The Weekly Report

Things look better in lists:

• Transmissions: I post fairly often about its progress. Namely, film fest rejections, which have been the norm. I don't even get nervous when a deadline comes up; I just expect the same pattern.
  
  
• Project 1011, aka Old War: The veil is lifted. So it's not much of a surprise. Or anything known territory, really, other than those few who either read or knew about the horrific 2003 script or the botched 2004 attempt. I breathed some joke life into it for Transmissions, in which Ridley Kraid watches it and laughs at the usual serious-silliness of sentimental war movies. But I've been rewriting the script, like clockwork, every year since. I have my 2005 draft, my 2006 draft, one for '07, a partial '08 work, and what I, obviously, think is my most solid effort for my '09 screenplay.
  
  I recently finished my material for my submission for a 2010 grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. I was in the running in '07 (because, well, I took the time to complete the application, not because I'm special or anything) and didn't get money. Then, my proposal was for basically the entire budget of Old War, which I'd shoot on my GL2. I actually got a call from the Board mentioning that I proposed all this and none of my work samples were actual films. And since I was asking for money to make a film, they, reasonably, wanted to see films I had made in the past. Then, my student film seems hopelessly outdated (but now I might've sent them in, since not a lot of people have work on celluloid film), so I just said let it slide and, maybe as a result or maybe not, no state money came my way.
  
  I originally planned to request grant money to travel to film festivals to promote Transmissions and network but... well, that's a goddamn shame, right? Anyhow, my Artist Plan for fiscal year 2010 is now to rent the notorious Red camera several times, assemble a skeleton crew (thus far have a location sound guy/possible sound designer + composer) and, with the help of a few Chicagoans, try to wrassle my way around the convoluted Redcode workflow without crashing my system just trying to look at the lowest-res files.
  
  So that's that. The script is locked and I wait until December to hear word. In the meantime, I can prep for OW with...
  
  
• Project 910: Yesterday I came up with the outline for the script. I'll dive in headfirst on Monday, so I can fiddle around a few days playing Rock Band drums and getting oh-so-close to the end of Infinite Jest (only 150 pages to go oh my gawd!). So I guess I was swept up in the zeitgeist of my own idea-creation and hyped it up before I even passed the page two mark in the script. Maybe it's because right now is the most exciting part of the process - sheer invention, trying to limit myself as infrequently as possible.
  
  So once I get comfortable with my first draft of the script, I'll put out feelers for my skeleton crew and cast. For the former, I probably need a boom op, a camera operator/AC, and maybe - I hate myself for this already - a PA. For cast, I'll need a solid lead (I already have an idea of who I want that to be, but he's not an actor and isn't sure he'll be comfortable with some ideas I've already laid down) and a bit of a supporting people to fill it out. Very different than Transmissions, I swear.
  
  Related to crew, I'm actually going to make an experimental short for this thing called MNKINO. (Those crazy video weren't up when I first went there. The On/Off intro is pretty fucking terrifying.) It says it's not for film students, but I imagine I'll meet some U of M film studies kids (since the U doesn't have a film production major, though some journalism kids shoot stuff for class). That could definitely be an untapped resource.
  
  That's it for now, I suppose. In addition to making the film of 910, I have some neat ideas to make it into a sort of multimedia project. And give it all away for free. I don't think I'll be submitting to any festivals this time around, and other than a scant few requisite Neighborhoodies items (that aren't stitched, meaning I'll save mad cash) and maybe another hard drive purchase, this one should cost much, much less than Transmissions. No iMac purchase required.

Enough has been said! Get back to work, you nine-to-fivers, and get ready to enjoy the weekend or whatever. I'll be in my technodrome, getting into Writing Mode, drinking too much coffee, listening to Fennesz and Fuck Buttons and Brian Eno, and cloistering myself from the outside world.

JDK Radio 005: My Brain Is Insane

Second playlist of the day. Fifth installment of semi-themed JDK Radio. (Whereas The Muxtapes are mostly new music.)

And if you happen to be in the presence of anyone older than 40, I suggest you listen to the last track in private.

