Quis Custodiet – Abridged

Mr Hilton at The Editing Room has just put up an abridged script for Watchmen.

And this excerpt is for the benefit of The Goddess who wondered what the heck the story was with Bubastis the wondercat:

MATTHEW GOODE

Would you like me to explain why as I stroke my tigercatrabbit?

PATRICK WILSON

Er, actually, yeah, are you going to explain that thing at all?

MATTHEW GOODE

Who, Mr. Meowkins? He’s my pet.

PATRICK WILSON

Right. I figured that.

This link/post is dedicated to Mr Molloy.

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Point & Click

A bit of a backlog of a collection, attributions for which I can’t remember, sorry – though a pretty good bet would be the sidebar, but.

    • There are such things as happy endings for screenwriters in Hollywood – just ask Robert Mark Kamen.
    • Thanks, I suspect, to Nick Grant of Onfilm, I have discovered The A.V. Club‘s excellent The New Cult Canon series, in particular this article about the commentary between The Limey’s writer Lem Dobbs and director Steven Soderbergh.
    • Another Kiwi screenwriting blog! Lyse Beck gives us Birds With Nuts. There’s a nice thread about Watchmen here.

And speaking of the Minutemen, after all my buildup, The Goddess and I went to see Watchmen a week or so ago. She enjoyed it; I hankered for some interpretation rather than faithful replication. Thanks to Mr Slevin I’ve read people who can say what I’m thinking much better than I could here, here and here. (And no one’s mentioned it’s been two whole decades since Tim Burton gave us Michael Keaton as Batman – didn’t that kickstart the mainstreaming of comic-book adaptations?)

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Quis Custodiet – One Sleep to Go

Oh alright. Despite whatever I said before, I’m in a… high state of anticipation.

Lynden Barber‘s whip ’round of reviews, along with the L.A. TimesPatrick Goldstein‘s post, have lowered expectations somewhat. Roger Ebert has given it four stars and a review that saw past the “cerulean genitalia” and picked up on a whole lot of the original comic‘s subtext (and I don’t think he’s read it).

I must note, however, that Mr Ebert gave each Hellboy film three and a half stars. After reading Guillermo del Toro‘s script prior to seeing the first one, I was rather… crestfallen at the finished product. The Goddess has never forgiven me for choosing Hellboy on one of our precious nights out. I’ve already asked Her to accompany me to Watchmen but the 163-minute running time is worrisome. Should I push my well-thumbed trade paperback on Her in preparation? Hurm.

The possibility of watching Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons‘ creation on the big screen is high this weekend next week this month.

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Quis Custodiet

Saw the trailer for the Watchmen film the other day.

It got me pretty excited. I suspect the faithfulness of the visuals to the source material is a big factor, though the voice-overs sounded a bit undercooked.

Although Terry Gilliam, and then Paul Greengrass, had been attached to direct this monstrous adaptation in the last couple of decades, it’s taken Zack Snyder to bring it this far. I haven’t seen Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead; not really my cuppa. I kinda/sorta/maybe was going to see 300 when it first came out but was quite disappointed by the graphic novel I borrowed from my friendly local in preparation for my viewing. Maybe, one very rainy day/week/month, I will might try either/both.

Anyhoo – wait a minute: I’ve got scripts of Watchmen – a 2003 Hayter draft and an undated Tse draft.

INT. CAVE – NIGHT – A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER

Some… measured anticipation has replaced the excitement.

I had, in my post-trailer, pre-blog-post-drafting excitement, already typed –

 

I can’t freaking wait

– but I was a bit hasty. It’s a big ask to condense a complex twelve-issue limited series into a two-hour adventure. (C’mon: it’s got superheroes – whether we like it or not, if it’s going to be a superhero movie, it has to be a kind of adventure.) And now, thanks to Mr Slevin, I can’t get this out of my head:

It’s eight-nine months away. Let’s see how I feel then, eh?

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