Looking over the edge... November is going to be a FULL month. There's a pile of October still piling up behind the door that I'm trying to get through today - subsequently I've been nailed to the fucking wall. Tonight Jess has invited some people over for a horror movie. She's betting on Night of the Lepus but I'd rather watch Don't Torture A Duckling... I'm in a kiddie killing sort of mood. Not that giant killer bunnies don't rock. Couple of deadlines due tomorrow that I'll be running out from under until the early hours and then I guess I can start Nanowrimo. Fucking idiot. No t-shirt this year but I did upgrade to a shiny new ruby red 1Mg iRiver today to keep my ears happy and drown out the idiots trying to distract me. You can shove your iPods up your silly little arses. Hoping to keep some momentum going, get some money in and then break EARLY for Christmas and plan an aeroplane ride out of here for sometime at the beginning of 2006. Christ I'm bored with London. Got to go meet the girl now and buy alcohol and nibbles. Happy Halloween and all that jazz... [Music: Black Sabbath]

Halloween eye candy... Remember when she looked like this? Well now she looks like this: Shot for EW and found via Dark, But Shining which I haven't read all month because I am an idiot. Here are the other pics... Is she doing The Grudge sequel? I lose track of these things... [Music: off - Jess is watching all the LOTR movies back to back...]

Ignore this... Just testing something. Move along... [Music: off]

Will you let me go? It's a long time since I looked at B3ta, but this is worth a click and a few minutes of your time: Lost Rhapsody It's actually a LOT better than the whole of season two so far. [Music: Helloween - Keeper of the Seven Keys: The Legacy]

Zinda... Although I hate the idea of the pointless American remake of Oldboy I am all a flutter over the prospect of seeing a bollywood version: [Music: off]

Behind the scenes... I need to add Peggy Archer's blog Totally Unauthorized to the sidebar. Peggy works behind the scenes in LA on TV shows like Bones (not on in the UK yet but I've seen the first few episodes and it's a solid little show). Her writing is spot-on funny and shows the very unglamourous side of the glitzy television world. This is from her last entry:

One of the things about working downtown LA is rats. Big, fat, sassy rats who aren't afraid of you, chump. Tonight, I left my light* for a few minutes to pee and make a sandwich (not simultaneously). When I came back, I saw a really big rat. A really big rat perched on the arm of my camp chair (with nifty built-in cupholder), daintily sipping my coffee (I still can't figure out how he got the plastic lid off the cup). In case you were wondering, flapping your hands and yelling "Shoo!" does not frighten rats in downtown Los Angeles - in fact, it barely makes them look up from their coffee.

Good stuff. And to cap it all she documents her job on Flickr which is how we came across each other. A lot of cool photos in her stream: I hated Enterprise but when I was ten years old Logan's Run was the best TV show I'd ever seen and it also taught me a lot about science... and girls in skimpy outfits. [Music: Black Flag]

And no he didn't sing anything from Once More With Feeling... I'm not sure last night's gig is worth a full review anywhere. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't very good either... the support was very good (if a little overwhelmed at the size of the crowd), but little James only had one or two good songs. It picked up when he got all Tenacious D about some girl on the balcony, but I think that was unintentional humour. And the crowd would have gone wild no matter what came out of his mouth - if he'd coughed up a body part he would have got the same response simply because he's SPIKE. What a weird world he must live in. Overheard at the bar about Evi Vine: "She can sing and I really like her hair, but I can't believe she gets to hang out backstage with Spike. Bitch!" People are weird. [Music: Mars Volta again]

If my heart could beat... I have no idea what to expect tonight. We are off to see James Marsters aka Spike from Buffy. There's a part of me that can't help thinking this is a little like going to see Deputy Andy from Twin Peaks playing the spoons... We'll see. Still working out whether to get there for when the doors open or stroll in around 9ish. Support comes from this young lady: That's that settled then. [Music: off]

