janradder

We've just put up another teaser that I thought I'd share here as well. This clip has bits with Ira Robbins (of Trouser Press), musicians Dave Minehan and Jesse Malin, and George Skaubitis, a former Warners radio promoter. Enjoy!

Ok, here's the deal -- I really hate asking for money but I'm going to do it anyway because it's for a movie I'm working on. So, if you're a fan of the Replacements or if you just like the idea of supporting indie filmmaking we've got a Kickstarter page for Color Me Obsessed that has been raising money for the movie over the past month and a half or so and it's only got 5 more days to go.

For thirty bucks you can get a DVD of the film a year before anyone else and see your name in the credits. For fifty you get the same along with a poster and for a hundred you get the DVD, your name in the credits, the poster and Color Me Obsessed T-shirt. You can also give more and see your name under the title Associate or Executive Producer, depending on the the amount.

Whatever we raise will help with travel expenses for when the crew comes out to Minneapolis so we're hoping to get enough to at least cover the trip (as for salaries, we're all working for free unless the movie makes any money, in which case we all get a percentage). If you'd like more information you can check out the official website, which has links to our blog and our Facebook page (as well as a link to a video tease of one of our first interviews).

And if you'd like to help us out, here's the Kickstarter page.

Thanks.

You can watch it here on our Facebook page.

A few weeks ago I was asked to co-produce the first-ever documentary about the Replacements. The movie is called Color Me Obsessed and will tell the (potentially) true story of the Replacements through the eyes of their fans and fellow musicians. Like all films, we need money, which is why I'm posting about this.

The director of the film has set up a Kickstarter page to help raise that money. If you're interested in helping us out, you can do so for as little as $10 (and if you want to give more, at the $30 level, you can get yourself a nifty DVD screener of the finished film along with a "Special Thanks" in the end credits.)

Thank you for your patience. We will now return to our regular scheduled programming.

Why is it that people think just because they're at a horror movie, it's okay to talk whenever they want about whatever they want. Last night, I went to see Drag Me to Hell (which was very good, by the way), and my friend and I seemed to be the only two people not having a conversation, and I'm not just talking about talking to the screen or announcing to the theater the blatantly obvious such as "It's coming up the stairs!" (of which there was definitely a lot of). I'm talking about conversations that had absolutely nothing to do with the movie. Here's a sample:

"So when did you change your hair color?"

"I didn't -- it's always been like this."

"Really? I like it, but I swear it used to be a different color."

This was not at the beginning of the film, as the credits were rolling. This was halfway through the damn thing.

I have to say, the best experience I ever had at a theater watching a horror movie was when I saw 28 Days Later and I was the only person in the entire theater because I was at a 1:15 screening on a Tuesday afternoon. I really need to find a way to get to more of those.

I'm the one with the goofy grin (in case you were wondering)



If you're interested, you can pre-order the new DVD release of it at Amazon.

(by the way, haddayr thinks I was "the cutest 15 year old ever" -- just sayin')

Of the movies I worked on as a teenager, Galactic Gigolo has to be the worst of them. It's about a broccoli from outer space who wins an all-expenses paid trip to Prospect, CT -- the horniest town in the galaxy. Some poor soul has actually written a review of it, complete with audio clips, stills and a brief clip from the film, which was shot in my mom's front yard in Connecticut (a bunch of the movie was filmed in the house as well).

My friend, Gorman, has inherited the reins to a documentary about the Replacements as seen through the eyes of their fans, called Color Me Obsessed. I mention this because right now there's only enough footage for a short film and he'd like to expand it to feature length so he's coming out to Minneapolis this May to film and interview. If anyone in Minneapolis (or elsewhere) is at all interested, here's an ad he placed on craigslist along with how to contact him:

http://minneapolis.craigslist.org/com/998117361.html

Basically, he's looking for "people to sit down in front of the camera with me for thirty minutes, an hour, however long it’ll take, and tell me their Replacements stories. Especially people who knew the band, saw the band, played on the same bill as the band, drank with the band, lived next door, anything and everything…WITH the band members. You get the picture. (You can love them…be indifferent…even hate them.)"

When I was in grade school, one of the most exciting days in the school year was when the teacher wheeled the film projector down the hall from the library and told us that it was a movie day. We'd pull our desks or tables away from the center of the room to make a large space on the floor. Then, after the teacher had pulled down the screen in front of the blackboard, she'd turn off the lights and we'd gather on the floor.

Under the flicker of the projector, I sat mesmerized by the antics of Uncle Smiley or some nature film about the desert. The best film of them all, though, had to be Paddle to the Sea. Each year, starting in second grade, we'd watch it at least once and sometimes twice, if we were lucky.

I loved watching the boy carve out his toy canoe and carefully paint it, then send it down a stream with the instructionswritten carefully on the bottom to put put the canoe back in the water so that it could reach the sea should anyone happen to find it. And though the wooden Indian in the canoe remained expressionless throughout the entire film, his face seemed to change as he reached each new point on his journey to the ocean.

Today, I found a site dedicated to the book and movie. I'd always thought that the movie was a true story -- that some Indian boy who lived far from the sea really had carved this beautiful little boat and figure and sent him on a journey to the ocean so that, even though the boy could never see what it looked like, his wooden figure could. Apparently, though, I was wrong. Still, if you go to the website, there is a link where you can download the film for free (as well as read the book online or order it and the film). So, for those of you who also remember Paddle to the Sea, enjoy!

Had some really pretty imagery, some beautiful cinematography, some decent fight scenes, and some really neat creatures.  It was enjoyable to look at.  Past that, though, the film seriously sucked ass.  Abe is a simpering C-3PO with emotions who stumbles and stammers his way around serving no real purpose in the film except to act as a cute Merman friend to Hellboy.  Johann Krauss is a  buffoonish robot who emits gas (literally) and acts and sounds much more like the oafish Johann in an oversized body from a recent B. P. R. D. run (if you read the comic you know what I mean) than a thoughtful psychic who lost his body.  The Hellboy/Liz Sherman romance is completely ham-fisted and unbelievable.  There were several moments (well, more than several, actually) where I could do nothing but roll my eyes and be thankful that I only wasted $5 on the dreck I was listening to (again, it really was very pretty to watch, with the exception of the atrocious Hellboy as a child scene that snurri described in his post about the movie.  If I could have turned the sound off I think I would have been a lot happier).  The story itself meandered to and fro, wasting time with tangential scenes of romance, and resolved itself in a manner that most viewers will probably figure out at least half an hour into the film.

There are two things that I really like about the Hellboy and B. P. R. D. comics.  One, the stories are interesting.   They blend myth and pulp into the type of  tale you'd expect to find in some cheesy 1950's paperback collection, complete with a sensational cover filled with monsters and men with guns, the type of story that you pick up because it was only ten cents at a yard sale and you figure you'll read it when you're bored and once you do read it, you're pleasantly surprised because that pulpy story  is actually well written and reading it turns out to be a pretty decent way to spend your summer afternoon at the lake.  Second, the relationships between the characters really aren't based on romance.  The people/beings who populate the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense are all misfits and outcasts who really have no place in the world at large.  They are each the only one of their kind (as far as they know, at least), who have found each other through their work in this government agency and, for the most part, they really do care about one another.  Together, they have formed a de facto family.  But these relationships are usually shown in their down time between missions.  They don't take over the story unless they really are the story, if that makes any sense.  Hellboy II really has neither of these.  It's a clumsy, sloppy, yet beautifully photographed, melodramatic soap opera.

(Now maybe if they'd added giant, mutant, robotic gorillas . . .)