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Friday, October 05, 2007

confessions of a movie lover

I never really liked Michael Mann's "Heat." Yeah, the climactic shoot-out is a pretty amazing piece of work, but otherwise -- eh. The much vaunted face-off between Pacino and DeNiro is a non-starter, Pacino's "great ass" speech just makes me embarassed, and the rest of the film is strangely inert while the air of existential ennui that seems to permeate everything never really coalesces into anything meaningful. It's a great looking movie -- I'm not sure Michael Mann is capable of shooting a bad looking frame of film -- but not one that ever connected with me, despite the praise lavished on it.

For my next trick: Why "Broken Arrow" is a better film than either "Speed" or "Independence Day."

Categories: movies
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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

oiran around the block

"Sakuran" is a punk-pop mash-up of high visual style and historical drama about a strong-willed woman (Anna Tsuchiya of "Kamikaze Girls" fame, who just generally rocks) trying to find love among the brothels of 19th century Edo's infamous Yoshiwara district. It shares a certain heightened reality and day-glo sensibility with some other recent Japanese films that I've enjoyed such as "Survive Style 5+," "Funky Forest," and "Otakus In Love," but with a far more accessible storyline. Also of note, it's adapted from her own manga of the same name by Moyoco Anno, wife of Hideaki Anno, creator/director of "Evangelion." Probably not a coincidence that she's also acted in both "Funky Forest" and "Otakus In Love," then. Anyways, Twitch has got a good review, and the trailer will probably give you an idea if this is up your alley.

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Saturday, September 08, 2007

so, enough of the silence then

I won't bore you with the whys, but I'm back and here's what's been entertaining me lately.

Otherwise, I've just completed the first draft of my zombie screenplay and it's something of a sprawling mess. The funny thing is that, as a writer, this is not necessarily a bad thing; it's frustrating that a first draft is seldom the last, but until you have that first draft it's difficult to see the path that will lead you to the final version. Given that I'm operating under some time constraints, I decided to show the first draft to a few close friends so I could gather their feedback as early as possible in the process, but as Joss Whedon has remarked, showing other people your early drafts is akin to them seeing you in your underwear.

After feedback from friends and a couple more drafts, I've polished up my novella "Box, A Nightmare" to the point where I'm happy with it. Trying to place the story, however, has been more difficult than I expected. I know that short fiction in print (particularly genre fiction) is an exceedingly rare breed nowdays and novellas are published about as often as a unicorn-sighting turns up, but I'd expected that online would be a different story -- apparently the joke is on me. It seems that most online publications have word limits. I'm not sure why -- the cost of publishing a 30K word story in print might be prohibitive, but online those costs shouldn't apply -- but most of the places I've looked have roughly the same submission guidelines as a print magazine. Maybe it's an issue of editorial bandwidth? Now that I've got a draft of the screenplay done, I'll investigate further.

I also received extensive feedback on the novel from an editor at a major publisher; we've since exchanged a couple rounds of e-mail, and I'm now waiting to hear back from him concerning the next step. Regardless of how things work out, his feedback was extremely useful and will most likely result in another draft of the book.

Yes, that's a lot of drafts still to be done on various things. Sigh. Writing is fun!

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Sunday, September 03, 2006

feast for crows

My apologies for the long absence. For various reasons beyond my control, posting has had to take a back seat to a number of other things lately. Hopefully the situation will settle down in the next few weeks, but in the meanwhile I'll post whenever I have a chance (and anything interesting to say).

So, that mea culpa out of the way, I did finish my novella "Box, A Nightmare" and received some great feedback on it from my usual reading circle of friends (thanks, everyone). I'll do some revising and then start seeing about getting it placed; given the somewhat odd "fairy tale meets horror story" tone and the novella length, I'm guessing my best bet will be online, but we'll see what happens. It's very much its own thing -- and everyone has had a somewhat different response to it -- but that makes me perversely happy given the story I set out to tell.

According to my agent, the novel is also getting some positive response. Nothing anywhere even in the galactic neighborhood of a done deal, but positivie all the same.

Myself and Gray will be flying out to LA in October for the 5th Annual Screenwriting Expo. Cool deal. We'll be taking classes and seminars led by people like Ron Shusett, Leigh Whannell, Brad Bird, and a whole bunch of other industry types. One of the highlights looks to be an all day class taught by Tim Minear where the class collaborates on an "original" script for "Angel" or "Firefly." Even better, my friend Christa will be flying in from Austria a few days early so we can spend some time together -- given the transatlantic distance, we only get to see each other every few years.

