Cinema Hype

Learn writers’ tips and
tricks when Jeff Goldsmith says, “That’s
how it all went down.”

There are two kinds of DVD watchers in this world: those that watch the movie, and those that watch the movie and everything else. Movie watchers like to see a good story play out on the screen. Movie-and-everything-else watchers like to see a good story play out on the screen, and then they want to know how it happened. They want to know why it happened. They want to know about costume issues, arguments with the studio, funny swearing incidents with the cast. Movie-and-everything-else watchers sometimes become writers. It’s for both of these groups of people that Creative Screenwriting magazine provides its free, fascinating, and thoroughly addictive weekly podcast. Want to know what it took to write and produce your favorite movies? It’s here. Curious about how actual, working writers and directors made it into the business? Check it out. Host Goldsmith is sure to ask the pertinent questions, and you’ll certainly learn a lot.

If there were a CH Seal of Approval, we’d give it, but we can’t find our wax.

screenwriting, creative screenwriting, podcast, haiku

After all of this pirate talk, I’ve been thinking a little about Keira Knightley. She’s one of those actresses: young, obnoxiously thin, beautiful, sweet but slightly airy on Letterman. There are, it seems, a lot of people out there who don’t like her for exactly those reasons, for being a perfectly un-bookish casting choice for Elizabeth Bennet, and for generally acting in a bland but starletty manner.

I see why, sort of. But I just can’t bring myself to dislike her.

I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that makes her appealing. I’m pretty sure it’s not her acting; she’s too self-conscious onscreen to be really natural. I’d place her in about the same dramatic class as Kirsten Dunst, who has a similar manner and drives me crazy with all of the smirking and weird vocal tones. Maybe it’s the movies she chooses? I do love Bend It Like Beckham, and Pride and Prejudice was fine, and obviously there’s the Pirates trilogy. I can’t stand Love Actually as a whole (I know. Please don’t take away my Female Gender membership card), but I don’t mind her in it. Who knows? Maybe I’m shallower than I thought, and she’s just very, very pretty. It’s hard to say.

I’ll report back after I’ve had a little Keira Knightley film festival. Maybe Elizabeth Bennet and an L.A. bounty hunter will have something to reveal.

The new Pirates of the Caribbean movie must have been hard to write. How does a writer, or a team of writers, take a big, complicated story and make it bigger and more complicated without sending the audience over the edge? As Captain Barbossa himself says, it would strain credulity, at best. And so it appears that they went the other direction: they took the audience over the edge–literally–and started from there. The result, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, is a flawed film. But it’s the best kind of flawed film: meaty, ambitious, confident to the point of arrogance, and really, really fun.

First off, I have two main areas of disappointment with this film. First, there’s the lack of well-choreographed duels. The first two Pirates films each have at least one creative sword fight on a small scale: in The Curse of the Black Pearl, Jack and Will get to know each other over swordplay and witty banter in Will’s blacksmith shop; in Dead Man’s Chest, the three-way (so to speak) between Will, Jack, and Norrington is practically a ballet with sharp objects thrown in for good measure. These kinds of sword fights are versatile because they let individual characters work out their own plot lines, and they’re fun for the audience because we like to see what the choreographers can come up with. Fighting in the rafters? Check. Shifting allegiances? Great. Why don’t we throw in a giant hamster ball? Yes, why not? They’re fun, useful scenes, especially for a series with a master swordsman and his girlfriend as main characters. At World’s End has a lot of action–gunfights and melees aplenty–but it’s surprisingly and disappointingly short on the precision swordwork. Doesn’t Elizabeth deserve some duellish action by now? And yet…there are more cannons than epees in this installment. There is one fairly satisfying fight towards the end–the climax, really–but one good duel in three hours of screen time seems like a sad proportion.

And then there’s the Jack/Will/Elizabeth plot. We come out of Dead Man’s Chest with a truly interesting set-up: Elizabeth has pretended–or maybe not pretended?–to seduce Jack, and in doing so, condemned him to a smelly and dramatic death. Does anybody else see endless potential for entertainment and character development in this scenario? Girl appears to cheat on devoted and gorgeous fiance by leaving pirate-y friend to be eaten by giant sea-beast? Anyone? Elizabeth’s actions at the end of Dead Man’s Chest were probably the most surprising and interesting moment in the series, from a writer’s perspective. And yet it feels like the writers lost interest or simply didn’t know what to do with their own story in the third installment; there’s a strange lack of action and deliberate intent in the resolving of that story.

