Flavours of the Month: February 2019...

Diving into Netflix, a phoenix rising, and killer convos are just some of what's been setting the tone of my February 2019...

Click "READ MORE" below to see this month's looks, sounds, vibes & flavours...

Flavours of the Month: October 2013...

LOOKS:

South Park Season 17 - recent seasons have seen a dip in quality, or perhaps expectations got in the way. Now though, after a slightly extended hiatus, we've had five good ones in a row - perhaps the apparent tweaks to how the show is written have paid off. Hopefully this upswing is set to continue.

The Walking Dead Season 3 (Blu-Ray) - TWD in HD, yes please. It's a shame there weren't more extras (and why they didn't include the making of featurettes AMC put on YouTube is anyone's guess), although I am yet to listen to the commentaries. There are some issues with the third season, mostly confined to the back half of the season - most specifically episodes 3x11, 3x13 and most especially 3x14, whereby pacing became incredibly mixed (both inside each episode, and across the overall arc of the season). I wrote on Homepage of the Dead about how some of these problems could have been tweaked. Not enough to sink the season by any stretch of the imagination, but they were unfortunate mis-steps in an otherwise satisfying season.

Click "READ MORE" below for more looks, sounds, vibes and flavours...

Flavours of the Month: March 2012...

LOOKS:

The Walking Dead Season 2 - the second half of season two has been a storming success with Glenn Mazzara as the new showrunner. The scale of the look of the show has expanded, the pacing has been perfected, the drama has been ramped up even more, and boy-oh-boy did we zed-heads get some amazing zombie action too. I absolutely cannot wait for season three!

Deadwood - spotted it on sale, so figured I'd give it a spin and now I love this show. The first season is superb, as is the second (even if the dialogue became overly complicated and verbose ... as if the writers ran every word through a thesaurus), and while the third season lacks some of the propulsion and intrigue of the first two seasons (until the final three episodes when it gets nail-bitingly tense), you're so invested in the town and its residents, you don't mind that the final season has been a slower-paced affair with several vague subplots that never really developed. An excellent show all-round and I dearly hope we can finally get the much-talked-about, but never realised (thus far), TV movies that were intended to wrap up the storylines properly.

The Evil Dead - I've got it twice on VHS (cut & uncut), once on DVD (the 'Book of the Dead' edition), and now I've got it on Blu-Ray. It's a bit of an annoyance that we in Region B didn't get the original aspect ratio and a few other additional extras (as found on the now out of print limited edition that Region A got), but it's a spiffing way to catch up on some missed extra features from releases past, and get a remarkably good-looking spruce-up of the print.

Flavours of the Month: April 2011...

LOOKS:

Hot Tub Time Machine - still a bloody good laugh. "Great White Buffalo ... Great White Buffalo ... Great White Buffalo."

Event Horizon - I hadn't seen this for years, so it was a nostalgia trip as I used to watch this all the time when I was in high school (when it originally came out). Me and my mates loved it, and the fact that it featured "Funky Shit" by The Prodigy made it all the more appealing to us. I tell you what as well, it's a damn sight better than Pandorum, that's for sure.

Blue Velvet - there's a certain tone and vibe to a David Lynch project that makes them stand out from the crowd, and Blue Velvet is one of his strongest films. I'm rather looking forward to the Blu-Ray release, now that a whole load of deleted content has been recently discovered.

Jackass - I had another skim through the Jackass flicks, being that the third one recently came out on home video, for old times' sake. Now roll on whenever Jackass 3.5 comes out.

Mulholland Drive - I'd not seen it until this month, but the Blu-Ray was released not too long ago, and coming hot on the heels of another viewing of Blue Velvet, it felt like the right time. It looks nothing short of seductive on Blu-Ray, and the extra features (which are mostly in French, somewhat curiously) are intriguing - particularly the one that uses Lynch's own list of 10 clues to decipher what the movie is (most likely) about. I loved it.

