Kevin sent this in on Friday, and I almost spit water all over my workstation:
"I'll be honest, when that black guy said he would 'stop at nothing' to get change, it kind of scared me," local mechanic Phil Nighbert said. "Just leave me alone."
If this movie is half as good as the book, it'll be up there with Shaun of the Dead. The pedigree on this project is good; Max Brooks is Mel's son, and geeks will recognize J. Michael Straczynski from his work on "Babylon 5," as well as a celebrated stint writing "The Amazing Spider-Man."
The script review seems good; the description makes it sound a lot like Citizen Kate or Immortal Beloved, at least structurally. I still think it would have made for an amazing HBO miniseries, but I must admit I say that about a lot of properties these days. If the director they attach is good, this could be huge.
Exciting.
Living in West Hollywood, Tracy and I have gotten fairly used to urban noises, both traditional (police sirens, fire engines, traffic) and L.A.-specific (arguing Russian teenagers, arguing Russian old folks, muscle cars being worked on at 11 p.m.). And one of the big sources of noise is helicopters; news and police 'copters routinely prowl the skies above our house, following car chases, traffic accidents and jams, celebrities on the move, movies premieres, and who-knows-what. Even at their most intense — when it sounds like a chopper is about to land on our street — they usually go away before too long.
Somewhere between 5 and 6 this morning, the noise of helicopters became so loud Tracy and I both woke up. After attempting to sleep through it for almost an hour, I eventually admitted defeat, and went to the computer to find out what was going on. I couldn't find anything on local news sites or gossip columns; I assumed Paris Hilton was going back to jail or something and took a shower.
But that wasn't what happened. Leanne filled me in when I called her to arrange a carpool: police responded to a report of an "injured man," who apparently attack the officers on scene, stabbing one of them in the hand. The police then opened fire, killing the man.
After Leanne gave me that information, I found this report. Walking down the block, I could look up Curson and see the crime scene taped off a few streets away, and watch the officers working the scene.
Yikes. My initial reaction is to back the police up on this one; not knowing the full circumstances, I can only imagine how I'd react if someone came at me with a knife. That being said, it's a tragedy no matter what, and a little unsettling. This is the third violent death in the neighborhood in as many weeks; police killed another man in an altercation at the beginning of the month, and while Kevin and Sarah were here, an elderly man was stabbed to death not far from where we walked on our way to Pinks. Not a happy trend at all.
I still feel safe walking the streets, and believe our neighborhood to be a good and comfortable one. It just goes to show, things go wrong no matter where you are.
Asshole.
I'd love to say I was shocked and surprised, but after eight years, I'm not.
On a semi-related note, here's a post that I tried (and failed) to write last week.
I will add: since we entered Iraq on March 20, 2003, 4,000 American soldiers have been killed there. 43 days later, President Bush declared "major combat" to be over on May 1, 2003.
3861 of those deaths have occurred after that date in May.
That's over 96% of all American casualties in Iraq. All dead after our leader told the world "Mission accomplished." And that doesn't even begin to factor in the two orders of magnitude difference in Iraqi casualties.
Some accomplishment.
Take a look at this great interactive chart over at the New York Times, illustrating comparative revenue of feature films over the course of their theatrical releases.
Scroll all the way to the left, and then quickly scroll right. What do you notice? My eye is caught by how what start as small "bumps" in profitability turn into large spikes over the twenty years covered.
That's the trend we see today, where a movie makes the bulk of its money in its first week or two. No more "legs," no more long runs. Get a monstrous opening weekend that people will talk about (and which will encourage more people to check it out), and you can make $100 million with any shitty movie.
The color ratios (which correspond to how much money a movie makes) stay close to the same; I'd say that there are more upper-middle level films, but the difference appears to be minimal. What changes over the decades is less how much money is made, than how long it takes to make it.
Follow this link for a fun look at what the opening credits for Star Wars: A New Hope would have looked like if they were designed by the legendary Saul Bass.
I love it, even though the music is cheating a little bit; it would be interesting to see if a similar effect could have been achieved while still using John Williams' score.
