Not Quite There Yet

"No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to..."

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 05:17:42 -0500

“No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the opposite.”

- Federico Fellini (via briankeene)

SINISTER poster and motion poster now online!

Wed, 30 May 2012 19:25:47 -0500

SINISTER poster and motion poster now online!:

It begins!

4e 2nd lvl Boss Kobold, armed with a spiked duck on a chain and...

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 00:29:00 -0500

4e 2nd lvl Boss Kobold, armed with a spiked duck on a chain and one hell of a will to live. I mean, Boss Kobolds aren’t even supposed to exist.

"I hate that my generation thinks that it is smarter than our parents just because our videos of cats..."

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:48:52 -0600

“I hate that my generation thinks that it is smarter than our parents just because our videos of cats and guys racking themselves aren’t narrated by Bob Saget.”

18 Years ago I met this girl. She changed my life and stuff.

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:41:46 -0600

18 Years ago I met this girl. She changed my life and stuff.

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 03:54:05 -0500

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN:

The odd thing about juggling a number of projects at once is that while they have your complete attention, you begin to lose track of which news is out there in the wild and which isn’t. In the film business, you learn to keep your mouth shut. So you stay quiet…even when the news is floating around already. What you learn rather quickly is that no one bothers to tell you the news is out there because they assume you already know. I knew that Brian mentioned in his blog that we had optioned the book; I just didn’t realize that anyone else had already written about it.

Well, they have. With SINISTER going in front of cameras in a matter of weeks, I doubt there will be any news on this project in the next few months - but I’ll keep you updated, as it is very close to my heart.

The latest on my film SINISTER

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 03:46:36 -0500

The latest on my film SINISTER:

There should be more news in the coming weeks as production gets into gear. Hopefully time will permit me to keep everyone updated on our progress.

AICN: Massawyrm mulls over SUPER 8

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 07:38:41 -0500

SUPER 8 very much wants to be an Amblin film, so much so that it hits all the notes that one would expect from just such a film. That said, it is not an Amblin film; not in as much that it will be remembered among them and achieve classic status. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a wonderful film. I loved every moment of it. But it feels more like a great modern band doing a song in the style of an immortal classic band than it does that original band itself playing a new song. You get what JJ Abrams is going for, but it never quite becomes what it is trying so hard to be.

Read more here.

AICN: Massawyrm has deja vu watching THE HANGOVER PART II

Fri, 27 May 2011 07:38:56 -0500

There’s very little to be said about THE HANGOVER PART II that won’t be repeated time and again not only by everyone who reviews it, but by everyone who sees it. Whether you love it, hate it or come down somewhere in the middle, it is hard to ignore the fact that it is the exact same movie as the original. I don’t mean to say that it is very much like the original, but rather that it is beat for beat the very same movie. One critic recently joked that the script was written entirely with the find/replace function of Final Draft, and I’m not in any way certain that it wasn’t. For some, this will prove to be a masterstroke, a genius tactic to create a true sequel in every sense of the word; for others, like myself, it will kill what you loved about the first film.

Read more here.

AICN: Massawyrm shrugs off ON STRANGER TIDES

Fri, 20 May 2011 04:28:16 -0500

Leave it to the PIRATES franchise to plunder the last of its own remaining goodwill. In what will be overblown by many as “a disaster” or “a franchise killing event”, many of the folks behind the successful series have returned to make what amounts to your average, every day, run of the mill sequel. While there are no doubt a number of missteps here, ON STRANGER TIDES never commits the sin of being terrible; it merely, contrary to its own title, sails through all too familiar waters and squeezes out every last bit of personality it can from its characters before running aground on the shores of mediocrity. It is the first of the series that fans can easily skip without feeling like they’ve missed much, if anything, at all.

Read more here.

Life: Where the hell have I been?

Mon, 09 May 2011 19:23:28 -0500

Several of you over the last few months have been asking why I’ve been so sporadic about updating - while the more eagle-eyed among you have noticed that I just don’t seem to be writing so much anymore. Why not? This is why not.