Eye candy... Swiped from my Flickr friends page and created with fd's Flickr Toys. [Music: Japanoise]

Nanowrimo... I've started putting a few things in place for Nanowrimo. Told you this year was going be more organised. My characters even have business cards: Make with the clicky for a preview of the of the 30 day blog and maybe a pint to the first person who tells me where I stole my title from this year. I'm digging a hole for myself again here. Most people will have their hands full writing, but I'm going to try and blog the thing too. This means that most of the time my word count should be higher than what makes it into the blog simply because I tend to jump around a lot when I write. I'll try and get the first chapter up on November 1st, but then I may write chapter seven next so it may be a few days before the second chapter is up. Get my drift? However it goes I'll run the word count tally here and link the thing up when there's something new on there worth reading. Ohhh lunch time... [Music: The Mars Volta - Scabdates]

Told you so... 9.20 and still no sign of the fucker. Ah well, I may nip over to the NFT later and blag a copy of the Nick Cave western that I missed yesterday. Also thinking about a haircut... I look like Grizzly Adams at the moment. [Music: Rammstein - Rosenrot]

Don't be alarmed... Things were looking a little drab so I moved some stuff around. Few bits and pieces still a little frazzled. Should be fine and dandy by morning. Hope I can say the same for myself. There's a 10am screening of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's Mirrormask that I'd like to check out, but I'm expecting a parcel between 8 and 10 so how the day kicks off is in the hands of the delivery guy. Ahh you just know that tomorrow is gonna suck... [Music: off]

Chewsday spat me out only half eaten... Beginning to feel more human although my right hip feels like it had its marrow harvested overnight. This getting old shit is seriously annoying. As an example of how I felt this morning I couldn't even bring myself to crawl to the Odeon to see a preview of The Proposition and that film had my name all over it. No worries - I'll catch it at the NFT later in the week on tape or something. I did manage to get out of the house for a time, but my idiotic bank joined forces with my crappy oyster card to ensure I wasn't going anywhere quickly. Felt good to collapse back at home with a crappy horror film for company. Just one of those days - I should never have lifted the duvet. The internet connection has been snappy all morning meaning I'm going to get that 8Mb connection sooner rather than later I think. Did catch up on some reading and made a couple of notes for Nanowrimo. What usually happens there is that I throw all the notes away and start writing blind on November 1st. Maybe this year I'll actually have some structure to work to. Which would be a nice thing to have in general. I'm as disorganised as a plague pit at the moment. Need to get a grip. And what's with all the Chinooks buzzing the place? Did they spot a flock of sneezing ducks on the radar and evacuate the Royalty to the Tower? First step is always to protect the dodo's last living relative... [Music: Tale of Two Sisters soundtrack]

We used to be friends... Joss Whedon:

Last year, Veronica Mars' best friend was murdered. Some months later, she was drugged at a party and raped in her sleep. Welcome to the funniest and most romantic show on TV... (full article)

