Flavours of the Month: June 2010...

Continuing on from last month, my obsession with Prison Break Season One exploded and I'm now eager to see the remaining three seasons. Initially I was sceptical as it does take a good four or five episodes to get you into the groove of the show, but after that you're totally sucked in and fascinated by how every single problem that arises gets solved ... and the last two episodes are nothing but awesome.

I read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, as I'm a big fan of the film adaptation, and naturally it was ruddy great, and then I simply had to watch the movie yet again - inspiring another mini-Cusack fest complimented by another viewing of Grosse Pointe Blank.

There's been a lot of script writing going on, what with Summer Road (comedy drama, now onto Draft 2.2) and Allen Bridge (drama mystery with a somewhat supernatural tint, now in the planning stages).

I also got the Season 1 through 3 box set of Robot Chicken, so it was nothing but that for a couple of weeks as I gorged myself on the extra features - and yes, season 4 is pre-ordered.

I finished Red Dead Redemption, which was a ruddy good game, and is Rockstar's best game to date, I'd have to say. You really care about John Marston and you end up caring about his family too, and what's more you really feel involved in the setting - that of the dying days of the wild west - and wow, the ending really packs a punch (just remember, the game ain't over till you've seen the credits roll). Speaking of the credits, the soundtrack to the game is tip-top, especially those two tracks on the credits which leave a memorable mark in the context of the ending.

As such, there has been a bit of a soundtrack festival on my CD changer - the soundtracks to Red Dead Redemption, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, and The Road - two are westerns, two are by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, and all three are excellent.

Finally, a hot topic for discussion over on Homepage of the Dead at the moment is the forthcoming TV series The Walking Dead, and having never read the source material before, I've now gone and gotten myself into that. At the time of writing I've read Vol. 1 "Days Gone Bye", and I've just started Vol. 2 "Miles Behind Us".

...

And there we have it, a whole year's worth of Flavours of the Month - to see the first one, follow this link:
http://deadshed.blogspot.com/2009/07/flavours-of-month-junejuly-2009.html

Say Anything...

I had a bit of a John Cusack movie fest a few weeks ago, and I spoke about how I got Better Off Dead, and Say Anything mixed up. I was looking for 'the movie with the ghetto blaster above the head' moment, and got my wires crossed and saw Better Off Dead - fortunately, that was a good little flick.

Anyway, Say Anything was on Channel 4 the other night and I ended up watching the whole thing before bed on Sunday night. I had intended to just watch it in stages, but by the time I was half way through I was so invested in the characters that I just kept going.

It's a cracking film, it really is. It's well observed with detailed characters, and as you should all know by now (as I've said it a bunch of times) anything with John Cusack in it is worth seeing (it's why I'll probably end up going to see 2012 soon - well, that and simply wanting to see stuff fall over for two hours).

I found myself connected to these characters, and it made me yearn for my teenage/student years. Little moments here and there reminding me of those years gone by, all delivered spot-on by Cusack who - as usual - gave an honest and inspiring performance. It almost feels like a forerunner to High Fidelity which came along a decade later, and that's no bad thing at all of course.

I also found it quite enthralling as I've been busy re-drafting a script (which I talked about the other day), and they both skirt similar territories - so Say Anything is helping to inspire me to finish off the last tweaks and start getting that script sent out there.

Say Anything gets a big old thumbs up from me. It's a 1980s teen-com with John Cusack in it. What's not to like?