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Tape Night.

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Tonight at the Sidewalk Cinema (the best movie theater in my area and, not coincidentally, the only indie movie theater in my area), my pal Jeremy is having a Tape Night event. Jeremy and Sidewalk host Tape Night a few times a year. As you might guess from the name, it involves projecting a movie from an honest-to-goodness VHS tape on the big screen. Now, VHS is not known for it’s visual clarity. In fact, it’s known for being generally low-res and muddy. But VHS movies look surprisingly good on the Sidewalk Cinema screen. And part of the fun is the retro nostalgia of watching a movie the way we watched so many movies back in the 20th century. Another part of the fun is the actual movie featured at Tape Night is a surprise. But Jeremy usually drops a few hints. For tonight’s screening, the hints are that the featured movie was shot in Alabama and released in 1976. Given that there aren’t a lot of movies shot in Alabama, those are really big hints! I am pretty sure I know what...
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Holiday movies.

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HIDE AND CREEP is a Thanksgiving movie. But there’s really only one clue in the movie to let you know that. I’m not a big sports guy, but in Alabama (where I live, and where HIDE AND CREEP is set), college football is wildly popular, and one of the biggest college games of the year is the Iron Bowl. That game pits the University of Alabama against Auburn University, two teams with legions of passionate fans. Hide and Creep is a Thanksgiving movie. But there’s really only one clue in the movie to let you know that. I’m not a big sports guy, but in Alabama (where I live, and where Hide and Creep is set), college football is wildly popular, and one of the biggest college games of the year is the Iron Bowl. That game pits the University of Alabama against Auburn University, two teams with legions of passionate fans. But I’m not one of those fans, because, like I said, I’m just not a sports guy. But I thought having the movie take place on the weekend of a big regional sports e...
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Dealing with interlaced video.

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Digitizing old video sources (stuff made in the 20th century) is a hassle for multiple reasons. Probably the biggest is that old video was stored in an interlaced format. This Wikipedia article digs into the details about interlaced video, but the short version is interlaced video is captured and stored as half-frames instead of full frames, and combining those half-frames for playback on modern displays (which are almost all progressive instead of interlaced ) can get messy. This is true for material that originated as video, and it’s also true of material that originated as motion picture film. The film-to-interlaced-video process often involved a hack known as three-two pulldown . That hack was necessary because of differences between motion picture film frame rates and video frame rates. Adding to the hassle of dealing with old video material is the fact that modern video editing software (stuff like Adobe Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve) just “fixes” the interlacing behind the...
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It was twenty years ago today.

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Couldn’t let the day pass without a blog post noting that Stacey and I got married twenty (!) years ago. Stacey is the best. And I think it’s fair to say that, after twenty years, our relationship now has quantity as well as quality. Here’s a relatively recent photo of Stacey and I together in Iceland.
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Here comes Ted.

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You ever watch one of those movies where you go in skeptical for whatever reason, but the movie ends up winning you over? I try to go into a movie with an open mind, but we all have baggage as film watchers. It reminds me of that scene in The Empire Strikes Back , when Luke asks Yoda what’s in the creepy tree. “Only what you take with you,” Yoda answers. I remember starting the first Goosebumps movie and thinking, “Eh, I dunno, it’s based on a bunch of kids’ books I’ve never read, and Jack Black isn’t as funny as he was back in the old Tenacious D days.” But the more I saw of Goosebumps , the more I liked it. And then Black delivered an incredible line of dialogue (“Every story ever told can be broken down into three parts… The beginning. The middle. And the twist!”), and I was all-in on the movie. As much as I enjoy being won over by a movie, I gotta admit, it’s even more fun to watch someone else get won over by one of my movies. Which is not something I witness often. But it ...
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24 hour movie people.

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Going into the Sidewalk Bad Movie Marathon , I was a little nervous. I mean, I wasn’t going in with any delusions of “winning.” But I was worried about falling asleep like two hours in and getting booted super early. Turns out my worries were unfounded. James and I made it a full 24 hours. I think we probably could have made it a few hours longer. But he and I had agreed we’d try to stay in at least 24 hours, and after we made it that far, we decided to go ahead and go home for more comfortable seating and less bad viewing options. It also turns out that watching bad movies with friends and acquaintances is fun. As you might guess, it does turn into something of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 situation. I think my best quip of the event was when Kelsey Grammer showed up in a terrible Transformers movie and I said, “This new season of Frasier sucks.” How bad were the movies? Pretty bad! A few that stood out as particularly terrible: The Emoji Movie , Son of the Mask ,...
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Bad movies, good cause.

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My birthday is January 31, which is Friday. I will be celebrating this year by participating in the Sidewalk Film Festival’s Bad Movie Marathon. The Sidewalk fest happens every year in lovely downtown Birmingham, Alabama, so it’s my local film festival. I’ve been attending it nearly half my life at this point. Sidewalk is also one of the big reasons I am a filmmaker. Chuck and I attended the very first Sidewalk in the late 1990s, and that was the first time we realized if we made a movie, someone might screen it. My birthday is January 31, which is Friday. I will be celebrating this year by participating in the Sidewalk Film Festival’s Bad Movie Marathon . The Sidewalk fest happens every year in lovely downtown Birmingham, Alabama, so it’s my local film festival. I’ve been attending it nearly half my life at this point. Sidewalk is also one of the big reasons I am a filmmaker. Chuck and I attended the very first Sidewalk in the late 1990s, and that was the first time we reali...
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Snow day.

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Stacey and I got up early this morning to see some snow. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten significant snow here in Birmingham, Alabama, and a minor winter storm rolled in around 1 a.m. today. We were afraid we’d miss the snow if we waited too long, but it turns out it stuck around. As of 1 p.m., it’s about 38 degrees Fahrenheit and overcast, and there’s still a lot of snow on the ground, parked cars, and buildings. Most of the actual snow happened while we were sleeping. When we went out around 7 a.m. we saw some classic Alabama “wintry mix” — sleet, snow, and cold rain. Stacey and I got up early this morning to see some snow. It’s been a while since we’ve gotten significant snow here in Birmingham, Alabama, and a minor winter storm rolled in around 1 a.m. today. We were afraid we’d miss the snow if we waited too long, but it turns out it stuck around. As of 1 p.m., it’s about 38 degrees Fahrenheit and overcast, and there’s still a lot of snow on the ground, parked cars, an...
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