Slade's American Grill

The Best 48 Hours Ever
Also appropriate: The most exhausting 48 hours ever, the must enjoyable 48 hours ever, the least sleep I've had in 48 hours ever.

So as you've already read at Dennis's blog, and at David's blog (w00t! Behind the scenes pictures!!!), a bunch of us participated in the 48 Hour Film Festival, which for the uninformed is basically where teams of filmmakers turn up at the most difficult to find location in Auckland, tred carefully down the most treacherously bumpy downhill path in Auckland, and receive a genre, a prop that must be used, a line of dialogue that must be spoken, and a character that must be used. So we, Team Squiid, were set the task of creating a Puppet film featuring a mirror, the line "that's what I'm talking about!" (delivered by Mr. Michael Trevelyan) and our character - Robin Slade, an eternal optimist (ie. a Ken doll that can't not smile by virtue of being plastic).
















While the zombie children above made the cut, a large black military vehicle with a big gun which was intended to be helmed by similar dolls during the beach scene never made it to filiming due to bad light

So we ran into a few difficulties. Our first story idea saw a superhero getting ready for an important mission to save the day but, upon realising he had five minutes still to spare, stopping off for food at a restaurant and getting squashed by a giant baseball, leaving his important task in the hands of the patrons nearby who were to assume the responsibility of what seemed like an important and easy thing to do - only to encounter dinosaurs and military and discover the task wasn't as important as they thought... maybe. We didn't really have an ending. Or a good arc. Or characters. Fortunately we ditched it and came up with something much better, if entirely silly and occassionally incomprehensible. Oh and the restaurant, dinosaurs, miliary and YES even the giant baseball stayed.
















Blink and you'll miss it: The director's cut (probably done this weekend) will feature a bigger bang here and possibly slowed down motion, because the bombing of the dinosaurs is a tad quick and it's actually possible not to catch it :(

So yeah, the screening is at 7:40 at the Civic Theatre on Queen Street. If you worked on the shoot, you need only turn up. If you aren't, turn up with $10 so you can get in. It's sooo worth it.

Actually I just want to say I co-directed a movie that grossed money at the box office.
















The verdict? Well, according to a test screening of my Mum, Dad, Sister and Sister's Boyfriend: funny, good, entertaining.... abrupt ending. Ie. everything up until the very end is great. Feck. I see exactly what they mean - the meaning is there, but its not as coherent as it was when we did a rough cut of the final shots on Sunday afternoon, and I think our last 4 seconds would have better been served without a long SQUIID logo at the start and with like... 2 credit titles at the end and instead put in the 2 shots we needed. I think the ending has killed our chances of getting anywhere, if it was good enough to otherwise (pass), which is a shame after all that work. But there's always the 30-seconds longer version at 15 Minutes Of Fame where we will sweep everything because we rock. Oh and there's ALWAYS NEXT YEAR. BECAUSE WE WILL BE BACK.

Thanks to everyone who gave up so many hours of your weekend and helped out, I hope you like the final product on Thursday.

Meat Loaf Is Awesome

Your Music Collection Sucks: Part II
If you didn't rush out and buy Bruce Springsteen's The Wild The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle, you suck.

This morning I found an even better and more up to date all-time greatest albums list from some American radio station. THIS is an awesome list. They even remembered that Pinkerton exists (though they rated it below the Blue Album...grr...).

http://www.xpn.org/885ATGA.php

Bat Out Of Hell - Meat Loaf (1977)
On that list, (too low) at number 134 is Bat Out Hell, a seven-song album from, at the time, a three-hundred-and-something-pound actor going by the name of Meat Loaf (I mean that in the sense that he'll ask you call him "Meat" for short), and an album which has sold 34 million copies worldwide, making it one of the ten biggest records ever. Bat Out Of Hell rose from the ashes of Never Land, a dark Peter Pan musical written by Jim Steinman which never got off the ground, and is essentially what you'd expect from such a project - imagine Grease with more grunt and a seventies (rather than fifties) youth attitude. The opening title track is a stunner, a ten-minute hard-rocking epic saga about a gruesome motorbike crash showcasing Meat's unrivalled vocal power. From there the album offers some variety; the straight-from-broadway banter of the hilarious high-school sex song Paradise By The Dashboard Light (at the time the longest song to ever make the US top 40), the classic You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth - another one you could imagine done on the stage, and gentler songs like Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad (his biggest hit until the early 90s), Heaven Can Wait and the powerful For Crying Out Loud. What makes this album so great is its mixture of classic melodies, Meat's powerful voice (at his best, he's arguably the most intense singer in rock music) and writer Jim Steinman's ability to mix wit with emotion, rock with piano ballads, and craft an album that's appealed to fans of all genres for three decades.