Well the funniest and most romantic show on American TV. Fuck knows when the idiots over here will finally get around to showing it. Still waiting for someone to buy Gilligan's Island for the UK so it may be a long wait... I've said it before, I'll say it again and I'm sure I'll say it a lot more - thank fuck for bit torrent. Jess and I watched the entire first season in a couple of days. What a fucking quality show. We're already knee deep in season two and are bracing for heavy withdrawal when we have to start waiting a whole seven days between episodes like regular viewers. Damn. Of course a show this good is already being threatened with cancellation... and yet the Lost tractor ploughs driverless across the TV landscape throwing up large piles of manure for the foreseeable future. Bollocks. In the states VM goes head to head with Lost and gets swallowed whole. Crying shame. I have a few misgivings as to how the second season will top the murder mystery/date rape arc of the first season, but this a tremendous cast and the writing is top notch. Less impressed with one too many Buffy refugees coming on board (I get it Charisma - your breasts cost a lot of money, but please put them away before I am tempted to come to LA and take a mallet to them) although Kevin Smith as a clerk is a nice touch. With a little luck the American viewing figures will increase without having to stuff the thing full of bait each week. The heart of the show is of course Kristen Bell - She played the underage scam merchant in Deadwood (remember she even looked cute with a cracked skull...) and she brings the feistyness of that role to Veronica - the best thing to happen to our TV set in a long, long while. Like Buffy Summers before her she steps up as great role model for the teenage girl audience and takes absolutely no shit from anyone without being encumbered by the vampire/monster of the week silliness (although she does have her own Spike to fall for... maybe two). Instead we get a 'mystery of the week' and while some it is beyond cutesy she's never far from the case of her murdered best friend, the mystery of who fucked her and the increasing spectre of incest. Add to all that the sassiest dialogue in recent memory and you have a killer show. Enrico Colantoni as her PI dad is just the icing on the cake... And now I am officially sick. Taking the weekend off to clear my head. See you on Monday. [Music: Minor Threat]

Ignore this... at your peril... Like we need more pictures of cats on the internet. I only just realised that Blogger lets you upload pics in a roundabout MT kind of way... Interesting. That's Merry shielding his eyes from the core of the bird flu death ray I put together this afternoon. So far I'm only aiming it at Greece... That could all change if too many people annoy me tomorrow. I demand a seat on the bus to the NFT, a decent cup of coffee when I arrive and the doors to the cinema to be blocked as soon as the credits run. If even one person walks in front of me during the Chan-wook Park movie tomorrow it's bye bye to western civilisation. [Music: Vincent Gallo]

All aboard... Why aren't there more horror films set on board trains? Off the top of my head I can remember Dr Terror's House of Horrors, (which doesn't really count as the railway carriage is only used as a place to bring the characters together, the stories that follow are all more traditional in setting, but I think the final destination is pretty obvious) and Horror Express which is simply so good maybe no one needed to make another one for 32 years*. Now you fuckers are going to give me a list of like thirty films I forgot about... I'm thinking about this because I just saw Red Eye - nothing at all to do with the recent Wes Craven airbound thing - this is a Korean train bound horror flick with some neat little moments that make me wonder why trains aren't used in horror movies a whole lot more. Nice contained world, a heap of creepy locations at your disposal and a trapped ensemble between stations... someone should be throwing Hollywood money at this. Red Eye threatens to lose its way badly about an hour in when the supernatural seems to hand over to a more run of the mill menace but it swings sharply back and the last ten minutes are awesome. I love the idea of a ghost train haunting a real one... it's a little too formulaic in places, but I enjoyed it a lot. Not as much as Telly Savalas as a possessed Cossack with bleeding eyes of course, but if I ever pull out that and The Cassandra Crossing for a train themed evening I'd add Red Eye to the mix... And hey, remember the early 'Hellblazer' with Constantine on a train and grannies shoving knitting needles through their eardrums? Was that ever collected? Anyway... tomorrow I get to see the new Hal Hartley flick and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance... damn! * I still haven't seen Creep, but I know I should... and doesn't that have more to do with simply being underground than the actual trains? ps Is this new blogger photo thing really old? I only just saw it while posting over on Blottered. Handy. [Music: Vincent Gallo]

Defend what was, and the dream of what could be... History always come back to you bite you in the arse... that's why I like John Carpenter's The Fog so much. That and killer undead pirate ghosties... (Don't get me started on the remake). Now I am undersiege too. The problem with living in a building that's a couple of centuries old is that every 200 years or so the heap has to be repaired to stop bits of it falling on passing motorists. Yeah I don't understand the logic either. So today I've been listening to the sound of metal on metal - not in the good John Boorman way or even the eye raping Dokken buttfucking Ratt way that also springs to mind... this is the noise of men with faces like potatoes putting scaffolding together. Their voices are rising as the structure takes shape beneath them. It's like living in a mockumentary on the Discovery Channel about the building of the Pyramids or Stonehenge, but without the bad music and meaningful voice over... At noon the menfolk raise their tabloids in search of breasts while honouring the Sun god Mur-Dok... Does anyone remember Ork Attack for the Sinclair Spectrum 48k? I'm all out of boulders and boiling oil, but I could get a mean batch of potato soup together... [Music: The Veronica Mars soundtrack]

