The creative juices are flowing again, and there are a number of different things I want to get stuck into in the coming months. I finished the screenplay for Our Last Summer (see below), and my short film Whirlwind Summer Romance is doing well - I will be attending its screening at Portsmouth's Shorts:Cut 2011 Festival on 24th September, and am looking forward to it greatly. As well as its screening last month at the Ventnor Fringe Festival, Whirlwind may also get a screening slot at this year's Southampton Film Week, as well as this year's Derby Film Festival. Now it's time to move onto new things as I wait to get started on the production of OLS next year, and time to prove that I can write things that don't have the word 'summer' in the title! I am hoping to at some point in the coming weeks make a short film that I scripted and storyboarded a while back, and was originally intended to be my submission to this year's Virgin Media Shorts (for various reasons this wasn't possible in the end, but there's always next year!). The short is currently untitled but is a bit quirky and cheesy and is a project that I have been looking to work on with my girlfriend for some time, so hopefully that will get done soon. I also wrote a script for another short a while ago, entitled 'For Better, For Worse', and I would very much like to get some actors locked in for that soon (it should only take a day or so to film really). Most immediately on my radar, however, is a 'remake' of sorts of Andy Warhol's Screen Tests, which were a series of pieces that Warhol filmed of actors sat looking at the camera for a number of minutes. The effect of this was really quite alarming, triggering a 'staring into the soul' in the viewer. The subjects of these 'screen tests' included the illustrious likes of Salvador Dali, Bob Dylan, Dennis Hopper, Yoko Ono, Lou Reed and Edie Sedgwick. I would like to make my own Screen Tests, edit them together, and see if the effect is similar. Warhol's films had a huge impact on me when I first saw them and were the subject of one of my better pieces of written work while at university, so I can't wait to experiment with some of the things that he did in his filmmaking and see what comes of it. I very much doubt this Screen Tests remake will be the last time I return to pay homage to the work of Warhol. ------------------------------------------------
The ball is rolling nicely on Our Last Summer, my feature film that I'm making next April. The online casting calls went live, resulting in a huge influx of actors' CVs in my inbox - all very exciting! There's some real great talent wanting to get on board, and it has been a hard job making the decisions over who we should and shouldn't invite to audition at Groundlings Theatre on October 9th. At the moment, despite a large number of applications from experienced and undoubtedly very talented actors, we are mainly targeting local, less experienced actors for the main cast, those with the insatiable enthusiasm of people looking for their big break, much as I myself am. I have had offers from people interested in helping out with camerawork, cinematography, editing, musical scoring, extras work, poster design, logo design, and publicity photography, so a potential crew is gradually building up around me and making me ever more excited for the shoot date. The first draft of the screenplay is finished (finally - what a feeling!) and now requires just a few minor tweaks before it is good to go. I'm really proud of it and think it will hopefully make a fantastic first feature for me, one with heart and one that acts as a fitting tribute to my friends, family and to the experiences I had a few years ago. After that, I think I'll start to get really stuck into the darker side of my writing! Finally getting round to writing the second half of my baby, otherwise known as Behind Closed Doors, is a definite must for the remaining few months of 2011. ------------------------------------------------
THE ART OF GETTING BY - Expected a little more from this, the indie flick starring Freddie Highmore (all grown up!) and Emma Roberts. Highmore plays George, a disenchanted young man who can't see the point of doing school work (or anything much at all, really) when we're all going to end up in the same place. The film doesn't really go anywhere, or break any boundaries, but the solid performances of its two leads stop it from being a wasted experience. Highmore shows he could yet prove to be a talented adult actor after a successful child career (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Finding Neverland). I am a big fan of Emma Roberts (she was the best thing about Scream 4, and I liked a lot of things about Scream 4) and she is as strong here as ever in the role of George's love interest and artistic muse. There are a couple of really nice scenes, but it is let down by our lack of sympathy towards George as a character and by its Friends rip-off ending (at which point it reverts to the stereotypes it seems to have spent the best part of an hour and a half trying to avoid). Harmless enough, though, and the likeability of the leads means that I'll give it 3/5. ------------------------------------------------
THE INBETWEENERS MOVIE - Absolutely everything you could've possibly expected from a movie version of the hit E4 show. The film moves along like one extended TV episode, and that is FAR from a criticism - in fact, it would've been disappointing had it been anything else. Bringing it to the big screen does allow for some slightly more bravura shots which wouldn't have been financially possible in the TV show - the opening images, for instance, in which we move from above the clouds down to the suburban streets in crisp high definition. The film is full of the embarrassing situations and brilliantly inventive and obscene humour that punctuates every minute of the three series of the TV show. The characters have endeared themselves so well to their fans that it makes it actually rather sad to be saying goodbye, but the film proves a fitting end to The Inbetweeners' screen life, tying up all the loose ends and bringing each character's arc to a satisying end point. I'll give it 4/5. -----------------------------------------------
In the coming weeks I should hopefully be getting to see Friends With Benefits, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Drive and Crazy, Stupid, Love. So once these are all seen I'll write a new blog post with reviews of all of these! The end of the month sees Lars von Trier's MELANCHOLIA finally released in cinemas, after what seems an age of waiting. To say I am excited would be a definite understatement.
