Posted: April 25, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ben Kingsley, Bill Murray, Bryan Sipe, C.R.A.Z.Y., Chris Cooper, Christopher Walken, Dallas Buyers Club, Demolition, Disney, Favreau, Idris Elba, Jake Gyllenhaal, Jean-Marc Vallee, Justin Marks, Lupita Nyong’o, Naomi Watts, Neel Sethi, Rudyard Kipling, Scarlett Johansson, The Jungle Book, Wild | 1,608 Comments »
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
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Warning: SPOILERS
For the first third of the new drama Demolition, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Davis, a man whose wife recently died in a traumatic car crash, one which he witnessed (he was in the passenger seat beside her).
After the accident, he starts acting, well, somewhat odd. He doesn’t seem to show any emotion or even grieve in any way. He returns to work earlier than expected. He distances himself from a scholarship his father-in-law wants to create in his daughter’s name.
But most important, at least in terms of the story, after a candy machine refuses to give him his order, he starts writing to the customer service department of the manufacturer. However, he doesn’t just air his grievance, he also spills his real feelings about his wife and what is happening to him. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 21, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Adam Driver, Jaeden Lieberher, Jeff Nichols, Joel Edgerton, Kristen Dunst, Michael Shannon, Midnight Special, Mud, Sam Shepard, Shotgun Stories, St. Vincent, Take Shelter, The Confirmation | 7,763 Comments »
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
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Warning: SPOILERS
Midnight Special, the new neo-noir/sci-fi film, opens at night with a throbbing music score backed by hypnotic drums. It grabs you by your neck and just won’t let go for the next ninety minutes. At first, the story seems to be about the abduction of a little boy, but it soon becomes clear that it’s much more complicated than that. The boy was adopted by the leader of a religious cult that makes its base in a private compound in Texas and the ones who have taken the boy from them is the boy’s biological father and the father’s closest friend.
So what is really going on and why do so many people treat this child as if the future of the human race depended on him? And why are the FBI after him as well?
Midnight Special is the sort of film every aspiring screenwriter, director and producer should be seeing, but I often suspect aren’t. It should be studied and emulated. That is, if you really want a future in the industry, whether your goal is the tent pole films of a major studio, or the more personal films that one sees on the independent circuit. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 12, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, Barkhad Abdi, Breaking Bad, Captain Phillips, Ethan Hawke, Eye in the Sky, Gavin Hood, Good Kill, Guy Hibbert, Helen Mirren | 6 Comments »
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
When air warfare and the ability to drop bombs on the enemy became standard methods of battle, pilots often had a different feeling, even a disconnect, from the grunts on the ground. It was easier to kill the enemy combatants because the pilot didn’t engage with their foe face to face. However, that’s not where the disconnect stopped. It was also much easier to kill those who were not combatants, but who are, as we say today, collateral damage.
However, a new method of air warfare has somehow combined both the disconnected pilots in the air as well as the more engaged privates on parade. This new method of mass killing, drones, enable a pilot to drop bombs on the enemy from a safe distance; but because the drones come with cameras, one also tends to see everything almost first hand, as if the ones with their hands on the trigger are there, even seeing some of the victims close up before launching a missile.
That is one of the dilemmas that is at the heart of the new drama Eye in the Sky, a story about a group of people trying decide whether to lodge a missile at a house that not only contains terrorists high up on the most wanted list, but terrorists who are planning two suicide bombings. The problem: right outside the house is a little girl, blithely unaware, selling bread. So is the attack worth the death of the little girl? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: April 5, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: A Christmas Tale, Arnaud Desplechin, Brigitte Bardot, COLCOA, Cyrus, Danny Boon, Death Valley, Duplass brothers, Gerard Depardieu, Grandvil, Guillaume Nicloux, Isabel Huppert, John C. Reilly, John LeCarre, Jonah Hill, Julie Delpy, Julie Peyr, Kings & Queen, Lola, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, Marisa Tomei, Mathieu Amalric, My Golden Years, Quentin Dolmaire, Seth Rogan, Valley of Love, Vincent Lacoste | 4,222 Comments »
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
COLCOA, the incredible film festival of new French cinema (as well as some classics), will be starting in a couple of weeks. But while you may be waiting in baited breath for it (well, I am), you don’t have to wait that long to see Gallic cinema. A few films from the land of Truffaut and Godard have opened in Los Angeles in the last few weeks.
