Listen. That sigh you hear? That combination of fond amusement and Oh, Chist, not another one already? That is Nicola, who has just been told that my fantasy boyfriend Johnny Depp has a new movie coming out in December.
The Tourist is a remake of a 2005 recent French film, and from the trailer I’m already banging my head that the female character is a Mysterious Woman Of Mystifying Mystery with an English accent that I didn’t believe in Tomb Raider and don’t believe now. I could wish for something a little deeper, and if wishes were fishes we’d all be feeding Copper River salmon to the neighborhood cats, you know? I console myself that the movie has Johnny Depp and Paul Bettany and Rufus Sewell and it’s shiny! What can I say? Some days that’s enough.
I know, I know, another video. But my fantasy boyfriend Johnny Depp has a new movie! I am so excited! You may now take a moment to imagine Nicola rolling her eyes and being patient…
… except I think she just might like this one too (*winks at sweetie through the internet*).
Write-a-thonrunning total: 2,660 words out of 12,000. This is where tracking wordcount gets a little depressing: because I find my way in by writing and revising, I go through phases where I make no apparent progress. But it’s interesting how different the story already is from those first 500 words. I’m already finding unexpected directions, ideas, resonances… and exploring them takes words and time, and much of it doesn’t work out right for the story I’m telling.
I don’t count that as a waste at all, but I know some writers who do. Shrug. To me, it’s part of the process, and it’s one reason that wordcount tracking makes me feel impatient. Sadly, I know of no objective way to measure “soundness of story” as a daily accomplishment. So I guess we’ll just stick with wordcount.
Wrestling with tense is part of this process. First person is these days by far the common voice of YA, and it’s absolutely right for this story. The choice of present or past tense is more problematic. Present tense is all the vogue and works wonderfully well in many storytelling situations. But it’s also quite limiting and can sometimes be unbearably precious. Past tense is the traditional storytelling tense for very good reasons, and is a much more flexible writing tool than present tense. So I am playing right now with tense to see where I want to land. It’s an exercise in nuance, and I find it challenging and interesting.
And as promised, we have met an Important Character, although not the one I was expecting to bring into the scene. Isn’t that just the way? *Throws up hands and goes off to have a shower*
We are all about the movies today in our house. Nicola gives you a look at the new Robin Hood, and I have this snort-your-tea trailer (big hat tip to Colleen!) for a film I am sure will be an instant classic. Man, I should have written this movie…
Enjoy your day.
(Sorry about the ads — I don’t seem to be able to do anything about them, but you can turn off the ad window).
Monika Bartyzel at Cinematical has a great post on recognizing — and therefore bringing more attention to — unconventional roles for women. You know, the kind where women are strong, heroic, active, and maybe even over 40! (— Oh my god, Martha, what did she just say? My brain is melting! — Just breathe, George, just breathe. Remember it’s only a blog.)
No, it’s more than that, George. The day of strong, varied, tough, angry, competent, heroic, tragic, big-as-life grown-up women is coming, and I aim to be there. Because it all starts with the script. I’ve talked before about the kind of women I want to write… and you know what? I should be doing some of that right now.
But before I get busy, let me point you to Bartyzel’s post. Be sure to follow her link to the Hollywood Reporter article that sparked her thinking, and then read her post on the feedback-cycle possibilities for making the pool deeper and wider for women’s roles.
Information is Beautiful is a Really Cool Website by David McCandless that will make all the design/map gooby-geeks lovers who visit here absolutely wiggle. And since today sees the release of the Can-There-Ever-Be-Too-Much-Apocalypse film 2012, here’s McCandless on whether 2012 really will be the end of the world.
And look! You can indulge your infographic self on a regular basis here.
Wiggle wiggle wiggle. I see you over there…
PS: You’re all being very patient, thank you; and I actually do have things of my very own to say real soon now.
Okay, I know I’ve been posting a lot of trailers lately, but seriously, check this out. Put your apocalypse pajamas on, butter the popcorn and turn the sound up — because California is going down!
No, it’s not what you’re thinking — an over-the-edge moviegoer hasn’t thrown some obnoxious Dude! I’m totally watching Batman kick the Joker’s ass! texter through the screen. This Rage is a movie itself, the first to be filmed for simultaneous release on mobile, online, digital screens and DVD. It’s filmed specifically to be watchable on your cellphone screen. As such, it tells the story completely through a series of monologues. The notion is that a schoolboy is doing a report on the fashion industry… and then something unexpected happens.
This won’t be everyone’s minty chocolate goodness: I can already imagine Nicola’s response (*waves at sweetie through the internet*). But I’m an actor by training and a talker by nature, so the idea of a story that unfolds in breadth (linear storytelling) and depth (character exploration) through monologue fascinates me. And this kind of thing is clearly catnip for actors — watch the trailer and see the lineup for yourself:
And here’s an interview with the director, Sally Potter. Here’s Potter talking about what inspired her to use intimate filmmaking techniques to make a movie intended for distribution on tiny, utilitarian cellphone screens (arguably the least intimate viewscreen ever…)
I do think it is intimate… It is in part my direct experience from being on the internet and doing a blog and making myself accessible to people in a very intimate way and finding that for the first time in all my working life I was having a one on one global relationship with strangers… — Sally Potter, director of Rage
Interested? You can get the DVD, or you can watch the film in installments over at Babelgum, which is distributing the film on mobile and the internet.
I’m a big fan of Denzel Washington: I’ll pretty much watch anything he does because he’s a great actor, and he’s so present on the screen. Some actors disappear into roles. Some actors are always only “themselves” in films. For me, Washington falls into the lovely other space of bringing his personal power and intelligence, a sense of his particular self, to his work. Not in a way that make him a cookie-cutter actor, or Hey, it’s me, Denzel! intrusive, but… hmm, what to call it? A vibration, maybe. A continuity.
Any of these acting styles can work when the right actor is in the right role. I don’t need all my favorite artists to work the way Washington does. But it’s fascinating to me to see glimpses of the artist within/behind the art, as if I’m getting a window into someone’s real-time personal connection to their own work. I love that (and more next week about a truly incredible set of DVDs Nicola I are watching that does it too…).
And then, of course, I just love the heck out of post-apocalyptic lone-hero-must-save-the-world movies with fights and jokes and excellent villains. And when you put that together with Denzel Washington and the fabulous Gary Oldman (whose performance in this trailer just makes me want to see this movie right now), well… friends, I give you The Book of Eli, coming in January just in time to kick the ass of the post-holiday blues.
Love movies. Love epic stories. Love ancient history (I was amazingly fortunate in my education — I got ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman history in junior high school, along with Latin, Shakespeare and the kind of geography where the test is “draw a map of Africa on a blank piece of paper and then fill in all the countries”… but I digress. Ah well, why should today be any different?)
And here is the trailer for the ancient-history-epic-movie Agora, directed by Alejandro Amenábar (whose work has always struck me as marvelously attuned to both the “big picture” of a film and the internal landscapes of the characters in it), and starring the brilliant Rachel Weisz as — wait for it — Hypatia of Alexandria.
