Saturday, November 28, 2009

Its been a rainy day here in SD...

and we have been balancing our time between completing a video for Artepolitik.com and watching TV. Tonight we might actually get out of the house for a bit to checkout The Road. As you know we have been talking about this film for sometime and can't wait to see it. We will be sure to post a review by tomorrow, until then checkout what Roger Ebert had to say after seeing The Road a second time.
"I first saw "The Road" in September at the Toronto Film Festival, as one of eight films I saw in three days. I wrote a draft of a review at the time and sent it. That review accidentally found its way into sight in October, long before the film was scheduled to open. I yanked it offline as quickly as I could."

Here is the The Road press conference at the London Film Festival.


Friday, November 27, 2009

The end of the world as we know it in the movies....


Have you noticed how many End of the World flicks there has been out this fall??? Seriously, for the past 10 years we have had there has been a major comeback in Apocalyptic/Post Apocalyptic cinema. And not that we are complaining but its been interesting to see that audiences are still plunking down the $$$ to stand in line to see them and it doesn't appear that Hollywood is going to stop making end of the world flicks anytime soon.... well maybe until 2012 when the whole S@$& house is going up in flames...so get your kicks now...btw, check out this interesting upcoming film called the Arcadian.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Its that time of year again...


to be eating until your in a food coma!!! Well at least that is what we did....anyway from all of us at El Roberto Productions, we hope you had a wonderful Turkey Day...

The next couple of weeks are going to be ridiculously busy for us but we will have some new footage we shot for ArtePolitik.com posted soon.

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Its almost Thanksgiving and....

the Fantastic Mr.Fox opens tomorrow and despite the mostly postive reviews we have to admit that we are a bit skepitcal after watching the trailer.

The Road is finally opening this week after several delays. Hopefully its worth the wait but something tells me that its not.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Screenplay Contest


This weekend was the third round of the screenwriting contest I enrolled in a couple of months ago. I am in the third round with one more round to go. As I've mentioned before, the premise is you are tasked to write a 5 page screenplay in 48 hours. You must write a screenplay in a specific genre, at a specific location with a specific item included in the script. For my heat, the genre had to be horror (boo) the location it had to be set in was a farm, and there had to be a remote control somewhere in the screenplay. I reeeeally hate horror movies and never watch them so I was a little unprepared with that aspect. However, I think I did okay. I ended up writing a story about a group of girls who are lured to a farm, thinking that they've come to audition for a reality series but are actually trapped at a snuff video factory. I went with cheesy and funny horror. We'll see how I do. Right now, were sitting here watching the Ken Burn's War series and relaxing. We have some work to do this week, but we'll take it easy and enjoy the short week :)

Sunday, November 22, 2009

An Education Review


I spent the whole weekend slaving in front of my laptop working on a script for a screenwriting contest I'm currently participating in. More on that tomorrow. But as a break from all the hard work this weekend, we decided to go see An Education, a movie I've been dying to see for weeks. It was pretty much exactly what I'd expected, which is good. It's about a British schoolgirl falling in love with an older man who manages to manipulate and seduce both the girl and her parents into believing he is her glamorous and righteous savior. The style of the movie is very sophisticated 60's posh which I love. And the main actress Carey Mulligan is cheerful and fun to watch just like all the reviews are saying. The only dark spot is of course Peter "I can't act to save my life" Saarsgard. He performed his usual sleepy-eyed, ambiguously shady schtick, but this time with a very confused British accent. It was pretty funny actually. All in all it was a sweet, sad movie (although I think the Oscar buzz is a little unnecessary). We're heading to bed now, preparing for a busy week! G'night :)

Friday, November 20, 2009

Happy Friday!!!

So tonight we are going to be taking a short break to checkout
Kelsey Brookes show, Bigger, Brighter, Bolder at the Quint Gallery. Check out his interview we produced for Citybeat.

