24 August 2010

What's new

Nothing, really. Filming continues on Judas Kiss (judaskissmovie.com). We're near the hump point in the film, and everyday is an adventure. The weather continues to be nice, and the work hard, but satisfying. Borders can suck my right ball if they think I'll be there any much longer. This is the life.

I would ask anyone who comes here to go over to Facebook and join the Judas Kiss Fan Page. It's updated daily. We need every fan we can get.

21 August 2010

Judas Kiss update

Judas Kiss (judaskissmovie.com) continues filming, as we conclude our first full week of production. With two more to go, we are gathering steam to make sure we get our shots needed, plus finish on time. Today is another long shift, but its still fun and enlightening. Makes it hard when you go to bed at 3 am and is awake by 7, but I can sleep when I get back to work on September 5!

We have a great cast led by Charlie David, Richard Harmon, Timo Decamps and Brent Corrigan. A great supporting cast and brilliant production team led by our director JT Tepnapa and producer Carlos Pedraza.

Join the the Judas Kiss fan page over at Facebook to keep an eye on what is happening here at the University of Washington in the great city of Seattle.

18 August 2010

Judas Kiss is filming

So, up in Seattle filming Judas Kiss (judaskissmovie.com). The weather has been warm, but the production itself has had little or no problems. We've wrapped early each of the four days, which is good considering we can film up to 12 hours. The cast has been great, Richard Harmon, Timo Decamps, Brent Corrigan and Charlie David are perfect. Julia Morizawa shines as always. Julian LaBanc (of GossipBoy web site) was wonderful. Dave Berry, our DP, is a man with an Oscar in his future.

Our director, JT Tepnapa, is having the time of his life, and it shows in the way he's handled his actors.

We've done two location shoots, one at a music studio and another at a house overlooking over Puget Sound. Now that place was gorgeous, and awe inspiring. For the rest of the week, we're at the University of Washington (where we are based), also known as U Dub,

06 August 2010

V casts their Diana and guess who's playing her?

At last months San Diego Comic-Con, show runner Scott Rosenbaum hinted that the mother of Anna, leader of the Visitors on ABC’s remake of V would be appearing. Who would be playing the recurring role was not mentioned, however TV Guide has confirmed that the role of Diana will be played by none other than Jane Badler, who played Diana, the villainous leader of the aliens out to suck the water off the Earth, back in the NBC version. So, while her character name will remain the same, the question is, will this Diana have any link to the other Diana, or have they transplanted the character and just given her a new history?

Badler, who made a career out of playing villains, has spent the last 20 years living in Australia -where the revived Mission: Impossible TV series was filmed from 1988 to 90 - married to businessman Stephen Hains. They have two sons, Sam and Harry. For the last 4 months, she’s been on the Australian soap opera Neighbours, playing another villain, Diana Marshall.

05 August 2010

Is the long-delayed Star Wars TV series dead?

Airlock Alpha confirms the long gestating (announced way back in 2005) Star Wars TV may never see the light of day. George Lucas himself told fans at a recent screening of The Empire Strikes Back that the “live action TV show is kind of on hold because we have scripts, but we don't know how to do them. They [the episodes] literally are Star Wars, only we're going to have to try to do them at a 10th of the cost. And it's a huge challenge, a lot bigger than what we thought it was gonna be."

While the premise has shifted over the years -it started as a sort of day in life of Boba Fett, with the series set between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, which then was dropped but seems have picked up steam again thanks to the Cartoon Networks Clone Wars animated series the show itself would be "much darker, much grittier, and it's much more character-based" than the original movies.

Of course, being Lucas, everything has to be big. And sometimes, as seen in the later trilogy, big did not mean better. Star Wars works, like most TV shows and movies, when the bigness, the set pieces, are toned down, thus allowing the story and the character to take center stage and not the CGI effects.

04 August 2010

Horror-scope

Plucked this off my FB page:

"According to his Zodiac (VIRGO) sign, David's modest and shy, meticulous and reliable, practical and diligent, intelligent and analytical, fussy and a worrier, overcritical and harsh, perfectionist and conservative."

Almost everything right, I think. Conservative? Like Nutcase in a Box conservative?

I don't think so.

02 August 2010

Veteran screenwriter Tom Mankiewicz dies

Screenwriter/director/producer Tom Mankiewicz perhaps best known for his work on the James Bond films and his contributions to Superman: The Movie and the television series, Hart to Hart died on Friday of cancer. He was 68. The son of celebrated screenwriter/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who won Oscars for both directing and writing for A Letter to Three Wives and All About Eve), he began his career in the theater and TV.

But it was writing the book for Georgy Girl that drew him the attention of David Picker and James Bond producer Albert Broccoli. The two were looking for a writer to do a major reworking of Diamonds Are Forever in hopes of luring Sean Connery back to play Bond. He was hired on a two-week guarantee, but eventually stayed on the film for six months and received shared screenplay credit with the original writer, Richard Maibaum. This began a long relationship with the Bond films, as Mankiewicz received sole writing credit on the next, Live and Let Die, shared credit with Maibaum on The Man with the Golden Gun, did an uncredited rewrite on The Spy Who Loved Me, and helped Broccoli and director Lewis Gilbert get Moonraker off the ground.

When director Richard Donner was hired to helm Superman: The Movie and Superman II (which were to be filmed simultaneously) he felt the scripts were unwieldy and too campy. He brought Mankiewicz aboard to do a complete overhaul. Mankiewicz stayed on the production for more than a year. Donner gave Mankiewicz a separate credit in the main title: “Creative Consultant.” The Writer’s Guild, however, objected to this on two grounds; first, that the traditional script arbitration process was being bypassed and second, that Mankiewicz’s credit came after the original screenwriters and not before them, implying that his contribution was more important. The dispute went to a legal hearing, yet in the end, Mankiewicz won. His credit remained where it was on Superman: The Movie, but he agreed to have it come just before the listed screenwriters on Superman II.

Warner Bros. then signed Mankiewicz to an exclusive deal that kept him busy “fixing” films. He wrote scenes for Gremlins, and Richard Donner’s The Goonies as well as WarGames. He also wrote the first draft of Batman. Donner then brought him onto Ladyhawke. He received shared screenplay credit and a separate credit as “Creative Consultant.”

Mankiewicz wrote and directed the two-hour pilot for Hart to Hart, which starred Robert Wagner and Stephanie Powers. The series ran for five years and later was the subject of eight two-hour network and cable movies. Mankiewicz received his “Creative Consultant” credit on each episode, while directing seven of them. He also directed the final cable movie, Till Death Do Us Hart.