What, When, Where this Weekend - Australia, Milk, Four Christmases, Transporter 3

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

Happy Thanksgiving!

Opening this weekend...

AUSTRALIA, written by Stuart Beattie and Baz Luhrmann, dir. by Baz Luhrmann


Premise: Set in northern Australia before World War II, an English aristocrat who inherits a sprawling ranch reluctantly pacts with a stock-man in order to protect her new property from a takeover plot. As the pair drive 2,000 head of cattle over unforgiving landscape, they experience the bombing of Darwin, Australia, by Japanese forces firsthand.

Playing at: Loews Kips Bay, Clearview Chelsea

I've always really liked the energy and visual style of Baz Luhrman's Red Curtain trilogy (Romeo + Juliet, Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge) and even went so far as to catch the opera he directed on Broadway a few years back. I'm a little cautious, though, to see him trying something so... straight-forward looking. But I'm in. I trust him, even without John Leguizamo.


MILK, written by Dustin Lance Black, dir. by Gus Van Sant


Premise: The story of California's first openly gay elected official, Harvey Milk, a San Francisco supervisor who was assassinated along with Mayor George Moscone by San Francisco Supervisor Dan White.

Playing at: Loews Village VII, Clearview Chelsea, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas

Great buzz, and I like Gus Van Sant. I'm in for this one, too.


FOUR CHRISTMASES, written by Matt Allen and Caleb Wilson, dir. by Seth Gordon


Premise: A couple struggle to visit all four of their divorced parents on Christmas Day.

Playing at: Everywhere.

Okay, I don't like Vince Vaughan. Don't think he's funny. Sorry, everyone. I tried, but he still just grates on me. No interest in this one, but it'll do well enough.


TRANSPORTER 3, written by Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, dir. by Olivier Megaton


Premise: Jason Statham is back in the third outing of 'The Transporter'. This time he's hired by a criminal mastermind to go on a mission to deliver a 'package'. With Frank Martin now electronically rigged, he must complete his mission or die!

Playing at: All over.

Gotta love the use of quotation marks in that synopsis.

First movie was bad. Second was even worse. Third one seems to be a car commercial. No thanks.

The "plot" centers around a "device" that's been placed in "Jason Statham's" "car". It won't "allow" him to get more than "75 yards" from the "car" or he'll "die". Which means plenty of gratuitous shots of his new Audi. Drive Audi!

Note, the director's last name is almost Megatron. Damn, that guy just missed out.

What are you doing/seeing this weekend?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Taking a cue from screenwriter and blogger Ken Levine, the League would like to share a few things we're thankful for:

Cake Man:
- Batman movies – especially BB and TDK
- Movie soundtracks (for sale/download)
- Netflix
- Weekend morning matinees at AMC/Loews
- Email query letters
- Screenwriting software
- A writers group that even helps me write letters to women (though, come to think of it, all those relationships have ended poorly)

Onyx:
- Family
- Screenwriters League
- Pandora.com
- Feedback
- Boston Bruins
- Matt Cassell's recent confidence
- Good health
- Friends
- My apartment
- Obama

DOA:
- The writing gods have not forsaken me
- That I didn't have to choose between writing and boyfriend
- Friends and ridiculous email threads that cheer me up at work (Thank you, Onyx, for making me look up what teabagging means)
- Being warm, full, dry, clothed, and relatively happy

AxelA:
- The Delete Key
- Bad Blockbuster movies that make me feel better about my own work
- Writing something that makes me laugh, even if I cut it later.
- THE DELETE KEY

King Suckerman:
- My friends and family.
- Brotherhood, The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Street, Oz, Flight of the Conchords, Californication, 30 Rock, Weeds and The First 48.
- Anything by Pelecanos, Connelly, Lehane, Ellroy, Simon and Price. Great entertainment, even greater motivation.
- My cat.
- This blog, for motivating me to keep writing.
- My job. It's a job, but it's a pretty cool one.
- The Replacements, Talking Heads, Rolling Stones, PIxies, Beatles, Mission of Burma, Gang of Four, Wilco and a ton more musical acts that make up the soundtrack to my writing.
- SILENT CITY. It feels nice to have 60 or so pages in my hands of something I've written. Might not be good, but it's mine.
- Anything by Chandler, Hammett, Thompson, MacDonald and Goodis. The classics of crime fiction.
- The Miami Dolphins finally winning a few games. Jeez.

