What, When, Where this Weekend - Quantum of Solace, Slumdog Millionaire, A Christmas Tale, We Are Wizards

What, When, Where is a weekly guide to select screenings, discussions and events in the NYC-area of interest to screenwriters.

Opening this weekend...

QUANTUM OF SOLACE, written by Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis, dir. by Marc Forster


Premise: Seeking revenge for the death of his love, secret agent James Bond sets out to stop an environmentalist from taking control of a country's water supply.

Playing: Everywhere.

Casino Royale was my favorite Bond movie in a long, long, long time. I felt like it returned the series to the exercises in badassery they used to be. Hence, a little discouraged to see the lukewarm reviews. Don't let me down, Mr. Bond.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, written by Simon Beaufoy, dir. by Danny Boyle


Premise: The story of how impoverished Indian teen Jamal Malik became a contestant on the Hindi version of "Who Wants to be A Millionaire?" -- an endeavor made without prize money in mind, rather, an effort to prove his love for his friend Latika, who is an ardent fan of the show.

Playing at: Angelika, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas

Lots of great buzz about this. I've got a love-hate relationship with his movies (Love = Trainspotting, Sunshine, Shallow Grave, hell, even enjoyed A Life Less Ordinary... Hate = 28 Days Later, grrrrr) but I'm eager to check this one out.

A CHRISTMAS TALE, written by Emmanuel Bourdieu and Arnaud Desplechin, dir. by Arnaud Desplechin


Premise: The Vuillard's shared history of physical and mental illness, estrangement, self harm, and loss doesn't lead itself to the idea of a cheerful holiday season. But can a Christmastime reunion, a scheme concocted by three of the youngest family members, finally bring peace their clan?

Playing at: IFC Center, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas

It's not even Christmas yet - why are so many holiday movies being advertised already? (Four Christmases, I'm looking at you.) Anyway, I really want to see this one. I just wish it were opening at a time when I was remotely in the holiday spirit.

WE ARE WIZARDS, written and directed by Josh Koury


Premise: The documentary profiles some of the power players in the underground Harry Potter creative community. I'm not talking sinister meetings in the woods about the Dark Arts. Instead, the film offers us a seven-year-old rock star and his teen pop idols, hilarious audio-commentary set to the movie and online creative writing sites waging war with corporate agents.

Playing at: Cinema Village 12th Street

I feel like I'm one of the few people left in the world who is still in the dark with the whole Harry Potter thing. I haven't read any of the books, and the only bit of the movies I've seen was the first one on mute, while listening to the hilarious Wizard People, Dear Readers commentary track by Brad Neely. All I know is the series is that it's about a school of wizard kids who play soccer on brooms or something.

I'll get around to 'em eventually, I know. But in the meantime this documentary looks interesting, and hey, it's got Brad Neely in it!

What are you doing/seeing this weekend?

Warner Bros. offers Dark Knight screenplay for download

Warner Bros. has offered up their script for their record-breaking Dark Knight for download on their website, ahead of this year's award season.

You can download the script here. (Thanks, Slashfilm.)

For the sake of fairness and at the risk of starting another comment war, here's an early script for Predator, courtesy of Movie-Page.

JCVD - You Might be Surprised

I’m going to try not to be biased here, but I’ve seen Jean-Claude Van Damme spin kick about 2,372 people, and I’ve loved every gravity defying second. Some people would call him a “career terrible movie maker”, but I say it all depends on what you’re looking for in a movie, and in most cases involving Van Damme, an action movie. There are several of his films that I can’t defend, not even with a flamethrower, but when it comes to the knockout punch, the run and gun, and the spin kick, Van Damme has delivered and entertained us immensely. I didn’t mind that I walked away from Kickboxer not discussing great acting. I didn’t mind that I didn't walk away from Double Impact talking about how interesting the structure was. I didn’t mind that Universal Soldier: The Return (in theatres...seriously) didn’t leave me dwelling on its skillful blend of comedy and drama. After all, these are things that we’ve accepted as irrelevant with Van Damme movies, right? Well, actually, Van Damme fan or not, you might be surprised to find that JCVD was good, and it will leave you talking about more than action.

