book and movies

recently read Cormac McCarthy's the road. Good stuff. Terrifying scenes in that book. Optimism through Cynicism. The world is ruined. Envy the Dead. This is my favorite line from the novel- "There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground."

At first when I was reading this book I thought, "Why doesn;t McCarthy just blow his brains out?" But I don't think he really has a completely negative outlook on the world and its future. If he did, why write? and also why write this kind of book with its satirical themes. That is the writing of a cynnical man who does care for his world. I read Michael Chabon's revue of the book here it has a great passage in it about a book that is truly about the end of the world and an apocalypse like the one in McCarthy's novel would be a book just full of white pages. That's funny to me

I saw Margot at the Wedding. I loved it. A friend of mine said that Jack Black trying to act ruined the movie for him but I disagree. Sure another actor could have played it better, but he didn't bother me. I loved the lighting, the fact that it seems or with either is natural light. I also really loved Kidman in the film. Casting her as the jerkoff parent was hard to accept, which is really the same position the family is in. It is really hard to accept that a close family member is just a self centered asshole.

I'm Not There. a mess but an entertaining one. The movie is trying to be the contradicting, myth filled, confusing life of Bob Dylan, and I guess it does that. I just don;t know if the goals the film has are one's an audience really wants to watch. Cate Blanchett is great, she is asshole 'Don't Look Back' Bob Dylan in Fellini's 8 1/2. I can't say that setting this part of the film on the sets of another film really did much for me- I see the connection. I just don't care. The story between Heath Ledger and the pretty french girl was well done also- I just don;t know what it really has to do with Dylan. Maybe it didn't feel like it fit because it told a story. I guess it si the kind of movie I say to see but I won;t ever watch it again.

THE ADVENTURE

Hello everyone,

it is time for you to begin to help Mike Brune's amazing short THE ADVENTURE
here is something you can put on your own blogs or mymspace pages to help us spread the good word:

COMING SOON!!! CLICK TO WATCH TRAILER

and on MySpace,

I can give you the HTML code for that if you just email me at alex@fakewoodwallpaper.com
just cut and paste it into your blog or MySpace and that it the beginning of what is sure to be a sweet ass festival run for Mr. Brune

The Adventure just got into a really great festival in Europe- I can't let the cat out of the bag yet but I will say that the fest is days after Sundance in Europe. So help us get some exposure by posting stuff about it around so more folks will find out.

2008 is the year of THE ADVENTURE!!

Color Correction

Yesterday I attended the color correction of Mike Brune's new short The Adventure. It looks pretty freaking sweet. Jon Peterson at Cinefilm did the color- he also did my (and many other people's) student film. He used the new Final Cut Color program. I don't think it is the program but the operator. I can't wait to see what festivals The Adventure plays. It is a hell of a short. There was also some talk about s

Speaking of festivals - bad segway - I received my volunteer packet for Sundance '08. that's right I will be staying in a hostel and doing the entire Sundance Film Festival this January. It's gonna be great. Hopefully I'll be attending a screening of The Adventure there too.

Right now I'm on set, yes I'm blogging on set. But the spots are about water conversation. I wonder if I can buy stock in water? That's the future, not oil or apple stock, but water. I want to be a Water Baron in the future.

HOLY SHIT!!!! I was talking about The Adventure and I just got a call. We got into a cool festival. not in the US. I'll keep you posted!

Asheville

Asheville is a cool town of for only one reason- they have BANNED chain anything from their downtown area. No Wal Mart, No Starbucks, none of that crap. That is awesome. I was there for a day because Blood Car won Runner Up for best feature film. We lost to Year of the Fish. We tied with Randy and the Mob for that award. When I got the award Don Mancini gave it to me- he wrote all the Child's Play movies (and he's a Blood Car fan) how cool is that?

That's a short blog. I'm tired, I actually got a job.

Iron Pan

Ever since I saw the myspace page for Snakes on a Train I think about how that movie got off the ground. I bet it was something like, "let's do that shit" Which is how I feel everything should go. And if the idea is good the person you're talking to should say, "Seriously? Somebody is gonna pay for that?"

That brings me to Iron Pan. Well, almost.

Mark Wynns had posted something about mockbusters that he read in the NY Times and I got to thinking about 'ol Snakes on a Train again and laughing. I think I read that and the next day Tony Holley and I were driving from Houston to Austin and I was on only a couple of hours sleep so I was idiot o'clock and I bounced around and ranted and we come up with Iron Pan.

