Ballistica Trailer.

I just found this a couple days ago. It's the trailer for that movie I wrote back in 2008.



No idea when it'll be available, but as you can see, not soon enough!

KRAKEN is the new Vampire.

How could I NOT post this?



And her book sounds pretty cool.

Halloween Cupcakes '08!

For the first time on Get Kraken...it's Sean's HALLOWEEN CUPCAKE HUNT!

From cupcakes_2008

Every year, MF and I spend Halloween driving around LA, hording spooky cupcakes. Then we go back to our place, try them all, and pick a winner for the year. (I wait until the following year to post the results because I'm always in a frosting coma immediately following, and quite frankly, who wants to read anything about Halloween after October 31st?)

If you're at all interested in seeing the cupcakes from previous years, you can find them on my old MySpace Blog: 2007, 2006
(My apologies to the two people who still check myspace, but I won't be blogging there anymore now that I Got Kraken!)

The one requirement for this important competition is that the cupcakes need to be Halloween themed. In 2007, MF and I went to a couple places that had perfectly good cupcakes, but without spiders or zombies, they just couldn't be allowed to compete. One of those bakeries was the amazing Vanilla Bake Shop, and I mused about how awesome it would be to be throw them head-to-head with previous Champion, Sweet Lady Jane's, to find out once and for all who had the best cupcake.

I'm happy to say, that very showdown DID in fact occur in 2008! Here's the story:

We visited a record number of bakeries:

VANILLA BEAN

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YUMMY CUPCAKES

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SPRINKLES

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HOTCAKES

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THE FARM

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SWEET LADY JANE'S (2006 Champion)

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and THEE'S BAKERY (2007 Champion)

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Ultimately, we piled-up quite an array of contenders!

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I tested each one...

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Using Ice Tea as a pallet cleanser between tastes.

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It was a tough competition, with all kinds of surprises, not the least of which being that Sprinkles actually held it's own.

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I keep hearing that this high-brow Beverly Hills Cupcakery is over-hyped, expensive, and not much to text home about, but on Halloween day, they actually turned in a good cupcake.

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However, (as expected,) it ultimately came down to 2 cupcakes...Vanilla Bakeshop, and Sweet Lady Jane's.

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This actually took several tries to figure out which was the best, but in the end, I had to rule in favor of Sweet Lady Jane's.

Not only was the presentation above and beyond Vanilla Bakeshop, the frosting is literally UNLIKE anything I've ever tasted. 2008's winner: SWEET LADY JANE's!

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As a final note, I did have to give special mention to The Farm.

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This little cupcake was REALLY clever! If it wasn't for the fact that fondant tastes NASTY, this guy might have won on looks alone!

This year, MF and I have planned a route that will bypass some of last year's stops, and rotate in a few new contenders. Will anyone have the chops to stop Sweet Lady Jane's from another win?

As my friend Joe Black would say, "It's Cake Time in Spooky Town!"

From cupcakes_2008

As an added bonus, here are a few extra shots from our day of cupcake hunting...

Some of THEE's more exiting looking pumpkins...

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A cool leaf that was on my windshield when we got back from Sprinkles...

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And Asian children trick-or-treating through the Grove at noon.

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What?

The MIDNIGHT MEN is Up!!!

The MIDNIGHT MEN is a comic book that Bill and I have been working on for a couple years now, and the website has just gone live!

themidnightmen.net

The first issue (and likely the only issue for awhile,) is there in web-comic form for you to enjoy at your leisure. You will also be able to order a printed version of the book once we get it uploaded to Ka-Boom.

The story takes place in 1941, just before America gets involved in World War II. It centers around a group of super heroes who are drafted by President Roosevelt to destroy a Nazi super-weapon. Roosevelt has been warned about the weapon by a time traveler from the future...a man who claims that the Nazis will win the war and conquer the world. In the first issue, our gang of heroes attempt to thwart an assassination foretold by the time traveler, thus making their first change to the timeline.

The main story is also backed up by a bunch of extras, including some stunning 2-page character bios by a group of very talented artists. So give it a look, and let me know what ya think!

New TRON Reboot!

New TRON reboot from my buddy, Ben Hansford!

These videos are AWESOME, and SOOOO much work goes into them to make 'em look so good. I'm not sure Ben actually sleeps.

COMIC CON Film School '09 is IN THE CAN.

Another Comic Con Film school has wrapped! This was year 6, and it was fabulous to meet and talk to a hole new group of future film makers. I'm always impressed by the questions we get asked, and the enthusiasm everyone has toward this art. I can't wait to see what people shoot!