Download via drop.io.

The tracks:

1. Frightened Rabbit - The Modern Leper
2. A.C. Newman - Miracle Drug
3. Jimi Hendrix - Manic Depression
4. Green Day - Brain Stew
5. The Shout Out Louds - Wish I Was Dead
6. Modest Mouse - Medication
7. Elliott Smith - King's Crossing
8. Sleater-Kinney - Jumpers
9. The National - Abel
10. Notorious B.I.G. - Suicidal Thoughts

Mux027: Chillin' II

July has seen far too many playlists. Today I'll post two, which are, relatively, short. And I like them.

Download via drop.io.

The tracks:

1. The-Dream - Walkin' on the Moon
2. Junior Boys - Bellona
3. CSS - Let's Make Love And Listen To Death From Above
4. Yeasayer - Sunrise
5. Daft Punk - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
6. Bibio - Fire Ant
7. Discovery - I Want You Back
8. Kanye West - Flashing Lights
9. Michael Jackson - Billie Jean

In brief: Grand Canyon

Unbelievable. The most overtly sentimental movie ever made. Moreso than Crash. And Crash was terrible.

In consideration: Another down

Charlotte turned me down. Now: 8 rejected, 10 pending; 18 total.

• Ann Arbor (Michigan)
  
• Austin
  
• BendFilm (Oregon)
  
• Big Bear Lake (California)
  
• Charlotte
  
• Chicago International
  
• Chicago Underground
  
• First Take (Georgia)
  
• Landlocked (Iowa)
  
• Maine
  
• Midwest Independent (Chicago)
  
• New York
  
• Rhode Island
  
• Sacramento
  
• Sausalito
  
• Slamdance
  
• Stony Brook (New York)
  
• Sundance

More additions to the best albums of 2009 (thus far)

There've been some additions and subtractions since last evaluation, so here's my updated take on my favorite music from 2009. I'll go out on a limb and assume that the upcoming releases from WHY?, Fuck Buttons, and Jay Reatard will end up on my final list.

New additions in bold.

• Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
  
• Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
  
• Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue
  
• Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
  
• Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
  
• Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains
  
• Dan Deacon - Bromst
  
• Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
  
• Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
  
• The Dodos - Time To Die
  
• The Fiery Furnaces - I'm Going Away
  
• Franz Ferdinand - Tonight
  
• Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
  
• Harlem Shakes - Technicolor Health
  
• Japandroids - Post-Nothing
  
• The Juan Maclean - The Future Will Come
  
• Metric - Fantasies
  
• Oneida - Rated O
  
• The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
  
• Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
  
• Royksopp - Junior
  
• Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
  
• The Thermals - Now We Can See
  
• Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country
  
• Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship
  
• We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls

Repeat: Gladiator

Gladiator came out when I was 14, and me and my buddy Seth went to the one movie theater that let minors see R-rated movies if a parent bought their tickets.

I remember totally loving the movie. I think I only saw it in the theater once, but when the DVD came out, I bought it day-and-date and spun it several times.

Strange, then, that I remember it as some balls-out action movie. Because it's not. There's a baffling amount of redundant dialog scenes that, for a years-later repeat, dragged it down. Weirdest of all is that the film starts out with a huge battle in Germania, and the next action scene (excluding the brief attempted execution of Maximus) is an hour later.

I ended up fast-forwarding the last half-hour of the movie, wanting to get to the final duel. Maybe that's how I watched it when I was 14.

In brief: Fantastic Planet

Primer: 1970s animated film about humanoids on a planet of giants who use them (humans) as pets and systematically exterminate the wild humanoids. The weirdest depiction of an alien planet/world I've ever seen.

So trippy I didn't even need hallucinogens. If I ever started a recreational habit, this film would be on the docket for a weekend trip. How the hell did the script read? Some of the stuff seemed completely impossible to describe. Makes Dr. Seuss look like non-fiction.

Mux026: August 2009

I'm like a magazine: saying some shiz is next month when it's really this month. Just wanted to make my third Mux of July and not label it as such. But when good new stuff comes out, I can't help but cannibalize albums for some twelve-track mix.

