.)

Practicing my T-Rex Moves
Nov 14 2003 - 12:31 a.m.

I had kind of a nasty, multi-tasking day, so I decided to celebrate the coming of non-work by spending even more time at my computer, and finally got my shit together and edited Burn. And man alive am I happy with this movie. I'm happy that I'm no longer working in mono-minute cinema; I'm happy that after procrastinating this for over a month, I cut the whole thing in three hours; I'm happy that I finally used REM's "Leave" in a film; I'm happy that I burned Burn to a DVD that looks fabbo; I'm happy that in a four minute movie, there are a hundred and three cuts.

According to my filmography, this is Film #41. Although I'm reasonably sure that sucker's inaccurate.

I'll show it off at my Lord of the Rings party on the weekend, then premiere it on Tederick.com sometime next week.

Bells
Nov 13 2003 - 10:39 a.m.

Weird dream: Roneet Folman getting in my face because she knew I'd missed my first english class of the new school year. Roneet Folman, I ask you???

My cable went stinko last night, but fortunately I was able to tune in Angel on the ol' VR. And - although I was delighted to see Father his own self, Roy Dotrice, hanging about - I found it to be a rather tame episode, until Wesley went and blew his old man away. Blew his old man away. Sure, it got networked down to acceptability in the end, but still... cripes. And he didn't just shoot the fucker once - he drilled him with the whole clip. That's why Angel remains the best fantasy series on the air today - and why last night's Enterprise, though visually probably the best Trek episode I've ever seen, just wasn't quite enough to get me re-interested in the show.

I wanna watch Lord of the Rings right now. Damn you time continuum for your unwavering steady march!!!

The Smith Cackle
Nov 13 2003 - 10:12 a.m.

Oh my god, it's snowing.

Something WICKED This Way Comes
Nov 12 2003 - 11:32 p.m.

Harry's back! And the trailer's out on the web, a couple of days early, thanks to fine, reputable hacker sites everywhere. A really slick look this time around - the film has a Tim Burton-y mojo, helped along generously by John Williams' new piece for the trailer.

Here's Hermione playing in the pumpkins (I'm still at a loss to explain what's happening here... these are the outfits they wear for the film's finale, yet the giant pumpkin stuff goes down at Hallowe'en.... Maybe they're next year's giant pumpkins?):

And here's the Knight Bus doing its funky mojo:

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Sirius... look, you can see bits of the scenery in Gary Oldman's teeth!

And finally, proof that our heroes are growing up. Here's Harry doing something inappropriate under the covers:

Next summer can't come fast enough!

Of course, I have no right to have any of these pictures up and if Warner gets their hands on me I'm as dead as Zed. But then again, it would be an honour...

And on one last Harry Potter note, the JK Rowling / Ian McKellen episode of The Simpsons is airing on the 22nd, just two weeks away.

Cinepoetics
Nov 12 2003 - 12:05 p.m.

I just want to give a big birthday shout out to my man Babs Yuen, who is no doubt 27 years old today, and could very well be driving someone insane, right now!

Let's take a moment to consider the overwhelming evidence that the specialty action figure market has gone completely insane: there are action figures of Canadian Prime Ministers. I am, of course, hoping for my very own JC doll, the only PM I'd happily display on my desk. Especially if he comes throttling a protester - now that's a fucking toy!

A few weeks back I noted that I never intended to buy TTC tickets again. I should have mentioned the most important aspect of this decision: I am sick to death of these wankers asking me to repeat myself every time I ask for tickets. EVERY BLOODY TIME. "Ten tickets, please." [TTC guy inclines head, ear-forward, in classic "I'm sorry, please repeat?" body language.] "TEN TICKETS, PLEASE." I swear this happens to me every time I ask. I mean come on! You are a TTC guy, sitting in a TTC ticket booth. You have exactly one job: to hear what I ask for and give it to me, with appropriate change. You are, theoretically, so prepared for your job that you actually have banks of tickets pre-ripped sitting right in front of you for easy sale. TAKE A FUCKING GUESS WHAT I'M ASKING FOR, DUMBASS. If my failure rate at my job was as high as yours, I'd be living on the damn street.

Necronomicon
Nov 12 2003 - 1:29 a.m.

