Not sure if you saw this, but a movie I co-wrote, co-directed, starred in, etc, has been finished and is on its way to the internet in just 13 short days. That’s right! You can view Cat cat Productions’s new short film, The Brat Snack, this month, on Saturday, August 20! Don’t miss the newest trailer, able to view below:
If you’re looking for some clarification, look no further! What exactly is “The Brat Snack”? And did the voiceover guy pronounce “brat” it like “braaht”, as in short for “bratwurst”? He did indeed! But going back, what is The Brat Snack? The Brat Snack is the sixth food-pun-titled movie by Cat cat Productions (Cat cat Productions is the creative collaboration between myself and filmmaker Ralph Blanchard, and the food-pun successors are Honted Dog, Apple Die, U.PH.O., Salmonrai, and Yeehawbanero). As with the past three films, a particular genre or director’s style is tackeld. U.PH.O. was our riff on the 1960’s science-fiction film, while Salmonrai was a Kurosawa-inspired action fantasy. Yeehawbanero dealt with habanero bullets and also took some time for Leone-style drawn-out epicness. The Brat Snack jumps through time to the 80’s, and clashes together John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club, with a fair bit of sausage thrown into the mix. Instead of taking place in a normal high school, we’re at the The Sausage Arts Academy of America. And, really, why shouldn’t we be? You ever seen a film taking place at a Sausage Academy? I sure haven’t. Such is the originality you can only find at Cat cat Productions, the home of pho-powered spacecraft and talking salmon masters!
This is impossible to tell from the trailer, but I can tell you from being there through the entire process that this is our most impressive filmic feat to date. Up until now, our longest movie was 17 minutes. This runs for 15 minutes longer. This film had the longest script and was also the most complicated, edit-wise. It’s also the most expensive. A song was written exclusively for the opening of the film. Lyrics were written to online-sourced tracks, real performers on Fiverr were objected to my vocal demos. Careful consideration for the colors and look of the film was taken. Visual effects were executed and sent back and forth via WeTransfer to make shots perfect. An older computer huffed and puffed with the live rendering of the multitudinous filters. The Brat Snack had it all.
And the good news is you’ll get to see it all in under two weeks! I’ll post again when the film releases.
Thanks for reading, hang tight, and don’t forget the caraway seeds!
So, earlier this morning I was working on some writing/world-building and was doing some research on snowy mountain villages. I had remembered some shots of the Swiss Alpine village from the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, and thought I’d find out where the movie was filmed. Such googling brought me to learn that the evil-guy base in that film lies on the top of the Schilthorn, which overlooks the Lauterbrunnen valley and its collection of villages.
I had recognized this name and the image of the valley from earlier searches about the origins of Tolkien’s works. It has long been posited that Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland was the inspiration for Rivendell in Middle-Earth. He had traveled there in 1911, and wrote years later in a letter to his son Michael:
“I am… delighted that you have made the acquaintance of Switzerland, and of the very part that I once knew best and which had the deepest effect on me. The hobbit’s journey from Rivendell to the other side of the Misty Mountains, including the glissade down the slithering stones into the pine woods, is based on my adventures in 1911… Our wanderings mainly on foot in a party of 12 are not now clear in sequence, but leave many vivid pictures as clear as yesterday.”
To further drive this home, here is Tolkein’s rendition of Rivendell next to an image of Lauterbrunnen:
But just in case we needed more proof, I have some linguistics to back up this claim!
Lauterbrunnen is made up of two German words. “Laut”, which means “loud” and “brunnen”, which means “fountain”, “well”, or “spring”. So Lauterbrunnen means “loud-fountain”, “loud-well”, or “loud-spring”. I couldn’t help but notice that “brunnen” sounded an awful lot like “Bruinen”, the river that hugs right up close to Rivendell in Middle-Earth. It is in fact the fords of the River Bruinen where the Black Riders are washed away by those horse-shaped rushes of water.
As depicted here on a few paperback versions of FOTR
Going deeper, I couldn’t help but wonder what “Bruinen” meant in Tolkien’s works. Surely, it would have some sort of translation from one of his languages. After some research and reviewing the text, whattya know, “Bruinen” it means “Loudwater”. Extremely similar to the translation for “Lauterbrunnen.” What a linguistic homage!
Doing a Control+F of “Loudwater” on the text of The Fellowship of the Ring shows that it is mentioned five times in the text. Here is the clearest indication they are the same river:
“What is that other river we can see far away there?’ asked Merry.
”That is Loudwater, the Bruinen of Rivendell,” answered Strider. “The Road runs along the edge of the hills for many miles from the Bridge to the Ford of Bruinen. But I have not yet thought how we shall cross that water.”
“Nen” can be found in other water-based Middle-Earth locations, like the lakes Nen Hithoel and Sea of Núrnen? As to whether this “nen” meaning “water” came first, and it was a happy coincidence that “Brunnen” had “nen” in there already, or if that came first and Tolkien decided to use “nen” for multiple water locations, who can say? Maybe a Tolkien linguist could help me out here!