Download via drop.io.

Tracks:
1. Blues Control - Good Morning (propers to MS)
2. We Were Promised Jetpacks - It's Thunder And It's Lightning
3. Les Savy Fav - The Year Before The Year 2000
4. Future of the Left - Throwing Bricks At Trains
5. Oneida - I Will Haunt You (MS again)
6. Japandroids - Heart Sweats
7. The Dodos - Fables
8. The Rural Alberta Advantage - The Deadroads
9. Harlem Shakes - Nothing But Change Part II
10. The Fiery Furnaces - The End Is Near
11. Sunset Rubdown - You Go On Ahead (Trumpet Trumpet II)
12. Radiohead - The Tourist

In brief: Japandroids @ Pitchfork

I guess the "B" stage (e.g. the self-coined "secret stage," tucked behind a wall of porta-shitters and all the food stands) had its charms. Boss Ben and I watched a bunch of white kids dance at the end of DJ/Rupture solid set, and when everyone joined the mass exodus for The Walkmen, we pushed forward and ended up about ten human-rows back from the front of the stage. After a whole festival of camping in one spot, respectively back from the masses, we decided to get up close for some noise.

Japandroids brought it (and it wasn't just the stack of four mic'd amps on stage). They burned through a set that was pretty much a track-shuffling of Post-Nothing; that album is only a little over thirty minutes, after all. For a band that's only a guitarist and a drummer, they supplied an enormous wall of noise; one of our friends way back in the larger grounds was watching The Walkmen and complained that the Japandroids were fouling the sound with their notorious bass leakage of stage B. But Japandroids have no bassist.

Every song on the album is some anthemic highlight, so you can imagine the sort of usual hipster-music-appreciation-rocking-out that accompanied the first notes of "The Boys Are Leaving Town," "Rockers East Vancouver," and "Heart Sweats." No need to mention the frenzy stirred up by the first few notes of signature track "Young Hearts Spark Fire." And hell, I'm twenty-three and, judging by the sea of raised hands that were absent of the 21+ alcohol-allowed wristband, I didn't feel that old yelling along "I don't want to worry about dying / I just want to worry about those sunshine girls," and "X-O-X-O-X, X-O-X / Some hearts bleed / My heart sweats!"

They played two new songs, I think, and they sounded a little more aggressive than Post-Nothing fare. Not sure if it's indicative of a new album (whenever the hell that comes out) or if it's just live-only fare, but it fared well; no one knew the lyrics is all.

A disappointment sank in once they announced they were playing one last song and opted for "Crazy/Forever." It's a great track, sure, but the last two cuts on Post-Nothing are much more obvious closers. A surprise, then, that they launched into the penultimate "Sovereignty" as the finale. And while I would've loved "I Quit Girls," I'm not sure if it'd match the fierceness of the set proper; or if the required falsetto would've worked.

But no show is complete with nit-picks. I've got one: Where the hell was "Wet Hair"? Granted, the lyrics are like some free-associate psychology test (ex: "She had wet hair / Say what you will / I don't care, I couldn't resist her") but they elude most conscious forms of logic and - to me, at least - make sense.

A footnote, I suppose: I was the highest bidder for a charity auction for a signed Japandroids shirt and a vinyl and CD of Post-Nothing. While claiming my goods, I ran into the band's manager, and I imposed the unreasonable request of seeing if he could round up the band to sign my CD and vinyl and like get a picture of us pretending to be best friends. They had scattered to different parts of the grounds by then (guitarist/vocalist Brian King was "checking on the van"; it seemed a very appropriate action for that band, for whatever reason) and I received a crisp business card and told to shoot him an e-mail and see if we could arrange something or whatever.

I have no idea what that means/meant, but now my filmmaker brain is scheming how I could try to get permission to use some Post-Nothing songs in Project 910. As source music, of course (910 is all diagetic and shit); I guess I could envision a character pumping iron and blasting "Wet Hair" through the basement. (Same as how I used to play my iPod through my Fender amp in my Minneapolis house's basement and rock some upbeat, meaty-sounding tunes to get me through my thirty reps on the benchpress.)

