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.
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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: November 28, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Amanda Brugel, Antonio Banderas, Bill Macy, Bob Gunton, Brie Larson, Emma Donoghue, Gabriel Byrne, Hector Tobar, James Brolin, Joan Allen, Juliet Binoche, Justin Tremblay, Lenny Abrahamson, Lou Diamond Phillips, Patricia Riggen, Rodrigo Santoro, Room, Sean Bridges, The 33, Tom McCamus | 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
Room, the new somewhat minimalist film written by Emma Donoghue (from her own novel) and directed somewhat minimally by Lenny Abrahamson (who also was responsible for cult fave Frank), is, like such movies as Vertigo and Boogie Nights, a before and after film, a movie in which something happens about midway through that divides the story into two neat little parts.
For Room, the first half dramatizes the story of a character called Ma and her six year old son, Jack. Seven years earlier, Ma was abducted and kept prisoner in a large garden shed by a bearded man called Old Nick. Jack was born into captivity and, in fact, does not know there is a world outside, having been told by Ma that there’s nothing on the other side of the four walls. Jack is so young, it simply doesn’t occur to him to ask that if that were so, then where does Old Nick come from each night when he visits, and where does he go when he leaves.
The second part dramatizes Ma and Jack’s escape (a very taught and edge of your seat set of scenes, even though you do also wonder why someone who is as clever as Old Nick in setting up the shed could also be so stupid) and what happens when Ma and Jack rejoin the outside world. Read the rest of this entry »