Zombie:
- Antigravity Cats.
- You, dear readers. You! YOU! (But not you...)
- The League, not only for putting up with all of my delays in sending around screenplay pages, but encouraging me despite that.
- Sweet, sweet vinyl reissues of the Mission of Burma catalog.
- Having my 33 1/3 proposal just about finished...
- ... as well as the spec script I mentioned earlier.
- The New York Giants 10-1. Just keep stompin' them out. AM I RIGHT?

Would you like to share yours?

SuckerFlix #4: Anything Else and Cop

Last week, we took a mini-tour of my TiVo Season Passes, but now we return to movieland. And, not to disappoint, I did watch a crime film. But it gets second billing to Anything Else, a latter-day Woody Allen joint starring Jason Biggs and the lovely Christina Ricci.

I have to preface this review by saying I'm a big Woody Allen fan -- who isn't, I guess? His characters, their dialogue and his sense of humor have made for more great movies than duds, especially Annie Hall, Manhattan and a few others. A lot of people slag on Allen's later works, but I've found most of them to be pleasant and wonderful at best, with Sweet and Lowdown and now Anything Else as prime examples.

Anything Else tells the story of Jerry Falk (Biggs), a neurotic young comedy writer with bigger, more literary aspirations. Jerry befriends David Dobel, an older and less successful writer with an interesting and slightly screwy world view. Jerry, you see, is head over heels in love with Amanda Chase (Ricci), a smart, funny and sharp actress who is at times emotionally charged and intense, and other times detached and direct.



The plot, while interesting and involving Jerry's quest for bigger writing opportunities, is secondary to the dynamic between Jerry and Amanda. As up and down as their conversations and scenes go, you quickly fall in love with Amanda along with Jerry, and you find yourself understanding why Jerry cherishes her company. Ricci does a great job of making Amanda believable and real -- sure, she can sometimes be tough on Jerry, but she is equally vulnerable and caring. The film presents the very normal and funny story of two people falling in love and trying hard to stay that way.

I can't say I was much of a Biggs fan going in, having really only seen him in the first two American Pie films, but he holds his own fairly well, sharing scenes with the veteran Ricci among others. He's not outstanding, but he is competent and believable as a guy who's deeply in love and dedicated to his partner. Ricci is the standout in the film, though, charming the viewer with her sense of humor and realistic, human moods. You find yourself rooting for Jerry and understanding Amanda's frustrations, all the while not really feeling like you're in the midst of a romantic comedy, but regular life.

Allen himself serves as the bulk of comic relief in the movie, as Jerry's pseudo-mentor Dobel, and does a fine job of letting his two young stars handle the majority of the movie's major movements. Stockard Channing also has a nice turn as Amanda's nutty but emotionally in tune mother, with a touching musical interlude in the film's final act.

If there was anything I didn't like about the film, it was the ending, only because after spending a few hours with the couple and their connection, you don't really want to leave. A

Cop: A fairly mediocre adaptation of one of neo-noir crime writer James Ellroy's lesser works, Cop stars the overrated James Woods as Sergeant Lloyd Hopkins, a fearless and dedicated cop (get it?) chasing after a serial killer preying upon young women in 1980s Los Angeles. The movie chops up and moves around scenes and key plot points from the book, Blood on the Moon, not for the better. Instead of building toward a climax slowly, the movie starts hot and keeps going, allowing for very little time to get to know the characters, much less care for them. Lesley Anne Warren is also pretty unsettling as Woods love interest, but not in a positive way -- she just comes off as nervous and odd. A forgettable, passable and mostly predictable flick. C

The Writing Week part 47 - Bittersweet Rejection

Just before I left for South Africa, I received an email from one of the three companies that had requested my post-Apocalyptic spec based on my query letter – in total, I had sent queries to just 12 companies. (I took the frugal route and decided to test the strength of my query letter by sending it out to a handful of companies, which not only produced or managed the kind of material I had written, but readily accepted queries by email. I recommend this strategy to writers, as it saves money on postage and, in a time when many people are doubting the success of querying, can be just as effective if not more so than paper mailings.) The email I got, which was from the script reader/receptionist at this particular company, informed me that he really liked the script, as did the readers, and would be recommending it to the managers. I left the country on a high note with something to look forward to.

