Yep.

The Rialto Channel have kindly agreed to show To’ona’i.

I’m chuffed.

Happy new year.

A nice mix of mainstream, European and indy this year.

  Asterios Polyp – David Mazzuchelli
  Britten & Brulightly – Hannah Berry
  Chance in Hell – Gilbert Hernandez
  Doing Time – Hanawa Kazuichi
  Fun Home – Alison Bechdel
  Hellcity: The Whole Damned Thing – Macon Blair and Joe Flood
  The Lagoon – Lilli Carre
  Maybe Later – Dupuy & Berberian
  Powers: Z – Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming
  Shaolin Burning – Ant Sang
  The Third Musketeer – Jason
  Walking Dead: No Way Out – Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

Scripts

Hm. According to my reading diary, I read the average annual amount of these this year but very few have wowed me like I want to be wowed.

  Billy Elliott – Lee Hall
  The Good Wife: Pilot – Robert King and Michelle King
  Lone Star – John Sayles
  Manhunter – Michael Mann
  The Straight Story – John Roach and Mary Sweeney

Maybe it’s just me.

Books

Some ah, research led me to more non-fiction reading that I would previously readily admit.

  Armageddon – Max Hastings
  Nemesis – Max Hastings
  Striptease – Carl Hiaasen
  True Grit – Charles Portis

I’m tempted to try the Demi Moore vehicle that started out once upon a time as a film adaptation of Striptease but… ‘m afraid I mayn’t survive it.

Features

  13 Assassins
  Animal Kingdom
  Another Year
  Born into Brothels
  Buck
  Chugyeogja
  Contagion
  Frozen River
  Get Low
  Leaves of Grass
  Please Give
  El secreto de sus ojos
  The Social Network
  The Women on the Sixth Floor

Television

  30 Rock: Season 1
  Go Girls: Season 2
  Breaking Bad: Season 4
  Downton Abbey: Season 1-2
  The Good Wife: Season 3
  Justified: Season 2
  Monroe: Season 1

There were some shows that were real… curate’s eggs that I wanted to try and be objective about but then I remembered that Sunday School chestnut about pointing fingers and the other three pointing right back at you. (Yeah, I chickened out.)

The latest Mission: Impossible instalment is around the corner and I’m kinda interested, kinda excited, though not because I’m a fan of either the franchise or Tom Cruise hisself – it’s for the directors who’ve gamely signed on (and the first one doesn’t count because Nobody knew)*:

  –  M:I-2 by a post-Killer, pre-Paycheck John Woo;

  –  M:I:III by the insanely prolific J J Abrams;

  –  and now Ghost Protocol from Iron Giant and Incredibles maestro Brad Bird.

… Yeah, I’m in.

Although somehow, somewhen along the way, whenever I think of the M:I franchise, I always flash on this:

* Disclosure: I’ll watch anything by Brian De Palma. Anything.

There’s more where that came from.

“I asked [Ayrton Senna] about dreaming,” Cronenberg said. The Brazilian replied that he “dreamed the racetrack. It’s almost like I am practising the racetrack in my dreams.” Asked the same question, [Keke] Rosberg replied abruptly: “No. Why would I dream about the racetrack? I spend too much time of my waking life on the racetracks.”

– From an interview with David Cronenberg where he talks about a failed attempt to make a Formula 1 feature.

This year, he accompanied me to the New Zealand Film Festival screening of Takashi Miike‘s 13 Assassins:

Oh.

So why’d I watch an eight-figure budgeted action comedy when I had the works of Tony Gilroy, Sidney Lumet, Paul Thomas Anderson and the Coen brothers to choose from?

1.  It’s an eight- to ten-inch screen. It’s bad enough to watch movies on the laptop but to watch VHS-like-quality images on such a small screen is irresponsible because I’m sure a movie-magic fairy drops dead each time a film is watched on a screen that’s less than twelve-inches across.