In May Iron Man will be released. Will it be good? I doubt it but you never know, maybe someone won't fuck up a huge budget superhero movie. (yeah and maybe Pimento Cheese will taste good) so first watch the Iron Man trailer.

Now let me give you the pitch on Iron Pan. (I really should just be making this instead of blogging it but its 4:30am and I can't sleep so you get the chance to steal it from me)
it is about a cocky, alcoholic Iron Chef type guy. Well, he's a big shot and then some terrorists snatch him up and try to force him to make a dessert to kill the President. But he doesn't. He makes a frying pan. that's it, it is just a regular iron skillet. It looks like a regular skillet. He bonks people on the head with it, fights Mongols and ninjas and vikings, blocks bullets and all kinds of other dumber, dumb ass shit. But it's just a drunk with a pan. I'm just gonna shoot a trailer because really, I'm gonna need someone to shell out some cash to jam out a retarded feature about a drunk chef with a pan that has an adventure.

But if you saw that Iron Man trailer, Iron Pan could rock ass for about 124 seconds as a trailer. If you wanna help me get this monkey on a stick, gather up some funny shit and some ninja outfits and let's go.
A horse would be good too- for the Mongols. Just imagine someone saying the line, "I AM IRON PAN!" over and over and over and over

The $2,000 Nachos

That's Blood Car on the same Marquee as a Godard movie. That's pretty sweet company, eh?

My girlfriend and I walk everywhere we can, we live in a great area for it and driving a couple hundred yards is for assholes. So we're walking and I meet eyes with some random guy- I look at everyone- and he says "You want to buy a computer?" I think that its probably gonna be something stupid (I'm mac only) and I'll just walk away. So this guy pulls out a brand new 17-inch macbook pro. He asks for $100. $100!! I KNEW he had to have stolen it so I go ehhhhh and start to hand it back. He says, "Will you give me less?" and I say $50 and he says $60, so I buy it. Then as Katie and I are walking down the street she decides that if we find the owner and give them their computer we can probably restore someone's faith in humanity. So I found the owner's contact info in his address book, called him and told him I bought his macbook for $63 (the $3 was my ATM charge)
Here is a picture of him with his computer.

He was happy.

After he gave me the money I spent, his girlfriend bought us some nachos. I call them the $2,000 nachos. We didn't take a picture, we just ate them and watched the Indians play some more cruddy baseball against the Red Sox. I don't know who at MLB decided that fucking Dane Cook should be doing baseball promos, but he shouldn't be anywhere near them. Get that guy on a bus with that Albatross Kenny Lofton (he's more cursed than Wrigley Field) and drive it right up Barry Bonds ass and that will be a start to fixing baseball. You fix baseball and just watch everything else start to get in line. Give our national pastime back its dignity (from strike to juicing- things have been better) and then you'll see all these other problems fix themselves. I promise.

Saw Gone Baby Gone. Some great stuff, some shitty stuff but Ben Affleck should get to do another movie. Casey Affleck was, of course, great. I liked the movie because C Affleck plays a character that reminds me of Hammett. Always finishing the job he was hired to do, even though no one wants him too. I like the part of a detective story when everything seems wrapped up and then one small thing starts everything unravelling. 'something doesn't sit right with the gumshoe so he stirs up a bunch of shit that ruins everything for everyone, even him.

I also got this hammock up - safely now. I did have it tied to some crap and it fell on me several times but I got t fixed now.It is one bad ass hammock. It makes not having a job ok. not really ok, but not as bad.

The Assassination Of Jesse James

Holy shit this movie is great. I watched Chopper that night. Really interesting to see what this filmmaker like to focus on. After Adam Pinney saw the movie he said we shoulfdshoot a Beardman titled The Assassination of Adam Pinney by the Coward Beardman. I said ok- let's see if we do it. Our last effort at a short- Smelly Couch, was abandoned by me because it had funny parts, from Amber Nash, Katie Rowlett and Adam- basically everyone but me) but wasn't totally funny as a whole. Maybe it is, i don't know anymore. I also just saw Vanaja. Not really worth catching. Although I get the social side of the film, the person pulling the strings- Rajnesh Domalpalli- didn't really do it for me.