I'll write up some more about Pitchfork (namely, the endless parade of artists self-deprecatingly and sometimes-snarkily commenting that, yeah, they were awesome, but not Animal Collective 9.6-awesome [it was Pitchfork, after all]; and also how The Flaming Lips, pyrotechnics aside, really blew it and featured more of Wayne Coyne talking than the Lips playing), but that seems good for now. The weather was perfect, I sat with some great company, heard some solid music, bought some merch, had a brush with fame*, got to personally harass Jonathan "Luke" Adams, and so many other fun things that makes my attendance at Pitchfork 2010 seem like a given than a pending decision.

*Re-tweet: Just bought a Nat'l poster. Turned round and saw singer Matt Berninger. Double take. Ran up gibbering and got a signed poster. (Non-tweet: He was dressed quite dashingly, had dreamy blue eyes, was a really nice guy, and shook my hand. I asked him how the recording of the new album was going, and he said something that can basically be translated into "slow but steady.")

In brief: The National @ Pitchfork 2009

If I had heard The National for the first time last night at the Pitchfork Music Festival and subsequently bought their last two albums, I might be disappointed.

So it was sort of a weird reverse that, while the softer elegance of the records makes them some of my favorite music of the past decade, The National had a certain part of each song that was earmarked as a total fucking rock-out that worked very well for massive festival grounds and the resulting massive audience.

First example came second song (after a new song started the set), "Start A War," which is really low key on Boxer. Not so much live. They turned it into a jam, as they did for pretty much everything else. The only things that didn't get totally loudly awesome was "Green Gloves" (which singer Berninger announced as "Here's a slow love song. Probably not a good idea. But we'll do it anyway," which I, unfortunately, though meant Alligator's "Geese of Beverly Road," or, just as good, Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers' achingly-beautiful "Lucky You.").

Also slightly-weird was that "Fake Empire" didn't get nearly the sort of rapturous applause/reaction as something like the obscure-because-it's-off-Alligator "Secret Meeting."

After a blistering run through call-to-arms "Mr. November," they ended the mini-encore with the requisite, gorgeous "About Today" that, also, turned into a guitar frenzy. After that, though, it seemed they tried to start a new song and, according to my compatriots, they got a signal to turn it off (10 p.m. curfew?) and simply ended.

Not-so surprising, for whatever reason, was the massive demographic shift during The National's set. While Doom (or, to play his game, DOOM) drew a huge, somewhat-participating crowd, most in the hipster-sea were in that vague 20s range, all in shorts and skinny jeans and t-shirts and variations on Panama hats. But when The National took stage, all of a sudden a huge amount of men in their 30s showed, most wearing dress shirts and most looking, somehow, employed. Call The National an adult contemporary band if you want, but they're the best fucking adult contemporary band ever.

I suppose the fleeing young hipsters opted for the giant bass-leaking Black Lips way over on what I've dubbed "the secret stage." Either way, I made the right choice. I was hesitant of The National's festival success, given that their Pitchfork 2006 appearance in 95-degree heat and bad sound and limp, quiet-as-the-album songs (pre-Boxer, btw) made it a lackluster set. Not this time.

The Best Mix Ever (as of July 15, 2009)

Download via drop.io.

Very flavor-of-the-year, but that's the beauty of it. Also, omitted "The Tourist" by Radiohead, which is my Favorite Song Ever but doesn't really fit anywhere.

Oh right, the occasion: Yet another drive to Chicago tomorrow for, among other things, the 2009 Pitchfork Music Festival. This should kick things off to a good start.