Bat Out Of Hell II: Back Into Hell - Meat Loaf (1993)
Proving that if lightning can't strike twice it can still hit nearby, Jim Steinman's second set of Bat songs sixteen years later was better than anyone had any right to expect, and while it didn't match the original's critical acclaim or hit the 34-million mark, 18 million copies sold is hardly something to laugh at when you consider that Meat Loaf basically had NO CAREER between Bat I and Bat II. Every album he tried with various writers was a flop, and by the mid 80s he was a washed-up one-hit-album wonder whose popularity was limited to the tour circuit in Europe. And yet somehow he and Steinman (Steinman himself having failed to launch his own solo career or his late-eighties girl-band project Pandora's Box into stardom) collaborated once more to create what is unquestionably the greatest comeback by any artist ever. I'm not just saying it, its a fact that no one's ever been that big, disappeared that emphatically, and comeback that big again, and they probably never will. Bat Out Of Hell II wasn't just a success because of what its title promised as a marketing tool. It was a success because of what the content delivered. I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That), perhaps longer than it needs to be at twelve minutes, was cut down to seven for the radio and MTV and quickly became the most successful rock single of all-time, hitting number one in twenty-five countries including the US and UK. The rest of the album is not as consistent as Bat Out Of Hell. The first three songs are up there as rock classics, no question, and there's nothing less brilliant about Objects In The Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are (yes, there are many songs on this record which Steinman gave 'odd' names to, but when you hear this song you see the title in a different light). And the final track, Lost Boys And Golden Girls (another one reportedly straight from Steinman's original Never Land songbook) is simple but effective - basically Bat II's Heaven Can Wait. That said, Good Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere) and its instrumental continuation Back Into Hell don't add anything but an unwelcome stench of the eighties. The rest of the tracks are actually great, as in "within millimeters of Bat I"-great, but they're more growers than immediately accessible classics. Overall, this is one of the greatest rock albums you'll ever hear, there's a reason why a middle-aged guy no-one had heard from in a decade and a half became a huge star AGAIN, and you should get it because I'm always right.

So yeah, two albums that will save your record collection. Try turfing out that generic TV-show soundtrack sitting on your shelf while you're at it.

The Monster Is Loose: Bat Out Of Hell III - Meat Loaf (2006)
Now here's a question: three in a row? Meat Loaf hasn't been a no-one since Bat II like he was after the first one, he's been in movies (like Robert Paulson, or 'the guy with boobs,' in Fight Club), had a platinum-album without the help of Steinman in 1995 and toured around the world as a sell-out live act for years on end, and is now set to play Jack Black's father in the Tenacious D movie this November. But it's not as if he's the type of star who guarantees a multi-platinum hit each time out. He's released one album in the last ten years and he had a few health problems which limited his promotion of it (that and the record company sucked ass and screwed up big time) and while it did "okay" in Europe that's not quite the description typical of someone who can still be considered a mega-star. Throw in the factor of Jim Steinman's non-involvement beyond providing a few of the songs (he produced and/or arranged the last 2 Bat albums and wrote every track on each), and it's not as if Bat III's shaping up, on paper, to be another great rock classic. I mention it here because when it comes out on October 31st, it's going to kick ass on the sole basis that I love the last two Bat albums too much that I refuse to believe otherwise.... :(

Here's the first song that got leaked onto the net, hitting radio in July or August, and was reportedly written by producer Desmond Child, Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx and former Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5. It's grown on me. A lot. My hopes are up a little.

http://www.badongo.com/file/675382

It's... MUCH less Steinman-esque than expected (except for the epic length), but at least they aren't just trying to imitate his lyrical humour and pop-sensibilities because they'd probably fail to nail what makes it so good and come off sounding second-rate. I just hope there's SOME classic Steinman on the album too or it wouldn't be the same. But yeah, I like the metal-style, interesting for anyone who's heard the first two Bat albums to see if III's consistently like that especially seeing as this record also features another of Steinman's Never Land tracks It's All Coming Back To Me Now, a song originally set for Bat II, then shelved for Bat III, only for Steinman to give it to Celine Dion before Meat Loaf could record it (it was huge in 1994-ish, and yes it's the one you're thinking of). Something covered by Celine Dion... I'd like to hear THAT as a hard rock song :D

Dumb Aussies

204 Is Over And Done With
For now. Not looking forward to doing the final draft (worth another 30-fucking-percent) after 48 hours weekend. WHICH IS ONE WEEK AWAY. w00t. For those unfamiliar, we get told a genre, a character, a prop that must be used, and then we have 48 hours to make a 4-7 minute film out of it. And Peter Jackson may or may not be one of the judges in the final round or something. Oooooh.

