Wednesday, January 25, 2006

cool news

My mentor Marc Zicree will be directing the next episode of "New Voyages" starring Sulu. Cool news. If you don't know about New Voyages, check out the link. Redefining media distribution conduits, courtesy of an Elvis impersonator.

My sister took me to my Christmas present last night. Billy Crystal's one man show "700 Sundays"...which I guess she didn't know was all about his two parents dying and leaving him an "orphan." Sigh. Three hours long. Yup. I'm officially in a tailspin. Doing the Hefner-robe-thing today. Urgh. I *hate* depressing/crying days.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Feedback LA

So my writers' group Reading Series started off with a bang. Courtney's script got a fantastic reaction, as did the quality of the reading itself. The actors were great, the space was perfect, and we impressed the heck out of someone else who has a regular series himself. And the phone calls our group made to studio development execs have garnered quite a bit of interest in this script and our group.

Success! Pictures are here.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Something For the Ladies

No thanks necessary. I'm here to please.






Tuesday, January 17, 2006

I'm the Friend

Mutual and Murmuring. Am I allowed to say that?

Effin' Cool

Brian's name is listed FIRST on the front page of the updated Comic-con website. I'm geeking out!

So Bri, whose palm did you grease???

Monday, January 16, 2006

Invitation

Feedback Writer's Group is beginning its reading series this Wednesday. Come on out and join us. Info is here.

Geek Goddesses


Okay, so I've heard on and off from some of my male readers that there aren't any other available women like me in LA. Just so you know? So not true. I spent Friday night swapping music CDs and watching pirated Dr. Who and Battlestar Galactica with three other pretty, talented, driven geek girls working successfully in the film industry. All single, all wonderful. So there.

Methinks I need to start a dating service for sci-fi/comic/movie fans.

"A beautiful girl...who loves comics — I didn’t even know they existed."
"It's like finding a unicorn Zach, it’s like finding a really hot unicorn."

- Zach and Seth talk comics with Reed, The O.C. - "Rager" episode

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Stripperella




Your Stipper Song Is



Super Freak by Rick James


"That girl is pretty wild now
The girl's a super freak
The kind of girl you read about
In new-wave magazine"

Freaky? Yes. But you're also pretty darn funny.



Actually, my favorite song to strip to is Wild Horses, by Rolling Stones or Charlotte Martin. Cuz I play the pole the way I play the piano...stormy and sad.

For your Sunday afternoon entertainment: a great blog.

Friday, January 13, 2006

How to Deal With Telemarketers

This suggestion is amazing. While it's admirable to have Fun With Telemarketers, this response is much more damaging to a system called successful by its instigators. Can't wait to try it, and help dismantle TPTB. Thanks to reader Eponymoustext for the link.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Heidi

Must go check out my lovely friend's blog Heidiwood. She's one of those bloggers like the esteemed Julie Goes to Hollywood who writes well-crafted, book-worty essays instead of...I believe my style is referred to as "spewing." :)

And did you catch this tidbit via Defamer? I loves me a Hitchhiker's reference.


So now that Angelina is pregnant, what is that Latin tattoo going to end up looking like? I thought she was adopting to avoid such a scenario...man it would suck to be Jennifer Aniston right now. I feel for her. Wonder if Conan has done a composite "And Why?!" skecth of the baby yet.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Meme me


Okay. I hate memes. I don't do memes. Mainly because, well, I have an MA in Media Studies and I know the true definition of meme, and it AIN'T CHAIN BLOGGING. Sigh.
But when Bill Cunningham come a'knockin', I answer. This is for you, my mad-pulp bastard brother:

What was your earliest film-related memory?
"Star Wars" at a drive-in theatre. Must've been all of three or four years old.

Name two favorite lines from movies:
"You wanted to tussel. We tusseled." Karen Sisco, "Out of Sight" Also a top ten fav character. Yes, I own a steel baton just like hers. Effin' rocks.

"I love my homosexual son. My son's gay and I love him!" - "Heathers" The ultimate revenge on those damn high school jocks.

And just for kicks: "Sex Machine. Pleased to meet'cha." - "From Dusk to Dawn" Come on now people. Hard pressed to think of a better character introduction, between that line and the revolver cod piece. Tarantino is my god.


Jobs you'd do if you could not work in the "biz"
-- Theatre with kids
-- Own a comic book shop
-- Make a tv show for kids that's downloadable on the internet (there's more than one way to be in the biz)

Name four jobs you actually have held outside the industry:
-- filled orders for Eclipse Comics
-- Assistant to a Playmate running an architectural design firm (how I learned my skills for small S Corps)
-- Programmed a series of CD-ROMs for an insurance corporation estimated to bring in $400 million in customers. Yes, I was underpaid and laid-off immediately afterwards.
-- Registered voters outside a Food 4 Less.

Three book authors I like:
Dave Sedaris
Tom Robbins
Kurt Vonnegut

Name two movies you would like to remake or properties you'd like to adapt:
Sure. Let me hand-off all my million dollar ideas.

Name one screenwriter you think is underrated:
Geez, if you'd asked me overrated two days ago I would have said David Mamet, but I just fell in love with "Spartan."

Underrated. Hmmm. Gotta go with Jesse Peretz of "The Chateau" or Karen Walton of "Ginger Snaps". And Hal Hartley doesn't seem to get a lot of love. What's up with that? Another fab writer who seems like he should have more attention is Drew Goddard. I freak out whenever I see he's written a TV episode because I know it's going to be Emmy-worthy, yet ignored. Okay, and I'll namedrop a new friend because he's a legend in my mind: Michael Reaves. My childhood would not have been the same without his brilliance.