This weekend C is going to be focusing on a screen writing contest, and I am going to be working with Artepolitik.com on some video content for their site. Also, this weekend we will post some more footage. Have a great night.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Fight club


An interesting piece of news came out today. The new Fight Club Blu Ray DVD just came out, and it has a cool fake-out. When it begins, instead of showing you the Fight Club menu, it starts out with the movie menu for the 1999 Drew Barrymore romantic comedy Never Been Kissed. They actually did something like this before; On the original DVD they anti-piracy "warning" actually had a message slipped into it. It's a funny addition. Hopefully we'll be trading in our DVD player for a blu-ray later this year and can check out the new version of Fight Club. Have a good night :)

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Hump day...

From director Adam Yauch, yeah that Yauch, comes Gunnin' For That #1 Spot.

I think that this looks both accessible and inspirational and look forwarding to seeing it when it makes its way to SD.

Here at El Roberto, we are constantly looking for new films to checkout. So if you have seen anything good recently, drop us a line and we will watch it and let you know what we think. theelroberto@gmail.com

Project update, we are currently taking the night off to recharge a bit and will return this weekend to start work on some new videos.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Black Dynamite Movie Review


So a friend of ours got an advanced copy of Black Dynamite they let us borrow, so we got to revel in the all the platformed glory. I'll be frank: I almost peed myself it was so funny. As a lot of critics have stated, they do take painstaking attention to detail. The badly dubbed sound, the fuzzy lighting, the boom mike that keeps dipping into the scene. All of that stuff is great, but on top of that, the writing itself is good. There are so many subtle awkward funny moments that after the ingenuity of the gimmicky humor wears off your still laughing. Unfortunately I don't think it got a wide release so when it comes out on DVD, we'll be sure to let you know so you can grab it..it is definitely a classic...In other news, I was editing a video for work the entire weekend, literally from 8am to 1am every night, so I'm just starting to now recover from the exhausting weekend. Right now, were cleaning off our computer as we were down to 65 gigs..But now we've opened up a couple hundred gigs and are back in business!! Whoo-hoo!! Check ya later :)

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Yeah its Sunday...

and we are busy finishing up the sound design on a video C shot and cut for her work. This next week we are going to be focusing on pre-production on our next project.

Checkout what Beastie Boy Adam Yauch's multimedia studioOscillscope has been up to. More on Oscillscope this week. Checkout Terribly Happy directed by Henrik Ruben Genz.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Mad Max 4!?!?


That's right....after nearly 25 years in development hell, director George Miller is returning to helm the 4th Mad Max film....unfortunately the real Mad Mel Gibson won't return for the sequel. In addition to the feature film, Miller is also producing a R-Rated 3d animated film to go along with Mad Max 4, similar to Animatrix. Can't wait...

Thursday, November 12, 2009

The weekend is almost here....

This looks sort of interesting....

This could be a good festival....What do you think?.
2010 Peach on Earth Film Festival Mission Statement:
"Peace on Earth Film Festival (POEFF) has been established to celebrate and encourage the work of independent films from around the world on the themes of peace, nonviolence, social justice and an eco-balanced world. POEFF is a not-for-profit film festival whose primary objective is to raise an awareness of peace, nonviolence, social justice and an eco-balanced world, as possibilities, by bringing attention to independent films from around the world. Through the power of motion pictures, POEFF endeavors to enlighten and empower individuals, families and communities to step out of the ignorance of conflict, violence and divisiveness into the light of communication, compassion and understanding." We are starting to look at festivals more closely as develop some of our creative projects. 2009 has been a good year, but 2010 is going to be awesome.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

The Kelsey Brookes video...


is our latest for Citybeat. It was a lot fun and interesting interviewing local Sd artist Kelsey Brookes. We are definitely fans of his work now and are looking forward to seeing his show later this month at the Quint Gallery.

Tonight, we are working on our video for Artepolitik.com. And we should have the video posted soon if we can finish entering subtitles in Final Cut...which is a tedious thing to do btw...

Anyway, last night I watched an interesting documentary called The Revolution Will Not be Televised. Its a documentary about the April 2002 Venezuelan coup attempt which briefly deposed Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Its a great doc and you can watch it online for free which is a good thing. In a few days, I will be posting a short version of an article I am contributing to Artepolitik.com about it.

