The Return of Fatman

 

Neglected to mention that I'd been getting fat over the holidays. Lotsa candy, back on the Slurpee train(like 5 or so a week), eating whatever I want whenever I want. I could see in my face that I was getting fat. The double-chin was starting to form and my face was even rounder than its usual.

I can usually guess pretty close to how much I weigh before I step on the scale--felt like 218, but ended up 213.4, so not too bad. Hard to believe the difference between me looking fat and not is about 12 pounds but there you have it.

So back to my shakes, chicken noodle soup, and broccoli and carrots until I'm less fat again.

---

So I got a sneak peak at that movie I "produced" a while back. The director wasn't happy with the color correction and wanted me to look at it, see if I had any suggestions. It's not the worst, but I see what some of the issues are.

The bigger issue is that he has a sequence that takes place scriptwise at night but they shot it during the day and he was hoping this guy could day-for-night fix it.

Problem is, it wasn't shot for day-for-night. You CANNOT show the sky if you want to do day for night. There's no way to turn a day sky into a night sky short of massive compositing that'll never look right.

And many of these shots are low, angled-up at a vast daytime sky. You can't just dim the picture, blue it up and desaturate and hope it's gonna look right. It won't. So my suggestion was to just add a line at some point to establish the people were in this place for a long time and now it's basically daybreak. Cheesy, but works better than bad day for night.

All in all it's not that bad. The director's improved in places--far less mismatched eyelines and line jumps. Has some good edits, but is about 15 minutes too long. There's a lot of walking that I advised cutting down. 

I also am going to try to tweak an effect, but then have to color correct it to this new guy's look. Shouldn't be that tough, but time is tight for me right now.

 

Another 10 Days

 

 So...huh.

The days keep flying by in a blur of not-enough sleep. I tend to go to bed around 1am, get up at 8:45am on the nose after some bad sleep. I take my 9am meeting every day(fucking hate that) and then I don't do much for an hour besides try to wake up.

Did that auction over the weekend, which is MISERABLE. It gets very hard to stay awake through 300 auctions each day. It's monotonous, watching a screen full of numbers lot after lot as the auctioneer lulls me to sleep with his constant drone.

I had dropped a big invoice off earlier in the week and I'd sort of expected to hear something from them about how big it was. Not like I was gonna back down--they waited until last minute to do them, and they're at least as long as the longest videos they've ever had me do.

Well, they said nothing, just gave me the check. Then after the very-successful auction, the lady in charge told me that one of the dolls that sold for $200,000 was bought by a woman who had told her that she was only going to bid $50K for the doll until she saw my videos, and then she knew she was going to bid whatever it took to get the doll.

So now I see why they didn't complain about my bill.

 Then they mention that they had a big March coming up, with an auction THREE WEEKENDS in a row. I say, "Who's going to run the auction those three weekends?" and she's like, "What do you mean?"

And I said, "I have a job. I work five days a week, then I'm going to work the weekend, go back to work for five days, then work another weekend, then work another five days, then work another weekend, then work another five days. That means I'm doing to work 26 days straight without a break, and NO, I'm not willing to do that."

So she says they'll cancel the middle one. Still not sure I'm on board. 

------

Had a Malf meetup night. We hung out at his firepit and had beers, and chatted about the plethora of things we do. He's finishing up his third book for Titan, so has been busy with that. It's a book of short stories(novellas, really) tied to a common theme.

Then we talked about other shit we're trying to do together, and suddenly in walks a drunken Malf neighbor. Just slides into the backyard with a whiskey and is like, "I thought I heard voices." He proceeds to hang out for like two hours, and gets very drunk.

The weird part is that this rando used to work at Troma with a bunch of people I either know or know of, so he's got some funny stories about that. Also as I'm showing him some picture on my phone he sees one of the creepy dolls that I take pictures of at the auctions, and wants details. I tell him, and all of a sudden he's on a rant about how we should be making some TV show on creepy dolls, and how much do we need to make this thing for two years?

