Flavours of the Month: November 2013...

LOOKS:

Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (Blu-Ray/DVD) - an exhaustive seven hour documentary on the entire Friday the 13th franchise. It's a shame that an early stab at covering the series ("His Name Was Jason", by some of the same people) recurs so frequently here - pre-existing interview footage is used liberally. However, even if you're familiar with HNWJ, you're in for a real treat (particularly with fresh interviews and rare clips). Based on the exceedingly excellent book of the same name by Peter M. Bracke.

Click "READ MORE" below for more looks, sounds, vibes & flavours for my November 2013...


Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy (DVD) - the guys over at 1428 Films have fast gained a reputation for producing must-see horror documentaries. The above "Crystal Lake Memories", as well as "More Brains: A Return to the Living Dead", both followed this detailed, entertaining, and quite candid examination of the A Nightmare On Elm Street franchise. I'm not so well-versed in the ANOES series (I've always been a Jason guy, myself) - but I've always dug the flicks nonetheless (1 and 3 are my favourites). Fascinating stuff for horror fans.

Fresh Meat Series 3 - the up-surge in quality during the second series hasn't been lost, so that's very good to see. On the other hand it does remind me just how long it's been since I was at university...!

The Walking Dead Season 4 - still on, still obsessing about it, still doing memes.

Seinfeld - two episodes a week on Sky Atlantic and I've finally just finished all nine seasons. Legendary laughs that had an inauspicious start (season one is pretty rough when you look back on it).

Charley Boorman's USA Adventure - more fun travels from the everyman explorer. They certainly don't have much luck when it comes to boats, do they?

Doctor Who - "An Adventure in Space and Time", and "The Day of the Doctor". It's all been 50th Anniversary fever on the BBC, but with recent years of Dr Who proving to be a decidedly mixed bag, I wasn't excited at all for the anniversary show. I'm pleased to say, though, that I thoroughly enjoyed it - and the tie-in dramatisation of the first years of the show was a fantastic piece of drama.

Pacific Rim (Blu-Ray) - what's not to like about a massive robot twatting massive monster in the face with a container ship?!


SOUNDS:

Alice Cooper "Spark in the Dark", "Brutal Planet", "Dragontown", "Theatre of Death: Live At Hammersmith 2009"

Dragon Sound "Friends (Forever)" - ridiculously cheesy, ridiculously catchy, ridiculously up-beat.

M83 "You And The Night"

M83 "Oblivion" Soundtrack

Green Day "Dookie", "Insomniac", "Nimrod", "Warning"


VIBES & FLAVOURS:

James Ellroy "White Jazz" - a punchy and disturbing speed-run finale to the 'L.A. Quartet'.

"Eyes In Your Window" - I'm currently in-between scripts at the moment, so I figured it was a good time to go back to my voyeur-tinged semi-supernatural drama to spruce it up a bit. The version from the beginning of 2013 was clocking in at 54 pages (and was my first stab at the television drama format) ... and on the first fresh pass through the script I hacked out 10, yes TEN, pages of extraneous prose and unnecessary scene extensions. It's kind of depressing to go back to an old script that you had so much passion for and discover that there's so much you can do better ... but then when you think about it for a second you realise that's a good thing - you're better, even much better, at writing now than you were then. Freshening-up "Eyes In Your Window" is a side-task, there's no point devoting too much time to going over it, but I still feel I owe it to the script. It's good to go about 'bringing it up to standard' (relatively speaking at least).

"Dug Deep" - I stumbled across a competition a British production company were running where they were looking for full scripts - or treatments - for low budget horror films. I didn't have any scripts suitable, but I did have a solid little idea stashed away in an ideas book from a good while ago. I dug that out and I've been bashing away at it to produce a 'treatment' for it. It's more work than you initially think - you're essentially dreaming up the entire script, minus the dialogue, and then you stop short of actually writing it in-full. It's good to get what was just a vague idea knocked into some form - I'll have a treatment in my back-pocket, and it's another test to help improve general writing skills. I'm pretty keen on the idea itself and think it'd make a groovy little low budget chiller.

The Walking Dead Volume 19 "The March to War" - it's all about to kick off between Team Rick, his allies, and the new big bad guy "Negan" (who is quite an entertaining villain). I only keep up with the comics via the trade paperbacks (released every six months), so it's a slightly disjointed way to keep up with events, but it's about to go off in a big way ... now, will it be another six months, or perhaps three, seeing as they're going through a double-speed publishing cycle for the 10th anniversary? Time will tell.