Tagged: film
Consumption: 2023
I maintain this list every year, for fun and for reference. I don’t do a numbered ranking, but my #1-most-fun-I-had-at-the-movies award goes to GODZILLA MINUS ONE.
For films watched on video, standouts included the hallucinatory Korean film CURE and Lena Dunham’s delightful CATHERINE CALLED BIRDY. For more film favorites consult my top-5 list on Yelling About Movies—an ongoing YouTube series featuring me and 5 friends. The title of the show says it all.
On the TV series front, favorites at our house included Bad Sisters, The Bear, and, surprisingly enough, Derek, a decade-old sitcom starring Ricky Gervais that is set at a nursing home. Who would have thought?
MOVIES ON THE BIG SCREEN
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022, James Cameron)
Ant-man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023, Peyton Reid)
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 3 (2023, James Gunn)
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023, James Mangold)
Princess Mononoke (1997, Hayao Miyazaki)
Barbie (2023, Greta Gerwig)
Oppenheimer (2023, Christopher Nolan)
Haunted Mansion (2023, Justin Simien)
The Holdovers (2023, Alexander Payne)
Godzilla Minus One (2023, Takashi Yamazaki)
Maestro (2023, Bradley Cooper)
MOVIES ON THE SMALL SCREEN
Love and Monsters (2022, Michael Matthews)
Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019, Alexandre O. Philippe)
I Love My Dad (2022, James Morosini)
Italianamerican (1974, Martin Scorsese)
By Design: The Joe Caroff Story (2022, Mark Cerulli)
The Automat (2021, Lisa Hurwitz)
Ronin (1998, John Frankenheimer)
Apocalypto (2006, Mel Gibson)
The Green Fog (2017, Guy Maddin & Evan & Galen Johnson)
Get Duked (2019, Ninian Doff)
Undergods (2020, Chino Moya)
Dogtooth (2009, Yorgos Lanthimos)
La Moustache (2005, Emmanuel Carrère)
Something in the Dirt (2022, Justin Benson & Aaron Moorhead)
Elevator to the Gallows (1958, Louis Malle)
Top Gun (1986, Tony Scott)
The Fabelmans (2022, Steven Spielberg)
Aftersun (2022, Charlotte Wells)
The Forgotten Battle (2020, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.)
Fury (2014, David Ayer)
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2023, Joel Crawford)
Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008, Darren Lynn Bousman)
Keane (2005, Lodge Kerrigan)
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair (2021, Jane Schoenbrun)
La Cérémonie (1995, Claude Chabrol)
The Piano Teacher (2001, Michael Haneke)
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011, Rupert Wyatt)
Eyes Without a Face (1960, Georges Franju)
Frank (2014, Lenny Abrahamson)
The Salton Sea (2002, D. J. Caruso)
One, Two, Three (1960, Billy Wilder)
Dive (2022, Lucía Puenzo)
World on a Wire (1973, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014, Matt Reeves)
Sisu (2023, Jalmari Helander)
Being Mary Tyler Moore (2023, James Adolphus)
Call Me Kate (2022, Lorna Tucker)
Where’s Poppa? (1970, Carl Reiner)
White Heat (1949, Raoul Walsh)
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985, George Miller & George Ogilvy)
How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2022, Daniel Goldhaber)
Week-end (1967, Jean-Luc Godard)
Teorema (1968, Pier Peter Pasolini)
Next Door (Naboer) (2005, Pål Sletaune, Tony Spataro)
Proof (1991, Jocelyn Moorhouse)
Naked (1993, Mike Leigh)
War for the Planet of the Apes (2017, Matt Reeves)
Used Cars (1980, Robert Zemeckis)
Beowulf (2007, Robert Zemeckis)
Le Cercle Rouge (1970, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Cure (1997, Kyoshi Kurosawa)
La Piscine (The Swimming Pool) (1969, Jacques Deray)
L’inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake) (2013, Alain Guiraudie)
Young Adam (2003, David Mackenzie)
Studio 54 (2018, Matt Tyrnauer)
Tokyo Story (1953, Yasujirō Ozu)
Skinamarink (2022, Kyle Edward Ball)
Iris (2014, Albert Maysles)
Goodnight Oppy (2022, Ryan White)
