#spaghetti junction film

[cammcharg]

The director of SPAGHETTI JUNCTION wanted to make sure the makeup people made me extra sunburned and beat up and hungover.

I’m pretty sure they just walked over to him and said, “He’s good.”

#cameron mcharg #cam mcharg #indie film #independent film #behind the scenes #on set photos #spaghetti junction film #film #movie

[greensparty]

2023 BUFF - Dispatch #2

Green’s Party is proud to be covering the 2023 Boston Underground Film Festival, which kicked off Wednesday at the Brattle Theatre (Cambridge, MA).  I’ve been lucky enough to cover the festival since 2016 (the fest took off in 2020 and 2021, and I was unable to attend 2022).

Day 2 of BUFF continued with Spaghetti Junction. It’s about a teenage girl, who recently lost her foot in a car accident. She doesn’t have the best relationship with her single-dad alcoholic father or her older flighty sister, but one day she wanders into the woods, where she meets a mysterious man “The Traveler”. I thought the first two thirds were really well-done and really visually impressive. Without getting into spoilers, what the ending built to was not as fulfilling as the build up. But I’m not lying about how visually impressive it was!

the heroes of Smoking Causes Coughing

Then it was a later-night (not going to say late night, but 10:15 is later on) screening of Smoking Causes Coughing, from French director Quentin Dupieux. This is a wild off-the-wall crazy take on the super hero genre, that I am so happy I saw with an audience. This is a perfect example of a movie that would not work if I watched it alone at home, it needs to be seen with a BUFF audience of genre film fans! It’s like a 70s-style super-hero movie: After defeating a giant, evil, foaming turtle, the Tobacco Force consisting of Nicotine, Benzene, Methanol, Mercury, and Ammonia must take on the even more evil Lizardin. But first, they prepare by going on a retreat to reflect on existential quandaries such as the meaning of life and the importance of clear instructions and staying calm in difficult situations. This is full of so many WTF moments. It’s as if Michel Gondry tried to make a super hero movie but pushed the envelope of WTF-ery even more than he usually does. It was LOL funny with tons of comedic set pieces. See this with any audience if you can!

Today: Highlights include The Dunwich Horrors shorts program, Mister Organ, and Enys Men.

For info on this year’s #BUFF23: https://bostonunderground.org/

Stay tuned to Green’s Party for my coverage of this year’s fest!

#boston underground film festival #BUFF23 #spaghetti junction #smoking causes coughing #film festival #film geek #kirby mcclure #quentin depiuex

[wifelinkmtg]

There's "spaghetti western" and then there's whatever the hell this Chef Boyardee shit is

Hello! and welcome back to Wifelink. We're talking about Outlaws of Thunder Junction today, Magic's second product in a row set in a version of Nevada, and let me tell you something: I am not impressed. The mechanics are uninspired, the setting is undercooked, the story is overstuffed, and to top it all off the whole thing smacks of settler-colonialism. AND they yassified Vraska, the monsters!

WE WILL GET TO THE HOT WOMEN, BELIEVE YOU ME, BUT FIRST I AM GOING TO COMPLAIN SOMEWHAT, AS IS MY RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN, AS A HUMAN BEING, AND AS A GAMER

The mechanics we've discussed elsewhere, and I will skim over the main storyline except to say that very few of this Big Villain Heist Team-Up gets enough spotlight to justify their inclusion here beyond getting recognizable names on cards, and that Rakdos' presence on the plane alone ought to be an apocalyptic calamity. I appreciate Jace & Vraska going full blackpilled accelerationist, stealing a baby, and aiming to destroy the multiverse & start over (a novel hybrid of Raising Arizona and Doctor Strangelove,) but I also know, sure as the sun rises, that whatever happens with their villain arc will be a underwhelming let-down.

What I actually want to complain about, though, is the setting. Thunder Junction ain't real, and I don't mean it's fictional, I mean it's plywood facades on a backlot. It's the set for a cowboy film. You feel me? This ain't a plane, it's a god damned sound stage.

Lemme go over the facts: we know Thunder Junction has been settled for a bit over a year. A year! - and yet there's multiple towns, multiple railways, and an honest-to-god metropolis. Less than two years and we already have ghost towns! This is not the product of a bunch of people on various planes all individually deciding to seek a new life in the off-world colonies. All of this represents a staggering quantity of people, material, wealth, and labor, being moved between planes, directed and organized - but by whom? For what reason? How, even? The story is totally uninterested in these questions.

One of the few silver linings to the way the Phyrexian invasion storyline ended was that the Omenpaths had a lot of interesting potential! Different planes would come into direct contact with each other for the first time ever! Different technologies, different philosophies and religions, different kinds of magic colliding, coming into conflict, adapting and adjusting to each other. And after a couple of sets where the interplanar contact was limited to one or two particularly adventurous individuals, we finally get to see what interplanar contact at scale looks like here in Thunder Junction... and it just looks like a John Wayne flick. Did people not bring their culture with them? Is there a big rack of hats and boots and dusters right where people step off the Omenpath? Shuck off those old Ravnican rags, kid, get changed. You'll spoil the aesthetic. I mean, it's baffling.

Luxurious Locomotive (art by Leon Tukker). This is one of the few man-made parts of this plane that I can look at and know where it came from: this is a Kaladeshi design. More of this sort of thing would have made Thunder Junction feel more like a real place and less like a Sergio Leone joint.

There's a side story, No Tells, by Isaac Fellman, which I quite like actually: it's about guilt and betrayal and the inevitable regrets of having moved into a queer housing co-op, and one of the things that makes it great is that we know where Yuma came from (New Capenna), we know why he left (the limitations of "be gay do crimes" as praxis under capitalism), and we know what he brought to Thunder Junction with him (cocktails, pool tables, and his co-op's emergency funds). Fellman has written nothing else for Wizards and doesn't play Magic, and even so he's done more to make Thunder Junction feel like a real place situated in a real history than the rest of the story team combined - which goes to show, one, that we should only let trans people write magic story for the next decade or so, and two, that what I'm asking for in terms of worldbuilding is not unattainable, or even that difficult.