For the record, I saw Snakes On A Plane opening weekend -- well, Sunday of opening weekend. I couldn't decide if it was stupidly entertaining or entertainingly stupid, but I had a good time. Still, I really wished they'd pushed the envelope some more. Why specifically introduce a character who is a kickboxer, and not have him kickbox snakes? Heck, why not cast Tony Jaa in the role? That alone would have made the movie a must-see. It's too bad Ronnie Yu left the project (supposedly in a disagreement over the fate of Samuel Jackson's character) as I think he might have really pushed the film into gonzo classic territory.

Meanwhile, Labor Day weekend has been an excellent opportunity to distract myself by getting caught up on a number of other movies:

I liked The Eye, thought Bangkok Dangerous was fun if somewhat forgettable, but the Pang Brothers' newest film -- Re-Cycle -- is an absolute must see. It's difficult to go into any detail about the plot without giving away most of the fun, but suffice to say that what starts as a standard J-Horror take on an idea that Stephen King couldn't help but admire then descends into the realm of nightmares, turns on a dime into a twisted sort-of take on "Neverending Story" and "Labyrinth," then manages a few more tonal and plot twists past that. It's a movie with some great direction and music, but it's also an uncommonly thought-provoking film in a number of respects. The only...well, I guess "catch," is that there's a certain aspect of the plot that could prove unsettling to some people. I think if you approach it with an open mind -- and an appreciation of the underlying engine that drives horror films -- then it's fine, but it's definitely an interesting choice on the part of the Pangs.

Between Re-Cycle, Shutter, and Tom Yum Goong, the Thai film industry is really starting to look promising.

Zhest, aka Junk or Scrap, is an odd beast. A glossy Russian film that starts off with echoes of Empire of Wolves or Crimson Rivers but then never really -- exactly -- delivers, and yet is a rather fun watch all the same. A veteran crime reporter is assigned to interview a psychopath who manages to escape right before she shows up. She tags along with the police and pursues the man into an abandonded dacha, an enormous village built during the height of the Communist era and now scheduled for demolition. It's of course one of those Temporary Autonomous Zones sung of in story and legend, peopled by a bizarre tribe of largely malevolent freaks. What follows is some really gorgeous techno-rock imagery suffused throughout with a druggy, psychedelic vibe; what doesn't follow is a plot, so much as a series of unrelated encounters. Still, entertaining flick.

Also watched the sequel to Anatomy (called, natch, Anatomy 2). From what I read, it wasn't exactly popular with afficianados of the first movie -- which I thought was a nifty German variation on Scream -- but I felt they did a really nice job of evolving the mythology from the original while adding some interesting situations and character shadings to what could have otherwise been a rote sequel. Sure, Franka Potente only shows up for maybe ten minutes total, but they gave her a cool role and I'll take whatever Franka I can get.

(I also recommend Creep, an urban variation on Descent starring Franka. It's much more in the slasher tradition, but it's nicely put together and there's an interesting thread of social commentary.)

Anyways, that's it for the moment. I'll check in when I have another chance.

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Friday, June 30, 2006

yeah, yeah, I know...

...these things always take longer than you think (or hope) they will. In any case, the novelette is almost done, and I'm taking a summer break for the next week. After that I should be back to posting some entries on a more regular basis.

In the meanwhile, Superman Returns seems to be the geek water cooler topic du jour. I caught it the other night and...well, it's a handsomely mounted film, and if you liked the original '70s Donner films then you'll probably enjoy it a lot. Myself, I always found the Donner films to be both goofy and self-important at the same time, and Superman Returns has a similar dissonance. The entire Luthor plot is rendered utterly silly by their attempts to mirror Gene Hackman's interpretation from the originals (though there is an excellent speech that Kevin Spacey delivers about Prometheus that gives a hint as to how the character could have been done). That said, it isn't a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, just not my taste; but then, neither are the Spider-Man movies. Worth a watch at the very least.

(My favorite superhero films? Almost anything from the Dini/Timm DC animated universe. Batman Returns/Begins. X2. Blade I/II . Incredibles. And...hmmm. There really aren't that many good superhero movies, are there?)

