Some stuff what people I know are doing...

First of all if you are involved in any kind of creative pursuit at all you should watch this immediately...

Ira Glass = awesome. For more awesomeness you should listen to This American Life. Especially if you're a writer.

So MovieBar was on Monday and Rich Badley has posted the write-up on the website here along with a few of the films and some photos of me in a hat talking to people who aren't wearing hats:

With the exception of a few glitches during the clip from Cyborg everything ran pretty smoothly. The pub even has a better sound system now so the speakers don't cut out anymore which is a huge improvement. It was a quiet one due to the bank holiday but there were still about 20 people in total which is enough to justify doing it outside of my living room (it's not very entrepreneurial of me but secretly I prefer doing it for 20 people. Lord Sugar would not be impressed). This did make the unintentionally hilarious post-apocalyptic trailers we screened seem rather self-indulgent but they added some humour to a night of predominantly serious films. Plus I like the juxtaposition of showing these trailers for epic ridiculous exploitation films against thought-provoking, micro-budget short films that are often on the whole much better-produced. It's all art at the end of the day, but I like to remind everyone that sometimes art features robots and dinosaurs.

I've forgotten what my point was, but on the subject of robots and dinosaurs I also spent an excellent evening with the MovieBar crew watching a double-bill of Yor, the Hunter from the Future and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn projected onto my living room wall. Yor was excellent and everything you would want from a film that features robots and dinosaurs. Metalstorm was not good. It was a low budget take on 80s 3D classic Spacehunter: Aventures in the Forbidden Zone - which is a good film. Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn was also shot in 3D but the filmmakers used this technology to strap a camera to the front of a tiny car to film lots of desert roads and to have inexplicable close-ups of trees. The hero spent most of his time squashed into the cockpit of the tiny future car with Tim Thomerson, occasionally stopping to have surreal naked dreams. And Jared-Syn wasn't even destructed. The best thing about that film was definitely the trailer:

So onto cool people doing cool stuff - Simon Messingham's play Disco is on at the Fringe Festival in Brighton next week. Simon has been blogging about the production occasionally here. Also my wife is stage managing so it will be an incredibly slick production with awesome props. It's on at the Funky Fish on the 11th, 12th and 13th next week, then the 19th and 20th the following week. You can find further details and buy tickets here.

Also next week actor and MovieBar regular Nick Bartlett will be playing the title character in a stage version of Get Carter which will be on at The Hove Centre (at Hove Town Hall) on the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th. You can find out more and buy tickets here.

I am still writing the dead ninja script. Normal service will resume once that's done. Possibly. I am also addicted to Mass Effect so normal service may need to wait until the window between me finishing the first game and getting hold of the second one...