Source Code

Last night I started writing the script for Script Frenzy. I got about three and a half pages written. It's a kind of horror, cyberpunk science-fiction script, based on a story idea I've had for years. Later on I watched the 1998 movie Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, directed by Steve Miner. It's the sixth sequel to the original Halloween film, and takes up the story of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) twenty years after the original, where she has a 17 year old son (Josh Hartnett) and is now working as a headteacher at a prestigious boarding school. While the rest of the school are off on a camping trip over Halloween, her son and three of his friends decide to take advantage of having the deserted school to themselves. Obviously before long, Laurie's murderous, invulnerable brother, Michael Myers (Chris Durand) to indulge his favourite hobby of slicing up teenagers, and anyone else he comes across, with large kitchen knives. It's actually a lot better than most of the others in the series. It owes a lot to the Scream series (Scream writer Kevin Williamson performed an uncredited rewrite on this film and acts as executive producer), with the same blend of shocks, jokes and movie references. Today I went out to the movies and saw Source Code, directed by Duncan Jones. The movie stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a US soldier who wakes up on a train with no memory of how he got there. He also doesn't know the woman sitting opposite him (Michelle Monaghan), but she knows him even though she seems to think he is someone else entirely. When he looks in the mirror he sees someone else's reflection staring back at him. Eight minutes after he wakes up, the train is destroyed in a bomb explosion. The soldier wakes up again to discover he is part of an experiment called "Source Code", which allows the participant to relive the last eight minutes of someone else's life. The train was destroyed that morning, and he has to keep going back through those last eight minutes in order to find the bomb and discover the bomber on the crowded train, before the same bomber detonates a nuclear device in downtown Chicago. It was a good movie with a really complex, intriguing plot and some great action and twists. Both of the movies are reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch

Last night I was playing some of Batman: Arkham Asylum on the PlayStation 3. It's a really fun game. The background is that Batman has captured The Joker and has brought him to Arkham Asylum, but it turns out that it's all a trap and that Arkham Asylum has been taken over by The Joker and his henchmen, and the staff, including Comissioner Gordon, have been taken hostage. Basically you play Batman and you have to explore the corridors of Arkham, fighting with The Joker's henchmen and all the other familiar Batman enemies, including The Riddler who has left a number of puzzles scattered around that you have to solve. It's a very involving game, and a lot of fun.

Later on I was watching the 1982 movie Halloween III: Season of the Witch, directed by Tommy Lee Wallace. It's a very unusual sequel because, unlike every other movie in the Halloween franchise, this one does not focus on the indestructible psychopath Michael Myers. Instead it concerns the insane owner of a toy company called Silver Shamrock, who maufactures a range of popular children's Halloween masks which are advertised endlessly with an irritating countdown jingle ("Three more days to Halloween... Halloween... Halloween... Three more days to Halloween... Silver Shamrock"). However, it turns out that the masks are lethal booby traps which are due to be activated by a special signal transmitted on Halloween night. Apparently, the producers John Carpenter and Debra Hill, wanted to turn the Halloween franchise into a kind of anthology film series with a new seperate horror film released every year focussing on a different aspect of the Halloween season. However the idea was abandoned due to the total commercial failure of this movie. The original script was written by acclaimed writer Nigel Kneale, who created the Quatermass TV series, but he had his name taken off the film when his script was changed in order to make it more gruesome and violent.

I started writing my NaNoWriMo story yesterday. I got 2,026 words done yesterday. The target is to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of November.

Today was yet another dull and quiet day in the office.

Halloween

Last night I was listening to an episode of the Doctor Who radio series called "Sisters of the Flame". In this episode The Doctor (played by Paul McGann) and his companion Lucie (Sheridan Smith), avoiding an urgent summons from the Doctor's people, the Time Lords, find themselves on a space freighter where The Doctor is immediately kidnapped by aliens and Lucie is arrested by the ship's security as a stowaway. However the Doctor soon discovers that suomeone is illegally using Time Lord technology and encounters an old enemy. It was pretty good. After that I listened to the first of a new radio series of The Man in Black, in which each week the sinister "Man in Black" (played by Mark Gatiss) introduces a one-off horror story. In this week's story, "Phish Food", a retired man gets his first computer and sets out to explore the internet, only to be plagued by on-line scams which he soon discover want much more from him than just his money.

I watched the 2008 movie Choke, directed by Clark Gregg and based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, on DVD. The film tells the story of Victor Mancini (played by Sam Rockwell), a sex addict who works as an actor in a historical recreation park themed around Colonial America, and operates a complex scam based around choking in restaurants on the theory that the people who save him will for ever afterwards feel responsible for him and send him money. He also visit his delusional, dying mother (Anjelica Huston) in a nursing home, and discovers a surprising secret about his origins. It is a pretty funny movie but it is neither as dark nor as funny as the book.

