Movie Talk
Occasionally, a genre film comes along which stays firmly rooted in the conventions of the genre while messing with the viewers preconceptions and expectations. Usually the attempts are clumsy and self-indulgent. Paul Verhoeven’s Zwartboek, or Black Book, is anything but.
I’m a sucker for good war movies, and Black Book leaped off the shelf at me. I wasn’t put off by the fact that it was a Dutch film so much as it was a Paul Verhoeven movie, he of wretched Showgirls infamy. But I was intrigued by the logline: Rachel Stein, a Dutch Jew, tries to survive in Nazi-occupied Holland. OK, strong female lead, Nazis, unusual location–worth the $3 rental and a few hours.
A gripping two hours it was. The story follows familiar terrain: Rachel Stein, a Jew, sees her family mowed down by Nazis while trying to flee German-occupied Holland. She’s rescued by the Dutch Resistance, who recruit the plucky and beautiful Rachel–now Ellis–to seduce a Nazi SS officer and gain information that would free a group of captured Resistance fighters. Unfortunately for Ellis, she’s fallen in love with her German officer, who not only figures out she’s a Jew, but who risks his life for her. Meanwhile, both sides become increasingly brutal as the end of the war approaches, and the bodies pile up.
Read MoreLast weekend I took my daughter to see the animated movie Ratatouille, and I was blown away. I’d expected a light PG romp about Disneyfied animals who have crazy adventures in Paris. I didn’t realize I was going to be treated to a meditation on creativity and artistic expression in a subtle and highly mature way.
For those who haven’t seen it, Ratatouille is the story of Remy, a rat born with a sophisticated palate. Unfortunately rats aren’t picky about their food–they eat to live, after all, not live to eat, and his finicky tastebuds are misunderstood by his rat-pack. In a series of events, he’s separated from the pack and forced to survive on the streets of Paris. There he befriends a talentless pot-scrubber and transforms him into a master chef by controlling him via his hair (don’t ask, just see the movie).
Read MoreYesterday, Therese and I dished about the newest Harry Potter flick. While we both gave it the thumbs up, we did have a few nits. Mostly we were pleased with the way the filmmakers managed to streamline an unwieldy story into a swift two-hour movie while retaining plot coherence. Today, we continue our analysis.
Kathleen: The Umbridge character is really worth dissecting for writers who want tips on creating memorable villains. Rowling took the mantra of contrasts to the -nth degree here, but it paid off, imo. Umbridge is a sadist with a girlish giggle. The pink walls with kitty-plates, the tea laced with poison—and every scene she’s in, there’s a sense of dread. No one’s going to forget her.
I really loved the Luna Lovegood character, too. She bugged me a bit in the book, but she’s the “wise fool” archetype, and Evanna Lynch was pitch perfect. I have a feeling we’ll find out that nargles really do exist in Book 7!
I just want to say one more thing about pacing. I guess I didn’t have a problem with it, the climax excepted. I thought it was wise of director David Yates to stay away from the cutsey stuff, hew to the story and keep the tension rising. After four HP movies, everyone should be on board with what the wizarding world is all about. I mean, Peter Jackson didn’t spend any time grounding the viewer into a retelling Middle Earth in Return of the King.
Therese: The movie felt choppy to me in parts. I could see how someone who hadn’t read the book would view the Grawp cutaways as intrusive and even irrelevant, for example. I guess it’s one of the disadvantages of sticking too closely to the book, without having the advantage of tossing in some internal dialogue to make sense of things. But there are some things you just can’t leave out if you’re going to tell Rowling’s tale. I was glad they left in Snape’s flashback but sorry to see they left out the bit about Sirius giving Harry that (never discovered) two-way mirror. I was kind of hoping that would play some strange role to come, but the absence of it in the movie almost deletes that possibility. I’ve read that Rowling is often consulted about those things.
KB: I agree about Grawp. I found myself getting annoyed that he was even there, until I remembered that he played a crucial role in getting rid of Umbridge. You’re so right that the filmmakers have to be really careful. The power of Rowling is that the most minor detail can become a major plot-point later. Which is, I suspect, why they kept Kreacher in. Now we know the sourpuss house elf is going to play a big element later.
TW: I think you’re right. And, now that I have the chapter titles beneath my hungry little fingers, I think the mirror WILL play a role later. Hee. I guess they’ll have to fix that in the movie version.
Read MoreWe’ve neglected them, but no longer. Movie Analyses are back! This time, Therese and I managed to go see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and being the screenplay buffs that we are, we’ve dissected the movie for its storytelling aspects and overall merits. If you’re sick of Pottermania, we can’t help you this week. Here goes.