Unfortunately, when I returned Stateside, I had the anti-email from what I was hoping for. The generic rejection email I received let me know that though my writing was strong, the company is small and cannot take me on as a client. I was thanked for my submission and encouraged to re-submit a query for any new projects down the road. The disappointing nature of the email threw me into an instant funk. I felt as if my plans had been derailed, and the opportunity posed to me by my friend in Africa – being a nature videographer for his game reserve – began to look all the more appealing. I thanked the assistant for his time and getting back to me, asked what he would like to read in the future in case I had anything like that, and began to think about making more serious plans to return to Africa and write from there, to give myself a longer break from the East Coast/West Coast dilemma.

Onyx would say that what happened next was “the screenwriting gods telling me to stick with it.” I came into work last Friday after having really begun thinking about moving abroad for a while to two emails. The first email was a fourth request for my script based on my query, bringing my batting average to .333. The second email was a very generous and uncommon email from the assistant who had the displeasure of rejecting my script. He sent me over a full page of notes – most of which were quite positive – on my script and explained more about why I had not been picked up as a client (a focus the company is making on established writers). He was very supportive of my work and encouraged me to re-send the script if I did a re-write. I know that notes and such encouragement are not common in this industry, and was incredibly grateful to him for his time. And when he offered to read a logline for any other completed scripts I have – an opportunity I took him up on, which led to another script request – I knew that this guy was looking out for me. For obvious reasons, I don’t want to give his name or company here, but let’s just say that his honest and incredibly helpful dealings with me renewed that fire in me to write.

I thought I would take the rest of the year slowly, work on a new script but not really try to push anything else out into the industry just yet. I see now that I was wrong to think that way. Mind you, I never meant to give up on writing – far from it. But the high of Africa mixed with the then just bitter rejection I got stopped me in my tracks. Now, though, that rejection has become bittersweet, with an emphasis on sweet, and my first real industry notes have compelled me onward. If you have what it takes, you will make it. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but stick with it. The screenwriting gods command it.

Screen Alert - The Wrestler

Screen Alert is a short, irregular segment highlighting noteworthy films that we saw during advanced screenings. Keep an eye out for these cinematic gems when they hit theaters.

A little while ago, Onyx, Zombie, and I had the great pleasure of attending an early screening of THE WRESTLER, starring Mickey Rourke, directed by Darren Aronofsky. I went into the picture a little skeptical; I'm not really a fan of WWE style wrestling, like, at all. I was more attracted to the film for its director, as I think REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is a truly beautiful picture.

Damn am I glad we went to that screening. Other than a few sometimes difficult to watch, gruesome wrestling scenes, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen. I got so much more out of the story than I had anticipated. The writing, I thought, was as strong as anything else to emerge this year, and I will definitely be scouting the script in the next few months to come.

Mickey Rourke - whom I have been a mild fan of, at best - was a thoroughly engaging washed up pro wrestler. I felt quite deeply for him as he tried to get his life, his career, and his relationship with his daughter back on track. What's more, he was a very down-to-earth protagonist. Often, I find that a character who faces a potentially life threatening or career ending obstacle will face it head on, not so much because they're brave, but because they're arrogant and stupid. Rourke's character, on the other hand, deals with a dangerous health risk in a smart, level-headed way that only increased my support of him. On top of it all, Rourke's performance is, in my opinion, outstanding, worthy of an Oscar nod.

I was blown away by this little gem. You do not have to enjoy or even like wrestling to get behind THE WRESTLER. When it gets its wide release in January (limited release in December), I strongly urge you to go see it. This, unlike many gambles we've talked about, is a $12 sure bet.

Trailer Trash XXI: The Exterminator (1980)

"The Man They Pushed Too Far..."

There is one golden item that this movie does right, and that item is done so right I'm almost willing to forgive this movie for existing. I'm talking about the poster, folks. This movie's poster rules and rules hard. Welcome to awesome:



WHOA HOLY CRAP THAT IS SWEET! Did you notice the motorcycle helmet? The flamethrower?? But, hey, wait a second... Is that a sleeveless leather jacket? Why is he wearing tight leather pants? Oh, shit.