Either way, couldn’t ignore this little linguistic homage and thought I would share. Happy reading!
Here I am with another blog article! This time, I am going to wax long about two things I like, so you’ll have to deal with that. Been a while since I’ve written a blog article! I had the busiest-as-hell July, but I wanna get writing. This isn’t 2007 anymore. Nice blogs cost money now, and i’m shelling out the “hard”-earned cash for this, so I want to get my money’s worth. So I’m going to get my money’s worth by explaining why a Norwegian symphonic black metal band could and should compose music for the biggest space fantasy of all time.
So, I’ve been a primarily-listening-to-metal guy probably since about 2006. It was touch and go with punk and conscious rap there for a while, but eventually the guitars and growls won out. Maybe if there had been conscious rap about Vikings or troll sagas…who can say?! In my early years, and for much of the following, I stayed pretty close to Finnish metal, ignoring Swedish, Norwegian, and other Nordic bands. I’d heard Dimmu Borgir before, but honestly never caught onto them. I think this is mostly because I was introduced to their music through their music videos, which mostly feature them standing around, alone, in big empty spaces looking…scary? I understand metal budgets are cheap, but it doesn’t help the music to have the band members standing around like costumed amusement park haunted-house employees, fingers clenched as if holding an invisible pomegranate, grimacing into the ether.
Pure nightmare fuel!
Dimmu Borgir or Muppet?
Is he, like, laughing?
Earlier this year, my Spotify algorithm was like “please listen to something else other than these four bands and Johnny Mathis” and threw me Dimmu Borgir, and I said back “okay, fine, it has a skull on the album cover, whatever”. This time, Dimmu Borgir worked. And boy, did it work! “Gateways” was the one that got me hooked (which I always thought was a funny coincidence). In the ensuing weeks, I listened to their Abrahadbra album hella. (Don’t worry, Dimmu fans, I am slowly listening to their older, more pure black-metal stuff. Calm down).
In this immersion, I would often watch their live videos while working from home, that is, processing online orders for a bookstore (nothing reminds one of the written word more than screechy vocals and choir-laden, double-bass apocalypse!). In their career performing live, they’ve sometimes performed with a whole entire orchestra, and sometimes, the orchestra will play an orchestra-only version of their songs! I was enjoying these too, in a music-score kind of way, when it struck me. Dimmu Borgir could totally compose music for fucking Star Wars.
Now, my history with Star Wars is long and conflicted and could cover 10,000 blog articles, but the short version is: I love the old movies to death, abhor the prequels, got excited for the Disney era, loved Force Awakens, and hated everything else except Solo. I don’t watch the cartoons and Mando was like whatever. Basically, I haven’t been happy with it for a long time. In my own life head-canon, I somehow get rich enough to wrangle Star Wars from the Disney claws and can finance my own fucking Star Wars movies (or at least get license to from them). With this plan in the back of my head, I am always on the look-out for Star Wars-y music that will serve as soundtracks to these hypothetical new films (that would probably take place far after Return of the Jedi, and for the record, would be good and would not be shit).
So, all right, enough talk and set up, this isn’t a recipe! Here is why I think Dimmu Borgir could compose some fuckin’ Star Wars music.
Exhibit A: “Eradication Instincts Defined (Orchestral Version)
Doesn’t this just sound like some sweet old Star Wars music? Right off the bat, it sounds like some dark-side user and their cadre of cronies are up to no good. Can’t you just see it in your mind? Some dark lord marching along with some troopers behind them? Or perhaps, this could be the theme of a new villainous organization. I might remove the choir, since Star Wars barely had that shit, but keep the instrumentation. I just love it.
Approaching 1:50, the song’s mood changes to some urgency. High tension between the stars! For this, I can see some officers on some good-guy ship discussing some plans to deal with a nasty blow to their war strategy (or something like that). Then we get to 3:10, and something bad has happened. Oh man! Someone is tumbling to their imminent death! Or a vital ship is going down! Round back to the opening melody and you got your evildoers bein’ jerks again. Fuck yeah.
Exhibit B: The beginning of “The Serpentine Offering”
The orchestral part of this song only goes for 45 seconds, but I mean, come on. You thought there was an evil theme in the last one, well listen to this. What classic, militaristic villain music. Does it sound like “Imperial March” in the beginning? Well, yes it does, but the lead melody is different, so fuck it. Just imagine another villain coming onto the screen to this music. Delightful.
So, yes, let’s get these two together. There are other orchestra-only songs they have, but “Eradication Instincts Defined” is really the best example of their Star Wars-y-ness. What do you think? (I don’t know if I allow comments on this blog, if not, just as rhetorical, see the question!)
Wouldn’t this be cool? Come check cinemas in 25 years when this happens! If all goes according to plan, I’ll be able to independently produce Star Wars movies (Big D can keep all the money), and Dimmu would still be kicking around. Hmm..now I’m going to be thinking about these future Star Wars movies all day… Thank you for reading and may the force be with your unhallowed soul!
Casey Poma 