Scriptwriter
Alex Wiebe at the ever-reliable The Editing Room has gifted the world with my favouritest ever zombie movie description:
INT. APARTMENTS
Everyone heads up the STAIRS but then ZOMBIES AIIEEEE STAIRS RUSH ARRRGH BRAD DAUGHTER RUN ENOS LOOK OUT FLARE MIREILLE RAAAARRRGH SCREAM CRASH KEEP GOING HISPANIC AIIEEEE PITT ZOMBIES NOOOO FIGHT CHOMP ARRRRGH
ZOMBIES NOOOOO FIGHT CHOMP ARRRRGH, indeed.
The ever-reliable Editing Room have thrown up an abridged script for one of my 2012 faves, Dredd. Some of you may wonder how such almost literal cannon fodder can rub shoulders with the likes of Never Let Me Go and This Must Be The Place.
From Chris W‘s abridged script:
INT. HALL OF JUDGENESS
JUDGE KARL meets his plucky new sidekick OLIVIA THIRLBY.
JUDGE KARL
So you failed the Judge SAT test, but you’ve got Kuato powers so we’re giving you one more chance to prove yourself.
OLIVIA THIRLBY
(using mind powers)
I sense that you’re very... You’re kind of... You’re sort of...
JUDGE KARL
Yeah? Go on?
OLIVIA THIRLBY
(pause)
Uh, nevermind. Forget it.
JUDGE KARL
But you were about to reveal something interesting and profound about me that might give my character the slightest shred of depth.
OLIVIA THIRLBY
(looks at watch)
Wow, you haven’t shot anyone for a full two minutes.
JUDGE KARL
Damn, you’re right. Characterization can go fuck itself. Let’s go kill something.
Yeah.
I loved Dredd because it didn’t try to be anything more than it is, whether it’s a balls-out actioner, a more-faithful-than-hoped-for adaptation of the original comic character, a nicely self-contained dystopian sci-fi flick, or a combination of any/all of the above.
I’ve seen more titles this year than in any other since official records began in 2003. I’d like to think the year’s expanded viewing-slash-research goes some way toward explaining why posts on this blog have tended towards commentary rather than craft.
Features
Drive
Tropa De Elite (Elite Squad) and Tropa De Elite – O Inimigo Agora E Outro (Elite Squad – The Enemy Within)
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
The Avengers
Safe
Never Let Me Go
Armadillo
The Angel’s Share
Dredd
This Must Be the Place
La Jetee
End of Watch
Yes, that’s more than ten for the year but those 2011-and-earlier titles were just so damned good that I had to name-drop them.
Television
Panama-hat-tips to The Good Wife, Mad Men, Justified, Nurse Jackie and Breaking Bad for continuing to be must-see telly three or more seasons into their respective runs. It’s sad that Mad Men and Breaking Bad will finish in the coming year but all good things do come to an end.
Hung – Season 2
Justified – Season 3
The Good Wife – Seasons 3-4
Smith
Inside Men – Season 1
Dirk Gently – Season 1
Game of Thrones – Seasons 1-3
Mad Men – Season 5
Nurse Jackie – Season 4
Hounds
The Newsroom – Season 1
Hit & Miss
Longmire – Season 1
The Golden Hour
Breaking Bad – Season 5
The Bletchley Circle
Last Resort
Monroe – Season 2
Boardwalk Empire – Season 1
Vegas – Season 1
The Sopranos – Season 1
Late adopter excuse/s for ‘discovering’ Smith, Boardwalk Empire and Sopranos.
A great year for UK telly with The Bletchley Circle and Hit & Miss.
And sun-hat-tips to the excellent The Golden Hour that almost, almost, made me want to watch the Olympics, and the lamented Hounds.
Theatre
Leilani Unasa’s His Mother’s Son
P-Lab’s Hypothesis One
Louise Tu’u‘s Gaga: the unmentionable
Disclosure: All three pieces are by Banana Boat colleagues,
Yah, it’s the end of 2012 already so time for a quick blow-out.
Another average year in terms of quantity of reading. Texts, as you can see immediately below, were a bit on the thin side.
Books
Other People’s Wars – Nicky Hager
Road Dogs – Elmore Leonard
Comics
Ongoing titles Walking Dead, Powers and Scalped continue to rate with excellent storytelling. Castle Waiting, Dolltopia and RASL were very pleasant surprises.
RIP – Thomas Ott
Castle Waiting Volumes 1 and 2 – Linda Medley
Tamara Drewe – Posy Simmonds
Walking Dead Volume 15 – We Find Ourselves – Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard
The Killer Volumes 1 and 3 – Matz and Luc Jacamon
Dolltopia – Abbi Densen
Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense: Being Human – Mike Mignola
Scalped Volume 7 – Rez Blues – Jason Aaron and R M Guera
RASL Volumes 1-3 – Jeff Smith
Powers Volume 14 – Gods – Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Avon Oeming
Scripts
This year’s overall slant towards television writing is represented below with the number of pilots listed.
