QT FEST - Day 4
Missed it, but it was The Gravy Train AKA The Dion Brothers, The Outfit, and The Muthers
April 28, 2006
April 27, 2006
QT FEST - Day 3
You know the drill, hit Ain't it Cool or Nick's review.
The night started out with Tim stalling because Tarantino was not there, but by the time he really started to move into real stall mode, QT popped up from the back of the theater.
Wipe Out
There is nothing like a good mafia film, especially if it comes from Italy. Using some bygone stars of hollywood yesteryear this film taught me that all women are sluts, well, maybe reinforced the notion. Ok, maybe not all women, but women that fall victim to Stockholm syndrome and drink a lot of whiskey. This girl is captured and she totally just hoe's out, then when she is rescued, she does it again for her rescuer. Moral of the story, if you like a girl, just kidnap her until she falls for you.
Nothing like a bit of kicking some klan booty. The story on this one was great, could be a comic book or something. A bunch of soldiers head back to their small town after the vietnam war and guess what they do, they drive around in a bus and beat up klansmen. Wardrobe was just great. While in Vietnam the soldiers were wearing these goofy green and orange camo fatigues that were jumpsuits. They were priceless. One of the best parts is when this guy kills a klansman and then steals his robe and starts taking out the other guys without them knowing.
April 26, 2006
QT FEST - Day 2
Once again for some kind of a real review, check out Ain’t It Cool News (although I disagree with the statement that the beer was "flowing like you wouldn’t believe" unless you thought it would be flowing like crazy).
This screening was out at the Glenn. Getting there was such as hassle as directions were poor, but luckily I called Daniel to figure it out. One of the reasons it was so difficult was because of FREAKING HUGE NEW DEVELOPMENT that was not there before. It really upset me, because I stood there on the property almost 6 years ago and was told by the developer that he bought the land surrounding his master-planned community so the land would never be spoiled with new projects . I should have known when he balked a bit at Roger's blueprints of a house that created more energy than it used because of the unattractiveness of the solar panels that were hidden in the roof. I guess if you are worried about how your house will look to low flying aircraft, then you are not the right kind of person to be building an environmentally friendly green house. Also he didn't like the Big Ass Fan in the living room. Well, enough venting, I'm sure he made plenty of money on the deal and is happy to be on my dead to me list.
Savage Seven
After seeing The Stunt Man, I was really looking forward to seeing another Richard Rush film. Richard Rush claims to have invented the rack focus (when focus goes from one thing in the frame to another), which is ubiquitous in filmmaking today. This biker film was great. Lots of rough and tumble action centering around a town of native americans that a land developer wanted kicked out to make way for a resort. Wait a minute, wtf. I didn't think of the connection until I started to write this. Alright, I'm all pissed again. Well, it's a pretty decent film with a good message. And that message is Bikers will mess things up if you hire them to run off a bunch of people, cause they will turn against you and everyone will end up dead.
QT serenaded the audience with the theme song to this film before hand. Maybe serenaded is the wrong word, more like mocked the living daylights out of the ridiculous lyrics that will be with the audience for the rest of their life. I didn't find this movie nearly as exciting as the 1st, but not every film can be great, especially in QT fest. The best thing about this movie was the lightning on screen and the lightning outside at the same time. It was crazy. This film taught me not to ask the mafia for money unless you are prepared to pay the consequences aka death.
Nick also has a nice rundown. And like him, or his friend really, I was pulled over by UTPD for rolling a stop sign on campus and all I could thing was "Just tell me one thing. Who do you hate the most? Is it me? Or these punks? Or yourself?"
April 25, 2006
QT FEST - Day 1
For a real review, maybe check out Ain’t It Cool News (I'm lazy, you know it) Snake in the Monkey's Shadow
Kiss the Girls and Make Them Die
So the best thing about this movie is the crazy similarities to Moonraker. The plot to take over the world is just genius. The villain plans to launch a satellite that will kill the sex drive of every man on the planet, while he of course will be safe in his underground bunker, and therefore he will be the only one that can repopulate the earth. That’s genius. I think it would go somewhere along the lines of “it’s for the good of the world babe.” And for some reason there is this running gag with bananas, got me, maybe a requirement to shoot in Brazil.
