All posts by Mike

Untitled Project to Soon be Titled

For some time, I’ve promised a post on the progress of the “Untitled Project”. Without revealing too much, the project will most likely have one of the following names:

  • Ameviathan
  • Magine
  • The Suspension Invention

Currently, I’m leaning heavily towards the last name; though all three names will be featured in the project in one form or another.

I’m developing the project so that it has the potential to be an episodic show. At this stage however, for practical reasons, my goal is too shoot one show, a pilot, which will be 20 to 30 minutes in length. If I even manage to get the pilot done, it will be a small miracle.

Continue reading Untitled Project to Soon be Titled

The Wereto

Where to?

Werewolves 
just don't bother me,
only traveling Weretos.
Never going home
when they know
they really should soon.
Oh I wish they'd go and
pester, Josie, Jill or Jeff
Check into the zoo at Salisbury
take up residence 
with that inconspicuous sloth.
Oh those, Weretos, Weretos,
where for out yous?
Making a ruckus at 
continental breakfast,
(that's where)
never bidding fond ados.
Always doing annoying things
like wearing out my new shoes
But really,
there's no sense in arguing
with an
"I Can't Wait!"
Cause a Wereto only knows 
one point of view...  
So pack an extra knapsack.
Hope the Stewardess doesn't ask.
The Wereto is going,
no matter when,
no matter how,
no matter what address.

Review: Deadbeat at Dawn (1988), directed by Jim Van Bebber

Last night I was privy to one of those harrowing cinematic experiences my film professor, Gary Adelstein, always hoped his students would have during a screening of Berks Filmmakers Inc., at Albright College. That is, witnessing a film that left them confused, uncertain and completely unsure just how they felt about life.

For me, the first of these aforementioned film experiences actually occurred at Berks, watching Pier Paolo Pasolini’s, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1976). If I watched Salò today, I’m not sure how much it would shock me. This isn’t to say that its depictions of burning penises and women sitting in vats of poop isn’t horrific. Rather, it is that I now have more of a context to couch the film within and realize that Salò was aimed, in part, to shock with its portrayal of fascist Italy. As such, today, the films that leave me unsettled now are of an entirely different breed like Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb (1994), a documentary about the life and times of comic artist Robert Crumb (Grue will back me up on this one). And then there was last night’s film, Jim Van Bebber’s Deadbeat at Dawn (1988).

Continue reading Review: Deadbeat at Dawn (1988), directed by Jim Van Bebber

Review: Bio Zombie (1998), directed by Wilson Yip

Review by Dragon and Loki

Though its name resontates with all the trappings of schlock horror, Bio Zombie (1998), directed by Wilson Yip, is far from it. And this is perhaps where the charm of the film lies, in its constant ability to surprise and confound viewers’ expectations. With its not-stop genre shifting-gears, the roller-coaster 90 minutes that is Bio Zombie, not only tears through its namesake – the zombie film – but takes on the buddy film, spins round the romantic comedy, double loops back over the action film and ends in a hair-raising finale, bleak, dark and hopeless.

Starting in a mall somewhere in Cantonese-speaking Asia, the film begins by exploring the exploits of two video shop clerks, Woody and Bee. Fast-thinking and handsome, Woody finds the perfect foil in the mop-headed Bee, who is contrastingly clueless to the point that his sole ambition extends to watching a movie with a nice girl on his birthday and rather ludicrously getting the opportunity to finally use his boot knife. “Working”, in the loosest sense of the word, Woody and Bee’s day-to-day in the video shop boils down to playing video games, swindling VCDs and trying to earn a fast buck. Quickly however, the daily diversions are thrown for a turn when Woody and Bee meet their female equals, Rolls and Jelly, two beauty shop technicians who work in the same mall. While Rolls, the skinny and clingy-dressed matches Woody’s savvy and quick wits, Jelly, the somewhat less-fleshed out and arbitrarily labeled not-so-pretty one, is poised as Bee’s love interest.

