with a Q

My script was one of the 12 picked to be filmed this year for Senior Film. I’m super fucking excited. I’ve got a crew of four, with others helping with effects and choreography. Now I need to find some solid musical help and I’m golden. This is what I’ve been hoping for these past six months.

I’ll be doing updates through Viddler and Vimeo on the progress, and maybe uploading some footage and test shots as they come in. I’ve got work tonight, but I’ll be celebrating all week.

September 16, 2009, 3:53pm

I’m starting up draft four of VoiceZ, and I’m more nervous than ever that I may not get my film selected to be made this year. There are 29 scripts up right now, which we, as a class, will vote on to get the number down to 12. I guess my chances aren’t that bad, but I’d feel like I had wasted an entire year if I don’t get my chance to direct it.

It’s been a personal project for over a year now. I’ll never get another opportunity to do it. But, on the plus side, I’ve been getting positive feedback on the treatment I posted last week. Most of the class seems genuinely interested in seeing it come together. That’s really all I can hope for.

September 07, 2009, 12:06pm

The University System

As I start my final year at Penn State, I’m starting to eye up the future options. Graduate school has definitely been on the table. I’ve considered going to law school, not one in particular but a law school all the same, or a graduate program for English, probably focusing on creative writing.

I’ve enjoyed my time here at Penn State, but can’t help but feel a sense of impending doom on my horizon. What kind of job can I get coming out of Penn State with degrees in English and Film/Video but no internships? Ideally, I just want to create stories. The medium isn’t all that important. Short stories, films, comics/graphic novels, television. Anything will do. I’m just not sure of the steps I need to take after graduation or even what direction to look. Graduate school feels like an easy decision, but not necessarily the right one.

I suppose I painted myself into this corner by choosing these specific majors, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to go to college for 4+ years doing something I don’t enjoy. I’ve seen my father work a job he hated for 20 years of my life, something he had to do and one of the many reasons I have a great deal of respect for him, so I’m not about to do the same thing.

September 03, 2009, 9:18pm

I really, really wanted to like this movie. I went in looking for a home run, and only got a base hit (Eli Roth as The Bear Jew anyone?). Maybe it was my fault for putting such lofty expectations on a director with a pretty impressive track record. After my first viewing (there will be more), my initial impression is that Inglourious Basterds isn’t Pulp Fiction. It isn’t even Kill Bill.

One of the primary problems I had with the film was the length of the dialogue scenes. They were simply too long for my liking. I know Tarantino is pretty known for exactly that, but where I found the banter between Jules and Vincent a pleasure to hear and recite myself, there was very little to latch onto here. With that said, there were a number of moments that were overwhelmingly dramatic and suspenseful, but those moments were overshadowed and made soft by the length of the exchanges themselves. You can write an amazing line, but if the twenty minutes that follow that line don’t do anything with it, that momentum is lost. And that was the primary failing of Inglourious Basterds, I think. Every time the film started to pick up any kind of speed, it slowed down in a sea fluff writing, and in a film that already clocks in at two and half hours, you can do without the fluff.

Feeling cheated by the dialogue, I turned to the action. I wanted so much for the Basterds to really make this a WWII film. But they never showed up. In fact, I don’t think five of the eight have any speaking lines, or recognition that they even exist outside of “the Basterds” being mentioned. Much to my dismay, the film isn’t about them. They are simply there. A few ultra violent scenes (which is where Tarantino really seems to shine here) dot the entirety of the film. Whereas most WWII films have an overwhelming sense of violence and carnage all around the characters and plot, the violence served merely as a punctuation to previous chapters, or a means to end a long, trying scene of dialogue. Inglourious Basterds seems to just take place during a war.

The story bounces between the Basterds’ and Shosanna Dreyfus’s (Melanie Laurent) tales of revenge, and I love a good revenge flick (Chan-wook Park’s Oldboy sits among my favorite films). Revenge flicks always end with some kind of redemption, or lack thereof. The big “event” that everyone has been referencing, for me, was very underwhelming. It just sort of happened. The real payoff of the film, again for me, comes at the very end. Tarantino let history create the characters, rather than the story itself. Because of this, the potentially biggest moment of the film, as shocking as it is initially, has no real impact, without unpacking all the history of the character. I suppose that’s a part of modern cinema and Tarantino’s own tendency to pour popular culture into his films. But the final scene is what saved the movie for me. Brad Pitt’s character comes through, as one-dimensional as he may be, and makes you feel good walking out.

This brings me to the performances. Only three people really got a chance to act here. Daniel Bruhl plays Frederick Zoller, a German war hero, and adds a complicated character to the mix of easily recognizable good and evil parts. He’s a bit scary when he needs to be, while still maintaining an innocence I couldn’t quite accept as an audience member. Melanie Laurent was also fantastic. She played a very quiet character, with an imaginable amount of rage underneath. From the first scene of the movie, you’re rooting for her and trying to imagine what she’s gone through. And finally, Christoph Waltz played Hans Landa. The character is a vicious officer in charge of hunting the remaining Jews all over France. He brings more to this film than any other character. I couldn’t help but be reminded of Anton Chigurh from No Country for Old Men. He’s boisterous, polite, and cruel. Of the handful of amazing moments in the film, he was behind all of them. Watching either of the three interact with another was where all the tension and power of the film came from. Eli Roth doesn’t do much, but his eyes say a lot, and that’s all he really needed to do to be convincing. Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine character was a strange mix of humor and bizarrely dry delivery. When he wasn’t cracking wise, I couldn’t help but laugh at how he was played. It was almost like after Pitt figured out how to do the accent, he left everything else out of the character. He was entertaining nonetheless.

