"Is it bad?" "As opposed to good?!"

Today has been a nightmare. My birthday party is starting in approximately 15 minutes, and my life is totally over.

I've been editing this movie for months - Friend 4 and myself estimate we've spent about 90 hours on it in total. 12 of those hours was yesterday. 9:30 in the morning until 10:30 at night. With short breaks for lunch, tea and filming 30 second's worth of new material. It's now near perfect. And the premiere's in 15 minutes. Only it's still burning itself to disc and I'm going pretty mad. When my friends arrive, my life ends, basically. Hence the quote.

On the good side, at least I found the cricket bat. It's movie costumes, see. I'm going as Shaun from Shaun of the Dead:

{will insert pic soon...}

The bat took forever to find, but the effort was worth it. Apart from a small, sad sensation that I'd rather have come as Mr Orange, the costume does look fantastic. I even made myself a badge (yes, I know he takes the badge off in the house before he gets to the Winchester and ties the tie round his head, but by that point he's lost the cricket bat too...fussy...). And I had to fight to get Shaun - Friend 2 wanted him, but then we found her a bowler hat under the school stage so she's coming as Alex from Clockwork Orange instead (she's got it on dvd, but switched it off because it was too violent...that made me laugh). She's been complaining our milk doesn't come in glass bottles...

My sister has come as Kate from Lost, because "they're going to do five seasons in total and then a film". I think it's a cop out, personally - and at the rate they're killing characters, she might not even make it to the movie. I leant her my model plane, which has been sitting in a corner of my room with a snake wrapped round it, and we decorated it with Oceanic Air symbols.

Goodness knows how many hours later.
I'm still alive! Friends 1 and 5 came as the twins from Matrix Reloaded, even though Friend 5 hadn't at that point seen it (I leant her the dvd). They looked so cool it was untrue. Friend 4 came as Zorro (from the Zorro movie, I think. And not a Pulp Fiction waiter. Or Hilary Duff's best friend in Cinderella Story...). And Friend 3 came as Ella from Ella Enchanted. In fact, all the costumes were scarily good. Friend 2 was ill with flu, poor chuck...

And I got presents! A wuvvy hand knitted scarf, a penny farthing clock (I'm a Prisoner fan, ok?), dark chocolate covered apricots...Friend 1 got me a definitive guide to Japanese film, in the hope that I'll "watch something good for a change". Friend 5 won on the outrageous front - the animated Count of Monte Cristo.

I love the Count of Monte Cristo novel. It's about a guy who is wronged fairly badly, suffers for 15 years and then plots and executes a whole lot of elaborately unpleasant vengeance on the guys who wrecked his life. Basically. It's a fantastic read, and I was dutifully furious at the most recent version with Guy Pierce as Ferdinand. It squidged the plot in an fairly unforgiveable way, and to be frank, wasn't half nasty enough.

It's not really film material, because the book is so long one can never do it justice. But one day I'll do it...possibly a tv series, I don't know. I'd adapt it so it makes you wince, and in places gets downright hard to watch. Unlike the films I've seen, where the baddies always get off lightly compared to what they did to him, I'd drive it to the point where you feel sorry for them, and start to wonder whether perhaps the Count has gone too far. It's a horrible book in places...

...which is why Friend 5 thought might appreciate a 40 minute animated version, featuring the "funky feline" Louis, the Count's animal friend. And I did - it was interesting seeing how they dealt with it. Some things, like the fact he doesn't get the girl are unavoidable. And the songs were good (though the plotters sing that they're going to "spoil Edmond's day", which is a little out of proportion with what they actually do...).

Three hours later, Friend 4's mother turned up with the finished DVD and we held our premiere (after a short speech, in which I thanked my hero and main influence Edward D. Wood Jnr.) It was fantastic! For an all-girl cast of six trying to reshoot a three-hour multi-billion dollar epic. The editing really improved it -we've got a trailer, and a moving menu and all! Though it's a bit tragic when the presiding comment was "the gag reel was really funny can we watch it again!" instead of "the film was awesome!"

I'm thinking of sending a copy to PJ. I think, having started indie himself, he would appreciate it - if he isn't currently heartily sick over the whole Middle Earth thing.


In other news...today has been the worst. My English teacher appears to be a Kubrick nut, which is cool, and he's offered to lend the film club 2001: A Space Odyssey. Which isn't exactly what I had in mind, considering I couldn't even get them to watch Strictly Ballroom. He also tells me that A Clockwork Orange "isn't that shocking by modern standards." Hmmm...I'm not disagreeing with him, and I'm very willing to watch it, but still...

And finally, I just found www.kids-in-mind.com which is a bit like the Christian Movie Ministry in it's listing every distasteful thing in certain films, but wins points for being far too dull to mock. I'd recommend it, if only for the amusing glossary of swear words...its mission statements have a certain integrity too. It links to http://www.screenit.com/, which is also pretty good.