In which I demonstrate when I'm well behind the curve by reviewing films Lovefilm have chucked me as well.
Very upset with myself for missing this the first time around. It is everything a blockbuster should be. Fast paced, witty, some nicely judged set pieces and intriguingly un po-faced given its subject matter.
I applaud the attempt to free an idea from its enormous history by a nifty piece of time travel. It will certainly free up any further franchises which is undeniably important. Also I think by making Spock someone who a) has lost his homeland and b) has a sex drive, you've allowed yourself massive freedom in the dynamics between them going forward.
I'm not totally convinced by Simon Pegg which is a shame as he's normally ace but it's got Zoe Saldana in it which is never a bad thing.
My only real quibble with it is that there's a massive coincidence at the centre of it which I feel they were a bit sloppy not to deal with. When Kirk gets chucked into outer space (which in itself I think happened too quickly, I think another option needs to actually fail before you chuck him out of a pod) conveniently landing within walking distance of the marooned old school Spock was a bit lazy. I think you needed to have a reason why he goes there. Maybe in order to get rid of him new school Spock get Kirk to check out something that doesn't make sense there. It's just an awful lot of deus ex machina in the middle of the film especially with the Scotty beaming technique as well. To be honest that beaming technique is a really really powerful thing to be letting loose. Obviously being a piece of technology it can break down but it stymies a lot of plotting for future episodes because it's so handy.
But sod it, they're young and brash and make the whole thing look exciting and new. It's what a blockbuster should be and I should have seen it at time.
Bones is rubbish though.
Saturday, 31 July 2010
Sunday, 25 July 2010
Heartbreakers
In a way I have little to say about this. I love it. Let's keep it to that.
It's exactly the kind of film I want to make. High concept. Romantic. Highly silly. And with a good broad base of comedy.
I'm not by nature as entranced by the world of the super rich and find it a little unattractive how utterly comfortable this film is with it but there's no denying that the odd bit of glorious decadence has its charms.
My main criticism is that having created a debt problem which forces him into the situation of having to break up a happy couple, they weedle their way out of that a bit. I don't think they had to. I think it's sloppy. I think there was comfortably a way for him to pay back the money without it just being written off and they should have fought harder to find out what it was.
But it's a small grumble. I was sufficiently enwrapped in it that I did genuinely wonder at one point if he was going to do the noble thing and let a happy couple get married. This is ridiculous. No audience will watch a film in which a strong chemistry is built up between two characters and then say, it's alright, he'll marry the slightly wet british due. But they balanced it well enough that it didn't seem completely implausible, especially to me who is always looking for the Casblanca ending. Stoicism and self-sacrifice always being more satisfying than finding true happiness in my head. Explains a lot.
I hear Working Title have the rights to the remake and I've been pondering what I would do if they asked me to adapt it. It would clearly be transatlantic. There's a touch of exoticism about it which means that I think certainly a Brit can't be magically seduced by a brit very successfully and I wonder if an American could by an American so easily. And I'd want to expand his team a little bit, it would be nice to have at least one more involved. But the key place for me is settings. I'd want to make it in London or New York and to have that sense of there being a super rich life which is very interesting but another part of London which is just as interesting. It sounds dangerously like I'm getting into Titanic style 'look poor people have so much more fun with their singing and dancing and lack of dinner parties' but I'm guess I'm looking for the sense of her untapping a more alternative side.
Anyway end of babble. But I definitely feel that it's a shame that I haven't made it as a script writer yet otherwise I would be calling up Working Title to talk about my pitch for it.
It's exactly the kind of film I want to make. High concept. Romantic. Highly silly. And with a good broad base of comedy.
I'm not by nature as entranced by the world of the super rich and find it a little unattractive how utterly comfortable this film is with it but there's no denying that the odd bit of glorious decadence has its charms.
My main criticism is that having created a debt problem which forces him into the situation of having to break up a happy couple, they weedle their way out of that a bit. I don't think they had to. I think it's sloppy. I think there was comfortably a way for him to pay back the money without it just being written off and they should have fought harder to find out what it was.