Killer Joe (2011, William Friedkin)
Bone Tomahawk (2015, S. Craig Zahler)
M (1931 Fritz Lang)
Zodiac (2007, David Fincher)
The Clone Returns Home (2008, Kanji Nakajima)
Bright Future (2002, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
Hide Your Smiling Faces (2013, Daniel Patrick Carbone)
Army of Shadows (1969, Jean-Pierre Melville)
Tori and Lokita (2022, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
Two-Lane Blacktop (1971, Monte Hellman)
One Sings, the Other Doesn’t (1971, Agnes Varda)
El Conde (2023, Pablo Larrain)
Return to Oz (1986, Walter Murch)
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969, Sidney Pollack)
Close (2022, Lukas Dhont)
Barbarian (2022, Zach Cregger)
Der Hauptmann (The Captain) (2018, Robert Schwenke)
1944 (2015, Elmo Nüganen)
Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007, Sidney Lumet)
12 Angry Men (1957, Sidney Lumet)
Eight Men Out (1988, John Sayles)
Squaring the Circle: The Story of Hipgnosis (2022, Anton Corbijn)
The Hired Hand (1971, Peter Fonda)
Catherine Called Birdy (2022, Lena Dunham)
The Terror Within (1989, Thierry Notz)
Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale (2010, Jalmari Helander)
Don’t Bother to Knock (1952, Roy Ward Baker)
Blonde (2022, Andrew Dominik)
Teknolust (2002, Lynne Hershman-Leeson)
In the Mouth of Madness (1994, John Carpenter)
May December (2023, Todd Haynes)
Asteroid City (2023, Wes Anderson)
REWATCHES
Heaven Can Wait (1978, Buck Henry & Warren Beatty)
Deathtrap (1982, Sidney Lumet)
Cha Cha Real Smooth (2022, Cooper Raiff)
The Endless (2018, Aaron Moorhead & Justin Benson)
Cape Fear (1991, Martin Scorsese)
Attack the Block (2011, Joe Cornish)
I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958, Gene Fowler, Jr.)
Teenagers from Outer Space (1959, Tom Graeff)
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011, Joe Johnston)
The Rocketeer (1991, Joe Johnston)
Dark City (1998, Alex Proyas)
Shakespeare in Love (1998, John Madden)
Meshes of the Afternoon (1941, Maya Deren)
The Fall (2008, Tarsem Singh)
Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966, Gordon Flemyng)
Strange Days (1995, Kathryn Bigelow)
His Girl Friday (1940, Howard Hawks)
The Worst Person in the World (2021, Joachim Trier)
Phase IV (1974, Saul Bass)
Persona (1966, Ingmar Bergman)
The French Connection (1971, William Friedkin)
The Poseidon Adventure (1971, Ronald Neame)
Hauser’s Memory (1970, Boris Sagal)
Splice (2009, Vincenzo Natali)
Upgrade (2018, Leigh Whannell)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986, Woody Allen)
Home For The Holidays (1995, Jodie Foster)
The Cooler (2003, Wayne Kramer)
Terror From the Year 5000 (1958, Robert Gurney Jr.)
Dredd (2020, Pete Travis)
TELEVISION
Bad Sisters
The Last of Us
Poker Face
Ted Lasso
Derek
Mrs. Davis
The Bear
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Welcome to Wrexham
Rampatrouille Orion (Space Patrol Orion)
Julia
BOOKS
White Noise (Don DeLillo)
CONCERTS
Jerry Harrison & Adrian Belew (12/30, Warfield Theater, San Francisco)
*a footnote!
Thoughts on Yasujirō Ozu’s TOKYO STORY
When discussing Ozu, film critics invariably focus on two things: the formal composition of his images, and the slow pace. For that reason I’d never felt compelled to check out the work myself. Sitting down to TOKYO STORY (1953), I was expecting something arty and rarefied—a homework movie that would probably test my patience. What I got instead was a family drama, packed with emotion.
It’s a simple enough story: Shūkichi and Tomi are a retired couple who travel by train to Tokyo to visit their adult children. But the children are busy with their work and their own lives, and the presence of their parents is a disruption. No one puts much effort into accommodating them, in fact, they shuttle the parents off to a spa for a few days “to rest.” And so, the visit goes badly—though this is barely acknowledged by anyone.