Australia
Australia is a song by the Manic Street Preachers. It is also a country with FUCKED UP copyright laws in relation to recording stuff from TV onto a VCR. Perhaps the most FUCKED UP aspect of it all is the fact that, other than being stupid laws, they're also unenforcable ones. Go Aussie.

From: http://blogs.smh.com.au/mashup/archives//004567.html

"Australia is finally reforming its backwards copyright law, which made it illegal to record shows off the TV and radio, and to rip CDs for personal playback. However, in the process, they proposed a new law that is even more backwards -- one that prohibits watching your recorded shows more than once, one that doesn't allow you to make backups of your CDs, and that doesn't let you loan them to friends.

<<<Does this mean I can record my favourite television or radio program to enjoy later?
Yes. For the first time you will be able to record most television or radio program at home to enjoy at a later time. This will allow you to watch or listen to a program as it was made available to the public at the time of the original broadcast.

How long can I keep the recording?
The recording must be deleted after one use. It will not be possible to use the recording over and over again.

Can I make a collection of copied television and radio programs?
No. You will not be able to burn a collection (or library) of your favourite programs on DVD or CD to keep. (It will be permitted to record a program on DVD or CD but only temporarily until you watch or listen to it for the first time.)

What can I do with recorded program?
You can watch or listen to the recording with your family or friends. It will not be permitted to sell or hire a recording or to play it at school or work or in any kind of public audience.

Can I give a recording I have made to a friend?
No. A recording is for the personal use of the person who made it. You can invite a friend over to watch or listen to your recording but you can't lend or give it to a friend to take home with them.>>>

Uh-huh.

Bobblehead

Seriously.

Essay's going okay, wrote lots of rambling bullshit today to be typed up, refined and elaborated upon tomorrow. I'm optimistic of watching The Da Vinci Code on Thursday morning... must use that as motivation to be basically finished by this time tomorrow (plus a couple of hours). I also know IT WON'T FUCKING HAPPEN :(

Greatest Season Finales Ever

That's What She Said
So JJ Abrams has been talking up the finale of Lost's second season as one of the greatest season finales of all-time. Well, newspaper The Phoenix (whatever that is) has made an awesome list of what its up against to truly deserve that kind of acclaim. Of course, I post it mainly because it has 24 and Twin Peaks in the top 3 and hence I agree with it entirely :p

Oh an I really need to see Dallas I think; what's so good in that famous J.R. episode that it beats the finale of Twin Peaks, the single greatest show of all-time? Seriously???

1. Dallas: "A House Divided" (1980)
2. Twin Peaks: "Episode 29" (1991)
3. 24: "11:00 P.M. to 12:00 A.M." (2002)
4. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: "The Gift" (2001)
5. The Simpsons: "Who Shot Mr. Burns?" (1995)
6. Seinfeld: "The Pilot" (1993)
7. Cheers: "I do, and adieu" (1987)
8. Friends: "The One with Ross's Wedding" (1998)
9. Newhart: "The Last Newhart" (1990)
10. Survivor: "The end of the first Survivor"(2000)

http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid11602.aspx

Your Music Collection Sucks: Part I
The Problem
It's incredible how popular bad music is. I'm not just talking about hip hop, some of which is actually good...ish...at a push, but stuff like Nickelback. And James Blunt. I've targeted Blunt before, and you can hold back on the tagboard responses because I read them last time, but his latest single deserves more sledging; just when I think he can't possibly excrete something worse than You're Beautiful as a follow up to the perfectly decent Wiseman, he goes out of his way to do it with Goodbye My Lover and succeeds in style. Nickelback is self-explanatory. If you need help, either Rolling Stone ("All the Right Reasons is so depressing, you're almost glad Kurt's not around to hear it") or The New York Times ("for hard-rock ridiculousness, Nickelback is tough to beat") are good places to start. The problem is: you own these records. And if you don't, have a cookie. I have cookie-dough being fed intraveneously into me at all times, that's how good my CD collection is. But you do own the aforementioned shit. And you own a trash can. And you haven't yet made the connection.