October? What's with the weather? A few weeks ago we were in Cockfosters (quit sniggering America) and it was too cold to stay out in the garden. Yesterday, mid October and we were lounging around in the sun while Jess' grandparents poked us with sticks to see if we were fat enough to put in the oven yet (I was, but Jess has a way to go so we escaped to eat another day). Today there's mist and fog and apocalyptic wailing coming from the direction of the Thames... is it the Rapture? Don't tell me I slept through seeing all the hot Christian chicks floating through the sky naked... damn. Here's a question for you religious types. Say the Rapture happens and a guy has led a pretty mundane sex free life and happily finds himself floating up to heaven buck naked with the McCavity sisters from church/Sunday school/whatever. If at say about 10,000 feet he comes to his senses and seeing all that levitating pussy begins to jerk off like a crop sprayer... does he still get into heaven or is it back to his crumpled clothes and the rest of us sinners? Do you think God would shove him back down to Earth so fast that he'd be able to look up and get an eye full of his own semen? I mean God's faster than The Flash right? This is the stuff that keeps me awake at night. That and figuring a way to sell harpoons to those that believe in the Rapture, but don't believe they'll be floating up there with the blessed. Can it really be part of God's plan to take every decent woman on the planet, strip her naked and have her floating around in the sky for every sicko on the planet to stare at? The Rapture is like the sleaziest pole dance ever... Isn't it the duty of every self respecting male to corrupt as many innocent girls as possible to save them from the embarrassment of being the headliner on Girls Gone Raptured? Here's one I corrupted earlier: Jess 02 Originally uploaded by sizemore.

Together we can save them all... [Music: Suicidal Tendencies]

His Kung Fu is strong... Odd time at the NFT yesterday. The main screen was overrun by schoolkids dragged along to watch some 'contemporary black cinema'. This meant LONG queues at the tuck shop for the broadsheet reviewers who weren't happy about having to wait in line for their herbal tea. Then to add insult to injury they had their press discounts revoked until the LFF actually begins. Very funny to see grown men splutter over not saving 25p on a drink. Because of the schoolkids (who spent most of their time in the toilets talking about the "tits on that blonde") our films were in the smaller screens. No problem for the first one - A French thing about fandom and pop stars with a lesbian twist and godawful French pop music - as the place as usual was half deserted: The Critics Originally uploaded by sizemore.

But then lots of people with industry passes turned up and FILLED the place to see Atom Egoyan's latest and Steve Coogan in the Tristram Shandy movie A Cock and Bull Story (funniest thing I've seen in ages). The industry types, who pay �300 or so for their passes, look down on the likes of me who get to see everything for free without ever having to hold a sound boom or tell the star to stop fucking the dead hooker as she's full and beginning to leak. The films were good - the company was not. That changed when I wandered across the river to meet John Rogers who is in town for a few days on important Hollywood business - and to buy some comics. That turned into quite an evening. Bad Chinese food followed by a dismissal of all the popular Soho haunts to settle in the traditional English pub surroundings of The Intrepid Fox - nothing says British Empire like a half naked bar wench, Anthrax on the jukebox and Evil Dead models behind the bar. Jess hooked up with us after her class and we finished the night off in Tokyo Diner before sending John off in the loose direction of his hotel with a warning about rape cabs. John is a very funny guy online, but he's a bigger blast of fresh air in real life. And the stories... man. I'm not at liberty to repeat any of that stuff, but he had me in laughter all night. There are some TV shows that I'll NEVER be able to watch again... [Music: Cops Make Good Targets comp]

