I love me a good poster as much as I do a good movie. Been a while since the artwork for a movie got me all stirred up, but this poster for THE AMERICAN is just about perfect:
I would have maybe added the word ‘motherfucker’ after the release date, but that’s all.
I was chatting on Twitter the other night how Matt Damon had kinda crept up on me as one of my favourite actors and as such he’s the anti-Clooney – George being an actor that I’ve been following closely since ER. They’re kinda linked because of the work they’ve done together and (especially) Soderbergh, but for some reason I’ve never given Damon the same kind of attention. Dumb of me.
Anyway… One of my fave Clooney turns comes in THE PEACEMAKER. It’s still the best thing Nicole Kidman’s been in and the car chase sequence that ends with Clooney putting a bullet in some bastard’s chest is the real precurser to both BOURNE and Craig’s Bond for badassery.
Badassery. I need to blog more just to get words like that out of my system.
THE PEACEMAKER also has one of my favourite onscreen relationships between the two leads. They get the whole movie out of the way and then only hint at the possibility of getting together in the movie’s coda. No shoehorning of romance for Mimi Leder.
Kinda wished I’d brought a copy with me on the train…
Anyway – this was just to give the bluetooth keyboard, iPad and mifi combo a test run in the wild when I’m actually on the move.
“You gotta hit some people in the head with an axe”. YELLOW SKY
Up at stupid o’clock. Even now it’s not quite 6am and I’m waiting for my first coffee of the day. I just left London on the 05.39 heading north. Never my favourite direction. Got an early morning meeting with a solicitor regarding my late mother’s estate and then lunch with her sister. Joy.
Things move on apace with SLINGERS. Caught up with Toby earlier in the week and Sleepydog are hoping to have a couple of announcements regarding the show in the run up to October.
Currently working on the second (or third, depending how you look at these things) pilot script and my feature stab at ‘monster in the house’ which isn’t set in a house and doesn’t really have a monster. Guys in LA seem to like the idea.
Aiming to be back in Hollywood once everyone is back from Comic-Con. Fun meetings lined up I’m told. We just stopped in Watford Junction and in a few hours I’ll be back in my home town. That should keep me grounded.
Few interesting things on the cards in London next week too so it’s all good.
The quote at the top of this post was already there when I opened this document and because of the way I expect the day to go it seemed apt. Have you seen YELLOW SKY? Brilliant western with Gregory Peck and Richard Widmark from around 1948. Highly recommended.
Stumbled across this while looking for something else:
That’s the first ever concept sketch of Junior (December 2008). I did have it as a Twitter background for a while until I started getting emails asking me about his metal penis.
I meant to post about Valhalla Rising a while back before things got crazy busy, but made a note to get something on here about the movie after I saw the frankly ridiculous packaging they’ve given the thing on DVD/BluRay here in the UK. Anyone buying it cold will think they’re in for a 300 style action fest rather than the minimalist, Aguirre, Wrath of God style film they’re actually purchasing.
I was blown away by Bronson (and in particular Tom Hardy), but Valhalla Rising is Nicolas Winding Refn’s best movie so far. Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis it is not:
Pusher aside I haven’t seen enough of Mads Mikkelsen’s Danish oputput (I’m fixing that) and he’s probably best known to mainstream audiences as the Bond villain in Casino Royale, but his silent role in Valhalla Rising is epic.
Funnily enough, all I could think about after first seeing the movie is how delicious Mikkelsen could be as Avon in a big screen Blakes Seven.
Following a second viewing of the movie I found out that Mikkelsen is set to appear in a remake of one of my favourite westerns, Cut Throats Nine. Now this is going to be interesting.
The remake is helmed by Rodrigo Gudiño, founder of Rue Morgue magazine and he’s also got Harvey Keitel on board.
Like I said… interesting.
