Dad's Birthday

Last night I was watching Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, directed by Joe Berlinger, on DVD. The film is set shortly after the hugely successful release of the original Blair Witch Project which has caused worldwide attention and bands of film fans and curiosity seekers have besieged the small town of Burkittsville in Maryland where the film was set, searching for Blair Witch souveniers. While most of the townspeople are sick of the tourists, a few have decided to cash in on all the attention. One of these is Jeff (Jeffrey Donovan) who runs a Blair Witch website and also runs the "Blair Witch Tour" which offers people the chance to spend two days and nights at the locations featured in the movie. On the first outing he is accompanied by a Goth (Kim Director), a practising Wiccan (Erica Leerhsen) and a married couple of academics who are writing a book about the Blair Witch (Steven Barker Turner and Tristen Skyler). The first night they encounter a rival tour group, who they trick into going to a different location, and spend the night partying. In the morning they discover all of Jeff's expensive audio/visual equipment either missing or smashed to pieces and their notes completely shredded. They also have no memory of the previous night. They discover some of Jeff's videotapes have been carefully buried and so they travel to the cavernous warehouse where he lives to review the tapes and solve the mystery. However they soon find out that thir nightmare is far from over. The film was very badly received on it's release, but I've always quite liked it. I can remember the release of the two Blair Witch films really well. The original got a massive amount of attention at the time.

Today was my Dad's birthday so I went around to my parent's house a bit earlier than usual, and gave my dad his present and card. Then we all went along to a restaurant called Howies where I had a shredded duck spring roll as a starter and sardine fillets as a main course, along with a couple of bottles of Corona beer. Back at my parents' the new issue of Fortean Times had arrived during the week. The main feature this month involved Crystal Skulls to tie in with the release of the new Indiana Jones film.