I have proper internet once more! Blogging will resume in 5, 4, 3, 2 … ah shit, there’s someone at the door
30 Days of Film – Day 3: “Happy Place” Film
The measure of a film that counts as one which makes me happy surely has to be one which provides all the comfort of day on the sofa, wrapped in a cosy blanket while the weather buckets down outside (er … this has nothing to do with the rain teeming down outside my house, or that I’m wearing a cardigan in 19ºC weather, honest).
Singing in the Rain has been there on those dark nights of the literal and soul destroying type.
There is very little to mention about this film that hasn’t already been said – the story is simple, the characters are charming, the set pieces are infectious and it is all done so very, very well. And who wouldn’t fall in love with a man running a hot fever and dancing in watery milk? [yeah, I'm not the only one with a bit of a martyr complex]
Honourable mentions
Office Space (dir. Mike Judge)
On the other end of the scale, films like these are what you need after those seriously fucking awful days in the office. Nothing, NOTHING in the history of cinema captures workplace frustration like a printer.
The Philadelphia Story (dir. George Cukor)
So back in the distant past when I was horribly dumped, I watched this for the first time, watched the extras with Katherine Hepburn and thought “Damn, she’s awesome. When I grow up, I want to be like her”.
Strong, smart and a take no bullshit kind of attitude, I think this is one of her greatest performances (well, it was written for her). Add Cary Grant and James Stewart to the mix (as well as the extraordinary Ruth Hussey whose acid tongue of awesomeness as James Stewart’s … or Virginia Weidler as scene stealing little sister, Dinah Lord – there are awesome women everywhere here) and you have one hell of a film to lift a girl out of the dumps.
30 Days of Film – Day 2: Underrated Film
It’s hard to classify what exactly makes a film underrated. Is it one that should have been acclaimed but was ignored by critics? A film badly handled by it’s distributors that it wasn’t marketed properly and so didn’t become a box office success? Or a film that should be in the popular imagination but isn’t?
I’ve gone for a film that hit me to the core, one that should have got far more acclaim than it did and should have picked up awards by the bucketful for it’s brilliance.
From my WRJ at the time:
I have to write this down before I forget.
I know I should be looking at the technical side and at some point.
I will look into this movie with a cool and analytical eye, but I cannot just drop what I have seen tonight.
I have no words that convey my emotion, other than devastatingly brilliant.
Or perhaps, just devastating.For a film about, what is in essence a political thriller about journalists in a war zone, I pulled right into the story, moved to tears and out right shocked even though I knew the fate of many of these characters.
Making fiction is one thing. But it will always pale to the truth and the urgency of this film.
It is spectacular. Not only a “message” film that indicts both the Indonesian and Australian governments (the latter in a fantastic final scene) but it manages to engage you without letting go. I remember being surprised to see that the writer was David Williamson, an Australian playwright that I could classify as a Roger Hall type – generally safe, middle class material that sells to it’s white, middle class audience … of course, I had forgotten that he also wrote the equally excellent Year of Living Dangerously another film that plays with the same subject matter and set in Indonesia (do yourself a favour and see it if you haven’t – it’s one of Peter Weir’s best films).
You’re probably going to hear this a lot with a good portion of the films I rate here but, I wish I could write a film this good.
Special mention
Death Proof (dir. Quentin Tarantino)
Can’t be bothered by the first half of this film, but from the second half when it clearly becomes a salute to Ozploitation V8 cinema, I am ALL in. Muscle cars, Zoe Bell playing a version of herself and a Tarantino diner scene – FUCK YEAH!
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (dir. Terry Gilliam)
We already know that I love the cinema of Terry Gilliam, yes, even The Adventures of Baron Munchausen …
There are times were cinema should be magical, it should make you gasp in wonder and release the same delight you had as a child playing with bubbles. It may sound ridiculous but the beautiful sense of play and fantasy during these modern times where that no longer seems to be valued, makes this film a precious one to me.
I love it. Plus, you know, Tom Waits as the Devil is a genius piece of casting.