The Solution, And Its Free
Sell these records. Trade Me is good for such things. Then use the proceeds for something decent. The strange thing is, new records cost $20-$30 in stores, and yet a few meters away there's always quality stuff that costs less simply because you aren't buying it within a few months of release. And last time I checked, music quality wasn't advancing with time at such a rate that what happens to be popular today must be better than anything in the past, so why limit your shopping list to the Top 20 rack, paying more essentially for less? I say "less" in all likelihood, its not an absolute and its not to say that the occassional new release isnt incredible and I'm not some elitist coot who refuses to listen to new music - I catch the top 40 show on C4 every Friday - but add up the same proportion of incredible records you find this year and apply it to last 40+ years and you might just happen to find a few more great CDs in the alphabetical stands. And by might, I mean will. Yes, this entry is driven by my wishing more people to delve into older music because I did and - holy fuck. It seems dumb even having to explain how much better some of this stuff is. Do yourself a favour if you haven't already. And I'm not writing this because I think everyone only listens to new music either, but I just can't get my head around the idea of a Nickelback CD selling 2 million-plus copies when alternatives exist and guns were not pointed at customer heads. The mind boggles. So yeah. There ARE SOME people who buy a lot of music because its new and "in fashion" so to speak. And maybe its taste but maybe even THAT is because they simply aren't exposed to older stuff for the very reason that "new" gets all the airplay as part of the music industry being a commercial venture like the film industry. But these people might be interested to instead seek out alternatives when they've heard something like:

The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle - Bruce Springsteen (1973)

Unlike a lot of padded-out CDs which either limp to the obligatory ten-track mark or go on longer by repeating the same melodies (Nickelback) to make it look like you get more stuff when you check the tracklisiting on the back of the case, Springsteen's second album stops after track seven, and if you listen to it it becomes clear why. When New York City Serenade comes to a close after just under ten minutes of piano, jazz and rock n' roll you aren't left feeling like you need more. The number of tracks doesn't make an album complete. The quality of the tracks that are already there do. The Wild... feels cohesive without Springsteen doing what a lot of popular modern artists do to achieve the same effect ie. choosing a style and then making a bunch of songs that all sound the same within that style and bunging them on a CD in whatever order works best (the style comment aside, even Radiohead committed this sin with Hail To The Thief - a record of great songs that doesn't feel satisfying because, unlike the band's previous efforts, its all over the place). The album is cohesive because of a sense of setting, the music captures the feel of the "scenes" around which the songs revolve, and if anything its the variation that makes it all the more cohesive because Springsteen is very much a storyteller and listening to something like this is like taking a journey through Asbury Park and along 57th Street witnessing the stories of his songs.

Track Picks: Everything that isn't Wild Billy's Circus Story, the album's one weak point being that (otherwise good) song's plodding intro. The last three tracks are mindblowing. A- or 4.5 out of 5. Not just minus 0.5 points for track four's opening, but because The Boss's 1975 follow-up Born To Run shows there's an even higher echelon of Springsteen album possible, and that must get the A.

Movie Stuff

Argh
Pump It "by" the Black Eyed Peas pisses me off more than any other Black Eyes Peas song, and they all piss me off. It's such an awful butchering of the song at the start of Pulp Fiction that I may never view what was once a great-for-mood credits sequence the same way again.

Trailers
So here's a new trailer for Click starring Adam Sandler, where he has a remote control that can control things in real life - ie. rip-off of a Paul Jennings story.

And a full trailer for Miami Vice which isn't as good as the awesome teaser, but is still good to some extent. The extent being everything up until actuallty selling a story or having some hook, as it basically just sells "coolness" at the moment. But still, its Michael Mann. And he rocks.

And one for M. Night Shyamalan's Lady In The Water.

And a new one for the Pixar movie Cars.

And lastly decent a SUPERMAN RETURNS TV SPOT which shows very little new stuff unless you freeze-frame it, though at one point it looks like Kevin Spacey maybe stabs Superman in the back or something???

If they don't work but you have iTunes, download the iPod one and play it in there. Some good stuff coming out over the next few months it seems. w00t.

The Last Season Of The Practice Is Back

Denny Crane
Do you watch Boston Legal? Of course not, because its too awesome a show to actually get watched by anyone, and will probably get cancelled soon because of it. But if you do, or if you ever used to like The Practice and want to see how it ends: THE SECOND GREATEST SEASON OF ANYTHING EVER has begun re-screening on TV3 at 11:15 at night on WEDNESDAY - the final season of The Practice. I never saw the show before the final year, and I saw about a dozen or so episodes of this awesome season of television before TV3 yanked it and replaced it with some reality TV crap. But now its back, and you can see for yourself how great it is, and I can finally see how the season finishes. Oh and we get to see the first appearence of Denny Crane in episode 17ish (who therefore hadn't shown up yet when TV3 pulled the show from the air) and a couple of other characters from Boston Legal who have now, thankfully, left (the show is awesomer for it in season 2). Watch. Compulsory viewing. At least tape it or something.

