STUDENT TEACHER

Hello there, please find below the promo for RTE Storyland's "Student Teacher".

We filmed the first episode at the beginning of December in my old secondary school. The show stars Conor O'Toole as the titular Student Teacher, with support from Carol Toibin, Neil Molloy, Doireann O'Brien, Justin Brody, Kevin McGahern, Edwin Sammon, Rachel Roche and Kieran Lawless. Music is by the wonderful Brian Kelly. Crewed by lots of lovely people. The show is produced by Damon Blake and Rory Walsh. I'm the writer and director until its discovered that I'm unqualified to be either. Massive thanks to the Presentation College Athenry, the Raheen Woods, Thompsons B&B and the people of Athenry.

The show is going "live" on the 13th of February, at which point you can vote for your favourite web series. We're going to be putting up lots of great teaser content in the run up to the launch, as well as doing gigs all over the place. We may very well be coming to a university near you, provided you live in Ireland.

All "Student Teacher" activity can be found at www.facebook.com/studentteachershow




Special thanks to Harris Wittels from Don't Stop Or We'll Die for allowing us to use his band's music in our trailer.

Gangbusters sketches for Humourisms

Here are some sketches myself and Kev shot for Humourisms. The first concerns a self proclaimed MInister For Ghosts and was shot without permission in a graveyard. The second is a very childish Apprentice sketch featuring comedian Barry Mack with Student Teacher producer/ comedian Damon Blake.

MINISTER FOR GHOSTS



THE APPRENTICE



Special thanks to Padraig Conaty and Tom Walsh

Humourism articles 2011

In September I was invited to join the team at the comedy website Humourisms.com. I agreed so long as they didn't immediately get rid of me. We all had a good laugh at that one. The following day when I showed up late and drunk and crying CONSTANTLY, it was already too late. I wasn't going anywhere, regardless of how much they repeatedly asked me.
I've included all links in HTML on account of how gorgeous it looks and not because I'm still having trouble using the links.

A wikipedia page for Dana, a former Eurovision winner and current right wing religious nut, who unsuccessfully ran for President earlier this year.

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Irish Presidential candidates and their bewildering publicity photos:

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An extract from Maeve Binchy's new romance, which has been heavily influenced by Saw.

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Potential Oscar Hosts, 1992. Before they went with Letterman, the job was OJ Simpson's and Basic Instinct screenwriter Joe Eszterhas' to lose.

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Massive thanks to everyone at Humourisms HQ - Damon Blake, Kevin Lockard, Davey Reilly, Jon Hozier-Byrne, Conor O'Toole and George Fox.

THE LONDON RIOTS: A HERO'S STORY by Giles Brody

August 4, 2011 - Police investigating gun crime shoot 29-year-old Mark Duggan.

15 miles away in South Woodford our hero and his flatmate Dave are availing of the Indian restaurant across the road’s 3 courses for £10 menu. Both order tap water. Our hero will complain bitterly about a mutual friend who borrowed his favourite jumper.

August 6 (16.00 GMT) - Duggan's friends and family gather outside Tottenham police station for a peaceful protest.

Our hero gets a text from an old school friend, Eoin, who is in the city for one night. Our hero really should finish some work but is informed he cannot as it is Eoin's birthday eve.

August 6 (21.45) - riot police at the scene come under attack from people throwing bottles and missiles. A red London double-decker bus is set alight, there are reports of shops being looted.

6 miles away our hero meets Eoin who insists on drinking in a park.

August 7 (17.00) - the violence spreads to Enfield, a neighbourhood in northeast London. Shops windows are smashed and a police car is damaged.

After receiving news that his flatmates family are coming over to help clean the flat, our quick thinking hero decides to take Eoin up on his invitation to travel to Cambridge to continue the birthday celebrations.

August 8 (01.00) - Police say they are dealing with "copycat criminality" across London.

Our hero gets drunk with lots of lovely programmers in Cambridge, briefly considers becoming a programmer.

August 8 (05.30) - more than 100 people have been arrested overnight and nine police have been injured.

Our hero, Eoin and a German programmer named Christian arrive back at school friend’s house. The school friend and Christian play FIFA while our hero falls asleep on the couch complaining about the fate that has befallen his favourite jumper.

August 8 (16.00) - clashes are reported in Hackney, northeast London.