This is how Ozu shoots interiors: camera low, to capture people kneeling or sitting on the floor. (There is exactly one moving camera shot in TOKYO STORY, a slow dolly at around the one hour mark.) With sightlines nearly always running parallel and perpendicular to the walls, the resulting compositions are a map of rectangles and 90-degree angles. In these spaces, emotions are also flattened and constrained. Diagonals are rarely seen and usually occur outdoors, in placid transitional shots interleaved throughout the film: a train chugging along a track, or white laundry fluttering on a clothesline.
There are two notable exceptions where the geometry of the characters’ lives is ruptured by strong emotion. The first is a barroom scene, where the elderly Shūkichi gets drunk and rowdy with a couple of old friends and complains about his no-good kids.
The second time comes late in the film, when all those offspring gather for a funeral. For shortly after the elderly couple return home from their trip to Tokyo, the mother Tomi falls ill and dies. Here, Ozu breaks out the diagonals: to capture the entire grieving family in a single shot, or to focus on the son who is overwhelmed and flees the ceremony.
Here too is where the weight of this story, which up to now may have felt slight, suddenly accrues into something deeply moving.
After the funeral, the family gathers in Shūkichi’s home for a meal. Ozu returns to his squared-off compositions as the chit-chat meanders from the logistics of taking the train home to what should be done with mother’s clothes. Soon enough, most of the kids are on their way, ready to resume lives fundamentally unchanged by the experience.
The exceptions are the youngest daughter, Kyoko, a schoolteacher who still lives with her father, and Noriko, the daughter-in-law (who’s consistently shown more concern for Shūkichi’s well-being than his own flesh-and-blood offspring). After they’ve left, Kyoko complains bitterly about her siblings, condemning them as selfish. Noriko, however, is pragmatic and realistic. She defends them, saying they have their own concerns, and acknowledges the selfishness she perceives in herself as well.
In a following scene, even the father admits guilt over his own denial and deferment of emotion. Staring down a lonely future, he muses on his relationship with his late wife: “I’d have been nicer to her if I’d known it would come to this.” Barring a divorce, a marriage can only end in a finite number of ways, yet Shūkichi seems to treat death as a surprise.
“Isn’t life disappointing?” Kyoko says.
“Yes, it is,” Noriko replies.
This was the moment in the film that was most arresting for me. Films—especially American films—are so often about massaging you into feeling good about yourself, about justifying your life and choices, and providing a narrative that promises to make sense out of chaos. TOKYO STORY isn’t that. It isn’t a balm. It isn’t constructed to make you feel good. And yet it does, but on a deeper level: one based on recognition, and maybe commiseration, and certainly on the bracing, freeing sensation of being told the truth.
Nine Tweets About LITTLE WOMEN
1. Greta Gerwig made a perfect thing. If I had actually written that “best-of 2019” list, right now I’d be flinging it dramatically into the flames.
2. LOVED the time-shifting storyline. Culminating with cross-cutting to the publisher during the happy ending which was *chef’s kiss* Also: the cinematography. I wanted to eat the beach scene with a spoon.
3. Seriously I’d be very happy to see it win Best Picture (it won’t) and Best Adapted Screenplay (it’d better).*
4. I think one reason I loved LITTLE WOMEN so much is that it is probably the only Best Pic nominee (of those I’ve seen) that is aspirational. Given the preoccupations of the other nominees, and our current real-world hellscape, it feels like a balm.
5. No one’s in danger of getting shot. No one wallows in dysfunction. The stakes are fulfillment/self-actualization vs. conforming and settling.
6. It’s full of kindnesses. Neighbors look out for each other. The lonely are befriended. Wrongs are forgiven. Kind gestures are reciprocated.
7. Even the ‘antagonist’ characters are just people with different opinions who are doing their best. And after blundering around and making mistakes, most of the characters end up where they ought to be.
8. I like movies that explore the stakes of the everyday. People trying to figure out how to live. (It’s why I’m so often on here evangelizing about HOLIDAY, one of my favorite films) And dammit, I like happy endings. So? Also I’m a big sissy and think everybody should be nice.
9. On that note, see also: A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD. (Nice to see so much of Chris Cooper lately.)
*Nope. Taika got it for JOJO RABBIT. Which I haven’t seen. Not in protest, you understand. But since I didn’t see it, I won’t render an opinion here about how Greta obviously got robbed.
