Musicalmidget’s Blog

For about a year now, perhaps more, I’ve been following the making of an independent film online. It generally takes a lot to get me interested in a film, especially one that isn’t finished, as was the case when I discovered this particular film. So, why is it I’ve been so interested?

If you’ve never been good at anything in your life, why would murder be any different?

Patrick has always had a somewhat combative relationship with his little sister Marilyn. But when she brings home her new sci-fi-soap star fiancé Ryan, it’s all out war. When Patrick fails to drive a wedge between the happy couple, he reaches for sharper instruments. Every family has a few skeletons in the closet; A Dog’s Breakfast is the nightmarishly funny mess Patrick makes when he tries to add another to his.

A Dog’s Breakfast is a head smacking, bone breaking, fiancé bashing romp, with a family that just loves themselves to pieces.

A Dog’s Breakfast is written and directed by David Hewlett, known by many as Dr. Rodney McKay on Stargate Atlantis. The cast of the film includes various other familiar faces from the Stargate universe, including Rachel Luttrell (Teyla Emmagan), Christopher Judge (Teal’c), Paul McGillion (Dr. Carson Beckett) and others. Throw that cast in with a comedy story written by David Hewlett and the whole thing starts to sound quite appealing.

Almost a year ago, a short clip from the film was released on YouTube by David Hewlett and partner and producer Jane Loughman. Within a matter of hours, more than 20,000 people had viewed the clip. A similar clip was released about three months later, which also proved quite popular. Finally, the official trailer went live just before Christmas.

Since the first trailer was released I’ve been eagerly awaiting the film. Today, there was finally some good news on that front.

A Dog’s Breakfast is available to download from the iTunes Movie Store and Amazon Unbox. That’s all well and good if you live in the United States, but for the rest of us elsewhere (who outnumber those in the states), we can still do nothing but wait. Thankfully though, an “international” release is due in early 2008. That’s still a long time to wait for a film, especially if you’ve been following it for the best part of a year. It is at least progress, and I look forward to finally seeing the film in all it’s glory.

Anyone that’s interested in the film can check it out on the official website:
http://dgeek.com/
http://adogsbreakfastmovie.com/

I’ve recently returned home from university after completing my second year. It’s apparently the summer break, but you wouldn’t know it from the weather. It’s rained almost constantly since I got home, and we’re not talking a little rain here, we’re talking torrential downpours that drainage systems across the region are having problems coping with. Numerous places in Doncaster are flooded, as are so many other places across Yorkshire and the north of England in general. I’m fairly sure the house I’ve just left behind in Hull is also flooded, since the news is reporting severe problems on the roads around the area. The news suggests water is knee-deep. It’s not quite that bad in Doncaster, but driving the car to the garage wasn’t fun this morning. Some roads were so waterlogged that the short 20 minute round trip took just short of an hour.

The weather has obviously had an effect on the first day of Wimbledon. A few matches have taken place, but the Henman/Moya match had to be suspended a short while ago. Probably quite frustrating for Tim Henman, since he was essentially only two points away from taking the first set. Wimbledon is really the only major sporting event I follow since I’ve never really been into any other sport. Thus, it’s typical that the tournament by disrupted in this way right from day one.

It’s really shaping up to be a typical “British Summer”. In other words, it’s basically a monsoon.

Updated 27/06/07: Doncaster is now one of the worst affected places in the UK. A large number of houses (particularly in the north of the town) have already been flooded, and it’s feared many more will flood if Ulley Dam bursts. I’ve also seen a number of videos online of Hull, which suggest that the house I’ve just left behind at uni has indeed flooded. Although I’ll not be living there anymore, had this happened a couple of weeks earlier I would probably be going through hell right now, especially since I lived on the ground floor.

Although we’re not in any immediate danger at home (very high above the river), the floods have caused major disruption across town. For that reason, it looks as though I’ll be spending the next few days indoors…still.

I’ve never been one for social networking on the internet, despite the fact it seems to be all the rage with people of my age. However, a little before Christmas, I decided to see what all the fuzz was about with Facebook. The last big networking craze seemed to be about MySpace, although I never really understood what it was about MySpace that made people like it so much. When I signed up to Facebook, I was actually quite surprised. It was something different. The “profile pages” were cleaner and the user interface was pretty nice to use. The photograph tagging system was also something I’d not seen on many other similar such sites. I’ve stuck with Facebook for a few months, but it seems that probably wont be the case for much longer.

The recent addition of “applications” to the site has in my eyes, made it more like MySpace than the fairly decent site it was before. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not bad to the extent that you click on someone’s page to have your music interrupted by some crappy rock clip blasting out that’s embedded in the page. That said, since the applications arrived, I’ve been constantly bombarded with “requests” to add the same applications as others on my friends list. I signed in this evening to find no less than 12 requests which had appeared in a matter of mere hours. Many of the requests were for applications, and they were mostly for applications which I had previously rejected numerous times. It seems it’s more a chore to deal with requests than to sign in and catch up with recent goings on. That strikes me as strange, since I thought the idea of Facebook was to make it a fun place for all.

The only social networking site I’ve ever been willing to use seriously, and it’s starting to get like the others that annoy me so much. Perhaps I’m a strange teenager 20 year old (bugger), but I don’t think I’m ever going to get on with this sort of thing.