Following the success of Inglourious Basterds it’s no surprise that more Grindhouse updates are on the horizon, but the great thing about these messy, but fun exploitation flicks is how ripe they are for reinvention. I’d hate to see a direct remake of something like Cut Throats Nine as that would be completely pointless, but if you take the premise and run with it you’re going to have a lot of fun. Here’s the original set up via IMDB:
1892: A wagon load of convicts on its way to prison inches its way through the northern mountains, escorted by a cavalry troop. They are suddenly and viciously attacked by a gang of bandits searching for rumoured gold within the convoy. Only a sergeant, his beautiful young daughter and a chain gang of seven of the most sadistic, murderous men alive survive the assault. Left without horses or a wagon, the sergeant forges ahead to get his prisoners to their destination, all the while protecting his daughter, watching out for the still pursuing bandits and trying to determine which one of the prisoners was the man who murdered his wife. To make matters worse, the criminals discover that the chain binding them together is made of the gold. Their desperate journey plunges our survivors into the furthest extremes of human savagery… choked, stabbed, shot, burned. And eaten.
It’s ticking all sorts of crazy boxes already, but alas the actual film is far from great. The premise though, gold chain and all, is beautiful.
As a cult movie it’s often characterised as a horror-western which it isn’t. It’s certainly Gothic, but sadly quite a few rungs below the almost-perfect The Great Silence and never gets close to the too-easily dismissed Ravenous. It has elements of both Euro-horror of the period and giallo so I guess its a true mongrel.
Weirdly what it reminds me most of is one of the missions in Red Dead Redemption.
I’m not a gamer. But I dabble and RDR was too good an idea to pass up on. If it had simply followed a bunch of generic western movie stereotypes I’d have still enjoyed it. What’s been surprising as I slowly unravel the narrative (I’ve just reached Mexico so have a ways to go) is not just how well the plot is put together, but how perfectly all the small side moments help make the world a real one. Before I started playing the game properly I would ride upon scenes of utter desolation – a man weeping over the dead body of a woman only to blow his own brains out before I could reach him or a cannibal about to gut his latest meal. This is far more Cormac McCarthy than Gary Cooper. Even taking flowers to a friend’s wife turns into a Psycho inspired episode of creepiness.
You also get to unload pistols into lots of unsavory types and there’s enough GTA-on-a-horse style mayhem to keep my inner-teenager happy. Mostly though I just explore the prairie hoping to run into James Earl Jones and Brad Dourif out camping or maybe a Confederate girls boarding school.
It’s that good.
Last month I started putting together a giallo inspired project of my own after being asked if I had anything up my sleeve for a certain A-list actor. I think the initial draft is probably too out there for my guys in LA, but it’s nice to have a little grind in my back pocket. Plus it seems to be coming full circle so you never know…
Frank Darabont and Gale Anne Hurd talking about The Walking Dead:
I love how seriously they’re taking this. I read the pilot script a while back and it was great. Very close to the original comic book and it’s in very safe hands.
Really looking forward to see this show shambling towards my jugular.
I’m about to go through my GReader and check in with what my friends have been up to. Talented fucks all, so no doubt there will be interesting stuff to link to.
First up though I should really mention that The F Word is looking for donations to help with its redesign. As I’ve been one of the most vocal attackers on its current soviet gulag style it’s only right that I throw some money their way and point you guys in their direction. I know that one of the reasons the F Word looks a tad old fashioned is that all involved are too busy actually doing stuff to worry too much about the online upkeep. That they’ve got the very cool folk from Quilted to fashion them a new site is wonderful news.
Out of all the blogs and online magazines I subscribe to I have to admit that The F Word is one of the few that would actually leave a hole behind if it folded. The work its co-operative of bloggers and feature writers do is incredibly important and I know that it’s not only a source of information and inspiration for women of all ages, but also provides a home for new writing talent. If you’ve only ever dipped into the blog then you should really dig into the features archive. One of the great things about the proposed redesign is that it will help bring all that content to the surface and hopefully encourage more writers and activists to join in with the ongoing work that the site champions.
Full disclosure: The current editor of The F Word is my partner, Jess McCabe, so I’m horribly biased, but also know first hand how much time and effort goes into the site. I honestly believe both the readers and the writers deserve this new design so if you can help with even a small donation that would be very cool. Thank you.
