Tuesday the 31st of August 99
The B Movie Festival was on the weekend. I'm waiting for, www.b-movie.com
to announce the winners before I post one or two of them.. I know they have
been announced.. But I haven't got an official list as of yet.. I'm interested
to see if the Australian film "Zone 39"
picked up any awards.. AS the guy who did the score for that has since gone
on to win an Academy Award. However Zone 39 got no Music nomination.
Friday the 20th of August 99
We pause for a few moments to pay tribute to a veteran of the genre.
Thursday the 19th of August (US time) Brion James died of a Heart Attack
aged 54. James may be best known for playing villains in films and for the
CYBORG character LEON in "Bladerunner". Horror films that he appears
in are numerous, to list a few here will give you a taste, "Horror
House", "Mom", "Black MAgic", "Scanner Cop",
"The Dark", "The Killing Jar", "The Nature of the
Beast". James appeared in over 30 Tv shows over spanning 3 decades
including episodes of "Millenium", "Tales From the Crypt"
and even "Benson" playing an Axeman.. But the villains that Brion
James portrayed on the screen were far from the person he was off it. Brion
James was a Vietnam Veteran that in his spare time helped young Hollywood
actors kick bad drug habits. The IMDB lists the amount of films that Brion James appears
in at an even 100, so chances are one of his films will be on TV this week.
BRION JAMES - RIP
7th of August 99
Today I got Larry Cohen's (ALIVE trilogy) autograph at the Brisabne International
Film Festival. he chaired a seminar on Independenyt film-making. He had
some interesting things to say about up coming projects. Here they are in
a nutshell.
Larry Cohen is currently in Brisbane for the International Film Festival
(BIFF) which is doing a retrospect on his life in movies. Today (Sat 7t)
he held a meet the film-makers seminar at the State Library (free of charge
so I went). The discussion went in various ways. Because of the amount of
people in the lecture theater we were limited to only one question. So I
asked about a film I'd seen listed on IMDB, "The
Phone Booth". The script had been bought for "A lot of
money by 20th century Fox", according to Larry, and it would follow
the style of most of his latest writing. This means each minute of the film
is going a to equal a minute in the realife of the characters. IE 90mins
of continuous film will equal 90mins of the lives of the characters on the
film in sequence. no cutting ahead just 90 minutes REAL TIME film-making
(similar to RUN LOLA, RUN [according to Larry]). It is a thriller that will
be filmed around a Phone Booth, and Larry said FOX is looking for big name
stars and a big name director for the film. Larry does not seem to want
to direct the film, however he did say that the week prior to coming to
Australia he was in talks with Mel Gibson about "The Phone Booth".
I'd assume this was for acting, but remember that Gibson does have a Oscar
under his belt for directing. I also heard Cohen say he'd love to make a
film in Australia, but that is just a marketing ploy used by all directors
to sell films when down here. BIFF is currently doing a retrospective on
the films of Larry Cohen which finishes tonight. | 
, 1998-1999.