In JCVD, Van Damme plays himself. In 1994, himself = an international action star, and master of doing the splits. In 2008, himself = a faded star all but forgotten to Hollywood, a man almost defeated by the financial and emotional struggles of a custody battle with his ex-wife. Van Damme retreats to Belgium, his country of birth, where he finds that he’s still the hottest thing since their waffles. While trying to complete a simple money transfer at the local post office, he inadvertently walks into a heist and finds himself the center of attention for the robbers, the police, and the entire country.

JCVD is not an action movie. In fact you’ll get most of the action during the first five minutes when Van Damme fights his way across a movie set in a great single-shot sequence. The lack of action may be strange for most that are familiar with Van Damme’s work, but it was exciting to see the action give way in order to allow the cellar kept children of Van Damme movies, drama and comedy, to emerge into the light.

The true reward in the humor of the film is for those at least somewhat familiar with Van Damme movies. It’s hard for me to put myself in my girlfriend’s shoes (America’s Next Top Model, 30 Rock, Snuggling), but for me, the references to Van Damme’s signature moves and movies were great. But for the first time with Van Damme, doing the splits and kicking a cigarette out of a bad guy’s mouth wasn’t being viewed as great action moments. Instead it was all being made fun of, and Van Damme finds himself as a character whose splits aren’t worth a dime in Hollywood, but in his home country, and in a time when they mean almost nothing to him, they mean a great deal to the surrounding characters. Van Damme plays off of the image of the Hollywood star against his harsher reality, and though it leads to laughs, it also leads to the dramatic core of the movie.

Director Marbrouk El Mechri gives the story an interesting non-linear structure that works well, but the biggest and most dramatic jolt doesn’t come from a jump in time, but a break in the fourth wall. It’s a strange moment where the film becomes a sort of confessional for our protagonist, and damn you if you don’t acknowledge that Van Damme delivers. In this scene it’s tough to say how much was the real Van Damme versus the actor. I imagine people will have mixed reviews on this moment because it is jarring, but it also feels honest, and as the fourth wall re-erects itself, movie fans and movie makers alike should have a new appreciation for what Van Damme can offer. I’d like to say that I’ve been telling people since Double Impact that there’s more depth to Van Damme the actor. Although, this can’t truly be an “I told you so” moment because Van Damme does have the luxury of performing in his native language, and if he bursts back onto the Hollywood scene as a leading man I don’t think we’ll be seeing much French. Speaking of French, I don’t know any and relied heavily on the subtitles that made up most of the movie. The choice of white subtitles was horrible and made certain scenes very difficult to read. That was probably my biggest gripe with the movie, and not so big at all.

I’ve never clapped at a Van Damme movie until JCVD and I wasn’t alone. Most of the theatre applauded. It’s possible that we are all just a bunch of nuts that were caught up in the moment and overreacted, but it’s unlikely. There’s something there in JCVD for most to appreciate. Van Damme has managed to turn some heads back in his direction with this one. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that he doesn’t spin kick us with a poor follow up.

The Writing Wire for 11/11: More Girl Talk, Roberto Bolaño, Star Trek and more...

Here we go, yo.

• The Book Publicity Blog on why marketing folk should join microblogging site Twitter.

• Does D.L. Hughley's new CNN show suck? Romenesko links to a critic that says "hell yes."

• Cinematical reveals two weird facts: "The Karate Kid" film franchise is being revived, and Will Smith's kid is gonna be the star. "Karate Kid" without Pat Morita is blasphemy, I say.

• The New York Times says booksellers and publishers are nervous about holiday season sales.

• Is getting an agent harder than finishing your first novel? Murderati thinks so.

• Wired's Underwire blog on the two new Star Trek movie posters. See Chris Pine's Captain Kirk above.

• Californication is one of my favorite current shows. Film School Rejects recaps the latest episode.

• Ugh. The Boston Phoenix talks to Girl Talk.

• TIME says Roberto Bolaño's 2666 could be the best novel of 2008.

• Pitchfork interviews Calexico.

What are you reading? Week 7: On the road to Nowhere

Last week, I gushed and gushed about James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, praising the neo-noir tale's slimy portrait of post-WWII Los Angeles and its denizens. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to move on to the next part of Ellroy's "L.A. Quartet," The Big Nowhere.