My march towards DVD supremacy continues; I've now burned a compilation disk of all the miscellaneous flicks I've made since film school. What was really depressing about this was that it added up to 8 VCR movies and five other movies. Of course Bone Daddy 1 & 2 aren't on there but still... Jesus, 13 tiny little films in four and a half years? That's just pathetic! There was a time I was making a dozen decent-lengthed shorts per annum. (Heh heh... annum.)

And I cannot believe I didn't end up making a single VCR flick in 2003. But... well, what I've got in store for 9 and 10 is going to take a long, long time.

So, next up, DVDS of those film school flicks. I'm looking particularly forward to seeing The Positively True Adventures of a Teenaged Girl In Love again, along with Parallax and Repression, both of which are proof that even a dinky Leon Marr exercise can generate some ridiculous levels of creativity and cinematic skill.

Life was so much simpler when Spielberg was the Mack Daddy of Everything.

Saying of which.... I'm rather apalled that the second Peter Pan trailer is as good as it is. I mean, this is a freakishly great trailer. And I want to believe, I really do. I want to believe so much, I'm re-reading Peter and Wendy starting tonight. (Although: one major downside of the trailer is that this girl playing Wendy looks so unbelievably vacant, I fear for her crashing into walls while attempting to fly.)

Hmmmm.... 1:29 a.m. No rest for you, Internet, but I'm going to bed.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter
Nov 11 2003 - 12:13 p.m.

Because we all aren't obnoxious enough in movie theatres, why not turn your next viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean into an interactive experience? The POTC Interactive Project is on the loose and ready to turn you into a vulgar sea-dog able to piss off even the most lenient of audience members! Arrrrrrrrrh. I guess I have to grow the beard back now...

On the Eve of Obstruction
Nov 10 2003 - 11:37 p.m.

After a 2½ year hiatus, FORP is back on the move with a new member, a new (revised) mission statement, and two new projects: the Mosquito Minute, and even better, the FORP Obstructions. And guess who's the first to be obstructed? Why me, of course.

(For those not in the know: this comes from The Five Obstructions, a film in which Lars Von Trier forces Jorgen Leth to re-make his experimental film, The Perfect Human, but creates a series of provisos ["obstructions"] to make the process more difficult for him. Stuff like "No shot longer than half a second, all questions you pose must be answered, and the film must be shot in Cuba.")

My films up for potential obstruction are: Night of the Centipedes, Light & Magic, VCR 1 through 8, Baby-Stealin' Gypsies, Who is Bob Ross?, Monosperm, Deluge, Sensitivity, Parallax, Repression, and the grand master of evil itself, Absence. Which one finally ends up as the Obstructee will be up to the jury of my fellow FORPers, Dave, Mer, Daniel, Brandy and Chris. Hopefully this will begin to happen very soon because I've already thought of a bunch of potential escapes to apply against whatever they throw in my way...

...As Opposed to Matt LeBrun
Nov 10 2003 - 4:53 p.m.

One of those days, but I've got a certain Mr. 'Lum to keep me company tonight. Not that I can watch it tonight, or anytime this week, but on the weekend... whoa baby, will there be fun! Yay to the temple of me.

(See? When faith fails, Hope will do.)

Let's play Scan-o-vision! One of my biggest problems right now is that my scanner is buried under a pile of documents, under my desk - so I don't get to scan very often. So, let's get 'em all out of the way at once, I say.

Here's a glorious piece of comparative photography that I like to call "The NT Posse, Then and Now." Don't ask me why we couldn't get our shit together to sit in the same places, and don't ask me what ever happened to Nicki Fung. And most of all, don't ask me why Mark has an angel on his shoulder - that boy's eeeeeeeeeevilllllllllllllllll.

The above also ably illustrates why film is temporary, digital is forever. That's with colour-correction, and look at it!

Here's the whitewater rafting gang at the only restaurant in the Ottawa valley at magic hour:

Here's what I look like when I have recently been snowboarding:

And for no good reason whatsoever, here's what I look like when I'm staring into the depths of a fire:

If you still haven't seen my Jack Sparrow costume, you must now visit the Gallery to do so.

There's no way around it: my mind is still reeling from The Matrix Revolutions disappointment. Talked to sooooooo many pissed off people this weekend that my own disgruntlement seems rather minor, but nonetheless I think I have decided to never see the film again ever. I shall instead enjoy Reloaded to its utmost, and pretend there never was (or was meant to be) a third chapter.

And that - meaning, all of the above - is why this is the best blog on the internet.

Stupid Coca-Coalescing Becomer
Nov 9 2003 - 11:28 a.m.