3:10 to Yuma – Michael Brandt & Derek Haas
Analyze This – Peter Tolan and Harold Ramis and Kenneth Lonergan
Gilmore Girls – Pilot – Amy Sherman-Palladino
Arrested Development – Pilot – Mitchell Hurwitz
My Name is Gary Cooper – Victor Rodger
30 Rock – Pilot and S01E07 – Tina Fey
Groundhog Day – Danny Rubin & Harold Ramis
The West Wing S02E04 – Aaron Sorkin
Justified S01E08 – Benjamin Cavell
Django Unchained – Quentin Tarantino
I’m a little worried I might’ve spoiled things a bit by reading Django Unchained before its opening here in New Zild but I enjoyed the script heaps more than the script for Inglorious Basterds (the film of which I have yet to see in its entirety [and those bits I have chanced across have been intriguingly tasty]).
The market caters to all sorts of tastes across various arbitrary boundaries, and impulse (that is, blind) purchases can provide the most rewarding of viewing experiences. (I suspect a large part of any cinematic or television enjoyment I can get nowadays is the tension between anticipation/expectation and The Unexpected – I might expand on that once I’ve found my thesaurus.)
So it was with This Must Be The Place, a road-trip/revenge-tale/coming-of-age film that captivated me for all of its almost two-hour running time. What distinguishes this film from any other film that tries to deal with even just one of those genres is the Robert Smith-inspired middle-aged rock star protagonist (Sean Penn) whose backstory is not what we expect, whose journey is equal parts convention and surreality, and whose characterisation reminds me why I’ve been a Penn fan since Bad Boys.
The trailer plays up the revenge angle but the film is, like other personal favourites, so much more.
So I’m not even a minute into this yarn when a smile begins to form. Five minutes in and I realise that all the testesterone-spiked Yeah‘s and awe-struck Whoa‘s are coming from the film’s heroes rather than the couch.
I’m sure the film is cueing training a new generation of action film aficionados but I feel a little obsolete.
When I heard that director Tony Scott took his life, I paused more than I expected. I’d long written off his films as overcooked excuses in directorial excess but… there was something about his oeuvre that nagged at me, something I suspect I didn’t want to acknowledge.
Then I read Dominic Corry‘s love post in the New Zealand Herald and I realised the mark Scott had left on me as a filmgoer. Despite inflicting Days of Thunder, Deja Vu, etc, on the world, between 1991 and 1995, he defined action films with muscle and panache with three films: doing justice to Shane Black‘s multimillion dollar script with The Last Boy Scout, showing a deft restraint with Quentin Tarantino‘s True Romance, and showing a hitherto unknown knack for intelligent, buttock-clenching tension with Crimson Tide.
Those films are among my touchstones.
And for that, I’m grateful to Mr Scott.
Travel safe.
Ye olde local started showing this one so we saddled up to support local business and see what the hype was all about.
As the end credits rolled, I turned to The Goddess and said, Well, and she loooked at me and said Well, and we hugged each other because it was nice to get out and support local business.
In an unprecedented move in our relationship, we returned forthwith to Fortress Mamea and watched the following two films in very short order:
It was an exhausting, essential cleansing process but well worth the time.
Postscript: Chris W at The Editing Room deconstructs the film perfectly, with my favourite abridged script line being:
CHARLIZE invites NOOMI and LOGAN to her FORESHADOWING ROOM.
.
I’ll watch anything by Steven Soderbergh – and if it’s a genre piece, I’m quite likely to add it my library. Copies of Traffic, The Limey, Solaris, Out of Sight, and Ocean’s Eleven have pride of place on the shelves. (The absence of Erin Brockovich and the Ocean sequels is, I think, self-explanatory.)
When I heard Soderbergh was making an action film, my Pavlovian response was predictable. An awesome roll call of actors. The writer of The Limey. Exotic locales. Its arrival on these shores couldn’t happen quickly enough.
It skipped a theatrical release and went straight to DVD. I watched it and kinda liked it. I watched it again – this time with The Goddess – and liked it more. And I think I’ll watch it again.
This excellent Editing Room abridged script both captures and highlights what I really enjoy about Haywire: it upsets my expectations of an action thriller while still giving me an action thriller. It’s no masterpiece. It’s a genre exercise. The story is familiar as all get out. Lead Gina Carano‘s game acting is surrounded by an excellent supporting cast who get into the spirit of things rather than just slumming it. Soderbergh’s crisp direction and Dobbs’ deft script provide 93 minutes of action, thrills and suspense.
I think it’s a keeper.