Kathleen: Hurrah! I finally got to see a summer popcorn movie and it was a doozy. I adored Harry Potter and Order of Phoenix. I thought it had the right combination of action, storytelling, and compelling cinematography. And it didn’t hurt that the cast was stellar in terms of acting. These movies are getting better with each offering, imo, which is really hard in a series where the norm is to get bogged down in too many characters and subplots *coughPirates3cough*. What were your initial impressions?
Therese: Forget Pirates 3, what about Spiderman 3 – yowza. Trim a plot, please. But about Harry: I was delightfully surprised with the movie. In general the film versions of JK Rowling’s tomes have disappointed me, but this one was spot on–a great visual supplement to the book itself. I wouldn’t want to be going to see this flick without having had the benefit of the prior read, however. I think I’d find the pace breakneck, the plot somewhat scattery and the atmosphere uber-bleak. Which is why we recommend reading the book first, right?
Read MoreI’d decided to take a break from television following the climax of all my favorite reality TV shows. But when I needed some couch time the other night, I flipped on the tube to find–surprise–another reality TV show, one I’d heard a little about: On The Lot.
Haven’t heard of it? Here’s a blip about the show from Fox’s website:
ON THE LOT, executive-produced by Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg, will give aspiring filmmakers from around the world the chance to earn a $1-million development deal at DreamWorks…this reality-competition series features a cast of undiscovered filmmakers who will compete to win the support of the show’s viewers, as their fate will be decided by a weekly audience vote.
I was ready to turn the channel when they started talking about loglines–something they’d covered in the previous episode–and something we’ve talked up here at WU.
Drat! Should I be watching OTL? Will I learn something here? I convinced myself that it wasn’t my laziness keeping me on the couch; I had to watch the show for potentially educational purposes. In the end, I learned not so much, as it turns out. The episode wasn’t about writing; it was about taking someone else’s writing and turning it into a movie.
The next day I went over to TV Guide’s site and found this review by Surfer Girl about the logline episode I’d missed:
…as I learned from Project Greenlight, a good director and a good screenwriter are not necessarily one and the same. Having this batch of 50 wannabe filmmakers try to take a logline (and couldn’t they have called it a plotline for us nonindustry people out here watching the show?) and turn it into a story doesn’t necessarily demonstrate their directorial talents. Sure, you have to have some creativity to be a director, but screenwriters exist for a reason.
Well, yeah, they do. Which spins me, finally, to my point. Screenwriters are undervalued and nearly invisible in Hollywood.
Just to prove this (not to shame anyone), let’s play a game. I’m going to throw some names out there. See if you can marry movie with writer. Here goes:
The Flick:
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
Titanic
Goodfellas
James and the Giant Peach
When Harry Met Sally
Misery
Dances with Wolves
ET
Amadeus
Malcolm X
Schindler’s List
Million Dollar Baby
Pretty Woman
Blue Velvet
The Bic:
Melissa Mathison
Nicholas Pileggi
Charlie Kaufman
William Goldman
Michael Blake
Paul Haggis
Nora Ephron
David Lynch
Steven Zaillian
Spike Lee
Peter Shaffer
J.F. Lawton
James Cameron
Karey Kirkpatrick
And here’s how things should’ve paired up…
Read MoreYou missed me, admit it. But I’ve been busy digging out from a snowstorm that stole our power for 12 hours and recovering from some blasted croupy-cough thing. When the lights finally came back, I learned about the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Ironically, the feeling foremost in my mind and today’s blog post focus are the same: compassion.
I finally watched Babel this weekend. I’d been reluctant to after hearing blah reports about the film from others, and then the Netflix cover started gathering dust; I had to either see it or return it unseen–something I hate doing. I reminded myself that Babel garnered some impressive nods and made myself watch it. I’m glad I did.
Babel is a thinking movie; you’ll be mulling over plot points and characterizations for days. And you’ll be wondering how screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga and director Alejandro González Iñárritu did it–how they made you care about their characters: Moroccan children who shoot at a tourist bus; a mute-deaf Japanese girl who tries to get her dentist to feel her up; an icy American wife whose behavior toward her husband seems borderline-cruel; an illegal-alien nanny who takes two children into Mexico without their parents’ consent and later leaves them alone, scared, dehydrated in the desert.
How the creators did it isn’t such a mystery though; they succeeded by making their jaded characters fully textured, real-seeming, and far more than the sum of their bad-karma moments. It’s something Hollywood seems particularly good at, making us love the anti-hero. Maybe it’s because a good actor can communicate layers of complex meaning with a single glance. The actors of Babel were certainly of the finest caliber, and by film’s end I was loving nearly all the characters, despite their appallingly poor judgment and neuroses.
A little more about the film’s basis:
Read MoreFinally, it was my turn for a movie in my family’s Netflix queue, and good luck that my movie arrived over the holiday weekend. I’d been wanting to see Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette for some time. Turns out I could’ve kept waiting.