And all of this ties into the colonialism, right? Thunder Junction is being colonized, and asking questions about who benefits, who's sponsoring this breakneck settlement of the plane, what they're after and so forth would require the story to take a good hard look at the process of colonization itself, and Wizards is flatly unwilling to engage with anything that thorny in their products. So, just as Ixalan involved a limp-wristed slant reenactment of the Spanish conquest of the Americas - but it's fine because they're the bad guys and they're technically not even trying to colonize Ixalan and they don't win anyway so no one gets hurt! - Thunder Junction is attempting to present a Disneyland version of Western colonialism. Untamed wilderness! Bringing civilization to uninhabited deserts! How cool and heroic these hard frontiersmen and -women are! I'm told they brought in Navajo cultural consultants for the Atiin, a fantasy equivalent, and I hope those folks were well compensated! The Atiin seem cool, and the one Atiin character we spend any time with is well-written, but the Atiin are not indigenous to Thunder Junction. They're not being colonized. And if there weren't anybody being colonized, I'd probably still dislike the colonial vision of a wild land inhabited only by animals, just waiting for us to shape it to our will with railways and violence, but there is in fact a native race of sapients on Thunder Junction, and these cactus folk get no voice in the story, so if they have some kind of opinion on the rapid colonization of their home and the clear-cutting of their cactus forests, we don't get to hear about it.

Prickly Pair (art by Brian Valeza) Too much of the extremely-limited presence Thunder Junction's only indigenous sapients have on the cards is devoted to cactus-based puns like this one, which is pretty distasteful given, you know, the colonialism.

I'm talking about colonialism not because I think that replicating colonial myths in fantasy fiction is an unethical thing to do - although it is - but because you can see, right, that Thunder Junction's lack of verisimilitude is intertwined with the colonial vision of the world at play here, yeah? The story wants to have cool cowboy shootouts and train robberies and it does not want its cowboy fantasy to be complicated by uncomfortable realities, so it has to avoid all of the basic worldbuilding questions that would tell us who the colonization benefits and how they're profiting off the plane, and in the end we're left with nothing but an empty aesthetic, like a duster hanging off a scarecrow, blowing in the wind.

ANYWAY SO WOMEN

To be honest, under the circumstances I'm not really feeling like giving the fine women of Thunder Junction my usual more elaborate treatment, so we're going to lightning-round this shit, which is at least thematic.

Blood Hustler (art by Anna Pavleeva)

Vampire MILF.

Rattleback Apothecary (art by Loïc Canavaggia)

Snake MILF.

Wrangler of the Damned (art by Michal Ivan)

Cis lesbian haircut, good with a rope.

Obeka, Splitter of Seconds (art by Ryan Pancoast)

BIG

#outlaws of thunder junction

[thewaysoundtravels]

(Xhosa Cole - All Roads)

"The saxophonist shares a film in which he dances with his two brothers beneath Birmingham’s Spaghetti Junction" - https://www.thewire.co.uk/video/xhosa-cole-all-roads

Audio only:

The full album - Ibeji | Xhosa Cole (bandcamp.com)

#Xhosa Cole #jazz #video #Vimeo #Bandcamp

[yhwhrulz]

Wiktionary's word of the day: 2nd June 2023

spaghetti:

(countable, uncountable) A type of pasta made in the shape of long thin strings.

(by extension, countable, uncountable) A dish that has spaghetti (sense 1) as a main part of it, such as spaghetti bolognese.

(by extension, countable) Denoting Italianness.

(derogatory, informal) An Italian person.

(film) Short for spaghetti western (“a motion picture depicting a story of cowboys and desperadoes set in the American Old West, but produced by an Italian-based company and filmed in Europe, notably in Italy”).

(by extension, uncountable, informal, often attributively) Something physically resembling spaghetti (sense 1) in appearance or consistency, or in being tangled.

(electrical engineering) Electrical insulating tubing or electrical wiring.

(road transport) Roads forming a complex junction, especially one with multiple levels on a motorway.

(uncountable, figuratively, informal) Something confusing or intricate.

(programming, derogatory, informal) Short for spaghetti code (“unstructured or poorly structured program source code, especially code with many GOTO statements or their equivalent”).

(transitive)

(humorous) To serve (someone) spaghetti (noun sense 1).

To cause (someone or something) to become, or appear to become, longer and thinner; to stretch.

To cause (something) to become tangled.

(intransitive)

(humorous) To eat spaghetti (noun sense 1).

To become, or appear to become, longer and thinner.

To become tangled. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spaghetti

[qudachuk]

Matthias Schoenaerts leads the cast of this tangled reboot of Sergio Corbucci’s film franchise

[iso3200net]

Down below the Junction

A walk under the famous Spaghetti Junction of Birmingham, UK, in early May 2015. Officially known as Gravelly Hill Interchange, Spaghetti Junction is junction 6 of the M6 motorway where it meets the A38(M) Aston Expressway in the Gravelly Hill area of Birmingham, England. The interchange was opened on 24 May 1972. It covers 30 acres (12 ha), serves 18 routes and includes 4 km (2.5 mi) of slip roads, but only 1 km (0.6 mi) of the M6 itself. Across five different levels, it has 559 concrete columns, reaching up to 24.4 m (80 ft).

Taken with Yashica Mat 124G, medium format twin-lens reflex film camera, with its Yashinon 80mm F3.5 lens, on Ilford HP5+ 400 black and white film. Developed in Kodak Xtol, 1+1 dilution, some six years after the photos were taken. Scanned with Canon CanoScan 8800F flatbed scanner using VueScan x64 9..

#IFTTT #Flickr #filmisnotdead #filmisalive #analoguephotography #analogphotography #filmphotography

[thatsnotcanonpodcasts]

Space Movie, Space Cement & PokeCoin

Nanoo Nanoo.

Ryan Gosling is going back to space for Andy Weir's next book, which isn't even out yet but is already casting actors. This one has a working title of Project Hail Mary and features a lone scientist on a spaceship trying to save the world. Slightly higher stakes than The Martian, but Andy's books are always great.

Astronauts are also going to use pee to build houses on the moon. Let's hope NASA has a large surplus of air fresheners to send up with them, because this cement is probably the most useful way to use human waste on the moon, but it's going to smell.

Back on Earth, Niantic are trying to deflate the Pokecoin economy by severely lowering the minimum wage. Nobody seems to be happy with this, but Australia is just the test site, so it's coming to a phone near you soon.

