Conversationing

Hello,

I realise I haven't actually put up anything about Conversationing, the short film we got Southern Exposure funding to make earlier this year.

A taster link is here:

http://vimeo.com/16221983

And as a bit more of a taster- this is the first 2 pages (apologies for the slightly wonky formatting):

1
EXT. PARK-DAY
JACK, 25, is on a park bench. It’s sunny but still a little cold to be out for lunch. He hunches over as he eats his crisps and regrets thinking a breath of fresh air was what he needed.

JILL, 27 with sharp eyes and a distinctive haircut, comes over and sits on the other side of the bench. Jack budges over to give her space. She smiles a thank-you and pulls out a packet of cigarettes.

They sit there in silence but stoically avoiding making eye contact, staring out into the space in front of them.

Suddenly Jill turns to Jack.

JILL
I’m no good at talking to strangers.

Jack is completely bemused by this comment but eventually replies.

JACK

Me neither.

Jill nods. This was what she expected.

JILL
I just don’t know how to start.

Jack doesn’t say anything. Then he turns to her.

JACK
Would you like a crisp?

JILL
No thanks. Would you like a cigarette?

JACK
No, thank-you.

JILL
You don’t smoke?

Jack shakes his head.

JILL
I ask because there’s some weird rule whereby,
even though someone’s offered you something,
if you don’t know them, you feel rude taking it.

Jack thinks about this and then offers her a crisp again. She smiles but mouths ‘NO THANK-YOU’.

JILL
Do you need to be alone right
now?

JACK
I’m sorry?

JILL
Are you enjoying a bit of time to
yourself? Not having to interact.

JACK
I don’t mind it.

JILL
But, if a friend walked around
the corner right now, would you
want to talk to them?

Jack thinks about this.

JACK
Yes.

JILL
Because right now, you’d be happy
to have a good conversation?

Jack nods.

JILL
The frustrating thing is that I know there’s
something we could have a really good
conversation about. Some way we could spend
the next five minutes which would be so
much better then just awkwardly ignoring
each other. But we’re just going to stare in
silence because we don’t know what that
thing we have in common is?

Jack eats a crisp as slowly as he can as the silence descends again. Then Jack turns to Jill for the first time.

JACK
I’m going to a gig this evening.

JILL
A music gig?

Jack nods.

JILL
I never really go to music gigs.

If you'd like to read the script or see the film (13 mins) get in touch and I'll send you a copy/link.

Encounters at the End of the World

Getting through the backlog is going to require more effort than I realised, especially if I keep watching new ones. So, to try and keep on top of the fresh ones here is Encounters at the End of the World.

I had a choice between two films courtesy of Love film. Encounters at the end of the world and Let the right one in. I've heard so many good things about let the right one in that I decided not to watch it because I was a bit tired and more importantly I thought my flatmates might appear two thirds of the way through and ruin the atmosphere.

Which doesn't say much about my expectations of Encounters at the End of the World. But I was right in the sense that it is sufficently episodic that an interruption halfway through wouldn't have changed much.

It's a great concept for a film. Herzog, that obsessive recorder of obsessives, has found his natural home. As one of those interviewed says, Antarctica is where those without anything holding them down drop to. Where those with a true wanderlust find themselves. There are people working there who have travelled between Peru and Ecuador in a sewage pipe (which was on the back of a lorry it turns out, which was a bit disappointing but still pretty good).

Herzog makes the not unreasonable guess that a place like this is going to be full of stories. That in the frontier like town some of humanity's most interesting specimans will be found. Having said that he doesn't seem that interested in them. He moans about the lack of charm in a settlement of prefabs and diggers. About a strictly run establishment where they have to do a two day survival course to be allowed out. There's one scene which shows the unlikely entertainment that occurs when this curious group let off steam but generally he can't wait to get out there. The settlement reeks of civilisation too much.

And he's right the truly magnificent parts of this film involve diving under the ice: The cosmic sounds of the seals, the extraordinary vista of a frozen ceiling to the sea and the descriptions and images of the creatures that live in the deep. There's an exhibition at the Natural History Museum which I'm desperate to see now before it ends. It's a truly magnificent world.