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Monday, June 05, 2006

state of the crow

Hey kids, guess what time it is! That's right...

Sorry I've been quiet for the last few weeks. Things have generally been busy and I've been devoting a lot of my creative time to finishing off the short story -- which has, unsurprisingly, revealed itself to actually be a novelette (or short novella, or long short story, depending on which theory of word length you subscribe to). I rather suspected this might be the case, but by calling it a "short story" I thought that I might be able to mentally trick myself into thinking it would be so very easy to write. To tell the truth, I rather like the story, but it's structurally kind of tricky so I've had to do some backtracking here and there. Hopefully should have that done in the next couple of weeks.

However, for what it's worth you do get my tribute to the end of "Alias" below, a show which has provided a great amount of enjoyment to me over the last couple of years. Sorry to see it go, but it's time had come.

In lieu of longer, individual reviews, let me toss out some quick highlights of notable things I've seen in the last few weeks. Maybe this format will work better going ahead?

El Metodo (The Method) is a Spanish film that plays as if David Mamet wrote The Cube: Several candidates for a high-powered executive position are all being interviewed simultaneously using an employment test called "the Gronholm Method" in which they play the kind of games familiar to anyone who's spent an afternoon in an HR seminar. Unlike those tests, however, the Gronholm Method is a deceptively effective game designed to tease out each character's flaws with brutal precision and then force them to justify their beliefs. The movie is basically several people talking in a conference room, but the writing is excellent, the acting solid, and the direction is cool and artful. Well worth your time if you can find a copy -- as far as I'm aware, the only release available right now is the Spanish DVD, but it does have English subs.

Tzameti (13) is a gritty French thriller shot in sumptuous black and white. It could almost have been a lost New Wave film if it wasn't for the occassional modern car or cell phone that turns up. The plot is deceptively simple -- a down-on-his luck roofer gains entry to a secretive game with the promise of a big payout if he wins. You're probably guessing that the game is not checkers or football, and you'd be right. It's a stark picture, but there's an elegance to both its look and construction, and it makes some surprisingly interesting points about how chasing hope and winning at all costs can both lead to some very dark places. In some ways it seems a distant spiritual cousin to El Metodo, but I'd also recommend a more fabulist take on a similar idea, the underrated Intacto. Tzameti is only available on DVD in France currently, but you can pick up Intacto on an R1 DVD.

L' Empire des loups ( Empire of the Wolves) is another French thriller, but more in the Europe-does-Hollywood vein of Crimson Rivers or Tattoo, a big, glossy, somewhat underwritten melange of serial killers, conspiracies, crypts, brainwashing, and shoot-outs. It feels like a sci-fi or horror movie sometimes even though it's not -- the title refers to a secret Turkish paramilitary group, but that's really besides the point for the most part. It is, however, ridiculously entertaining and has some great scenes, though it goes on for just a little too long with one too many twists along the way. On the other hand, it does star Jean Reno and it's one of those movies where everything looks cool, no matter what's happening. If someone lights a cigarette, the direction, lighting, and music will let you know that this is the coolest cigarette that has ever been lit. I have to admit that I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.

Blueberry (retitled Renegade for the R1 DVD) could best be described by the comment I made to Gray while watching it -- "I like it when people go crazy in interesting ways." A very, very, very loose adaptation of the Jean-Michel Charlier/Moebius comic by director Jan Kounen (who also directed the equally crazy Dobermann), it's a visually sumptuous acid-trip of a Western starring everyone from Vincent Cassel to Eddie Izzard and back. See, the story goes that part way through making the movie Jan Kounen went to South America, had a vision trip, and then came back with a "new direction" for the film. Indeed. But truth be told, I found it quite entertaining. The psychic duel at the end was worth the price of admission, and for all its weirdness, actually makes sense if you pay attention to the symbolism that crops up throughout the rest of the movie. Certainly not for everyone, but I can guarantee you haven't seen anything like it before.

And just so you don't think I watch nothing but crazy foreign films, Gray's girlfriend suggested I watch Joe Versus the Volcano and I rather fell in love with it. I always enjoy a good fabulist allegory, but it's the luggage that makes the movie.