Christian and our hero head back to London. Christian mentions that he heard something about some riots in London. Our hero shows his empathy and astonishment by saying "Jaysus..." a lot.


August 8 (20.00) - TV news channels show aerial footage of large fires in Croydon.

Our hero returns to an immaculate flat. Dave and his girlfriend Opel arrive home. They talk about the riots. Our hero makes out that he's well up to speed on the topic. After talking to them he goes on twitter, searches for #londonriots. Jaysus.

August 8 (21:30) - The violence is reported to have spread to Clapham, an upmarket area in southwest London. Rioting follows in Ealing in the west and Woolwich in the east.

"Sure that’s miles away, we're grand out here in the sticks" - Our Hero.

August 9 (00:30)

Looters hit South Woodford removing an ATM and robbing a jewellers.

Our hero, recognising that the street is one minute away from his own, searches for something to cave a punk's head in should the situation arise calling for such a measure. In his panic he fashions a machete-truncheon out of a whisk, wooden spoon, carving knife and sellotape. The machete-truncheon will never be called to service.

August 9 (01:00)
There have been no new developments in South Woodford.

Our hero turns off the lights and starts walking between the two rooms facing onto the street, peering behind the curtains for signs of marauding youngsters with looted shoeboxes under one arm and grenade launcher under the other. Our hero writes a note about recent thug activity and leaves it outside Dave's door. It is written in such panicked cowardly hyperbole that the phrase "Good luck. We're going to need it" stood out as being particularly subtle. Our hero falls into a heroic sleep while clutching onto his laptop and machete-truncheon.

August 9 (11:00)
Cameron addresses the media, says he will recall parliament and put 16,000 police on the streets of the capital on Wednesday, almost three times the number out on Tuesday night.

Our hero, now with an opinion on the atrocities besieging his current city of residence, hypocritically yells "Where were you?" at Cameron before going onto twitter to double check that everyone else thinks he's a bastard before yelling more righteous vitriol at the prime minister.

August 9 (14:00) - Cameron visits Croydon to see the damage from the previous night's violence.

Our hero leaves South Woodford for his uncle's house. Shop owners and elderly members of the community stand out before the store fronts giving our hero, the only person on the street under the age of 50, the stink eye as he passes by. Such is his fleeting feeling of disenfranchisement our hero briefly considers looting them.

August 9 (15:00) 16000 police are deployed on the capital

At Holland Park our hero notices that a rug shop and a hair salon have had some of their windows broken. Our hero checks for news of rioting in the vicinity, opens pages just for tweets about Holland Park and Notting Hill. Although there is a lot of terrifying speculation and misinformation this exercise only proves that the film "Notting Hill" is watched somewhere on earth every fifteen minutes.

August 10 - August 15th Police reports that despite some disturbances there are no major incidents in the city.
- Hide quoted text -

Our hero takes this to mean that the rioters are merely biding their time. He rings up his friend to check on the jumper and breathes an over the top sigh of relief upon discovering that its fine. Feels a wee bit more relaxed. Realises he's allowed himself to become overtaken with fear, is going to go out and help with the clean out. While buying a brush our hero sees two youths, decides they are going to kill him, leaves the shop without the brush, invites himself to stay with his friend on the south coast.

August 15th (15:00) Attempted armed robbery in Holland Park

Our hero sees this tweet on the day he's planned on returning to the capital and changes his mind. He will find out later that the Holland Park mentioned in the tweet is in Australia.



This appears in the latest version of the zine "Flip Sake", special thanks to Heather Mills and Barry Richardson

MAINSTREAM COMEDY REVIEWS

Opening paragraph about how unpromising the film looks, set up for disparaging pun in the final paragraph:

"So it looks like well known blonde bombshell and well renowned shit-for-brains Cameron Diaz is playing a teacher. Is this sci-fi or comedy? And its written by the CUNTS who wrote Year One. It was with trepidation that I went into the cinema to see it for free. Would it be an A or would it have to stay late after school for, I dunno, joke classes or some shit?"

Second paragraph: brief details of the story which is consumed by details about the actor, the actor's personal life and a token credit from a film the actor would rather forget about so as to hammer home the point that they're shit.

"Diaz plays a bad teacher but really, the only thing she could teach me is how to sleep because I'm bored. In real life, Diaz goes out with fellas. One of the fellas she went out with was Justin Timberlake who is in this film as a teacher also. The last time this prick did comedy it was in The Love Guru which was bad."