This week Professor took a trip to a far away planet to care for slimes, and DJ found out what happens when you swim with the cardsharks.

Check in next week for probably less pee jokes. Probably.

Andy Weir’s Space Film starring Ryan Gosling

-https://variety.com/2020/film/news/phil-lord-chris-miller-ryan-gosling-astronaut-movie-1234607851/

Introducing….Piss-ent: the new space cement

-https://www.sciencenews.org/article/astronauts-lunar-exploration-cement-urine-urea-3d-printing

-https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652619340478?via%3Dihub

PokeCoin: Gotta cash them all

-https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/glcywi/tales_from_the_front_one_players_experience_with/

Games Played

Professor

–Slime Rancher – https://store.steampowered.com/app/433340/Slime_Rancher/

Rating: 2/5

DJ

–Legends of Runeterra – https://playruneterra.com/en-us/

Rating: 4.5/5

Other topics discussed

The Martian (The Martian is a 2015 science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Matt Damon. The Martian, a 2011 novel by Andy Weir, served as the screenplay adapted by Drew Goddard. The film depicts an astronaut's lone struggle to survive on Mars after being left behind, and efforts to rescue him and bring him home to Earth.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(film)

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a 2018 American computer-animated superhero film featuring the Marvel Comics character Miles Morales / Spider-Man, produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation in association with Marvel, and distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Into_the_Spider-Verse

Andy Weir (American novelist whose debut novel in 2011, The Martian, was later adapted into a film of the same name directed by Ridley Scott in 2015.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Weir

Sean Bean Death Scene Compilation 1986-2016

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnzk5qAaNLk

First Man (First Man is a 2018 American biographical drama film directed by Damien Chazelle and written by Josh Singer. Based on the book First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong by James R. Hansen, the film stars Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong and follows the years leading up to the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in 1969. Steven Spielberg serves as an executive producer.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Man_(film)

Interstellar (2014 epic science fiction film directed, co-written and co-produced by Christopher Nolan. It stars Matthew McConaughey. Set in a dystopian future where humanity is struggling to survive, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole near Saturn in search of a new home for humanity.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstellar_(film)

Raid: Shadow Legends (freemium mobile and PC game developed and published by Israeli game developer Plarium Games.)

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid:_Shadow_Legends

-https://raidshadowlegends.com/

Girl being hit by a truck while playing Pokémon Go

-https://time.com/4405221/pokemon-go-teen-hit-by-car/

Pokémon Go disrupt a funeral

-https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-08/pokemon-go-blamed-for-brisbane-funeral-disturbance/7700332

List of highest-grossing mobile games

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_mobile_games

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery forces you to pay - or wait - to save a kid from being strangled.

-https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-04-27-harry-potter-hogwarts-mystery-is-ruined-by-its-in-game-payments

Harry Potter mobile game maker defends child-choking scene which asks you to wait or pay money

-https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-05-31-harry-potter-mobile-game-maker-defends-child-choking-scene-which-asks-you-to-wait-or-pay-money

Pokémon Go Hits $3B in Lifetime Revenue

-https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/pokemon-go-hits-3-billion-lifetime-revenue-1250983

Wall-E: Do not Return to Earth Scene played by Fred Wllard

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNXNkdZVqs4

Groucho Marx’s look

-https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Groucho_Marx_-_portrait.jpg

RC2014 is a simple 8 bit Z80 based modular computer originally built to run Microsoft BASIC. It is inspired by the home built computers of the late 70s and computer revolution of the early 80s.

-https://rc2014.co.uk/

Sgt. Slaughter On The Time Andre The Giant Fell Asleep Mid-Match

-https://www.mandatory.com/wrestlezone/news/1060153-andre-the-giant-sgt-slaughter-zzzz

Andre The Giant (2018 TV documentary film based on the life of French professional wrestler and actor André René Roussimoff (better known as André the Giant).)

-https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6543420/

Star Wars Day (Star Wars Day, May 4, celebrates George Lucas's Star Wars media franchise. Even though the holiday was not created or declared by Lucasfilm, many Star Wars fans across the world have chosen to celebrate the holiday. It has since been embraced by Lucasfilm and parent company Disney as an annual celebration of Star Wars.

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Day

An Assemblage of Grandiose and Bombastic Grandiloquents (TNC podcast)

-https://thatsnotcanon.com/grandiloquentspodcast

Heavenly Shows and Unnecessary Letters (TNC Podcast)

-https://thatsnotcanon.com/heavenlyshowspodcast

Shout Outs

15 May 2020 – Fred Wilard passes away at 86 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcberman1/2020/05/16/comic-fred-willard-dies-at-86/#5461bf6d7f10

Frederick Charles Willard, was an American actor, comedian and writer. He was best known for his roles in the Rob Reiner mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap; the Christopher Guest mockumentaries Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, For Your Consideration and Mascots; and the Anchorman films. Willard’s other recurring sitcom roles included Family Matters,Sister, Sister, Mad About You, and Everybody Loves Raymond (the latter which resulted in Primetime Emmy nominations for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy for three consecutive years). He even appeared as the only human character in the animated film "WALL-E," a first for a Pixar film. Willard was one of Hollywood's busiest comedic actors with a career that lasted more than 50 years, playing clueless characters such as sidekick Jerry Hubbard on the satire "Fernwood 2 Night" in the 1970s. He recently finished filming the Netflix series “Space Force,” where he played actor Steve Carell’s father. He died from natural causes in Los Angeles, California.

18 May 2020 – Ken Osmond passes away at 87 - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/arts/television/ken-osmond-eddie-haskell-dead.html

Ken Osmond, who played the duplicitous teenager Eddie Haskell on the long-running sitcom “Leave It to Beaver,” one moment a smarmy young man when talking to parents, the next moment a devilish troublemaker when the adults were out of sight. Mr. Osmond appeared in all six seasons of “Leave It to Beaver,” 1957 to 1963, one of the most-watched television sitcoms of the era, then reprised the role as an adult version of Eddie in the Disney Channel revival series “The New Leave It to Beaver” in the 1980s. After Leave It to Beaver ended in 1963, Osmond continued to make occasional appearances on such television series as CBS's Petticoat Junction, The Munsters, and a final return appearance on Lassie in the episode "A Matter of Seconds" as a motorcycle delivery man who offers the hitchhiking collie a lift in his sidecar. However, he found himself typecast as Eddie Haskell and had difficulty finding steady work. In 2008, Osmond told radio host Stu Shostak in a radio interview, "I was very much typecast. It's a death sentence. In Hollywood you get typecast. I'm not complaining because Eddie's been too good to me, but I found work hard to come by. In 1968, I bought my first house, in '69 I got married, and we were going to start a family and I needed a job, so I went out and signed up for the LAPD. As an officer on motorcycle patrol, he grew a mustache to disguise himself. In 1980, he was shot three times in a chase with a suspected car thief but escaped serious injury: One bullet was stopped by his belt buckle, the others by his bulletproof vest. He was put on disability and retired from the force in 1988. He died from complications of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and peripheral artery disease in Los Angeles, California.