MacGruber - I'm totally unfamiliar with the SNL sketch on which this is based, but we laughed hard at the cinema when we went to see it, and I certainly enjoyed it a second time around. "KFBR 392, KFBR 392, KFBR 392."

Iron Man 2 - it was about a year ago that we saw this in the cinema, and we were insanely psyched to see it. It's a shame then that it just didn't live up to the excellent trailer, nor the very enjoyable and well paced first movie. The sequel's pace is too uneven, the final battle with Vanko is bizarrely short, and it gets a bit distracted by establishing the wider Avengers franchise. There's still some cool action, but here's hoping that the third movie - apparently under the tutelage of Shane Black - re-asserts the quality factor of the first flick.

SOUNDS:

CKY "An Answer Can Be Found" - I was a little bet let down by this album back in 2005, but it's definitely better than I remembered it as being. However, Infiltrate Destroy Rebuild, and Carver City, were both superior albums in my view.

The Prodigy "Invaders Must Die" - I think it was the use of "Run With The Wolves" in the trailer for Paul that inspired me to give this a few more spins.

Angelo Badalamenti & BlueBob - there's something about the vibe, that music produced for David Lynch projects, gives off that helps get my mind into a certain place that helps me write.

Foo Fighters "Wasting Light" - after being a little bit underwhelmed by their last two albums (although I still enjoyed them, just not as much as their 2nd, 3rd and 4th outings), this is a return to form in my view. A stripped back sound with catchy songs. Make sure you check out the 'Live at 606' version of the album on the band's official YouTube channel.

Scream 2 - I gave the soundtrack CD, which I bought back in 1999, another spin after seeing Scream 4 in the cinema. It's a rather mixed album - the good comes in the form of "Eyes of Sand" (Tonic), "Dear Lover" (Foo Fighters), "Red Right Hand" (Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds), "I Think I Love You" (Less Than Jake) and "She Said" (Collective Soul) ... but the bad comes in the form of the absolutely dreadful opener "Scream" (Master P), and a series of mediocre offerings filling out the rest.

White Zombie "Astro-Creep:2000", and "La Sexorcisto: Devil Music Vol. 1" - the former is definitely my favourite White Zombie outing. Every now and then I swing by these albums in my collection and give them another spin.

VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Brownies & Apple Juice - a recurring snack choice for this month.

Battlefield Bad Company 2 - it's been a while since it was released, but I got around to it for the PC. It's good fun with some pretty cool levels and a nice sense of scale. Plus, naturally, the sound design is superb, and how could you not enjoy blowing holes in buildings and then rinsing the military occupants with bullets?

Hobo With A Shotgun - trailer contests, trailers, featurettes, music, there's been a decided Hobo vibe to this month.

Allen Bridge - having broken the back of the central idea (which originated in June 2010), I finally got into writing it, and as you'll have noticed here on the blog, I've been doing a series of posts specifically about it. Inspiration has come in the form of Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks, and the music connected to those flicks, but that's not to say that this drama mystery of mine is particularly Lynchian. Those just happened to be the influences that got my mind into a particular space that allowed me to head off into my own directions and generally set a sort of tone ... if that makes sense. Continue to follow my progress with this script here on the blog.

Red Dead Redemption - replaying the story missions, ahead of L.A. Noire out later in May, I really enjoyed heading back to the dying days of the wild west with John Marston. It's possibly the best thing that Rockstar have thus far produced, even if certain elements feel very familiar from the likes of GTA.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - I've seen Blade Runner numerous times over the years, but I've never read the book. Now though I'm into the second half and I'm really enjoying it - especially as it's decidedly different to the film, so it's pretty cool to see how Blade Runner developed out of Philip K. Dick's android hunting paranoid vision.

Quiz Cocktail Supreme - it's that time of year when spring is slowly morphing into summer, and that means cider and pub quizzes. Teaming up with some chums of mine, with a name inspired by a Jackass 3D skit, we've been doing better than we thought we might.