Third paragraph: bemoaning the story's direction, hypothetical unasked for corrections which contain spoilers for the film as it exists now:

"The film follows Cameron Diaz's struggle to save up money for a boob job to impress Justin Timberlake. This is stupid. Were I the film's author, I would have made him the main person who needed a penis enbiggener. Jason Segal plays the goofy PE teacher she ends up with in the films final minute (SPOILER!)"

Forth paragraph: bullshit about wanting to like the film so as not to look like a troll but its all bullshit because ...

"I wanted to like this film but went in with a bad attitude. Added to that, everything I wanted to happen did not and as such I was disappointed."

Final paragraph: .... you complete the bitchy shitty joke set up in the first paragraph that jumped into your head the day the film was announced. Usually a pun on the title, the lead's profession, the director's previous films or something that only makes sense to you.

"All in all, Bad Teacher needs to stay late for Joke Class! Bad Teacher + Cameron Diaz = Bad Film."

Captain America: The Low Budget Years

from The Independent, August 1st:


The new Captain America film is a hit but, says Giles Brody, the super soldier's last outing provides a cautionary tale

Captain America is unbeatable. Last weekend the chemically enhanced super soldier knocked Harry Potter off the top spot at the US box office and, judging by its opening weekend in the UK, his new film is set to be the blockbuster of the summer.

His studio, Marvel, has recouped most of its £85m budget and the film's lead, Chris Evans, can finally forget his other Marvel franchise (the woeful Fantastic Four in 2005). But there was a time when the "Cap" wasn't beating all comers in the cinema. There was a time when he couldn't even get into the cinema.

Back then, Captain America's biggest foes were not Nazis or evil scientists, but shaky film financiers. In 1990, 21st Century Film made a Captain America film starring JD Salinger's son, Matt. The project came about when the producer Manahem Golan was given the rights to Captain America as part of his severance from Cannon Films, a company he had run with his cousin, Yoram Globus. Together they earned the nickname "the Go-Go Boys", for their fast and cheap film-making.

Then Golan couldn't afford a rights payment, which meant that unless he did something with the property, the title would revert to Marvel. The director Albert Pyun had read Stephen Tolkin's Captain America script. A lifelong fan, he convinced Golan that he could make the film on a relatively small budget of $6m and assured him that it would be made before the looming expiry date.

Many actors were considered for the hero, including Val Kilmer, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the American footballer Howie Long. The role eventually went to Salinger, who initially turned it down over funding concerns, on the advice of his lawyer. Joining him were Deliverance alumni Ronny Cox and Ned Beatty, with Scott Paulin playing Red Skull, the villain with a dastardly plan to control the president's brain.

Everything was falling into place, but for one thing. "They just ran out of money," Salinger said, in a recent GQ interview. "It was a lot of well-intentioned people that loved the story and loved the character and wanted to make a good film and just weren't able to."

Pyun told Las Vegas Weekly: "It was a miracle the production didn't shut down or fall apart. There was a day when we ran out of film and couldn't buy any more."

Golan sent his producer, Tom Karnowski to different countries with a suitcase, to pick up cash. On the days when they did have film, there was a niggling feeling that what they were making looked a bit too daft, even by superhero standards. Pyun's plan of casting two Steves – a pre-serum weakling and a post-serum man mountain – was nixed by Marvel. The latex and foam jumpsuit used was so constricting that Salinger lost a stone from overheating, making the sickly Steve bulkier then his chemically enhanced alter ego. The Captain's mask resembled a stretched swimming hat with a fridge magnet "A" on the front and rubber ears glued to the sides. Salinger wore it with all the enthusiasm of someone tricked into going to a black-tie event in fancy dress.

Indeed, there is nothing particularly super about this Captain. He spends most of his time retreating. He feigns car sickness twice, to rob cars. Even the elderly president he is sent to rescue proves more adept at beating up the bad guys.

The film was shot entirely in Yugoslavia – set-pieces in Alaska and California were abandoned. Action sequences were cut or deleted. Money was scrambled together for reshoots but they were not enough to help what Entertainment Weekly called its "shapeless blob of a plot".