Other than these two points, At World’s End is a big, fun piece (I’m reluctant to call it the end of anything) of a big, fun series, emphasis on series. The script walks that fine and elusive line between reinventing the wheel and feeling like yesterday’s underwear–new situations give the audience something to get excited about, but the use of jokes and characters from the previous films offer a sense of familiarity, improve the realism of the Pirates world, and save precious screen time. Saving time here is no small thing. The movie clocks in at just under three hours, and while it wears its length well (the slow patch, if there is one, is at the beginning), it’s just as well to not re-explain who’s doing what, and why.

Part of the reason the movie is so long is that, as the series has grown, so has the cast. At World’s End has plenty of Johnny Depp action, but it’s no longer the Jack, Will, and Elizabeth Show. And while a little more depth to the main story lines would have been appreciated, director Gore Verbinski doesn’t waste what he has–many of the best scenes in the film deal with characters and relationships we haven’t seen before. We get Elizabeth and Bootstrap Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgard), Davy Jones Bill Nighy) and Calypso (Naomie Harris), and great moments from Elizabeth’s father (Jonathan Pryce), Gareth from the BBC Office Ragetti (MacKenzie Crook), and Norrington (Jack Davenport) (who, it must be admitted, may be my favorite character in the series. More Norrington, I say!). The starring cast is slightly less consistent–Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom are charming and endlessly good-looking, but end up totally (and unsurprisingly) outclassed. Chow Yun-Fat sounded like a good idea at the time, but doesn’t contribute much except as a plot point, which is disappointing. On the other hand, Depp is fantastic, as if there were any other option, and Bill Nighy continues his quest for a new Academy Award category: Best Actor Hidden Under Prosthetics and Animation. Geoffrey Rush isn’t any kind of revelation, but I’ll say that he gives the best “YARRRRRRRRR!” in the business. Even Naomie Harris as Calypso shows her stuff under a thick Caribbean accent and some truly terrifying teeth.

At World’s End is a big movie. It’s noisy, colorful, complex, and packed with special effects and striking moments–exactly what the third (and currently final) Pirates movie needed to be. It isn’t perfect, but it gets the job done with enthusiasm, confidence, and spectacle, and that’s just what a pirate would want.

And for the eager beavers out there, a few more comments, in list form:

SPOILERS AHEAD! BIG, JUICY, IMPORTANT ONES! IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN AT WORLD’S END AND DON’T WANT TO KNOW, SKIP THE FOLLOWING SECTION. CONSIDER YOURSELF WARNED.

- The teaser scene carried just the tiniest whiff of cheese with it, but still: striking. Pirates: The Musical! Poor kid, though.

- Davey Jones’s Locker is one cracked-out place.

- What’s with the crustacean theme? Weird. Who knew that floods of crabs could be so impressive? Also: the Black Pearl crashing over the dunes. Cool.

- MacKenzie Crook cracks me up, but I’m so glad he got a Moment in this episode. Talking to Calypso like a lover, and all. You know Gareth would be stoked.

- I thought the best scenes tended to be the quieter, slower, sadder ones: Elizabeth trying to save her father, Calypso and Davey Jones in the brig, Elizabeth and Bootstrap Bill. There’s some pretty emotional stuff going on here, and I liked what we got to see of it.

- Fun fact: Keira Knightley plays Queen Amidala’s stand-in in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (when Queen Amidala switches places with her handmaiden, remember?). When Sao Feng dresses her up like Calypso, the Natalie Portman resemblance is kind of uncanny. Well done, Star Wars casting folks!

- KEITH RICHARDS. HA!

- I was really surprised that they killed Will off. Why do they kill the pretty one? Of course, he comes back wearing that silly pirate bandana, which I assume comes with the position of Undead Captain for All Eternity. I sat behind a crowd of high-school freshman girls, which means I’ll always associate that moment with the Gasp Heard ‘Round the World. Hear, hear, girls. Hear, hear.