Talk about some kung-fu action. This film had an amazing fight seen between a real monkey and snake, where the main character learns, after being defeated by two snake style masters, that monkey beats snake. It makes you wonder how they did it, it looks like the python got a few good strikes on the monkey, but it didn’t die, it killed the snake, it was crazy. Guess there were no animal cruelty laws at that time, which makes for good filmmaking. The idea that the Drunken Master would have such an inept group of students was a little far fetched for me, but I guess he had to pay for his drinking habit and maybe the rich kids were good fighters, but they paid on time.
April 22, 2006
Red Time
STS vs Fusion
Is it just me or does the new Ford Fusion look a lot like the Cadillac STS?
April 21, 2006
ACL Fest
Austin City Limits Music Festival 
I've gotten my tickets, have you? All the cheap tickets are gone now, so jump on it if you want to go, else you'll be buying them off ebay or trading sex for them on craigslist. Check out the line up so far.
April 20, 2006
Camera Issues
Well, my Canon suffered the dreaded E18 error. Being out of warranty and purchased in France (so I doubt I have the proper documentation) I took the time and took it all apart. Amazingly I got it working again, but now the back panel does not function, so until I figure out how to fix that, all photos are taken with the flash. Well, at least it takes photos now.
Movable Type
Well, after trying Simple PHP Blog and just having all kinds of troubles with it, I switched to Movable Type and like it much better.
Besides some issues with pinging icerocket and indiewire
April 18, 2006
Hot Damn
It was 99 today and it hit that at 5pm.
That ice cream Cuban is holding in the picture below sure looks tasty.
Luckily the temperature tomorrow will be a temperate 87 for the high.
Sometimes I wonder how people lived in this state before a/c.
Hey Tony
Tonight I had the opportunity to meet Mark Cuban for the Master Class that I'm in with John Pierson.
He was a very dynamic speaker, and even if I didn't agree or if I got lost sometimes with the basketball conversation (let's face it, I'm no good at sports), I found myself agreeing with pretty much everything he said just because of his enthusiasm that he presents about every topic he touched on.
He spoke a bit about the controversy over the day and date stuff (THOSE ARE ALL SEPERATE LINKS PEOPLE!) dealing with I am a Sex Addict by Caveh Zahedi. I think the most interesting thing about what Mark is doing is the collapse of the window for distribution. If you don't know anything about it, it is basically coming out with a movie theatrically, on DVD, and on TV at the same time, but of course it is not that simple and he has been getting a bunch of slack from the studios, but it seems so obvious that collapsed windows for distribution is the way of the future and that Mark is on the bleeding edge.
He also talked about how one needs to be on top of their game, because there will always be people out there that are smarter than you, so you have to work harder than they will, something my father always told me, which always seemed to me to be the best advice.
I think he got a kick out of flightaware and my tracking of his flight, that or he was crept out, I can only imagine that Daniel will be getting some kind of email from him tomorrow.
After his conversation, we went over to Rudy's BBQ, I believe John has some kind of addiction to bbq and taking filmmakers to bbq, that’s OK though, he seems to be well on his way to be an honorary Texan. Mike Judge and Matt Dentler also made an appearance at Ruby's. Nick came also.
Maybe I will update more later, but I'm Gonna Git You, Sucka just came on, and I don't feel like TiVo'ing it and watching it tomorrow. I wonder if Keenen Ivory Wayans had anything to do with the new Scary Movie
livejournal
I'm done with it
All you livejournalers can add my new blog as a feed of livejournal from here
April 14, 2006
Easter bunny
I'll be in Houston this weekend for Easter.
For All Mankind
I just finished watching For All Mankind. It was an amazing conglomeration of film shot during the Apollo Program. The film has some really amazing shots that have become iconic in our culture about the space program. There is no real character development, so don't watch it thinking there will be some giant drama, like focusing on Apollo 13, because it focuses on the program as a whole and the individuals involved.
Al Reinert supposed watched over 6,000,000 feet of film for this movie, that's more than 1100 hours edited down to a very tight 80 minutes.
The amazing score was done by the wonderful Brian Eno and it just takes you into the world of space without you even really noticing it.
It was nominated for an Oscar, but lost out to Common Threads by Rob Epstein, a name that I have been hearing a lot lately since he might be doing a project in Austin.
April 13, 2006
New Blog
Well, I'm trying to update my old webpage, make in not suck so much, and since vanity pages pretty much suck the most, I'm thinking of just making it purely a blog, I guess we will see how this goes.