And he wouldn't drop it, even when I laughed at him and said it was ridiculous and wouldn't happen.

Got kinda annoying. I was glad when he finally left, after wasting a bit of our talk time. It started raining at a certain point, and we still sat out there and drank and talked. 

---

Work on the T3 script has stalled. I know the version with Greg in it would be better, so I think my subconscious is rebelling about moving forward on that version. I'm at the point where I think I'm going to finish the script the way it should be, and see what happens.

I might be of a mind that "Hey, I finished the story," and maybe I won't have to shoot it. I can just say, fuck it, why blow a bunch of money and kill yourself physically when you can just NOT do that? 

I guess I'm feeling very unmotivated at the moment, is what I'm saying.

 

The Lie of Deep Regret

 

It hasn't really been 10 days since I posted, has it? I feel like that's impossible. Fuuuuuuck.

Anyway, can't really tell you what happened in those 10 days because I don't remember. I worked a bunch. I shot and edited a fuckton of videos for that auction company--at least as long as any they've ever done. That'll be a nice bonus check this week when I go to do their auction next weekend.

With how much money I've spent lately, I can use it. 

Anyway, the deep regret line above is from this song below:

The entire line is "The lie of deep regret, let me see what I don't get."

And thing is, I've been thinking about various regrets for no other reason than I'm always "What iffing?" about everything. It's one of the things that makes me a writer.

Lately I've been thinking about FOC2, and what it would look like if we'd had today's cameras back then. Man, would be gorgeous. And sure, you're probably going to say "All the director's probably think that."

And I'm gonna call bullshit on that, because today's cameras still can't out-do 35mm. Some of them can get VERY close with the right cinematographer, but they're not going to out-do it. They've gotten to a point where they have more resolution than a 35mm scanned, but it still doesn't look BETTER.

Anyway, it's only one of the things I've been thinking about with regret. No big deal, I don't have any giant soul-sucking regrets that make me suicidal. I totally should have banged Anne Marie when I had the chance back in high school. Couple of other girls I had a chance to bang but didn't for one stupid reason or another.

----

I'd tell you about the new Scream movie but you probably haven't seen it yet. I'll just say I'm not a big fan. It's basically on par with 4. Not the worst entry(which is 3 by a mile), but still nowhere near 1 or 2.

I'm gonna give you two weeks, and then I'm unleashing my detailed version of why I didn't like it much.

 

 

 

2021 Recap of Movies

 

 Not gonna do a top list, as I don't want to attempt to rank things. Takes too much time and effort. It's enough just to go back and look through the lists to see what I liked and didn't like, so here they are in no order.

Movies I Liked in 2021

•  Dune
• Free Guy--lot of fun
• Ghostbusters Afterlife - brought a fun, summer-movie feel with it. Well done.
• Spider-man: No Way Home - This tops off, by far, the best trilogy of Spider movies. Raimi's Spider-man 2 is still my favorite overall movie though.
• Don't Look Up - lot of people trashed this. It was a little long, but I still enjoyed it.
• Suicide Squad
• Shang Chi
• Red Notice - Ryan Reynolds in a movie almost always means a fun time
• 8 Bit Christmas
• Godzilla Vs. Kong
• Fear Street 1
• Quiet Place 2
• Wolf of Snow Hollow
• Boss Level
• The Guilty - Netflix movie directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by the True Detective guy.
  

