Hollow House

Last night I started writing the story about the guy who enters a house which turns out to be a hollow shell and he falls into this weird fantasy world. At the moment I’m just calling it the Hollow House story for sake of convenience. I’ll think up a better title later.

Today was another ordinary day at work. I’m taking the day off tomorrow anyway, to celebrate the fact that I managed to finish my script. I’m thinking of checking out The Sandman series of graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. I’ve heard a lot about that series.

Ideas

It was another very quiet day at work. As it pretty much always is. There wasn’t really much work to do today. I am trying to think now about what to do now the Script Frenzy screenplay is finished. I’m thinking of doing something different. Something really big and epic. I’m not sure what yet except I had an idea when I was bored at work, about a house that looked perfect from the outside, but inside it was just a hollow shell, without even a floor, and someone goes inside and falls into this weird underground world, so that’ll probably appear somewhere.

REC

Last night I was watching a Spanish horror film from 2007 called REC, directed by Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza. The story involves a TV news reporter (Manuela Velasco) and her camerman who are doing a feature on a night at a fire station. When they get a call about an elderly woman locked in her apartment the TV people go along with the firemen on what is seemingly a routine assignment. However, when they enter the woman’s apartment she viciously attacks them and bites one. It turns out she is suffering from a virus which causes it’s victims to enter a kind of homicidal frenzy, and is spread through bites. As the police and military seal the building, and the occupants increasingly fall victim to the disease, they are soon fighting for their lives. The entire film is shot as if it’s being filmed by the news camerman, constantly handheld and shaking and swinging all over the place. It makes for a very intense and pretty claustrophobic experience. For fans of horror films it’s well worth checking out. There was an English-language remake out last year called Quarantine.

Today was another really dull day at work, with nothing particularly interesting happening. As often happens when I get bored at work (which is most of the time) I escaped into my imagination.

I left work fairly sharply and went along to the Cineworld cinema to meet my Mum. We were going to see a preview of the film Coraline, directed by Harry Sellick and based on a novel by Neil Gaiman. It was a model animation film about a young girl called Coraline (voiced by Dakota Fanning) who moves with her parents to a dull old house with eccentric theatrical neighbours. However one day, a bored Coraline, whose writer parents are too busy to do anything with her, discovers a small sealed up door and that night dreams that the door opens and that she can enter through it into a magical version of the house where everything is fun and perfect and her mother – or “Other Mother” (voiced by Teri Hatcher) – and father or loving, doing and can’t do enough for her, and where every single person has buttons instead of eyes. However, as the dreams become increasingly real, she soon discovers that the “Other Mother” is far more sinister than she guessed. The film was absolutely fantastic. I really enjoyed it. I saw it in 3D and it was really spectacular.

After the film I went along to my parent’s house for something to eat and then went back home and topped up the credit on my mobile phone.

The Assassination of Jesse James

Last night I was watching a 2007 film called The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, directed by Andrew Dominik. Set in the 1880s the film told the story of the notorious outlaw Jesse James (played by Brad Pitt) and the younger outlaw Robert Ford (Casey Affleck). Ford worships James and is desperate to join his idol’s gang. However as the gang disintegrates and James’ behaviour becomes ever more paranoid and erratic, and Ford begins to feel increasingly isolated and overshadowed and begins to consider drastic measures to make a name for himself. The film is very well-made and well acted. It’s also supposed to be fairly historically accurate. The film is long (at around two and a half hours) and kind of slow moving but it is also very powerful and quite mesmerising.

The big news last night also is that I have now completely finished the screenplay for Script frenzy. The finished work is 101 pages long.

It was a busy and very stressful day at work again. I left with a splitting headache. Tomorrow though I’m going to a 3D preview of Coraline tomorrow, which should be fun. Also I’m off on Friday, which should be really good.

Twilight Zone

It was a pretty quiet evening last night. I listened to the latest episode of The Twilight Zone radio series. This one was called “The Ring-a-Ding Girl” and was adapted from a 1963 episode of the TV series. It told the story of a world famous movie star who is given a ring by her fan-club from her hometown. However the ring gives her disturbing visions of the future. It was a good story, with a genuinely surprising twist in the tail.