- I would very much like to be the Pirate King.

- Did you stay to watch the ending scene after the credits? Never leave before the credits. Didn’t you learn your lesson from X-Men 3?

SPOILERS END HERE. BUT THEN, SO DOES THIS REVIEW.

Pirates of the Caribbean, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Keira Knightley, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, movie reviews

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End made Disney plenty of money this weekend, but not enough to break the first-weekend box office record its predecessor set last summer. Dead Man’s Chest set the bar at $135.6 million and was surpassed twice this month by Spider-Man 3 and Shrek the Third; one assumes that Disney had high hopes for this weekend, but they missed the mark by a good $20 million–PotC3 brought in $112.5 million, which is certainly enough for a few summer homes, but just squeezed onto the list of Top Five Weekend Releases.

CH staff have now seen the film; thoughts ad nauseam tomorrow, after a matinee re-watch. Excuse the delay–we’re just recovering coherent speech.

As usual, the rules: The first person to comment with the character, actor, and movie that contains that quote gets a special eyelash batting and a tailor-made Cinema Hype cheer, which might even rhyme.

This week’s extra-special quotation:

“And so, dear Lord, it is with deep sadness that we turn over to you this young woman, whose dream to ride on a giant swan resulted in her death. Maybe it is your way of telling us… to buy American.”

Klassy.

movie quotes, contests

I forgot the plot
of the second one; please don’t
make me walk the plank!

As I hurry through my last-ditch memory-refresher viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, I’ve come to one major conclusion: I really like pirates. I suspect that I’m not alone here. Pirates are fun. They have parrots. They say “booty” a lot. They like to travel. They’re a good bunch, the buccaneers. Maybe that’s why I’m excited about PotC: At World’s End, which comes out Friday and to which I have an opening-night ticket. I feel that the pirates won’t let me go without showing me a good time, you know?

I also firmly believe that we have an example of Empire Strikes Back-ism here, where we see the glory of the second PotC movie when the third is released. Since the second two movies were written and filmed as a single unit, I see the two as two halves of a whole, and I think it’s going to be a pretty great whole. Just you wait. It’ll all make sense come Friday night.

I’ll keep you posted. Arrrr! (Sorry. Just had to say it one more time.)

*For all you Bones geeks out there (…just me? Really?), I tried mightily to find a proper “Man With the Bone” pirate quotation to use here, but nothing fit. I apologize.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, movies, haiku, Bones, Man with the Bone

When it all comes to an end, when I’ve finished Project 501 and have to find some other quixotically obsessive pop-culture quest (Academy Award winners, in chronological order, by Best Supporting Actress!), I believe I know what my final words will be: “Thank goodness for the library.” What would we do without that repository of ancient VHS tapes, the last bastion of the Netflix-free world? I know I wouldn’t have finished the Project. Not even close. I would have been stuck: stuck in 1933, on a movie that doesn’t exist on DVD and probably doesn’t spur many video-tape sales, either.

It’s a sad thing. But anyway.

Cavalcade is a fine film. It’s sensitive, in an epic sort of way. Diana Wynyard is lovely and sympathetic as the requisite long-suffering maternal figure. There are lives and loves lost, wars fought, hardships overcome. The screenplay, based on a Noel Coward play, moves along without being glib. One scene–which I won’t describe on the off chance that somebody is actually going to rent the Oakland Public Library’s one VHS copy–has one of the finest plot-point reveals I’ve seen on film. There is much to enjoy about Cavalcade.

There are just two minor setbacks: first, “epic” does not necessarily equal “memorable.” Cavalcade is about real events, and it was probably a truly moving film in its day. Unfortunately, so many other 20th-century films have done “epic” so much better that it’s not so surprising that Cavalcade would get lost in the shuffle. It’s kind of too bad, but it’s also not quite striking enough of a film to have made its mark.

Second, it’s one thing to make a film about Change and the Decline of Society in the 20th century. It’s something entirely different to make that film in 1933. The temptation is to tap this movie on the shoulder and say, very politely, “Um, you missed a few things.” And of course nobody could know about World War II or the other myriad things that went on in the other 67 years before the millennium, but you’ve got to admit that, mathematically, 1933 was unlikely to be the high point of the century, excitement-wise. Basically, it’s dated. Sweet, but dated.

