Happy new year and stuff...

So I just noticed I haven't posted anything here for like nearly a month. And I don't really have an excuse. I guess I've been a bit busy with writing, but mostly I'm blaming Xbox.

Actually it was partly to do with the fact that I wanted to write an epic ranty blog about how the Carnival of Souls screening and the Jenny Ringo Cinecity screening (mentioned here) turned out to be pretty awful.

(however, I should mention that the Frighten Brighton horror film event I went to on the same weekend was amazing. There's another one in February, details here. If you can get to Brighton you should totally go)

In summary, seeing Carnival of Souls on a big screen with a live score from David Thomas of Pere Ubu (who totally lives in Brighton!) was the most awesome thing ever.

Sidenote, here is an awesome video of David Thomas...

Seeing Carnival of Souls with an audience of people who found the whole film hilarious because it's like, well, old and stuff, was no fun at all. The film works because it creates and maintains an atmosphere, the live score enhanced that atmosphere, the raucous laughter of idiots ruined it.

Then there was the Cinecity screening of my film Jenny Ringo and the Monkey's Paw (which you can see if you go to www.jennyringo.com and sign up to the mailing list!). In many ways this too was awesome - a proper festival screening, a nice venue and they'd somehow made the dodgy files I'd sent them look really great on screen. But it was ruined by the fact that two hours worth of short films were screened back-to-back with no real introduction, no breaks and no atmosphere. This shouldn't bother me, because maybe all film festivals are like this. Except that I run MovieBar in Brighton every month (next one is on Monday 6th February) where we talk about peoples' films, introduce them properly, get the filmmakers up for Q&As, and involve the audience a bit. I'm not particularly good at compering a short film night but at least I try and I think if nothing else there's a fun atmosphere. Plus it's free - if it hadn't just been the filmmakers at the Cinecity night people would've paid to have watched what was essentially a two hour video file that someone played through a laptop.

So in December I was basically going to write about that only it would've been a hundred times longer, probably a lot angrier and ended with a depressing comment on the state of society.

But it was coming up to Christmas and I wasn't really in the mood for writing an angry blog.

Then Christmas happened and was awesome. 

And suddenly it's 2012 and my flat is leaking all over the place...

 Which really isn't awesome at all. It's kind of the opposite of awesome.

Mostly what I've been doing for the last few weeks is sorting out Jenny Ringo 2 which I will write about in more detail soon (if I get chance - there's loads to sort out and we're supposed to be shooting it next month!)

Happy new year!