Damn this man and the indescribable linkages made by the brain hidden beneath this strange matte of combed hair:

Damn damn damn damn.

The longest three minutes of my life
Nov 8 2003 - 9:50 a.m.

When I say "Starwars.com," you say "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO." They really dropped the ball on the Clone Wars animated shorts - some lunatic decided that streaming the video would be the best way to do it. Which basically means, due to bandwidth issues, nobody can watch it. I finally got through the whole thing in fits and starts this morning... and I would like very much to like this wondeful bit of animation (even if it is ludicrously too short)... but I'm just way too pissed off at Lucasfilm right now.

Boy, check me out: a one-man Lucasfilm backlash! Although I admit, I got 4 steps into ordering a customized Clone Wars coffee mug before I realized what I was doing and cancelled. But it was mostly because I couldn't choose between the boy Jedis and the girl Jedis.

The flick reinforced my belief that my next 1-Minute Film will have to be animated. Guess I oughta learn how to draw? Oh, and props to whoever's doing Ewan's voice. The rest of the impressions suck, but that voice is scaaaaaaary accurate.

Navras
Nov 7 2003 - 4:59 p.m.

It's the welcome end of another week, although week and weekend are all crazy-blendy now because of all the 1MFF work yet to be done. Still, I updated the web site today with the final programme for the show, and re-rendered a half a dozen of the flicks that had technical problems, so call me Mr. Satisfied. Maybe I'll go to yoga tomorrow and pretend it's a real weekend!

Irritating: there's a toy store downtown that has the Simpsons Treehouse of Horror IV playset for a hundred bucks, which sounds like a lot, but is actually probably about as cheap as I'm ever liable to see it - and I can't afford it. I can't even afford the Future Burns set from the Snail, which has Smithers dressed up as Bobo. Just about the only thing I can afford is a Niobe action figure... and I can't find one anywhere! Sigh.

All Right, Fine
Nov 7 2003 - 11:12 a.m.

Cuz everybody else is reporting it.... the Star Wars trilogy finally hits DVD just in time for my next birthday. Now of course, it will undoubtedly be another Lucas monkey job, an Extra Special Extended Edition where Greedo shoots first (twice), Leia's bikini has been transformed into a stylish suede pantsuit, the gutted tauntaun is replaced by a nice fuzzy parka to keep Luke warm, and no stormtrooper ever gets killed by anyone under 30.

Wouldn't now be a wonderful time to sign the Original Trilogy Petition?

"He's Tall and Dark and Very Present"
Nov 6 2003 - 11:49 p.m.

The coolest thing that's happened so far in conjunction with the whole One Minute Film & Video Festival thing was today, wherein Mer and I actually guest-lectured at a film class at Sheridan in Oakville. How fucking great is that?! Teaching my end-of-term seminar for INFA 1900 back in '96 was one of the eight best nights of my life, so I was on board for this from the moment it came up (which it did, with rather short notice, on the weekend). I mean, get me over there, I'm yours. I'm totally in.

The prof is one of our many submittees for the festival, and the class is embarking on a one-minute montage project, and so in we went, to do our song-and-dance show and present some of the movies from the festival. Which was just wicked, wicked fun. If it weren't for the fact that technically, we already did, I'd say Mer and I oughta take our show on the road. We've got mad charisma, and everyone really seemed to respond to what we did - a whole bevvy of people came up to us afterwards to thank us for being there. So that's way cool.

I could do this shit for a living. The prof opened the class with a quick discussion of the Russian montage theorists (which, ironically, I was discussing with Mark just a few weeks back in conjunction with Razor Burn), which of course was one of my favourite bits of film history from back in the York days, so I was just happy as a clam. A bit too happy, in fact; I wanted to get up and start supplementing what he was talking about, with my own spin on the material. Which was the wrong impulse, so I contained it. But still. I loves the Dziga Vertov.

So yeah. As we're discovering more and more by the day, when in doubt, run a film festival. It perks up your life in new and astonishing ways.

The festival is just two weeks away - and it's been a mad, mad week getting this far. Now I have to fine-tune the show reel and figure out what the hell I'm going to say as emcee... oh yeah, and keep up with my real job. That's always in there somewhere, I'm sure.