I’m @giantspecks on Twitter. Occasionally Yelling About Movies #YabtM with my friends. Come say hi. Or yell back!
Consumption: 2019
I make this list every year, for fun and as a reference. It only reflects things seen for the first time; “POLTERGEIST was on again” doesn’t make the list. There are plenty of 2019 releases I haven’t gotten to yet. Of the films I did see, here are some noteables:
THE LIGHTHOUSE brought the crazy. Dafoe, Pattinson and director David Eggers deliver absolutely everything one could ask for in a two-guys-go-nuts-in-a-lighthouse movie. Shot on vintage cameras in black-and-white in 1.55 AR Claustro-vision.
ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD was my favorite Tarantino in a long time. 2018’s THE FAVOURITE was another, uh… favorite. Ditto for THE FAREWELL. Awkwafina, so good. Lulu Wang, so good. Most of PARASITE is watching grifters build a Jenga tower of lies and wondering when and how it’s gonna fall, and that = a good time at the movies! Meanwhile, THE RISE OF SKYWALKER was an imperfect end to an imperfect saga. I cried anyway.
What’s on TV? Well, I finally saw KLUTE. TCM, thank you. Jane Fonda, holy shit. They don’t make movies like this anymore; do they? Watching films from the 70s you realize how sanitized and smug most mainstream movies are now. We’re backsliding.
Also caught FIRST REFORMED on video. Paul Schrader’s still got the goods, and brings ’em. AT ETERNITY’S GATE features Willem Dafoe again, this time as Van Gogh. Heartbreaking and beautiful. In its own way, so was RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET… and it feels like this one kinda got overlooked. It’s endlessly clever, has great visuals, and an emotionally affecting core all about friendships and how they can change.
Marvel recently announced they will do a superhero movie centered on a gay character. But, they already have CAPTAIN MARVEL! I mean, come on…
If you like docs, TICKLED dives into the weird world of “competitive endurance tickling.” You’ll want to shower after. Also finally caught up with Berlinger and Sinofsky‘s 1992 doc BROTHER’S KEEPER – riveting. Highly recommended.
On the series side of things, I liked HBO’s “Dead to Me.” Great performances, and the first episode delivered not one but two A+ OMG moments. Held up throughout the season, too. Season 3 of “The Crown” introduced an entirely new cast without a hiccup. If I ever write anything as perfect and delightful as the last two scenes of episode 5 (“Coup”) I can hang up my mouse and die happy.
Adult Swim’s “Primal” was an amazing, totally dialogue-free animated series about a caveman and his dinosaur. The season (series?) finale may be the goriest thing I’ve ever seen on TV. “Undone” (Amazon) was another fine adult animated show. Come for the mind-bending premise and trippy visuals, stay for the writing and performances.
MOVIES ON THE BIG SCREEN
Mary Poppins Returns
Welcome to Marwen
The Favourite
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Vice
The Kid Who Would Be King – Every boy in this movie has chapped lips. England’s cold.
Ralph Breaks The Internet
Apollo 11
High Life – Infuriating “art movie.” Somebody explain to me why this wasn’t terrible.
Pill Head
Avengers: Endgame
Booksmart
Toy Story 4
Yesterday
Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood
The Farewell
Ad Astra
The Lighthouse
Parasite
Terminator: Dark Fate
Knives Out – My mom would have loved this movie. I loved it too.
Frozen 2
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
MOVIES ON THE SMALL SCREEN
Mary Poppins
Obvious Child
Avengers: Infinity War
First Reformed
Ant-Man and The Wasp
Eighth Grade
The First Monday In May
At Eternity’s Gate
Vox Lux
The Peanuts Movie
Blackboard Jungle
Victoria & Abdul
Lean On Pete
Where The Boys Are (1960)
Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Mary Queen of Scots (2018)
Swim Team
The Invitation (2015)
Clouds Of Sils Marias
Miracle Mile
Spiderman: Homecoming
The General (1926)
Brother’s Keeper (1992)
The Men Who Stare At Goats
Wendy And Lucy
Late Night – Needed a rewrite
Captain Marvel
Klute
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Thunder Road
I Lost My Body
Marriage Story – Alan Alda, MVP
Rocketman – Bohemian Rhapsody ain’t brilliant, but still better than this mopey pity party
Tickled
Empire of Dreams
TELEVISION
Supergirl
Mom
The Orville
Russian Doll
Better Things
What We Do In The Shadows
Archer: 1999
Game of Thrones
Shrill
Dead To Me
Barry
The Great British Baking Show
The Good Place
Fleabag
Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal
Undone
Bless This Mess
The Crown
Catastrophe
A Year In Space
Mike Birbiglia: The New One – Delivered to me my single biggest belly laugh of 2019
Rick and Morty
Encore
The Mandalorian
###
6 tweets about THE SHAPE OF WATER
- You guyssss… I know it’s been a pretty weak movie year but SHAPE OF WATER is not a masterpiece. Don’t go soft on me you saps.
