Swoosh! Bang! Crash! Pow! Smush! Whump!
Understanding Screenwriting #94: American Reunion, Mirror, Mirror, Damsels in Distress, & More
There is understandably a slightly more rueful tone to this entry in the series, which is also true about high school reunions.
Understanding Screenwriting #93: The Deep Blue Sea, A Separation, Pauline Kael, & More
Terence, meet Terence.
Ahh, it came back and nearly all was right with the world.
Michel Hazanavicius is attempting to make a silent film that will play to a talkies audience, not just silent film history buffs.
The idea of a film about an unwed mother first came to Preston Sturges in 1937.
Understanding Screenwriting #89: Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, The Descendants, My Week with Marilyn, & More
If we had been more emotionally involved with Hunt in this film, we might have found it more moving.
Understanding Screenwriting #88: Young Adult, A Dangerous Method, The Palm Beach Story, & More
Hollywood studio development executives always insist that characters have to be “likable” and usually ask for a scene early in the script that shows it.
Since Hoover ran the Bureau for fifty years, there is a lot that is left out, enough to make another film.
The broth is only lukewarm.
Understanding Screenwriting #85: A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, The Women on the 6th Floor, The Sturges Project, & More
As longtime readers of this column know, I love shaggy dog stories.
And you thought baseball was a slo-o-o-ow game.
Tone, nuance, restraint.
Contagion is the (cough, cough) feel-bad movie (cough, cough) of the fall.
My wife and I have been huge fans of the Canadian Cirque du Soleil since it first played in Los Angeles at an Arts Festival in 1986.
Are water buffalos this year’s Ishtar?
By now you have probably read the backstory of the film.
Understanding Screenwriting #78: Friends with Benefits, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, & More
Haven’t we recently seen this? Take one. No, actually we haven’t.
Let’s go back to the first film for a minute.
Understanding Screenwriting #76: The Tree of Life, Bridesmaids, Too Big to Fail, & More
Robert Benton’s graceful and poetic final scene in Places in the Heart does what I think Malick is after even better.