It

Last night I went out and saw It, based on the Stephen King novel.  I saw the two part miniseries adaptation from 1990 when I was about 15, and it was really my introduction to Stephen King, and I saw it several times.  I also read the book when I was 15, and I was on this massive King kick and buying pretty much everything I could find from him.  It is still one of my favorite Stephen King works.  The movie is good, and sticks fairly close to the book, although the setting is updated to 1989.  It's set in a small town in Maine (where else?), which is being terrorised by a string of mysterious disappearances of children.  Seven outcast kids band together to find out what is going on.  They soon learn that the culprit is a weird clown called Pennywise, which is just one manifestation of a hugely powerful, evil, shape-shifting entity, that the kids just call "It".

I saw the show with my friends Alan and Jackie, and we went out afterwards to Five Guys for some food.  I had a bacon cheeseburger and fries.  Then we had some drinks before heading home.

I went along to my parent's house today for lunch, which was fun.  When I got home I got the book I Am Behind You by John Ajvide Lindqvist delivered.  I had pre-ordered it a few weeks ago.  Lindqvist is a Swedish horror writer, who is probably best known for Let the Right One In which was turned into a hugely successful Swedish movie, and was re-made in the US as Let Me In. 

I also got some writing done.

Ghostbusters II

Last night I did some more writing, some reading, and watched some of Hostel Part IIwhich was on TV.

It was a pretty long day at work because there weren't many people in. I listened to some of a podcast called Saturday Night Freak Show which is usually devoted to discussing horror and cult movies, but this week was discussing Ghostbusters II, which apparently a lot of people do not like at all, but I remember really enjoying it when I saw it as a kid. When I was about 11 I thought it was funnier than the first one, which I have always liked but never really found particularly hilarious.

Writing and Food

I did some more writing last night.  

Today I went along to my parent's house for lunch.  We had roast chicken, boiled potatoes with mint sauce, peas and stuffing, followed by strawberries, profiteroles and butterscotch ice cream.  It was really nice.

Feast Day

Last night was pretty quiet. I got up to 16 pages on my Script Frenzy movie script. I did a six hour day at work today. There was a Feast Day at work, which meant there were sandwiches, cake, and so on. After work i went out to the comic book store and bought the latest issues of Green Lantern, Memoir, iZombie, House of Mystery, Freedom Fighters, Sweet Tooth, Hellblazer: Bad Blood and Let Me In: Crossroads. I have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning before work.

13 Pages

Last night was pretty quiet. I spent most of the time watching TV and reading. I was back at work today, and mostly it was another pretty quiet and dull day in the office. I got to 13 pages with the Script Frenzy script last night, so that was good.

Inferno

Last night I was watching the 1980 movie Inferno, directed by Dario Argento. It's a sequel to his 1977 film Suspiria and was intended as the middle part of a trilogy. In this film a young poet (played by Irene Miracle) living in New York City becomes convinced that the old house that she is living in is the home of one of the Mater Tenebrarum (the Mother of Darkness) the youngest and cruelest of a trio of powerful supernatural creatures known as the "Three Mothers". She sends a letter to her brother (Leigh McCloskey), a music student studying in Rome, but by the time he arrives in New York she has vanished. Like it's predecessor, this is a very strange, dream-like film, full of weird camera angles, lurid coloured lighting, and very loud music. Along with elaborately choreographed and stylised violence. It's kind of designed almost as a fairy-tale for adults. The story doesn't really make a lot of sense, it's all about the mood that the images and sounds create. I liked it, I thought it was pretty scary. I really like the Dario Argento movies, mostly. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird. I had the day off work today, but didn't go out anywhere. I was watching some of the documentaries on the Inferno DVD and thinking about my Script Frenzy screenplay, which I honestly believe will never make a movie because it would be way to elaborate and expensive to get made.

St. Patrick's Day

Last night was pretty quiet. I managed to do some more writing so that was pretty good.

Today was pretty quiet. It was another pretty dull and quiet day at work.

Of course, it's St. Patrick's Day today. I remember being at the bar in an airport on St. Patrick's Day and someone went up and ordered a green beer. The woman behind the bar didn't have a clue what he was on about and the guy said he meant beer which had been dyed green. The woman offered him some beer in a green bottle, but said that they didn't have any green beer. The guy refused and said that if it wasn't green dyed beer he wasn't interested and wandered away. I have never had green beer. I would have thought a Guinness would have been more authentically Irish.

It's Friday tomorrow so I'll be trying to get up and out early in the morning so I can leave work early.

New Schedule

Last night I tried a kind of new schedule: Coming back from work and taking an hour to get some food, going on-line to reply to messages and do my blogging and so on for an hour and a half or so, then switching off the computer for a couple of hours or so to read and watch TV and write in my journal, and then go back on to the computer for an hour or so without going on the internet so I can get some writing done (or take an hour to try drawing or something), then have half an hour or an hour chilling out before bed. I tried it last night and I managed to write about 1000 words, which was quite good.

The Akira graphic novels which I ordered arrived in the mail today. It was really good. They arrived before I left for work.