#ShapeOfWater #YabtM - Also, you DO realize it’s SPLASH, right? It’s. SPLASH.
- I mean, I enjoyed it. It’s not terrible. It’s heart is in the right place, I guess. I’m def. 100% against sadistic govt guys inexplicably torturing fish-men
- “Inexplicable” is overstating it. It was the space race. Something to do with Laika the space dog. Anyway, Michael Shannon had his reasons.
- I liked Sally Hawkins & Richard Jenkins. I liked their characters & relationship. I liked the sets. Fish-man was handsome.
And it was funny when he SPOILER ALERT
ate the cat - OH, and what’s all that “waiting for the rain so the canal is full” business? Just drive to the damn beach.
I’m @giantspecks on Twitter. Occasionally Yelling About Movies #YabtM with my friends. Come say hi. Or yell back!
Consumption: 2017
I make this list every year, for fun and as a reference. As always, it only reflects things seen for the first time. “POLTERGEIST on TV, 14th viewing” doesn’t make the list. Nor do films not viewed in their entirety, for example, Guy Ritchie’s THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E, which got ejected from the Blu-Ray player after 15 minutes. I’d never seen Henry Cavill in anything before but he seems to emit some kind of anti-charisma particle.
I didn’t bother making a numbered best-of list this year. But if I had, LOGAN would be at the top. It’s perfect. Damn you James Mangold, for making me cry at your Wolverine movie.
Some of my other favorite releases of 2017 include THE BEGUILED, COCO, ATOMIC BLONDE, THOR: RAGANOK, and THE MEYEROWITZ STORIES. Of course, DUNKIRK was impressive – but cold, as is Christopher Nolan’s way. MOTHER! is a movie, alright. Darren Aronofsky swings for the fences. And whatever you think of the film, Jennifer Lawrence and Michelle Pfieffer were very good. The BLADE RUNNER sequel was amazing, and very nearly great: only Jared Leto’s messianic super-villain seemed out of place, like a character from a different, dumber movie. THE LAST JEDI: wonderful, about 50% of the time. The compelling Rey/Kylo/Luke storyline almost makes up for how they couldn’t find anything interesting for Poe, Finn, or Rose to do. (Yeah I get that the casino plot is a critique of capitalism and arms dealers and yes intellectually that’s interesting for a Star Wars movie but dramatically it was a big bag of nothing and visually it looked cheap & reminded me of the prequels and like this sentence that movie is too long.)
Linked titles take you to my review, or more info on the film.
MOVIES ON THE BIG SCREEN
Manchester by the Sea
Elle
La-La Land
Logan
Get Out
Life
Pollyanna
Colossal
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (live from the Old Vic)*
Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2
Baby Driver
The Beguiled
Dunkirk
Atomic Blonde
Dave Made A Maze
Dawson City: Frozen Time
The Big Sick
mother!
Blade Runner 2049
Spoor (Pokot)
Suburbicon
Thor: Ragnarok
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Lady Bird
Coco (saw it January ’18)
MOVIES ON THE SMALL SCREEN
The Jungle Book (2016)
The Nice Guys
Shadow of a Doubt
Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children
Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them
The Handmaiden
The Trip (Steve Coogan, not Dennis Hopper)
Back To The Future III
Eat Pray Love
The Meyerowitz Stories
Hidden Figures
Passengers
Bullitt
The Godfather (pretty good! why didn’t anyone tell me about this flick sooner?)