For historical film buffs like me, it was something of a mixed bag. I will say this: the look of it is fabulous. It’s as frothy and baroque as a Fragonard painting. Kirsten Dunst is appealing as Marie, and Jason Schwartzman as the hapless Louis XVI looked the part. Coppola managed to capture the odd flavor of France’s decaying ancien regime: hedonism coupled to ennui, which brought about an attitude of unforgivable blindness to the country’s political powderkeg.
Despite the movie’s strong visual appeal, it lacked a story. So the whole thing was about as satisfying as one of those Laduree pastries Coppola managed to cram into every shot: it looked great, but lacked substance. Marie Antoinette arrives in Versailles an artless teen who loves puppies; as France’s Dauphine she becomes a young woman who loves puppies and lots of clothes; then there’s a muddled third act where the loss of one of her children and a lover make her grow up, except we really don’t see any of that. Coppola’s fond of long reaction shots, and even a great actor like Dunst can’t tell a whole story with facial reactions. So by the time the Revolution arrives on their doorstep at Versailles, you don’t really feel any sense of pity or empathy for Marie. She–and her husband–remained stunted adolescents throughout the whole movie.
Read MoreThis past Saturday marked the 216th birth-versary of musical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Recently, I watched the special edition director’s cut of one of my favorite flicks – the fantastical, academy award winning movie Amadeus. With 20 extra minutes of never-before-released footage and a 2nd disc dedicated to interviews on the making of the movie, this music/film aficionado was in heaven. The director’s notes – as always – proved fascinating, but I was especially struck with what the filmmakers had to say about casting characters.
Casting for Amadeus was an arduous process. At one point producer Saul Zaentz tallied the number of actors they’d auditioned at 1,263 – and they weren’t yet finished. Said director Milos Forman:
Of course you start with the main characters and then you go down. But down doesn’t mean less important. I think the small parts are as important as the main characters. In a certain way, I pay more attention to casting the small, bit parts because they will have to be …(pauses)…once you see them, you will never forget them. Nothing drives me more crazy when I am watching a film and somebody appears, then disappears and then reappears. And he looks like the guy who was just there, and I’m asking ‘Who is he? Who is she?’
Distinctive. Those secondary characters must be distinctive. But how to make it happen?
Read MoreAt WU, we feel it’s never too early to begin planning where you’re going to spend your 2007 moviegoing dollar. So many decisions. Do you wait until the film comes out on DVD, or do you bite the bullet, say goodbye to a $20 bill (factoring in snacks), and hit the theatre?
Fortunately MSN News has published a list of some of the most anticipated movies of 2007. Fantasy and action will rank high this year, as will superheroes.
Another unfortunate trend for risk-adverse Hollywood is the insistence on churning out sequels. Don’t get me wrong, sequel quality has been on the rise in the last few years. I’ll most certainly haul my butt to the theatre for Pirates of the Carribbean 3, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and possibly Shrek the Third. Why? Because these movies delivered, time and again, and I didn’t feel like I was wasting my money seeing them in the theatre. But do we really need another National Treasure 2? Mr. Bean’s Holiday? I’m sure somewhere in Hollywood, someone’s taking a meeting to produce Garfield 3: Catacular.
Read MoreYesterday Therese and I dished about the totalitarian-themed film V for Vendetta (just a short scroll down). Our talk yesterday examined the role of the two protagonists Evey and V. Today we move our analysis to the way the filmmakers handled the controversial theme, which is that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.
Kath: This movie was pretty unapologetic on the political front, no?
Therese: Yes–the total control; it was frightening because it’s also plausible. I also thought the parallels to 9-11 were eerie. Their “chosen date” was November 5th, their goal to destroy a government building to make a statement: Blowing up a building can change the world.
Read MoreOne of the films of 2006 that Therese and I wanted to analyze for WU was V for Vendetta. Based on a graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, the film version was produced under the guidance of Matrix-creators, the Wachowski Brothers, and directed by one of their acolytes, James McTeigue. Before release it generated lots of blog buzz and plenty of controversy. We were expecting a quirky unboxed film loaded with symbolism and kick-butt special effects. Boy, did it deliver this, and in spades.
As always, we watch films through the lens of the novelist. Read on for our observations!
Kath: Man, this movie had me on a rollercoaster. I still don’t know if I loved or hated this film, but it definitely stayed with me for a while. One of the things I was entranced by was the Soviet-style fascist backdrop mapped over ye olde cheery London Town (disclosure: I didn’t read the graphic novel). The filmmakers keep the pace blistering while leaning on the meta-narrative pretty heavily, which is how fear makes people give up their basic rights for safety, but it’s a pact with the devil. A Hobbesian world run amok. What did you think? Was the world building successful for you?