I was in San Francisco when the iPad launched so have been using one for a little while now and it’s a beautiful piece of kit. I thought it would fall between an iPhone and a notebook, but it’s actually something else. I’m still working out what exactly and that’s part of its charm.*
It’s a very real relief for the UK to finally catch up if only because using one in public was a signal for people to wander over to talk about it, ask me questions and give the damn thing a prod. Not that I really minded because it is such a fun device to show off. I loaded The Elements and Mirror’s Edge on there just to give people something to play with. But the honeymoon is over and the work is piling up so I’ve been looking for a way to use the iPad for more than just consuming content.
That’s been helped by the UK app store finally waking up and letting me get my hands on Pages and a few other essentials I was missing. Charlie Stross has more on the iPad as a writer’s tool here, but as ever I’m still waiting for a decent mobile FinalDraft style editor. We live in hope.
Today I organised all my current projects on it while reclining on the couch in a sun trap listening to Regina Spektor.
It’s a decadent bastard this thing.
I’m not reviewing the iPad itself. There are plenty of blogs that have done that and in way more detail than I’d care to get into. It’s not perfect, but I think Apple will have nailed it by the 3rd generation model and even then there will be no one forcing you to own one at gunpoint. Right now I’ve been using it in development meetings once a week or so and I haven’t missed having a laptop with me at all.
It never occurred to me to even consider a 3G model and I still think if you have a smart phone in your pocket and work/home Internet access then you don’t need one with anything more than wifi. But the nice folk at Three Mobile Buzz sent me one of their 3 MiFi dodah’s to play with for a few weeks and as soon as I got outside of London it was an absolute lifesaver.
Having a little web cloud above your head at all times is handy for many reasons, but the ability to have multiple devices (and people) connect has been the real winner for me. The first few days I only used the MiFi with the iPad, but it soon became part of my everyday kit and has so far got me out of jams when normally reliable wifi elsewhere has gone flaky and also kept me sane/connected following my mother’s funeral last week.
Your mileage may vary and there are other MiFi devices and providers out there, but I went cold turkey for less than an hour after returning my trial device and bought one of my own (PAYG) to replace it. Bottom line is it’s a neat piece of kit and you should certainly consider grabbing one.
Not going into specs and speeds – I use mine for email and web surfing on the move and it’s fine and dandy. Handles video with no stuttering which is nice and has no problem uploading pics to Twitter etc. While I haven’t looked into jail-breaking one I’m told it’s a simple enough thing to do if you’re that way inclined. I’ve gotten into the habit of turning mine on as I leave the house and popping it into my jacket pocket for the day.
As a bonus it also feels a little like a Type 1 phaser from Star Trek, but that’s probably not gonna swing it for you. Right?
*But you probably don’t want me to advise you on whether you need an iPad or not. I once bought a piece of kit with a completely indecipherable Japanese operating system because it looked cool. It still does *and* makes a great paperweight.
Outriders is one of those terms that I’ve been in love with for years and it would be great to say that when Jamillah approached me for help in coming up with a new name for the BBC’s Pods and Blogs show I immediately fired it at her.
The truth is that we spent time brainstorming some great (and not so great) titles when at some ungodly hour of the night she was the one who nudged me about outriders. It’s a term I’ve used more than once when describing anyone out on the edge of the mainstream doing interesting work and of course it was a perfect fit.
So to be completely honest it was Jamillah who put the new name in the target, but I’m quite happy to take the blame if anyone out there hates it. So far though the response seems very positive.
I was myself interviewed for Pods and Blogs a year or so ago with @documentally while helping raise awareness for Bletchley Park. My few minutes aside, the show has always championed those of us who are doing something ahead of the pack. So by definition:
A guide; an escort.
One that goes in advance; a forerunner.
It’s a fun place to live and even exploring the occasional dead end and dangerous route is vital to those that follow or simply decide to run in the opposite direction. One way or another most of the people I admire have been outriders and I’m proud as punch to have had a small hand in the evolution of a BBC show that itself lives out on the edge.
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