Distracted… Less so Now

The return of bullet points (not literally)

Covering lots of ground in a short period of time. In my head the “Montage” song is from Team America is playing.

Been absent in my blogging

I could make some excuse about having nothing interesting to say but we all know that isn’t true. Flaked on the Oscars as well as the half a dozen films I’ve seen in the past couple months (p.s., none of them were good). Was involved in a hellish low-budget production which kicked my ass. Then was involved in a startlingly rare “relationship” (her scare quotes, not mine) that really kicked my ass and am now pulling myself out of the flaming crater that is the aftermath. I hope to figure out what the hell went wrong there but in the meantime I find myself with a lot more free time on the weekends.

Been a Twittering fiend

I found my latest fix however in Twitter right around the time I got my iPhone. If you’re reading this now you absolutely should sign up for an account as there’s rarely any thought going through a person’s head that wouldn’t be improved by being condensed down to 140 characters. Sadly the more adept I become at Twitter the less need I’ll have for long form blogging. Call it selling out or giving up or simply no longer caring, but I think I’ve found my new love.

Feeling creative again

For the first time in months I feel flush with new script idea. This extends both to screenplays I’ve already started and ones in the pipeline. It feels good to be passionate about what it is you aspire to do once again.

Plugolla

Steel City will be out on DVD on May 6th. As I’ve spent the past three months scrambling to assemble elements for this event it’s especially rewarding to see pre-orders being taken at sites like Amazon.com and Best Buy. Hint, hint, hint.

Coachella still sucks

Nope, no less bitter about this. Andrew’s unofficial Christmas is still a floating turd and nothing in the past two months has changed that fact. Meanwhile Lollapalooza rumors are heating up and I may have to build a return engagement to the Windy City into my schedule/budget. I wonder if that girl still lives there.

I’m finished.

Back from Texas

Had a great time in Austin but it’s a relief to be back in LA. Met a lot of incredible, generous people and reconnected with some old friends, didn’t embarrass myself in my panels (although I heard some horror stories about my inebriated behavior after hours) and saw some great films. I’m trying to get caught up on my blogging but there’s been more distractions waiting for me at home than I thought. The office is especially populated these days, so less time for on-hours goofing around. I’ve also got about 20 hours of TV clogging up my dvr that I’m supposed to be going through so my housemates will stop giving me the evil eye (the sad part is, over half of it is poker… I really do have a problem). The good news is the Sox are in the process of pissing away a glorious season because the bottom of our lineup is abysmal and none of our starters can make it to the fifth inning (save for Beckett, who’s tomorrow’s last hope), so at least I should have some free time now. Oh and more good news: my X-Box is doing that three blinking red lights which I guess is the new “Blue Screen of Death” so that will be out of commission for the next month or so while the criminals at Microsoft fix the problem they were aware of when they sold the damn thing. I’ve got a screening of 30 Days of Night tonight, so once you factor that in to everything I saw at AFF as well as a couple films I saw immediately beforehand and I’m quickly becoming swamped. Too much good stuff.

And in the interest of staying positive: Go Pats, Go!

The 3 AM Hustle

My flight for Austin leaves at 7:30 AM, which means I’ll be pulling an all-nighter just so I know I’ll be up in time to be at the airport by 6. I really hate waking at 4 something in the morning and I fucking despise forcing myself to crawl into bed at 10 at night to try and get a semblance of a full night’s sleep (I blame my mom passing along her night owl genetics). So this is the silly dance I perform every time I travel early in the morning. Yes, it’s probably crazy, although not a whole lot more than tossing and turning in bed for a few long hours as I try and trick my body into aping the sleep habits of a two year old.

And it’s not like I’ll be want for activity to keep me awake and alert. I’m planning on putting in my second workout in a span of twelve hours. I’ve been skipping a few lately and it’s not like the binge of booze and BBQ over the course of the next week will help keep me in fighting weight. Plus, I’m quickly trying to get caught up on the first season of “Friday Night Lights” so I can weigh in on the supposedly awful second season premiere and when I’m on the elliptical seems to be the only time I get to watch.

I’m also trying to cram in as much research as possible for my Austin panels which don’t technically start until Saturday but I don’t see myself having access to the net between now and then. I know I found myself watching the film Over the Hedge TWICE today (once with less illuminating than I’d hoped commentary track on) to get ready and even still I feel woefully under prepared. Right now I don’t even want to think about my Sunday panel where I’m sitting with two entertainment lawyers and a venture capitalist to talk about the nuances of contracts (yeesh).