October is trying to kill me... Along with the LFF stuff (saw Proof today which I liked a lot - two more reviews right here) I have a BUNCH of writing commitments on top of which is the IMAF which kicks off on the 21st... ah well at least that's right on the doorstep. Plus John is going to be in town for a few days which means DRINKING and a certain amount of BEMOANING. Did I mention Afrirampo (who I'm supposed to be interviewing... argh!) and James Marsters... fuck and blast it. At least I'll have November to recover... what's that? No.... keep Nanowrimo the fuck away from me... I will hit you with this chair. [Music: Bracket]

Happy Birthday to us... Did I not mention this? Come along if you're in town. I'll try and get at least one Sabbath track played and I think we're giving away one of those iPod things that all the kiddies seem to want... [Music: Weezer]

Reviewarama... The new issue of Firecracker is out and inside you'll find a few reviews penned by yours truly: Another Public Enemy The Bodyguard The Eye 2 GI Samurai Golgo 13 Killing Machine Running Out of Time I & II And over on Londonist is a preview of Keane. More to follow. Time for bed. Another three films at the NFT tomorrow. Hanging around there from 10am until 5pm is the closest thing I've had to a day job in years... [Music: off]

Once more with feeling... San Francisco: 1 London: sweet F.A. [Music: off]

Alas poor Ignat... Jason: Just got back from seeing Nightwatch. Mike: Enjoy it? Jason: Sure, although I thought you went a bit overboard in your review. I mean it was good, but it wasn't that good. Mike: So what was your favourite scene? Jason: I liked the bits with the Gloom. Having to use a mirror to see the vamps was a neat twist. Mike: I liked the bit with the couple on the plane. Jason: The couple? Mike: Yeah, you know when the woman sees the bird fly into the engine and she turns to her husband and... Jason: I didn't see any couple. Mike: Sure you did. Remember when the flight smoothes out and then when Svetlana bangs her head they hit turbulence again they... Jason: Hang on. Who was Svetlana? Mike: The funnel. Jason: The cursed girl? Mike: That's the one. She's in the kitchen with Ignat - he's there to calm her down but gets distracted because he's due to get married... Jason: Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? Mike: I'm talking about Nochnoy dozor. You're confused because you saw Nightwatch. Jason: I saw the film you told me to, you fuck. Mike: No, you saw the version of Nochnoy dozor that FOX cut up to make more palatable for its dumb as nails demographic. I saw the Russian DVD. You saw some fancy subtitles while I got to see the film the director made. No shitty exposition, no crappy English dialogue over the opening and closing scenes. No clips from Buffy The Vampire Slayer. No flashback reveals to give half the plot away early on in case the dumb fucks in the back row get confused and walk out... Jason: So there are two versions? Mike: I'm afraid so. You saw the one with all the Feeder music tagged up on the poster and the end of the film. Jason: Son of a bitch. So I should get the Russian DVDs when they make the sequels. Mike: Sequel. Jason: It's a trilogy. Mike: It was a trilogy. FOX decided it would work better as two movies so they persuaded the director to abandon the third part and squeeze the backstory and wrap up in one more film. Jason: Fucking hell! Mike: Welcome to my world. Hey did you hear about Wolfhound... [Music: off]

LFF Press Previews Week One... London Film Festival Press Previews Week One Originally uploaded by sizemore.

[Music: off]

Ouch... Still breathing... just. Had my arse kicked by the LFF previews running at the same time as Raindance. Going out until 3am does not help. Feel like my spine has been stamped on by a bevy of Scandinavian gymnasts... actually that may have happened. Did I mention that I was out the other night with Buffy's stunt double? I intend to mention that a lot. Have to rush out again now to do lunch with one of Hollywood's up and coming... hope I don't make the faux pas of spitting blood into by beer again. Normal service will be resumed... oh I don't know... soonish... Over and out [Music: off]