Category: Film

Posted on

Timing

Rom-coms are watched very infrequently at Fortress Mamea. They’re not my cuppa, really.

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 —

GODDESS

That was nice.

(beat)

But love does not overcome all odds.

WRITER

It does if you write “FADE OUT” quickly enough.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Point & Click

Burble.

  • 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.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Point & Click

Hurm.

  • 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.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Tools of the Trade

There’s a montage in Commando where Arnold Schwarzenegger packs on a few hundred pounds of munitions:

Not-too-common poster for "Commando"

(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.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Point & Click

Been saving these up, oh yes I have.

  • 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:

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

About Last Year

(Yeah, okay: eight days since my last post is more than a few days – more than several days – more, even, thana week. Sorry.)

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 —

Television

Better Off Ted – Season 1
Generation Kill
Go Girls – Season 1
Mad Men – Season 3
Nurse Jackie – Season 1
State of Play

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

Film

Avatar
Dan in Real Life
No Country for Old Men

Rambo (2007)
Stephanie Daley
The Lives of Others
Up

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

Print

American Born Chinese – Gene Yang
Global Frequency – Warren Ellis and various artists
Iron Man: Extremis – Warren Ellis and Adi Granov
Lenore: Cooties – Roman Dirge
Parker: The Hunted – Darwyn Cooke, based on the book by Donald E Westlake

Scalped: Casino Boogie – Jason Aaron & R M Guera
The Walking Dead: The Heart’s Desire – Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard

Oryx & Crake – Margaret Atwood
The Turnaround – George Pelecanos

… Aaaand – okay, books without pictures were a bit of a rarity last year (again) – but these scripts made an impression:

Action: Pilot – Chris Thompson
Burn Notice: Pilot – Matt Nix
NYPD Blue: Pilot – David Milch
Six Feet Under: Pilot – Alan Ball
The Philanthropist: Pilot – Tom Fontana

Miami Vice (2004) – Michael Mann
Precious – Geoffrey Fletcher

Red Rock West – John Dahl and Rick Dahl
The Incredibles – Brad Bird
The Hurt Locker – Mark Boal

The Road – Joe Penhall
Zombieland – Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick

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.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Balance

The Goddess and I watched Stephanie Daley last night and we’re still talking about it. So many layers, so many lines to read between, and so much to savour and consider.

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.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Vacuum

In the vacuum left by the season finale of Mad Men, the Fortress Mamea inhabitants have been at a bit of a loose end. We enjoyed a fling with Better Off Ted, had our injections with Nurse Jackie, but they too have gone the way of Mad Men.

I’m at a similar place with my slate. Having reached my writing objectives for the year, I’m now trying to raise my film and TV viewing stats (59 finishes and 33 walk-/turn-offs to date, compared to 2008’s 94 and 19, respectively), as well as my reading stats (there’s a gaping hole from July to September that I don’t think I can make up for). I’ve completed Delta Force: Black Hawk Down (snore) and Close Combat: First to Fight (grin)* but… surely I could be doing something more useful?

We’re chortling through Glee. The Banana Boat writing group is ending the year with a bit of a bash. Only 24 sleeps until Avatar.

And after a few weeks of staring at my development file for the next project and not being inspired… I’ve just had a brilliant idea for my next project, totally out of the blue**.

Suh-weet.

* Not that you asked, but I’m currently chugging through Aliens vs Predators 2 and finding it rather tedious – I think I might join Monty and the boys in their North African campaign sooner rather than later.

** “Out of the blue”. What a crock. It was a fortuitous intersection of: people I know and want to work with; an achievable production budget; and a perfick location.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share
Posted on

Point & Click

Greetings earthlings.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
Share