Screenwriting & Film

I like movies. They entertain, transport, inspire , induce laughter, and at times, their unpleasant cousin visits me as tears. Depending on the type of person you are, movies can effect you in a multiple of ways. What can make a movie a winner or a loser is the quality of its screenplay. They should be written with just enough information for a director to envision a scene and allow her "artistic licence" to take hold.

Earlier this week, Mark Boal won the Writers Guild of America award for best original screenplay for the film, The Hurt Locker. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awarded Boal the same achievement earlier this month. Boal appears to be on a roll as his screenplay has also been nominated for best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards next month.

It must have been hard for Boal to hold back in writing a list of detailed descriptions in his screenplay. Boal had been embedded with a bomb-disposal unit in Iraq and he's been quoted as saying there were, "many, many moments of real terror." To sum up this idea rapidly in the average person's mind, the term "hurt locker" is military slang for a bad and painful place. To the soldiers responsible for carrying out the actual work of defusing bombs, the term carries even more weight. If an IED explodes in front of you while trying to disarm it, the "hurt locker" is a white box draped with the U.S. flag shipped home full of military honors. Just try and limit your adjectives writing this screenplay. I'm guessing it wasn't easy.

James Cameron's Avatar, on the other hand, was probably a little easier screenplay to write. I say this only on the opinion of others as I have not seen Avatar, but it's fairly well known that it's claim to fame is visual excellence, not screenplay writing. It's absence from the Oscar nomination list in this category says enough. To be fair, Cameron is more about visual dialogue as even the most limited film buff would know. The Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss, True Lies, Dark Angel, and Titanic, all speak to the artistic vision buried in Cameron's mind that screams to be captured on film.

While Kathryn Bigelow's film career is not as extensive as Cameron's, her work is gaining well-deserved recognition in the film industry. She's received awards for directing and nominations for both the Golden Globes and the Oscars. Her film, The Hurt Locker, has been generating buzz for a while for now. Two of her more well-known films include Strange Days and Point Break.

It's interesting to know that two of these Oscar contenders, James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow, were once married. What a dynamic movie-making duo they could have been had they stayed together. The pair have been heard to speak highly of each other's recent directing efforts which is just, well, plain nice. Who knows, had they stayed married and collaborated on more films (Cameron produced Bigelow's, Point Break), they probably would've driven each other nuts and ended up hating each other.

But, I digress...

I predict none of these three will go away empty-handed come Oscar night, March 7th.

Oh summer, where art thou?

No, the title of this post is not the name of an upcoming Cohen brother sequel to, "Oh brother where art thou," just my attempt at being clever.

I've been waiting for the right time to post this juxtaposition (a mere seven months to be exact) due to the change in seasons that was required. I think it makes a cool photo, but I have to admit it's left me lonesome for summer.

These photos are of a clematis vine Heidi and I planted near the fence in our side yard. The clematis didn't grow the first year as it was establishing its roots. My wife thought the plant was dead and considered replanting something else, but I convinced her to be patient. Plants sometimes need time to grow, but when they decide to take off, they do it in quick fashion. Once the new growth shot out of the soil, the stem climbed the fence perfectly, blooming to what you see here.

As bleak as the winter photo looks, the perennial nature of the clematis ensures it will be back again this summer. I may tinker with this flower bed in June and plant in a white climber of some sort. I think it would punch up the purple colour making it look even more brilliant.

Cabin fever February

Poor pets, always at the mercy of human beings and the natural elements.

Our cat Bob fixated on a squirrel (the fluffy blur three-quarters of the way up in the first photo) one day last summer for most of the afternoon. He's been an indoor cat since last May when he went missing for three weeks. That's a long story, but suffice to say certain neighbors can be cruel if they feel their yards are being trespassed upon. I tried taking Bob outside on a leash a few times last summer, but it seemed neither of us had the patience. Bob's been housebound for ten months now. This a short clip of him returning one night before his "capture."

Since being stuck indoors, Bob has had his share of restless periods. Bob is a clever feline and takes advantage of situations where you can't avoid him. For instance, I'll be washing dishes and he'll start howling to go outside three feet away from me (if you've owned a cat, you know how annoying the sound is) I can't get away as my hands are in dish water and I can't move for twenty minutes or more. It's brutal. It's like a baby has fallen down a well or something and is crying to be saved. Uughhhh...I just shiver thinking about Bob's howling ability. I'd love nothing more to let him out when he's like this, to let a cat be a cat so to speak, but Heidi and I can't risk him being "apprehended" by a certain person in the neighborhood.