Continue reading Review: Bio Zombie (1998), directed by Wilson Yip

The Suspension of Invention

This is the other main character from the untitled project, Jonathan Winthrop. After Winthrop’s invention shop, “The Suspension of Invention”, is burned to the ground by mysterious forces, Winthrop sets out to investigate those same unknown forces with one of his patrons, Cecily the Fairyskate. However, Winthrop doesn’t believe in the unknown forces.

The Suspension of Invention

The Suspension of Invention

It's called the suspension 
of invention because
there is no such
thing as the
invented!
Yes, I fear
it is a comprehension 
of total misapprehension;
a belief from an invisible
incongruous dimension,
because I ask, 
how can it be made,
if it fails to exist?
Inventions are 
the invented intentions 
of extremely demented
head-ghouls who work
by ghostly-dark.
And head-ghouls are
notoriously uncemented
and mixed-up!
No, no, no, trust me, 
they all are...
That's why they hang in
graveyards 
digging other 
people's thoughts.
Yes, I know what 
I'm talking about!
Flights of fancy 
simply can't exist, 
they never-ever will!
That's ipso facto final!
So what are we 
doing here you ask?
Why we're inventing truth!
You're not even listening...
Now why on Earth did you
just give me a kiss?

The Untitled Project: Making Movies & The Illusion of Flight

Having giving up the life of door-to-door message sales, I’m once again hanging with the Employment Mouse. I.E., rather than planning a triumphant return to the world of work any time soon, my job is now solely focusing on making movies. This is Cecily the Fairyskate, one of the main characters from the ever evolving and yet untitled project I’ve been working on. In addition to being obsessed with bicycle modification and repair, Cecily can’t fly even though she has wings.

The Illusion of Flight

The Illusion of Flight

You just
don't know 
what you're
talking about...
Saying I 
can't fly...
Saying I 
might as well 
give up 
dreams of wide 
Big Sky...
Should I 
curl up 
and metaphorically die?
...
Ho-Hum.
...
Well first off, 
Big Sky is a place
(IN YOUR FACE!).
And for 
your information,
it's a 
town down 
in Montana!
And if a sky 
can be place,
Then I'll
elude your illusion
with my spoked
wheels flying
in a bicycle race!

Think Tank

Think Tank

The panic had spread.
They phoned me up.
They told me of some 
bubbling madness,
about how
"ITS"
eyes slid shut.
"Impossible!" I cried,
"Even inside the 
bullet proof tank
of a closet 
made of dark?!?!"
"Yes," they replied.
I asked,
"Did you tell it not to dream
of things like 
Tennis in the Sea,
or Sphinxes weird 
from trapdoor realities?"
"Yes," they muttered, 
"and nothing works."
So I put the phone down.
Now there's little
left to tell you, 
so if you'll excuse me,
I'm giving into my fear
like we all do.

Grumblings

Grumble, Grumlbe, Grumble...

Grumblings are always grumbling,
about this and that.
Go ask a Grumbling to take out the garbage,
he'll retort, 
"What, and waste my time?
I ain't doin' no rubbish like trash!"
Or tell him to trim the hedge, 
and he'll growl very low,
"Leave me alone, Jack, I'm bushed 
and am staying planted right here 
so long as I can't figure out
what whack smack you are barking about."
Try to get a Grumbling to feed the fish,
he'll reply composed and reposed,
"I just can't do it, Trish, 
for I fear the only fish I'm hooked on
come off punch-lines and onto my dinner dish."
Though, the true problem comes
when the Grumblings are more than one.
Whereas 'a' Grumbling can be humbled into mumbles
with 'a' strategically placed TV 
(which he'll watch indefinitely),
if a number of Grumblings start 
stumbling though doors, jumbling out windows 
and falling in a bumble of tumbles 
down the crumbling chimneys narrow,
that grumbling will roar into a rumbling crescendo
that even the mayor can't fix,
because by then he'll be grumbling, too,
with little, if any, clue of how to save
a neighborhood that has gone to 
the Grumbling zoo.