ANGER!!

My next film is about anger, and I found this inspirational.









thnx roo

Film Festival

$10,000 grand prize for best Christian film? I'm there!

independentchristianfilms.com

Christians are SCARY

From an article on the Michael Bay site..."Platinum Dunes Productions scored monster returns with the 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which cost $9.5 million to make and scared up more than $80 million in domestic grosses (and gross-outs). The company scored another hit with last month’s remake of The Amityville Horror, which won its opening weekend at the box office with $23.5 million. And none of these figures factor in the increasingly lucrative DVD market."

“...The horror product coming out of Asia challenges audiences,” says Bob Myerson, executive vice president of Tartan Films, which specializes in distributing Asian films in the United States. “Their plots are more sophisticated and therefore the payoff is more intense. American studios, in their constant search for new product, have taken notice.”


I think this article shows where Christians can have an edge too. We have some of the SCARIEST elements for a movie ever known to mankind. We should take advantage of it. The realm of evil is a reality. I have not seen "The Exorcists" nor do I think Christians should watch it, but from what I've heard it was scary when it came out. And a Christian "Exorcist" would be more impacting than that because we would show evil at its worst and good at its best and it would be REAL. Man that would be an awesome movie! I think I'm gonna make one. A really scary one. Possibly based on true stories. It's time for a good scary Christian movie!

Review: "The Island" is ENTERTAINING, AND KINDA SCARY

Just saw "The Island." Michael Bay is one of my favorite directors. However the ones that I consider his best are of course the original “Got Milk” commercial, “Bad Boys” “The Rock” and “Bad Boys 2.” “The Island” was all right. It was not spectacular as far as the action is concerned. The premise though was what was great, and no I'm not talking about the whole island thing cause that was pretty stupid. I'm talking about cloning people for parts. I had this idea a long time ago as I'm sure many people have, I'm glad someone made this movie because that means I now don’t need to make it now. :- )

The whole bit about the cloning was very scary and this is what I feel made the movie. There are a couple of scenes that make you cringe with fear because we all know this is coming.

I don’t know if they were shooting in HD or not but 60% of this movie is completely out of focus. And 90% of all the action scenes are way to shaky hand-held to tell what was going on. I hate it when they do this. I have realized though that Bay has a talent for making cars look like they are traveling a thousand miles per hour. All in all it was entertaining, not dazzling, but entertaining, and a bit scary.





By the way there are a bit of storyboards on the yahoo page. I love storyboards. Check em out.

Review: "Lay it Down" is REVOLTING and "Mercy Streets" is BEARABLE

Its no secret that Christian films have a knack for committing crimes against filmmaking. But I decided I should suck it up and watch what other “Christian” filmmakers had made. So I joined Netflix just to watch “Mercy Streets” and “Lay it Down.”

“Lay it Down” for those of you who don’t know, is a movie produced by John Hagee about racing cars. According to my Dad I should watch this because Hagee made it, and because they “flip cars in it and everything.” Well I got the movie and I watched it.

From the very first frame of this movie I felt as if they had stuck their arm down my throat and began pulling my entrails out through my mouth for 50 minutes straight. Yes that is the total run time 50 min. then when it hit me that this movie received significant funding, promotion, and distribution, I found the idea so revolting I vomited all over myself and almost drowned I'm my last meal.

Why? Why do Christians think these movies are good? Why are Christians so cheesy and so profoundly out of touch with modern civilization? WHY?


So once I cleaned my self up, I popped in “Mercy Streets” thinking to myself that I will give it 5 minutes to generate some kind of intrigue., before I turn it off. It stars David White.

David White is also in “SIX,” and it was terrible, and so was he. So I was not very anxious to watch this movie. Can you blame me I mean look at the poster! Doesn't the poster just grab your attention and make you want to see the film? This poster is the majority of the reason why I HAD NOT yet seen this movie. It’s CHEEESY. Really cheesy.

But I popped the movie in anyway and I must admit I wasn’t prepared for what happened. I actually began to find it mildly entertaining. It could be because I watched it directly after the revolting “lay it Down,” but I found it to be the best Christian movie I've seen yet (including "Left Behind"). Granted it still lacked elements and it was still way to preachy. But it seemed to be bearable. Surprisingly bearable. Except for some Christian-y unrealistic elements. And David White did a decent job. He played a bad guy pretty well. Better than a good guy. He was smoking though… does he smoke? Isn’t he supposed to be Christian? There is also drinking in it, by the Episcopal priest. I found that very annoying and pretentious. The fight scenes where laughable, I never once believed a single punch. Granted it is very difficult to do that. I think though this movie is a better movie for Christians, than it is for non Christians. We are still lacking in my opinion a good movie that you wont be ashamed to show your non-Christian friends.

