Trailer Trash III: Hercules in New York

While we're on an Arnie kick, here's a classic one. I only wish it was the original theatrical trailer and not the post-Terminator VHS release...

Best Arnold Schwarzenegger movie? Definitely. Onyx would agree.



At 0:50 - do we really need to see that? REALLY?
At 1:10 - Can anyone translate this for me?

The Writing Week part 29

Another week down. Like recent weeks, though, this one has been pretty stellar. Besides the still lingering high of The Dark Knight, I've been making some progress in my post-Apocalyptic spec.

Before I go any further, I have to take a quick detour to talk about... PAGE NUMBERS!!! I don't know about the rest of you out there, but those of us in the League wind up doing a lot of talking about page numbers, as in, "I'm aiming for 105 pages" or "You should really cut about 7 pages" etc. etc. I don't know why that's become such a frequent topic of discussion, but it has. Kind of like asking a fellow fan about sports stats, we'll ask one another how many pages we're at, what we're aiming for, how many we've cut. The reason for the tangent is, I'm about to do that now.

Onyx and Zombie suggested to me that my 112 page script would be an incredibly tight, solid 105 pager. So, among other things this week, I've shaved off 7 pages. I don't miss anything that's gone, so I guess that's a good sign.

I'm pretty sure I posted before about a late night discussion Zombie and I had where we worked out a lot of the kinks in my draft. Springing off of that, I was able to consolidate a few scenes, and make those that remain flow into one another much more naturally. Overall, I think that the pacing is much more effective, and I'm desperately hoping that the themes are much clearer now. There were a couple of things I had wanted to convey in the script that simply weren't coming across yet, in part because I wasn't exactly sure how to make them work, and therefore, wasn't really trying to. I think they're there now. At least in spirit.

I still have a ways to go with this. That much I know. But I think I can see the horizon. Once I do a read through to make sure everything that should be in there is - at this point, I know the world and the ideas behind the script so well that I could very well just not even be seeing the holes in it anymore - it'll be time to send this latest draft out to the League again. I just have to make sure it's different, yet effective enough to make it worth their time again.

Vacation coming to a close...

I'm leaving the big apple for the next week on a stint of (fun) work-related travel. July has been the busiest time of the year for me at my day job, and it's just been taking it all out of me. I've been getting home and having the hardest time putting words to the page and it's been very frustrating.

I finished a first draft of a new screenplay in late June and have only really been picking at it with a fork since then. I have a good feeling that after this little hiatus I'll be starting something new rather than going straight into the full-blown rewrite.

I'm hoping that after a week in sunny San Diego, when things start to slow down at work, I'll be refreshed enough to get back into the game. It's probably good just to take it easy for a couple weeks.

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."