But it's a small grumble. I was sufficiently enwrapped in it that I did genuinely wonder at one point if he was going to do the noble thing and let a happy couple get married. This is ridiculous. No audience will watch a film in which a strong chemistry is built up between two characters and then say, it's alright, he'll marry the slightly wet british due. But they balanced it well enough that it didn't seem completely implausible, especially to me who is always looking for the Casblanca ending. Stoicism and self-sacrifice always being more satisfying than finding true happiness in my head. Explains a lot.
I hear Working Title have the rights to the remake and I've been pondering what I would do if they asked me to adapt it. It would clearly be transatlantic. There's a touch of exoticism about it which means that I think certainly a Brit can't be magically seduced by a brit very successfully and I wonder if an American could by an American so easily. And I'd want to expand his team a little bit, it would be nice to have at least one more involved. But the key place for me is settings. I'd want to make it in London or New York and to have that sense of there being a super rich life which is very interesting but another part of London which is just as interesting. It sounds dangerously like I'm getting into Titanic style 'look poor people have so much more fun with their singing and dancing and lack of dinner parties' but I'm guess I'm looking for the sense of her untapping a more alternative side.
Anyway end of babble. But I definitely feel that it's a shame that I haven't made it as a script writer yet otherwise I would be calling up Working Title to talk about my pitch for it.
Inception
So went to see Inception at the IMAX last night. There are plenty of SPOILERS in this so don't read on until you've seen it because you should.
It is good. There's no denying that in the grand scheme of blockbusters this one is smart, engaging and technically magnificent.
But it's a Christopher Nolan film and I want to hold it to a higher standard. Which leaves me unsure.
So I'll start by describing how I felt. As I came out of the IMAX and put on this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqT5Y2Ul3bg and headed out I was strangely removed from my surroundings. The southbank at night with the lights gleaming, and they seemed to be sharper than usual although that may be just I cleaned them for once, has a surreal aspect. You walk above and around buildings and strange exhibits and performances go on around you, the London Eye and the Palace of Westminster can be seen together looking like different worlds.
Now I do that walk a lot. It's always great and there's nowhere on earth I love more. But it doesn't often feel other-wordly. Which is a strong sign that Inception worked. It left me feeling a little bit discombobulated, a little bit gleefully wondering if I was in a dream. Which was great. On that visceral level it had worked.
What's more it's got all its ducks in a row in terms of internal logic and uncertainty. It fits together and has no big flaws in what's a gloriously difficult thing to map. So technically as a script it deserves a huge amount of praise.
And yet. And yet. The same precision that made the internal logic so tight and the set pieces fit so meticulously seems to slightly constrain it. The plot ties us into dreams which must not deviate too much from reality because there are people involved who must not suspect it's a dream.
This is a shame because a) early on Dicaprio points out that you never realise a dream is weird while you're in it, yet they spend the rest of the film making dreams if anything more boring then the world Dicaprio actually lives in. Now that may be deliberate to stress that sneaking suspicion throughout the movie that Dicaprio is actually dreaming. But it also makes a slightly disappointing touch to the big sequence that defines it.
The original dream worlds we see involve beautiful ornate japanese palaces full of black tie guests, rioters streaming through the streets of some unknown city and, in the scene that truly makes the most of the freedom of dreams, a Paris which bends in on itself, builds bridges and contorts mirrors. It also has a Tokyo which feels as gloriously urban and unsettling as it can on film and a Mombasa that feels surreal and wondrously exotic but they're in the real world. And that's b) they've made the real world cities pretty exciting. And then they've gone and made one of the dreams a raining LA with lots of chasing cars in a way that feels like a million derivative action movies, a stylish hotel which I do quite like and crucially loses gravity which allows for lots of great scenes and a snowy lair which, as has been mentioned by many people, feels like Roger Moore era Bond and crucially means we rarely see who is who and lost interest soon after.
