Tuesday 30 November 2010

Snow day

Well it's definitely winter now in Scotland we've had two days of constant snow and for once I'm quite happy to be staying indoors because that trip to the doctors this morning was a complete nightmare I even had to dig out the wheels of my Dad's car so he could get it up the drive. Anyhoo I thought I would share some pictures taken by moi from the safety of my upstairs landing and bedroom hope you enjoy.











Thanking you
The Housebound Writer

Friday 26 November 2010

More Movie news

More movie news in this blog post, first up is...

THE GREAT GATSBY
Columbia Pictures are looking for a 2012 release for this adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald classic novel. Although the novel is set in Midwest America it appears this film will be shot on location in Australia by Aussie native filmmaker Baz Luhrmann and will star Leo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan who has beat out Anne Hathaway, Keira Knightley, Natalie Portman and Amanda Syfried to the role of Daisy Buchanan.

INTERSTELLAR
This is the long touted science fiction film from film making legend Steven Spielberg and based on the gravity fields theories of Kip Thorne and several hypotheses of Albert Einstein. Not to much is known about this project except the script is being penned by Jonathan Nolan brother and writing partner of Chris and is expected to be shot in 3d. Whatever else I hear about I'll post on the blog as this is definitely writing partner  got the potential to be a classic.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E
Steven Soderberg and Warner Brothers are set to bring the classic television series to the big screen with George Clooney reportedly set to star. The script has been penned by Scott Z. Burns and should hit screens sometime in 2012 my bet would be a Christmas release date as summer 2012 is being flooded with other big budget action films.

UNTITLED ALIEN PREQUEL
Even though this is due for a summer 2011 release not much is known about this film besides Ridley Scott is directing from a script by Damon Lindelof. Rumours are endless but the most believable of them being that Ridley Scott wants Noomi Rapace (Girl with the dragon tattoo) for the lead role along with Sharlto Copley (District 9) although with little known about the plot other than it's about terraforming, it's hard to be 100%sure on what casting rumours to trust.

THE EXPENDABLES 2
Following the success of the first Expendables movie and fan pressure for a sequel it looks like Sylvester Stallone and crew will be back for another round of 80s inspired action. Stallone will once again direct and star alongside Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture and Jet Li. Also rumoured to be returning is Bruce Willis this time though as the possible head bad guy along with the rumoured Jean Claude Van Damme, Ray Park and Kurt Russell although these are just rumours at this point.

Thanking you
The Housebound Writer

Monday 15 November 2010

Hometown News

My hometown football team has made the front pages of many newspapers today but not for the best of reasons. Did they win a cup final? Did they win the league? These are questions that you may have asked but the answer to both is no (this is Airdrie United we are talking about after all, lol) what they did was screw up something incredibly simple causing great anger and for once even a life long fan such as I can't ignore their error.

To mark remembrance day, on Saturday Airdrie United used a World War 2 picture of soldiers leaving on a train as the cover of their official programme along with the logo for the services charity PoppyScotland and the words "Lest We Forget". What's wrong with that? You may ponder well the image they used just happened to be of Nazi soldiers.

Club secretary Ann Marie Ballantyne said "A few people have picked up on this. It certainly wasn't deliberate." she also added "We were told the soldiers were Australian." This is obviously a huge mistake on the part of the club but unfortunately when a small element of your fan base utilise the Nazi salute when singing football songs this isn't going over well with most people around the country and this topic has lit up a lot of Scottish football forums. Spokesman Leigh James of PoppyScotland said "Obviously the club meant well."

My guess is not many football fans will be forgetting this blunder and will be reminding the club from the Away stand at many Airdrie home games to come. Here's a link to the full story: http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2010/11/15/football-club-s-poppy-tribute-backfires-after-using-picture-of-nazi-soldiers-on-match-programme-86908-22718341/

When I told my Gran about this story she had the opposite reaction to it than I expected she actually laughed and said "bunch of numpties." So maybe others will take that approach and acknowledge it for what it truly was a huge error and not a deliberate joke anyhoo...

Thanking you
The Housebound Writer

Sunday 14 November 2010

Movie News

There is a lot of movie gossip floating about at the moment some of which seems very unlikely but with Hollywood you can never really rule any of it out but for now I've decided to stick to the more concrete movie news and first up is the first of two Arnold Schwarzenegger films to be getting the remake treatment.