Thanks for comin' by, and thanks to my panelists for making it another great four days!

SALAMANDER

Salamander from Sean Rourke on Vimeo.

I recently joined Vimeo, and uploaded Salamander as a test to see what they're like.

These guys have a very cool approach to their community. It's strictly for original content, so you don't have tons and tons of anime, fan-mashed to the same Evanescence song. I also dig the fact that you don't have to limit your total run time to 10 minutes, (which is why I've never posted Salamander on Youtube.) And the playback looks pretty good.

But, since it's here now, I should probably say a few words about this video. (Although if you worked on it, you've already lived this next paragraph.) :)

Salamander is a podcast I wrote a while back, while going through an esoteric phase. It's a little LA crime story between two girls. One of them, DICE, is a criminal, who's been caught by the FBI. The mob doesn't want her to flip on them, so they try to have her killed. The other girl, CREEP, is someone from Dice's childhood...someone she couldn't stand as a kid, but is now the only person who can keep her safe.

Ultimately, it was written as a 22 episode podcast, (that wound up as a very confusing read,) but shortly after I finished the first draft, XBOX announced a competition. They were calling for pilots. The pilot had to be 15 minutes or less in length, and if selected, you'd get a 6 episode commitment on XBOX Live. So, being the crazy person I am, I somehow got a lot of great people together for a marathon 7 week schedule...shooting over two weekends, and doing post and VFX for another 4. I managed to get the DVDs into the mail mere moments before the cut-off, and then two months later, Xbox chose a show called "Bouche Dags."

But, what we wound up with was this little pilot, which shows off a huge amount of very fast, very good work by a lot of my friends!

DICE - Anna Perilo
CREEP - Susan Smythe
CARMEN - Katherine Steel
AGENT BECKER - David Bryant
AGENT COOPER - Christopher Stack
AGENT DADE - Mary Druzba
CRAIG - Brian Stevenson
BLAKE ALEXANDER - Jack Conway
GHOST - Aaron Perilo

PRODUCER - Bill Murphy
DIRECTORS OF PHOTOGRAPHY - Kyle DeVriendt and Ric Serena
LINE PRODUCERS - Terron Pratt and Jen Serena
VFX SUPERVISOR and Eye VFX - Craig Sylvester
VFX BLOOD HITS - Hero VFX & David Bryant
GHOST VFX - Brent Prevatt
AUDIO MIX - Drew Anderson

Oh damn...I think this one may be even funnier than the first. Again, this was made by my friend, Ben Hansford, starring Dan Thron, and made with the help of several folks from my Writer's Group. Have a look.

TRON!

This Tron Fan Film was made by my buddy Ben, and just hit the web. Check it out!

NINJA JUSTICE

Been awhile since I'd watched this, and thought I might post it.

This was a short that we made a couple years ago to enter in a Ninja Film Competition. (That's right.) The rules were that it couldn't be longer than 3 minutes, and it had to have a Ninja in it. We were like, "Well why WOULDN'T we do it?"

The only problem was that we found out about the contest 2 weeks before the deadline. DOH! So what you see here is two weeks worth of hard work by some really fantastic people. I'll list them with links to their IMDB pages. (Everybody needs a Star Meter boost once in awhile!)

STARRING
Ninja - Susan Smythe
Mr. Caine - Ethan Keogh
Mr. Troy - Kevin Sage
Insurance - Danny Albano

STUNTS
Jonathan Eusabio - Fight Coreographer
Hiro Koda - Stunt Coordinator

CREW
Produced by - Bill Murphy
Director of Photography - Kyle DeVriendt
Camera Operator - Matt Krupke
Stills Photographer - Bridgitte Krupke
Written by - Your Get Kraken Blogger
Directed by - Tim Cunningham and Myself

And here's the website.

College of Santa Fe - R.I.P.

From CSF - R.I.P.

It's all over.

The College of Santa Fe, the place in the desert where I went to school, made friends, found love, and learned to make movies, ceases as an institution as of today. What was a wonderful place to go to school...and for me, the perfect place...is now having it's final day of classes.

I'll never be able to explain what I found at the corner of Cerrillos Blvd. and St. Michael's Dr. When the buildings are gone, the Prairie Dogs have been relocated, and the paths I used to walk are bulldozed, the only things I'll have left to remember those four years are the friends who I still party with to this very day, and the touch of my wife's hand as she holds mine.

Thanks for everything, CSF.

God speed.

From CSF - R.I.P.

1 Hour of Sleep and a WHOLE LOTTA Bullets...

So, for those of you who don't know, I wrote my second paid screenplay last year. As it happens, the movie has actually been shooting, and they wrap this week. Whoda thought?