Next up: It Happened One Night (1934), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935)

Cavalcade, Academy Awards, Best Picture, Project 501, Noel Coward

1. I may have laughed louder at Talladega Nights, but I laughed far longer at Blades of Glory. Eat that, Ricky Bobby!

2. Amy Poehler and Will Arnett as the semi-incestuous brother-sister pair everybody recognizes except the international skating community.

3. Excellent use of actual figure skaters in various stages of embarrassing decline

4. Jon Heder’s hair: the perfect feathered fluff, a la Farrah. Golden, glowing, and mesmerizing.

5. Chazz: We’re gonna dance to one song, and one song only: “Lady Humps” by the Blackeyed Peas. “What you gonna do with all that junk, all that junk inside your trunk? I’m a get you, get you drunk, get you drunk off my lady humps, my humps, my humps, my lovely lady humps.
Jimmy: [disgusted] I’m not skating to anything with references to lady humps. I don’t even know what that means.
Chazz: No one knows what it means. It’s provocative.

If the new movie Waitress were a pie, it might be called “Sweet Little Movie Pie.” It might have cherries–sweet, but tart–and maybe some chocolate, and it might have whipped cream on top. It would be a pie that isn’t totally exotic, nothing we haven’t seen in a pie before, and it might not be the most elegant piping on top, but it would probably taste pretty good in the end.

The heroine of Waitress is Jenna (Keri Russell), who makes and serves life-inspired pie at a diner in an unnamed town in the South. Jenna has two waitress buddies (Cheryl Hines and the late Adrienne Shelly, who also wrote and directed the film), one cranky customer/owner, one hellish husband, and one unwanted, unborn baby (thanks to the hellish husband). She is, in a word, trapped–stuck without the strength or the means to leave her life. It’s not a particularly new or unique story, but it’s told with earnest charm and a sense that, while Jenna’s situation is a bad one, all is not lost.

The script for Waitress reads a bit like a first novel: it’s a good story, but the telling of it is sprinkled with moments of self-consciousness. We can overlook the awkward patches, though, because for each of them, Shelly snuck in a moments that feel graceful and true. She dealt especially well with the interactions of the lower-pressure supporting characters–the storylines that don’t affect the outcome of the movie, per se, but give us local color and people to root for other than Jenna. Things get better as the movie goes on and finds it rhythm. But there’s a period toward the beginning where everything’s just a little bit studied and a a little bit too carefully arranged.

The performances are reasonably strong all around–Russell does a fine job, and Hines and Shelly give her some good gal-pal backup. As Jenna’s lover/Ob-Gyn, Nathan Fillion is impressive mostly in that he’s so restrained. It’s tempting to hold him to the standard of his signature role, Capt. Mal Reynolds, and it’s surprising to see him go in a completely different direction with himself. It’s weird but kind of fun to watch him–a dynamic actor–fit himself carefully into a role that is, frankly, far less dynamic than he is.

In all, Waitress is unlikely to sweep the Oscars next year, or spawn a new school of filmmaking, but it’s a good movie. It’s funny, sweet, and offers a welcome respite from the school of noisy/somber action-dramas we’re seeing these days. Just beware: it might make you want to bake.

Waitress, Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, Adrienne Shelly, independent film, movie reviews

As usual, the rules: The first person to comment with the character, actor, and movie that contains that quote gets a special eyelash batting and a tailor-made Cinema Hype cheer, which might even rhyme.

Here you go:

“The magic is unsanitary!”

And because this week’s is short and therefore on the difficult side, a hint: “There will never be a time when this will not be tacky.”

Have at it!

Not even Netflix
cares enough for Cavalcade
to hit DVD.

Project 501 has hit a bit of a technical snag this week. It’s nothing big–nothing the public library can’t fix–but the 1933 Best Picture winner, Cavalcade, doesn’t exist on DVD. This has us a bit concerned. What, exactly, does a film–the best film of 1933, apparently–have to do to be denied DVD-hood? It’s squeezed between two potential winners, Grand Hotel and It Happened One Night, both of which have achieved disc status. But Cavalcade? It’s too obscure, or too boring, or something to be converted for the 21st-century audience. It’s a little worrisome.