Of course Austin won’t be all drunkenness and trying not to embarrass myself in front of thousands of people (those two things really are at odds though, no?). I have a lot of activities (read: parties) planned for the week but my passion first and foremost is film, something that’s usually forgotten or overlooked when talking about film festivals. In fact I’m already bemoaning the films I *won’t* be able to see either because of conflicts or that they’ll be screening after I leave including Before the Devil Knows Your Dead (thankfully opening in LA shortly), Grace is Gone (ditto), The Savages (will have to wait for AFI) and Paul Schrader’s new film, The Walker.

What will I be seeing? A couple definites on a few strong maybes. I’ll be at the opening night Gala of Chicago 10, the divisive animated documentary which opened Sundance earlier in the year as well as at the Centerpiece Premiere, Juno which is Jason Reitman’s follow-up to Thank You For Smoking (yes!) that was hailed at Toronto as this year’s Little Miss Sunshine (uh oh). I also hope to see Lars and the Real Girl and Control, both of which are opening in LA soon but I care not as well as a few films that played Sundance earlier in the year but aren’t scheduled to open for several months. I’ll try and keep my ear to the ground, but so much of these things are dictated by scheduling, energy, and distance from where you’re standing at any given moment.

Oh as if that weren’t enough, the Sox are also in the ALCS.

Game 1 is on Friday, Game 2 is Sunday. As if I didn’t have enough to worry about I now need to sneak away and find an unguarded tv to watch the Sox play the Indians. The irony is last year I gave Brian, our director, endless shit for blowing off the festivities to go watch the Cardinals in the World Series. I’ve also pretty much given up any hope of catching the Pats/Cowboys game (in Texas no less!) because it runs right into my Sunday panels and the Juno screening.

Because I’m a luddite without iPhone or laptop, this will be my last entry till I get back next week. Hopefully by the time I return the Pats will still be undefeated, the Sox will be in strong position against the Tribe and I won’t have imploded due to my lousy public speaking skills.

A quick note about The Kingdom

It’s really not that bad people.

I’m in slight ass covering mode at the moment after being first out of the gate with a mostly positive review earlier in the year. My bullshit detector’s pretty high and while the film’s flaws weren’t lost on me I came to the conclusion that the film was definitely worth your time, predominantly for the film’s first and third acts and the performance of Ashraf Barhom. Is it probably too jingoistic for its own good? Yeah. Does it use contemporary fears as a pretense for what amounts to a well-constructed popcorn flick? Yep. But my God, it seems like every film that tries to address current world events either ends up as inert crap like Syriana or a condescending brow-beater like In the Valley of Elah. So a film tries to quicken the pulse a bit and it’s treated like John Wayne’s The Green Berets?

And the kicker is Universal screened the film like crazy for the press all throughout the summer so they must have thought it would be well received. Oh well, the public decides starting tomorrow. I think it will play well all through the next month or so, but what do I know?

No mini-review for this one. If you care you can paw through the month-old gargantuan piece.

http://andrewdignan.blogspot.com/2007/04/when-did-peter-berg-become-better.html

Because People Are Lazy...

I'm getting comfortable with my ever-expanding (both in length and volume) mini-movie-reviews both as a (hopefully) useful guide for my readers as well as a way for cataloging my thoughts, so I'll probably keep at it at least through "Oscar Season." One film however that won't be getting this kind of treatment is Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah which I saw early in the summer. If you're interested in my thoughts on this pre-release version of the film, which I've been told is almost identical to what's playing in theaters (save for what I'm hearing is a truly horrendous Annie Lennox ballad over the end credits), then click the link below. I'll probably do the same thing for The Kingdom in a couple weeks so I can renew the latest round of arguments about why the film isn't (according to some people anyway) better than Miami Vice.

http://andrewdignan.blogspot.com/2007/06/valley-gall.html

Not Dead, Just Uninspired

No updates in almost a month. I barely noticed, did you? This blog was created for short, off-the-cuff commentaries (or in the words of Matt Stone and Trey Parker, “commentary: mini”) but I’d pretty much fallen back into the habit of long, dishy tirades well suited to the House Next Door’s Links of the Day. It’s fun to stretch my essay muscles every once in a while but I tend to get bored halfway through them. I’d rather write twelve one-paragraph-long pieces than one twelve-paragraphs-long, so to encourage renewed activity I’m going to try and get into the habit of writing something… anything at least once a day.

