Why So Serious?

I saw The Dark Knight on Friday. I'd have posted my review earlier, but I had to spend the past two days taking a cold shower to calm myself down. The movie competes - along with air, water, Mom's cooking, and love - for the title of "best anything ever."

Ok, before I go on, I should say that I'm perhaps a little bit biased. I probably have one of the largest Batman trade and graphic novel collections in New York City. (That's not a challenge, internet dwellers, simply background.) So, it's fair to say that I'll watch just about anything Batman (and I have). I thought Batman Begins was great. When I emerged from the theater after seeing that 3 years ago, I didn't know how a Batman movie could be better. Now I do.

Like so many other people, I went into the screening having heard that the film was incredible, that Heath Ledger was a great, a definitive Joker, and that the movie was one of the best of the year, if not the best. About half an hour in, I reminded myself of all these things, and thought, "I'm liking it, but I don't know if I'd say any of those things yet." Almost immediately after, the movie really hit its stride, and I was mesmerized. The film was incredible; it was thoroughly entertaining and much darker than I had imagined. Heath Ledger was the Joker; I wasn't watching him play the Joker, I was just watching Joker. And, there is no way, in my opinion that DC Comics can publish any other Joker from here on out. Joker will never again be able to poison Gotham's fish. He's no longer that character. He will forever be the Joker from The Dark Knight.

I cannot articulate concisely enough my appreciation for this movie. I loved it 100%. Aside from an annoying SWAT team member who must have been owed a favor and thus was given lines, I had very few problems at all with the film. It not only lived up to its hype, but it surpassed it. My only real issue with it is that, now, I don't know how I can watch Batman Begins again. It made that movie look like child's play. It wass so much darker, so much more chaotic, and Joker is by far the most riveting character to watch in the franchise.

Now off to see it again!

Trailer Trash II: Troll 2

Troll 2 is a special little doozy of a film. Rated near the bottom of IMDB's Worst 100 Movies, the movie has absolutely nothing to do with the first (awful) Troll movie. So little, in fact, that the movie doesn't even have trolls in it. The midgets in halloween costumes you'll see in the trailer are GOBLINS, and goblins are the stars of the movie Troll 2.



So, to explain things... a happy family takes a vacation to the town of Nilbog, which definitely isn't "goblin" spelled backwards. That magical floating head you see is the deceased grandfather, who sometimes shows up to give advice. The goblins eat people, but only if they turn them into plants first. To turn into a plant, you must... ugh. I'm not even going to bother explaining any further. If the trailer looks awful to you, I assure you the movie is actually worse.

Golden moments:

At 1:00 - "They're eating her! And they're going to eat me!"
At 2:00 - HOLY SHIT IS THAT GUY ON FIRE WHAT???

And because I can't go a week without linking to an Onion AVClub story, they pit Troll 2 against the even worse Manos: Hands of Fate, with clip goodness. Manos is deserving of its own post here soon...

23 and Counting

Here we go, my first post as a 23 year old. Not a bad number 23, although some would say it was a bad movie. (Ba Da Chh!) I’ve actually never seen The Number 23, but I should have gone to support Jim Carey. I always liked him, especially when he dabbled with more dramatic, less zany rolls. Some of my fellow league members may disagree with me here, to the point where I have a knife in my back, but I think that if Jim Carey was never in Batman Forever and decided to show his darker more dramatic side in a role, the new Joker could have been a good fit. (Ducking as Cake Man’s empty whiskey bottle flies over my head)

Anyway, this post was never supposed to be about Jim Carey really. It’s supposed to be about my goals for another year on the planet. Shortly after I turned 22 I posted that I wanted to move back to the artistic hotbed that is New York, get a job, and place in a screenplay competition. Most people tell me I did all three. It depends on what your definition of “place” is. I was envisioning top three scripts. I made top sixteen. Some days I say I accomplished all the goals, other days I don’t, but they’re old goals. Time for new ones. My Grandma always says write down your goals. I think this counts.

Goal #1- Place in a screenplay competition. By that I mean...I’ll just say better than top 16.

Goal #2- Have six screenplays polished to the point where I wouldn’t mind dropping any of them on a producer’s table. Right now I have one in such condition, and a few others that aren’t too far away.

Goal #3- Have conversations with three people I’ve never met before who are currently working in relevant corners of the entertainment industry.

There they are, my screenwriting related goals for 23. Come 24, if the world hasn’t ended yet, I’ll come back to this post and measure my progress. In any event, 23 will be a better year than 22. The other day I just realized I spent nine months of 22 with my brother’s old leather couch as my primary bed. Now I sleep on a queen size bed of my own and in my own apartment. In the end I think that might be the real progress.

Trailer Trash: Commando

The trailer for (the cinematic masterpiece) Commando does just about everything right to sum up the movie in two minutes: it offers up bite-size portions of all of the movie's most essential elements. You get gunfire and explosions, cheesy catchphrases, and tough-guy mugging from Arnie.



I think more bullets are fired in this trailer alone than in all of Saving Private Ryan.

Sequence that hurt my eyes the most: the rapid-fire cutting at 0:30 while Arnie is putting on his badass dress. Did that almost give anyone else a seizure?

"Let's party."

The Writing Week part 28

This has been another week of re-writes. Some major, others not. But re-writes, nonetheless. And, I'll tell you, it feels good. Knock on wood, but I think this round of re-writes is going well. I'm feeling very good about them. I think I'm making some solid, strong changes, without compromising the strengths of the script so far.

It's a bit of a strange feeling for me, actually. Normally, I hate re-writes, as I'm sure you've gathered. But this time, I'm actually very excited about them. I think I've just gotten myself to the point where I can recognize the problems within my script (this is the post-Apocalyptic spec), and am eager to iron them out. For the most part, I think that's what I've been doing. Frankly, I've never been so excited about re-writes, so it's actually quite refreshing. I feel that I can see the script improving before me as I work on it. Though I know we tend to focus on page numbers a lot on this blog, they do matter (to a degree), and I've also been seeing those drop off. Onyx and Zombie have both told me that my script is a solid 105 page adventure. As it stands, though, it was at 112 before I began reworking it. Now, it's down to 107 - shedding weight like a beauty queen.

All told, though, I am very pleased with the direction it's taking. The content itself is really not changing a whole lot, which goes back to something I believe I posted here, and something I know I've talked with the other Leaguers about; the quality of our first drafts has improved dramatically. When we were still in school, even seniors in college, our first drafts were barely competent, could hardly stand on their own. Now, though, everyone in the League is turning out very strong, solidly built first drafts. I think this is a combination of both experience writing, but also of the level of feedback we've been giving one another. Without other writers prodding us on, forcing us to ask the major questions about our work, I don't think we'd be quite where we are now.

Anyway, I hope to have the re-write done soon. Yes, we hope to get good responses from the competitions in the next month or so. Beyond that, though, I'm just also excited to have this "done." It's finally fun again, and I'm enjoying working on it again, and I can only hope that it leads to continued interest in other scripts, either re-writes, too, or new.

In Soviet Russia...

I know this is a music video, but somebody really needs to ink a deal right away to turn this thing into a movie. Into TEN movies. Holy crap this rules.


GORBACHOV: THE MUSIC VIDEO - BIGGER AND RUSSIANER from Tom Stern on Vimeo.

Via Kid Sis in Hollywood.

I tried to think of a cold war joke to put here, but it's still too early and I've barely cracked my coffee...

Happy Birthday, Onyx!

From, The League...

(We'll let you drink this one...)