COMMANDO
Sam Worthington will step into Arnie's shoes for this one with David Ayer (writer of Fast and the Furious, Harsh Times and S.W.A.T) handling the directing and writing honours. Strange film to remake in my humble opinion as it seems very of it's time but maybe they are planning to put a new spin on it, see what I did there trying to be positive? Let's see how long that lasts, lol.

TOTAL RECALL
This has been long rumoured to get the remake treatment and actors from Denzel Washington to Russel Crowe have been linked to it but it appears to be Colin Farrell who has landed the lead role. Len Wiseman (Die Hard 4.0) will be directing from a script by Kurt Wimmer (Law Abiding Citizen and The Recruit). Could be a great flick and Farrell is an interesting choice for the lead role.

HIGHLANDER
yep another remake of another 80's classic this time with Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow and Fast and Furious) directing a script by Matt Holloway and Art Macum the writers behind Iron Man & Punisher: WarZone. Casting wise there is only rumour at this point but a strong contender seems to be James McAvoy which would make the Highlander actually played by a Scotsman for a change, oops positivity sliding.

MASS EFFECT
The popular video game title looks set to come to the big screen with a big budget to boot. A script penned by Mark Protosevich (I Am Legend, Thor and The Cell) is in development with Avi Arad (pretty much all Marvel films) producing. Casting wise Matthew Fox is one rumour another is Channing Tatum but as this film is at the very early stages of development I'd take both with a pinch of salt. With the right director and cast this could be a great franchise for the studio and with this large a fan base amassed over the two games in this series it will have to be. Well almost kept the positivity up over the blog post, almost anyhoo....

Thanking you
The Housebound Writer

Thursday 11 November 2010

Dino De Laurentiis (1919-2010)

Legendary film producer Dino De Laurentiis has died today (11th of November) at the age of 91 in Los Angeles according to several Italian media sources. He has produced more than 500 films including Serpico, Death Wish, Flash Gordon, Tai-Pan, Three Days Of The Condor, the Hannibal Lecter franchise and the 1976 remake of King Kong.

Di Laurentiis has won two Oscars, one in 1956 for Federico Fellini's masterpiece "La Strada" and again in 1957 for the Fellini directed "Nights of Cabiria" which starred Giulietta Masina. He has undoubtedly made a huge contribution to both the European film industry as well as in Hollywood and will be greatly missed.

Sunday 7 November 2010

The Writeaholic's Drabble Challenge

Yep another seven days between blog posts and you guessed it for health reasons again this time I had a mixed bag of symptoms including my stomach ulcers playing up leaving me spending the last week vomiting up my stomach acid which is as gross as it sounds folks, lol and some kind of virus or what not leaving me with the headache to end all headaches and feeling lethargic. It's not improved as the week has progressed so I'm going to have to bite the bullet and go to my GP even though I hate giving in to things like this and taking meds for it as God knows I take enough pills as it is but to get past it I'll probably need antibiotics.

Anyway that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it for why this blog post wasn't done and dusted by Wednesday at the latest and I can only humbly apologise for the lateness of this drabble challenge post as I realised earlier today the next drabble challenge has already been posted up at http://writeaholicblog.wordpress.com/ and to top that I'm not just late with the post I'm also five words over the limit for the hundred word challenge, yeah been one of those weeks. Here it is anyway hope it's OK as I really struggled to write something this short, attempt one was 305 words and I was beginning a new paragraph when I realised I may have overshot the limit a smidge.

CAREER
The big bang echoes in my ears as my 6:45am wake-up call buzzed progressively louder. I reached over and as my hand kissed the timepiece my eyes gained that much needed confidence to welcome in the early Monday morning sun. My mouth still harbouring unwanted, unfading memories of the days before as I rise from my safety net and seek the sanctuary of the toothbrush to exorcise my weekend demons. My coffee stained tie hangs crooked as I await the cattle call of the underground what wondrous forfeits we so welcome for the burden of a paycheck and the love of a career.

If you love great writing (what the hell you reading this for then?) you should definitely pay a visit to http://thewritaholicblog.wordpress.com/ you won't be disappointed and trust me the stories on there are a lot happier than mine have been of late I'm working through some stuff and this is my outlet for it so bear with me it will get more upbeat eventually, I think anyway.

Thanking you
The Housebound Writer

EDIT: The link appears not to be working for some reason but you can find a functional link in the smart links section of the sidebar.