Well, Paul Feig is back. The creator of Freaks and Geeks has a new movie coming out, Unaccompanied Minors. However, I fear he has a flop on his hands. The problem? The title. A terrible title. It's being called Grounded over in the UK, and it's obvious somebody over there has a little more brains. Warner Brothers (right now the last-place studio...with hair-brained decisions like this it's not hard to see why) has been marketing the movie towards small children, but they've given the movie a title that they can't even pronounce or understand. And I don't think they're playing up the cast enough, especially with the large fanbase that Wilmer Valderrama (That 70's Show) has. Even worse for Feig, I fear that there might actually be a good movie hidden under all of the marketing bullshit. It's based on a true story, which essayist Susan Burton recounted on NPR's "This American Life" a few years back, and the cast is great. Sadly, it looks like another flop for Feig, whose 2003 film I Am David bombed, grossing just $284,000 on a $25 million budget. Since then, he's gone back to TV-land, directing episodes of The Office and Arrested Development, which was a good fit for him and is probably where he should stay. Of course, we wouldn't even be having this conversation if Warners would just call the movie Grounded.

Kind of interesting stuff today: I got a cease-and-desist order from Vincent Gallo himself, requesting I take a clip down off of YouTube (the photo booth scene from Buffalo '66). I've gotten these before, but it's sort of odd that it came in the form of an e-mail from the actual guy instead of an e-mail from YouTube saying that a studio had requested it. Strange. Anyway, I took it down of course, but it's kind of fun to know that Gallo was strolling through the internet today and ended up e-mailing me for one reason or another.

Candles on Bay Street, a TV-movie, premieres tonight. Set in Maine, but was filmed (like almost everything else these days) in Canada. Boo...!
(Does this mean I spend too much time reading about random shit? Answer: yes)

Robert Altman
1925-2006

Art School Confidential - terrible goddamn movie... what happened to Terry Zwigoff?

The Gaslight District, part 3

As the day continued on, he retired to his bedroom, watching the sun’s descent on his ceiling. The bright white light of afternoon quickly turned orange, and then the dark amber hue of evening filled his window. He walked across the room and looked down on the street below. The last lingering signs of life remained: Several kids – remnants of the evening’s hide-and-seek game – hid behind cars and underneath bushes, desperate to escape the clutch of that night’s seeker; the old women – seated outside on their front stoops in lawn chairs – had given up on their afternoon sunshine, and instead headed inside to actually face their husbands for the night.

He lived across the street from a bar, and as the many groups of people entered on this Friday night, he made – as he often did – a little bet with himself as to which one of them would be the last to stumble out onto the sidewalk in a drunken stupor, waking him up from his deep sleep and signaling the arrival of the misty morning fog. As he drifted off to sleep, his thoughts quickly veered from the exploits across the street back to matters of more importance. The beach. The sand. The night. That long-lost memory, all those years ago. It was so clear and vivid in his mind, it could have happened yesterday: The crashing of waves against the shore; the distant sound of a cargo ship in the darkness; the faint scent of saltwater on his clothes the next morning. Fuck this. He hurriedly summoned up all of his energy and attempted to focus on something else. Something much less emotionally...brutal.

As he frantically searched his mind for a comforting image with which to numb his brain into submission, his thoughts wandered back to the little girl and the chestnut tree, and he quickly fell asleep. He was awoken by a loud crash, and he sleepily shuffled over to the window to locate the cause of the disturbance. He spotted Seymour, the 60-year-old town drunk, stumbling around outside. He had wandered outside – or, more likely, was kicked out – and tripped over a large metal trashcan, sending it tumbling into he street, and he along with it. As the owner of the bar retrieved him from the pavement and tried to silence the babbling, intoxicated old man, Seymour picked himself up, brushed himself off, and strolled into the early morning light. He stopped in front of the corner chestnut tree, picked a few of them up off the ground, and put them in his pocket. As several kids groggily walked to the bus stop, he handed a chestnut to a little girl, and kept on walking.

The Gaslight District, part 2

He struggled to open the heavy oak door, and once inside, he began his trek up the dimly-lit hallway. The old stairs creaked and groaned under his weight as he made his daily trek up to his fourth floor apartment. He had promised himself for years that he’d move into another building on the other side of town, where the then-new building codes required that there be an elevator, but years later, he remained in the same place. He walked through the quiet hallway, down to the end of the hall, and stopped in front of apartment 8A. He turned the key in the doorknob, and forced open his frequently-stuck door. I need to fix that. He knew he never would, of course, but it made him feel like he was accomplishing something by noticing that it needed to be done.

He walked over to his television, and retrieved the picture of his wife that was sitting on top of it. As part of his ritual, he kissed the picture, set it back down, and walked to his kitchen table. He looked out his window, over all of Beacon Hill, and watched the gaslights slowly being exterminated. Even the city had not yet adjusted to the autumn season. He turned his attention back inside his apartment. His hands searched the cluttered kitchen table for his journal. He found it and opened it, its old leather cover stretching and straining upon opening. He started writing, his rambling prose detailing all of the sights and scenes of the day. He wrote of how the young family had reminded him of himself when he was younger – minus the child, of course – for that little detail was never to occur. He wrote of the fluttering leaves and the busy waitress and the half-asleep assembly line of customers, and anything else that happened to enter his brain at that particular moment.

A cloud formed overhead, and the light inside his small apartment slowly began to dim. He walked across the room and switched on the light, and the overhead fluorescent bulbs flickered and buzzed as the room quickly brightened. Hours had passed, and he returned to the window, now watching the children returning home after their day at school. He watched as the fleet of yellow schoolbuses rolled over the hills, winding in and out of the streets, and marvelled at the ballet of little feet splashing in puddles and picking up fallen leaves in the street. A little girl paused and examined a chestnut tree, and upon obtaining some of its riches that were deposited on the ground, promptly skipped on down the street, making sure to jump in each and every puddle along the way. The cloud became thicker and more pronounced in the sky, and he was sure a storm was coming. Whether it would be rain or snow, he could not be sure. It was that time of year.