19 May 2020 – Red Dead Redemption Celebrates Its 10th Anniversary - https://www.gamespot.com/articles/red-dead-redemption-turns-10-years-old/1100-6477391/

On May 18, 2010, Rockstar Games released Red Dead Redemption, an open-world Western video game, on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Universally acclaimed for its artistry, dramatic storytelling, and freedom of choice, the game sold 17 million copies. But despite the game's reputation today, it's important to remember a time when its success wasn't certain, and Rockstar's developers sought to distinguish it from the studio's prior accomplishments. It subsequently attained a 95 on Metacritic and received over 170 Game of the Year Rewards. It led to a revitalized interest in the Western genre, especially the "Spaghetti Western"revisionist works by Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci. And after eight years, players got a sprawling prequel, Red Dead Redemption 2, which built upon and deepened the themes of its predecessor. Taken together, the two games are an American epic about modernization, betrayal, and the demons of the past. The West may be dead, but that won't stop us from reminiscing and keeping its memory alive.

Remembrances

19 May 1825 – Henri de Saint-Simon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henri_de_Saint-Simon

Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon, often referred to as Henri de Saint-Simon. He created a political and economic ideology known as Saint-Simonianism that claimed that the needs of anindustrial class, which he also referred to as the working class, needed to be recognized and fulfilled to have an effective society and an efficient economy. He said the primary threat to the needs of the industrial class was another class he referred to as the idling class, that included able people who preferred to be parasitic and benefit from the work of others while seeking to avoid doing work. Saint-Simon stressed the need for recognition of the merit of the individual and the need for hierarchy of merit in society and in the economy, such as society having hierarchical merit-based organizations of managers and scientists to be the decision-makers in government. Saint Simon's conceptual recognition of broad socio-economic contribution, and his Enlightenment valorization of scientific knowledge, soon inspired and influenced utopian socialism, liberal political theorist John Stuart Mill, anarchism through its founder Pierre-Joseph Proudhon who was inspired by Saint-Simon's thought and Marxism with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels identifying Saint-Simon as an inspiration to their ideas and classifying him among the utopian socialists. He died from suicide at the age of 64 in Paris.

19 May 1935 - T. E. Lawrence - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._E._Lawrence

Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, British archaeologist, army officer, diplomat, and writer. He was renowned for his role in the Arab Revolt and the Sinai and Palestine Campaign against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia, a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities. In 1916, he was sent to Arabia on an intelligence mission and quickly became involved with the Arab Revolt as a liaison to the Arab forces, along with other British officers. He worked closely with Emir Faisal, a leader of the revolt, and he participated, sometimes as leader, in military actions against the Ottoman armed forces, culminating in the capture of Damascus in October 1918. After the war, Lawrence joined the Foreign Office, working with the British government and with Faisal. In 1922, he retreated from public life and spent the years until 1935 serving mostly in the Royal Air Force, with a brief period in the Army. For the RAF, he participated in the development of rescue motorboats. In the inter-war period, the RAF's Marine Craft Section began to commission air-sea rescue launches capable of higher speeds and greater capacity. The arrival of high-speed craft into the MCS was driven in part by Lawrence. He had previously witnessed a seaplane crew drowning when the seaplane tender sent to their rescue was too slow in arriving. He worked with Hubert Scott-Paine, the founder of the British Power Boat Company (BPBC), to introduce the 37.5 ft (11.4 m) long ST 200 Seaplane Tender Mk1 into service. These boats had a range of 140 miles when cruising at 24 knots and could achieve a top speed of 29 knots. He died from a traffic collision at the age of 46 in Bovington Camp, Dorset.

19 May 2009 - Robert F. Furchgott – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_F._Furchgott

Robert Francis Furchgott, Nobel Prize-winning American biochemist who contributed to the discovery of nitric oxide as a transient cellular signal in mammalian systems. In 1978, Furchgott discovered a substance in endothelial cells that relaxes blood vessels, calling it endothelium-derived relaxing factor (EDRF). By 1986, he had worked out EDRF's nature and mechanism of action, and determined that EDRF was in fact nitric oxide (NO), an important compound in many aspects of cardiovascular physiology. This research is important in explaining a wide variety of neuronal, cardiovascular, and general physiologic processes of central importance in human health and disease. In addition to receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of nitric oxide as a new cellular signal—shared in 1998 with Louis Ignarro and Ferid Murad. Furchgott's discovery, that NO gas causes blood vessels to dilate, provided a long sought-after explanation for the therapeutic effects of Nitroglycerin used to treat Angina pectoris and was later instrumental in the development of the erectile dysfunction treatment drug Viagra. He died at the age of 92 in Seattle, Washington.

Famous Birthdays

19 May 1942 - Gary Kildall - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall

American computer scientist and microcomputer entrepreneur who created the CP/M operating system and founded Digital Research, Inc. (DRI). Kildall was one of the first people to see microprocessors as fully capable computers, rather than equipment controllers, and to organize a company around this concept. Although his career in computing spanned more than two decades, he is mainly remembered in connection with IBM's unsuccessful attempt in 1980 to license CP/M for the IBM Personal Computer. Kildall and his wife Dorothy established a company, originally called "Intergalactic Digital Research" (later renamed as Digital Research, Inc.), to market CP/M through advertisements in hobbyist magazines. Digital Research licensed CP/M for the IMSAI 8080, a popular clone of the Altair 8800. As more manufacturers licensed CP/M, it became a de facto standard and had to support an increasing number of hardware variations. In response, Kildall pioneered the concept of a BIOS, a set of simple programs stored in the computer hardware (ROM or EPROM chip) that enabled CP/M to run on different systems without modification. CP/M's quick success took Kildall by surprise, and he was slow to update it for high density floppy disks and hard disk drives.After hardware manufacturers talked about creating a rival operating system, Kildall started a rush project to develop CP/M 2. By 1981, at the peak of its popularity, CP/M ran on 3000 different computer models and DRI had US$5.4 million in yearly revenues. He was born in Seattle, Washington.

