2023 Brief Look At Movies

 

 I don't really do Best Of lists. These are the things I enjoyed, or didn't enjoy.

Movies I Really Liked

• Sisu
• Megan
• Dungeons and Dragons
• Missing
• Totally Killer
• Godzilla Minus One
• Guardians of the Galaxy 3(probably my favorite of the year)
• Renfield
• The Covenant
  

Movies I Liked

• Evil Dead Rise
• Plane 
• Cocaine Bear
• Shazam 2
• Air
• No Hard Feelings
• Last Voyage of Demeter
  

Movies That Were Okay

• Thanksgiving
• No One Will Save You
• Blue Beetle
• Scream 6--this is on the cusp of being a Movie I Didn't Like
• Haunting In Venice
• Ant Man and Wasp
• John Wick 4
• House Party
• Sick
• Knock at the Cabin
• 65
• The Boogeyman
• The Flash
• Indiana Jones and Dial
• Insidious Red Door
• Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning
• Cobweb First 90%
• TMNT Mayhem
• Meg 2
• Strays
• Bottoms
• Reptile
• The Creator
• Dark Harvest
• Silent Night
• Wonka
• Aquaman and Lost Kingdom
   

Movies I Didn't Like

• Asteroid City
• Children of the Corn
• Hypnotic
• Cobweb Last 10%
• Five Nights At Freddy's
• The Marvels
• It's A Wonderful Knife
• Genie
   

Movies I Didn't See(but plan to eventually):

• Barbie
• Oppenheimer
• Creed 3
• Spider-man Across Spiderverse
• Iron Claw
• The Killer
• Suitable Flesh
• Saw X
• The Nun 2
• New Exorcist movie
• Mario Bros
• Little Mermaid
• Fast X
• Sound of Freedom
• We Have A Ghost
• Dumb Money
• VHS 85
• Pet Sematary Bloodlines
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Napoleon
• Rebel Moon
• Anyone But You
• Ferrari
   

 

 

Xmas Over

 

Was pretty average, as usual. Started bad--my mom sent a text saying don't come by, she was getting ready to go to the emergency room. She was hurting on her left side pretty bad.

But then an hour later we get another text that says Come on By...turns out that the pain subsided so she decided NOT to go...

So me and the kid went down and hung out for a little while, exchanged gifts. Then out of there and headed to the inlaws. Only seven of us there now, when there used to be like 25.

The wife's feeling ultra-bad...still missing her dad and worried about her mom's ailing health, as well as the fact that her leg is super fucked up.

Did I mention that? She's got a torn ligament. She'd been hobbling around like an 80 year old and finally went in for tests. She was hoping they could do some sort of quickish surgery to fix it, but the doctor gave her the bad news that they need to do a full knee replacement because of <reasons>. 

She can't afford to take off of work right now, not strictly for monetary reason, but for a lot of the behind-the-scenes shit. She'll lose her FMLA time that she needs to take care of her mom and our kid. Some other shit like that.

I think her plan then is to try to suck it up--with cortisone shots--until the summer, and get it done then. I think it'll be a repeat of the last time she had to have surgery on her arm, when she basically took the entire summer off and went to the beach.

Sounds like it's gonna fuck up any vacation plans we might be trying to make, and I can tell you, I need a vacation. I just had four days off, but it felt like four hours. I need a solid week, maybe even 10 days.

---

The Xmas script is at a near standstill. I came up with SOME of the stuff I need, but there's a big middle section that I just don't have anything. I can't really tell you why without going into specifics, and I'm not gonna do that.

Have edited most of a rough-cut of the music video. 

I'd floated the idea of going down to the beach for New Year's--getting a room for us, plus a room for the kid and mother-in-law but the wife doesn't think her mom's feeling up to it.

Gonna be another crappy New Year's--it's really turning out to be my least-liked holiday, but at least I get another day off at work...

Holiday Season Kinda Sucks Now

 

I mean, we all know it, right? Once upon a time they were fun and exciting and you couldn't wait for them to get here, and now they're just full of anxiety and things-to-do and to-get.

The only upside is time off from work.

 I continue to make progress on that Xmas script. Since I have a well-documented hard time writing seasonal things out of season, I've basically got a now two-week window or so to get as much done as possible. Can I finish it? Who knows.

I DO know that I've been laying in bed brainstorming, coming up with some interesting stuff that I then type into the notes on my phone that's by my bed. 

Interesting to me, I've written in a different style than I usually do. Closest thing I can compare it to is a Shane Black script if you've ever read any of his old ones like Lethal Weapon. I'm not doing anywhere near as many "asides" as he did, but they're there, and they make me chuckle.

--

Finished the auction videos and uploaded them. Gotta then get back to the music video.

--

Have we talked Crypto before? Last year since I had extra money hanging around, I looked into the whole Crypto thing. I got friends who are big on it, and I got friends who think it's all a scam.