PS. These posters are so terrible I am reluctant to even show them on my blog.

Ali Movie Review

I recently became a boxing fan, and with the DVD release of "Million dollar baby" I decided why not just make it a boxing night and get "Ali" also. Boy was that a mistake. Ali was an abomination to boxing, a mutilation of storytelling and a disgrace to Mohammed Ali. How did this movie get nominated for an Oscar?!! There is maybe 10 minutes total of boxing in this movie. I have seen Ali fight, and I saw the last fight in the movie the "Rumble in the Jungle" after seeing that fight on TV I was dazzled by Ali. I literally couldn't get over how amazing he was. The movie made that fight as fascinating as a slug marathon. As a matter of fact the whole movie felt like two hours of constipation.

Ali in essence had no plot. It had no purpose. It had no tension. It had no central question. It seemed to just be. It really didn't go anywhere and didn't know where it was going. The entire first act really isn’t even about Ali its about Malcolm X. who cares about Malcolm X we’ve seen that movie, and its WAY better than Ali. Then they kill MLK jr. why? What do we care about MLK jr? What does he have to do with Ali? Answer: nothing! This movie was like turd that floats on the surface of the water in the toilet for absolutely no reason. It just sits there and doesn't do anything. Try to flush it and he waits to the last possible second to finally get flushed. That is Ali. The floating turd that won’t flush.

Some Recent Sites Ive found

dailyscript.com - Site with Hollywood Scripts
ifp.org - Filmmaker site dont know if its good.
productionhub.com - Another filmmaker site dont know if its good either.
indietalk.com - Filmmaker site with shorts on it.
triggerstreet.com - Just in case you havent heard of it. You can feature your shorts and scripts and get others opinions.

Cool Animation

Really well done animation

Filmmaking Site

A site with some good stuff. The forum looks promising. Their short film enteries look sub par but "Number 6" had very good cinematography and poor directing. It seemed however, like it was the best one of the ones I watched.

It seems that student or amateur filmmakers have one thing in common, they cant or should I say don’t direct actors. I think this has a lot to do with the fact that people think that if they know the technical aspects of making a movie --like f-stop, or coverage—that this is all they need to know to make a movie. My first film I was afraid to talk to the actors but once I identified this, I worked on it and now I focus on performances just as much as anything else. Focusing on performances will dramatically increase the production value.

Watching Films With A Directors Eye

This is a short list of things to look for in a film from the book "Film Directing Fundamentals." I strongly recommend this book.

So here are the questions:

• Look for dramatic structure and the narrators voice
• Pick a scene watch it again why did it catch your attention?
• Why is it effective?
• Is it the staging?
• Is it the camera
• Draw a floor plan of the location
• Visualize the geography of location and placement of the camera within that place
• Keep track of where the camera is stationed
• Pay close attention to how the scene is introduced
• Figure out the camera setups
• Look for articulation of narrative beats
• Objective narrator
• Subjective voice
• Transitions
• Entrances
• Art direction
• Fulcrum
• Wants and spine
• Relation to other scenes
• What is the director trying to tell me?

Interesting Sites

-Weird Photographer-

- Pretty cool animated video-


-Compfused- a good source of random videos updated regularly.

Trailers

Some interesting trailers:

King Kong lots and lots of CG, its Peter Jackson though, I hear he’s a good director.
Dark Water not sure about this movie, but that last shot looked pretty cool.
The Devils Rejects I've never seen "House of 1000 Corpses" but this movie looks... disturbing. (What the heck? Was that nudity in the trailer?)
Fantastic Four it doesn’t matter how they cut or recut the trailer, this movie is gonna reek like a flatulent lactose intolerant dairy cow.
The Man stupid, stupid, stupid.
The Island I love Michael Bay, however this movie doesn’t look very good. It looks like the same car chase scene as Bad Boys2 with a different plot.
Millions looks cool, sappy, but a cool idea.
Da Vinci Code this is going to be bad for Christianity, its a good director too, Ron Howard (Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Edtv, Ransom, Apollo 13, Backdraft, Willow)