All right, on to the next thing. Lex is in, so to spare regular Tederick.com readers from the boredom of having to read six months of blogs about Survivor All-Star, I've done the unthinkable and re-opened SURVIV.ORg. It'll be a lot simpler than last time - just basically an ongoing Survivor blog, but the irony that I'm running two blogs at this particularly jam-packish time in my life isn't lost on me. What can I say? I loves the Lex, I loves the Richard. Big Tom's my homie. Rudy's 76 and he's up for another round on the island, so who am I to complain? Visit SURVIV.ORg as often as you please to keep up with my Survivor musings, cuz this is the last you'll hear of it here until next summer.

The only downside I can see to this whole thing is that S falls before T in the alphabet, meaning that the SURVIV.ORg directory has pushed the Tederick.com directory out of view in my Documents folder. But I'm trying not to find symbolism in that.

Check this shit out:

Daunting, isn't it? That's what I'm gonna have to look like in '05. FYI: my hair don't do that shit. And the thought of growing another beard after a month of Jack... well, it ain't appealing.

Okay, how's this:

Yeah, pretty shitty, but it's the only Harry Potter still with the kids in it - in spite of the fact that the trailer is being released next week! Come on, gang, let's get some hardcore shit in there, yeah?

I've been described well, many times in my life. Babs Yuen's immortal "pedantically verbose" remains the all-time fave, but Mer hit me with two beauties today. The first is the headline for this post. The second, I'll leave you with:

"A bit of a deviant and more prone to disease."

The Code Drip
Nov 6 2003 - 12:07 a.m.

Surprisingly savage, my review of The Matrix Revolutions took even me by surprise. Major spoilers within. In fact, all the spoilers are in there. If you want to know everything, this is the review to read, all right.

Still, it's been a hell of a ride. My special thanks to Brandy, Steve and Candice for 3x the fun - it was great that we were able to do this.

This is the digital age
Nov 4 2003 - 7:14 p.m.

I've been burning a lot of DVDs in conjunction with my work on the One Minute Film & Video Festival, which has given me plenty of practice with the DVD authoring - so just for kicks, I finally got around to making my very first DVD of one of my movies. Yep, Bone Daddy and the Big Score is on DVD. At long, long freakin' last. I am so incredibly proud of myself. Eventually I'd love to do cool-ass cover art for the thing, but right now, I've got my movie, my director's commentary, and my chapter menu, and that's as pro as I need to be!

No, You're Not Talking
Nov 4 2003 - 4:10 p.m.

SurvivorFever has posted a list of 20 potential castaways for All-Star, culled out of evidence of who is and isn't currently in the United States. Lex is on the list, as is Big Tom (yay!), Rudy, Sue, Jerri, Colby (yay!), Shii Ann (who has been independently confirmed, making her official castaway #3), and a bunch of other people I can barely remember. The only winners not on the list are Vecepia (thank god) and Porn-Star Brian. Once there's some confirmation of this, it'll be back to the races for my old Survivor site.

And Richie Makes Two
Nov 4 2003 - 1:21 p.m.

Richard's on All-Star.

This is the man who got me into the whole thing. Everyone else hated him, but to this day, no one has played this game better than Richard Hatch. And I knew that from the first moment I laid eyes on him.

Why the original Survivor-master would put himself at the mercy of a whole bunch of people very likely to vote him off immediately upon his arrival at the island is unknown, but no doubt he worked out something reasonably lucrative with Burnett & Co. to allow them to put him in such a potentially humiliating situation. But I don't care: my boy is back.

And Lex? We're halfway to a SURVIV.ORg resurrection...

Ha ha, I said "lugubrious"
Nov 4 2003 - 10:32 a.m.

I'm waaaaaaaaaay behind on this show for watching it at home - still mired in the early fourth season - but Deep Space Nine Season Six comes out today, and here's my review. It's the best season of the show, so I wrote a whole lot. Which one of you bastards called me a geek?!

November Rain
Nov 3 2003 - 5:49 p.m.

Hardy har har, I amuse myself exactly once a year.

So check out the Alien Quadrilogy specs. I was expecting a lot - and I am not disappointed, except for the lack of a Fincher commentary, which sadly, can't even be called surprising. What called me out on the carpet big time is that Whedon's original script for Resurrection is on this disk. Good god damn, I've waited six years to read that thing. Now we'll find out where the shit really sits.

So apparently, the flannel sheets I got from Chandra last week are exactly what my cat has been waiting for, all this time. She has never slept in the bed with me even once, yet five minutes after I put the sheets on the bed last night, she was in there, and she wasn't getting out. I threw her out of bed twelve times last night because she was snoring so badly, and she just kept coming back. She's there now. I may never see her anywhere else again.

