whatnot

Debut Feature

2008-04-04T17:19:00.002-06:00

This Summer, it's happening. I'm making my feature directorial debut. Enoch Allred and I have been working hard on writing on a script currently titled Legends of Minigolf: The Falmingo's Challenge, the seeds of which were planted while shooting Patrick Svensson's Hopscotch Hotshots in 2004. We still have a lot (most) of the cast and crew to line up, but today I launched the project's (admittedly sparse) official webpage.

I'll be moving back to Provo in the Summer to direct it. It's a sports comedy-cum-naturalistic drama about a guy whose life is getting back on trail and the mini-golf supervillain who derails it.

If you have any questions or would like to be involved in any way, please don't hesitate to drop me a line.

$50 Cash Reward

2008-03-31T22:47:00.001-06:00

Taboo

2008-03-31T22:03:00.001-06:00

The press needs more power in press events. A panel of reporters (preferably to be decided at the outset each event by an orgiastic game of rock-paper-scissors) should get to declare certain words taboo to the speaker. This year, we could sure use some relief from the following:

Freedom
Change
Liberty
Experience
America

A presiding panel of highly revered professionals (preferably to be decided next year at a major journalists' conference by a massively orgiastic game of rock-paper-scissors) should also reserve the right to put temporary moratoriums on words that will affect all press events in the United States.

If that goes well, I would also advocate the implementation of a secret word policy.

The Importance of Tolerance

2008-02-23T00:56:00.003-07:00

At long last, The Importance of Tolerance is available online for your viewing pleasure. I wrote a release announcement at the Bombdotcom Productions blog for it. But if you just want to get to the meat of things, here's the video:

Learn Something About Tolerance

2008-02-17T14:56:00.001-07:00

Cross-posted from Bombdotcom Productions.

I've just finished putting the last touches on what we're calling the first final edit of The Importance of Tolerance. It's been a long time in post-production, but I'm feeling really good about where it is right now. WiL Whitlark has composed a beautiful soundtrack for the film and I'm eager to show it off to you.

But first, if all goes according to plan, we'll be premiering it at this Wednesday's Open Mic Night (February 20th) at the Salt Lake Film Society's Tower Theatre, playing alongside an assortment of other local filmmakers' shorts. Admission to the screening is a dollar per person and so totally worth it.

If you miss it, I expect to have the film posted online within a week. However, this may be your only chance to witness it on the silver screen.

What: World premier of new short film The Importance of Tolerance
When: February 20, 2008, 9:00 PM
Where: Tower Theatre, 876 East 900 South, Salt Lake City, UT
Why: To grow your faith and support your filmmaking community.
How: By any means necessary.

If you attend, please feel free to seek me out, say hello, and exchange a few words.

The Mustache: More Than Before

2008-02-10T19:33:00.000-07:00

Vimeo.com provides a better resolution than the old YouTube. I've begun moving stuff onto their site, at least to serve as an alternative host. Behold below, my 2006 film, The Mustache looking better than it's ever appeared online before.

Stand-up Comedy

2008-01-26T13:55:00.000-07:00

The Interconnection of Mr. Daily

2008-01-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

In retrospect, I don't think I've pimped The Interconnection of Mr. Daily enough. The short film version is embedded below:

Ghost Rider: A Review

2008-01-24T23:48:00.000-07:00

Ghost Rider
Written & directed by Mark Steven Johnson. 2007.

NOTE: I'm going to spoil a bunch of stuff.

I have no idea what the hell kind of movie Ghost Rider was supposed to be, but even from that position, I still think I've got a leg up on writer/director Mark Steven Johnson. I never did see Johnson's Daredevil, but generally gave it the benefit of the doubt when people told me it was misjudged and underrated. Still, after its terrible flop status, I'd assumed he would never get another break like he did at a major studio picture, let alone adapting Marvel characters again. I'm much, much more wary of Daredevil.

The structure of the picture is a mess. Its first twenty minutes are spent before the story starts properly in a very broadly told story of teen angst and love. Literally, Johnny Blaze carves his and his girlfriend's initials in a tree, turns around, and she tells him she's leaving town. Wow. That was actually a little impressive.