Undercover Brother (dir. Malcolm D. Lee)
Anchorman, Zoolander and, to an extent, Hot Rod may get all the quoting love but Undercover Brother deserves it’s place in the cult pantheon. It’s a loving tribute to the Blaxploitation genre which, unlike Black Dynamite whose tongue in cheek attitude becomes tiresome and arrogant after the first 15 minutes, maintains it’s own sense of self with a decent storyline and a nice critique of modern politics (the literal brainwashing of General Boutell to a fried chicken outfit in this film is a direct critique of Colin Powell’s involvement with the Bush II era of politics).
30 Days of Film – Day 1: Best Film in 2010
I didn’t even need a second to think about it –
Among the many forgotten drafts sitting around for this blog is a rambly one about Inception. It is more or less a defence against the charge that the film is shallow – the characters aside from Cobb are 2 dimensional and it’s just a dumb action film dressed in philosophy undergraduate clothing. My retort to that is one long, loud, giant raspberry which is accompanied by the words “well fuck ya’s …”.
Fine. I think this film is brilliant on several levels – I buy the entire plot and the characters. At the moment I’m of the belief that the majority of the film happens within Cobb’s dream logic and so the other characters are in part his creations, sort of like the imprint and memories we carry of other people Ariadne is the give away and at the beginning, Sato is handling Cobb’s totem (ooh-er) so we establish that nothing we see is to be trusted.
I would have loved to have seen the script notes that Nolan must have received for this. If I ever meet him (and you know what? I’m going to. There, I’ve said it. One day I will meet Christopher Nolan as a peer … hopefully I won’t make a complete tit of myself at the time), I’m going to ask him. Apparently he pitched the idea to Warners in 2001 but then decided he needed to get a bit more experience first. I’m sure an element of that is true, but I’m also going to guess that someone looked at his pitch and laughed at him. So away he went, built up his reputation as a man who not only makes incredible, intelligent, commercial films but also as someone who can lure a patron into a seat. Once he convinced the money men, perhaps only then could he have made this film.
More importantly, this film shows that an audience will come to see an original feature in their droves. In a time where we seem to be getting nothing but adaptations and remakes, this can only be a good thing – when will we see studios take a similar leap of faith with other filmmakers? It can take about 2 years before things even get green-lit so I hope that 2013 will have some gems in store … That said, Mark Harris’ excellent GQ article on the state of modern cinema does have me worried if studios think that Inception‘s success is an anomaly.
Honourable mentions (get thee to a video store and rent them!):
Four Lions (dir. Chris Morris)
I wish wrote this film, but no Chris Morris (along with the stupidly talented Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong of Peep Show brilliance and Simon Blackwell from The Thick of It) did. Fuck the terrorists, fuck government scaremongering and fuck Mini Babybel!
Whip It (dir. Drew Barrymore)
Complex, three dimensional female characters? Check. Kick arse soundtrack? Check. The best representation of a mother and daughter relationship on screen that doesn’t appear to side with either party? Oh hell yes.
We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programme …
So over at Sassy is Convenient, Bel and Lou are laying out some film action via their latest project – 30 Days of Film.
I saw this and thought “I’ll do what every good writer does, and steal it!”
According to the ladies of Sass – the days are laid out as such:
1. The best film you saw during the last year
2. The most underrated film
3. A film that makes you really happy
4. A film that makes you sad
5. Favourite love story in a film
6. Favourite made for TV film
7. The most surprising plot twist or ending
8. A film that you’ve seen countless times
9. A film with the best soundtrack
10. Favourite classic film
11. A film that changed your opinion about something
12. A film that you hate
13. A film that is a guilty pleasure
14. A film that no one would expect you to love
15. A character who you can relate to the most
16. A film that you used to love but now hate
17. A film that disappointed you the most
18. A film that you wish more people would’ve seen
19. Favourite film based on a book/comic/etc.
20. Favourite film from your favourite actor/actress
21. Favourite action film
22. Favourite documentary
23. Favourite animation
24. That one awesome film idea that still hasn’t been done yet
25. The most hilarious film you’ve ever seen
26. A film that you love but everyone else hates
27. A film that you wish you had seen in theaters
28. Favourite film from your favourite director
29. A film from your childhood
30. Your favourite film of all time
Now having done the 15 films in 15 minutes meme, I’m going to try and be a bit more academic this time around and treat the project like the work and research journals that I would have to do for school. It’s been a while since I’ve done one (this blog is meant to be an extension of that idea but, well, life has got in the way).