Personal Shopper
TELEVISION
Travelers
Westworld
Orphan Black
Modern Family
Incorporated
New Girl
The Good Place
The Expanse
Supergirl
Better Things
Game of Thrones
Girls
Mom
Downward Dog
I Love Dick
Odd Mom Out
The Orville
Star Trek: Discovery
POV: What Tomorrow Brings
Big Little Lies
Abstract: The Art of Design
BOOKS and OTHER READING
Other People’s Trades – Primo Levi
Broken Frontier (graphic novel) – Various
Lightspeed Magazine – Various
A whole bunch of screenplays
*I am calling this a movie. I saw it at a movie theater. Harry Potter guy was in it. It counts.
12 tweets about FANTASTIC BEASTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM
- Caught FANTASTIC BEASTS & ETC over the weekend. Despite a few moments I liked, I’d still rate the experience as “mostly unpleasant”
- So, Eddie Redmayne. Is there a reason he played the lead as a creepy weirdo? Or, is he just a creepy weirdo?
- Also there’s a dour missionary-type char. who hands out anti-wizard leaflets & mistreats her pack of creepy orphans. Ick.
- Colin Farrell, villain, is trying to steal one orphan away for evil purposes. He meets him in dark alleys and hug & caresses him a lot. Ick.
- Colin’s big villain monologue: he doesn’t want magic to be a secret. As evil plans go, not super compelling. On his side, kinda
- In this universe it’s REALLY important regular people don’t learn magic people exist. Witnesses get mind-erased a la MEN IN BLACK…
- Nevertheless there’s a huge skyscraper full of wizards/magical stuff right in dwntwn NY. Sure hope nobody walks in looking for DMV or whatev
- Not a Potter fan so this went over my head but at the end SPOILER? Colin Farrell turns into Johnny Depp w/an Aryan Nation haircut.
- Look for him in the sequel, I guess
- I did like subplot lumpy bakery guy, who falls in love with cute floozy sister-wizard. Anytime I didn’t have to look at Redmayne = +.
- So. Much. CGI. This is virtually an animated film w live-action elements. Climax is an exhausting light-show of black clouds & lightning.
- Act 3: one vial of memory eraser (b)rain-washes all NYC. Wave a wand, devastated city reassembles. Ho-hum. Magic sure makes things easy.
I’m @giantspecks on Twitter. Occasionally Yelling About Movies #YabtM with my friends. Come say hi. Or yell back!
John’s 2017 Productivity Report
This cartoon by Jules Feiffer first came to my attention via Stewart Stern, a wise and lovely man who knew a thing or two about writing AND writer’s block.
2017 Goal #1: Finish my feature screenplay spec BARTENDER OF THE YEAR and submit it to the Nicholl Fellowship in April.
Goal achieved? NO
Not only did I blow past the Nicholl Fellowship and every other contest deadline this past year, I am nicely on-track to miss a bunch of 2018 deadlines too. I’m currently 100+ pages into a terrible, no good, very bad first draft. Writers sometimes call the first draft the “vomit draft,” the goal being getting it done, not making it good. But rather than a full-throated purge, progress on BARTENDER OF THE YEAR has advanced in a series of minuscule puke-belches.
BARTENDER is a comedy-drama about a popular local mixologist who runs for office in his small town. It’s also my challenge to myself to write a movie outside my comfort zone: one with no science fiction elements or high-concept gimmicks to propel the story. And it’s propulsion, sure enough, that has been lacking. In my darkest moments of plotting this thing I’m convinced I know nothing about writing, human nature, normal human speech, or how the everyday affairs of human beings are conducted. I feel as if I’m bluffing my way through everything.
And then other days… it’s better. A lot better. Experience has taught me the only way out is through. Push, work, WRITE until the work becomes the thing that occupies your mind instead of the fear.
Goal #2: Search for material
Goal achieved? YES
Itching to get a project into prep, this year I decided to put on my producer hat and start looking for screenplays. I didn’t find anything I wanted to option, but I made the effort and read a pile of scripts. (I’m still itchy. If you’re interested in sending me something, please read this to learn more.)
Goal #3: AFX training
Goal achieved? NO
This year I bought myself a nifty (and pricey) new MacBook with the intention of updating my knowledge of Adobe After Effects. The ability to create pro-level motion graphics and visual effects “in-house” would hugely expand the range of projects I can execute DIY-style. And, it’s never a bad thing to have more marketable skills. But I had an ambitious list of goals for 2017 and something had to give, so this one resides on the back-burner. I needed a new computer anyway, honey. Really.