Oh, shit.

Is the biker from the Village People going on a rampage??

The more you look at the poster, the less and less sense it makes. I suppose they're going for a "dimly-lit warehouse" look or something similar for the background. But it really, really looks like this guy went to the photo studio at Sears. Perhaps he was waiting in line behind these guys:


Are they in post-apocalyptic New York City? The background looks more or less the same. Hmmm... maybe if I give it a title, add awesome copy text...


Booyah! Now THAT's a movie I'd like to see. (Rejected titles: "FAMILITARY: SUBURBAN WARFARE" and "FAMASOCHISTS".)

But, back to business. Don't let the misleading Village-Person-Cop-with-nothing-to-lose poster fool you - this movie is pretty dumb, but it does do one other thing well: explosions. Boy, there are a lot of explosions in this trailer.

Roll the footage, Frank:



At 0:03 - BOOM! (And a helicopter! Helicopters make everything awesome.)
At 0:05 - BOOM!
At 0:08 - BOOM!
At 0:09 - BOOM!
At 0:13 - Bang bang bang bang!
At 0:14 - Man on fire!
At 0:20 - BOOM!
At 0:21 - BOOM! (And another helicopter!)
At 0:24 - BOOM!
At 0:38 - Are they going through these weapons in a hospital?
At 0:42 - Fight choreography by Adam West and Burt Ward.
At 0:49 - Fire!
At 1:05 - The title for like the fifth time, in case you're just tuning in.
At 1:18 - Can someone turn on the lights, please?
At 1:26 - BOOM!
At 1:30 - BIG SLOW MOTION BOOM!
At 1:33 - BOOM! (Is that a volcano?)

If we were taking shots for each explosion in that trailer, we'd all be on the floor right now.

When The Exterminator was released on DVD a few years ago, the designers seem to have caught on to the problem with the backdrop in the original poster, and decided to fix it. The new DVD cover is more indicative of the contents of the film:


Explosions! Helicopters! A vast improvement over the original poster.

But, I refuse to be outdone. TWO can play that game...


Yeah, THAT's the ticket!

"BOOM! BOOOOOOOM!"

Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.

What, When, Where this Weekend - Twilight, Bolt, Special, Lake City

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

Opening this weekend...

TWILIGHT, written by Melissa Rosenberg, dir. by Catherine Hardwicke


Premise: A teenage girl risks everything when she falls in love with a vampire.

Playing at: Everywhere.

The summary for the film reads just like a screenplay logline. It helps that it's based on a wildly popular YA novel (that's what I read - I'm not really "hip" with the "kiddos" these days) but the premise is one of those ones that you read and immediately see dollar signs.

BOLT, written by Dan Fogelman and Chris Williams, dir. by Byron Howard and Chris Williams


Premise: The canine star of a fictional sci-fi/action show that believes his powers are real embarks on a cross country trek to save his co-star from a threat he believes is just as real.

Playing: All over.

This looks like Pixar... but it's not. I won't be tricked.

SPECIAL, written and directed by Hal Haberman and Jeremy Passmore


Premise: A lonely metermaid has a psychotic reaction to his medication and becomes convinced he's a superhero. A very select group of people in life are truly gifted. Special is a movie about everyone else.

Playing at: Landmark Sunshine

I love seeing so many writing teams this week. The description above is a little misleading - the movie sounds like it's a bit of a downer. However, if the film is taking the superhero idea seriously, that makes me more interested. And I like Michael Rapaport.

LAKE CITY, written and directed by Hunter Hill and Perry Moore


Premise: In this searing Southern drama, a mother and son reunite under desperate circumstances years after a family tragedy drove them far apart.

Playing at: Quad Cinemas

From the Time Out New York review:

Most independent movies model themselves on a Sundance-approved template: the rural miserablist parable, the heal-thyselves family tragedy, the gritty crime flick. Hunter Hill and Perry Moore’s drama, however, shoots for the moon; the directors have seemingly crammed the festival’s annual lineup into 92 minutes. For those viewers who don’t have two weeks to spare in Park City, the mix-and-match sensibility might seem like a valuable time-saver. Anyone who wants a little quality with their quantity, however, will curse the fact that an hour and a half of their lives is gone for good.

Ouch.

What are you doing/seeing this weekend?