2.  I’d started watching a couple of other films on the movie menu but all the swearing (even ass – ass!) was muted. I was scratching and scratching and scratching my head until I realised that flying Emirates might have something to do with the level of censorship.

So.

Ninety – ohmigosh! 120! – minutes later, here is what meagre enjoyment I dredged from the action comedy that played on the tiny screen in front of me:

1.  Having leads with a genuine chemistry can help. Would’ve helped. Although maybe not as much as it used to since I was watching part three of a franchise. But the memories of the previous instalments… okay, the memories of the first instalment can carry you some of the distance. Oh gods above, I lie: the memories didn’t help at all.

2.  Having supporting actors who can out-act your leads can give such a film some sorely welcome spots of genuine humour and/or pathos.

3.  For all of the studios’ squeals of dwindling cinema attendances and how the internet is stealing not just from DVDs but from the starving children of Africa, I can’t help but think that, at least for all of the creatives and technicians and support personnel involved, they all got paid.

It is, just like they say, only show business.

And maybe, one day, if/when I can afford to travel better than cattle class, I’ll have enough room to be able open up the trusty Powerbook and exercise choice.

Once the chuckles abated, I had to search hard to find out what kind of storytelling device this is: a how we got here trope.

I used to think this device/trope was a nicely grabby way of starting off stories until Battlestar: Galactica killed that enjoyment with overuse in its second season.

I inwardly groan whenever I see such a title card now. For me, it’s become an unnecessary obstacle a film or show has to overcome for me to continue watching. Grinning and baring it has been occasionally rewarding – Breaking Bad and Band of Brothers come to mind – but for the most part, deservedly or no, a time-travelling title card provides an excuse to stop watching and move on to the next show.

And how would yours truly do it?

In film, Memento and 21 Grams have shown the way in forcing your audience to work without title cards.

As for TV, I wouldn’t use it in a pilot*. I was going to say it’s been done to death but I’ve gone back three years in my viewing diary and haven’t even been able to make a list of five. I blame BSG for my sensitivity.

And as for Battle Los Angeles, I enjoyed it immensely despite health advisories from Mr Ebert and Mr Slevin. Maybe my low expectations carried me over that title card hurdle.

* And yet… a pilot script of mine starts just like this – though, in my defence, it doesn’t have a title card.

Saw the leads, didn't read the fine print.

Yes, Mr Johnson’s name is right up there with series (ir)regulars Paul Walker and Vin Diesel but I’ve never cared for the latter two in this series.

But Mr Johnson – well, I’ve been a fan since Welcome to the Jungle and Walking Tall. Here, finally, I thought to myself at the time, is the true heir to the Schwarzenegger throne.

The Boy has already seen the film. But I suspect he may not object to having to watch it again. For his old man’s sake.

Better Off Ted – Season 2
Breaking Bad – Seasons 1-3
Defying Gravity – Season 1 (a pox on whoever described it as “Greys Anatomy in space”)
The Good Wife – Seasons 1-2
Glee – Season 1
Justified – Season 1
Little Dorrit (fedora-tip to The Big A for putting us onto this)
Modern Family – Seasons 1-2
Nurse Jackie – Season 2
The Unusuals – Season 1 (fedora-tip to MC Ash for the ah, tip)
The Walking Dead – Season 1

A toast to Better Off Ted, Defying Gravity and The Unusuals, all cancelled, and all sorely missed.

Breakout television for 2010? Zombies, natch.

Film

The American
Boy
District 9
Green Zone
I Love You Phillip Morris
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
Kenny
Let the Right One In
The Men Who Stare at Goats
Once Upon a Time in the West
The Road
Sherlock Holmes (2009)
A Single Man
Star Trek (2009)

Film of the year? Boy. God damn your eyes, Waititi.

There’s more in this cool Esquire interview with the 5′ 11″ Sigourney Weaver, including:

(Fedora-tip: Dan Slevin.)