Three people I'm tagging to answer this meme next:
Heidiwood
Otis Frampton
Mo
And one more because I hate rules: Lynne

Monday, January 09, 2006

Cliche?





Does it help at all that I'm a woman getting a Supes tattoo, or is it still a totally over-done cliche? Getting worried...Of course, dolphins and fish are also so trendy...

Real Shocker

Couldn't see this result coming...nope, not at all:

Marianne -- The Romantic
You're Mariane Dashwood from Sense &
Sensibility
! You are the romantic
youngster, also found in Jane Austen's work as
Catherine of Northanger Abbey and
possibly Georgiana Darcy of Pride and
Prejudice
. You wander through life like Red
Riding Hood in the forest, picking wildflowers
and humming a happy song... and you can't see
the wolf right in front of you! Ruled by heart
and not by head, you are best advised to to
learn a little caution, before you are forced
into a better acquaintance with the ways of the
world.


Which Jane Austen Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Researching Tats


Definitely sending my story into Inked. In the meantime, doing recon.



"If there is no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do." - Christopher Reeve



"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then improbable, and then when we summon the will they soon become inevitable" - Christopher Reeve

Like any of these for me?

Friday, January 06, 2006

I Do Sooo Love Roger Ebert



My main man, the only film critic who seems to consistently stick up for women. Gods bless ya, babycakes.

For the record, I'm totally a horror fan. But that doesn't include mutilation and torture horror, sadly now a sub-genre in the forefront. Now if only he would take on all those TV procedural shows...
-K.S.

Wolf Creek
BY ROGER EBERT / December 23, 2005


Dimension presents a film written and directed by Greg Mclean. Running time: 95 minutes. No MPAA rating (intended for adults). Opening Sunday at local theaters.

I had a hard time watching "Wolf Creek." It is a film with one clear purpose: To establish the commercial credentials of its director by showing his skill at depicting the brutal tracking, torture and mutilation of screaming young women. When the killer severs the spine of one of his victims and calls her "a head on a stick," I wanted to walk out of the theater and keep on walking.

It has an 82 percent "fresh" reading over at the Tomatometer. "Bound to give even the most seasoned thriller seeker nightmares" (Hollywood Reporter). "Will have Wes Craven bowing his head in shame" (Clint Morris). "Must be giving Australia's Outback tourism industry a bad case of heartburn" (Laura Clifford). "Vicious torrent of bloodletting. What more can we want?" (Harvey Karten). One critic who didn't like it was Matthew Leyland of the BBC: "The film's preference for female suffering gives it a misogynist undertow that's even more unsettling than the gore."

A "misogynist" is someone who hates women. I'm explaining that because most people who hate women don't know the word. I went to the Rotten Tomatoes roundup of critics not for tips for my own review, but hoping that someone somewhere simply said, "Made me want to vomit and cry at the same time."

I like horror films. Horror movies, even extreme ones, function primarily by scaring us or intriguing us. Consider "Three ... Extremes" recently. "Wolf Creek" is more like the guy at the carnival sideshow who bites off chicken heads. No fun for us, no fun for the guy, no fun for the chicken. In the case of this film, it's fun for the guy.

I know, I know, my job as a critic is to praise the director for showing low budget filmmaking skills and creating a tense atmosphere and evoking emptiness and menace in the outback, blah, blah. But in telling a story like this, the better he is, the worse the experience. Perhaps his job as a director is to make a movie I can sit through without dismay. To laugh through the movie, as midnight audiences are sometimes invited to do, is to suggest you are dehumanized, unevolved or a slackwit. To read blase speculation about the movie's effect on tourism makes me want to scream like Jerry Lewis: Wake up, lady!

There is a line and this movie crosses it. I don't know where the line is, but it's way north of "Wolf Creek." There is a role for violence in film, but what the hell is the purpose of this sadistic celebration of pain and cruelty? The theaters are crowded right now with wonderful, thrilling, funny, warm-hearted, dramatic, artistic, inspiring, entertaining movies. If anyone you know says this is the one they want to see, my advice is: Don't know that person no more.

Oh, I forgot to mention: The movie doesn't open on Dec. 23, like a lot of the "holiday pictures," but on Christmas Day. Maybe it would be an effective promo to have sneak previews at midnight on Christmas Eve.

Note: As of Jan. 3, 2006, the Tomatometer reading for the
film had dropped to 51.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Update

Curae leves loquuntur ingentes stupent - Slight griefs talk, great ones are speechless. (minor losses can be talked away, profound ones strike us dumb)

Hi all, thanks for the well-wishing. I'm okay. Things around here have been very tough for me and Nurse Sis...we're just taking the holiday season pretty hard. People have been very kind, but oddly, sometimes that kindness just makes things hurt more. Anyway, I'm alive...drinking too much champagne, watching too many horror movies, Miami Ink episodes, and writing at least 5 script pages a day (45 usable pages since Christmas). Carry on, and when I have something interesting to say that, well, wouldn't rip my heart out to type...I will.



There have been two big fishies I haven't told you about; one on Thanksgiving and one on Christmas. Other than that it's been pretty lonely and quiet. But I'm pondering some kind of tattoo that says I Listen to Fishies...maybe in French, maybe in Paris next month...just a thought