Time to re-kickstart this puppy*
*don’t kick puppies.
Beyond The Pie
So after yesterday’s angsty post, I did what I do best- sought out food to drown, or rather consume, my sorrows.
Unfortunately good food is not the easiest to find or remember in a rage, so I have decided to add to my procrastination and collect my cheap eat exploits over at Beyond The Pie … No doubt the non writing angst will go that way too …
So My Visa Expired
I’ve been home and I’ve moved again – from the shaky isles of NZ to the flood plains of Australia … wherever I go nature seems to have left her mark be it the volcanic ash that almost stopped my flight back into London; the snow that almost stopped my flight out of London; the floods that engulfed my home town to be before I arrived or the earthquake that shook the mountains of my homeland after I left.
I wonder what the universe is trying to tell me?
In the meantime, I am slowly finding my way in a new town.The writing has mostly been for other people’s projects and has been plentiful and my own projects seem to have taken on a new life when I have time. As usual, I am also trying to find a way to convince people that I would be the most awesome employee in the whole friggin planet™. It’s only week 2 but the hunt has not been going so well … at times I rue my decision to leave Beloved in dirty London town when my visa expired – he’s so far away and skype, when only one party has a camera, doesn’t cut it. Today I’ve fought a bank, wordpress eating half of this post and my own self doubt.
Have to count the good things, have to remember it’s only been two weeks.
Dear Universe, please keep your fingers crossed for me, I need some help picking myself up and dusting myself off now and then. Or a cuddle. I could really do with one of those too.
Step Into The Real World
The travels are almost over, I’ve made it home. Back to the mountains, back to the sea, back to the howling southerly that cuts deep through your bones (I had genuinely forgot that it does that).
I’m still in limbo, somewhat – my move across the ditch is fast arriving and I have managed to distract myself with the joyful thoughts of nesting and working my way through boxes in my mother’s house filled with forgotten 21st and (my brother’s first) wedding gifts that will furnish my new (rented) home quite nicely.
The most exciting thing is not to have all my books and DVDs in one country, but to finally have a single place where I can work. My very own office that doesn’t need to be moved means I can finally have a desktop computer once more, a chair (oh the hours of procrastinating that will be taking up by finding the right chair), a cork board, a bookshelf to keep my growing pile of notebooks …
I’m not going to kid myself and say that by having a settled work area will mean that I will find a routine I’ll stick to. I think I have to abandon the idea that I will be of the Ronald Harwood style of writers who gets up, sits at his desk and writes like it is a normal job. I find myself in the Graham Linehan, Dean Craig camp where you procrastinate forever, realise how long you’ve been procrastinating, panic and then write everything in a flood of words. I will have to come to terms that for me, the magic seems to happen between the hours of 10.30pm and 6am.
Speaking of which … it is warm up time*. Yes, the magic needs warm up time.
* Warm up time: 1. Opening Final Draft. 2. Opening the file 3. Rewriting a line of dialogue from the last time I opened it 4. Staring at the screen for a really long time (about 2 minutes) 5. Checking the clock to see if 20 minutes has passed yet. 6. Repeating steps 4 and 5 for about 20 minutes. 7. Quickly checking facebook as something important needs to be looked up again. 8. Getting distracted on facebook. 9. Returning to document. 10. Remembering that I didn’t actually remember to check that thing I was looking for on facebook. 11. Opening the thing I needed on facebook, reading it, closing the link and going back to facebook where I get distracted again. 12. Thinking “so I don’t lose focus again, I’ll quickly check Twitter and the feed reader” 13. about 2 hours later, I finish with the feed reader, see the clock and panic at the lack of productivity. 14. Put a DVD on to distract myself from distracting myself online. 15. Magic almost begins. 16. Pee. 17. Repeat step 12. 18. See that it’s almost 10pm and realise I have done fuck all and this screenplay is due the next day. 19. Magic begins.