Inglourious Basterds isn’t a bad movie. My disappointment is only more elevated because of what I expected of the director of Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs, and Pulp Fiction. I wanted to love it, but the film is a bastard (another joke!) among every other war film, and Tarantino’s own resume. I want to see the film again before I make a solid final comment, and to try and unpack a bit more of the dialogue.

August 31, 2009, 3:35pm

District 9's Effects On the Film Industry

creeperstatus:

atencio:

What can be said about District 9 that hasn’t already been repeated ad nauseum? It’s clearly a revolutionary piece of filmmaking, and I believe the effects of the film will be felt in the film industry for some time. But I wanted to take a moment to examine those effects, and explain where I think District 9, and the success it will enjoy, will take us.

A nice look at what the possible impact of District 9’s budget and success will be. While it’s true that Hollywood puts only the surest of the sure in their tentpole positions over the summer, District 9 still had a bit of help in the marketing department. It’s hard to say how well the film would have done without Peter Jackson’s name attached to it, but I want to say significantly less. Most of the people I’ve talked to were still under the impression it was actually directed by the “Lord of the Rings guy.” This isn’t to say that the success of the film is based solely on a director’s name, but it certainly didn’t hurt it.

August 20, 2009, 2:46pm

I wrote up a little article on Voyeuristic Cinema and made a mention of District 9. Well, after seeing the movie, I now know the entire movie is not set in that documentary style at all. In fact, it’s pretty much just the first twenty minutes or so of the movie, as a means of establishing the setting and events that take place prior to the film’s opening, and a couple of minutes at the conclusion of the film. That’s not to say that the film doesn’t use the style to its advantage, in fact, I think it packaged the storyline in a much clearer way, grounded in a sense of reality that would have been missing without it.

The film itself was refreshing.The setting isn’t one you might ever associate with aliens, and it goes a long way in also making District 9 a visually unique experience. Speaking of visuals, the special effects were impressive for a film that didn’t look destined to cause huge waves at the box office,even though it did make quite a splash ( $37 million).

I think as a story, the writing is a tad bit lazy, and relies on character lines that are too obviously drawn. I’ve heard complaints of the plot being a bit too convenient, as well. To be fair, there was a moment in the film where I thought the same thing. But with that said, it is a science fiction movie, and a damn good one in a year of other good sci-fi films (see: Moon and Star Trek), and there is bound to be some form of convenience or happy accident that ties part of the story to another. Part of the problem with sci-fi films is to make them seem absolutely plausible, which I think District 9 does a superb job of doing.

I’ve read multiple accounts that much of the acting was spontaneous and without an actual script for the actors to read from. This makes sense, as a lot of the dialogue felt quick and a bit of it was stumbled over or choked on (used to great effect as well). There are a couple of moments where I thought Wikus (played by Sharlto Copley) overplayed the character, but I only noticed them in the beginning. Once the action ramps up, which was also well shot and choreographed, I didn’t find myself paying much attention or finding much more at fault.

This could have been the Halo movie, and I’m glad Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp spent their time with this instead. This year has seen a resurgence in well done sci-fi, which has been a pleasure as a moviegoer.

August 18, 2009, 5:52pm

I almost died five days ago. I had my usual ear protection on, when around the corner came the larger of the six forklifts at full speed. I didn’t actually see it coming, but out of the corner of my eye I saw it stop; its long lifting forks only a foot away from my flesh covered ankles. On my second day, one of the The Twins told me about the most recent injury at the plant, which involved a forklift, a pair of ankles, and buckets of blood.

I’m actually done working at the plant as of the writing of this. On my final day, my supervisor kept making the same joke as he passed by me, asking whether I really wanted to leave, claiming he’d give me a 75 cent raise. For a brief moment I considered it as a possibility. But for only a brief moment. I generally think my experience at the plant was worth it. I had always wondered whether I could do the same menial task for eight hours straight, and now I know: I can. I don’t whether I could last longer than the two and half months I put in, or if a lifelong sentence there would be too much to handle.

Apu - I understand the racial implications of this name, but it is solely for the purpose of classifying this individual with an exactness any other name could not possess. He looks Spanish, and was probably the most jolly and likable fellow I had a chance to meet, but his voice was as stereotypically Indian as they come. A loud HAYLLOOO! started our every conversation. He said “yes” like “yays” and “thirty” like “therdy,” but each mispronunciation sounded like a deliberate attempt to mock Indian mannerisms and sounds.

The MILF - In reality, I don’t think she has any kids. She holds the title on age and appearance alone. Wearing low cut shirts and tight jeans, she can pretty much do whatever she wants. In the kingdom of unattractive women, the least unattractive is queen. Because of this, she also has to take a lot of sexual harassment. Discussions of cup size or dirty jokes were the norm when she entered the area (To be fair, with good reason. She was well-endowed.) and when she left they only escalated. Her personality is loud and boisterous, which fits since when she leaves the plant she proceeds to her second job as a small town bartender, something I have an easier time imagining her doing.

The Centuries - Every employee there is ready to leave. At least they vocalize that point whenever they can. Unfortunately, most of the people are stuck there. And some, are stuck there well beyond a retirement age. There are two 79 year-old men who work there, as well as an 81 year-old. They shuffle, slower than slow, holding onto the wall for support to get from their machine to the break room. It’s a depressing scene to witness, realizing they have been making the same motions for far longer than you’ve even been breathing. They mumble and swear as they pull containers from the huge machines, they’ve seen replaced and maintained for decades. They make promises they shouldn’t keep with their imagined lottery winnings: “If I win, I’ll buy everyone in this factory a fucking car,” knowing full well their chances are the same as they were fifty years earlier.

August 18, 2009, 3:53pm