Blake's Seventh Seal

Last night I was watching an episode of How TV Ruined Your Life, hosted by writer, comedian and TV critic Charlie Brooker. This episode was about technology and how TV had influenced people's views on it. It had a lot of clips from old TV shows, particularly some weird ones from the fifties which basically said that by the 1990s everyone would be living on the Moon with their own personal robot servant. It also had a few clips from a 1970s British show called Blakes 7, which Brooker described as being so downbeat it was as if the "lenses were crafted from frozen widow's tears". I've seen a lot of Blakes 7 and it was a good show and it was pretty much usual adventures in outer space with mosters, aliens, and so on. Part of what was interesting about the show was the unremitting bleakness of it all. The main characters pretty much spent all their time arguing and fighting with other and being alternately insulted and patronised by a super-computer that looked like a glass box full of old Christmas tree lights. It was a little like if Ingmar Bergman had directed Star Wars and it's still kind of notorious for ending the series with all the main characters being killed. The show continued with clips of David Hasselhoff flirting with his car in Knight Rider and clips form a show about text messaging, which seemed to be all the fun of watching a lot of people texting, i.e. not any fun at all.

I also started writing a new thing last night It's basically set on another planet and the idea is that it's going to be a really big thing from when people first arrive and start settling down there to the establishment of it's own kind of civilisation.

It was another quiet day at work. However one good thing was that I did get a lot of praise for the way I'd been working. The boss said that my work has been "excellent", which was really nice to hear.

Writing Stories

Last night was pretty quiet. I started writing a short prose story set in the Lonely Cities universe. I was kind of thinking of including it as an extra feature with the first issue of the comic or whatever.

It was another fairly dull day at work today. Tomorrow I'm planning on getting into work early again and leaving early so I can go to the comic-book store and I'm also planning on heading up to see Black Swan.

First Script Finished

Last night I finally finished the script for the first issue of my Lonely Cities comic-book. I'm hoping to write some more scripts for later issues and at the weeknd to work on doing test drawings for the artwork and trying to plan out the pages. When the writing is going well than it is the best feeling in the world.

It was another pretty dull day at work.

Life During Wartime

Last night I did some more work on the Lonely Cities comic. I think it's coming along pretty well. I do find that when it is going well I feel better than I have felt in a long time.

In the evening I watched most of a movie called Life During Wartime, directed by Todd Solondz. It's a kind of sequel to his movie Happiness, but the same characters are all played by different actors. It wasn't bad but it was really depressing. The movie is kind of a dark comedy about a disfunctional family.

Today was another dull day at work. I got home at around six again.

More Lonely Cities

Last night I wrote a review of EmiTown by Emi Lenox on Permanently Weird, wrote some more on my comic and watched an episode of The Wire and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

It was another dull day at work. I got back at around six.

I actually think that I have nearly finished the script for the first issue of my comic. I know the look I want to go for on it. I'm going to try and write a few more issues this week and then at the weekend do some test drawings for the artwork.

Comics Work

I was really busy yesterday evening. In fact I was on the computer from about half past six until eleven and wrote the script for the first six pages of the Lonely Cities comic. I am hoping that by the end of the week I will have finished the script for the first issue.

It was another fairly dull day at work. I'm hoping to do what I did last week and get in really early tomorrow so that I can leave around lunchtime.

The Wrestler

Last night I did start working on a comic-book. So far it's called Lonely Cities. It opens with someone arriving in a strange town looking for something that they've lost, but they don't really know what it is. The feeling I'm kind of going for in it is that feeling you get when it's 3AM and you're completely alone in a strange part of a strange city and you can't find your way home again.

I watched the 2008 movie The Wrestler, directed by Darren Aronofsky. The movie stars Mickey Rourke as a one-time professional wrestler who was at the top of his career twenty years earlier but is now pretty much forgotten and spends much of his time wrestling at the weekend on the independent circuit trying to recapture his glory days. It also stars Marisa Tomei as the stripper with whom he strikes up a tentative relationship, and Evan Rachel Wood as his estranged daughter. It was a really good movie. It's reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

This morning someone came to my door at quarter to eight while I was having my breakfast (or at least a cup of coffee, I never seem to have time for a proper breakfast). It turned out it was the book that I ordered on Friday. The book is EmiTown by Emi Lenox. It's described as a "Sketch Diary", and is pretty much an autobiographical comic-book, along the lines of American Splendor.

It was another fairly dull day at work, but there was a baguette run that was good. I had cajun chicken, onions, savoury cheese, jalapeno peppers and chilli sauce. It was really nice.I was listening to Mary Chapin Carpenter songs on my iPod on my way to and from work this morning (I walk, so if takes about twenty five minutes each way).