Therese: Oh, yes. It reminded me a little of that TV show that was on a few years back with Jessica Alba, Dark Angel. The world has gone to hell in a futuristic handbasket (an electrified one, no doubt) and its up to our hero and heroine to save the little bits of it they can.
Read MoreIt doesn’t seem right to be doing a movie analysis without the intrepid Therese tossing her trenchant observations into the fray, but I’ve just seen the latest offering in the ultimate boxed franchise movie, James Bond, and I wanted to share my thoughts while they’re still fresh. Casino Royale could have been a royale dud. Instead, the producers and writers took the best of Bond and unboxed the suave spy who was beginning to wear as thin as the vermouth in his martini. The result is fresh and entertaining, if not quite plausible in many, many instances. But plausibility is not why one watches a Bond movie. Casino Royale is a lesson on how to take a stale genre mired in predictability and breathe new life into it.
They start by tinkering with the character of Bond himself. Purists were up in arms that Bond could be imagined as anything other than talk, dark, and handsome. In other words, boring as old coats. As played by Nordic blond Daniel Craig, the new ‘old’ Bond has gone back to his roots the way Ian Fleming initially wrote him: cold and ruthless, a feral killing machine.
Read MoreI still remember the day, years ago now, when I sat with some critique partners and one of them said, “The little voices came to me last night. I was sitting there, eating dinner, when all of a sudden some chick inside my mind started talking about her problems.” I was fascinated and a little freaked out by what she told us. It was like tuning a crackling radio, she explained, trying to listen closely to what this imaginary woman told her about her troubles. “Come in, Houston, come in,” she joked. I wondered if she might be mentally ill.
Until it happened to me, months later. My characters, it seems, don’t like to “talk” to me over dinner; they prefer the shower. And then they talk and talk and talk…
I’ve taken a mini break from my wip. I’m not sure why the enthusiasm drained so suddenly from me for my story, but I have a few suspicions: my vacation, coming down with a pretty rough case of strep throat, having to give up my hopes of reaching the 50K mark for NaNo, Christmas shopping demands, etc… As I’m sure many of you know, it can get a little depressing–not writing–but at the same time I think it’s important sometimes to listen to what your body and mind are telling you: Take a break. Just do it. Listening to this voice, allowing my muse to refill her writerly gas tank, may even prevent a more serious case of writer’s block, who knows. Bottom line is the same, though: I’d willingly–almost gratefully–put myself in the equivalent of a writer’s semi-comatose state.
Or so I thought until the little voices woke this past weekend.
Read MoreWriter Unboxed had the honor recently of interviewing one of the motion-picture industry’s best advisors, Michael Hauge. Not only is Michael a consultant for most of the top film studios in Hollywood, he’s also a highly sought-after speaker and author with plenty to offer screenwriters and novelists alike. His new book, Selling your Story in Sixty Seconds, is bound to become a classic; Hauge’s previous book,Writing Screenplays That Sell, is now in its thirtieth printing for HarperCollins, and is a definitive reference book for the film and television industries. His seminar with Chris Vogler (author of The Writer’s Journey) called The Hero’s 2 Journeys, and is now available on DVD and CD through Michael’s website.
If you missed parts 1 and 2 of our interview with him, click HERE and HERE now to read them. Then come on back for the conclusion where we try to pin him down about how you’ll know a manuscript is ready to market…and when there’s more work to do!
Part 3: Interview with Michael Hauge
Q: You said that it’s very important to get your script or manuscript to professional caliber before you even think about pitching. How do you know when it’s ready? When everyone else says it is?
MH: Yep.
Q: Do you recommend you have a certain number of people tell you that it’s finished?
MH: Yep.
Q: Is there a magic number?
MH: Nope.
Q: Maybe something you feel in your gut?
MH: I don’t trust people’s guts when it comes to their own work, because they’re so eager to get their work out there that they’ll be blind to its weaknesses. So the number of positive responses you need from your support group depends on who those people are. If you belong to a writers’ group, or if you have friends who are knowledgeable about screenwriting or publishing, and if you know those people will be honest with you, I’d say you’ve got to get a positive response from at least five. However, if you’re working with a good script consultant, or a professional editor, you should be able to trust that person to know when something is ready to go.
But even then, with writers I’ve been coaching through the whole process, I still insist that we show the work to at least five knowledgeable people. I’ll help get it to people I know in the film business, just to get their feedback. Or sometimes I’ll have clients – the ones who have reached a high level of skill – swap critiques with each other. Because I know that after working extensively on a project, even I may get so close to it that I’ll miss spotting weaknesses or ways to improve it.
Q: What do you wish screenwriters or novelists would “get” about writing, and about the business?
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