Explaining It To Your Parents
Today, a wonderful bit of linky courtesy of Graham Linehan’s tweet: Lernert and Sander’s How I Explain It To My Parents.
Aside from the excruciating memories that I’m sure this will bring to most people of explaining something, that you have spent hours of your time and passion on. to your parents who may be bemused about the whole thing; the films are a beautiful study of characters.
One room, two or three people talking about art. And yet, here we have complex back story that gently edges it’s way into the foreground while all parties skirt around how this creation of art is shaded by our upbringing.
The parents are all seated on chairs that are ever so slightly higher than that of their child’s, forcing both players to slowly fall from slightly equal status, back into their old roles …
My favourite is the exchange is between visual artist Arno Coenen and his father, especially the visual tableau when … well, you’ll see it soon.
15 Movies, 15 Minutes. Memes for your procrastinating mind
I’ve got a couple of posts lined up talking about more things like figuring my way through character work and other serious matters which are, in reality are me procrastinating over a new outline that is WAY overdue.
So, in that frame of mind, here’s the result of some procrastinating I’ve been doing when I should be finishing an outline that is now ridiculously overdue … (shut up).
This one is a variation on the 15 albums in 15 minutes that has been doing the rounds on Facebook lately. The rules are as pretty simple – You have 15 minutes in which to come up with 15 films that have left an indelible impression on you in one way or another.
1. Return of the Jedi
It’s not about the Ewoks! Honest! It’s all about the Vader vs. Luke swordfight in front of the Emperor … and you know, the whole battling the idea you will one day be like your parents, dead fathers thing too … ok, no, lightsabers battling in and out of the shadows is pretty fricken cool!
2. Infernal Affairs
This completely and utterly displaced the above as my favourite film in the world, ever.
Forget that I can’t speak Cantonese and am reliant upon sometimes inaccurate subtitling, I find this film entrancing. It’s story is elegant – two men, two undercover lives, both trying to expose the other; it’s pacing is a hundred miles per second – this is one film that isn’t going to wait for the audience to catch up; it’s characters are complex – with enough back story to satisfy a very good prequel (the sequel, not so much).
I so very much wish I could write this well.
3. The Muppet Movie
I’m still surprised that the video cassette of this (recorded off the telly, of course) still works. I played it so often, I can still sing most of the songs.
The Muppets television show had a bigger impact (another list for another time), but the film is notable for beginning my love of Steve Martin and Mel Brookes.
4. Time Cop
Don’t think that this isn’t a stupid film. Time travel that defies the laws of physics, JVCD doing the splits as many times as possible. It’s also the film that was playing on the telly the night I decided to hang out with my friend Helen and her, then flatmate, Sam. Beloved (as he was soon to be known) and I had met on several occasions and had started a “take the piss” antipodean banter with each other (he’s Australian).
That particular evening Helen and I were in town trying to find a farewell party, piked when we found the place packed and returned home to watch movies. Flu ridden future Beloved was already on the sofa trying to kill germs with whisky, we watched films, Time Cop was on TV after the DVD was finished, I should’ve gone home before it started but Helen insisted I crash on the couch instead. I did and watched the appalling badness that is Time Cop, while drinking whisky. Banter turned to flirting. And flirting turned into nothing. Dude, he had the flu!
Anyway, mid way through the week, he has a spare ticket to Dylan Moran and invites me. I possibly mistake it as a date … and here we all are, battles with immigration policy, an MA, a new career in film and awesomeness that makes up for the hard times later.
It’s a rubbish film, though.
5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
This film scared the bejebus out of me. My father would play the little chords on a casiotone and point to the sky to tell me that aliens were coming. I would scream and hide under the bed for a couple of hours.
He thought it was hilarious. Dick.