I can say after doing quite a bit of research that it's definitely not a scam. There ARE scam cryptos out there, but the fundamentals of investing in an underlying blockchain technology seem legit from everything I've read.

The BS cryptos out there are pretty easy to spot. 

Anyway, after doing my research I dumped about $6K into some specific cryptos that looked promising, ie, ones whose technology was better than bitcoin so therefore looked to have a better future. As in, faster processing speeds, how many transactions per second they could handle, how energy efficient and scalable they were.

I figured--if I lose it, so what. 

Well, at one point my portfolio was down to like $1800. I was thinking...well, was an interesting gamble. Guess I'm gonna lose it all.

Recently, however...well, I'm sure it'll go back down but my portfolio's currently at over $10K. Quite a pleasant surprise that specifically the cryptos I chose are starting to really blow up--reminds me of my comic book days when I could take a look at what was going on with a certain character or artist, and figure out the comics that would blow up in price in the next few years.

I was very good at that.

Anyway, not giving any advice. It's obviously a very volatile market. It's pretty clear that if I were one of these multimillionaires then it's a very easy way to make money. You simply wait until the cryptos go way down, then buy a lot. When it goes back up, sell when you're ready and reap the profits.

It's basically the stock market, except it seems to go up and down more often. I could sell now, make some money, then wait for it to go back down and buy it again and repeat, but I don't want to play those games and have to pay the taxes every time I sell. If we were talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, guess it would be okay because I'd hire an accountant.

Bonus Xmas pic--and man would I buy a ticket to this SO FAST...

 

Sick

So this sucks.

Somehow caught whatever cold bug is going around, even though I don't get out much and interact with people. It's the congested and hacking up phlegm type of fun.

It started as a hint of a scratchy throat. I went to shoot the auction video even though I didn't feel great. Came home and started editing it, getting progressively worse. Next day it was full fledged sore throat and coughing up stuff, when it had been a dry cough.

Took the 'Vid test, negative.

Just gotta grin and bear it. Almost finished the video--did some marathon editing sessions to get there. I want it out of my way so I can try to relax over the holiday weekend. I went ahead and took off the day after Xmas so I get four days off. Part of me wants to take off Friday also, but I'll probably just go in late.

Been trying to do some work on that Xmas script--was going to make it a short and possibly shoot it with Malf's short, but he flaked out on it so I think I'm just going to turn it into a feature script and maybe try to get it out there.

I think it's fun, and I've never seen a movie with this premise before...even though it seems a little obvious to me.

--

At work they finally got around to giving me my performance report. As expected, promotion again. Another raise. More contribution to my 401K. A nice bonus.

I mean, I'm not complaining about that. 

---

Watched Die Hard 2 with the fam--the kid wanted to see it because he apparently really liked part 1. I have to convince him that part 2 is that last part, cuz the rest of those movies suck.

Still a very fun movie. 

Then we watched It's A Wonderful Knife. Now THAT is a giant piece of shit. What a mess...they knew they wanted to put a slasher slant to the original classic, but clearly had NO idea how to do it. This thing is all over the place.

Not gonna make it into any holiday rotation of mine...

 

 

 

Xmas Imminent

 

Sisters apparently came/coming to town this week. One showed up Sunday, another shows up today. They're only in town for a few days--not a Xmas visit--so they're trying to pack in as much shit as possible.

Unfortunately they like to eat a Ledos because apparently their fucking taste buds don't work. 

So I'm gonna meet up with them after eating somewhere else first. Then I got to run to the Malf's to grab a hard drive so I can back up all this video footage. It gets wiped from the camera cards on Saturday when I go shoot this auction video.

Work was supposed to gear up and get excruciating for me as of tomorrow, but word came down that it's been delayed--basically, the environment was supposed to be finished refreshing tomorrow. Turns out, it's not getting started until the 22nd and will take 11 days to complete.

Guess it's now gonna be my January that gets screwed. Sounds okay to me, since it's a suck month anyway.

Haven't had my review yet, so don't know what kind of raise/bonus I get this year. I expect it to be good, but we'll see.

I continue editing the music video--hard work, with all these tracks. I should have shot more closeups, but it was a bit of a clusterfuck shoot and I didn't have a lot of prep knowledge so I could plan. It sounded more like I'd just be the DP on this, but once I got there it became a lot of directing. I don't like directing without a plan.

These fucking performance videos suck. I'm done after this one. Malf's brother is already looking at the next one, and I'm like, "Not me if it's a performance video." They've got other guys with cameras who could do this, so not sure why they obsess over me. Guess they really liked that first vid I shot for them.

Malf had a really good idea for a video--THAT I'd like to shoot. But it's more complicated, would cost a little bit of money, and would require some more work. Good, cheap, fast. You only get two out of the three but not the third.

So if it's good and cheap, it won't be fast. If it's cheap and fast, it won't be good. If it's good and fast, it won't be cheap. They haven't learned this golden rule yet...