We’ll keep you posted.

I’m sure that if I ever become bored with making up random movie-related blog posts, I could probably keep up an entire blog about literary adaptations. It’s a never-ending stream: we’re never going to run out of books to adapt, as long as the writers keep writing and the filmers keep filming. Since I’m not bored of making up random movie-related posts, though, I’ll just use a reference provided by someone else: check out this list, from The Book Stacks, of upcoming book adaptations to see what’s coming down the pike.

And I must say: The Second Summer of the Sisterhood? Hmmm. It’s my favorite Pants book, but a) they’d better re-cast, since they’ll all be 35 by then, and b) DON’T SCREW IT UP.

That is all.

I’ve been watching a lot of teen-girl rivalry movies lately. I don’t know: maybe I’m secretly re-living the tenth grade in my dreams, or wishing I were Lindsay Lohan, or something. Maybe I’m feeling inadequate, or, on the other hand, particularly domineering. Whatever it is, I’m all over the Queen Bee/Wannabe movies these days. So what better way to celebrate than to share with you all a list of high-school social-hierarchy films? This is clearly not an exhaustive list–not even close–and there are plenty of films that crossed my mind and didn’t make the cut, for whatever reason (13 Going on 30: Queen Bee/Wannabe movie? Talk amongst yourselves). Feel free to comment with suggestions for either list, if you feel so inclined.

In the mean time, I’ll be working on my slam book.

Queen Bees:
Mean Girls: The cream of the post-John Hughes teen-girl-movie crop. A really good movie posing as a…not-really-good movie. Plus, Tina Fey. And Amanda Seyfried’s psychic boobs. Heh.
Heathers: Kind of the ultimate queen-bee movie, what with the murder and the Christian Slater, and all. Classic.
Clueless: Almost didn’t make the list due to a rare instance of queen-bee kindness to those who are not of their species. Still kind of a winner, though.
Election: I almost listed this under “Wannabes,” but Tracy Flick wouldn’t put up with it.

Wannabes:
Sixteen Candles: The geeks and the underclassmen win out in the end, of course, but Samantha Baker is no Caroline Mulford. Wannabe, definitely.
Welcome to the Dollhouse: Painful.
Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion: An interesting twist on the high-school social-angst movie, with adults pretending to have invented Post-Its. Plus, “I’M THE MARY!”

I haven’t been to the theater in over three weeks. In the life of a movie blogger, that’s a long time–there’s only so much to write about, movie-wise, without actual trips to the movies. Part of the problem has been a lack of material–I recently checked the listings for a sixteen-screen multiplex near my house and found exactly one movie I could maybe have been talked into seeing (Blades of Glory). So, review-wise, there was The Host, and then there was…nothing. Now, I did miss Spider-Man 3, which is a little embarrassing after all the Cinema Hype-ing I did. I was supposed to see it opening night, but I was sick, and then the moment had passed, and word of mouth isn’t exactly inspiring me to spend $10 and nearly three hours on it.

So I’m turning over a new leaf. I’m looking forward. Forward to summer, to blockbusters and less-than-blockbusters, to having decent choices. Currently, I’m trying to track down a showing of Waitress and then waiting for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End (for which I will need to find an appropriate acronym, since I will not be typing the entire thing out every time; mark my words). There will be movies, soon. There will be more movies than a reasonable person can see, and I know that. I’m just trying to pace myself, here.

Waitress, Spider-Man 3, The Host, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, movies

As usual, the rules: The first person to comment with the character, actor, and movie that contains that quote gets a special eyelash batting and a tailor-made Cinema Hype cheer, which might even rhyme.

This week:

“‘I never told him to stay out of your bed.’
‘You most certainly did.’
‘I never told him to stay out of your bed.’
‘Yes you did.’
‘I told him that a player on a streak has to respect the streak.’
‘Oh, fine.’
‘You know why? Because they don’t–they don’t happen very often.’
‘Right.’
‘If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you ARE! And you should know that!’”