Tacos and Beer

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...

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 ...

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 ,...

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...

I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions. I have plenty of opportunities to disappoint myself without setting difficult goals. That said, I have set a couple of hopefully not difficult goals for myself this year. First, I want to watch more new-to-me movies. For a while now, at least since the pandemic, I have spent a lot of my viewing time on comfort movies — films I love (or at least like) and have watched numerous times. I’m sure I will continue to re-watch old favorites in the future, especially when I want a movie I can halfway watch while I am doing something else. I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions. I have plenty of opportunities to disappoint myself without setting difficult goals. That said, I have set a couple of hopefully not difficult goals for myself this year. First, I want to watch more new-to-me movies. For a while now, at least since the pandemic, I have spent a lot of my viewing time on comfort movies — films I love (or at least like) and have watched nu...

Disney-Post-STAR WARS-Live-Action-Movies Double Feature: THE BLACK HOLE (1979) / TRON (1982); 1980s-Wendy Carlos Double Feature: THE SHINING (1980) / TRON; 1980s-Jeff Bridges-Sci-Fi Double Feature: TRON / STARMAN (1984); 1980s-Computer-Hackers Double Feature: TRON / WARGAMES (1983); First-Gen-CGI Double Feature: TRON / THE LAST STARFIGHTER (1984); Teleporter-Mishap Double Feature: TRON / THE FLY (1986); TRON Double Feature: TRON / TRON: LEGACY (2010); World-Inside-the-Computer Double Feature: TRON / WRECK-IT RALPH (2012) Disney-Post- Star Wars -Live-Action-Movies Double Feature: The Black Hole (1979) / Tron (1982) 1980s-Wendy Carlos Double Feature: The Shining (1980) / Tron 1980s-Jeff Bridges-Sci-Fi Double Feature: Tron / Starman (1984) 1980s-Computer-Hackers Double Feature: Tron / WarGames (1983) First-Gen-CGI Double Feature: Tron / The Last Starfighter (1984) Teleporter-Mishap Double Feature: Tron / The Fly (1986) ...

In the 1980s, CDs became the music industry standard for album releases. Even though CDs were smaller than the vinyl LPs they replaced, they could hold more music. A twelve-inch record can hold 45 minutes (give or take) of music, while a CD can hold more than 70 minutes of music. Some musicians decided that their albums needed to fill up a CD, even if they didn’t have 70 minutes of good music ready, and we got a lot of hour-long albums that would have been a lot better if they’d been edited down to 40 minutes. I’ve been thinking about the overlong albums of the ’80s and ’90s lately because of the overlong movies of the 2020s. I am certainly not the first person to complain that movies are too long these days. Vanity Fair published a piece on the subject last year. The Vanity Fair article mentions that producers and cinema owners and audiences complain about long movies. But those complaints don’t carry as much weight as they used to, and I can think of a couple of reasons for...

Apple likes to brag that a lot of their commercials and promotional videos are “shot on iPhone.” But of course Apple can afford some wild accessories for their iPhones, including Panavision lenses! Stu Maschwitz wrote an excellent blog post about how one attaches a pro cinema lens to an iPhone. Blackmagic has created a dual-lens 3D camera for making immersive video for Apple’s Vision Pro VR goggles. I’m not that interested in VR, but I think VR goggles would be fun for watching old 3D horror and sci-fi movies like Creature From the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space . And it might be fun to shoot a movie in the style of those classic 3D movies with this new Blackmagic camera. Ben Pearson wrote a lengthy and revealing article about the modern state of film scores over at Slashfilm . It was revealing to me, at least. Among other things, Pearson tries to figure out why we have fewer memorable musical themes in modern movies. No details yet, but apparently Kino Lorber i...

When a song is built around samples, have you ever been curious what songs those samples came from? WhoSampled.com might be able to help you. That link goes to the WhoSampled.com Beastie Boys search, and the Beasties sampled a lot of cool stuff. If you’re interested in digging more into the Beastie Boys’ stuff, check out BeastieBoysAnnotated.com and “Every Sample from Beastie Boys’ ‘Paul’s Boutique’” on YouTube . IndieWire put together a nice list of the cameras and lenses used to shoot 59 of the movies that played at this year’s Cannes film fest.

