Gabe Powers' Blog

This is the first blog in the last few weeks that didn't make me want to stab myself in the eyes.

Good job, Gabe.

And the first one from a board member I recognized. Thought there'd be more. Keep it up, Gabe!

Yeah, Gabe's the man. Can't wait to see what you come up with, buddy.

very cool ...

Does the ending of Silence of the Lambs count for the Night Vision Scare? I'm betting not since I doubt you'd forget that.

It's been overdone, but it's not nearly as bad as the waking-up-from-a-dream-in-bedscare. The night vision scare still works pretty well, actually, but it's probably best to 86 it before it gets too out of hand.

Good point, i'd forgotten that all the scares you listed involved cameras. I got stuck on the Night Vision part.

Well done so far Gabe, I'll look forward to reading more.

I cannot believe that Robert Altman started Lionsgate. Where did you read that?

Is their anything more sacred than a solid road mix? The possibilities are limitless, yet the end result is only as good as the users music collection. I completely agree with you on throwing in flashback tracks. Nothing like singing along to Kriss Kross to make you feel more like a man.

A large part of what's on my Sansa player is music from soundtracks. Be it actual vocal tracks, or film scores.

Road music? Nothing like listening to Brian May's soundtrack to The Road Warrior.

Sing along to? Phantom Of The Paradise. Always gets me in a cheery mood during a drive.

If you're going to hit a horror convention in Chicago, make sure you get to Fangoria's convention. From my experience its better than Flashback with both guests and content. I only went once (a couple of years ago) so I could be wrong...

Glad you enjoyed Wizard World, though. BTW, Gotham Knight didn't have any permanent booth -- they just had a signing at one point and a panel at one point. Unfortunatly, I also missed both...I had wanted to talk to Greg Rucka again myself.

I went to the Flashback Weekend in Chicago (I also met George Romero, which was awesome), but just wanted to mention, they did have the Mother of Tears on bootleg. I didn't buy any bootlegs, but definitley remember seeing it there.

I briefly talked to Romero about Bruiser, which he seemed very excited to talk about how it was produced by a French company and that know one really "got" that movie(I thought it was awesome, the movie), but there was a decent size line which didn't give me much room to get into an in depth discussion.

I also watched the discussion on breaking into Independent Cinema. Romero also spoke during that along with Roy Frumkes, the guy who made Phantasm, and the Producer of the new Mandy Lane. The producer guy was kind of a dick, and trashed almost everything Romero said. After Romero explained how shooting Diary of the Dead was much easier because of CGI, and that they did not use one squib, this guy immediately responds "I HATE CGI!, I think it is bullshit!". Looked like Romero wanted to punch the dude, and he would have deserved. Overall, it was very cool for me, since I never have been to one of these conventions before. I had to meet Romero though, so it was welll worth it.

Yeah, he did look kind of beat. When I mentioned Bruiser he lit up though, and just started to talking about financing and stuff. I didn't really know how to respond. "You know George, my experience with French financing has been spotty too". I think it was cool for him though to have someone bring up his non-zombie movies, because I think those films get completely ingnored (I haven't even seen all of them), and he clearly invested quite a bit of time into each one.

My buddy is named Martin and had him sign his Martin poster(which he also hasn't seen). He told him to "direct me George", which was pretty hilarious, when he was taking a picture of me, Romero, and my wife. Overall, it was a really cool experience. He's actually the only reason I went to the convention, so I wasn't disappointed.

Seeing Elvira, cleavage and all, was also a bonus, even though she is pretty old! ha!

Not a fan of The Crazies Gabe? As much as I love Martin Crazies is probably my favorite non-Dead film of his (and I haven't seen Creepshow yet before you ask)

Yeah, I met Romero and Savini as a Fangoria convention in Chicago a couple of years back and had them sign a Creepshow picture. Meeting Savini was crazy because my friends and I were just walking around and see him sitting at his table...waiting for people to approach him. No one was even there. So we got to talk to him for about half an hour before, I guess, someone else recognized him.

Agreed about Martin, perhaps it's because when I saw it I actually knew 'Martin' for all intensive purposes (I had a gothy friend who believed he was a vampire, took it rather seriously actually).

I disagree with you so much about Nausicca, but overall an interesting list.

The thing is that by cutting out the extraneous material it allows the film to focus on the two main characters. Turning it into some massively political war film would take away a lot of the great character work Miyazaki created.

Ah, the audio commentary. I dunno anything quite like it. The only ones I don't like are commentary tracks with loooooooong pauses. Those drive me nuts.

Can't wait for your "Worst of" commentary blog.

I always forget to leave comments but count me in as another reader looking forward to the worst of blog. They combine two things I love very much: lists and audio commentaries.