Expanded
On TV.com they're advertising EXPANDED season finales in the U.S. tonight for My Name Is Earl (meh) and... The OFFICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Expanded Office???? Ooooh. Everything Office makes me go oooooooh, but this is an uber-oooooooooh. I'll take every extra minute I can get.

Madonna
For 204 last week we had to do a music video assignment. I did mine of Madonna's American Life because we looked at it in the workshop and half the work was therefore already done for me. I'm lazy like that. BUT the original cut of the video was actually different and all controversial and stuff so the one we saw was the TAME version.

Full story at Wikipedia as to what happened.

And the one you might catch on C4 once in a while.

And the other one that makes you see why they pulled it, and makes you sad that they did.

Title

Humpty Dumpty
After another long work-induced blogging break you'd expect something AMAZING is coming. Well, I figured I'd disappoint anyway, so I shall do so in style.

Microsoft Word sucks ass. Word does not consider the plural "auteurs" acceptable, but is more than happy to recommend "spidery" when I misspell "stupidity." The irony. Or possibly the Iraqi.

Oooh...want to be nosy? Try http://www.google.com/trends

End of entry.

Seriously.

Though I'll next start up a series of posts telling you why your music collection sucks and CDs that can save it.

Google

Nope. Couldn't even manage a funny picture.

Choose To Accept This Mission

Mission: Impossible III
Very good movie, and pretty much everything you could want from a popcorn action-thriller. My full informal review of sorts here. Though I'll add: had a few problems with the very end of the movie, maybe the last 15 minutes or around that. Mainly that the demise of a certain character which is rather anticlimatic. Oh and they repeat something seen in an episode of Lost, right down to how its "resolved." Being more specific would give things away that you don't want to know if you haven't seen it yet. But yeah. Oh and if you've read the Weekend Herald review that came out today, a source I normally disagree with on every movie on a weekly basis except when it comes to blockbusters which I randomly seem to agree with 99% of the time, they summed it up pretty well actually.

Overall, after thinking on it for a couple of days: a strong B or 3.5 out of 5. B+ would be if it had finished a bit better; its a messy route to an overly neat conclusion. This type of movie would struggle to get a higher grade than a B+ in my book just because of it being a spy action-thriller with little purpose other than to entertain, so to almost get that means M:I:III is about as good as what anyone going to see a Mission: Impossible movie can reasonably expect. Main strengths: maintains top-notch action and suspense for a full two hours, the opening scene (which we revisit later in the film), the whole cast, attempt at focusing on Cruise's character beyond just "I'm a hero in typical Hollywood situations", minimal use of those bloody face masks except when absolutely necessary, and a run-of-the-mill twist but executed in a really great way (at least for me because I was easily fooled; some might see it coming as with any twist). Probably more too. Highly recommended.

Brits & Americans

Three years after the American public had their say in the 2002 Rolling Stone Readers' 100, an occasionally dubious list of what they collectively considered the greatest 100 albums of all-time, the British replied with an equivelant list for Q magazine earlier this year. In 1998 when a similar poll was conducted, the Brits showed themselves to have goldfish-like memories in voting in a number of mediocre 1996/1997 releases, such as Oasis' Be Here Now which is famous as one of the great disappointments of the decade, and not surprisingly many of those have disappeared from the top 20 to not even chart anywhere; so who knows if many of their new picks will stand the test of time?

Americans:
Rolling Stone Readers' 100

Brits:
Q Readers' 100

The problem with both lists is obvious: this is popular opinion, and as such there's bias toward more widely-known releases (as shown by bands more commercially popular in Britain charting higher in the Q poll and vice-versa, oh and of course Britian's failure to recognise Pinkerton in any way shape or form :D). Overall: they're interesting and worth a look, but nothing quite beats a comprehensive list made by the people who listen to everything when it comes to a list determined by actual quality:

Critics' 500

Honestly, with new music mostly sucking ass (especially once you go back and listen to some Led Zeppelin for a few days...) I've been using this critics' list as a guide to what albums to consider buying from some of my favourite older artists and it's worked out awesomely so far.

On that note, and because Dennis showed it can be fun to review music as much as movies:

Exile On Main Street- The Rolling Stones
A or 5 out of 5. A sixteen track album-album with few of their gazillion famous singles and none that get much airplay, this is the work of a band in love with rock and roll and not seeking out commercial success (they'd had plenty by then anyway) and the result is widely considered their greatest achievement - and for good reason. Listen to this album if you have interest in music of any sort whatsoever. It's that good.
Track picks: Rocks Off, Casino Boogie, Sweet Virginia, Loving Cup, Happy, Let It Loose, All Down The Line, Soul Survivor