At the end of it they end up in DiCaprio's head, in a dream world he spent years creating with his wife and Ellen Page says how magnificent it is but to be honest it doesn't seem that great. It's the wrong end of the film to be chucking in an even more fantastic world but then don't say it is magnificent. Say it has a simplicity that is beautiful. And make the raining LA and the snowy fortress a bit more magical. Make this world a contrast.
My other complaint is that there's no room given to anyone but Cobb having a character really. Now this may well be deliberate. They are after all quite possibly any memories or indeed creations from his subconscious. But if they can't have character arcs they could at least have character. There's one moment when Joseph Gordon Levitt persuades Ellen Page to kiss him to hide the parts of his subconscious from staring at him. It has no effect, why would it? But it was worth a shot. Page's smile is one of the few moments of warmth and humour in the whole film. And I guess it would have been nice to give them a little more to say for themselves. Page in particular is basil exposition a lot of the time.
But I've realised something over the last few days with Heartbreakers and this. I love a heist. I love a team plotting something fiendish. It might be a perfect date or a perfect crime or a perfect ride but it's that sense of things being planned and them being one step ahead of you or thinking they are that is immensely satisfying.
So yeah, it is a great blockbuster. Lacking the visceral power of the Dark Knight or the mind blowing imagination of Avatar but it's tight and exciting and you come out with that sense of having been taken to another place which makes focusing on the real world a little tricky. I just feel that from where it started he could have let himself go a little, a little more flair, a little more humour, a little less po-faced angst. Which teaches me something because I always thought a film could never be too tight. So there's my learning experience. Flair vs discipline, discipline shouldn't always win, even for me.
It is good. There's no denying that in the grand scheme of blockbusters this one is smart, engaging and technically magnificent.
But it's a Christopher Nolan film and I want to hold it to a higher standard. Which leaves me unsure.
So I'll start by describing how I felt. As I came out of the IMAX and put on this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqT5Y2Ul3bg and headed out I was strangely removed from my surroundings. The southbank at night with the lights gleaming, and they seemed to be sharper than usual although that may be just I cleaned them for once, has a surreal aspect. You walk above and around buildings and strange exhibits and performances go on around you, the London Eye and the Palace of Westminster can be seen together looking like different worlds.
Now I do that walk a lot. It's always great and there's nowhere on earth I love more. But it doesn't often feel other-wordly. Which is a strong sign that Inception worked. It left me feeling a little bit discombobulated, a little bit gleefully wondering if I was in a dream. Which was great. On that visceral level it had worked.
What's more it's got all its ducks in a row in terms of internal logic and uncertainty. It fits together and has no big flaws in what's a gloriously difficult thing to map. So technically as a script it deserves a huge amount of praise.
And yet. And yet. The same precision that made the internal logic so tight and the set pieces fit so meticulously seems to slightly constrain it. The plot ties us into dreams which must not deviate too much from reality because there are people involved who must not suspect it's a dream.
This is a shame because a) early on Dicaprio points out that you never realise a dream is weird while you're in it, yet they spend the rest of the film making dreams if anything more boring then the world Dicaprio actually lives in. Now that may be deliberate to stress that sneaking suspicion throughout the movie that Dicaprio is actually dreaming. But it also makes a slightly disappointing touch to the big sequence that defines it.
The original dream worlds we see involve beautiful ornate japanese palaces full of black tie guests, rioters streaming through the streets of some unknown city and, in the scene that truly makes the most of the freedom of dreams, a Paris which bends in on itself, builds bridges and contorts mirrors. It also has a Tokyo which feels as gloriously urban and unsettling as it can on film and a Mombasa that feels surreal and wondrously exotic but they're in the real world. And that's b) they've made the real world cities pretty exciting. And then they've gone and made one of the dreams a raining LA with lots of chasing cars in a way that feels like a million derivative action movies, a stylish hotel which I do quite like and crucially loses gravity which allows for lots of great scenes and a snowy lair which, as has been mentioned by many people, feels like Roger Moore era Bond and crucially means we rarely see who is who and lost interest soon after.
