Brian Schiavo's new movie

I think the working title was Demon Nun. The artwork is pretty fantastic.

Grass Growing in Slow Motion

Ian Hubert. Genius.

Here's his feature length motion picture entitled Grass Growing in Slow Motion.


It is impossible to overstate how utterly brilliant this is.

Stakeland in July

Man, Jim Mickle just blows me away. His latest movie is Cold in July. Jim's directorial style is what I would ignorantly call mannerist. All these very precise images assembled together for effect. Of course, his being able to do that makes him such an amazing horror director. Cold in July is not a horror picture as much as a thriller. A crime thriller I suppose. It's very Cohen Brothers in its deliberate and macabre humor. And sometimes very Kubrick-y in the framing.

This "looking at the bottoms of feet" motif is something that's in at least a few of Jim's pictures. This image really pays off when you see their POV. And not to get too precious about it but notice that the "bars" in this shot are on the far side of the subjects, unlike how (in this movie) they're frequently between us and some very bad people.

See, the lead character owns a frame shop. He's a "framer". And the movie has you looking through frames, frames that change, frames that hold different things. Frames.
The movie has this very specific aesthetic vocabulary what with repeated patterns and bars and obstructions between the audience and the subject. I mean it's just really well thought out. The frame shop and the locksmith shop are pretty awesome.
Nick Damici wrote the screenplay with Jim and again they get the tone of the movie just right.

I want, nay, need this owl lamp.

It is beyond my ability to understand how the economics of these kinds of movies works. I just wish he'd make more of them. In fact, I think they should have expanded Cold in July to be an HBO series. Because that's just how cool it is.

Outliving us

Today I saw a private screening of They Will Outlive Us All. It's an impressive indy picture and a horror comedy. Those are two things I just can't do.
It's a really well written movie and really, Nat Cassidy is almost naked for a substantial portion of the movie. And Jessi Gotti is totally a movie star.
There's really only one other horror zombie comedy from the "real indy" world of low-budget filmmaking that's any good. And that's Chance Shirley's Hide and Creep.

They did a stunning job on the audio post on They Will Outlive Us All. I was filled with envy. I mean I'm supposed to be the guy who can do that. I can't. They totally can. Dialog edit was fantastic.

I think there were three sets. And one zombie bug puppet. It was amazing.

They Will Outlive Us All is to Evil Dead II what Hide and Creep is to Dr. Strangelove.

"That's like a lame sub-species of vampire."

Stacy Shirley's Monster Hunt.

It's a vampire - hunter reality TV show. Awesome.

Stake Land

I just saw a not-quite-locked cut of Jim Mickle's Stake Land. Jim's the dude who made the brilliant little horror film Mulberry Street a few years ago. And now he's in post-production on this amazing feature -- a post-apocalyptic vampire tale which looks huge and expensive. Nick Damici is the writer and the lead (same roles as Mulberry Street) and he's just perfect as the badass Charles Bronson - type vampire killer of the future.

A very dark and grim future.

I was really blown away by the scale of this picture. Jim's a genius at squeezing every little dime spent on a movie and making it look huge. I was expecting a brilliant little picture from him. What I saw was a brilliant BIG picture. He not only filled in the world to make it real and palpable, but used the camera -- moving it, keeping it still -- to create this wonderful sense of movement throughout the story.

One of the advantages of living in New York (and having cool friends) is to get to see stuff like this. I watched it with our grip/sound/editor all-around-dude David Frey. David made a fascinating point about how one of the scariest moments in the whole movie is not even a jump scare. It's a vampire you see coming from a million miles away. She just walks into the room and... it's super-creepy.

At the end Jim handed out questionnaires. (Wow, we never do that. I'm serious -- the first time I actually saw Clonehunter all the way through was at the cast/crew screening!). But anyway we all gave notes and I told him I didn't think the sequence in the middle where the rabbit kills all the knights of King Arthur really worked if Jim's reading this, I'm the one who rated Stake Land in a scale of 1 to 10 at "One million". I'm comin' clean on that one.

I Am In Awe

My man Ian Hubert directed this amazing feature called Project London.

Project London: Multiply Teaser from Phil McCoy on Vimeo.

"No Budget"? Ha! Don't let that fool you, distributors! They spent millions. Untold millions. Pay 'em back!

All the 3D was done in Blender by the way. Ian is a genius.

I am, of course, filled with jealousy

that someone else is adapting Jeff Somers' The Electric Church as a movie. Actually, I just finished the book last night, having read the series out of sequence (which was a bit of a mistake, it's a lot easier to read them in order).

The Bloggess respectfully submits a suggestion for decorum while at a public viewing of a film presentation.

And I'm fighting with my Mac trying to get Snow Leopard on it. Wish me luck...

Patrick Stewart, Clowns, and the Decade

Katie West, photographer. With an unhealthy Patrick Stewart obsession. It's OK, she's Canadian.

This dude, David Kronemyer, has a lot of esoteric interests. But many of them I share with him. This blog post is about AC power in recording studios.

Fear of Clowns is number 12. And with Lion's Gate. This post explains why (to both issues.)

Hmm... Lion's Gate and Sony aren't in a bidding war for any of my pictures. Gotta do something to rectify that...

Chance Shirley reviews the decade.