That's Bob's life in a nutshell; looking at life through the living room window. He's happy enough I suppose, but I'm sure he misses balancing on fences, chasing butterflies, and lying on the lawn in the hot summer sun. One good thing about Bob being inside is the local bird population didn't take a hit last summer. Unfortunately, Bob as an outdoor cat was a very efficient killer.

I play with Bob when I have a spare moment or two. I grew catnip for him last summer which I am rationing until I can grow more. He goes crazy for homegrown catnip.

I guess that's one thing Bob looks forward to. Free drugs.

The Kraken's had some work done.

I was a mere lad of 12 when the first Clash of the Titans movie played on the big screen. I use the term "big" loosely as the movie screen in my hometown of Esterhazy was, and still is, small by today's standards. As a boy on the edge of teendom, the characters in the 1981 version were still as large and realistic as life itself.

This post can't be a review or comparison of the 2010 version of Clash of the Titans as this remake isn't scheduled to be released until April 2. I'm sure the movie will look amazing (probably right up there with a movie like 300) and I think a comparison at this stage of moviemaking would be unfair to the original version. Just one look at the movie posters and you can see how far art departments have come in poster design. "An Epic Entertainment Spectacular" claimed the 1981 poster compared with "The Clash Begins in 3D" in 2010. How can it compete with that?

I chuckle at the somewhat broad description for the 1981 version release date of "Clash". "Coming For the Summer of 1981," compared to the 2010 poster, "April 2". Likely there's been a buildup campaign for this latest version of "Clash" and they may have had versions of posters in 2009 saying something to the effect of "Spring 2010", but I think it's charming how the 1981 poster kinda throws out such a general movie release date. How times have changed.

For me, it would have been kind of neat to see Harry Hamlin (Perseus from the 1981 version) come back to play a role for the 2010 remake. Not a major role like Zeus or anything, just so there was a connection to the original in some way. But I guess if someone as charismatic as William Shatner couldn't land a role in 2009's Star Trek, Harry didn't have a chance.

I'm sure it's somewhere...

Meccano Accessory Outfit? Check. Meccano brass gear outfit? Check. Meccano Magic Clockwork Motor? Check. John Bull Repair Outfit? (For the man who will have the best; note: I did not just make that up) Check. Okana Fruit wood crate that once shipped Canadian pears? Check.

LEGO picture window? Check. LEGO auto wheels? I think there's three. LEGO evergreen tree? One side still looks intact. LEGO front door? Still in one piece, but missing plastic window. LEGO box to store it all in? Long, long gone to the god of landfills.

Seeing a pattern here? The Meccano set I described above once belonged to my dad. In creating content for a toy magazine my group and I are developing, I finally got around to taking these sets out of the old pear crate. Within moments I felt like I was opening a time capsule. Much of it is in very good condition considering its age, which I guess at being more than 60 years old. My dad loved his Meccano set and built many things as a young boy living in rural Saskatchewan. As interesting as his sets are, what I found more curious was that my dad had tacked little nails everywhere on the bottom of the crate. All Meccano plates have holes along their edge and many loose plates were organized by my dad with a series of tiny nails to keep them from shifting about.

It's important to note that at the age of 40, this is the first time I've ever emptied out the contents of this crate to look at all the parts. My father guarded this Meccano set for years. Time came when he outgrew them, but seeing how maybe his own children were a little destructive with their toys, we were not allowed to go near this box. My dad passed away five years ago this past January. When my siblings and I helped my mom move out of her house shortly after, there were possessions she distributed among her children. She asked me if I would like to have this set as my own and I gladly accepted. Even after 40 years, I wait for a day when I can sit down on a bad weather day and tinker with everything inside this old pear crate.

Video of the New Zealand Meccano Exhibition is courtesy of YouTube. (and if you think this is pretty amazing, check this out)

As for the LEGO you see here, it never had the luxury of being put into hiding for 30 years. I inherited these parts as well when my mom relocated. These LEGO parts were part of a set I believe was given to my sister when she was about the age of ten. She and my brother shared the set and it was handed down to me as I became older. I remember my neighborhood friends would come over and we would build toy cars and little bungalows complete with plastic trees for the front yard. When we all reached adulthood, this set sat idle. For a time. Once my sister had children and they would come over to visit grandma and grandpa, her daughters would pull out the LEGO from under the bed, occupying themselves for long periods of time.