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest

Last night I finished reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest by Stieg Larsson, which concludes his Millennium Trilogy (the other volumes being The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire). The book takes off directly from the end of the second one, and contines a compex and involving conspiracy thriller. I really enjoyed the whole series and I thought that the second and third books were a lot better than the first, which was still good. They do have to be read in sequence though. I'd like to see the Swedish movie versions of the series that were out last year. Also there is an English-language version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo coming out at the end of this year. Stieg Larsson died in November 2004 shortly after delivering the manuscripts of the three books to his publisher, however an unfinished manuscript for a further book is apparently still on his computer so it wouldn't surprise me if someone tried to completel it at some point. The book is reviewed over at Permanently Weird.

It was the start of another week at work and pretty much it was the same as usual. In the afternoon I had a meeting with the team leader about how I've been getting on with the training period and I was told I was actually doing very well so that was good. I alwasy get really nervous about these meeting things because I always expect to be told that I'm screwing up.

I had an idea for a comic book, actually about three comic books. One a kind of cyberpunk thing, another a kind of horror thing and the third something about someone wandering around a strange city looking for something they lost. They probably won't happen though.

Yesterday my parents were telling me to try on-line dating again, but to be honest I'm totally out of the whole dating thing and kind of see it as a bit of a waste of time. Maybe if I emigrate I'll get into the whole dating thing again, but not until then. I got fed up of it awhile ago and I just think that there are other things to do. Would I like a girlfriend? Of course I would, ideally, but I would also like to be a superhero living in a mansion in Beverley Hills, and one is about as likely to happen as the other.

The Belfry

Last night I was watching an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents called "The Belfry". It was about a man who is in love with the local teacher and kills the man she is engaged to marry. When this fails to win her affections he goes on the run, but hides in the belfry of the local school, which also doubles as the local church, so he can spy on the woman.

I started writing a new story last night about a group of people who go to a new kind of virtual reality video game, only to esperience some strange after effects. This year I'm going to try to write more and read more, as well as watch more movies.

It was another average day at work. On the way home I bought some milk and the latest issue of Empire magazine, and also a steak pie supper for dinner.

When I got home the DVD of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World had arrived in the mail. So I'll probably be watching that tomorrow.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Last night I was watching the 1992 movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer, directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui and written by Joss Whedon. In the film Buffy (played by Kirsty Swanson) is a high school cheerleader in California, who spends most of her time shopping and hanging out with her friends, until she meets a strange man named Merrick (Donald Sutherland) who tells her that he is a "Watcher" and that she is The Slayer, or Chosen One, a girl who is born once every generation to fight vampires. It turns out that vampires are responsible for a spate of disappearances and murders in the local area. The movie looks very dated now and the kind of Bill and Ted and Clueless style humour is pretty broad. Although the film is fun and entertaining enough, it is not nearly as good as the TV series, and the series isn't really a follow on from the movie. Apparently Whedon was unhappy with the film because of the changes it made to the script. The TV series has a much better balance between the comedy and horror elements, whereas the film is pretty much entirely played for laughs. Apparently there is a rumour that a remake to the film is in the works which will have no connection to either the original film or the TV series and no involvement from Whedon.

It was another very average day at work, and it really was very dull. However, last night I got back in to my TV script which I had to put to the side last week because I was busy with the Film Festival.

Film Festival Week

Today was the start of another week at work, and of course it was pretty much the same as usual. I've got Film Festival movies pretty much every evening this week except for this evening and Thursday evening.

It means I probably won't be able to do much to my TV show script this week, but I'll keep on doing bits to it when I can and maybe work on the outlines of later episodes in the series.

She's All That

Last night I was watching the 1999 movie She's All That, directed by Robert Iscove, on TV. The movie tells the story of a high school senior, Zach (played by Freddie Prinze Jr.), who is the most popular guy in his high school and is dating the most popular girl (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe), until she dumps him for a reality TV star. Zach makes a bet with his friends that he can turn even the most unlikely girl into the prom queen, and his friends nominate Laney Boggs (Rachael Leigh Cook), an intelligent and artistic, but unfashionable, student. Of course, there's no prizes for guessing how it ends. It's not a great movie by any means but it's fun and it has Rachael Leigh Cook, who is the best thing about it, so I have seen the movie quite a few times now. I'd forgotten that Anna Paquin (from True Blood and the X-Men movies) was in it.

I was watching an episode of Blake's 7 afterwards on DVD. In this episode the ship arrives at a remote planet where two of the crew attempt to steal a vital computer component while the rest of them have to contend with a derelict 600 year old spacehip that is filled with a deadly virus. It was a good episode although it really struck me when I was watvhing it how much Paul Darrow (who plays the cynical Avon in the show) resembled an early Beatles era George Harrison. Apparently polo necks and the moptop cut will come back in a big way in a few hundred years time.

I was writing some more of my TV show script. I am motivated with it, because I don't want to be a complete loser for my whole life and time is passing. I'm aiming to get it made for HBO.

It was another very quiet day in the office. It was probably one of the hottest days of the year so far, if not the hottest. It was amazingly hot, but I hadn't realised that when I left this morning and so I was wearing my thick winter jacket, which is like a fleece inside a waterproof anorak, because I thought it was going to be either cold or wet. I walked home and I had to carry the jacket instead of wear it, because it was just too hot for it.