19 May 1944 – Peter Mayhew - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Mayhew

Peter William Mayhew, was an English-American actor, best known for portraying Chewbacca in the Star Wars film series. He played the character in all of his live-action appearances from the 1977 original to 2015's The Force Awakens before his retirement from the role. When casting the original Star Wars (1977), director George Lucas needed a tall actor who could fit the role of the hairy alien Chewbacca. He originally had in mind 6-foot-6-inch (1.98m) bodybuilder David Prowse, but Prowse chose to play Darth Vader. This led Lucas to cast Mayhew, who was working as an orderly in the radiology department of King's College Hospital, London. He became aware of a casting call for Star Wars which was filming at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire. The 7-foot-3-inch (2.21m) tall actor was immediately cast as Chewbacca after he stood up to greet Lucas. Mayhew continued working as an orderly—at Mayday Hospital (now Croydon University Hospital)—in between filming the original Star Wars trilogy. Mayhew modelled his performance of Chewbacca after researching the behaviour of bears, monkeys and gorillas he saw at London Zoo. Lucas said Mayhew was "the closest any human being could be to a Wookiee: big heart, gentle nature and I learnt to always let him win". The character did not have any lines, the sounds he made being derived from sound recordings of animal noises. While Mayhew portrayed Chewbacca in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, he was not in Star Wars: The Last Jedi but was listed in the credits as "Chewbacca Consultant". He was born in Barnes, Surrey.

19 May 1946 – André the Giant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_the_Giant

André René Roussimoff, best known as André the Giant, was a French professional wrestler and actor. Roussimoff stood at over seven feet tall, which was a result of gigantism caused by excess growth hormone, and later resulted in acromegaly. It also led to his being called "The Eighth Wonder of the World". He found success as a fan favorite throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, appearing as an attraction for various professional wrestling promotions. During the 1980s wrestling boom he was paired with the villainous manager Bobby Heenan and feuded with Hulk Hogan in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE). The two famously headlined WrestleMania III in 1987. Outside of wrestling, he was best known for appearing as Fezzik, the giant in The Princess Bride. After his death in 1993, he became the inaugural inductee into the newly created WWF Hall of Fame. He was later a charter member of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame and the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame; the latter describes him as being "one of the most recognizable figures in the world both as a professional wrestler and as a pop culture icon." Towards the end of his career, Roussimoff starred in several films. He appeared most notably as Fezzik, his own favorite role, in the 1987 film The Princess Bride. Both the film and his performance retain a devoted following. In shoot interviews, wrestlers have stated that he was so proud of being in "Princess Bride", he carried a copy of the movie everywhere he went, to watch whenever he could. Roussimoff has been unofficially crowned "the greatest drunk on Earth"for once consuming 119 12-US-fluid-ounce (350ml) beers (in total, over 41 litres (72imp pt)) in six hours. He was born in Coulommiers, Seine-et-Marne.

19 May 1955 – James Gosling - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Gosling

James Arthur Gosling, often referred to as "Dr. Java", Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java programming language. He wrote a version of Emacs called Gosling Emacs (Gosmacs) while working toward his doctorate. He built a multi-processor version of Unix for a 16-way computer system while at Carnegie Mellon University, before joining Sun Microsystems. He also developed several compilers and mail systems there. He is known as the father of the Java programming language. He got the idea for the Java VM while writing a program to port software from a PERQ by translating Perq Q-Code to VAX assembler and emulating the hardware. He created the original design of Java and implemented the language's original compiler and virtual machine. He also invented an early Unix windowing system called NeWS, which became a lesser-used alternative to the still used X Window, because Sun did not give it an open source license. He is known for his love of proving "the unknown" and has noted that his favorite irrational number is √2. He has a framed picture of the first 1,000 digits of √2 in his office. He was born near Calgary, Alberta.

Events of Interest

18 May 1980 – Eruption of Mount St. Helens - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens

On March 27, 1980, a series of volcanic explosions and pyroclastic flows began at Mount St. Helens in Skamania County, Washington, United States. It initiated as a series of phreatic blasts from the summit then escalated on May 18, 1980, as a major explosive eruption. The eruption, which had a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 5, was the most significant to occur in the contiguous 48 U.S. states. It has often been declared the most disastrous volcanic eruption in U.S. history. The eruption was preceded by a two-month series of earthquakes and steam-venting episodes, caused by an injection of magma at shallow depth below the volcano that created a large bulge and a fracture system on the mountain's north slope. An eruption column rose 80,000 feet (24km; 15mi) into the atmosphere and deposited ash in 11 U.S. states and significant ash in two Canadian provinces. At the same time, snow, ice and several entire glaciers on the volcano melted, forming a series of large lahars (volcanic mudslides) that reached as far as the Columbia River, nearly 50 miles (80km) to the southwest. hermal energy released during the eruption was equal to 26 megatons of TNT. Hundreds of square miles were reduced to wasteland, causing over $1 billion in damage (equivalent to $3.4 billion in 2019), thousands of animals were killed, and Mount St. Helens was left with a crater on its north side. More than 4,000,000,000 board feet (9,400,000m3) of timber was damaged or destroyed, mainly by the lateral blast. At least 25% of the destroyed timber was salvaged after September 1980. In areas of thick ash accumulation, many agricultural crops, such as wheat, apples, potatoes and alfalfa, were destroyed. As many as 1,500 elk and 5,000 deer were killed, and an estimated 12 million Chinook and Coho salmon fingerlings died when their hatcheries were destroyed.