The Royal Wedding - while I wasn't all super-psyched about it, or especially looking forward to it, I remain in favour of the Royal Family for numerous reasons (which I've gotten into elsewhere, so I won't get into it here). I ended up watching the whole thing and actually quite enjoyed it, particularly for the sheer military precision and organisation of the entire event. Besides, it's not often that an event like this happens, and we Brits are reserved in our patriotism - saving it up for grand gestures and events, such as this, every once in a while - and we really show a global audience (estimated at two billion) just how to pull off pageantry properly.

Flavours of the Month: March 2011...

LOOKS:

Born To Kill? - During my formative years, and being one of those teens who was obsessed with horror movies (not an awful lot has changed in the intervening years, then), I used to watch documentaries on Channel 5 about notorious serial killers - the real-life inspirations to some of the horror movies I would watch. This was back when Channel 5 was brand new and pretty much only showed softcore porn movies and aforementioned killer docs ... but fast forwarding to now I discovered, thanks to Sky Anytime, a series that began airing on the Crime & Investigation Channel about serial killers, ultimately concluding whether they were born to do the things they did or not. It's a fascinating series, although the constant re-use of certain footage and photos does begin to grate on the odd occasion.

Glory Daze - Apparently this comedy series about 1980s fraternity life isn't getting a second season, and you can kind of understand why, but at the same time - so far at least - it's an enjoyable enough distraction.

Shutter Island - Early in the month it was put on Sky Premiere so I figured I'd give it a third viewing, and sure enough there were still things that I was picking up that I'd missed the first two times around. I'm really quite fond of this film.

Nedroid, and Romantically Apocalyptic web comics - I'm a big fan of the Cyanide & Happiness web comic, and through them I was introduced to these two other web comics which both tickled me. Particularly the latter, which is beautifully crafted in its illustration of a whimsical, semi-deluded air to an apocalypse.

SOUNDS:

Alan Wake OST - I find this soundtrack helps me get my head into the right tone of late, as I have been mapping out my next feature length script "Allen Bridge".

Staind "Break The Cycle", and "14 Shades of Grey" - Perusing my CD collection I rediscovered these sitting way down at the bottom of the stack, having got them the best part of a decade ago. So I gave them another spin for old time's sake.

CKY Infiltrate Destroy Rebuild - I love me some CKY, I even got to see them live at my University (it was a bloody good show, too), and with their newest track "Afterworld" getting a lot of airing on my playlist, I returned to this spiffing album (the video version of the album is also bloody good).

VIBES & FLAVOURS:

Allen Bridge - My next feature length script, and I'm really planning-the-hell out of it. Characterisation, town history, motivations, impediments, the three-act-structure - the lot. I'm getting close to finishing the prep work - which has been handled on-and-off over the last 10 months (I found myself having fits-and-starts of productivity with interluded bouts of struggling) - and in the past month I've really broken the back of this thing and explored entirely new territory that I never considered when I first came up with the idea. It's been like taking a lump of clay and crafting it into a sculpture, as what was once a fairly unclear vision has evolved into a deeply considered project. Indeed I plan to follow the writing process on this blog as I go, so keep an eye out for that.

Project Gotham Racing 4 - Lacking any new games to play (plenty of interesting ones are out there, but certainly not at prices I'm willing to pay for them), I broke the cycle of first-and-third-person-shooters, and sandboxers, by returning to good old PGR.

The next educational DVD project - On the topic of Abortion, this will be the next series of educational films that I'll be putting together, similar to the likes of Just War (which was screened at the Borderlines Film Festival this month), so it's been all-hands-on-deck to gather enough footage and photographs to turn the words in the script into moving images. Naturally with a topic such as this, finding footage can be a bit of a struggle, and so we'll be going for a slightly more abstract and metaphorical approach this time around. For me as the editor it's shaping up to be an intriguing visual challenge.