Movies ::

 

The Oscars :: 

Best Actor - 8 actors have won the award twice : Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Marlon Brando, Dustin Hoffman, Tom Hanks, Jack Nicholson, and Daniel Day-Lewis..

Best Actress - Katherine Hepburn has won 4 Oscars the most by any actress..

Best Film - 3 films have won 11 oscars each :: 

Ben Hur      

Titanic    

Lord of the Rings ( Return of the King )    

 

My top ten films ::  

                                                                                     


                                                             

   

The worst film I have ever watched is Borat, schoolboy humour at its most dreadful.. 

 

Books :: 

   

 

The most popular book by sales is the bible.. 

 

My top ten books ::

 


 

The worst book I have ever read is The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie it was just plain silly with boredom mixed in...

 

Television :: 

   

 

On January 23rd, 1926 John Logie Baird gave the worlds first public demonstration of a mechanical

television apparatus..        .................

........  on February 28th 1983 the final episode of M*A*S*H attracted 105.9 million viewers, and they said it would never catch on !! 

 

My top ten TV shows  ::

 

 


 

I do not watch bad TV programmes as I discovered an on/off switch and a remote control..

 

 

 

                                                             JUMP  ( My movie idea )

 

This is an idea I thought of some time ago, it is the basis for a movie..My thoughts and ideas will be added as they occur to me..

The basic premise is that it will be a movie based on the old concept of making the cinemagoers jump.This however will be done in various ways. The classic concepts of ' climbing the stairs ' ' opening an attic flap ' ' hearing a noise and investigating ' etc..etc will all be utilised but sometimes they will be funny, they will sometimes be introduced by dialogue just as the music reaches a crescendo, the scene will stop and the character who introduces the movie to the audience will appear and say things like " wait for it, wait for it, you know it's coming, shall we have a countdown 4 - 3 - 2 "  SCARY MOMENT..Some will happen as in a normal scary movie without interference..Some can be stopped at the moment of  jumpiness by our narrator ( A Boris Karloff type figure ) just appearing on screen and saying " not this time, you need a rest "..That is the basic concept more detailed thought will follow except the whole movie will leave the watcher totally unaware of the next twist, but waiting for something to happen to keep them watching and hopefully entertained..

The main and most important  character is the narrator..He sets the tone for the film and will appear many times, sometimes as a prelude to key moments sometimes as an ordinary character..He needs to have a highly defined and scary face, plus a voice that can be both soothing and alarming..Below is an example of the movie opening designed to grab attention quickly..The sequence will be accompanied by the sound of a heart beat gradually incresing in volume and speed..The narration will accompany the face and heart beat..I will attempt an example of the the narrative but have no idea what I'm doing..

Eye contact with the audience is very important with the initial narration to create the feeling that the narrator is addressing you directly :

The initial narration will conclude with an extreme close up of the talking mouth with a face, full sized, jumping out of the mouth and filling the screen accompanied by the frenzied, loud heart beat..That will be the first jump.... 

 

                                                 

" Why are you here ?

Do you like to feel scared ? Do you like the steady quickening of your heart beat as the adrenalin begins to pump and the mind begins to take over ?

Are you here to show you are not scared ? To watch a mere film with a few noises, a few clever tricks and to prove to yourself - No not to yourself ? To the person next to you, the person who will be scared while you look at them with that patronising expression on your face..

Believe me dear friend you will be scared, that monent you weren't expecting, that moment you held your breath and readied yourself only to turn away and laugh..

Is your heart beating faster as mine is beating faster ? As you watch my face getting closer, ever closer only to stop when it fills the screen, Or will it stop ? What if it gets closer and closer never stopping, closer, closer until......."

Face jumps out of mouth !!!!!!!

 

 I'm going with my original 3 vignettes idea, as nobody will ever read this, comparisons to The Twilight Zone are unfounded...   THIS IS NOT A SPOOF MOVIE - as they are now becoming tedious..

I will make no attempt at writing script dialogue as I am simply not clever enough..

1 - No strings on me ... 

This opens with a panoramic view of an orchestra panning from left to right during a performance, the last figure seen playing a violin is our narrator who smiles at the camera..

This is about a tryannical , nasty, sarcastic but very succesful orchestra conductor who is studio based and produces background music for horror films..He is especially scathing towards one of the violinists in the band and ridicules him at every opportunity in  front of everybody.Our hapless violinist is only average and is scared to answer back as he is always made to look a fool..He needs the money so takes the abuse.After one particularly nasty verbal assault by the conductor he hangs himself as he can take it no more..Horror sequences, finding the body after a climb up the stairs to his flat by his girlfriend, who then finds the door ajar etc etc..Plenty of scope for the announcer to wind up the tension..

We next see his replacement, at first sight and unremarkable young girl..But when we hear her play she is amazing..Attempts at sarcasm backfire to such an extent that he starts losing control of the orchestra, our relacement violinist becomes scarier as time goes on and appears out of the blue in various scenes concentrating on the conductor..The  appearances are in the form of a delusional figure gradually taking over the life of the conductor..The conductors actions are eventually all carried out to the accompaniment of a creepy backscore..Even opening the fridge or window has a big musical build up which is in reality only in his mind..

It finishes with the conductor completely insane sitting in a room and the girl playing violin sitting in the corner, the girl morphs in to the dead violinist and we realise she is in fact his ghost..

 

            The transition between each vignette is just a 5 second blank screen..No introduction, no credits, nothing to interfere with the flow..

 

2 - The Spectre Inspector...

This is the story of a number one hit TV show that has slumped so far in the ratings it will be axed after this programme. It is a ghost hunting  documentary show featuring a supposed haunted residence each week. It's popularity soars because of the proof and amazingly dramatic live pictures of paranormal events. The dramatic slump comes after one of the producers admits publicly that all these paranormal events are just very clever and realistic computer generated images.

The show starts with the investigation team entering a brightly lit supermarket, or at least a location that is the last thing you would expect to be featured on a ghost hunting programme. The opening sequence shows our narrator as a hand held camera man following the team into the location, he grins nastily as he walks past and then the fun begins. It should be a dramatic and very scary encounter with ghosts laced with humour and build up by the narrator..

                                                                       Transition

 

3 - I'll have an ice cream and a chain-saw please...

 

Story 3 will open with an ultra cutesy family opening presents on Christmas day, full of xmas trees, cute kids, puppies, kittens, whatever..This will only last a couple of minutes and will finish with a child opening a present and out jumps our narrator who says something like ::

" No, no, no no, my dear friends you didn't really think we would do this to you do you ? We would like to leave you with a little story that will go home with you and live in your mind until the next time you open a door, hear a noise or get that feeling where the hairs on the back of your neck slowly start to rise until......"

 

Our 3rd story then takes place in a deserted cinema, two people b/f & g/f looking at the screen, out narrator sitting right behind them, although they are unaware of his presence..He starts pulling faces at them and making gestures like running his finger across his throat..he then starts pulling various implments from under his chair - a chain saw, an axe, a rocket launcher etc but gradually discards them one by one..The couple remain unaware the whole time.. He than leans forward and touches them on their head with one finger, they explode without warning and splatter the screen..He leans forward and the film finishes with a form of warning..

" Thats the problem with sitting in a cinema, you never know whos behind you and what they are doing " He points directly at the audience " Do you know who's behind you, do you, do you " pointing in various directions.." So as you leave tonight dear people, I might go with you, I might stay here, you might see me tonight or in ten years but you will never forget me..You will know it's me because......."

He then leaps at the screen and vanishes..

 

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That is my idea for a movie which will thankfully never be seen..

Or will it ??

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