September 30, 2007
Gave my final speech at the festival at 11:30 then worked the booth with Joel Klasky until about 2:30. Met lots of great people and sold a few subscriptions.

Got home at three and Kathy and I decided to go see another movie (we saw Eastern Promises on Saturday). Drove down to Harkins to catch The Kingdom. Enjoyed it. Really strong action and yes, the big blow-up stuff was filmed on the 202 in Mesa. They had wide open shots (no saguaros) and it was seamless, standing in for Saudi Arabia. It also seemed like they filmed some of the government housing sequences in Mesa as well, utilizing fifties style tract homes to simulate a U.S. housing compound in Saudi Arabia. Saw local friend and cowboy enthusiast, Tony Casanova, as a corpse with Jennifer Garner poking around his chest cavity for marbles. And, yes, that's Country singer Tim McGraw as an angry, grieving survivor. The final action sequence is the best I've seen since Saving Private Ryan and with flipping SUVs amid fireballs of explosives it looks as dangerous as it evidently was to film it. At the end they dedicated the film to Nick Papac, who was killed during the filming in Mesa after suffering head injuries. Also two other crew members also died during production, but I don't have the why. If you see the movie you'll see how you could get a high mortality rate like that.

Been playing with color schemes some more, noodling flashes of color I'd like to do with more Greek pottery style colors:



And pushinig that as far as it can go with chiariscuro effects. I especially like the sequences where I had no preconceived idea of the outcome:



How to maintain that credibility into actual shot-for-shot sequences is the key, for me.

Classic Onion Headline de Jour
Life In The Navy Rocks Even Harder Than The Commerical Implied

"It's ok to look back. Just don't stare."
—Doris Roberts