I’ve stopped writing for everyone but Ain’t it Cool News and pulled back on the amount of content there as well because I’ve sold a screenplay. In the course of doing that, I picked up a writing partner by the name of Scott Derrickson (Director of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and The Day the Earth Stood Still) with whom I am now partnered full time. We’re working on a number of things together and plan on taking on writing jobs together from here on out. Meanwhile, the secret project I’ve been working on is entering its final stages before I talk about it.

Needless to say, I’ve been busy. I’m making movies and hope to be for the foreseeable future. The days of me being a professional film critic appear to be drawing to a close. It’s been a fun ten years, but it is time for me to leave the nest and put myself out there. I’ve been wanting to talk about this for months and let you guys in on what was up, but I had to keep my mouth shut until the contracts were signed. Those were signed Friday. The cat’s out of the bag now.

I couldn’t be more excited to work with Scott. We’re two peas in a pod, he and I. One way or another, this is gonna be fun. Thanks for sticking out the radio silence with me.

-C

Of crescent moons and rolling dunes and the ocean’s...

Wed, 04 May 2011 05:31:00 -0500

Of crescent moons

and rolling dunes

and the ocean’s cerulean hue

no love could be

such errantry

as the love I have for you.

6/26/96

(Happy anniversary, Jessica.)

Here’s to the next ten years. May we strive to be better.

Mon, 02 May 2011 19:29:33 -0500

The new decade did not begin in the year 2000. Neither did the 21^st Century. They both began on September 11^th, 2001. We don’t measure our lives from the changing of the calendar, nor talk about a new Millennium and what it means to us. We talk about a post-9/11 world; we talk about what this country used to be like…before 9/11. It marked the beginning of a turbulent decade overflowing with racism, homophobia, religious fundamentalism, fear, loathing, war, extremists, protests, division and an erosion of everything we believe in – regardless of political affiliation.

And the greatest trick played on us was by the man who coined the phrase “The world changed on 9/11.” Because it didn’t. The only thing that changed on 9/11 was the people. Politicians like George W. Bush used the event to fundamentally rearrange their beliefs and begin structuring a nation closer to what we’d been fighting against than what we’d been fighting for. People got scared. They got angry. They showed their true colors. It turns out we didn’t live in a Christian nation; we lived in one that liked to be Christian when it was convenient for us. Turn the other cheek became “Let’s get the mother fucker.” And we did.

After 10 years, hundreds of thousands of lives and Trillions of dollars of debt, we got the guy. And people are celebrating in the streets. Meanwhile, the armchair philosophers are wagging their fingers, admonishing the celebration as a barbaric act of bloodlust, entirely ignorant of what everyone is really celebrating. There are few people in the streets cheering the death of a man. No, they’re cheering the end of an era. This terrible, turbulent decade of divide is over. It’s behind us now. We won’t measure the decade’s end by a January 1^st; we’ll talk about May 1^st.

Already we’ve been watching as the statues of that era have crumbled. Keith Olbermann is gone. Glenn Beck has been handed his hat and is on his way out the door. Dick Cheney doesn’t even show his face anymore. The villains of the last decade are all dead, in hiding or considered irrelevant. Even the Tea Party is withering away, the mortal wound delivered earlier this year when 800 bussed in agitators stood amid a throng of protestors 100,000 strong - of all political stripe and kind - and the world saw how marginal they really were. A right wing Republican governor smacked down a bill about Birth Certificates declaring it a bridge too far. And in one calculated week, our president silenced the birther movement and humiliated his loudest, most obnoxious, headline grabbing critics.

But all of that is just small potatoes. We got the guy. We put two bullets in his head and showed our enemies that no one was too powerful or protected to hide from us. Then we respectfully cared for and buried his body without allowing the circus of previous assassinations to divide the world. We made a point, and that point was the punctuation mark at the end of a time we will all tell our grandchildren about.

It’s over. It’s all over. Now is the time to rebuild. Now is the time to dismantle the monolithic entities that have sprung up and altered the world as we know it. Now is the time to pull our troops out of two senseless wars, having finally met the objective we initially set out to achieve. We aren’t entering a world without problems or doing away with evil, or racism, or homophobia - but we are now able to leave that decade behind, to relegate it to history and try once more to have a go at a better world. One death can do that.