They are opening now between the months of January (where the movies are mainly the leftovers from the Oscar noms and those movies the studios wish to bury) and June (or whatever month is the one where the tentpole films will be thrust upon us). Translated, this means the time period when strong, introspective and personal films can make their appearance before they are gulped up and spit out by billion dollar movies as if they were a character in Jaws.
Lola, the new French rom com written by Eugenie Grandvil (a first feature) and the director Julie Delpy, has more than a passing resemblance to the Duplass brothers’ American comedy Cyrus, starring John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei and Jonah Hill (in the title role). Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: March 30, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 45 Years, Bach, Catherine Frot, Cesar Award, Florence Foster Jenkins, Grandma, Grey Gardens, Groucho Marx, Hello My Name is Doris, Laura Turreso, Marcia Romano, Margaret Dumont, Marguerite, Marianne Sagebrecht, Max Greenfield, Meryl Streep, Michael Showalter, Percy Adlon, Peter Gallagher, Sally Field, See You in My Dreams, Stephen Root, Sugarbaby, The Room, Tommy Wiseau, Tyne Daly, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Xavier Giannoli | 1,371 Comments »
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
When Tommy Wiseau released his film The Room, it was so awful that it inadvertently became a cult hit, especially on the late night circuit. But people often wondered whether the filmmaker knew just how execrable his movie really was.
I thought of that as I watched Marguerite, the new French film from writers Xavier Giannoli (who also directed) and Marcia Romano. It’s a story about a patroness of the arts who gave recitals in her home to raise money for various charities. When all the other performers had rendered their absolutely ravishing arias and duets, Marguerite would then conclude the evening by singing herself. And out of her well meaning mouth came notes so awful, it made fingernails on a blackboard sound like one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto.
Posted: March 23, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 8 ½, A Better Life, Alice Adams, Antonio Banderas, Armin Mueller-Stall, Bill Murray, Bob Nelson, Brian Dennehy, Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Cinderella, Clive Owen, Confirmation, Federico Fellini, Hardcore, Jaeden Lieberher, John Gielgud, Kitty Foyle, Knight of Cups, La Dolce Vita, Liam Neeson, Mario Bella, Matthew Modine, Natalie Portman, Patton Oswalt, Paul Schrader, Robert Forster, St. Vincent, Stephen Tobolowsky, Taken, Terence Malick, The Bicycle Thief, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Searchers, Tim Blake Nelson, To the Wonder, Vittorio de Sica, Wes Bentley, Working Girl | 173 Comments »
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
Knight of Cups, the new film from art house fave writer/director Terence Malick, begins with some excerpts from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, spoken, I believe, in the dulcet tones of Sir John Gielgud. The Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory about a man who is weighed down by his sin and must seek a path to righteousness, but he finds many dangers, toils and snares along the way.
I suppose the allegory in that classic is supposed to also be an allegory for Rick, the central character in Malick’s drama, and his journey. Rick is a screenwriter who basically just drifts from place to place, observing the world he encounters while avoiding screenwriting as much as possible. It’s sort of like a movie by Federico Fellini, 8 ½ or La Dolce Vita, character studies of a men who are spiritually lost or have writer’s block, set against dwarfing architecture and a somewhat impressionistic view of the local’s lives.