Then again, quick looks at opening credits for Anatomy of a Murder and The Man with The Golden Arm show why the designer scored it as he did.
Other great works by Saul Bass (a small selection out of many): the openings of three very minor Alfred Hitchcock films; the openings of Casino and Bunny Lake Is Missing; a whole slew of wonderful movie posters; and the old AT&T logo.
While we're at it, check out an (arbitrary) compilation of "25 of the Best Title Sequences" (Part 1 and Part 2). I've always been a huge fan of the Soylent Green title style, which will creep up on you if you haven't seen it before. It's a fun collection of great sequences, and well worth the twenty minutes.
Enjoy the holiday everyone, in whatever way suits you best.
Just remember... nobody knows Easter like the Cadbury Bunny.
Regular readers and RSS subscribers will have noticed that there has been a fair amount of activity on the blog here today. This is a result of a "Perfect Storm" for blogging conditions.
You know what happens when you wait to long too post a good link?
Kottke posts it first.
Daniel passed along Michael Chabon's excellent essay on the nature of comic book superheroes and their costumes at the beginning of the month, which really struck my fancy.
We say “secret identity,” and adopt a series of cloaking strategies to preserve it, but what we are actually trying to conceal is a narrative: not who we are but the story of how we got that way—and, by implication, of all that we lacked, and all that we were not, before the spider bit us. Yet our costume conceals nothing, reveals everything: it is our secret skin, exposed and exposing us for all the world to see. Superheroism is a kind of transvestism; our superdrag serves at once to obscure the exterior self that no longer defines us while betraying, with half-unconscious panache, the truth of the story we carry in our hearts, the story of our transformation, of our story’s recommencement, of our rebirth into the world of adventure, of story itself.
Why must the movies I get excited for have their release dates pushed?
Spike Jonze, director of Being John Malkovitch and a bunch of trippy music videos, has been making a live-action film adaptation of Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are" for just over a year, but if this article speaks the truth, we won't be seeing it for almost two more years.
I don't know if the studio's (supposed) fears are justified or not; all I know is that the still accompanying the above article gets me more excited than most trailers do. If the FX live up to the promise of that single photograph, count me in.
A leaked clip circulated for a while; you can find it here. The performances are awful, and the suit doesn't look quite finished, but no worries, because Jonze said it was an FX demo, which makes sense. Either way, I love the feel of the clip, and look forward to more.
Some friends at work got to see the Pasadena screening CHUD mentions, and they were neither impressed, nor amused. Bummer. Here's to hoping that Jonze gets to make his movie, even if it means reshoots.
Because, dammit, I want to see it!
Brett found this page, which offers a sneak peek at the upcoming animated anthology "Batman: Gotham Knight." Much like "The Animatrix," it's a series of short animated films that Warner Brothers is commissioning to fill in the storytelling gap between 2005's Batman Begins and the upcoming The Dark Knight.
It's being made by Bruce Timm, the genius behind a whole slew of DC Comic animated television shows and direct-to-video movies. I was always a big fan of "Batman: The Animated Series," which in many ways is still the best film version of Batman yet. And, lucky me, Kevin Conroy, the voice of Batman/Bruce Wayne on that series, will be voicing the titular hero for "Gotham Knight."
Brilliant idea, and I can't wait to see it. The great news is, although it's direct-to-DVD, it will also be coming out on Blu-ray, which is a real treat.
The name "Gotham Knight," however, always ends up being "Gotham Knights" in my head, which leads me to thinking about "Baywatch Nights," which is something best never done. Ah well.
I am always behind the musical trends: I depend on people like Will and Kevin to keep me up-to-date on what's happening in modern music.
So it's no surprise that I only discovered Vampire Weekend yesterday, over at Deus Ex Malcontent.
Gotta say, I like the music, and love the video. It manages to take the Michel Gondry "Around The World" video style and do something new with it. It feels familiar and fresh without being derivative.
Not ground breaking in any sense, but worlds better than this garbage.