  Movies I Thought Were Okay

• Venom: Let There Be Carnage
• The Last Duel--could have been a really good movie except that they tried the Rashomon multiple point of view thing except all three of their point of views mostly match. Why bother?
•  Last Night In Soho--I don't understand how people are ranking this so high. It's a mediocre story with an ending that makes no sense. If it came from anyone other than the awesome Wright, I might rate it a little higher, but he has set the bar so high before that we expect more.
• Antlers - nothing you haven't seen before, but it's got one jump scare that really got me(and those things almost NEVER get me)
• Resident Evil Raccoon City
• Old
• Jungle Cruise
• Army of the Dead
• Copshop
• Don't Breathe 2
• Wrong Turn
• Coming 2 America
• Willy's Wonderland
• Fear Street 2&3
• Zoey's Extraordinary Xmas
• Son
• Jakob's Wife
• The Night House
  

Movies That I Disliked or Hated in 2021

•  No Time To Die - Overly long, same old shit.
• Halloween Kills - Jesus, so bad in so many ways.
• Matrix Resurrections - Took me four tries to finish it. Garbage.
• Black Widow - probably the worst Marvel movie so far.
• Silent Night - Didn't finish it. Boring.
• Zack Snyder's JL 
• Malignant - Honestly, I'm gonna give this one another look, because I was a bit out of my mind when I saw it. I'll probably still hate it though.
• Mortal Kombat
• Tomorrow War
• The Marksman
• Last Looks
• Black Friday
• Seance
• Great White
• Shadow In The Cloud
  

 Okay, this is probably not all encompassing, but I went through a bunch of lists to see what was released. Saw a lot of movies I SHOULD have seen but didn't. But this took me a while, so I'll save the TV post for later.

 

Help I Am In Hell

 

 Man, past couple of days of work have been ROUGH. This "easy" test turned out to take me three days. They had no idea what needed to be done to run through the whole thing, and this thing kicked my ass up and down.

I ran through the full process--which takes roughly an hour each time--around 20 times. But it's finally done.

On another note, my kid's upstairs throwing up all over the place. No idea why. That's not a 'Vid symptom. It's not fun though.

--

I dunno. I'm really on the fence about T3. Like, the idea of doing it appeals to me but then when I actually think about all of the work involved...well, it all starts sounding rough. 

I mean, I'm going to finish the script for sure. I'm going to call Laura from the first Ttory and see what it would take to get her out to do it. If she's not interested or needs too much money, it's a done deal. The project will be dead. I'm not recasting her role, and there's no way to sub someone else in like I'm about to do for that actor who's ghosted me.

It will be a bit of a bummer, but we're back in that ugly space where finding locations is nearly impossible. Unless I set the whole movie in the woods--which I've done already for most of part 1 and 2--it's just not easy to get people to let strangers over to their house.

Hell, some of the actors who were originally in for the first segment aren't even getting back to me, so I imagine casting could also be tough.

 --

Did I tell you that I managed to get the new Xbox for both my brothers. Took some serious work, but got 'em. Hadn't been able to get one for myself, but that changed yesterday. Got an alert that bundles might be available at that place that rhymes with Name Drop, so I logged in. Took some more fiddling, but I got one.

They haven't shipped it today, but maybe by this time next week I'll have it.

 

First Post of 2022

 

So, we made it, huh? 

First off, my brother Mike got a test and is positive. He's getting over it now, seemed like a decent cold to him. My other brother's wife also tested positive and is showing mild cold symptoms. 

I've had some mild cold symptoms for a week or so, but those tests I ordered over a week ago still haven't arrived. Oh well, whatever. Hope I've got it and can get me some antibodies, since I haven't gone in for a booster. (the research thinks J&J boosters aren't all that effective, and I'm not interested in the other boosters)

---

We went to the beach, masks in full effect. We mostly stayed at the hotel. The kid hit the indoor pool for a while, while the adults did adult things. 

We got a quick dinner of pizza, then we decided after much deliberation to hit a bar very close to the hotel. They were having karaoke, but it's an arcade bar with all sorts of awesome stuff in it. Here's some pics of this geek heaven.

 

We stayed there until midnight, then grabbed some food to take back to the hotel. We called the kid, who apparently watched the Rockin New Years on the TV, and he came down and we ate, called the parents and said happy new years.

All in all an okay way to spend the holiday, if only to get out of the fucking house. 

Not ready to go back to work, yet here I am...back there...