Keeping company with the likes of Emma Thompson, Billy Wilder and Callie Khouri since 2011.

Guess what--

I've got my first ever writing credit on IMDB for the short film Speechless that I co-wrote with Rick Maughan. HERE.

Pretty exciting, non?

Well I think it is.

Hopefully it'll be the first of many.

But probably not if I keep writing double spaced like this so it looks like I've written more.

Anyway, if you didn't already know (where have you been??) Speechless is a gentle but quirky comedy short about a guy who longs to be a stand-up comedian. Only one teensy, tiny problem... his speech impediment. That and his fear of talking on the phone, never mind speaking in front of an audience.

Some people have said it's a bit like The King's Speech (which it's not), only better (which it is).

Speechless is set to do the rounds on the festival circuit in the coming year.

Look out for it!

Tangled: A film review... Why? Because she's worth it.

Blessed and Burdened with the title of Disney’s 50th animation feature and the second most expensive film of all time (costing $260 million), Tangled is the "House of Mouse's" retelling of Grimm’s classic fairy tale, Rapunzel.

For American audiences Tangled is old news having been released prior to the Christmas period and competing well with Harry Potter and The Don’t Bother Watching if You’re a Fan of the Books. Nevertheless, British audiences will be able to ‘let their hair down’ (Ugh, I hate myself for that one) by the end of the month. January 29th to be precise...

The last in a long line of Disney princesses (well at least for now according to recent reports in the LA Times) Rapunzel is everything a Disney princess should be. And as indicated by the very first song ‘When will my life begin’ She’s an all American, singing, cleaning, baking, sewing machine. Well she’s not a sewing machine but you know what I mean. It is this opening, along with Mandy Moore’s sickly sweet middle American accent, the odd adding of ‘like’ to sentences where it’s really not necessary and the accompanying cheery chord strumming of the guitar that had me cringing in my cinema seat. Fortunately for me and the child side glancing daggers at me every time I ‘tutted’ at another lyric about doing the washing up, it didn’t last long. The song is used to sort of lull you into a false sense of security making it appear that everything is just dandy. Until, the pace finally slows out of the infuriating jig-a-jing rhythm and into the melancholy strums that indicate Rapunzel is far from fulfilled, painting, cooking and generally keeping the place looking presentable. I believe in the 'Bizz' this is known as her 'I want' song and so just as Ariel 'wanted' to be part of their world, all Rapunzel wants to do is nip out to the local offy every now and again for a packet of fags. Or something like that anyway.

There’s no getting away from the fact that rather than entertain herself by trying to discover the secret of alchemy or philosophizing over a good book (if it’s good enough for Belle... ) she resorts to filling her time baking a pie or fashioning a pair of ear muffs out of a couple of dead rodents (this is an exaggeration of course, but one I hope to see recreated in animated form someday). The film at this point completely plays into the Disney disposition of feminine representation which was the centre of some gentle ridiculing in Enchanted. And as it happens, early drafts of the screenplay originally set Tangled up as a sort of sequel to the hybrid animation and live action movie Enchanted, which stars Amy Adams as the Disney Princess lost in New York. This is perhaps why this early sequence in Tangled comes across as a little confused not knowing whether to pastiche or stick to tradition. From this point however, the film picks up with Rapunzel eventually setting out armed with a frying pan and a disregard for her own safety or that of her eventual prince Flynn Rider (voiced by Chuck’s Zachery Levi).

Swansong or not, Tangled acts as a pretty good homage to the look and feel of some of the older Disney ‘Princess’ films. You simply can’t imagine Rapunzel’s tower, for example, without thinking of the opening scenery in Beauty and the Beast. The love song ‘I see the light’ is visually and audibly reminiscent of the ‘A whole new world’ sequence in Aladdin as Rapunzel and Flynn sit watching the lantern’s float in the sky just as Jasmine and Aladdin watched fireworks from a rooftop during their romantic encounter. The success of Rapunzel is the trickery of the animation which fools the audience into associating it with such hand-drawn Disney Classics whilst presenting a staggeringly crisp and phenomenally detailed image thanks to CGI technology used throughout the film. The mix of old and new works in what I have to admit is the first 3D film, animated or otherwise which I have seen and did not wish I had instead watched in uncomplicated and comfortable 2D. I am firmly of the opinion that 3D is a gimmick, no matter how popular or ‘normal’ it becomes. It also does not excuse a bad story (I’m looking at you Clash of the Titans, Gulliver’s Travels and yes you too, Avatar). Yet here it provides a spectacle so grand that it cannot help but allow its viewers to buy into the spectacle, the characters and world that Tangled presents.

Speaking of characters, it is once again the job of the animal sidekicks to steal the show, offering up the majority of laughs. These are Pascal; Rapunzel’s over protective chameleon armed with a dry sense of humour conveyed merely through his silent actions and Maximus; the Palace Guards’ head horse whose characteristics are inexplicably akin to a dog.

