Shouting into the Wind Saying my piece in a windy world.

#16 – Trucker (February 7)

#17 – Fletch (yeah, I KNOW). (March 2)

#18 – Into the Night (March 2)

Decided that ‘Temple Grandin’, which is an HBO original movie doesn’t count. Must have had theatrical release, methinks.

Oh, have also watched Season 1 of Breaking Bad (love it), started Season 1 of The Shield (love it) and myriad other tv episodes.  Reading lots of pilot scripts.

And that’s the briefest, lamest blog update I could muster.

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So, breaking my hiatus to announce that while not officially official as yet (paperwork to be signed, all that) it looks like I am once again employed.

It’s a contract position, probably 6 months and non-writing related.  I was hoping to hold out until the end of staffing season, but the writing was on the wall — I think my chances of getting a writers assistant job were approaching negative probability.

So, time to get back in the workforce being productive and stuff.

Pilot isn’t finished yet, but much progress has been made.  Hoping I’ll be able to keep making it now that I’ll have a day job again.

Time will tell…

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Twitter – turning it off.

Blog – no posts.

News reader – ignored, only used for finding articles i’ve flagged for research purposes.

Facebook and all other social media – nobody home.

I’m taking a self-imposed break from the internet.  I’ve never tried to shut myself off completely, so we’ll see how long it lasts.

It starts tonight at midnight and goes until I finish this pilot script.  So, it could be awhile.

If you need to send me a message, I’ll be checking my email (and replying) twice a day at 10 AM and 10 PM.  If you have my phone number you can call me.  And there’s always the carrier pigeon option.

Sorry to shut you all off, but I haven’t been able to get anything done since about 1996.  Time to change that a little.

Goodbye, wonderful internet.  Here’s hoping I can quit you…for awhile.

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Amazing performance from Patton Oswalt in this.  Did they even run an Oscar campaign for him? I’m not saying he should be in the list, but…maybe a Spirit award?

Something.  What an amazing portrait of life.  If ‘Precious’ is one end of the empathic spectrum, this is possibly on the other.

Low budget, not as ‘refined’ as a studio film — yet I could watch this multiple times.  Can’t say that for more than half the films I saw last year.

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Direction felt a little indulgent at times, and it pulls no punches (even using a literal frying pan over the head) at times to get its message across.  That said, I still found myself engaged and caring about Precious — character empathy can be so very hard to get right, especially if the character is from a background or has life experiences which are hard to comprehend — in this case, having been dealt an extremely bad hand in life.

I’d say the performances are some of the strongest I’ve seen this year, certainly the most raw and unfiltered.

I’m not sure that over the years it will be a film I revisit much, but I do think it deserves much of the accolades it has drawn.

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I lack much to say about the film that is at all substantive.  I really enjoyed it, more than I thought I would and loved the costume and art direction porn.  In a completely inappropriate way, watching the film made me think of this video on Funny or Die – mostly because of the commonality of Paul Schneider being in it.

“I shoulda worn a coat to my inauguration.”

And the trailer for “Bright Star”

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Okay. We are 29 days into January, but only 12 new films.  Yeah, I can do the math too.  I have a lot of catching up to do.

In my defense, I’ve been reading a lot of pilot scripts and writing…but, I still want to get back on track with this ‘resolution’, so yay, new movie.

I had two problems with “Coraline.”

First, I hate rules that aren’t fully explained.  I get that there’s this pathway between the real world (RW) and the ‘Other Mother’s’ world (OMW), but apparently the only way through is from the small door.  Still, Coraline manages to transport from OMW back to RW when she goes to sleep.

Later, they establish that OM can’t get into the real world EXCEPT THROUGH THAT DOOR.  So, which is it?  I’m probably picking nits, but it bugged me enough to take me out of the movie and try to figure out if I had missed something earlier on that explained that or if I was just supposed to accept this weird little rule change.

The other problem I had was one of Coraline’s character.  I’m still scratching my head about the girl.  Overall I feel that Gaiman wrote a beautiful story about being careful what you wish for (as you may get a psychotic version of it), but there was something about Coraline’s behavior throughout that just didn’t ring true.  OMW starts off so great, you wonder why Coraline goes back to the RW at all (and again, with the rules — DOES she go back voluntarily or is she magically transported back to her bed?  Is she sleepwalking?)  Once she detects that things are going hinky, she’s a little slow to respond, especially given how generally bright Coraline appears to be.  I’m also confused about OMW – does she have power over everything she creates there?  If so, how are the other Wylie and her other dad able to rebel as they do?  One would think they are merely ‘puppets’, but what gives them conscience to help Coraline?

Also, there can never be enough Ian McShane.  Like the proverbial cowbell, I needed more.

I enjoyed the visuals, but the film left me wanting.

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For me, the worst part of writing is the moment when I am typing words onto the page.

I’ve heard that’s pretty common with writers…hating the writing part.

As we all know though, writing is more than the act of typing or physically writing words on a page – it involves the thinking, the constructing, the questioning, the tearing down to build up, and the constant stream of decision making.  I recently discovered I lost a screenplay I started writing about eight or nine years ago.  It was one of my first attempts, and it was horrible, but I had a thought the other day that it would be better to work with some words on the page, even if they are ill-suited or horrendous, than start with that damn blank page again.

But whatever I had, horrible as it was, is no longer there.  Whatever is left, exists only in my memory.

So here I am, facing the blank page, trying to find some words to put on it.  I’m not looking for the right words yet.  Right now, I’m looking for the ones that help me get to a point where I can start looking for the right ones. 

I guess that means I’m looking for the wrong ones.

As I said, the wrong ones are better than none at all, it seems sometimes… 

I care about what I say and how I say it, and I hate getting it wrong.  Sometimes I wish I didn’t care so much, because then I’d just pour out words and not care whether I was communicating anything worth saying.  At least there’d be words.

And having said all this, maybe I can start looking for something right to say…

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I love William Powell and Myrna Loy.  Somehow I’ve missed this pairing of them, outside ‘The Thin Man’ series.  Powell is amazing, as always, as Ziegfeld, but the real suprise for me was Luise Rainer, who played Ziegfeld’s first wife.  The scene that resonated most, when she’s congratulating him on his second marriage to Billie Burke (Loy) and you can see Anna Held’s (Rainer) heart breaking onscreen.  It’s one of the most emotional gut wrenching scenes I’ve watched in awhile.

Anna’s maid asks her why she divorced Ziegfeld if she was still in love with him. “Because I was hoping it would bring him back to me,” she wails. 

Hit me hard.  Amazing film, well worth watching.

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He’s Just Not That Into You

No further comment.

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