Goal #4. Take a beginning improv class
Goal achieved? YES
Every Monday for 10 weeks this past year I stood up with a group of strangers, playing silly improv games with them and making up scenes on the spot. I said and did the first stupid-ass thing that came into my mind. Something different, to maybe blow some cobwebs out of the brain. Not as embarrassing as anticipated. Signing up for the intermediate class in January.
Goal #5. Other writing
Goal achieved? YES
OK, admittedly “other writing” is a pretty nebulous goal, so it’s easy to call this one a win. I did work on things besides BARTENDER OF THE YEAR in 2017… and even finished some of them. For instance, an 8-page short called FROG, which I’m pretty happy with. It’s a two-hander about a disabled intern who befriends the super-intelligent frog she meets one night in a university computer lab. It was written expressly for the Jameson First Shot contest and if it had won, the script would have been produced with actor Dominic West providing the voice of the frog. Alas, that didn’t happen, but FROG did quarter-final in the ScreenCraft Short Screenplay contest in September.
context is everything
One of the best writing experiences I had this past year happened at the day job, imagine that: Armstrong Creates, the agency I’ve worked at for mumble-mumble years now. I’m a generalist there, which means I might be retouching photos one day and cooking up an ad campaign the next. When a client (a manufacturer of corks for the wine industry) decided they wanted a concepts for a promotional video, I whipped up a script for a comedy sketch that takes place entirely inside a wine bottle. The wine and the cork are personified (think the Fruit of the Loom guys), best buddies who’ve grown very close over the years as the wine ages. They even sing a duet together. Like so many concepts, this pitch never made it out of the conference room. Too bad: I think it would have turned out well. Would have been an absolute blast to shoot, too. Given that, what exactly made this a good writing experience? Well, I got paid, for one thing. But more to the point: starting from zero I cranked out a completed script – one I was really happy with – in the matter of a couple of hours. It was exhilarating, and a welcome reminder that I don’t really need inspiration. I just need a deadline. So sure, my concept got rejected, but I went home happy that day. And the experience helped me shake off the torpor I’d been fighting much of the year.
Back at home and re-energized, I finally wrote up a first draft of ANAESTHESIA, another short film idea that I’d been kicking around for too many years. I’m also compiling notes for a new feature script, the one I’ll write once BARTENDER is in the bag. I don’t know the title yet. But it’s a sci-fi comedy about an alien invasion. Yeah, back to the comfort zone. I gotta be me, I guess.
6 tweets about COLOSSAL
- Given COLOSSAL’s fun premise, the film that unfolds is not quite the romp you might expect.
- COLOSSAL puts Kaiju monsters & indie-film slackers into a genre blender. Like many smoothies the result is a bit lumpy & faintly sour
- The lumps: Characters poorly defined. Plot threads meander. Some end abruptly and add little. Even the monster origin story is half-baked.
- The sour: characters aren’t typical indiefilm losers. Not clever/charismatic enough. The range is more like “pathetic” to “pathological”
- Premise pulls you through the rough patches, even as COLOSSAL turns darker. One scene evokes mass carnage without showing a drop of blood.
- And as stakes rise, COLOSSAL rallies. The film deploys its cleverest notion near the end, delivering a satisfying resolution.
I’m @giantspecks on Twitter. Occasionally Yelling About Movies #YabtM with my friends. Come say hi. Or yell back!
6 tweets about LIFE (the movie, not the existential dilemma)
- LIFE is not a bad movie, but it’s a B-movie. #LIFEmovie #rental
- So yeah, if you liked the trailer that’s what the movie is. No more, no less.
- There IS a long, lovely single-take intro that’s maybe the best zero-g scene ever in a space movie
- There’s also a major action scene toward the end that just doesn’t work very well, IMO
- But there’s tension/suspense, gross-outs & scares. Things zip along in a 10-little-Indians way that can’t help but remind you of ALIEN.
- The ending (SPOILER!) reminded me of the ’70s when big studio pictures more often than not went “tails” at the end instead of “heads”
I’m @giantspecks on Twitter. Occasionally Yelling About Movies #YabtM with my friends. Come say hi. Or yell back!
Random Blood Polka 