Flavours of the Month: March 2010...

Another month comes to a close, so that means another round of Flavours of the Month.

Technically the very end of February, but nevertheless, the month kicked off with a Crazies vibe, checking out the actually-quite-good remake of Romero's 1973 infection shocker at the cinema before returning home to give the original movie another spin (a movie which gets better each time I see it).

Moving swiftly on I finally got around to reading Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas, which I bought months ago but have only just gotten to after a stack of other books from Christmas had shrunk down a bit. I'd already seen the Gilliam film version (which is bloody brilliant in itself), but it was great to read the absolutely bonkers source material. Naturally a re-watch of the film was in order, but not only that, it was Knox's birthday (he who plays Zombie Man) and he was having a Vegas-themed fancy dress bash - as such I donned the key apparel to outfit myself as Hunter S. Thompson.

There's been a bit of a Jason Vorhees vibe to March as well, with a bargain bin priced DVD viewing of the okay remake, and another spin of the franchise documentary His Name Was Jason.

It's been a strong month for editing, with "Just War" being the latest educational DVD project I've cut together, and I have to say the muse has most definitely been with me. I feel like my editing stamina has increased, I've even become oddly addicted to trying out nifty little ideas throughout and trying out new tricks. I also think that "Just War" features some of my best editing - we've always aimed to produce visually stimulating films (and constant feedback from the customers confirms our success in achieving that goal), and "Just War" is our most visually stimulating educational project to date. The idea being, of course, is that if you present something in an intriguing and arresting manner, you'll get the kids to pay attention to the information being imparted via the voice overs.

As near as makes no difference, two years and one month since my Xbox360 first broke (total video failure, 9 months after purchasing it), it conked out for a second time (total video failure again, plus the disc drive was showing its age). Within a week my console had been picked up and a 'new refurb' (i.e. not a used refurb, but not brand new console either) had arrived. Seems to be running fine, and the disc drive is certainly a considerable improvement over the one with my original console ... as such I'm now gradually picking my way through 15th Century Italy in Assassin's Creed II, which I have to say is quite a spiffing game.

Finally, having discovered that Tremors: The Series had only just been released, I snapped up the DVD and have been making my way through the episodes (that I fondly remember seeing on the Sci-Fi channel years ago). I love the Tremors franchise (well, part 4 was wholly unnecessary) and I'm eagerly awaiting the rumoured Tremors 5, so I'm thoroughly enjoying getting to see the series all over again.

Well there we go, that's it for March as I wrap up editing on a couple of projects and seek to knuckle down and get the character arcs fully fleshed out for my next script, which has - I must admit - taken a bit of a back seat this month what with all this editing that's been going on. Hopefully in the coming weeks I can say I've made some real progress on that script, but we'll have to see.