Star One
Nov 3 2003 - 10:38 a.m.

SurvivorNews.Net - certainly the most reputable Survivor news source I know of - is reporting that none other than Rupert "Blackbeard" Boneham is the first official castaway for Survivor: All Star. They are so certain of this that if any castaway they name as being in the All-Star game is able to conclusively demonstrate that they are not, SNN will be paying out to their favourite charities. So, one down, fifteen to go.

On the surface this would seem to suggest that this means that Rupert doesn't win Pearl Islands... but, the running idea had always been that Richard, Tina, Ethan, and other previous winners would probably be playing All-Star, so who knows. Still, I can't see Rupert pulling this one out, unless he has a Colby-like run on Immunity Challenges from here on out.

Tide
Nov 2 2003 - 4:00 p.m.

BEST - GAME - EVER.

There's nothing like two hours playing in a genuine mud pit, in a driving rainstorm, to make you feel like the real goddamned deal. To my enormous surprise, I didn't roll until the second half (which I played the entirety of, by the way.... must have had an annoying week). All bets were off after that, so I war-painted my face, and Kate and I (who were co-defending) painted our initials on our jerseys. It was fan-fucking-tastic.

Of course, when you roll as comprehensively as I did, in the midst of a swamp, you get cold mud in places you didn't know you had. I've been in the shower, scraping out every gully and crevasse for half an hour. And I finally killed the last vestiges of my beard - yay to a complete lack of facial irritation!

The Sundays
Nov 1 2003 - 11:20 p.m.

Do you ever have whole days where you just miss the hell out of Dawn? Or Xander? Or even Ethan Rayne? I'm having one of those days.

And by the way: I've gotta pass on Tru Calling. It just all feels so "done before," no pun intended. Give it up, Eliza, we want you back!

Today Mark and I shot a flick that is currently titled Razor Burn, which I think is going to turn out to be really, really interesting. I give him total credit though, because not only did he invent the concept, he delivered bigtime on performance. I just kind of sat around with the camera in hand.

But we also filmed the final missing piece of Who Is Bob Ross?, extending the statute of limitations on altering our own films to five damned years. The only reason I'm allowing it is that this particular nugget was always part of the original idea, and we just never got around to it. It's a minute change; most people won't even notice it. But it was nice to don the 'fro again. We talked about doing Get Outta My Way: Bob Ross 2, and figured it was impossible, but then figured... nah, it's not. We just have to drive across the continent to the Mojave Desert and shoot it there. And that's not so tough.

Tonight I got a pizza and watched The Lion King. According to the Lion King character personality quiz on the DVD, I'm most like Simba. Which I guess I already knew, what with the whole being in love with Nala thing.

Ugh. It's November already. In spite of having worked on 2 flicks today, I feel woefully unproductive.

....Pirate!
Nov 1 2003 - 2:44 a.m.

I gotta say. I've been doing costumes for a long, long time. I am a costume whore. I wear Indiana Jones' jacket as part of my regular wardrobe. I wear an E.R. scrub top on Thursdays. I wear Survivor appareil when engaging in sporting events. And I stride the streets of Toronto in Jedi robes any time they think to release a Star Wars flick.

But I am so proud of myself tonight.

My Jack Sparrow costume kicked serious hard ass. To those who doubted me (including myself), I told you I had mad skills. Even as recently as Tuesday, I was thinking, it just wasn't going to be that good. It would be passable, but not great. Well fuck that: it was awesome. Pure, bug-shagging awesome.

Many thanks to Courtney, who got me started, and Mark, who finished me off. Behold the gallery by clicking the morphy-face:

And it's nothing short of amazing how many friends you make when you ride the TTC dressed as a pirate. I met this one dude, he was dressed as a used tampon. And this other girl, she was totally onto my scene... too bad about the high school thing. And Pussy! Where did you run off to, Pussy? And Superman. And Supergirl, come to think of it! Everyone's super. I've had rum.

Happy Hallowe'en again everyone! It's the bestest day of the whole darn year. I think there needs to be more costume-themed holidays. We could make Christmas costume-themed, couldn't we?

Anyways. Thank Christ the beard comes off altogether tomorrow - although I'll admit, the Shakespeare in Love look has its levels of cool. But first, I've got a 5-year-overdue appointment with one Mr. Bob Ross....

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