Later I was watching the original version of Halloween, directed by John Carpenter, in which a group of babysitters are stalked by masked psychopath Michael Myers, who has escaped from the institution where he has been confined since killing his sister when he was six. It is still a really powerful and often pretty scary film. It has inspired countless sequels, remakes and imitations and pretty much set the template for the whole slasher movie genre.

Today is really, really cold and very wet and so dark that when I woke up this morning I had a moment where I honestly felt that it was night and that I had slept through the day. I'm going to be making a start on my NaNoWriMo story today.

Dracula

Late last night I was watching the 1931 film of Dracula, directed by Tod Browning. In the movie, a young solicitor named Renfield (Dwight Frye) travels to the remote Castle Dracula in the Carpathian Mountains of Transylvania, where the mysterious Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) is planning to move to England. The movie does not stick closely at all to the original Bram Stoker novel, and it hasn't aged very well by modern standards, but it is still a classic. Hungarian actor Bela Lugosi ended up forever typecast as Dracula and his performance has been imitated and parodied countless times since, but the perfrmance is still a really powerful one.

Today I went along and did some shopping. I got the film Choke, based on the Chuck Palahniuk book, on DVD, and a video game called Batman: Arkham Asylum for the PlayStation 3. I'm going to chill out and relax this evening until NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow.

Happy Halloween!

Trick 'r Treat

Last night I watched a movie on the Pay-Per-View TV On Demand service called Trick 'r Treat, directed by Michael Dougherty. It was a 2007 horror movie set during Halloween night in a small American town. The film basically consists of four interlinking stories: A boy discovers that the high-school principal (Dylan Baker) hides a murderous secret, some teenage pranksters discover the truth behind a ghostly local urban legend, a young woman (Anna Paquin) is threatened by a mysterious stranger on the way to a party and an elderly curmudgeon (Brian Cox) is attacked in his home by a malevolent trick or treater. It's all very cleverly linked together and the movie is hugely entertaining, which makes it a mystery why it was released straight to DVD, because it really did deserve better.

Today was another dull day at work, although I did manage to spend most of the day listening to Neil Gaiman stories on my iPod. I managed to get out fairly early as well. On my way home I stopped off and bought some wine and a pumpkin. When I got home I carved the pumpkin to make a jack-o'-lantern. At the moment I have a candle burning in an empty bottle of wine. I kind of think it looks good when you get the wax melted around the bottle, like you see sometime on the tables of bars and restaurants.

More Christmas Shopping

Last night I was watching the film Christine, a 1983 film directed by John Carpenter and based on a novel by Stephen King. 'Christine' is actually a car (a 1958 Plymouth Fury) which is bought in 1978 by a nerdy teenager. Although the car is little more than a wreck when he buys it, he soon manages to get it fixed up as good as new, however the teenager soon starts to show drastic changes in his personality and the car itself seems to have a disturbing mind of it's own. By and large, the film is relatively faithful to the book and is pretty entertaining. It has to be said as well, that the car in the movie does look pretty cool, and I'm not really into cars.

I also watched Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers, which is a fairly average slasher film in which masked psychopath Michael Myers returns to finish off his young neice who now seems to have a psychic link with her murderous uncle, who manges to still find time to hack and slash his way through the usual party-loving teens. The trouble with so many horror sequels is that after you've seen one you've more or less seen them all.

Today has been pretty quiet. I went out today to finish off some Christmas shopping. I bought the DVD of Dirty Dancing for Jackie, and the book of The Star's Tennis Balls by Stephen Fry for my mum. I also bought some cards. The streets were absolutely clogged today, to the point where, at one section of the street that had been narrowed by half due to scaffolding, there was just a solid mass of people who could barely move in any direction. Also it was absolutely pouring with rain so many people had umbrellas, which made things worse. I really hate crowds and so I was starting to feel quite stressed, but I managed to get what I wanted and that, I hope, is my shopping done for this year. On my way home I got my groceries for the week.

When I got back I found a letter addressed to me, containing an electricity bill for around £7, apparently for an unmetered TV amplifier (I don't have a TV amplifier, unmetered or otherwise) covering the dates 31 December 2004 (six months before I moved in here) until 31 December 2007 (which is still three weeks away) so I don't know what is going on with that.

Halloween

Last night was pretty quiet. I was talking to Emily on the phone for about an hour, which was very nice.

Work is still going through a period of adjustment in regard to the big desk move. One curious thing actually, Owen, the guy who sits directly behind me, was in my class at college for three years. I studied Information Management at Queen Margaret University College in Edinburgh for four years from 1997 to 2001. I miss those days actually, I had a lot of fun. I remember being absolutely worried sick and stressed out for weeks after I finished the course because I was convinced I'd failed. Surprisingly enough I did graduate in the end.

Anyway, happy Halloween!