Flick Addiction

The formal qualities of Inception are amazing, but the best formal element has to be Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a suit.

Best prop I’ve ever had to buy for a shoot.

I actually find the article less hellish and more inspirational, if only because it’s nice to read about someone else’s creative frustration rather than feeling my own.

Maybe I’m preaching to the choir, but the film geek in me still feels it needs to be said. “Remastering” should be clean up, not alteration. I don’t mind some dustbusting and digital erasure of marks and scratches on film (though to be honest I think they also have they’re own warmth and suggestion of historical character on a film print). But for the love of God don’t try to remove film grain! It’s the defining characteristic of object and blurring the crap out of it won’t make the original look cleaner, it will make it something completely different. Also fugly.

Aside from having one of the most amazing opening credit sequences ever, I have a confession: I just can’t get into Mad Men. I’m working through season 2 and plan to finish it, but really, I question my drive to. The production design, period detail, and costume are all impeccable. So glossy and beautiful I want to run out and buy a thin black tie and learn more about scotch. But perhaps everything is so meticulously placed and constructed that the world feels as cold and callous as much of the show’s characters.  I’m sure there’s a soul underneath, but everything is so glossy, the drama and emotions so understated that it’s hard to find. Much like the the characters impeccable suits, nothing ever seems to burst through the seams.

The show’s inhabitants repeatedly make the same mistakes without ever changing or seeming affected.  Moments rarely feel spontaneous or unrehearsed (for the characters and the show). I can’t help but wonder if I’m watching the show for  pure revelry and nostalgia for the the period and for the characters’ id-fueled consumption of sex, alcohol, and cigarettes as opposed to some interesting commentary on it. I keep watching and waiting. The female cast is the strongest hook at this point, but the show seems reluctant to throughly mine all of the tension and anxiety caused by the period’s shifting gender roles for all the drama that it should be worth. Fingers crossed. Or maybe not. My Netflix queue is already hovering around 560 titles, so there’s plenty else for me to get done.

oldhollywood:

Robert Cummings & Norman Lloyd in Saboteur (1942, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

Yeah, no shit. I’d say that mark got missed the first time around too.

With the exception of film noir, where it’s expected out of convention, I generally find flash forwards and framing devices to be weak and dramatically inert. Like the writers knew the material’s first half wasn’t strong enough to carry me through. Even more perplexing is when otherwise well written films and episodes use it. What the hell.

oldhollywood:

Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931, dir. Tod Browning)

screenwritingtips:

Remember why you’re doing this.

I recommend writing screenplays because it’s fun and you can’t imagine doing anything else. That way you can’t lose.

Interesting talk on copyright. I wonder how the talk’s logic might translate to film. Seems like the knock off industries enhance the authenticity of the original creator, and by extension their value and marketability. Not sure if this would in the same way for digital copies, which in theory are exactly the same as the original, versus material copies which are by definition “not the original.”

As if he could make my skin crawl even more. Seriously Bret, Mary Harron actually turned your novel into a valid critique, as opposed to gory misogynistic revelry.

The Adjustment Bureau. If Richard Kelly made a romance.