Add to that icebergs with so much water they could keep the River Jordan running for a 1000 years, 1 cell organisms which exhibit signs of intelligence, volcanoes which go straight down into the magma of the earth's core and penguins who run madly for the mountains far from the sea and their companions destined to drop down dead long before they get there, and you can see why he was desperate to get out there.

Given this I think he should have set it up more in two bits. First bit the humans who would think of coming to such a place. Second bit the place itself and why it endlessly fascinates those who have seen so much of the world already. It feels choppy, like he hasn't got a handle on what brings it together. Maybe there isn't anything. There is little that can connect it but without that it's possible to lose concentration even when you see all the things I've described. He's not helped by so many people who while theoretically fascinating are not actually engaging people- not surprising really, you don't travel to Antarctica to engage your easy charm.

I wish I'd seen it on the big screen and I long to see more images of the sea with the ice ceiling but I can't help feeling that somehow Herzog didn't know what to do with the extraordinary material he was sitting on.

The Illusionist

My goodness I've got a lot of films to write about. These are going to be short and snappy and proof positive about how I need to write these things nearer to the event for them to have meaning. But hey ho.

The Illusionist was a film that hadn't entered my consciousness. I'd seen an article about it which I thought was saying that it was on in Edinburgh at the moment. A minor mental note to look out for it but presuming it wasn't out and not that excited.

And then I found myself in the cinema, knackered, meeting a friend to watch The Secrets in their Eyes in a couple hours and it was about to start. I thought watch this now and enjoy it or try and stay awake through the heavier film and not got to sleep. It was a mistake. Not least because I failed to get the sleep I was aiming for. And that probably colours my view of a film that has much going through it.

It's by the Belleville guy and carries much of the charm and beauty of that. But while I don't remember Belleville very much anymore I remember thinking it had a decent pace. The Illusionist is stately. Which makes sense when you're dealing with loneliness. You can't be busy and notice that you're lonely. You can be aware of it and have it lurking, ready to strike when you stop, making your determined not to. But for an audience loneliness needs quiet but even more than that it needs slowness (I feel there's another word an articulate person would use but it's not coming). It needs an audience to have the space to reflect on what they're seeing. The question isn't 'what happens next', it's 'what is he feeling'. It's a hard trick. And I don't know it always pulls it off.

So the good, it's beautiful. All of it but especially Edinburgh. I've been to Edinburgh twice in my life but it was amazing how much the images evoked it (it also fitted in beautifully with One Day which I was reading at the time) and made me feel as if it was somewhere I really knew.

It's a great world. The end of vaudueville. The guy is an incredible illusionist. Just a genius. But he lacks panache, showmanship and he's just not interesting when there are heartthrob rock bands to get the girls throwing knickers at. And he's not alone. There are clowns and ventriloquists and acrobats. And they're all suffering. The acrobats survive a bit more. Partly because they're a team. But the clown and the ventriloquist are broken men.

As is the Illusionist but for a little while he has a companion. A hopelessly naive young girl who believes he actually is a magician. And expects shoes and coats to be magiced up for her. I get the idea that a lonely man would indulge this emotion to have someone in their life. And I get the idea of wanting to have a daughter to indulge. But nonetheless I could never quite take it. The girl isn't charmingly naive. She's not interested in the man treating her. And she's staggeringly materialistic. I can't take interest in someone who on discovering a magical father figure just want to find a nice dress so she can find a nice man. It feels like such a lack of both imagination and soul.

And because I can't like her, I can't really like it. But it sticks. It does. The bad tricks. The vistas. The essential toughness of a man who has so little going for him but keeps at it. Fail again. Fail better.

So don't go in expecting Belleville. Don't go in expecting to come out laughing and skipping. But there is beauty and humour in this and I have this feeling of finding myself at 50 watching again and it hitting a chord it can't quite on a lucky 20 something who doesn't feel alone that often. Well, not lonely at least. Or more accurately hasn't this week.

Star Trek

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.

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.

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.

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.