Monday, November 09, 2009

Where the Wild Things are review


Soo..two weeks later than planned we went to see "Where the Wild Things Are" aaaand...meh, unfortunately. I wanted to love it so bad. But after 1 and a half hours of basically the same exact images and scenes over and over again I felt kind of bored. The movie is basically 2 hours of what you saw in the trailer. Awesome, looking fuzzy monsters and a cool little boy running wild in the forest, yelling at each other and throwing things. It's fun and silly, but there was really no plot. It was just the characters chasing and fighting with each other. The look of the film is spectacular-a golden glow lays over everything and the sets are a perfect mix of fun make-believe and a dark nightmare world. It is a very imaginative setting, but ultimately, the cool visuals were not enough to keep me entertained without a meaningful plot. So there it is..I'm disappointed in myself for not liking the movie, and disappointed in the movie itself for not meeting my expectations. But oh well, that's just my opinion-and I'm sure there are plenty of people who will love this movie and watch it over and over on DVD. Just not me. Ciao for now..We'll have our latest vid up tomorrow.

Sunday, November 08, 2009

The beginning of a new week...

So we were way too busy to watch a bunch of movies over the weekend but we did have a chance to see Where the Wild Things Are. We will post a proper review tomorrow, I promise. Also, be sure to checkout our latest Citybeat video and our Anthony Francoso of Geronimo interview at The Troubador in Beverly Hills for Artepolitik.com later this week. Talk to you guys tomorrow.

Saturday, November 07, 2009

The weekend!!!!

Ok, so for our movie blitz this weekend, we are finally going to checkout Where the Wild Things Are, and hopefully a bunch of other flicks...

We have been waiting till the crowds die down before seeing it and will post a proper review soon.
Besides seeing a bunch of movies this weekend, we are working on a number of projects and will have a new Citybeat video posted on Tuesday and later in the week, an interview that we produced for ArtePolitik.com. Plus we are finally going to take a day and organize our studio a bit to setup some additional workstations, setup a network, and a Green screen!!!. We are looking forward to having some additional space to create projects.

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Movie Blitz!!!!


After we complete editing our latest video, we are going to catch up on some movies this weekend...anyone have any suggestions on what we should go see??? We were thinking of checking out The Men Who Stare at Goats or Where the Wild Things Are finally...also we just saw a preview of surfer/musician Rob Machado's movie The Drifter which was featured on the news tonight....looks interesting.


Anyway, we are currently working on a corporate video project that C filmed and we are logging footage from our latest Citybeat project...new footage posted soon...

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

New Video

Here is our latest video for Citybeat.

We were lucky enough to tape Transfer while they rehearsed for an upcoming tour in support of their album Future Selves. We are definitely going to check them out when they play San Diego.

Tonight we filmed another project for Citybeat, and will have footage posted next Tuesday. Have a good night...javascript:void(0)

Monday, November 02, 2009

10:44pm and ready for bed


It's been a long night of editing and were pretty tired. We're going to wrap up our work for tonight. We'll have a Citybeat new video posted tomorrow that we're excited for everyone to see. Have a great night!

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Finally..Final Draft!


After years of dreaming, I finally broke down and bought Final Draft 8. Believe me, it was hard plunking down the $280.00 it took to buy the software, but I have to admit it was totally worth it. There are just so many perks with this program! Not too mention the sample inquiry letters! Anyways, I've been busy all weekend testing out the software and am excited to start using it to finally finish my screenplay and begin submitting to festivals and contests. I'll be sure to post my interesting experiences with this new software as they arrive. We've been busy this evening editing footage from a Citybeat story this weekend. It was pretty neat. We were able to go into the studio with local band Transfer and film them record. I'm not one to gush, but they were amazing. I can't wait till the video is complete so you guys can see how good their sound is. Anyways, I'm off to enjoy what's left of the weekend and pretend I don't have to go into work in 9 hours. Ciao!