I went along to my parent’s house for lunch as usual on a Sunday. Lunch was really nice, being chopped up salmon with rice, spring onions and red peppers. The latest issue of Fortean Times (“The Journal of Strange Phenomena”) had arrived as well.

From Around Here

Last night I managed to get to 92 pages on the Script Frenzy screenplay challenge. It means that I have completed the challenge in eight days, which means it should be completed tomorrow. Aside from that I spent most of the evening reading stories in the Best New Horror book that I bought a few weeks ago. One of the stories (“From Around Here” by Tim Pratt) is about a displaced island god who searches for a new home in the USA while fighting evil supernatural creatures. Another one (“Pumpkin Night” by Gary McMahon) told of a man who brings his serial killer girlfriend back to life by replacing her head with a cursed jack o’lantern. The third story I read (“The Other Village” by Simon Strantzas) told of two Canadian women falling out while on holiday in the Mediterranean and one of the two finds a solution to her anoying friend in a strange deserted village. They were all pretty fun stories. “From Around Here” was fun and pretty exciting, “Pumpkin Night” was gruesome and genuinely creepy and “The Other Village” was a pretty fun Twilight Zone style one.

This morning I went out to get a birthday present and card for my brother (his birthday is on Thursday). I got a card and a £10 HMV voucher. Since he lives in London and I very rarely see him, I never know what he wants or what he’s already got. At least with a voucher he can pretty much get what he wants with it. On the way back I stopped off to get my week’s groceries. I also got the latest issue of Empire magazine. It was a twentieth anniversary issue this month with Steven Spielberg acting as guest editor.

Work Stress

Yesterday evening I was watching the season four DVD of Red Dwarf with the audio cast commentaries playing. They were pretty entertaining and funny. I often really like listening to the DVD audio commentaries.

Today was pretty quiet. Although there was a lot of drama this morning when I was told that I had totally messed up this big complex piece of work that had about four different parts to it and it would all have to be cancelled and so on and they were really getting on to me about it but when I’d got the things together and actually checked it out it turned out that I was right all the time. I’d done exactly what I had been told by people more senior than myself, and I had the paper to prove it, so in the end it was accepted that I hadn’t done anything wrong, so it turned out okay, but it was stressful and it took over an hour to track the bits and pieces down and sort it out.

The rest of the day was quiet. Some people were blaring a radio loudly in the office during the afternoon, which was pretty annoying. I was really glad to get out of there today.

On Target

Last night was pretty quiet again. I did some more of the script last night and made it up to 84 pages. I should reach the 100 page target in a couple of days which means I’ll have a few days before the end of April to get things sorted out, if need be. I’m hoping to get it all done by the end of the weekend. I know I won’t be able to get much if anything done on Tuesday, because that’s when I’m going to see the 3D preview of Coraline. I watched the latest episode of The Apprentice which was pretty entertaining.

It was really busy and kind of stressful at work today. There was a lot of pretty difficult and very time-consuming jobs to be done, and also my computer locked itself for some reason and I couldn’t use it for awhile, until they got it fixed. To kind of relax a bit I spent some time listening to my iPod, namely the soundtrack to the film Juno, and a couple of episodes of That Mitchell and Webb Sound.

I left work at about quarter past six and got a fish supper on my way home.

Massage at the Office

Last night I was watching the first ever episode of Red Dwarf on DVD. It was originally shown in February 1988 and is kind of crudely made compared to what came later, but it’s still really funny. It’s kind of interesting how shows change as they go along and Red Dwarf really changed a lot in it’s time.

Work was kind of average today. One thing that was fun was that at work they were doing a free taster of the massages that they offer. They had people coming round the office and doing massages for people at their desks. I had a head and shoulder massage which was really good and felt really relaxing.

I’m still working away on the Script Frenzy screenplay and so far I’m doing pretty well, with 80 pages written.

Late Writing

Last night I was busy writing my screenplay for Script Frenzy until fairly late, before watching an episode of South Park on TV which I had seen a few times before, but was still pretty funny.

Today was a fairly average day at work, and pretty dull, although it was fairly busy. Apparently they are cracking down on people taking days off and leaving early on Mondays and Fridays. People can still take the days off they just need to give a couple of days notice now. I’m taking a day off week on Friday, by which time I should have got my script finished and would probably want to celebrate that fact.

I got home at about half past six today.