Drifting: A Director's Log: Catching Up

June 12, 2006

The sixty-degree weather in Chicago last week made me fear returning to Texas, but something about the encompassing vacuum of dry heat here seemed welcoming. Feels like home, I guess.

This Thursday, Bryan Poyser is holding a fundaiser for his new short film, Best Birthday Ever (which he sarts shooting the following day, I think). For fifteen bucks, you can see Bryan's Dear Pillow and Joe Swanberg's Kissing On The Mouth back to back, and be entered in a raffle to win prizes worth hundreds of dollars (i.e. film festival passes). Buy your tickets here; and while you're waiting for your credit card to get charged, you should head over to GreenCine and read David Hudson's comprehensive review of Joe's recent work.

I meant to review Pixar's Cars over a month ago, when I first saw it, but it completely slipped my mind until it opened this week and all the reviews reminded me of exactly how unexceptional it is.

While driving around Waukesha, looking for the school my parents dragged me to, kicking and screaming, for the first day of 1st Grade, I listened to an old episode of On The Media with a segment on the history of the Wilhelm Scream. It was only a few days earlier that Brad and I had been discussing where we might, for our own amusement, slip a Wilehelm into The Outlaw Son...

I used to really love Neil LaBute - I even liked Possession to a certain extent - and I still watch In The Company Of Men once a year or so. I couldn't figure out why he, of all people, might want to direct a remake of The Wicker Man, but whatever his reasoning, the trailer is pretty scary. It opens on September 1st, and hopefully will set a good precedent for a genre-rific fall (Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and, of course, The Fountain are at the top of my current must-see lists).

I didn't finish any of those scripts I was hoping to finish while I was in Milwaukee (although I did start on a third one). I'm going to spend the next week finishing them up, so I can hand one or two of them to Jim McMahon when he comes to town to prep Yen's film. Yes sir, seven days of non stop writing! You'll be able to chart my procrastination by the frequency of new posts here.
As a parting gift, I bought my grandparents the best gift I could think of: a copy of The New World.

Posted by David Lowery at June 12, 2006 04:21 PM

seriously. during the piercing. the wilhelm.

think about it.

Posted by: brad at June 13, 2006 08:12 PM