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alias mortem

I don't watch a lot of serial American television -- after the Whedonverse went off the air, the few remaining offerings of interest just didn't seem like much fun, and most anything that I did happen to like ("Dead Like Me," "Inside," "Threshold," to name a few) usually managed to get cancelled just as it got interesting. That's not to say I don't watch a lot of TV in general, but most of what I watch nowdays is either on DVD or from foreign shores: "Lost" simply works better for me on DVD, and with shows like "ReGenesis," "Life On Mars," and the new "Doctor Who" coming from Canada and the UK, I manage to keep busy.

(There are exceptions -- I have to get my fix of "Battlestar Galactica" every week when it's on the air, most anyone could learn something about writing from the precision of any random "Law & Order" episode, and they can pry my Sunday trifecta of "Simpsons"/"Family Guy"/"American Dad" from whichever one of my cold dead hands is not holding the universal remote. But I digress.)

But during the dark time after the end of "Angel," my brother gave me the first season of "Alias" on DVD. See, "Alias" was a show I really wanted to like and get into -- the first episode was promising and the nod to "Run Lola Run" didn't hurt -- but my attention was distracted by "Buffy" and "Angel," and I simply didn't have the bandwidth to keep up. But the gift gave me a second chance (the same one many TV shows have gained through DVD), and once I devoured the first season I was hooked. I immediately picked up the sets for the second and third seasons and managed to catch up just in time for the fourth season to hit the air. Unfortunately, it wasn't to last. With creator J.J. Abrams' attention distracted by "Lost" and the "Mission: Impossible 3" movie, and ratings declining with an increasingly fickle audience, the writing was on the wall. I figure I was lucky to get the most recent fifth and final season, though, one more chance to spin out the plot threads before watching them yanked back together in the final episode.

Any synopsis of the show is somewhat futile now, but the basic idea was that Sydney Bristow, an attractive, intelligent, proficient woman, just happens to be a spy working for a series of nebulous organizations that require her to undertake dangerous missions around the world. That these dangerous missions frequently require her to infiltrate dance clubs while wearing a variety slinky outfits should, you know, go without saying. The problem is that I think a lot of people misunderstood the nature of the "Alias"; or perhaps, I was simply approaching it from a different angle. Critics believed that the heart of the show was Sydney balancing her career as a college student against the demands of being a secret agent in the early seasons and were never happy once that plot element was ejected from the show. Another contingent of viewers were frustrated by the constantly shifting nature of the ancient, occult Rambaldi Prophecy, in which Sydney figured prominently. And there were more than a few people perturbed by the fact that Sydney could continue to work with and for her boss, Arvin Sloane, even after he assassinated her fiancee.

But they all seem to be missing the point: "Alias" was never a traditional spy show, it was a superhero show dressed up in James Bond duds -- and more specifically, it was a superfamily show. It always reminded me of reading Chris Claremont's run on "X-Men" back in the day, with all the melodrama, family relations, mistaken identities, retcons, fights, double-crosses, triple-crosses, nefarious villains, secret agendas, and world-shattering threats that Must Be Stopped. Sydney's brief college fling was really beside the point as it distracted from all the fun. If you're a globe-trotting superspy who just narrowly escaped dying from a genetically engineered disease, then finishing your term paper is probably not only besides the point, but really boring for anyone else to watch. I was never happier than when they ditched that aspect of the show and fully embraced its comic book universe. I mean, did anyone really want to see "Felicity" with spies? And since when did Bond ever get to tussle with anything as bizarre as giant red floating spheres? In that context, the "answer" to the Rambaldi Prophecy was never particularly important to me; it was more or less an excuse for relationships to be rearranged and redefined into new, interesting geometries as everyone pursued the ultimate MacGuffin.

But it was the superfamily aspect of the show that interested me the most, and whether they were related by blood or not (and more often than not they were), everyone on the show formed a family, each one of them a master of their particular talents and most of them skilled in the art of deception, self and otherwise. It made for some interesting dynamics -- not to mention some occassionally sly commentary on tthe lies we tell to the ones we supposedly love -- but if it's remembered for nothing else, I think "Alias" will have contributed two of my favorite characters to the television pantheon. In many ways, they're the angel and devil -- well, maybe dirty angel and devil -- whose struggle for Sydney's soul provided the real spine for the series.