1. The National - Fake Empire
2. Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal
3. The Hold Steady - Sequestered In Memphis
4. Pavement - Cut Your Hair
5. Guided By Voices - Teenage FBI
6. Jay Reatard - Nightmares
7. No Age - Everybody's Down
8. Radiohead - Fog
9. The Smashing Pumpkins - 1979
10. My Bloody Valentine - Sometimes
11. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened
12. Broken Social Scene - Cause = Time
13. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - In This Home On Ice
14. Mission of Burma - That's When I Reach For My Revolver
15. The Thermals - A Pillar of Salt
16. Wolf Parade - I'll Believe In Anything
17. Spoon - Finer Feelings
18. Rogue Wave - Endless Shovel

In consideration: Burnt money is not satisfying

I removed Toronto from the list since, well, I'm pretty sure they didn't get my submission. But I'll be one irate film-festival-rejectee if they somehow, for whatever reason, cash my $75 check.

So, the tally: 7 rejected, 11 pending; 18 total.

• Ann Arbor (Michigan)
  
• Austin
  
• BendFilm (Oregon)
  
• Big Bear Lake (California)
  
• Charlotte
  
• Chicago International
  
• Chicago Underground
  
• First Take (Georgia)
  
• Landlocked (Iowa)
  
• Maine
  
• Midwest Independent (Chicago)
  
• New York
  
• Rhode Island
  
• Sacramento
  
• Sausalito
  
• Slamdance
  
• Stony Brook (New York)
  
• Sundance

What I'm going to enter next year, barring total bankruptcy:

• Minneapolis-St. Paul
  
• New Directors/New Films (New York)
  
• SXSW (Austin)

Transmissions One-Sheet

I might splurge and order a 27" x 40" print. Through my mom's photo business, I could get one for around $55; it'd be printed on photo paper, and it's strange that FedEx-Kinko's price is about $120, and I don't know what kind of paper they'd use for the print. Probably not as high quality as photo paper.

And never mind that a classy frame and matte would cost twice that. I think I deserve this kind of memento for my first feature.

JDK Radio 004: Le Clasique Roc Deux

Stretching the boundaries of what is both "classic" and possibly "rock." Whatever. I like it.

Also: Return of the cheesy-as-hell vinyl scratch SFX. Ripped off from Sirius XM Radio's Classic Vinyl channel that I oh-so-enjoyed before my parents switched to shitty Comcast cable (which doesn't include free XM radio).

Download JDK Radio 004 via drop.io.

The tracks:
1. David Bowie - Five Years
2. Big Star - September Gurls
3. The Animals - The House of the Rising Sun
4. Edgar Winters Group - Frankenstein
5. Black Sabbath - Paranoid
6. The Doors - Break On Through (To The Other Side)
7. Devo - Gut Feeling
8. Cream - White Room
9. Jimi Hendrix - If 6 Was 9 (Intro)
10. Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb
11. The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
12. The Who - Baba O'Reilly*

*"Teenage Wasteland" for all you troglodytes who don't know the real name of the song.

Project 910

Project 2010 is on a bit of a hiatus. Not shelved, mind you; the script is done, and I'm waiting for a response from the Minnesota Arts Board to see if I'll get $6,000 to do Red camera tests, scout locations, cast John Krasinski, and get everything planned in 2010 for a probable 2011 shoot. Downside: I don't hear about their decision until September.

In the meantime, though, I've cobbled together a few ideas that I realized I could make into a feature film. I haven't settled on an official title yet, but the current codename is Project 910, since I want to shoot it in late '09 and early '010. Like all things me, I won't talk about the plot. I'll say it's more free-form than Transmissions and it'll have more than one actor.

Also: I have no intention to submit 910 to film festivals. Barring the upcoming months of expected rejections, it's pretty obvious I'm hugely disillusioned by the festival process (and not only because of about $1000 spent on submission fees that went into the garbage). All this years-long talk about democratizing film via the internet is absolute bullshit. You still have to get into festivals to make your film seem important. I don't know how things will change (that is, until the Age of Blockbusters dies its deservedly-horrible death), but I don't want to lock myself into a system that doesn't work.

(Note that I'll change my tune right quick if Transmissions get accepted anywhere. I'm easy to wine-and-dine.)

Much like Transmissions, I probably won't offer many updates on 910, since chronicling the making of a project is just as much work as the project itself. The best place for any possible news is probably my Twitter feed.