We do not celebrate the death of Osama bin Laden. Instead we celebrate what his death signals. That’s why we dance in the streets; that’s why we hug and cry and high five one another. Today is the beginning of a new decade, one in which we’ll try to do better than those who came before us. I didn’t vote for Obama and frankly I haven’t been surprised by his policies; but man, am I proud today that he is my god damn president.

Here’s to the next ten years. May we strive to be better.

AICN: Massawyrm loves FAST FIVE

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:26:29 -0500

Just when you thought the FAST AND THE FURIOUS films had run out of steam, they up and reinvent them, bringing a fresh spirit and renewed sense of self that flips the dynamic and turns it from something on its last legs into a character driven series of films that could potentially be sustained indefinitely. No mere retread of its previous efforts, FAST FIVE aims to please the fans by offering everything they love about the films without feeling like it has to pander to its series roots. No longer a series about street racing, it has become about criminals who pull off incredible jobs with their unmatched skills behind the wheel. So it seems like a no brainer to shift into fifth gear and turn this into a heist film as they assemble the fan favorites from the previous films into one superteam eager to bring down a South American crime lord.

AICN: Massawyrm goes to PROM

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:25:22 -0500

Leave it to Disney to take the single most sexually charged night of adolescence and neuter it to the point of being nothing short of a two hour commercial for Prom products. And that’s exactly what they did in their half-baked prom drama, brilliantly titled PROM. Not that I expected anything different, but being a fan of teen comedies – having been as surprised as everyone else by films like CAN’T HARDLY WAIT, MEAN GIRLS, EASY A, and 10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU – I was holding out hope that this might have been a little something better than what it is. Sadly, it’s a film trapped between two worlds, one being the sterile, cotton candy environment that is Disney live action filmmaking and the other that of a team really trying to make something good.

This is for Brody!

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:38:54 -0500

This is for Brody!

Cargill's Annual Springtime Scavenger Hunt!

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 14:45:05 -0500

The rules to this year’s scavenger hunt are simple. Each team is issued a garden gnome and given three hours to race around town taking pictures of their gnome with any number of elements from the list. For each element in the photo, points will be multiplied. (example: a topless girl by a roaring fire with your Gnome is worth 20pts. Your gnome with James Taylor praying for rain is worth 400pts.) There is no limit to the number of elements that can be contained in a picture, but you can only score points for any given element once – so no driving around with James Taylor to multiply everything by 40.

With something that makes me laugh 2 pts

With a sign that says SPRING somewhere in it 2 pts

With an APD Officer 2 pts

Next to a roaring fire 2 pts

On top of one of those newfangled parking meters 2 pts

Enjoying BBQ 2 pts

Waiting in a line with more than 10 people in it 2 pts

In a Canoe (not a Kayak) 2 pts

At a table where people are actively playing D&D 2 pts

Enjoying some pie 2 pts

With a fixed gear bicycle 2 pts

With a Turtle 5 pts

With Krypto the Wonder Dog 5 pts

Riding public transportation 5 pts

A piano in the outdoors 5 pts

A person dressed as the Easter Bunny 5 pts

A person dressed as Jesus 5 pts

Being examined by a doctor 5 pts

Playing Pool 5 pts

In an eastside bar converted from an old house 5 pts

At an Adults Only book/video store 5 pts

On a walkway overlooking a freeway 5 pts

In a store, bar or Restaurant written about by Jen Blair 5 pts

With something that could be described by a single line from a James Taylor song 10 pts

With an Austin Celebrity I don’t work for or with 10 pts

With a type of food I’ve never eaten before 10 pts

With a topless (live) woman 10 pts

On the pitcher’s mound at the Dell Diamond 10 pts

With something handwritten by Tennessee Williams 10 pts

Re-enacting the “This one’s for Brody” scene from MALLRATS 10 pts

With complete strangers praying for Rain as per the Governor’s request 10 pts

With a child dressed as a member of KISS 20 pts

With Musical Legend James Taylor 40 pts

The Curious Case of Amanda Hocking

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 16:43:00 -0600

Here in the coming months I’m going to spend a bit of time writing about much that has become of the journalistic world as it crashed headlong into the world of the blogosphere. What started with the best of intentions has gone horribly wrong with entire sections of the environment becoming thoroughly unreliable. Today brings us just such an example of what frustrates so many about how websites handle “the news” in this day and age.