This LEGO set has captivated dozens of imaginations in its lifetime. Hence, the box was nearly in tatters when the time came to store them in my home. Now, the parts rest comfortably in a white plastic Tupperware container until the next pairs of hands are ready to snap and configure the parts any way he or she desires.

I can't wait to sit back and watch.

No juxtaposition, just inspiration.

I just finished watching a two hour program about Stephen Hawking's search for the Theory of Everything. And to think I get a little worked up occasionally about having a few assignments due on the same day (shame on me)

I was first introduced to Stephen Hawking and his theory of the origin of the universe in a documentary called, A Brief History of Time based on the book of the same name. The book gives an overview on subjects of cosmology such as the Big Bang, black holes, and his views on the basic laws which govern the universe. With a colleague named Roger Penrose, they implied that Einstein's Theory of Relativity would have a beginning in the Big Bang an an end in black holes. It was this idea that gave birth to the necessity to unify General Relativity with Quantum Theory. They conjectured that black holes would not be entirely black but emit radiation, evaporate, and disappear. The universe would no longer have an edge or boundary in imagined time, implying that when the universe began it was completely determined by scientific law. This video created by the American Museum of Natural History gives the viewer a snapshot of the area of exploration they are working with up to this point.

If I understand a mere thimbleful of what Stephen Hawking is trying to discover, I can consider myself smart. I admit to not fully comprehending what he says, but I know he does it with a passion and an ultimate sense of purpose to unravel the awe of the origins of the universe. Crippled by Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS), Hawking has outlived early predictions that he would die 40 years ago. Once Hawking discovered at the age of 21 what would happen to his body over time, his dreams became disturbed and he dreamt he was to be executed. Hawking realized he had little time for a life of purpose so he focused his energies on research and science, determined to leave a legacy behind for future generations to build upon. Hawking married and took a position shortly after as a theoretical physicist and had three children. Hawking has been a professor at Cambridge university for decades, written countless papers, lectured extensively on black holes and theoretical cosmology. Much of his life has been spent in a wheelchair and he still works to discover a unified theory.

There are days when I feel the strain of the requirements of schoolwork. Not only to complete it, but to the best of my ability as well. A certain amount of anxiety comes with this as it would for anyone. When I watch a program like the one I mentioned at the beginning of this post, I am inspired and reminded that no matter how much adversity I feel I am being subjected to, it is nothing compared to the experience of others. I could even say it's relative.

Sick and I got the blues...

I called in sick today and removed myself from classes for the second time this week. I hate this. My body has let me down again, but it's put up a good fight I suppose. I don't know what the hell is making its way through school right now, but several of my classmates have been felled by the same bug this week and were no-shows as well.

On one of the days I was driving into the city to attend classes I was obsessing about how gross my body felt. I was beginning to feel this scourge inside my body was holding me captive from what I needed to accomplish. Suddenly a musical phrase popped into my head.

'If you ain't got your health, you ain't got nothing.'

Inside my head, I began to hear a single acoustic guitar plucking out the blues, popping out a catchy little rhythm. The sound has followed me around since that morning, so I couldn't help but try to put the tune to a few simple words characterizing my situation. It came out like this.

Rolled myself outta bed today,

Feeling wrong, far from ok

I thought, what's up with that?

Flicked the light, looked in the mirror,

My eyes beet red, lookin' real poor

I felt, I'd been hit with a bat.

I didn't feel like this ten hours before.

I hope I'll never feel this way again.

A mild sore throat I thought I could ignore.

You ain't got your health, you ain't got nothin'.

Called in sick two times this week,

All my joints ached, I heard them creak

I thought, gettin' old's a drag.

Blew my nose and was shocked to see,

All the colours staring back at me

I shivered, the stuff made me gag.

I didn't feel like this ten hours before.

I hope I'll never feel this way again.

A mild sore throat that kicked me to the floor...I tell ya,

You ain't got your health, you ain't got nothing...oh no,

You ain't got your health, you ain't got nothing.

(apologies to Chris Petty for the poor grammar, but it's the blues and that's just how it is)