Dan Slevin

19 July 201218 July 2012

NZIFF ’12

For as long as I can remember being a cinephile, June/July is a time of excitement and discovery and anticipation as the New Zealand International Film Festival hits town.

Multiple copies of the brochure are hoarded (1 x library, 1 x lending, 1 x booking), and one of them becomes dog-eared with innumerable passes as various selections are made (1 x if I was rich, 1 x if I am poor, 1 x if I had the time, etc). The first pass is usually where several hundred notional dollars is spent as real-world rules are abandoned. The final pass is reached after considerable pain, and eventual, reluctant, acceptance of the world that I live in.

This year, I did my first pass and… I didn’t dog-ear anything. This is a first. The Boy has made his choice – having bored and traumatised him at the last couple of fests, I thought it only fair that he have some say this year. Even The Goddess has had some difficulty finding something to discover/anticipate/get-excited-about.

Is it me? I hope not.

Time, maybe, to consult with Someone Who Knows.

31 March 200919 October 2012

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.

Billy Mernit makes a good case for bad screenwriting.

There are such things as happy endings for screenwriters in Hollywood – just ask Robert Mark Kamen.

Salman Rushdie writes about adaptation.

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.

Oh, is nothing sacred, Mr Rogers?

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 build–up, 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?)

1 December 20075 August 2012

Point & Click

This week, in lieu of my usual witterings, I offer you:

At The Editing Room, Rod Hilton writes ‘abridged scripts’ of popular films – but in an indecently irreverent spirit that harks back to web classics “movies in a minute” and “movies with bunnies”. Behold his takes on The Bourne Ultimatum, The Departed and Ronin.

Bang2Write head script-reader, Lucy, is oft-name-checked in the UK scribosphere – and for good reason: her Write Here, Write Now blog has gems aplenty to offer, like no, your script idea has not been nicked, Worst. Feedback. Ever., and The List. (Collective fedora-tip: Messrs. Barron, Clague and Stack.)

A mere twelve months ago, Severance scribe James Moran listed seven reasons why his beloved horror genre can sometimes suck ass. Read. Memorise. Avoid. (Insta-fedora-tip: Write Here, Write Now.)

Former Paramount Theatre manager Dan Slevin used to throw together the best – the best, I tell ya – weekly e-newsletters. I may have been in the wrong city at the time (Christchurch, then Dunedin), but the reviews, descriptions and one-liners were a pleasure to read, and welcome heads-ups on what might (eventually) hit the South Island. He’s now the Capital Times film reviewer – and generously reprints his reviews at his blog, Funerals and Snakes.

And for something different, try killer-fact.com where literary quizzes (what novel opened with “Call me Ishmael”?) gleefully rub shoulders with polls like which Spice Girl to eat first when all the food has run out on your desert island. (Fedora-tip: NZBC.)

Update: the killer-fact.com page now says “This account has been suspended – please contact billing…”. Guess you’ll have to take my word for it.