19 May 1999 – Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace was released - https://www.scifihistory.net/may-19.html

On this day in 1999, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace was released theatrically ... and most of us came crashing understandably back to Earth. Employment consultant firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas estimated that 2.2 million full-time employees missed work to attend the film, resulting in a US$293 million loss of productivity. According to The Wall Street Journal, so many workers announced plans to view the premiere that many companies closed on the opening day. The release on May 19, 1999 of the first new Star Wars film in 16 years was accompanied by a considerable amount of attention. The Phantom Menace was released almost 16 years after the premiere of the previous Star Wars film, Return of the Jedi. The film's premiere was extensively covered by media and was greatly anticipated because of the large cultural following the Star Wars saga had cultivated. It grossed more than $924.3 million (equivalent to $1.42 billion in 2019) worldwide during its initial theatrical run, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1999, the second-highest-grossing film worldwide and in North America (behind Titanic), and the highest-grossing Star Wars film at the time.

19 May 2005 – Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith was released - https://www.scifihistory.net/may-19.html

George Lucas brought his Prequel Trilogy to its tragic close when Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith finally showed audiences what exactly went down when Jedi Master Anakin Skywalker embraced his inner demons and took the path to the Dark Side of the Force. Luke and Leia were born, delivering the film's only true hint of what things would inevitably lead to their father's redemption, but an Empire was forged in darkness once and for all on this day. Its theatrical release in most other countries took place on May 19 to coincide with the 1999 release of The Phantom Menace (the 1977 release of A New Hope and the 1983 release of Return of the Jedi were also released on the same day and month, six years apart).

Intro

Artist – Goblins from Mars

Song Title – Super Mario - Overworld Theme (GFM Trap Remix)

Song Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GNMe6kF0j0&index=4&list=PLHmTsVREU3Ar1AJWkimkl6Pux3R5PB-QJ

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[reel-em-in]

[11/05/2022 - 12/05/2022] Finishing Sound Design - For Crimes Forgotten

After a short rest I got back into the edit suite to improve the sound design of the film, both based on things that I was already planning to change as well as on improvements suggested in the crit.

I began by adding prisoner sounds earlier in scene one so that it was more clear that all three characters are within the same location. The Prisoner is further away from the action at the beginning of the film and so in order to convey that within the sound design I set up a an aux track to run some effects through to show this distance. Specifically I processed these sounds with EQ, Volume Automation, a little reverb as a treat.

I also added a slower ticking to Glenshee sections. I chose to use a slower ticking here to show the difference in the way that time moves within this world, it does not behave as it would on earth, or at least it is more obviously subjective. I was inspired by the way that time appears to be quicker the older we are based on the way we understand the passage of time in relation to itself. The more time you have experienced, the quicker it seems to move (due to its relative proportion to your life). I then treated this tick with the same style of volume automation that I used for the ticking in the first scene.

After listening to the film again I noticed that there were still a few bird noises that had somehow slipped through. How were there still birds?! I felt like I was losing it a little but I am now certain that none have escaped my wrath.

I then began working back into the dialogue. Learning how to use the different  DeNoiser plug-ins that we have access to in screen academy. This was useful as different DeNoiser’s are better for different things. Petros gave me a quick rundown of how they work and I am now confident in using them on dialogue, which will definitely be useful in the future! These plugins also effect whole tracks so I had to do a bit of rearranging based on which microphones I had used for the different sections of dialogue so that i could adjust the settings to work for each slightly different unwanted noise.

Once I had everything in the timeline in the correct places and all at the correct volume in relation to each other, I began the final mix. I put everything through routing folders until my session was like spaghetti junction of routing folders, aux tracks, and internal busses. This caused me some problems but this was mainly in the form of accidentally routing things through the wrong internal busses, but eventually I got there.

[See above for an accurate representation of me trying to work out where my routing had gone wrong]

I then went through and actually did the mixing of all the different sections so that the dialogue is clear, and everything complements each other rather than being a cacophony of different noises and instead one coherent piece of sound design. Bounced the file, tweaked the mix again, and sent it to be put back together with the rest of the film like a happy audio-visual family :)

#reel-em-in #film project module #study blog #studyblr #film studyblr #film student #third year #post production sound #sound design #For Crimes Forgotten #HoD #primary role

[greensparty]

Preview: 2023 Boston Underground Film Festival

From Wed. March 22 to Sun. March 26, the Boston Underground Film Festival takes over Harvard Square at The Brattle Theatre (Cambridge, MA). The fest is in its 23rd edition and it is a celebration of bizarre, weird and alt cinema!

Here at Green’s Party, I’ve been lucky enough to cover the festival since 2016 (the fest took off in 2020 and 2021, and I was unable to attend 2022). Here are some of the highlights of this year’s BUFF:

Wed. March 22:

Opening Night film is Jeffrey A. Brown’s The Unheard, which is going to be on Shudder later this month. The film finds a young deaf woman undergoing experimental treatment to regain her hearing. Recovering at her family’s beach home, she fears she is not alone - all while uncovering family secrets and experiencing psychological strife and auditory hallucinations. It was filmed in Massachusetts and it was written by Michael and Shawn Rasmussen (full disclosure: the writing duo are friends of mine). Then it’s Nightsiren from Slovakia. The trailer is pure WTFery!

Thurs. March 23:

BUFF doesn’t screen nearly as many documentaries as narrative films, but the ones they do are quite noteworthy. The doc Stand By For Failure: A Documentary about Negativeland looks at the experimental Bay area music group Negativeland. Then it’s back to narrative films with the sci-fi Spaghetti Junction, about a teen discovering a mysterious place in the woods. From France, the Canne Film Festival hit Smoking Causes Coughing is a wild bonkers super hero film about the dangers of smoking.

Fri. March 24:

First up is The Dunwich Horrors, a collection of short films about New England. Massachusetts certainly has its history with horror stories, but there’s other states like VT and ME represented here as well. This is usually one of my favorite short collections at the fest and among the shorts is Skin & Bone (full disclosure: director Eli Powers is a friend I worked with on a film previously). Then it’s another doc Mister Organ, the new one from David Farrier, director of Tickled. This one looks at the secrets behind a a man at a small antique shop in New Zealand. From U.K. Enys Men is a throwback to 70s horror on an uninhabited island off the Cornish coast.