If all goes to plan, I'll have the script done within a month, and I'll start shooting in September.

In consideration: In handwriting

Today I received the SASE I included in my application to the New York Film Festival.

Inside was my submission form and a single sheet that included a synopsis, cast and crew, director bio, and filmography, which I assume they photocopied. (I decided I could omit the pretense that this film deserves multiple sheets of paper.)

Included with this was a poorly-folded piece of paper with "RECEIVED" scrawled in ballpoint, underlined twice.

It's strange that, in this newfangled era of newfangledeity, something as prestigious as the New York Film Festival at the Lincoln Center would:

A) Be completely free to enter.
B) Have some intern (presumably) acknowledge the receipt of my materials via handwriting on a sheet of paper.

They're in their 47th year, so I guess they can get by without Withoutabox and bloated press kits and whatnot. And hell, even though I had to pony up the envelope and stamp for the SASE, I got my notice, whereas my Toronto submission went off into oblivion since I didn't FedEx it or whatever.

So propers to the NYFF. Even if I don't get in.

2009 albums I have listened to thus far and will listen to within the next two hours

• A.C. Newman - Get Guilty
  
• Andrew Bird - Noble Beast
  
• Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
  
• Annie - Don't Stop
  
• Asobi Seksu - Hush
  
• Bat For Lashes - Two Suns
  
• Bela Fleck - Throw Down Your Heart
  
• Bibio - Ambivalence Avenue
  
• Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
  
• Bowerbirds - Upper Air
  
• Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career
  
• Casiotone For The Painfully Alone - Vs. Children
  
• Charles Spearin - The Happiness Project
  
• Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains
  
• Dan Deacon - Bromst
  
• Dinosaur Jr. - Farm
  
• Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
  
• Discovery - LP
  
• Fever Ray
  
• Franz Ferdinand - Tonight
  
• Future of the Left - Travels With Myself And Another
  
• Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown
  
• Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
  
• Handsome Furs - Face Control
  
• Iron & Wine - Around The Well
  
• Japandroids - Post-Nothing
  
• Jaydiohead
  
• The Juan Maclean - The Future Will Come
  
• Junior Boys - Begone Dull Care
  
• Magik Markers - Balf Quarry
  
• Mastodon - Crack The Skye
  
• Metric - Fantasies
  
• Mos Def - The Ecstatic
  
• Neko Case - Middle Cyclone
  
• The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
  
• Patrick Wolf - The Bachelor
  
• Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
  
• Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love
  
• Realpeople (Beirut) - Holland EP
  
• Royksopp - Junior
  
• The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns
  
• Sonic Youth - The Eternal
  
• Sparklehorse - Dark Night of the Soul
  
• Spoon - Got Nuffin' EP
  
• Sunn O))) - Monoliths & Dimensions
  
• Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
  
• Swan Lake - Enemy Mine
  
• The-Dream - Love vs. Money
  
• The Thermals - Now We Can See
  
• Thom Yorke, et al - The Eraser Rmxs
  
• Tim Hecker - An Imaginary Country
  
• Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship
  
• Various - Dark Was The Night
  
• Wavves - Wavvves
  
• We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls
  
• White Denim - Fits
  
• Wilco - Wilco (The Album)
  
• Woods - Songs of Shame
  
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs - It's Blitz!

Anything missing?

Update: With a gun to my head, this is how I'd line it up, thus far:

1. Japandroids - Post-Nothing
2. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer
3. Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why There Are Mountains
4. Dan Deacon - Bromst
5. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest

In consideration: ?

Toronto never cashed my submission check. I had been checking my bank account for the $75 CAD withdrawal, instead of looking at the TIFF '09 home page and seeing they had made they already made their selections. I can, well, assume they decided to pass.

Did they even get my submission? Can I take that imaginary $75 in my bank account and use it to pay off some of my credit card balance from my other $1000 spent on festival fees?