It is clear that Tangled strives unmercifully to live up to a back catalogue of animation films which reached their peak in the 1990s with such unforgettable classics as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King. Coincidentally, these films are the subject of the highly recommended documentary Waking Sleeping Beauty. It is only after watching this documentary that you concede that Disney will perhaps never realise what it did in that decade. It becomes clear that, what was achieved then was consequential to a meeting of minds and talent and cannot be replicated. This does not take away from the fact that Tangled is another good solid Disney movie, a fun and extremely well made adventure film that kids and adults alike will enjoy. The effort and execution by the filmmakers of Tangled to create a piece that sits well inside the ‘Disney Vault’ is truly commendable, as is the admission from the studios that perhaps it is time for something new.

A brief history of time. Very brief. I'm talking the last year kind of brief.

Time. It's a funny thing isn't it.

Sigh. Yes, this is about to get heavy.

What is it with the minutes, hours, days, week, months that gives them the right to just carrying on passing without making sure that I'm getting stuff done. I think the general consensus is that time is much less tolerant of writers. Even now as I sit here I am certain that time I am moving in slow-mo as the world around me speeds through seconds and minutes like Alanis Morissette in the video to 'Thank You' except with more clothes on. 

It's sort of the opposite effect that Hammy gets in Over the Hedge after he drinks an energy drink:

The last year in particular has been one massive, wonderful, exhausting, enlightening, terrible and terrific blur and I'm sad that it's over.  I feel like I've travelled so far in such a short space of time and as things begin to slow and I reflect back on a year that has given me so much hope in my career and life in general,  let's hope I'm not stood still for too long, because it's chilly up north. Especially when you cant afford pyjamas like our Alanis. 

I better pass this bloody MA now, or I will be deleting this and all similarly upbeat (yes upbeat!) posts.

Oh and seen as we're reflecting on the past, if you would like to have a look at some of my earlier snippets of writing in the form of film reviews, here are a few links.

The Wrestler
Slumdog Millionaire
Notorious

The END. For NOW... 

Don't Feed the Animals

The Zoo. It's an odd place isn't it, where children try to poke fingers through the lion cages and scuffle to get a glimpse through the glass at empty reptile tanks.

But what if we saw the world through the eyes of the animals staring back at us? 

The pilot episode of Don't Feed the Animals introduces us to three different perspectives of life in Durnovaria Zoo on the day of its relaunch.

Meet Winston, a self-confessed thesp and luvvie chameleon as he battles to keep his colour long enough to show his not-so adoring public what he's made of; Gertrude, counsellor and all round hypochondriac warthog who reluctantly resides in the petting zoo; And Chanelle and Rodney, a couple of pandas going through the motions as we delve deeper into their relationship problems.     

The radio play was produced and conceived by Mog McIntyre and written by myself, Rick Maughan and Graeme Comrie and can be found here.

Happy listening!

Evidence-Interactive: The radio play what I wrote.

Well after much hard work from my partner in crime, Lorenza Samuels, the Evidence-Interactive website is up and running.

So if you would like to while away an hour or two investigating the disappearance of Emily Simons, click on the link below to take a look at the evidence table and solve the crime.

http://evidence-interactive.co.uk/

Or you can listen to the radio play in full by clicking on the bottom centre notice on the home page.

Enjoy!

Writer's Block

The title of this post may have you thinking its subject has something to with procrastination, laziness and all round non-constructiveness in relation to writing.

Fooled again dear reader for I bring you, as well as stolen puns, tales from the script and its metamorphoses from the humble written word to the sweet sound of the radio broadcast.

BIRSt, Bournemouth's Internet Radio Station have been broadcasting live for a fortnight from the 7th until 18th June. Nestled somewhere in the wonderfully varied and unique timetable of the station's output is BIRSt's Writer's Block - a four part drama serial produced by Lorenza Samuels and made up of five minute slots starting with one writer and continued by another and so on. 

I wrote the second part of the serial which originally aired on BIRSt Live on the 11th June. The only rule I had to abide by when writing was the inclusion of certain words and one single action that were suggested to BIRSt via Twitter, Facebook and Email. If you're feeling in a playful mood, try and guess what they were.. 

Answers in the post below - and no cheating!!

Writer's Block - The Answers

Hopefully it wasn't completely obvious which words/actions I had to sneak into the play or I fear I failed completely!

Although I would like to add, in a pathetic attempt to defend myself, none of the words/phrases were exactly what you would class as 'everyday':

Cumberbund (Possibly the oddest word in the world in my opinion)

Espionage (This word rarely comes up in conversation unless someone's isn't that good at said career choice)

Bamboozle (Anybody else use to play this game on teletext? No, just me. Ok then..)
Action: Accidentally stepping into a waste paper basket