More catching up...

Haven't had time to blog properly so am having to quickly round up stuff that's happened. Funnily enough, last Christmas I managed a new blog post every day. This year I've hardly had time to register the fact that it is indeed Christmas this week. I am currently working on a rewrite that desperately needs to be done by January, hence the lack of posts.

- Sad to hear about Dan O'Bannon passing away - one of the few screenwriter names I knew well before I became interested in screenwriting. Alien was his most famous work after Dark Star, but looking at the various obituaries online I was surprised at how many great films he worked on including Lifeforce, Blue Thunder and the best segment of Heavy Metal. He also directed Return of the Living Dead which is perhaps the best of the zombie comedies.

- I was also shocked to hear about Brittany Murphy's death, an actor I'd been a fan of since she stole her few scenes in Drive.

- Overjoyed at the news that Rage Against the Machine made it to No. 1 in the charts. However, I'm embarrassed to confess that despite my support of the campaign I forgot to buy the single. Oops.

- Finally finished epic PS2 Yakuza 2 which I've been playing on and off all year. By the end I was kind of bored of the format, which mostly involved running between locations only to get another overlong cutscene (the script badly needed editing down) with a fight tacked on the end. But the ending of the game (SPOILER - although I doubt many people will have the patience to play that far) almost made up for it. As the hero, Kazuma Kiryu, you defeat the main villain Ryuji Goda who also happens to be the brother of your detective girlfriend Kaoru Sayama (it took a lot of plot points and hours of cut scenes to get to those revelations). Unfortunately, the time taken to defeat the Ryuji has meant that there's now no way Kazuma and Kaoru can escape before the bomb left by another bad guy (there were two twist villains - I'm not even going to get into that) explodes.

So I'm poised for a bit of running-from-burning-building gameplay when Kazuma says that actually there really is no way they can escape in time and they should just enjoy their last moments together. So Kazuma and Kauru, lovers united in their inability to fit in with the world around them, accept their fate and kiss as the counter hits zero. Roll credits. Best ending ever.

Except it's then ruined with a post-credits revelation that the bomb was a fake. Rubbish.

- Finally watched Moon which I really enjoyed and is definitely one of the best films I've seen this year. There's nothing particularly new or exciting about it, but it's a solid, well-crafted and enjoyable sci-fi film that tells a proper story in just over 90 minutes. It was about as close to being perfect as you can get.

- Brother Pete blogged about making his music video for Bitter Ruin's Soldier in depth here which is definitely worth a read and gives a good idea of how much work went into it.

That's it for now. I'll try to blog more about actual writing in the new year, just too busy doing the actual writing itself to blog about it at the moment. If I don't get chance to blog again before Friday hope you all have a good Christmas!