Reconstructing old footage

Giving Up

When my friend and I made videos years ago, we often did not finish what we started. 

Above is an unfinished episode from an educational series we made called Brain Pow!. It's the elusive "Holiday Special," of which there are at least five half-shot variants and two half-written scripts. 

We also made a video called "House of Nightmares," which has two unfinished sequels, two unfinished remakes, and multiple scripts that served as either sequels or remakes. 

Basically, we'd get bored with a video, then give up on it. There was a certain spark that occurred when we started filming as young kids, but often the spark would die out, and we'd end up with a half-finished product. It's fine, though, because these projects were just for fun. No one's money was involved. 

Brian Eno speaks the truth

"Right now, I mainly see hustlers looking for suckers." - Brian Eno said in an interview.

Thanks, Brian! You took the words right out of my mouth! 

I watched Scream 2 and it sucked

 

Scream 2 continued the tradition of surface-level self-referential critique established in the first Scream but was not even remotely subversive. A sequel can't be subversive if it does the exact same things as its predecessor. 

By the way, Scream was not subversive. It just did everything that other slashers do except it referenced movie tropes. If Scream or Scream 2 really wanted to be subversive, then they would have done something new.

That's pretty much it! 

Buying old stuff

 

When I was younger, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre on the Atari 2600 went anywhere from $40 to $200 on eBay. It didn't go for much more than that, nor did it go for less. 

  I always wanted it just so I could say I owned it, yet I never bought it. Being a lower-middle-class kid, $40 seemed like a lot of money. For a game that consists of one repeating screen, $40 is a lot of money. And, anyway, I thought I'd buy it someday when I made my own money. 

Well, now I do make my own money and I could afford a frivolous $40 purchase. Now, however, the game costs a grand total of $125,000-$200,000. To be perfectly clear, that's more money than I spent on college. That's more money than I'd spend on a car or a house. There is no chance I will ever own Texas Chainsaw Massacre on Atari. 

Silent Hill: Room 304 (RIP Flash)

Everything fun on the internet used to use Flash, but now Flash is gone so the internet is mostly boring. 

Flash supported games, animated videos, and killer interactive websites. If like me you didn't have a gaming console, but you did have a computer, then Flash games were your go-to. 

I used to play this Doctor Who Flash game called "The Last Dalek" all the time. Now, unfortunately, it's unavailable. It's on some websites, but it just loads forever. You'll never get past the "Level 1" description scene. 

There's one game, though, that I would have completely lost my shit over as a kid, but it completely flew under my radar. That game is Silent Hill fan-made Flash game Silent Hill: Room 304.

COWBOY.MOV

 

COWBOY.MOV Poster from FilmFreeway

My friend Sean Nelson Taylor took advantage of the early days of COVID-19 and made an entire feature-length film called COWBOY.MOV. You can stream it on Vuuzle!

I met Sean in Prague, Czech Republic. We. were both American students studying at FAMU. He directed a film called Once Upon a Time in Prague 7 and I photographed a film called Ruth Takes a Bath. 

He got some other friends we made involved in the production. My friend and former roommate Ben Champagne shot the COWBOY.MOV, and my friend Zach Gordon-Sandweiss provided food and acted in it. 

I was completely shocked to see that Sean was making a feature film, honestly. It takes so much work to make just a two-minute little short that the task of making an independent feature, to me, was insurmountable. Nonetheless, he put the work in and got results. 

This will be a film that people look back on. It's a perfect time capsule of 2015-2020 American culture. It deals with the growing cost of living, distrust in the government, and overall the culture surrounding armchair political commentators/propagators of conspiracy theories. It's also shot well and has compelling characters. 

It would also make a great double feature with The Pizzagate Massacre, another independent film from around the same time. Each of these films reflects the existential threat that is misinformation. Pizzagate is a dark take on the situation, while COWBOY.MOV has a much more hopeful outlook. 

I hope COWBOY.MOV is the impetus more many great films to come, as well as a prolific film career for my friend Sean and everyone involved in the production. 

Also, I hope when people google "COWBOY.MOV" they read this review and seek the film out. 

@JustLikeThat, the abandoned Instagram account who beat HBO to the punch

 So, my friend works for HBO. Yes, I am jealous. 

He recently made a post on Instagram, which detailed an early screening of a new HBO Max show called Just Like That. Below is the original post. I've blocked out his identity.

At the bottom, you can see that he tags an account called @JustLikeThat. Of course, one would assume that @JustLikeThat belongs to the HBO Show, but that's not true. The Instagram account for the show Just Like That is @justlikethatmax. My friend accidentally linked to @justlikethat. 

Troll 2 and my old YouTube channel

 I used to love so-bad-they're-good movies. I loved Manos: The Hangs of Fate, The Room, and Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2. My favorite, of course, was Troll 2.

Like many people from the mid-2000s, I discovered the film because of the infamous "Oh my Goddddd" scene. One of the early viral videos. Coincidentally, Troll 2 was shot in Utah, just like the unforgettable Wun Blee Chung Dee.

Wun Blee Chung Dee (2001)

 

Wun Blee Chung Dee poster

One of my most hipsterish pursuits is my ongoing attempt to find great obscure movies that were never released on DVD or streaming. I spend a lot of time perusing through eBay, looking for the strangest yet cheapest tapes. 

Ten years later, almost to the date

I made this blog in 2009. Back then, it was called the Mondas Chronicles. I basically just posted every silly YouTube video I made with my friend.

About a year later, I deleted all those videos, so the blog linked to nothing and discussed nothing. I was ashamed by how terrible they were. It just sat there in limbo. Dead, yet alive. 

As Morbius said from the Doctor Who story "The Brain of Morbius": "Even a sponge has more life than I."

Apparently I revamped this blog in 2011, almost exactly 10 years ago today. Again, I just posted videos that I made when I was a kid. Fortunately, I did not delete all those videos. They're here, but they're just unlisted.

Recently, I've found myself missing the old internet. Back when it was still around, I was a big fan of That Guy With The Glasses and Cinemassacre, both of which still exist in one form or another, but their old blog-style websites are gone. 

Generally, the internet looks different now. Everything is on either Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. Back when I was young, though, people had personal blogs and websites. I miss this. 

Quite frankly, I also hate the new social media apps. There's a distinct sense of competitiveness on these apps. Everyone is just fighting for the most likes, and everything is so polished and professional. It's no fun anymore! 

My distaste for the new internet landscape and my nostalgia for the old days is why I'm revamping this blog an entire decade later. Of course, I can guarantee that no one will read this, so I'm making it for myself! 

If you do end up here somehow, welcome! Thanks for reading!