Flash forward to the future. The first fifteen minutes of this segment are spent with ridiculous, golden flashbacks to stuff we saw as little as five minutes ago. A friend of mine likes to call this storytelling for "the slows." I don't know if I've met anyone that slow. Naturally, the love interest from his youth resurfaces as a tonally inconsistent world famous reporter that will shriek like a little girl, show the mature sympathy of la belle, and have her obligatory half-assed girl power moment. It builds this love interest, but it only really does that to have two breasts to stand around and motivate the protagonist into action he probably doesn't have control over anyway. Or does he? I could never figure that out.

The romance is so perfunctory, and it stands in sick contrast to Johnny Blaze's, uh, roadie or business manager or technical adviser or something... at any rate, his name's Mack and he's apparently Johnny's only friend. Mack is nonchalantly killed--with nary a wince from either the film or Johnny--about thirty minutes from the end.

That brings into sharp focus one of the many problems with the film: there are no stakes. Roxie and Johnny are going to survive because they're going to. Ghost Rider will always be Ghost Rider because he has to be. He can't lose a fight, because he can't. Every time one of the weird elemental side-villains seems to have our hero does something we didn't realize he could do that makes no goddamn sense. The rules are made up from shot to shot. If there's any internal logic in this film, I can't find it.

Back to the genre confusion: Personal drama is abandoned in the first hour. There's hardly enough fun for this to be even a dark, campy comedy. And it's certainly not an action film (thought that's where your local video store will shelve it). It's a problem with a number of American studio products posturing themselves as action films: there's no fighting. Battles are decided by our bad guy initiating an attack against Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider pauses, then retaliates with the aforementioned something we didn't realize he could do. What I would give to see some punches and some fight choreography.

Is it ludicrous to complain about the moral palette in a film like this? Ghost Rider employs a move called Penance Stare (visualized in the worst visual effects attempt at a trip I've seen in a while) on some random mugger. At this point, I thought he was under the devil's control (oh yeah, he works for the devil because he signed a contract by accident), but this was soon celebrated as a heroic task. Everyone is apparently quite neatly categorized into "innocent" or "guilty," and it's pretty simple to make the distinction. Hilariously, the only black character (or extra) in the film (and apparently in all of Texas or wherever this was set) is an "innocent" in the jail.

Part of the blame for this pathetic clusterfuck of a movie must belong to the source material. Superhero comics aren't my forte, but I can't imagine this character or his ill-defined universe working well, like, at all.

There are precisely three good things about this movie:

1. Nicolas Cage shaking and drinking from a martini glass full of jelly beans.
2. Nicolas Cage and his Carpenters dependency.
3. Nicolas Cage enjoying stupid monkey videos way too much.

These things are all well behind us in the first half hour, though.

Okay, Sam Elliot's always nice to have around (and in this movie, he's exactly who you think he is and it's so not a reveal that it made me kind of sad), but that's all he really is: around.

The Future and the Past

2008-01-07T01:31:00.000-07:00

Welcome to 2008, everyone. It feels a lot like 2007 so far.

The Nativity Story

2007-12-21T01:10:00.001-07:00

Updated for 2007. Your religion. Your world. Your time.

Merry Christmas, if you're into that sort of thing.

What's Your Problem?

2007-12-19T23:56:00.000-07:00

This is perhaps my favorite video on the Internet.

The Interconnection of Mr. Daily

2007-11-24T09:08:00.000-07:00

After nearly six months of production and post-production, my latest directorial effort, The Interconnection of Mr. Daily is finally here. You can head over to our website to read the release announcement that Joseph Schlegel, the screenwriter, wrote. Or you can go directly to Interconnection subpage. Or you can go do your holiday shopping. Your call.

Inevitable

2007-10-15T02:31:00.001-06:00

One of these days, the world is going to end. When that happens, there will be more than one person who thinks--even if it's just a fleeting moment's thought--that it was because he or she did not, in fact, forward that email to ten people.

New Bombdotcom Website!

2007-10-12T19:17:00.001-06:00

While pondering where the last nine hours had gotten off to, I realized I had set up a completely reconfigured Bombdotcom Productions website. It's a much cleaner and more elegant than the previous design, which I'll admit I was never quite happy with. It, too, uses Blogger integration, and will hopefully soon become a team blog.

And what's this? Why, it's Andrew Whittaker, prominently featured in the first released still from The Interconnection of Mr. Daily. The project is pretty much complete. Once I can orchestrate a screening of the finished product for the production team, I'll get it online. This means by the end of the month. Is it exciting? Yes. Yes, it is.