I have to say I liked Knight of Cups, though I also have to say I’m surprised that I did. In Malick’s last film To The Wonder, the filmmaker told an almost impossible to understand story, made almost impossible to understand because it was not told in chronological order. And since you were spending so much time just trying to understand what was going on, it was difficult to become emotionally involved in the movie. And it didn’t help that when you did figure it out, it was a pretty bland and banal story line. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: March 20, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 10 Cloverfield Lane, Ane Dahl Torp, Cloverfield, Cooper, Damien Chazelle, Dan Bradley, Fridtjov Saheim, Harold Rosenlow-Eeg, John Goodman, John Kare Raeke, Josh Campbell, Josh Gallagher Jr., Kristoffer Jone, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Matthew Stuecken, Roar Uthaug, The Wave | 2,826 Comments »
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
10 Cloverfield Lane is a somewhat awkward mating of two genres: the women in danger film (aka, a female thriller) and an alien invasion film.
What’s so surprising is that despite the clunkiness of said mating, the movie is very enjoyable and more or less works on its own terms.
The basic premise here revolves around a young woman who leaves her boyfriend for reasons unknown and on her way to wherever it is she is going, if she’s actually going somewhere, her car is broadsided and goes over the side of the road. She loses consciousness only to wake up in an underground bunker replete with a conspiracy theorist who claims that America has been attacked and they may be the only survivors.
Posted: March 15, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Zootopia | 3 Comments »
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
I’m not sure there’s a lot more to say about the new animated film Zootopia that hasn’t been said already. It opened to a very favorable critical response (99 % on rottentomatoes.com) and a nothing to be sneezed at box office.
And I can’t argue with much that has already been said. Zootopia is, indeed, a clever, smart, feel good in a good way film and a fun time in the theater (with the best jokes centering around sloths, lemmings and how soft a sheep’s hair feels). Bored you will not be.
The only thing I can’t say is that it’s very cute. Only the central character, a rabbit, can say that, and you’ll only know why if you go see the film.
The basic story posits a world where carnivores are no longer, well, carnivorous, which enables them to live side by side in peace and brotherhood in an attempt at a kind of utopian society that centers around the capital city, Zootopia, which looks like a mixture of the Emerald City and Panem. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 29, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: A War, Antonio Bolivar, Brionne Davis, Charlotte Munk, Ciro Guerra, David Gallego, Embrace of the Serpent, Jacques Toulemonde Vidal, Jan Bijvoet, Nilbio Torres, Pilou Asbaek, Soren Malling, Tobias Lindholm, Tuva Novotny | 10 Comments »
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
Two movies opened recently that allowed, in a rare instance, the ability for filmgoers (at least if you live in the LA area) to actually see all the foreign language films nominated for an Academy Award before the ceremony. However, taken together, Colombia’s Embrace of the Serpent and Denmark’s A War, are a mixed bag as far as I’m concerned.
Embrace of the Serpent, written by Jacques Toulemonde Vidal and the director Ciro Guerra, is based on the diaries of the two Europeans whose trips up the Amazon are dramatized here: Theodore Koch-Grunberg, who traveled the river at the turn of the 20th century, and Richard Evans Schultes, who did the same about fifty years later.
The conceit is that the same guide, Karamakate, led them both, and both explorers had the same goal, to find a sacred plant that is supposed to be some sort of wonder drug. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: February 25, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ellie Granger, Harvey Scrimshaw, Jarin Blaschke, Kate Dickie, Lucas Dawson, Ralph Ineson, Robert Eggers, The Witch | Leave a comment »
First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
Well, The Crucible it ain’t.
The Witch, the new slow burn of a movie that was a hit at Sundance and is taking the art houses by storm, is a film where I feel I’m on the sidewalk looking through a window at a party that I can’t join. It just didn’t work for me.
There are several reasons as to why, but the simplest reason is that it didn’t remotely scare me and that slow burn of a build up never made me remotely tense or nervous. I found the story as a whole to be slow and tedious. Yes, there are a few jump and go boo moments, but in the end, even those didn’t do much to get my fears going.
So, basically, if the movie scared you, then you’ll probably like the movie. If you didn’t, as I didn’t, then you won’t. Read the rest of this entry »