I want to go somewhere cool to make a movie. We had a lot of fun in the California desert when shooting Millennium Crisis. And hopefully I'll have a couple sales coming up soon which I can talk about (effectively there's an embargo on outstanding deals so I just won't talk about 'em 'till they're "actual" deals and then I'll just say how awesome they are because there is no profit in badmouthing anyone -- besides, what am I going to say? "They didn't use my 5.1 mix or my commentary track in the Urdu version of the movie!!!"? C'mon.)

Stills from Shoot

Here are a couple stills from Maduka's shoot last week. He's using Mitchell's DVX100, shooting in the fabulous Lower East Side of Manahatta.

That's Jim Mickle's crazy setting on the DVX which starts off this nice amber look, and (I think) Magic Bullet's Warm Bird color for even more of that fun.

In the lower picture that's Robin Kurtz (on the ground), Nadia Dassouki (center), and Tzaddi Simmons (on the right).

Maduka Shoot

Today Maduka was directing a short. I showed up with a smoking jacket and a martini in order to "help".

That's Tom Rowen, Henry Maduka Steady, Tzaddi Simmons, and Nadia Dassouki.

In the second pic that's the same folks as above with the addition of Robin Kurtz.

Maduka on the ground shooting Nadia and Robin.

Maduka shoots Tzaddi and Nadia.

Interplanetary

I have really really bad news for my friend Chance Shirley. I think that his movie Interplanetary is beyond brilliant. It's like ur-brilliant. And... wait, what's that sound? Is there someone outside? No... no!!!. Don't listen to me! Wait. What's that? Aliens. Yes. Aliens. At the door. Make sure the shotgun is here. Warm against my hand. Four ready to go, one in the chamber. Breathe...

OK. Where was I? "Interplanetary." Yeah, it was like a religious experience. Yeah.

OK. I'm cool.

All of the movies I watched in my childhood while pretending to be asleep; from Robinson Caruso on Mars to Forbidden Planet are represented in a single motion picture.

Interplanetary.

It's like 2001 meets Office Space but with more nudity. The nuances of every single shot (not just every single scene) are exactly right. It's like... it's like Chance is in my head! Get out!! Get out of my dreams!!!! How did you know?!!?

When the Mars buggy rolled up all I could think was "YES!"

And the world of the picture is so physical -- with the spacesuits and the props and [dear Lord!] a MARS BUGGY! A FREAKIN! MARS FREAKIN!!! BUGGY!!!!!!!!!!

OK, I've calmed down.

The movie is awesome.

Awesome.

I think at one time I told Chance I'd give him notes. These are my notes.

Now stop filming my dreams...

What was that sound!!!??

How to Know

Chance won the audience award at the WT* Film Festival in Os Norway.

Here is the festival's blog post about it (I think).

It looks like it might indeed be the coolest film festival in the world.

*Weird Tales (?)

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How to know when you're wrong.

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4 Word Review

My four word review of the new Star Wars animated movie:

"Walk cycle. What up?"

Of course, only animators who have seen the movie will think that's funny.

Mitchell in a Movie

There's a trailer here and a trailer there. Steeling Martin Lane. I have no idea what it's about. After seeing the trailers, I still have no idea. But it has MITCHELL in it!

And Mitch is gonna be in our next movie. Yay!

More Awesome Things

My friend Josh James wrote a screenplay "Down and Dirty Pictures" (which I haven't read), which is reviewed here.

It's sounding like the movie might get made. Awesome!

Another Day Another...

One advantage of Blogger over Wordpress is that Blogger is pretty good at filtering out spam in comments. So that's one reason to stay with Blogger.

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Today was a very cold day out on the roof again for Maduka's feature... er, rather I mean short film.

Rik, Zainab, and Maduka. Yep, that's the Empire State Building in the background.

Zainab and Maduka.

It was quite blustery today. I think I got all my vitamin D for the year. Also, Rik made fun Bacardi and blueberry rum-drinks. So I was feelin' pretty warm despite the wind which almost knocked Zainab over.

Zainab was born in London. I tried to get her into that "what country are you from" question which nobody from whatever country that is can answer.

Maduka laughed at me when I told him that I'd gotten sunburned our first day on Rik's roof.

Madness on Mars

Chance has art for his new movie!

Wednesday

Here's the best article on screenwriting I've read all year. It's all about keeping things active. Brilliant examples, too. I mentioned something similar in this post but Josh says it so much better.

This morning I was helping Maduka shoot a short. Here he is with Diana Ferrante setting up a shot.

And here's Maduka going through the paperwork.

And here's the view from the roof. We had to use actor's heads to block out the Chrysler Building because the scene was supposed to take place in London.

Update: I think I actually got sunburned out there on the roof.

Time on my Hands.

The following text is a great example of how this blog is really just my notebook in which I write stuff, some of which I may want to see later.

A little birdie told me that the web series Sanctuary is getting picked up by the SciFi Channel. That's certainly one way to actually make money with webcasting. Actually, it's the only way I've heard of as I can recall...

I still haven't gone to Best Buy to visit Millennium Crisis. It's still not available in Manhattan -- I suspect they get new shipments on a different schedule than everyone else. So we're going to Woodbridge later to find it. We've had a screener copy for a while, and we're getting a big load of copies from the distributor, we just ain't seen one yet.

I'm rendering robots for Solar Vengeance. Gives me lots of time to blog.