• Austin
  
• BendFilm (Oregon)
  
• Big Bear Lake (California)
  
• Charlotte
  
• Chicago International
  
• Chicago Underground
  
• First Take (Georgia)
  
• Landlocked (Iowa)
  
• Maine
  
• Midwest Independent (Chicago)
  
• New York
  
• Rhode Island
  
• Sacramento
  
• Sausalito
  
• Slamdance (Utah)
  
• Stony Brook (New York)
  
• Sundance (Utah)
  
• Toronto

I'm not going to wax theoretic and wonder if by some customs fuck-up (despite having DVDs successfully sent to several Canadians, including two in Toronto proper), my package was never delivered to the committee. So, yeah, sure, I might be lucky and have saved $75. But what if they loved the film? Judging by my recent lack of success I'm going to assume the opposite, but goddamn, what if they loved the film? I'll never know.

Mux025: July

Can't stop.

Also, download Mux025 via drop.io

The tracks:
1. Devo - Mongoloid
2. White Stripes - Seven Nation Army
3. Franz Ferdinand - No You Girls
4. Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
5. The Decemberists - Here I Dreamt I Were An Architect
6. Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks
7. Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
8. Bibio - Cry! Baby!
9. Dirty Projectors - Useful Chamber
10. Wolf Parade - This Heart's On Fire
11. Spoon - Got Nuffin'

Repeat: Ordinary People

Talktalktalk. YAWN.

(Fringe bitterness over Redford stealing Scorsese's Raging Bull Oscar.)

Decade: Ten Stories of a Future (American) War

In celebration of our fine independence from those dastardly, tax-heavy Brits, I'm posting a novella/collection of short stories I wrote about a year ago that, well, sat on the shelf. I wrote it to get out of my heady-prose mindset after coming off two Chronicle novels (the behemoth Ages and the still-self-confused Century) and to expand my fictional future-America-universe to cover absolutely everything unnecessary.

(Also I'm in a bit of a clearinghouse mode with one long-time-coming script given another polish and my own plan to write another goddamn, better-written novel since making another movie looks pretty slim.)

This piece is called--

Decade: Ten Stories of a Future (American) War

--and the ten stories are:

1. Sharpshooters
2. Rogues
3. Acronyms
4. That Goddamn Bridge
5. Modern Mechanized Warfare
6. Death Messages
7. Keys
8. Colony
9. The Lecture Circuit
10. Old War

You can download the PDF.

Stats (some via Wolfram Alpha):

• 10 stories
  
• 26,124 words
  
• 48 PDF pages
  
• Approx. 36 book pages
  
• 95 mins. estimated reading time

Also, for whatever reason, I actually had this formally copyrighted. (I didn't even do that for Transmissions. Probably since I used licensed music.) So steal away and send it to fancy magazines and say you wrote it. Go ahead: I'm not doing anything with it, other than writing an adaptation that becomes vastly different (and better) within five pages.

In consideration: Post-deadline, non-notified assumptions

• Austin
  
• BendFilm (Oregon)
  
• Big Bear Lake (California)
  
• Charlotte
  
• Chicago International
  
• Chicago Underground
  
• First Take (Georgia)
  
• Landlocked (Iowa)
  
• Maine
  
• Midwest Independent (Chicago)
  
• New York
  
• Rhode Island
  
• Sacramento
  
• Sausalito
  
• Slamdance (Utah)
  
• Stony Brook (New York)
  
• Sundance (Utah)
  
• Toronto

Also, many congratulations to co-worker/boss/peer/colleague/filmmaker/friend Ben "Benjamin S Rogerson" Rogerson, whose graduate thesis film, Blood Horizon, made official selection for the Landlocked Film Festival.

In consideration: Waiting for my underdog moment

• Austin
  
• BendFilm (Oregon)
  
• Big Bear Lake (California)
  
• Charlotte
  
• Chicago International
  
• Chicago Underground
  
• First Take (Georgia)
  
• Landlocked (Iowa)
  
• Maine
  
• Midwest Independent (Chicago)
  
• New York
  
• Rhode Island
  
• Sacramento
  
• Sausalito
  
• Slamdance (Utah)
  
• Stony Brook (New York)
  
• Sundance (Utah)
  
• Toronto