I just saw this show Yank! in NYC at the York Theater. If you’re up that way, you need to go check it out. It’s about two soldiers who fall in love during World War II and basically what that atmosphere was like, trying to not be gay in the army back then. [...]

Via Bill Cunningham’s Pulp 2.0, found this archive of cool photos of miniatures, all of which pretty much blow my mind. I love this kind of trickery. This is all work by a dude named Michael Paul Smith.

This is just genius stuff. I’d love to make something that requires miniatures some day. [...]

That’s right – I’m about to watch Wrong Turn 3 which, if you’re keeping count, is the third installment in the Wrong Turn series. Most people didn’t like the first movie. Loads more never even saw the second. And now here comes the third and, since it hasn’t been released yet, even [...]

I love gore. Not in real life, mind you. I mean, I have no problem with seeing a little blood, but real life guts I can do without. I’m actually fairly squeamish when it comes to actual injuries. But in a horror movie, I love it and always have. I [...]

Continuing where I left off…
Which brings us to ‘The Blair Witch Project’. I’m not sure there’s a horror movie with a lower-budget and a bigger response. The fact they were able to pull off such a gigantic prank for so long – that it was an actual documentary and this actually did happen [...]

So there’s a review for a movie called ‘Nightmare Castle’ up over at The DVD Lounge and if you look closely, you’ll see that it was written by me. If you have a second, click on over and check it out, maybe leave a comment or two and help support my pack-a-day DVD habit.
There [...]

Thinking about low-budget one location horror and how it gets made and how it gets made well. First movie that always comes to mind is ‘Evil Dead’, which is pretty genius as low-budget one location horror goes. There’s not a slow moment in it and most of it is really just one guy [...]

As reported by just about every site in my blawglines (Pulp 2.0, for instance), Marvel Studios is apparently going to start up a writing program – a one year deal to develop new talent for Marvel movies. But check out the quote about the terms:
“Among other things, the contract gives Marvel ownership over everything [...]

Here’s some old junk that I co-wrote and edited five or so years ago now. Keep in mind we had to make this, soup to nuts, in a weekend. Good fun. Enjoy.

Glancing at Epstein’s blog this morning, I see mention of a site called Beneflix.com. The idea with Beneflix is that, as a filmmaker, you get financial support from the users of the site and in return they get to vote on what happens in your movie. So, in effect, Beneflix is bringing together [...]

This post from Jamie Stuart on Ted Hope’s blog yesterday is a great read – it really cuts to the heart of what bothers me about a lot of DIY filmmaking on the internet and the belief that going online is sort of the holy grail in terms of competing with the studio system.
I agree [...]

So Entertainment Weekly continues to move toward its inevitable fusion with Us Weekly with this column: 25 Greatest Active Film Directors.
Not to belittle anyone on the list – they’ve all done their share of great work – but do you think Jon Favreau would tell you he thinks Elf stands above Chinatown? You think [...]

I found an article on the New Yorker site about what goes in to marketing movies. Most of this stuff I already knew, but I love the psychology involved – identifying the “problems” of a movie and sometimes just outright distracting audiences from what the film is actually about. Remember the ad campaign [...]

I listen to enough podcasts and read enough Varietys to know that there’s anxiety in the entertainment business over what to do about this internet thing. I don’t understand this anxiety at all. I imagine its mostly about how to best make money off of the thing, but it also seems to be [...]

So far, it’s mostly been about eating…

Great interview with Christopher McQuarrie on the Christmas Day Creative Screenwriting podcast. It’s practically a monologue, as McQuarrie does go on. But it’s good stuff – a solid two hours chronicling everything from ‘Public Access’ through ‘Valkyrie’ and all the false starts in between. Probably best of all is listening to how [...]

2008’s Blacklist is filled with some of the most god-awful loglines you will ever read.
For instance:
“A female clothing designer struggles to find love and success after turning thirty.”
This is not a judgment of the actual script, mind you. And really, if your script is on this list, you probably don’t need to write an [...]

I can’t say I’m dying to read any of these, specifically, but Paramount Vantage does a pretty cool thing every year when they break out their For Your Consideration campaigns – they actually post the screenplays of the movies they’re pushing.
This year, the movies are The Duchess, Revolutionary Road, and Defiance. Again, this isn’t [...]

There’s a scene to be watched on the Wholpin DVD site today straight out of ‘The Guatemalan Handshake’ – if you haven’t seen the movie, this’ll give you a little more flavor than the trailers.
Here’s how Todd sets it up:
This is a story-within-the-story that serves as an uneven parallel to the film’s main story – [...]