Flavours of the Month: April 2010...

Continuing on from the end of March, I finished off the DVD for Tremors: The Series - it was an enjoyable show, if a bit under-funded, and you do miss Burt Gummer in the last couple of episodes (presumably off filming Tremors 4 at the time), but yeah - it's a fun show for the Tremors franchise fans.

In full-on Tremors mode I toured through the four movies again - the original is a classic with perfect pacing and brilliant lines of dialogue, the second is a riotous action-packed romp, the third is weak on the production front but affords us plenty of quality Burt Gummer fun and returns us to Perfection all these years later. Tremors 4, meanwhile, was a flick I didn't like at all the first time around, but six years later giving it a second chance I do like it. It is a bit of a let down in some respects, but the production value is great (and kicks the ass of Tremors 3 in that respect) and on its own terms it's actually pretty good. I do hope that Tremors 5 does happen ... I'm eagerly awaiting a new slice of Burt Gummer action!

Other viewing experiences this month have included The Mist (ruddy good monster movie Stephen King adaptation, which has gotten me in the mood for Alan Wake, oddly enough, and The Walking Dead, which is being brought to us by Darabont) ... then Funny People (enjoyed it more on its own terms this time around, and the DVD is plenty enjoyable), then Poultrygeist (gory Troma fun - although from the making-of I'm still astonished they're this disorganised and prone to production-haulting bickering after 35 years of filmmaking) ... *gasps for air* ... and then, plucked from my DVD shelf and blown-free of dust, the Soderbergh movie Full Frontal, and all-over-the-place Japanese zombie movie Wild Zero.

I watched Full Frontal as part of my film degree when we were discussing the Dogme 95 Manifesto (we also watched Festen), and Soderbergh's flick while initially slow to get going, and only vaguely living up to the Dogme 95 mindset, is actually quite an intriguing movie. The first twenty minutes bored the pants off me, but then I found myself getting quite into it ... so it was fun to have a bit of a nostalgia trip back to 2002/2003.

I finished off Assassin's Creed 2, which was ruddy good fun ... aside from a few niggles - including all those annoying NPCs carrying boxes, or playing guitars and getting in your way, or that your Villa chest can only carry about 55,000 florins but I can lug about 650,000+ just fine on my person ... silly, silly, silly. However, as I said, aside from a few dodgy little things here and there (including some small, but undercooked gameplay mechanics or the odd mission - such as "CTF"), it was a ruddy fun game - and a breath of fresh air into my sandbox gaming, being that you're yomping around 15th Century Italy.

Naturally, being a Brit, there's also been a lot of General Election based chit-chat, and I've found myself exhausted by it all quite quickly (as have friends of mine who are interested in politics - cue endless and fruitless political arguments between us all, which we all decided were more annoying than anything productive - best to remain friends, you know?) ... anyway, I've found myself utterly turned off by BBC News and Sky News - their obsession with the three leaders and nothing else (*ahem* what about the hundreds of constituencies and local issues up and down the nation?!) ... indeed, Sky News' coverage of their hosted debate was ludicrous and nothing short of masturbatory ... ... the "meeja narrative" has also been extremely evident in the last couple of weeks. How about reporting FACTS, rather than the opinions of the 24 hour news channels? The constant re-framing (or "spinning") of what's actually going on - into some warped, non-sensical hodge-podge of time wasting - has been a total turn off. As such I'm sticking with newspapers and blogs, because 24 hours news is (mostly) just pathetic and self-involved (and it has been for a very long time).

Finally, I got to check out In The Shadow of the Moon on telly the other day, and it was a really compelling examination of how mankind got to the moon, and the men who took us all there. Fascinating stuff. If only mankind still did things as boundary-pushing as that these days...

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.