A Line for a Trailer

2007-09-23T14:55:00.000-06:00

              NARRATOR
      Rethelbart Hadenschwaffer only has one problem.
          (beat)
      He doesn't exist.

              RETHELBART
      Yet.

The film then proceeds to chronicle the epic struggle of an individual who doesn't exist trying to break into existence. I'm actually trying to figure out how to make this idea work.

Miscellany: September 2007 Edition

2007-09-19T00:26:00.000-06:00

I've begun work on a few essays and reviews that I can't quite seem to finish. Yet I still feel like making a blog entry. So here we go.

I finally got bored (enough) with the limited menagerie of background images I've been cycling through on the site here for the past year or two. So, for the proverbial shits and giggles, I drew something new for the background. It's a pretty generic young woman holding a parasol accompanied by the most half-assed of all backdrops (90 seconds, maximum), but such is the state of things. I've been spending more time drawing lately and that's a trend I'd like to continue.

Notably, good friend and brilliant musician WiL Whitlark and I have recommitted ourselves to an animated series we've been developing for nearly four years now. The new target date to begin premiering episodes is October 2008.

Speaking of long dormant projects, that seems to be the trend with us at Bombdotcom. The upcoming The Interconnection of Mr. Daily was written nearly three years ago. We've resurrected a Halloween project that we wrote while shooting Hopscotch Hotshots in September 2004. And, not least of all, there's The Importance of Tolerance. While we're at it, have another production still!

Seriously. Watch out, folks. This movie's gonna inspire the pants right off of you. Wear suspenders. With any luck, both this and the aforementioned Halloween project will be finished by the end of October (as well as Mr. Daily). If all goes according to schedule, I'm going to submit this to the 2008 LDS Film Festvial, the 2005 instance of which was actually where the seeds of this project began.

Just you watch. 2007 will have been a productive year for Bombdotcom Productions yet.

A Couple of Shout-Outs

2007-09-08T14:40:00.000-06:00

A blogger I read regularly recently mentioned that he does not have very many readers at all. That struck me as a shame, so I decided I'd take it upon myself to refer my (admittedly meager) audience through to some blogs that deserve readership.

Kaiju Shakedown. In January, the sun seemed to have set on Asian entertainment coverage, as New York Asian Film Festival organizer Grady Hendrix's Kaiju Shakedown closed its doors. Yet hark! the sun has once again risen as the blog has returned as part of Variety Asia's site. If you like a good deal of snark delivered alongside American DVD sales analyses and pictures of Darth Kitty, be sure to check it out.
The Golden Rock. While Kaiju Shakedown was missing, I discovered this blog, covering Asian entertainment news with keen attention paid to box office reports with a healthy dose of the author's (LMFDean9 of LoveHKFilm.com) welcome personal slant. He also takes it upon himself to round up early word on various productions from Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan.
DINOSAUR JOE. After a hiatus, Dinosaur Joe is at it again. It's a thoroughly entertaining blog written by a friend of mine. I'm a regular commenter, posting as "Vincent."
The Comics Curmudgeon. At long last, my on-again-off-again obsession with the typically bland newspaper comics feels validated.
The Grammar Vandal. Kate lives in Massachusetts and has the cojones to do something I've long fantasized about. She patrols the mean streets with a marker in purse, ready to correct the abundant grammatical, spelling, and punctuation mistakes on the signage of businesses. A hero for our times.
Dinosaur Comics. Okay, so this is actually a webcomic, but it updates more consistently than most blogs and it's obscenely funny.

Sweater Vest

2007-09-07T17:27:00.000-06:00

This is the sort of trauma men are subject to at public urinals. Craning your neck around to see who's back there would be far too conspicuous a motion. You stand there, looking straight ahead, vulnerable. Anyone in the world could walk through that restroom door. Anyone in the world could stand behind you. Anyone in the world could be looking at your sweater vest. And you would never know.

Those Who Wait

2007-08-30T00:07:00.000-06:00

The tagline for Sarah Polley's directorial debut, Away from Her read, "It's never too late to become what you might have been." While I liked the film a great deal (one of the better films of 2007, surely), that is, of course, not true (its relevance to its film is dubious, too). Sometimes people get cancer or lose limbs or get shot or something. However, sometimes you actually do get to take care of something you suspected you'd never get another crack at.