6. E.T.
This is the first film I actually remember seeing in cinema. My brother took me and I cried the whole way home because E.T. left his friend behind. He consoled me by buying fish and chips.
This could be where my abandonment issues stem from. Also, fish and chips as a comfort food.
I haven’t been able to watch the film without being a wet mop of tears afterwards. It was playing in the background of an eatery a couple of weeks back and I saw that final hug goodbye and got all choked up (I can’t even bring myself to find a you tube clip – I’d need a cuddle afterwards).
Damn you, Spielberg!
7. Closer
Possibly the best break up film ever. In fact one of the films I hired the day after I was unceremoniously dumped out of a four year relationship (the rest included Shaun of the Dead and Stepford Wives). What does it prove? The world is filled with manipulative, cowardly arseholes and good people get crushed, no matter how nice they are.
8. Lost in Translation
And this would be the film that I sat through and realised my, then 2 year, relationship was over … stuck with it another two years after that – see above.
9. The Birds
I love Hitchcock and I’m currently working through his interviews with François Truffaut – watching the films first and then reading what he says. It’s a brilliant way to study a filmmaker.
I saw this as a kid, well I have images of it and even though Rear Window was the film I obsessed over in my early 20s, this one seems to have had the biggest impact on me as a writer.
Brooding, foreboding and guaranteed to make you a mite nervous when a flock of birds congregate at dusk.
10. Ghostbusters
Most kids get taken to animated films by their parents or ones about the young boy or girl overcoming some obstacle to become a hero.
Meh.
My father and I tried. We went to the Carebear’s Movie and almost died of embarrassment when it came to the audience participation bit (everyone stood on their feet and said “we care”). After that fateful day, we agreed over a Fillet O’Fish to NEVER DO THAT AGAIN.
Cue: Ghostbusters! This film is aces. FACT.
It also causes me to type in block capitals.
11. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Possibly one of the first films I could quote end to end. And a bigger influence on my writing than first I realised.
12. Labyrinth
There are muppets, Escher’s stairs and David Bowie. Tight pants, spectacular mullet, I don’t care. It’s David freakin’ Bowie!
Oh and this:
13. Brazil
I have a soft spot for Terry Gilliam’s films. They are magical, strange and fantastic in the truest sense of the word. Every inch of the screen has meaning, every shot is important and the story layered like the most delicious cake imaginable.
When I daydream, Gilliam is at the helm.
I will work for him some day. Some how.
14. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Oddly enough my in to Stoppard, Beckett and Pinter was through this film. I had no idea who Stoppard was before it came out, but my friend Erica recommended it on the back of what a Shakespeare geek I was.
Tim Roth and Gary Oldman will always be the best Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to me forever more, however as I’ve developed as a writer, I’ve moved further and further away from Stoppard. It’s all part of the learning process sometimes we understand that our gods are merely men who aren’t always perfect. That’s a whole other blog post – one sitting in the drafts folder for the last month …
15. Hamlet (Branagh’s full length)
This is by no means the best Shakespeare on film (that would be Longcraine’s Richard III with Ian McKellen or Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara); nor is it the best Hamlet (a tie between Derek Jacobi and David Tennant); nor is it Branagh’s best filmed Shakespeare (Henry V would be, by far, the winner and I’d put his Much Ado before it too) … But, it takes some cojones to do a virtually uncut film of Hamlet and then film it on 70mm stock.
Branagh over enunciates, Patrick Doyle’s score is irritating (“ooh, this is important” or “you will find this poignant, now!”), some of the casting is a horrible mess and yet again, Ophelia is just a bit loony (the best Ophelia is still Julia Stiles in Michael Almereyda’s film). And yet, I protested on seeing the cut version on a school trip and held out to see it in full for four glorious hours. Four times.
It also has the best poster for any Shakespeare film or stage performance.
Obviously the time limit means that this will never be a definitive list (The Godfather, A Clockwork Orange and The Searchers are some of the more notable omissions off the list), but interesting none the less. Anyone else care for a little procrastination?