There's Sydney's father, Jack Bristow, a brilliant, ruthless, calculating man -- and spy -- emotionally traumatized after being betrayed by his wife, another superspy working for a foreign power. Originally a distant authority figure who so cared for his daughter that he tried to keep her from the life that had nearly destroyed him by shutting her out, he became her fiercest protector once both their secrets were revealed. Knowing no other way to demonstrate love for his daughter after years of suppressing his personal feelings, Jack Bristow became Dad as Terminator, an unstoppable force that would lie, steal, torture, kill, and endure any physical or psychological damage in order to save his daughter from danger. When an enemy agent infiltrates their headquarters and hides a bomb that could kill everyone -- including Sydney -- it's Jack who chokes the agent to death, then restarts his heart, with the promise that he'll keep doing it until the bomb's location is revealed or everyone dies. It was this strange combination of the monstrous and the heroic which defined Jack and made him a fascinating character week after week, even down to the series finale in which he gets to deliver one of the best quotes from the show ("You could beat death...but you can't beat me").

Then there's Jack's opposite number, the ambiguously ammoral Arvin Sloane. Obsessed with both the Rambaldi Prophecy and, only a little less, with Sydney, Sloane would play the good against the bad, the deceived against the deceiver, anyone against everyone, to get what he wanted. The ultimate narcissist, Sloane's tragic flaw was that he wanted to be loved, but would inevitably time and again be forced to choose between love and himself. That Sloane was also closely allied with Jack Bristow even as he acted as surrogate father to Jack's daughter, and then was later revealed to have even more intimate connections with the Bristow clan, only added additional layers of disturbing psychosexual tension to Sloane's already dubious personal motivation. When Sloane believes that someone may have killed Sydney, he flies into what could almost be described as a jealous rage, murdering the person he believes responsible; his creepy patriarchical feelings will allow for no one to harm Sydney -- except, when it comes down to it, for him. Sloane was the proverbial character you loved to hate, and there was always something satisfying about watching him calmly slip the bonds of anyone who tried to control him, whether they were the good guys or the bad. He was a chess player always twenty moves ahead, a villain through and through, but one who could never quite escape his own selfish obsessions and so pays the price for that weakness again and again.

And that's really what I liked about the series. It wasn't necessarily landmark television -- an above-average action show that could, on occassion, be a little silly -- but it was also a show where action was character, springing from collisions between motivation and duty only to become the catalyst for the next revelation. Every new secret or betrayal, every new villain or prophecy, was a way to further explore what motivated these characters and challenge them to overcome their fatal flaws. And if that happened to involve lots of gunfights, techno music, glam couture, and last minute escapes in the process...well, all the better. It was smart and it was fun while it lasted, and there's just too damn little of that on television.

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breath of god

I know it's not in fashion, but I do miss writing like this, from Harry Kleiner's final draft of Fantastic Voyage; note that Michaels is played by the incomparable Donald Pleasance:

CEREBRAL LIGHTS
A dazzling display of flashing lights fills the screen. Then as the CAMERA PANS DOWN slowly, we see a high wall of complex circuitry, in which the tiny lights glow on and off rapidly. Finally, as the CAMERA NEARS the bottom, it reveals:
EXT. PROTEUS - IN CRANIAL FJORD
The sub seems a mere speck as it cruises through a chasm formed by two walls of similar circuitry and electronic pyrotechnics. There is a sense of order despite the complexity.
INT. PROTEUS
Grant has joined Cora and Duval at the bow. The three are deeply impressed and moved by what they see. Michaels remains at the chart. As they look on:
DUVAL
(softly)
"Yet all the suns that light the Corridors of the Universe shine dim, Before the blazing of a Single Thought -- "
GRANT
"Proclaiming in incandescent glory the myriad Mind of Man..."
Cora looks at Grant in rather surprised awareness of this other side of him.
MICHAELS
Very poetic, gentlemen. You seem to see a great deal out there. Let me know when we pass the Soul.
Duval turns from the bow windows to face Michaels with the answer:
DUVAL
(quietly)
The Soul? The finite mind cannot comprehend Infinity. And the Soul which comes from God is Infinite.
MICHAELS
Take a close look at your Soul, and your Infinity, and your God out there and you'll find it's nothing but a combination of atoms, molecules and certain chemicals involving proteins --
DUVAL
You left something out.
MICHAELS
What's that?
DUVAL
(flatly)
The Breath of God...

I miss that sense of wonder in my sci-fi. Plus, that's just fun writing. I get a big smile on my face whenever I see a header like "EXT. PROTEUS - IN CRANIAL FJORD".

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