Tuesday, December 24, 2013

book/ Hollywood hooked on a teenage fantasy

This is on my www.badcb.blogspot.ca:



Dec. 11 Book: I have thought of writing the Rain script or The Vertex Fighter script into a book form, and then self-publish.  It will then gain more attention and it could then be produced into a TV movie.  However, I don’t want to write a fictional book.

Dec. 16: I sent “Self-publishing rewrites rules/ Allie Brosh.”  Then my friend Sherry told me I should write the Rain script into a book and then self-publish.  That’s uncanny.  I was thinking the same thing and then I emailed her back the above paragraph.

http://www.badcb.blogspot.ca/2013/12/self-publishing-rewrites-rules-allie.html

Rain script: Today is my day off.  I did do productive things like look for a job, read the newspaper, and pick up a prescription.  I decided to look at my notes again because I did take a break from it.  I read some of it and then I got frustrated with it because I’m stuck.

I decided I might as well print some of what I typed up.  I always write my script on scrap computer paper to save paper.  I decided to print it on my scrap paper for the same reason.  My notes are scattered so when it’s typed up and printed, I can read it clearly.

Comparisons:

A character steps on a bomb and can’t move or it will detonate: I found this in my notes.  It was done on Flashpoint ep “Coming to You Live.”   A character Young does step on the bomb and he was stuck there.  Then he decides to step off it and then it kills him.  It was a powerful ending.  

It was done on Rookie Blue where Dov Epstein enters a drug lair and steps on a bomb.  Bomb squad comes, and she puts the weight of Dov to replace his weight so he can step off it.

It was done on Castle’s ep “Still.”  Beckett steps on a bomb and the others have to solve the case.

A drug that makes you really smart: It was done on the TV show Invisible Man where Agent Hobbs was injected with this drug that makes him really smart, but then later proves to be fatal.

It was done in the movie Limitless where a man takes this drug, becomes really smart and really rich by using his smarts.

Reading scripts: A producer I have in contact with has sent me some scripts to read before, and I write my review of it.  I joined a couple of Meetup groups and I read the other members scripts.  I have read one full-length script and a 30 page outline.  I thought both are really good from un-produced writers.  One script was drama and the other was action.

I then sent my notes to them about my take on it.  I say things like I like the dialogue, or the plot twist.  This script reminds me of these other movies and they appreciated my feedback.  

Left/ right brain: Throwing out old notes is good for my left and right brain.  My left brain likes that I’m cleaning my room and recycling.  My right brain is being more creative.

Hollywood hooked on a teenage fantasy

Superhero fetish stretching out into a future of endless sequels

Jay Stone, Postmedia News

Published: Friday, May 04 2012
The versatile British actor Tom Wilkinson was talking recently about his new movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It's a film about a group of seniors: a rare film that's actually aimed at the over-50 crowd.
"There are a lot of people over the age of 50 who really like going to the cinema and don't want to watch X-Men or Clash of the Titans," Wilkinson said. "And why should they? God. There is a big market for films that are slightly old-fashioned, in the way they used to make films in the '70s."
Later, though, he amended his view: "A good X-Men movie. - A good movie is a good movie is a good movie," he said.

Amen to that. As Duke Ellington once said about music, there are two kinds: good and bad. But even given all that, the Hollywood love affair with the X-Men and their ilk - with the genre of the superhero film - is getting out of hand.

The latest one, The Avengers, opens this week, and it should be one of the good ones, with a fine cast that includes Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Jeremy Renner, and an innovative director in Joss Weldon. It's been getting strong reviews. It is probably a lot of fun, and if it were being offered up as a surprising change to the summer movie schedule, it would be refreshing. But it's only the latest in a perennial parade of super-hero films, with other high-profile entries like The Amazing Spider-Man and The Dark Knight Rises still to come. They are both remountings of franchises that have been reinvented more often than the iPad. Like many super-heroes, Spider-Man - still a Johnny-come-lately to those of us who grew up with Super-man as the king of the super-hero universe, with Batman as a sort of weak-kneed second cousin - is hailed as a metaphor for confused adolescence, or maybe the ambiguities of power. Batman, meanwhile, is another depressed saviour who represents the futility of nobility in a world gone mad.

There have been some wonderful Batman and Spider-Man films, but there have been some lousy ones, too.
It doesn't seem to matter: If you want to talk about the great responsibilities of great power, you have to do it through the eyes of a teenager who can climb up the side of buildings. Hollywood has been taken over by fantasy, and it's almost a novelty to find a story about an everyday adult trying to solve realistic problems without benefit of Spandex or a supercar.

Like the X-Men, with their cast of heroes tormented by their extraordinary powers - the pain of being inflammable becoming a symbol for lonely adolescence in a way that, say, Holden Caulfield never imagined - The Avengers brings together a wide selection of offbeat creatures. Downey Jr.'s Iron Man gets by on the star's charisma, but the character himself is a juvenile trope for the misuse of military power. And do we really need more of The Hulk - even as portrayed by Ruffalo - as an illustration of the destructive effects of anger? It was kind of campy fun back in the 1970s, when Bill Bixby turned into Lou Ferrigno when he lost his temper, but it's a constricted kind of fun. It's the same thing every time, the temper tantrum as character development.

And that's the problem with Hollywood's superhero fetish. There's simply too much of it: indestructible warriors extending back in time (Thor is another of the Avengers) and forward into an endless future of relaunches and remountings and even more obscure comic-book characters. I know I'm mostly alone in this: Millions of fans of these superheroes can't wait to see them on screen, a nostalgic trip back to the time when (I suppose) they all dreamt of being invisible or flying or turning unconquerable. It's a teenage fantasy that has taken over an industry that is more and more turning to familiar, pre-sold ideas - old TV shows, bestselling youth fiction - to fill the seats. A good movie is a good movie is a good movie, but can we please have a few more with ordinary human beings?

http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=5867c524-9237-458d-8531-31c0001c2898&p=2

Dec. 24 My opinion: Yeah, I have to agree with the above article.  There are all these superhero movies.  The latest ones I saw are The Dark Knight and Iron Man and those were about 5 yrs ago and only when I rented it on dvd.

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