Two years ago, I was set to direct a short film that was postponed indefinitely when the majority of my cast dropped out last minute. "Indefinitely" frequently means forever, but here it turned out to be two years. Over the weekend, my crew and I shot a little film called The Importance of Tolerance. It turns out that this may indeed be one of those oft-mentioned "blessings in disguise," because the change in cast (the first time I've collaborated with high school friend William Stewart in six years) and our overall advancement in technical and artistic abilities have given this film a kick that we just wouldn't have had in 2005. It feels good to resurrect and complete a project long thought dead.

Currently, I'm entrenched in editing this project and coordinating an edit with editor Patrick Svensson on The Interconnection of Mr. Daily (disturbingly similar titles for back-to-back projects). Post-productions rocks!

The Importance of Tolerance is something of a formal send-up of videos produced for and by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (those rascally Mormons). There's a peculiar aesthetic flavor to these Church-sponsored productions and we've done our best to ape it, as evidenced by the first official production still below, included by popular (i.e. cast member and collaborator Joseph Schlegel's) demand.

While preparing to shoot this, I tried to dig up as many of the videos I was once subjected to in numerous Sunday school and seminary classes. Alas, the Internet would seem to prefer people lip-syncing and clumsily gyrating to Justin Timberlake songs over ham-fisted, modern morality fables devoid of irony. I've culled what I can from YouTube for reference:

Pride: Something kind of bold for seminary videos: science fiction!
Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration: Apparently, since I've stopped paying attention, the Church has gone more Christian rock. However, this highlights the visual flair of Church productions wonderfully.
What Mormon Theology Is Really All About: Okay, this cartoon is a far cry from something the Mormons would produce (surprisingly, I don't think they'll ever attempt to debunk themselves), but it's a riot. Check out that sleazy God-strut.

If you stumble across any other fantastic bits of Mormon video (I'm looking for one in particular, which I believe is called The Joy of Missionary Work) on our favorite series of tubes, please let me know in the comments!

Retired Be My Name

2007-08-26T10:03:00.000-06:00

Effective as of a couple days ago, I've put to rest my pseudonym, Vincent Elliott. Henceforth, I shall be signing my work John D. Moore, much like I did two years ago before I adopted my silly and pretentious pen name.

What happened? As time went on, I came to hate it even more than my own boring, stale, and somewhat embarrassingly Anglo name. Enoch Allred and I have begun trying to sell a script; when it came time to sign our names to a query letter, I found I couldn't sign that name, so I signed it as John Moore. I figure that there will be less headache overall in the future if I don't continue to publish under a false name.

Hopefully, revoking the name will clear up more confusion than it will cause. I'll be systematically removing it from various materials here and elsewhere online over the next couple weeks.

The Frog Prince

2007-08-17T13:32:00.000-06:00

The "within the week" I mentioned in my last post ended up being today. Dear readers, I submit to you my first animated short in seven years, "The Frog Prince."

Work has begun on my next animated short, to be titled "Prince Charming." It'll be a lot more intricate than this one. With luck, it'll only take about another month to finish.

UPDATE: August 23rd, 2007
This is actually a newer version. The audio sounds much cleaner on this version and I think the video may have rendered better as well.

Cardinal Sins

2007-08-17T02:19:00.000-06:00

So, the idea of a "dark and mature" reboot of the Darkwing Duck franchise got into my head. Then this happened:

Frankly, I still occasionally entertain the fanciful notion of one day resuscitating the Darkwing Duck franchise. I probably wouldn't want to go all Batman Begins on it, but I'd love to helm a movie one day. Which is just silly talk.

Meanwhile, I think "The Frog Prince" actually got some genuine laughs when it debuted on the 15th at Open Mic Night. It should be online in some form within the week.

Ascending the Corporate Ladder

2007-08-13T00:04:00.000-06:00

Just because your old friends tell you that you "sold out," doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to be easy.

Most Definitely

2007-08-12T01:58:00.000-06:00

Okay, Internets. Really, it pains me to do this, but I'm afraid it's time to bring out the chart again.

Got it? Let's try to do better in the future, please. Minding your p's and q's is all well and good, but it's apparently the vowels that are tripping you up.