Sat. March 25:

A matinee screening of Moon Garden, about a little girl who falls into a coma and finds herself in a strange new world. One of my favorite shorts programs at BUFF is Sound + Vision, a collection of music videos that push the envelope. Then it’s Butter My Noodle, a collection of comedy short films. Among them is High Moon, directed by my buddy Kevin J. James (director of Not For Resale). From Germany, Piaffe is about a woman who fills in for her sister as a foley artist and grows a horse’s tail. Not a typo! Then it’s the Sundance hit Divinity, which boasts star power of Stephen Dorf and Scott Bakula as well as producer Steven Soderbergh.

Sun. March 26:

First up is Survival is Insufficient, a collection of shorts including CONTENT: The Lo-Fi Man co-directed by BUFF alumni / my friend Brian Lonano (read my interview with him at BUFF 2018 here) and It Takes a Village co-written and co-starring SNL’s Sarah Sherman. Then it’s Destination, a collection of animated shorts that are not suitable for children. Then it’s the festival hit How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a crime thriller about a group of environmental activists who plan a disruption of an oil pipeline. The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster is about a brilliant teenage girl who tries to bring back her recently murdered brother from the dead. And finally the Closing Night Film is Rebel from Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, the Belgium filmmakers known for Bad Boys for Life and Ms. Marvel. This film focuses on a Muslim family torn apart over the future of its youngest member in Belgium. 

For info on this year’s #BUFF23: https://bostonunderground.org/

Stay tuned to Green’s Party for my coverage of this year’s fest!

#boston underground film festival #BUFF23 #the unheard #nightsiren #the rasmussen brothers #stand by for failure #spaghetti junction #smoking causes coughing #skin and bone #mister organ #enys men #moon garden #piaffe #divinity #how to blow up a pipeline #the angry black girl and her monster #rebel #film festival #film geek

[audreysmusicaljourney]

Album #64: Outkast “Stankonia” (2000)

I remember hearing of this album when I was young, but I definitely never listened to it. Hip-hop music was not readily available in my home. I now own this album on vinyl, and have listened to it a handful of times.

The “Intro” definitely sets the tone for this album: funky, soulful hip-hop. “Gasonline Dreams” has a catchy beat over which André 300 lays down some intense rhymes. This song is definitely about black culture, with lyrics reminiscent of those of Public Enemy or even N.W.A. I have heard “So Fresh, So Clean” many times. It is a soulful track. Big Boi and Andre 300 collaborate well on this track. I like how André 3000 moves from emcee to singer on this track. I have listened to “Ms. Jackson” many times before but never thought about its meaning. It clearly is written as an apology to the mother of the singer’s baby mama. Big Boi delivers a nice opening verse before André 3000 gets after it, first by singing and then by rapping. This is an R&B song at its core, but it has a lot of funk and soul infused into it. I don’t know who Killer Mike is but he throws it down on the track “Snappin’ & Trappin’.” This track hits harder than the preceding tracks. There is a nice guest appearance by J-Sweet with a reggae tone. I appreciate the interludes on this album. They do their job well. There is an incredibly smooth sound to the track “Spaghetti Junction.” The beat definitely is one to which a person could dance. I like the backing chorus as well. There’s an upbeat pop sound to the track “I’ll Call Before I Come.” I like the guest rhymes from Gangsta Boo and Eco. Never heard of them, but they are two women who can throw down.  I like the playfulness of André 3000′s vocals on this track as well. “B.O.B.” is an incredibly frantic song. The number of beats per minute on this track (155) is insane. It’s incredibly impressive how André 3000 and Big Boi are able to rap as quickly as they do to stay up with the beat. I like the gospel chorus on this track as well. The track “Xplosion” has the perfect infusion of funk into a hip-hop track. This instrumentation on this track could easily be a song in an Ocean’s Eleven franchise film. 

“We Love Deez Hoez” has an incredibly catchy beat with a playful sound. It sounds like an edgier version of something by De La Soul. “Humble Mumble” has a global sound with the drums creating a different sound. I like Erykah Badu’s vocals on this track. “Red Velvet” features a lot of distorted vocals. There’s a grittier tone to the track “Gangsta Shit.” The rhymes are cohesive and intentionally delivered. This is another track on which the emcees deliver incredibly fast rhymes. “Toilet Tisha” has a slower sound to it. André 3000 delivers an earnest spoken narrative at the end of this track. To me this song conveys a similar sentiment to, but definitely is from a different perspective than the Ben Folds song “Brick.”  Cee-Lo does make an appearance on the track “Slum Beautiful.” This track has more of a mellower vibe, but features some incredibly confident vocals from André 3000. I like the funk sound of the closing track “Stankonia (Stanklove).” The use of a backing chorus is incredibly effective on this track. It almost sounds like something by Prince. 

Rating: 8/10

How I Listened: Vinyl

Takeaway: OutKast definitely created a sound all their own with this album. They used a lot of the techniques of other hip hop artists of the time, but added a lot of funk and soul. It’s a unique sound and one that continued throughout their discography. I like how they incorporated a lot of other Southern emcees and artists to show off the talent of others from their region.

#rs500albums #nowspinning #nowstreaming

[jonryanfmp]

city backdrop idea

I took a lot of inspiration from Mega city one in Judge Dredd. I loved the way that the buildings weren’t just sky scrapers, and how the roads went much higher because that could happen and it makes for a believable future.

I based the road on things like spaghetti junction.

This is from the film Dredd which I remembered because of how high the roads were.

[asinglesongilove]

The story of why I love this song is very simple.

It is a story with three parts.

1989 I’m about five years old. I’m in a car. I presume the car is not particularly fast.

The car is travelling over spaghetti junction, which if you don’t know it, is a concrete knot of roads tied around the heart of Birmingham.

There is a song on the radio which is also about being in a car, that much I’m pretty clear about.

I’m also clear that the song is telling a sad story, and has a sad tune.

I’m unclear exactly what the story is, but I am pretty sure someone is trying to escape their mean parents.

In my head, I think their fast car breaks down while they are trying to escape and that is why they are so sad.

By the end of the song, I am crying in the backseat.

My mom turns around and sees me crying. She asks me why I am upset.

I tell her. It’s the sad song. It just made me a bit sad.

She doesn’t believe me.

A few nights later I overhear her telling my aunty that I must be being bullied at school.

I’m not being bullied at school.

It feels like I don’t hear this song again for years and years.

When I finally do I have absorbed enough shame to know that I shouldn’t like Tracy Chapman.