I like the new CIVIL WAR movie (the one about an actual modern-day civil war, not the Captain America movie from a few years back). Turns out it is more about battlefield journalism than modern U.S. politics (though it doesn’t shy away from politics). INDIEWIRE did a piece about the movie’s impressive sound design, and VARIETY did a (spoilery) piece about the making of the movie’s finale. And if you want a detailed review of CIVIL WAR, FILM FREAK CENTRAL has a good one. I really like THE FALL GUY... I like the new Civil War movie (the one about an actual modern-day civil war, not the Captain America movie from a few years back). Turns out it is more about battlefield journalism than modern U.S. politics (though it doesn’t shy away from politics). IndieWire did a piece about the movie’s impressive sound design , and Variety did a (spoilery) piece about the making of the movie’s finale . And if you want a detailed review of Civil War , Film Freak Central has a good one . I ...

Today I found out that there actually is a real Frankenstein Castle . Really! It’s in Germany. That info about the castle comes from author John Scalzi, who also recently wrote about why, after being on it for a year, Bluesky is his favorite social media platform . I haven’t been on Bluesky for a year yet, but it is easily my favorite social media platform. (I like it because: no ads, no algorithm, and it’s simpler than Mastodon.) Via Andrew … who played the greatest guitar solo ever? Was it Prince? It was probably Prince . From 2016 but new to me, writer/director Shane Black talks about some classic Shane Black scenes with Screencrush . From CBR.com, the first time Garfield hated on Mondays . There’s a comic shop called Dr. No’s , and it’s only a couple hours east of me, so I am obviously going to have to visit at some point. And finally, this is a deep cut even for Gen X-ers… Back in the 1970s there used to be a Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew TV show . It was based on the...

Director Adam Wingard works on big Hollywood movies, but he still calls Alabama home. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that he hosted a friends-and-family screening of his new blockbuster, GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE, last week at a Birmingham movie theater. I was maybe a little surprised to get an invite to the screening. Adam and I were friendly when he was living in Alabama. This was a couple decades (!) ago, around the time I was working on HIDE AND CREEP. Director Adam Wingard works on big Hollywood movies, but he still calls Alabama home. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that he hosted a friends-and-family screening of his new blockbuster, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire , last week at a Birmingham movie theater. I was maybe a little surprised to get an invite to the screening. Adam and I were friendly when he was living in Alabama. This was a couple decades (!) ago, around the time I was working on Hide and Creep . In fact, Adam edited the trailer for Hide and Creep . Around ...

I’m posting this a few days late. But Friday was March 15, AKA the Ides of March, AKA the anniversary of the first DVD release of INTERPLANETARY in 2011. I always forget that movie came out in 2011 because it should have come out much earlier. But that movie was literally years in the making — it was a tough movie to finish! I am always happy to see that my old blog about the making of INTERPLANETARY... I’m posting this a few days late. But Friday was March 15, AKA the Ides of March, AKA the anniversary of the first DVD release of Interplanetary in 2011. I always forget that movie came out in 2011 because it should have come out much earlier. But that movie was literally years in the making — it was a tough movie to finish! I am always happy to see that my old blog about the making of Interplanetary is still available on Blogger. And I am happy that people can still watch the movie — it’s currently streaming on Tubi .

Michael Shelton (who’s been in almost every movie I’ve ever made) texted me earlier to let me know we started working on our third feature film ten years ago today. Hoo boy, time sure flies. I wasn’t blogging while we were making that movie. Its working title was Red Season , but the real title (I love the real title, and all credit to co-director/co-writer Chuck for coming up with it) is For a Few Zombies More . It’s a sequel to our first feature, Hide and Creep , but it’s an old-fashioned sequel that should make sense for anybody, whether or not they’ve seen Hide and Creep . If you haven’t seen For a Few Zombies More , you can literally watch it right now — it’s available free-with-ads on Tubi.