I'm not really sure how I feel about it yet. I'm about 170 pages in and I'm still waiting for that great moment where you have to keep reading and can't put the book down. I was talking to Zombie about this last week, thinking I'd reached that moment with the book. But then I hit a few slower, less interesting chapters and I found myself not as motivated to pick up the book. Still, I remain optimistic, and Ellroy is far from an "easy" writer. You have to really dedicate yourself to the material. He doesn't mince words or ramble on, so you know every word, character and scene counts. Did I mention it's not easy?

The Big Nowhere kicks off by slowly introducing us to its three protagonists: Sheriff's Deputy Danny Upshaw, a young up-and-comer with promise and a textbook approach to detective work; Mal Considine, a divorced cop trying to keep custody of his immigrant stepson and Buzz Meeks, a corrupt ex-cop who's on the dole for Howard Hughes and local mob boss Mickey Cohen. Set during the red scare of the early fifties, the novel finds the three characters inching closer together amid a backdrop of labor disputes, Communist witch hunts and a series of grisly murders.



At first, the three characters seem distant and unrelated, but as the novel progresses, all three become involved with the same problem: weeding out Communists from the UAES, an actors' organization on strike and costing Hollywood bags of money. I'm not sure how much that interests me, to be honest, but there's also the case of the potential serial killer, which is Upshaw's thread as the story begins. And sometimes, after reading a great book by a great author, you allow the author some modicum of faith when reading a later, more complex work. That's what's going on here. I imagine that after a few more chapters the story will kick in and I won't be able to put it down. Until then, I'll push through and wait for that moment.

The Writing Week part 45 - Read Scripts

This week, though I didn't do a lot of writing, I did something that all writers - no matter how seasoned or "emerging" they might be - should really do. I read scripts. I read a script that Onyx lent me, which was nothing that anyone in the League had written. I read a script for someone I met at one of the Meetups that we've been going to here in the City. And I read material submitted by Leaguers for our most recent meeting, which was last Thursday.

Every week, king suckerman asks his readers what they're reading. As my family members will acknowledge, it's very odd for me to be a huge advocate of reading. I grew up hating reading. Unless it had Batman in it (and even then), you'd be hard pressed to get me to voluntarily open a book and sit down and process the words printed on its pages. It's only been relatively recently that I've done so willingly - and enjoyed it. Yet recently, I've taken to reading. I read on the train to work each morning and evening. I read when I get home (when I'm not writing). And, more and more, I find that I love reading. It's something that my father has done for as long as I've known him. The man has stacks of unread books scattered around my parents' house, because every inch of bookshelf is packed with books that he's read time and time again.

We spend a lot of time on this site talking about writing, but with the exception of suckerman's discussions, we fail to mention one of the most crucial aspects of writing - yep, you guessed it. Reading. If you plan on making your career as a screenwriter, it's imperative that you read not only other scripts - look at those that won awards, those you loved, those you want to imitate, and even those you hate - but read classical material, as well. I'm currently making my way through Dante's Inferno (on my way through the Divine Comedy). There's a reason this and other material is considered "classic;" it's proven itself time and time again. More and more stories are being told, which are based on 10-12 core formulas, depending on who you ask. When we went through NYU, we were taught that there were really only 10 stories, and everything since they were first put to paper has been some adaptation of them.

Reading is crucial to writing. Yes, what you're reading can impact your writing. But that's not always a bad thing. Certain stories and elements work for a reason. I'm just doing my damnedest to expand my horizons as a reader, and hopefully, in the process, as a writer, too.

The Writing Wire for 11/10: The new Lehane, Jolie, Girl Talk and more...

Bring the noise.

• PoeWar on building a sustainable writing career. Two words: Emergency fund.

• This is great news: Dennis Lehane's next book may be another Kenzie and Gennaro mystery, according to Sarah Weinman.

• Vulture discusses the trailer to Pixar's 'Up.'

• The Miami Herald's Glenn Garvin on Michael Crichton.

• Film School Rejects on why actors shouldn't be casting directors.

Cinematical has the the real story behind 'Changeling.

• Idolator ponders the question: Does Girl Talk's music fall under fair use? I don't think so.

• The New Yorker is serializing some new fiction by Jonathan Lethem.

• PopMatters on the state of rock concert posters.