New review at the Metropol, new review here (Imaginarium!), and an update!

They've posted a new review over at the Vampire Film Festival website, this one for Ganja and Hess. I reviewed Daybreakers for them, but I suppose they're going in order of when the review was written.

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I was given the green light on the music video for my brother's band, World Collision, and I have a script all ready for a new short film so as far as production goes, it's going well! I hope to get principal photography done this month on the music video and then start the short in a couple of months! I love this stuff!!

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I got to see Terry Gilliam's new film the other night, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, which stars Chrisopher Plummer as our eponymous hero, a 1,000-year old man who manipulates the imagination to try and make the world a better place. He's locked in constant battle with the Devil, played by Tom Waits, and is about to lose his daughter to him when a mysterious, amnesiac stranger (played in the real world by the late Heath Ledger and in the Imaginarium by Johnny Depp, Jude Law, and Colin Farrell) shows up on the eve of her birthday and changes the balance of the game between Parnassus and the Devil.

This is seriously one of the best films I've seen in a loooooooong time and is absolutely one of Terry Gilliam's best films. In fact, I believe this has replaced Brazil as my favourite Gilliam film. I wanted to cry, the movie was so good, so beautiful. There is so much heart, humanity, and - yes - imagination in this film.

A lesser filmmaker probably would've had to abandon the project with so much left to shoot in the studio when Ledger passed, but with a story like this, and a mind like Gilliam's, the production recovered with only minor hiccups in the flow of the narrative. To be honest, if you didn't know Ledger had died during filming, you wouldn't give it much of a second thought.

The design is a HUGE part of this film, but it's not overwhelming. It's like looking through a window into Gilliam's brain and seeing loads of Monty Python-esque animated links brought to life. That might put some of you off (mom), but don't let it. This is a film that needs to be seen.

Unlike other films that have come out recently, the effects are not more important than the story being told and the characters within. Everything is of equal importance from the wonderful actors to the colours, to the score and design, to Gilliam's masterful direction.

Beautiful.