The film convinced Salinger that he would be better off behind the camera, as a producer. He offered to perform a cameo in the new film but was defeated by scheduling. Today, the old Captain is philosophical about his time as a superhero. "Maybe future superhero movies were a little bit better because of the mistakes that were made".

To see how far the Captain has come, Albert Pyun's 124-minute Director's Cut of 'Captain America' is available from his www.pyun.com; 'Captain America: The First Avenger' is in cinemas nationwide"


Special thanks to Alice, John and Dave H.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/the-cap-wasnt-always-so-marvellous-2329534.html

"Smell-o-vision" article for The Independent, 11th July

It featured in Time magazine's poll of 100 Worst Ideas of the Century, where it trumped, among others, mohawk haircuts and swine flu.

And now, like mohawk haircuts and swine flu, "Smell-O-Vision" is attempting a comeback. American filmmaker Robert Rodriguez announced that Spy Kids: All the Time in the World 4D will be released in "aromascope". The director told The Philadelphia Inquirer: "We brought 3D back the first time. We had to come up with a 4D, and the obvious choice was smell." He won't divulge what smells to expect ahead of the movie's 19 August release date, but does warn of a mischievous "smell prankster".

"Aromascope" is an improvement on the scratch and sniff "Odorama" cards from the likes of John Waters's 1981 comedy Polyester. To release the odours, audiences can "swipe" their finger (like an iPhone) over the panels. The film has Ricky Gervais giving a short tutorial before the film as robodog "Argonaut". It also has has the potential to be the rarest entry in the malodorous history of smelluloid – a box-office hit.

Samuel Roxy Rothafel was the first recorded pioneer of smell-cinema when he placed cotton wool soaked in rose oil in front of an electric fan during newsreel footage in 1906. 1960 was the next significant year for the aromatic cinematic industry when, in a clash Variety dubbed "the battle of the smellies", two producers competed to release the first fragranced film.

The producer Mike Todd Jr teamed up with Swiss inventor Hans Laube for 1960's Scent of Mystery, starring Peter Lorre. Laube's "Smell-O-Vision", first unveiled at the 1939 World Fair, emitted odours prompted by the movie's soundtrack. His costly and complicated system delivered scents via tubes leading to the audience's seats. Rival producer Walter Reade Jr's "AromaRama" was considerably less sophisticated, simply blasting smells through the cinema's air conditioning vents. Reade Jr's travelogue documentary Behind the Great Wall was the first into the cinema, treating audiences to 72 different smells from the orient. The film critic Bosley Crowther wrote: "The artistic benefit of it is here demonstrated to be nil."

Released weeks later, Scent of Mystery's advertisements heralded Laube's invention as a cinematic milestone, "First They Moved (1895)! Then They Talked (1927)! Now They Smell!" Todd Jr hyped the film through his newspaper connections and his own groan-inducing puns ("I hope it's the kind of picture they call a scentsation!"). Critics and audiences were unanimous in their appraisal of the film: it stunk. The smells were either too strong or too faint, the audience's sniffing too distracting, the whirring and hissing of Laube's brainchild too intrusive. Critics dismissed the whole thing as an unpleasant gimmick.

But it doesn't end there. In 2006, Japanese company NTT piped odours into cinemas for Terrence Malick's The New World. Their machine allows customers to "download" different scents. A recent press release from the University of California and SAIT in Japan proclaims they've developed a smell-o-vision device, which could add another aspect of realism to your TV viewing. The compact device produces around 10,000 scents.

Should smell-o-vision take off, expect a seismic shift in top 10 film lists. Trainspotting's popularity as a modern classic will go down the toilet, as will anything not set in a bakery. Chocolat will hurtle to the top of IMDB's top 250. Perhaps climate control will be the next innovation, with the cinema temperature corresponding to the film? Sweat your way through the hottest day of the year in Spike Lee's scorching Do the Right Thing! Watch Doctor Zhivago through a haze of your own frozen breath! Enjoy Andy's triumphant rain-drenched prison escape in The Shawshank Redemption while being soaked by the cinema's sprinkler system.

As with 3D and CGI, the reaction will depend largely on the entertainment it's enhancing. Perhaps a smell-o-vision version of 2006's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer could convince audiences of its value? For now, Rodriguez is leading the way in "new" old gimmicks.



Big thanks to David, Charlotte and John

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/have-you-smelled-any-good-films-lately-2311575.html