It's a CIA spy thriller / action film titled "Ballistica," and I actually got a chance to go be on set for a night of filming. It was Saturday night, and instead of just a casual visit, it turns out that they needed me for an on-set re-write of the ending. I got off the phone with the Director at 4pm, after finding out that my call time was 6:30pm, and we would be shooting throughout the night.

I had gotten up at 8am that morning to workout.

Awesome.

Regardless, I spent 14 hours watching them shoot a movie that I wrote (mostly,) all the while doing fixes on the fly for the Director and the actors. (So if you're keeping track, that means that I left at 8am the following morning...I seem to only update this Blog after all-nighters.)


This was where I was set-up...sandwiched behind the monitor cart.

It was a blast. Tony, the Producer, had told me a week prior that they had secured two actors for the movie whose attachment would help sell the film. He mentioned their names, which I promptly forgot, and when arriving on set, found out that they were Robert Davi (Special Agent Johnson from DIE HARD,) and Marty Kove, (The Evil Sensei of the Cobra Kai in THE KARATE KID!)

Yeah...Special Agent Johnson and Mr. Cobra Kai together on screen! That is GEEKTASTIC.

Now, obviously, I thought both of these guys would be absolute hard-ass mothafuckas. In fact, I was a little hesitant to talk to Marty Kove at all because he had his students beat-up Ralph Machio. Imagine my surprise when he and Robert both turned out to be REALLY nice guys. Robert heard my name once when I was introduced to him, and remembered it all night long. That's a hell of a lot better than I could do.


Marty Kove, Tony Kandah (the Producer,) Robert Davi, and Gary Jones (Director/ridiculously nice guy.)


Robert Davi in his Trailer, telling a story about how he met Sinatra.


Gary at Video Village.

So after a long night of shooting, I basically came to two realizations...

1. SCREENWRITER is the BEST position to have on set. The only thing you have to lift is your laptop, and they let you sit up front at video village. Oh yeah...and you get to interact with the Director and the Actors over the story. (At one point I was discussing the differences between the CIA and the NSA to Special Agent Johnson, and almost sucked myself into a Black Hole.)

2. I had forgotten how much movie crews are like Flash-Families. You're with these people who you don't know for no more than a couple weeks. But during that time, you sweat and laugh and bond with them as though you were all related, and then when its over, you never see them again. I showed up at that set knowing four people, but by the end of the night, I was part of the family, like I'd been there the whole time.


Me and my long-time friend, Vera.


This was lunch at 1am. VERY tasty.


The sun coming up at 6:30.


Gary, me and Robert. (I'm not that guy who asks to get my picture taken with celebrities. Robert was about to walk away, saw me and said, "Hey! We didn't get a picture together yet!" So that was cool.)

But for as surreal as the night was, my biggest geek-out moment was when I got there. The props master had brought a friend with him who I immediately recognized, because he recently played DRACULA in low-budget Vampire film that I LOVED.



His name is Tom Downey, and his character in Dracula's Curse is named "Rufus King." Of course now I've totally spoiled it for ya, because you don't find out that he's Dracula till the end of the film. So try and forget that in case you watch it. (Although I've never met anyone else who's ever seen it, so you're probably not in any real danger.)

Turns out that he's also a really easy goin' funny guy, and since I've learned not to TOTALLY geek out on people, I think I came across as fairly normal. As a result, we had an un-awkward fun time that night...even though being the Vampire Lover I am, couldn't stop thinking "THAT'S RUFUS KING!"

So as I was leaving, I did brake my rule and asked him for a picture. As we were posing for my iphone, I turned to Tom and said, "Give me your best Rufus King."


MF says I look really gay in this picture.

And she's right.



But I love him.

Does everybody have to do a STAR WARS post?!

Well...I guess so.

I was cryin', this was so funny.


Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.

VAMPIRE Redux!

Outstanding! I told Marcie that I posted her Waking Vamp pic, and she immediately said, "Oh, that needs to be updated."

So here, a mere 24 hours later...is the newly revised "Waking Vamp '09!"



(God Rays make everything cooler.)

VAMPIRES in 2009!

It's my FIST Post for 2009!

From Get KRAKEN

And I figured we should have some Vampires up in here to get the Year started off right! This is something that Marcie sent me a little while back. She did a whole LOT of Vampire illustrations for me once upon a time for a project that never got finished. Maybe one of these days I'll put some of those fantastic images up here, but for now, WAKING VAMP!



You can see Marcie's other work here: MARCIE KLINGER