Tamara Jenkins just sent us an email saying they finished filming the love making sequence in the movie. All four characters have the moment in the relationship where their relationship reaches a climax(literally and figuratively) well except the kids. Their "love making" is totally different but while the other characters are making love, the kids are dancing to a song and arguing over whose leading, whose stepping on whose feet, etc. It's an innocent version of their relationship reaching a moment where they can be one with each other....or at least try to be. The rest of the sequence is natural, tasteful, hell even the old people "doing it" is considered beauty.

Karate Kat special article

Karate Kat is inching closer and closer to its release and we are going to explain a few things about the Karate Kat series.

First of all, Nathan Gamble's character appears less and less in the series and the film, but he is the owner of the crime fighting cat. His mother thinks he's crazy though, but he knows the truth!

The series is actually a little edgier, not for the younger kids, but the older preteen ones and up. It still holds a few comedic moments but it still consists of action, adventure and some heavier moments not usually found in straight up kiddie shows. Josh Collins has always wanted his cartoons to be like that to appeal to a variety of audiences that won't fall asleep or assume that it's a little kid's show. Take Ninja Turtles and the Batman Animated Series for examples.

Dr. N. Sane is the main villain in the film, as already mention in the production list. Dr. N. Sane has stuck with me as a villain since I was a little kid coming up with hero and villains and making back stories and comic adventures out of them.

Nicholas Sanson worked in his father's factory doing floor-work like every other employee. His father never seemed to have high hopes for his son; not so much as even talked about him to others while his father would sing high praises about Nick's siblings. So obviously, his dad was not going to leave the factory in Nick's name when he died.

On the side, Nick went to school for engineering and was also building an authentic hand-held death-ray gun. He was never planning on using it, he just wanted to prove to his father that he was worth something. When he was done, he showed his brother, who asked to see it in action and after a little bit of persuasion, Nick gave in and shot a tree with it.

I wasn't much longer after that when Nick's father called him into his office to hear about a dangerous weapon he built. Nick was shocked that his own brother sold him out and forced disappointment from his dad even more. Nick's dad fired his own son.

Nick returned to the factory and went postal with his death ray gun, shooting any employee who happened to cross his vision while he marched to his father's office. He had snapped that day and felt that it wasn't he who tried to earn approval from his father, but he wanted to approve of his dad. When he failed time and time again, Nick blasted his dad with the ray gun.

After the massacre at the factory, he fled the scene and the state, changing his name from Nicholas Sanson to Nick Sane and started his life anew. With his mechanics and engineer background he was able to start a business of his own, recruiting people to help him build all kinds of things: weapons, machines, robots. By day he's a successful businessman, selling his household machines and robots to make peoples lives easier. But by night, he's always trying to seek the approval of his dead dad. When he feels that his dad isn't listening to him, he'll always try harder, usually resulting in people being hurt.

He's not a physically powerful villain, but what he lacks in physic he makes up for with intelligence and his heavy artillery. He considers himself a scientist and wishes to be referred to as a Doctor. The media referred to him as Dr. N. Sane after his first major news story hit. The name was used as a pun like every other news-story has a particular title or word for someone and the name stuck as his villainous moniker.

Pun intended, but we are very curious about how Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time is going to do with critical reception and box office results. I'm already predicting it to be a flop. Not that I WANT it to be a flop, I just have more of a hard time making those kinds of films work. I want to believe in it, I really do. But I also am thinking too much into a realistic future.

Fellow collaborator Matt Kubrick has shown interest in making a sequel to HellBowl. I wanted to step aside and let him write it so that I can focus attention on another film involving Hell, but really about Hell. I also tried really hard to make it follow the arch of Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey. If you are unfamiliar with the Hero's Journey, take a look:


http://www.answers.com/topic/monomyth


you can actually think about a lot of real Hollywood films following the Hero's Journey. More famously Star Wars, Harry Potter, Wizard of Oz, even many biblical stories.

My story focuses on my hero being unjustly condemned to Hell where he must survive against all odds from demonic spirits and face Satan himself.

We know CMP has been around for ALMOST 4 years. FOUR YEARS! When I came around in 2007, I had only two films released before CMP went on a hiatus that left us doubting if it would ever return. Fortunately the studio has been going strong since 2008, the only major break that happened since has been when the original mogul board went down last year. CMP's come a long way and looking at Stark's poster exhibition brought me proud feelings.

Now I don't mind making fun of myself with my films. I know I'm not perfect and have had some pretty awful ideas for films and especially titles. Here is the bottom of the barrel in terms of either ideas or titles, in the spirit of Mr. Thumbs' reviews:

1: 72 Hours: Numbers in a title usually don't work out. The plot itself was interchangeable. Dafoe managed to earn a best villain nomination, but it's not hard for him to play a villain.

2: Babes in Toyland: Just an updated version of the same story. *Yawn*

3: Civilization M: Not a great title and the plot wasn't good. Humans being the aliens have been done, most recently in the kid film 'Planet 51' The film did manage to be a blockbuster, but that doesn't make it great.

4: Lying Wish: It seems to always be the film critics use as an example of 'bad' the title and the plot.

