Santa brought us a Toshiba HD-DVD player. It’s the A3 model, which included two HD DVD movies in the box. Santa must have picked it up at Best Buy, because the receipt also comes with five more free discs, a sort of mail-in rebate deal.
Got it set up, plugged into the 42” Panasonic plasma-screen via [...]

Today’s take on the WGA strike originates from an essay on SFGate by Noah Hawley, a novelist and writer for “Bones.” The piece is called “What the writers strike is really about,” and like all op-ed columns written by striking writers it conveys a certain veracity. In fact, Mr. Hawley makes one of the most [...]

It’s been a while since I’ve been on the air, but I have a good explanation.
Our office was burglarized.
In the wee hours of Monday morning two guys broke into our offices and stole stuff. Most of the swag they got were, what I called later, “unintentional decoys:” A busted laptop, a camcorder on it’s last [...]

At this point, the precious raw footage of “Arrangements” has been digitized and sits, cataloged and ready to go, on the editorial platform. There were apparently some delays in delivering continuity notes and footage logs to editorial, but at this point all has been handed over and the editorial process has begun.
I took this moment [...]

Got a chance during the exceptionally long Holiday weekend to catch up on some movies. It’s been a while. Here’s they, with some pithy notes on their respective viewing environments.
Wednesday Night: The Mist. Fine, scary film. Marcia Gay Harden chews her some serious scenery as a religious fanatic. Did you know director Frank Darabont got [...]

Saturday was the last full filming day for “Arrangements.” According to the call sheet, the last scenes were to be shot at Pinewood.
Yeah, that’s what I thought too. But rather than the historic soundstages of Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, the shoot was on a charming 70s-era cul-de-sac in upper Live Oak, the unincorporated area I grew [...]

The Crew Call for the very first shooting day of “Arrangements” was at 8 a.m. up in Glen Alba Gardens in Ben Lomond. This left me in a unique position: Alas, as hard as I looked, there was no position on the call sheet for “Writer.”
But I kid. Besides, I was heading down to the [...]

The following is an exercise in forensics. Not the gory “CSI” type, the talky sort of exercise.
I’m going to take a viewpoint and elaborate on it. I do not necessarily hold this viewpoint, but I think any reasonably intelligent person can see both sides of any argument and defend either effectively. It’s Speech and Debate [...]

Had to fly into Los Angeles yesterday for a meeting. It was with a Veteran Producer who was more comfortable going face-to-face about DVD design issues than conducting business over the phone of via emailed pictures.
But this meeting was in the afternoon, and I was in town mid-morning. So I put on my blogging journalist [...]

In the last week, the work towards filling the job slots for “Arrangements” has gone on with deliberate speed.
Quite a few roles - hair/makeup, scriptie, and a few PA roles– have been filled. The search continues for a director of photography and an art director.
Most importantly, the casting calls have gone out. Apparently a few [...]