The Chicago Tribune has a few fond reminiscences about shooting The Blues Brothers in Chicago. Remember the car chase through the mall? The arrival of the Blusemobile, at least three hundred bodies, fifteen horses, three Sherman tanks, three helicopters and three fire engines at the Daley Centre? All in Chicago.

My favourite reminiscence: two Cook County commissioners* buttonholing then Mayor Jane Byrne at, I presume, the local premiere:

(Fedora-tip: the LA Times‘ Patrick Goldstein.)

*  New Zild readers: those county commissioners are the equivalent of local body councillors.

There is some common ground. Queen, Maisey Rika and Phoenix Foundation. Better Off Ted, Modern Family, Breaking Bad, The Good Wife and Mad Men. (Yes, these last coupla years have been big box-watching years.)

She likes relationship stories while I like kill-my-dog-and-I-shall-lay-waste-upon-the-land-until-vengeance-is-mine stories. Her viewing threshold is a lot lower than mine – q.v. The Cult – but my excuse is that all viewing is a learning experience.

So we like different things. So what.

Were it not for Her, I would not have had the pleasure of Grand Designs, the River Cottage series, Pieces of April, and King of Kong. And were it not for me, She would not have had the pleasure of Mad Men, The Good Wife, Lars and the Real Girl, and In Bruges.

I suppose it evens out in the end. And because I do like to quote the good doctor,

  It is important to always try new things.

The same goes for whenever I rewatch films like The Constant Gardener or television shows like The Shield where the endings are not happy.

Why do I subject myself to this torture?

It’s the execution. It’s the characters. It’s being taken by the hand for a half-hour or hour or ninety-plus minutes or days and returning to the real world short of breath, my heart thundering in my chest and a lump in my throat.

This is not a new discovery. Romeo and Juliet will never grow old. Rick will always have Paris. Rachel and Deckard will never have certainty.

And I think to myself:

  Someone wrote that shit.

  I lapped that shit up and begged for more.

  I want to write like that.

Last weekend, Mr Ebert very generously posted the script from that moment in time. Oh, what coulda bin.

I don’t know how but The Goddess and I watched one earlier in the year – I can’t remember what – and even though it was a pleasant enough experience as the two leads got into a clinch, the music rose and credits rolled (and I coughed to cover my swallowing my tears and blinked rapidly so as not to give Her the impression I enjoy this genre) my Beloved turned to me –

• Screenwriter J D Shapiro apologises for Battlefield Earth.

  (Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)

• This. Is. SHATNER!

  (Fedora-tip: Alex Epstein.)

• Homicide: Life on the Street and The Wire scribe and producer, David Mills died suddenly last week. I didn’t know – I should’ve, really, but I didn’t know – that he was the one who penned the Homicide “Bop Gun” ep (the one with Robin Williams and a teenage Jake Gyllenhaal). This forty-plus minutes of free-to-air television truly opened my eyes to just how much more you could put into a police procedural.

  His and David Simon‘s latest television series Treme opens in a few days. I can’t wait to introduce The Goddess to teevee a la Simon et al.

Peace out.

• This is spot-on:

  

  It seems to be cool at the moment to bag Avatar – something akin to the derision that accompanies Titanic, perhaps? – but I enjoyed it. Not only was I familiar with the original scriptment from way back but it transported me to a different reality for a couple of hours. That takes real story-telling and filmmaking, regardless of the tools and bells and whistles at the filmmakers’ disposal.

  (Fedora-tip: Alex Epstein.)

• Some other backlash: on the BBC Writersroom blog, Dominic Mitchell lays into writers holding forth about writing at the Guardian website:
  Get lucky. Stay lucky. – Ian Rankin

  Stop reading fiction – it’s all lies anyway, and it doesn’t have anything to tell you that you don’t know already (assuming, that is, you’ve read a great deal of fiction in the past; if you haven’t you have no business whatsoever being a writer of fiction). – Will Self

  When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else. – Zadie Smith

  Yeah, some of them are a bit pointy-headed and a lot of them prescriptive but everyone’s different – particularly writers – and writers should remember can always cherrypick advice at their leisure.