5: Paternal Nightmare: I'm not going to say anything about the storyline because I enjoyed it and the actors involved. The only problem I had with this film really is the title could have been better.

6: Super Bowl: Another film with an interchangeable plot with the funniest jokes used in the trailer.

7: The Mistaken: I think the plot could have been a little more fleshed out.

8: A Man Called Dan: I am proud of the plot. The title makes me want some green eggs and ham though.

9: The Dead Walk: Bad title and a generally bad plot it sounded like a good idea on paper though.


Now as for the poster exhibition, I will not say which is the worst because I don't do any of the posters and know I wouldn't be able to do anything better. I have high respects for the artists who make the posters. So instead of focusing on the negatives, I would like to focus on the positives and pick which ones I like the most for my films!

1: Hollyweird: It's like looking at Mt. Hollywood-Rushmore. It's funny to me that three of the actors who appear in the poster were nominated or won an award with one of my later works and they're all standing together.(Bridges, Breslin, Johannson)(Johannson was at least nominated for Hollyweird) Cusack would go on to be nominated in a film that wasn't written by me.

2: Bird of a Feather: The artists for the poster had to have put effort into making the bird on the poster a cartoon. I like the background as well.

3: Five Thunderbolts: Sure it may be Jet Li from War pasted on a street of an Asian big city, but it's still cool to look at.

4: Fantastic Mansion: I thought it did a good job capturing the characters and the mood of the film with the big spooky mansion in the background.

5: Woodland Creatures: Funny, funny poster to a funny movie. I don't think the film would have worked better if it were animated as the big joke in the movie were the humans dressed as animals.

6: Dare to Be Perfect: It was a little simple poster but I really loved the irony of the poster as it contrasted with the film.

7: Dream of a King: I can actually imagine a poster for an MLK biopic looking like it.

8: Fireflies in the Jelly-Jar: I can appreciate the hard work it must have taken to find those pictures of the fireflies as I searched for pictures involving fireflies for the DVD cover.

That's right, if you haven't figured it out yet before the recent CMP update, Karate Kat has hit the in-production schedule. That explains all of the recent cat pictures we've been posting. Harry Stark will probably never again inform us of a movie hitting the in-production list *laughter* In Collins' Pitiful Plight interview, the question of Karate Kat was asked with a side note that revealed the film would be included in the new update.

In addition to the mass promotion of the film, there is news that a video game based on the film will be released around the same time of the film release. The rumored TV Series is still up in the air though. Networks are looking at how well the film does in the box office before they start investing in a series.

Curious Incident is coming along very nicely. We have high hopes in particular for Freddie Highmore for GMA buzz. Very rarely do male young actors get Oscar/GMA buzz. The always impressive Danny Boyle is making great strides to keep to the spirit of the book.

We are glad Pitiful Plight has reached the release. We have a feeling the box office may not respond the greatest. With two big entertaining action shows, it will be a more quieter film. We hope the demographic of adults and seniors(particularly women) won't have a difficult time going to see this one though.

This film had also been pitched at the old HM board when there was a character limit so many of the stories they ladies tell didn't end up there. Once bit of irony not mentioned in the final pitch is when Tom doesn't want a male nurse for fear that he would be "funny" Kathy Bates' character is actually a lesbian(the real live-in nurse was also a lesbian) we didn't really feel it was necessary to emphasize that since it's now 2010. It's not that shocking to be around gays anymore. But we'll go ahead and point that out since it was a little ironic that Tom didn't want a gay guy and ends up being cared for by a gay woman.
Also, in real life and in the movie, Tom keeps thinking the live-in nurse has the hots for Michelle's(Judy Davis) boyfriend. Ironic indeed. Once when Kathleen was over at the house and Michelle was in another room, Tom(in his last couple years of life) asked Kathleen 'whose that fat woman in the other room?' and she looked at him and is like, 'that's michelle.'

Another story that gets talked about is when Tom had Kathleen's family over for dinner(for a while, it was a weekly thing) if they were a minute late, he would start calling. One particular evening he got upset that nobody was going to eat anymore of his stew(after having enough to eat) he yelled, "You god damned ungrateful bastards. I'm going to take this food and throw it in the yard!"

You couldn't take him out to dinner anywhere cuz one time we took him out to dinner on Trish's birthday and he kept saying he wanted the dinner that came with the salad and though we kept telling him he'll get his salad, he wouldn't listen. He kept calling the owner of the restaurant 'Water Boy'

Once again, ironic that he calls some people ungrateful when he had some pretty ungrateful moments himself. When Trish(Helena Bonham Carter) thought it would be nice to get him some newer furniture, he gave a chair a sit and said he didn't like it because his 'bottom was lower than his knees when he sat down' and went on about blood flow and how he'd fall if he stood up and it was just upsetting. That old man can get on your nerves but on other days he would be alright.

The stories don't get "told" though, that's a no-no in film making. So the stories actually get shown with extra actors playing the parts of the random family members, including young actors playing me.


Alan Arkin was absolutely brilliant in this movie. I really hope GMA buzz goes well for him!!