Here is an article published today by Gizmodo about the new e-book prodigy Amanda Hocking. The headline reads:

This 26-Year Old Makes Millions Writing Kindle-Only Books

Omg! That’s incredible. I want to read more! Trouble is, the article is more of a blurb and Gizmodo is only paraphrasing another article by Business Insider titled:

This 26-Year-Old Is Making Millions Cutting Out Traditional Publishers With Amazon Kindle

So let’s head over there, shall we?

Welcome to disruption. 26-year old Amanda Hocking is the best-selling “indie” writer on the Kindle store, meaning she doesn’t have a publishing deal, Novelr says.

Oh shit. That’s also not the original story. Hmm. Turns out Novelr is the first place to actually begin collecting information from a variety of sources…but ultimately isn’t the original source either; The Huffington Post is, along with Hocking’s own blog. Truth is, things have gotten so bad in the blogosphere, that Hocking herself had to print a laundry list of corrections today just to keep the story straight - up to and including getting her age right. Hocking is in the middle of a promotional blitz - she wants her name out there and bloggers need something to write about. She is about to have the very best year of her life, if she can keep this momentum going and use the media to her advantage.

But how do you do that amid of sea of people copying and pasting other people’s stories…or worse, rewriting them so badly that the story changes, details get muddled and the only “reliable” source is the person who benefits most from the creation of her own legend? Because at the end of the day, the only source for how well Hocking is doing is Hocking herself. Not a single person through the chain of blogging has done a stitch of legwork and none of the subsequent bloggers have even noticed.

It’s a weird world we find ourselves in.

If you’re a blogger, trace your story back to its source and verify anything you can. Trust me, most people will take your call and give you a simple yes, no or no comment. They might even give you details others missed or never asked about. But if you won’t take yourself seriously, no one else will. Also be sure to note if a story really has no reliable sources save that of the one benefiting most from it. That’s kind of an important detail.

If you’re a reader, begin to demand more of your news blogs. They should not be run like opinion blogs. If a site regularly rewrites other sources and is never the source themselves, read the sources from which their news originates. Then, by all means, head on back for the opinion the others blogs provide in lieu of journalistic legwork and integrity.

The further I delve into this story, the more absurd it gets.

AICN: Massawyrm enjoys THE EAGLE

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:49:28 -0600

At first glance, many will think that they’ve seen this already, mistaking it for Neil Marshall’s fun, b-movie romp CENTURION. But they aren’t the same film – they’re not even the same story. Instead, I think they would make one hell of a double feature – CENTURION playing beautifully into THE EAGLE. CENTURION is Marshall’s bloody exploration into what happened to the fabled 9th Legion of Rome that marched into Northern Britain never to return. Marshall’s version hypothesizes (as history is unclear as to the 9ths true fate) that they were slaughtered in an ambush, and follows a few of the survivors as they flee back to Hadrian’s Wall. THE EAGLE, however, takes place 20 years later, as the son of the legion’s General returns to discover the fate of his father in order to restore his family’s honor. And it is a pretty solid action film in its own right.

Read more here.

AICN: Massawyrm craves the taste of cold steel and the sweet release of death while watching JUST GO WITH IT

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 07:47:03 -0600

I do believe that Adam Sandler’s films are getting progressively worse. At this point I find it hard to tell; like that kid who gets his ass kicked on the playground every god damned day and doesn’t know for sure whether the beating was worse yesterday or the day before. What I do know is that something broke inside of Adam Sandler and somewhere along the line he stopped trying to be a comedian and just began coasting as one. It is one thing if someone’s trying and you just don’t find them funny; it is something else entirely when they spend years just phoning it in.

Read more here.