Part of the problem has been that I haven’t been to the movies in four weeks (hooray for late August!) when the only thing out are bummer docs about genocide in Darfur, films that should have remained skits on “SNL” and Jason Statham movies. I also haven’t been to a test screening since early summer, and this one can be directly be attributed to the construction being done to turn the Sherman Oaks Galleria into another Arclight. The Galleria is about 10 mins from my front door and hosts 2-3 test screenings a week but during renovations (and recently, a temporary shuttering) they’ve halted or have been scattered up the 101. I really want to see David Gordon Green’s Pineapple Express and Jake Kasdan’s Walk Hard but I’m not driving to Thousand Oaks on a work night to do so.

Netflix has definitely come in handy lately. I only saw a couple of movies in theaters during the spring so I’ve finally been able to catch up on the likes of Fracture, The Lookout and Vacancy (PS: I wasn’t missing much) from the comfort of home. I’m also trying to get caught up on “Friday Night Lights” before the new season starts later this month, but my initial response is that of slight disappointment. I’m weary of passing judgment too early (only four-episodes in, with the second disk due in the mail tomorrow) as most great shows get better as they go, but I can’t help but wonder if all the people who went nuts over it, especially the ones who claim it’s not really about football, realize that it’s essentially a better written and directed version of “The O.C.”?

I’m actually going to cut this entry short here as I’ve got a lot to get into but I think if I keep going it’ll all just sort of peter out and die on the page. Short, quick and to the point is the new motto.

The myth of the active blogger

Much to my disappointment, the promise of regular blog appearances by yours truly has withered on the vine somewhat, especially those arriving during the work-week. My after-hours resolve is somewhat lacking as more often than not I find myself crashing before 11 these days (frankly I blame the heat which is bordering on oppressive and it’s not even July). I can only be thankful I’m not under the gun of weekly Lost articles anymore as I’m so punch-drunk and bleary-eyed lately they’d probably just descend into protracted apologies (kind of like this entry). I suspect for the time being my updates will be limited to quick bursts primarily written on the weekends.

Less verbose than I anticipated…

This blog has been up for about a week and my plan of a new entry a day has, um, stalled. I think the key here is lots of short posts unless I really feel like busting out something worth expanding upon, which probably for everyone’s well-being, will be rare. My weekly Lost columns for Matt Seitz (which I’ve indexed on the right-hand side for all you good people) do a pretty decent job of quenching that particular desire to tap out 1500 to 2000 words, so my writing will probably be in quick bursts until my tenure is up over there.

I wish I could just shut the fuck up...

I have a blog. Yes, another one. As if I didn’t have enough outlets for unsolicited "opinionating" and poorly spell-checked shit-talking.

I’d been toying with the idea for a little while now, especially as the volume of posts on my Myspace blog have been increasing steadily over the past few months. Myspace has been a great stop-gap but it’s too confining. You can’t embed photos or video into the text and frankly, there’s still a bit of a stigma attached to it. I don’t care how many fucking novels Zach Braff writes on his Myspace, it tends to reduce even the best pieces of writing to the level of overly-confiding 13-year-old girls.

So I’ve placed my toe in the water over at Blogger, which is the same server company that The House Next Door is built on. And if it’s good enough for Matt Zoller Seitz it’s good enough for me… for now.

I’m still getting a feel for the software so it’s a bit rough at the outset. Ideally I see myself posting to it several times a week but the road to hell is paved with articles I never got around to finishing. The new site will hopefully keep me sane while I’m out on the road with Steel City in late May and June, and allow me to record some of the madness of my first theatrical release. I somehow managed to “do” Sundance without taking a single photograph to prove I was even there so I have every intention of avoiding the same mistake this time around (especially as it could be years before I get another opportunity).

This isn’t a “movie review site:” I’ve done that, and it’s tedious and you get diminished results over time. There really is no format to it. If I see something (in any medium) that I feel inspired to write about, I will. If there’s something going on in my life that’s worth sharing, it will be here. It’s as simple as that. My stuff for the House Next Door aside, I tend to have a pretty low-impact, conversational writing style so hopefully it will be enjoyable for others to read, and if not, at least I’ll have another way of documenting this period of my life.

Also, I’m still completely addicted to Myspace, so don’t worry about me disappearing from there entirely. As long as there are still friends, acquaintances and former girlfriends to cyber-stalk, I will still be logging in there a couple times a day. This site is me simply attempting to branch out a bit and hopefully rope in a few eyeballs who are turned off by the whole “Myspace” experience.

Let’s see how long I can make a go of this.