Last night in Prague.

Stacey and I are spending our last night in Prague--a lovely city full of lovely people.



Off to Budapest tomorrow. For some reason, I decided to write a review of a movie that's been in theaters for almost two weeks. I'll post that in a minute.

Gone too long.

Wow. More than a month since my last post. And after all that time, nothing to say. Well, maybe a little to say.

Stacey and I are going on vacation soon. Before we leave, I want to get the current cut of Interplanetary (clocking in at an even 83 minutes) submitted to a few fests, including Sidewalk here in Birmingham, AL. Ted's still working his magic on the audio mix, but I think the version I'm sending out next week is pretty good. Better than any previously-seen versions, at least.

The new Wolverine movie isn't very good, but the new Star Trek movie is terribly entertaining. A strong cast and interesting cinematography/sound design more than make up for the plot holes in the Trek script.



Stacey and I are finally mostly settled in the new house, and things at my day job have kind of returned to normal (after a pretty rough couple of years), so I hope to get back to regular blogging after I return from vacation.

Re: Mixing.

Ted Speaker and I started re-mixing the Interplanetary audio last weekend. It's a little trickier than expected (otherwise, it wouldn't be Interplanetary, right?), but it's sounding great. The opening scene, especially, is so much more dynamic now. I can't wait for you guys to hear it.



Stacey and I are finally in our new house. Things are still a mess, but we have a roof over our head and a comfortable bed to sleep on. And I got an interim home theater system set up tonight.



No surround sound yet (I got a new tuner but can't find my old set of surround speakers), but we have the big TV, Dish Network, and PlayStation 3 for Blu-rays and DVDs. Also, my new favorite trick is using Handbrake to convert videos on my Mac for playback on the PS3.

I only have one real gripe with the new house: none of the electrical outlets in the living room are grounded. So I ran a ground wire out the back door. I feel better now, and so does my surge protector.

It ain't dead yet.

A little recent Hide and Creep coverage I found while scouring the interwebs...

HorrorStew.com

Dead In the South

trioxin.wordpress.com

Plus a passing mention in this TvTropes.org article about movies where the characters don't follow the rules of gun safety. Which is kind of funny, as Interplanetary features a scene where one character explains the rules of gun safety to another.



The flick's been out of print for a while now, and people are still managing to find it and write about it. Surely some distributor out there would find this interesting.

Still homeless.

So Stacey and I are still homeless. We were supposed to move into our new house today, but the bank dropped the ball and didn't get the mortgage ready in time. And they're apparently just now discovering that we spent a lot of money last year on a movie, and they don't seem to be happy about that. Well, somebody had to finance Interplanetary, right?

Anyway, we moved out of our tiny, crappy apartment and into this ridiculous old, slightly creepy three-story mansion. I'm not even kidding. I say "slightly creepy" because the house constantly makes this weird high-pitched moan-y sound. I assume it is an airflow thing and not the sad whispers of the damned.

The real estate mess has slowed down post-production on Interplanetary, so it looks like I won't make the March 15th deadline as recently promised. But Ted speaker wants to do some additional audio mixing (which will be good) weekend after next, so it's for the best. The new deadline is... you know what? There is no new deadline. I'm not gonna mention finishing the movie again until it's finished.

It ain't all bad, though. Stacey and I visited Atlanta recently. Atlanta still sucks, but sometime Interplanetary cinematographer Jimbo lives there now, so that's nice. And Jimbo took me to an awesome Atlanta beer store, where I purchased a few bottles of awesome Brooklyn Pale Ale, and I'm drinking one of those bottles at the moment.

Don't drink and blog, kids. Do as I say, not as I do.

As for movies that Stacey and I didn't finance, Watchmen is in theaters now, and you should go see it. I've seen it twice and will return for a third viewing later this week. Reviews and word-of-mouth have been mixed, and I will admit it isn't perfect, but Watchmen has really stuck with me unlike any movie I've seen since... well, I can't remember when. I was somewhat skeptical when the flick was pitched as the work of "visionary" director Zack Snyder, but the guy definitely made his own movie, one that doesn't pander to much of anybody. That Warner Bros. gave him $100 million to make a long, weird, violent, and often batshit-crazy superhero movie that doesn't pander much to anybody is some kind of Tinseltown miracle.

And I'm going to go ahead and say Jackie Earl Haley's portrayal of "Rorschach" in Watchmen is just as good as Ledger's "Joker" in the last Batman movie. And Haley's working inside a full mask most of the time. One hand tied behind his back, as it were.

Okay, enough rambling for tonight. Catch Watchmen at a theater near you. I'm going to get back to work on Interplanetary.

"Cha!" said the space kitty.

My friend, cute animal aficionado, and fellow low-budget filmmaker Andrew Bellware says Interplanetary is "like 2001 meets Office Space but with more nudity."



You can read the rest of Andrew's review (it's "spoiler-free") on his "Pleasure for the Empire" blog.

Happy belated anniversary, Interplanetary.

If I still remember correctly at this late date, it's been two years (and two days) since the start of production on Interplanetary. The "quick and dirty little sci-fi flick" I'd originally envisioned has turned into a no-budget epic.

But I'm really going to try and get it done this month. Which is almost over.

Okay. I'll have it done by March 15. Really.

As if I'm not slow enough to work on Interplanetary, it's been a rough couple of weeks. Stacey and I have both been sick, plus we sold the condo and moved out. But we don't have a house yet, so we're staying in a tiny studio apartment for a while.

Here's my portable editing station, set up in the apartment complex lobby/common area...



Before Stacey and I went to the Oxford Film Fest (which was awesome -- thanks to Melanie, Michelle, and everybody else in Oxford town!), local cinematographer and movie genius David Brower stopped by to watch Interplanetary and offer some editing suggestions. Based on David's input, I just got the flick down to 83 minutes, 51 seconds.

Eric is re-thinking some music, and Joe Walker is working on a couple of cool Martian-style post-production effects for us. And Trap is, of course, doing a little more roto work. But we're getting close to putting a bow on it and calling it "done."

Really.