 

 

Vid Shoot Done

 

Went and did the shoot. Was at a studio with some decent lights and stuff. They had a bunch of help. 

We shot some wides and then went into a bunch of other stuff, from tripod but tilting and panning to gimbal stuff. My brother fished for shots wherever he could.

The drone was spotty--luckily one of the other guys there is a drone dude, and he got the app to work on his phone. We shot a couple of takes with it. I tried my hovercam but it refused to launch for some reason. There's no GPS in it--it just kept saying "Waiting to take off"...but it does that automatically when you push the power button.

Pretty confusing. Came home only to find out that an issue that popped up once before has once again reared its head. Two tiny smudges on the camera sensor leaves a small faint circle in the shots.

Bad news for me. Luckily most of this is lit very dark, so you don't see them too well. When I'm done editing the whole thing, I'm going to have to go in and frame-by-frame paint them out when you can see them.

That sucks.

Started working on it but haven't had much time. Gonna try to get some edited Sunday.

Going by Zig's tomorrow to go to some weird festival they have in his city. Prolly watch something afterward, I assume.

 

Vid Shoot 2.0

 

Tested some stuff over the weekend. My actual drone, one battery just flashes red on the charger. The other two charged okay.

Except when I put the battery in the drone, the app said "Battery Error -- Cannot Launch". Tried the other battery, and it seemed okay.

Means we only have about 25 minutes of fly time before it has to be charged.

I messed with the hovercam. It's pretty impressive. Will follow me around, will orbit me. If you download the app, you can manually control it. Goes about 30-40 feet high.

Only runs for about 10 minutes, but sounds like you can fully recharge it in like 30 minutes. I have an extra battery, so we get 20 minutes of fly time with maybe 10 in between.

We shoot the video later tonight. I'm hoping the floor is smooth so I can use this cheap-yet-okay dolly for most of the shots rather than the gimbal, which kills my arms after an hour.

Hey, how about a funny vintage ad?

 

Movie Weirdness

 

Got out to see the new G-Zilla -1. It was showing in that Screen X format at the theater we shot FOC at way back when. Yes, the theater that we thought was closing forever, but turns out another chain bought it and reopened it like a week after it closed as the other.

It's now been a couple of months since they took over, so I sort of expected some upgrades. Well, they've put a banner with their company name over the old company name on the building.

We walk in and I see no ticket machines to print out my tickets that I ordered through the app. No ticket takers. They've removed some of the interior glass doors, but otherwise it looks like the same theater. The popcorn still smells like the old popcorn they cooked there--still smells good, but not the same exact smell as the other theater we go to from the same company.

We grab out snacks--it's a little more expensive than the other theater--and head into the Screen X auditorium. It hasn't changed at all. It had been closed for about a month after the new company took over, so I figured they'd done something to it.

The seats are okay, but you can see the people in the row ahead of you. I like the dividers that hide them from me unless I stand up.

Anyway, movie was a lot of fun. Not the greatest movie of all time, as I've heard people say, but if you liked G-zilla way back when he was a rubber suit, you're gonna like this. The creature is CGI, but everything else feels familiar, with a lot of nods to the originals.

Out in the parking lot there's another 15 or so people leaving. We're about to get in our car when every light in the parking lot goes out. It was freaky. Place is super dark, and going from brightly lit to that dark was wild.

I drive off, and there's a car with bright lights behind me. Goes the same direction that I do on Snowden. Stays pretty close to me too, even though there's another lane he could go in if he wanted to get past me.

It's still behind me as I get onto 100, and it's staying close to me considering nobody else is on the road and there's THREE lanes here. I say, "What's this guy's deal?" and my brother looks and is like, "Dunno."

So I say fuck it, I jam the breaks on and slow down to 20 miles an hour on a major highway. This dude does the same, and stays behind me. My brother is like, "That's weird." Why doesn't this guy go around me? He's clearly following us.

I stay there for like 10 seconds to see if he pulls around but he never does. I speed back and so does he.

I'm not particularly scared--my brother and I are big guys, but we're not armed so if we get stuck somewhere and a guy with a gun comes up, we're fucked.

I dial 911. Tell them the deal. In the time it's taken to get them on the phone--and then we crossed counties so they transferred us to the other county--there's now some traffic. This car has drifted to the right lane.

I tell the operator's what's going on, but I say that they're not in my lane now and it's a turn lane into the mall area. I tell her, "If they get off here, I guess we have no issue, but if they swerve back onto the road at the last second, something's definitely going on.

Well, they got off at that exit, leaving us super confused. Why would they have followed us like that for so long?

Strange.

---

Anyway, am getting ready to release a call for entries for my next anthology. I'm not sure what's wrong with me.

Also, gotta mess with some of my gear--see if my drone still works, see how this hovercam I got recently works...gotta start charging batteries for stuff. This coming week's gonna suck.