  (Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)

• Heartened by an October 2005 revised draft of Terminator: Salvation, I watched the finished film recently.

  I should have taken the hint:

  CHRISTIAN grabs a HELICOPTER, which results in a CRASH that somehow leaves him unscathed. A CRIPPLED TERMINATOR chases him, but it is killed by BULLETS. Plain old, regular BULLETS. The kind that couldn’t kill TERMINATORS in the other movies.

I rilly rilly enjoyed the Star Trek reboot recently so: Go forth and prosper.

(The poster neglects to show the shotgun and rocket launcher/pod that are part of his kit. Maybe the PR elves thought it all a little overkill or something.)

When it comes to writing, I haven’t been picky with my kit. All of my handwritten notes are consistent in their random ink colours – and occasional pencil – because I don’t care for my writing implement (and because I lose pens on a regular basis). As for the electronic records, they include Word, text-only, rich-text and Open Document formats – although that last one has been the standard since 2007.

A couple of years ago, I started playing around with Celtx and, well, nothing has been the same ever since. I use Final Draft now. I understand now the zeal of the convert: FD makes (screen)writing so much easier. But it’s only a tool.

Commando will always have a special place in my heart but it’s been a quarter-century already, and in this post-Bourne world where a rolled-up magazine is as handy in a fight as a Rambo knife, it’s no longer about suiting up for every possible situation. Save the montage for a flashback or Michael Bay homage.

Use whatever you have to hand to put words on the page or screen.

• The last swords-and-sandals epic I saw was Gladiator. Since then, Troy, Alexander, Rome and 300 have come and gone with nary a flicker of interest on my part. But The Incomparable‘s review of Rob Tapert and Sam Raimi‘s Spartacus has sparked a guilty, pulpy, what-the-heck kind of interest:
  …Spartacus won’t win any awards for the originality of its premise. Hunktacular warrior dude loves his superhot wife, but is reluctantly called away to battle for the good of his people. Hunktacular warrior dude is betrayed by sleaze-weasel Roman general and branded a deserter. Hunktacular warrior dude escapes and is reunited with his superhot wife just in time for them to be captured (notably, while in the altogether) by sleaze-weasel Roman general. Sleaze-weasel Roman general sells hunktacular warrior dude into the employ of agreeably amoral gladiator owner. Hunktacular warrior dude must wage a muscly, well-oiled, tiny-pantsed struggle up the ranks of the gladiator circuit to find his beloved wife and gain his whoa that guy just took a giant axe to the face!
• The always excellent xkcd webcomic has this heads-up for those writers out there putting the final touches on their denouement:

  

• And go here – now – for the rest of this brilliant bat-take on Memento:
  
  

It’s been so long since we’ve rolled into 2010 I won’t bore you with -0

This is my blog – and in the world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Hooah.

2009 was really a year for the goggle box –

– but cinema had some new – and old – pleasures –

– and when not glooed to a flickering screen, there was always –

I won’t be disclosing stats because they’re pitiful and I have no excuse. But if you break my run of comment spam (three figures and rising this past month) and ask nicely, I’ll consider it.

2009 was an okay year for watching and reading – a better year for writing – and 2010 awaits my conquest domination attention.

Overall rating: Satisfactory – but must try harder.

It being a rainy afternoon, I’ve just finished watching Rambo and enjoyed it tremendously. Was I flashing on my teen years where I grew up with the first three instalments in the franchise?* Rather likely.

And I can’t help thinking: does my unalloyed enjoyment of Rambo make me a Bad Person? Or just Naughty? Time may tell.

* I laughed out loud when, asked about the intervening forty years between being drafted for the Vietnam War and his current situation in Thailand, Rambo says, It’s complicated.