(And that I shouldn’t cry in response to pop songs I hear on the radio.)

Instead, I pretend to like other songs about cars and escaping.

(I pretend to like Bruce Springsteen, basically )

I don’t cry any less, but I do it less publicly.

1994

Dreams sounds an awful lot like Fast Car.

I mean, it’s really very very similar.

Which is probably why, when I first hear it, aged nine or ten, it feels like a man with a giant hand is punching me in my heart.

It gave me the exact feeling I had in the back of that not-particularly-fast-car.

I had my own radio by then, and had written down the lyrics to Dreams on some printer paper.

Doing this meant that I knew the song wasn’t really about leaving.

What I couldn’t understand back then was why it sounded like it was.

I think I might know now.

Here’s the theory: there are two voices in each verse of the song, someone leaving and someone holding on.

I’ve got no proof of this, obviously. It’s just a shit theory.

But tell me adding brackets to this verse doesn’t change things?

I’m not making plans for tomorrow Let's live for tonight I know I want you baby So hold me so tight [Put your arms around me You make me feel so safe Then you whisper in my ear That you're here to stay…]

Also, it turns out the original single actually had a Fast Car sample in it, which had to be removed at the last minute due to copyright infringement.

So it might just be that, come to think of it.

2017

I am 33 years old.

I have no children.

Despite being a fan of The Rock, I have not seen the Disney film, Moana.

I spend a fair amount of time thinking, both professionally and personally, about what it means to be from somewhere, what it means to leave, what it is wise to take with you when you do, and what you might usefully bring back if you ever return.

I am 33 years old.

I don’t like cars at all.

Looking at them, being in them, talking about them … all shit.

I am 33 years old and now when I think about leaving I don’t think about cars, I think about crossing oceans.

I hear the song How Far I’ll Go, taken from the Moana soundtrack.

I am 33 years old and I am five again.

(I’m still not being bullied in school )

It’s the best song I’ve heard in ages.

If I’d have heard it at five I would have cried in the car.

If I’d heard it at ten I would have written the lyrics on printer paper.

As it is, I listen to it over and over again, and then I listen to Dreams over and over again.

Just those two songs, back and forth for about an hour.

I couldn’t care less where I cry these days.

I know full well that boats are better than cars.

I’m 33 years old…

Dreams can come true!

Throw off the fucking bowline!

I know the word mizzenmast!

There’s a trade wind!

Look at that bloody sail billow!

Faster than a fucking car!

#gabrielle #dreams #music #pop music #video #fast car #tracy chapman #moana #boats #leaving #childhood

[take2intotheshower]

There's your problem, dude. You got spaghetti in your junction box. 

Kurt Weller rocking the porn film electrician look in Blindspot Season 2 Episode 20 (In Words, Drown I) 

#Blindspot #Sullivan Stapleton #Kurt Weller #Blindspot gifs #Take2-BS2-20

[tomkendrew]

FILM: REFUGE CITY - The story of the construction and inhabitation of an emergency city in Spaghetti Junction, UK. Faced with increasing climate change and air pollution making the atmosphere unliveable, air-tight and self-sufficient megastructures are built in Birmingham’s leftover spaces to house residents while the environment is fixed. However things don’t go to plan, and over a century later, how has life continued within these towers?

#architecture #film #graduate #academic #future #sci #fi #scifi #dystopia #dystopian #refugecity #city #tower #towers #urban #birmingham #spaghetti junction

[greensparty]

2023 BUFF - Dispatch #1

Green’s Party is proud to be covering the 2023 Boston Underground Film Festival, which kicked off last night at the Brattle Theatre (Cambridge, MA).  I’ve been lucky enough to cover the festival since 2016 (the fest took off in 2020 and 2021, and I was unable to attend 2022). 

me at the Boston Underground Film Festival red carpet!

Last night I went to the Brattle Theatre and I actually got to sit next to my Cruising In The Van Productions chair in the 5th row! The Opening Night Film was The Unheard. Jeffrey A. Brown’s follow up to The Beach House is set to premiere on Shudder later this month, but the Massachusetts-filmed psychological horror film had it’s World Premiere at BUFF. What got my attention about this, was screenwriters / producers Michael and Shawn Rasmussen. Full disclosure: The Brothers Rasmussen have become friends of mine over the last decade though the Boston film scene.  2005′s underrated Long Distance was co-written by them. Then they wrote 2010′s institution thriller The Ward, which was John Carpenter’s first movie he directed in about 10 years. Then they wrote and directed 2013′s Dark Feed, a horror movie about a movie crew filming in a scary location. They wrote and directed the indie horror film The Inhabitants (I was lucky enough to attend the private cast/crew/friends screening in 2015). Then they co-wrote Alexandre Aja’s Crawl  (one of my 10 Best Movies of 2019).

But I digress. In The Unheard, we meet Chloe a young woman who undergoes an experimental procedure to restore hearing loss. She then goes to her family home in Cape Cod. She is haunted by memories she had as a child. That home was the last place she saw her mother before she went missing. She starts having auditory hallucinations and it’s not clear if that is related to the recent procedure or if strange things really are happening in the off-season of this Cape Cod home. This slow burn is a film I’m super glad I saw on the big screen as the Brattle just installed a killer new sound system. The sound design in this movie is off the charts and there’s a VHS element to this film was is creepy and haunting. Lead actor Lachlan Watson (NOTE: the actor goes by they, the character goes by she) gives one of the best horror movie performances in recent memory (up there with Mia Goth in Pearl and the cast of Nope). Also need to mention supporting actor Nick Sandow, known for his comedic tendencies on Orange is the New Black, here he really leans into this dramatic role as a former cop turned handy-man for the property. Highly recommend watching this with headphones on and not doing anything else while watching it. 

Michael, Shawn and Jeffrey during the Q&A with BUFF Artistic Director Kevin Monahan.

The film was followed by a Q&A with Brown and the Rasmussens. Afterwards I hung out with them at the after-party. Good times!

Tonight: Films include Stand By for Failure, Spaghetti Junction, and Smoking Causes Coughing.

For info on this year’s #BUFF23: https://bostonunderground.org/

Stay tuned to Green’s Party for my coverage of this year’s fest!

#boston underground film festival #BUFF23 #the unheard #jeffrey a. brown #the rasmussen brothers #film festival #film geek