At the end of it they end up in DiCaprio's head, in a dream world he spent years creating with his wife and Ellen Page says how magnificent it is but to be honest it doesn't seem that great. It's the wrong end of the film to be chucking in an even more fantastic world but then don't say it is magnificent. Say it has a simplicity that is beautiful. And make the raining LA and the snowy fortress a bit more magical. Make this world a contrast.
My other complaint is that there's no room given to anyone but Cobb having a character really. Now this may well be deliberate. They are after all quite possibly any memories or indeed creations from his subconscious. But if they can't have character arcs they could at least have character. There's one moment when Joseph Gordon Levitt persuades Ellen Page to kiss him to hide the parts of his subconscious from staring at him. It has no effect, why would it? But it was worth a shot. Page's smile is one of the few moments of warmth and humour in the whole film. And I guess it would have been nice to give them a little more to say for themselves. Page in particular is basil exposition a lot of the time.
But I've realised something over the last few days with Heartbreakers and this. I love a heist. I love a team plotting something fiendish. It might be a perfect date or a perfect crime or a perfect ride but it's that sense of things being planned and them being one step ahead of you or thinking they are that is immensely satisfying.
So yeah, it is a great blockbuster. Lacking the visceral power of the Dark Knight or the mind blowing imagination of Avatar but it's tight and exciting and you come out with that sense of having been taken to another place which makes focusing on the real world a little tricky. I just feel that from where it started he could have let himself go a little, a little more flair, a little more humour, a little less po-faced angst. Which teaches me something because I always thought a film could never be too tight. So there's my learning experience. Flair vs discipline, discipline shouldn't always win, even for me.
Saturday, 24 July 2010
A first line
'You often hear people say that they love their wife, or husband or partner or child or ferrari, more than life itself. And I never understood that. Life itself had never been one of those things that seemed particularly worthy of my love. That's why I wanted to fall in love. Because life itself wasn't worth loving at the moment'
If I'm by my computer or phone and the thought comes it's going to be posted however shit, so bare with me.
If I'm by my computer or phone and the thought comes it's going to be posted however shit, so bare with me.
Friday, 23 July 2010
A fresh start
Hey,
So up until now this blog has been a place to put up bits of two scripts of Advanced Fun and Towards Java. Those bits are still up there if anyone is interested but they're both in more serious development now and not for general sharing.
So instead I'm going to share two other things. The first is my thoughts on films I see as I think reviewing will help me to focus on the audience experience. Which is pretty crucial to writing stuff people enjoy.
Secondly I'm going to post those little random ideas I have. Now on one level this is madness: If I've got an idea then I should be keeping it to myself and nurturing it until it's something I can sell. But I figure a) I've got enough ideas to be nurturing at the moment and b) at the risk of sounding heinously hippy, if I'm the right person to nurture it then I'll be able to make a better version of it then anyone who reads it on a blog and has a go. And if I'm not well then I'm glad that someone has picked it up and run with it.
So yeah you're getting reviews and first bits of whimsy. Hope you like it.
So up until now this blog has been a place to put up bits of two scripts of Advanced Fun and Towards Java. Those bits are still up there if anyone is interested but they're both in more serious development now and not for general sharing.
So instead I'm going to share two other things. The first is my thoughts on films I see as I think reviewing will help me to focus on the audience experience. Which is pretty crucial to writing stuff people enjoy.
Secondly I'm going to post those little random ideas I have. Now on one level this is madness: If I've got an idea then I should be keeping it to myself and nurturing it until it's something I can sell. But I figure a) I've got enough ideas to be nurturing at the moment and b) at the risk of sounding heinously hippy, if I'm the right person to nurture it then I'll be able to make a better version of it then anyone who reads it on a blog and has a go. And if I'm not well then I'm glad that someone has picked it up and run with it.
So yeah you're getting reviews and first bits of whimsy. Hope you like it.
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