The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Movie Trailer

Since I'm not doing much filmmaking these days, nor scriptwriting, I've decided to use my old blog to promote movies/tv series that deal with the theme of filmmaking and/or writing. The first one in the series is the trailer for The Perks of Being a Wallflower, starring Emma Watson. Watch below and enjoy.

Dogs Of Babel - the book, the script and Steve Carell

Steve Carell just signed in to play to protagonist in the screen adaptation of Dogs Of Babel. Screenwriter Jamie Linden (Dear John) adapted the script from the novel by Carolyn Parkhurst.

The story is interesting enough as a book:

Paul Iverson, a linguistics professor, returns home one day to find his wife dead in their backyard. Police rule her death an accident, but Paul is not quite sure. The only witness to her death is their dog Lorelei. In Paul’s grief-stricken search for answers, he endeavors to teach Lorelei to talk in the hopes that he can uncover what happened the day his wife died.

Now, call me weird, but just the words "linguistics professor" make me want to watch the movie already. I only readan older version of the script (2006), and now I need to read a newer (2009) version to see howit all ends up - in the original script it was somehow faded.

Rabbit A La Berlin

The untold story about wild rabbits which lived between the Berlin Walls. For 28 years Death Zone was their safest home. Full of grass, no predators, guards protecting them from human disturbance. They were closed but happy. When their population grew up to thousands, guards started to remove them. But rabbits survived and stayed there. Unfortunately one day the wall fell down. Rabbits had to abandon comfortable system. They moved to West Berlin and have been living there in a few colonies since then. They are still learning how to live in the free world, same as we - the citizens of Eastern Europe.

If you're in NYC today - run!

WGA Awards Nominations

WGA 2011 Best Comedy Nominees:

Not that it matters, prizes never really matter. But I really doubt that WGA has any notion of the term 'comedy'. Check out their 2011 nominees for Best Comedy TV Series:
30 Rock, Glee, Modern Family, Nurse Jackie, The Office.

It sounds like a list from couple of years back, doesn't it? Why would they put The Office on their list, and not the much better Parks and Recreation? Why would they even consider Nurse Jackie to be a comedy, and a best comedy? And Glee, they had better seasons.

If I was to write my 2011 Best Comedy nominees, It would have been something like:
Parks and Recreation
Community
Eastbound and Down
Modern Family
Terriers

OK, Terriers is not (or, was not) a comedy, but it's way funnier than Nurse Jackie.

Moving on to the next category.

WGA 2011 Best Drama Nominees:

And the nominees are...Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, Dexter, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men.

Couldn't agree more about most of that list, and especially it is great to see Breaking Bad there. The competition here is hard, and although I hope Breaking Bad will get the award, I'm afraid Friday Night Lights is a possible winner (a last chance to reward this show before its final fifth season ends), and it will be hard also not to give this award to Boardwalk Empire (it is also a nominee for Best New Series, but there the competition is even greater).

Since Breaking Bad has also two episodes on the Best Episode list, it may win there, giving the Best Drama to Friday Night Lights, and forcing Boardwalk Empire to go home with the Best New Series award.

I'll wait until February 5th with the smiles and the curses.

How Did Adam Rifkin Made 'Look' TV Series?

I was never a big fan of reality, documentries, and any material that tried to show me real things on my screen. I love the stuff that looks too good for any reality. Not fake, not ice-cream shots, but still - crafted.

I never saw the Adam Rifkin's movie Look, that was kind of successful when it was released in 2007. But now the same Rifkin brings the same Look - to the TV screen. A TV series that's based on material taken from security cameras. Edited, of course, I thought, but could it be all original content and still be legal to air? Or did they use actors that played what they saw on the cameras?

I got pretty curios about this Look the TV series, and then I found this great clip that explained me some things about the making of of Look.



So is it real or not? And what will be the hook? I mean, Rifkin talked about lines of plot that are splitted into pieces during the season, but isn't it what any TV series do anyway?

Being a writer and still have some privacy

I was trying to write about an affair without letting my wife know about it. I was writing about my experiences, girls’ flats, things like that.

This is what John Lennon said about the lyrics to his song Norwegian Wood. I wonder if Haruki Murakami read this citation when he wrote his book by the same title.

Here's John telling us more about how to write about private things and still keeping your secrets to yourself:

Norwegian Wood was about an affair I was having. I was very careful and paranoid because I didn't want my wife, Cyn, to know that there really was something going on outside the household. I'd always had some kind of affairs going, so I was trying to be sophisticated in writing about an affair, but in such a smokescreen way that you couldn't tell. I can't remember any specific woman it had to do with.

Here are the lyrics of Norwegian Wood:

I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me.
She showed me her room, isn't it good, norwegian wood?
She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere,
So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair.
I sat on a rug, biding my time, drinking her wine.
We talked until two and then she said, "It's time for bed."
She told me she worked in the morning and started to laugh.
I told her I didn't and crawled off to sleep in the bath.
And when I awoke I was alone, this bird had flown.
So I lit a fire, isn't it good, norwegian wood.

HBO Set Design on Mildred Pierce

After giving us a lesson in set design on Boardwalk Empire, the guys at HBO are showing off their creativity also on the set of Mildred Pierce.

The movie was shot in NYC, an the set just looks so good. I thought the way the cars are driving reverse is funny. And i wonder if the production used the same crew from Boardwalk Empire for the Mildred set.

Deep Drama In Hollywood And Asia

I first thought of studying film after watching an Ozu film. It was so amazingly quiet and intense that I felt an urge of expressing myself the same way. So real and yet so surreal. After getting to know the Asian film industry slightly better, I knew it wasn't that all Japanese or Taiwanese films were were composed like this - in fact most of them tried to do what they saw in western films - but i guess every Asian director could relate to those feelings that are expressed so subtly. Not a racist thing, just different types of cultural behaviors in the eastern side of the world, or at least in some Asian countries.

Tsai Ming Liang is a great example, although an extreme one. His film The River is dealing with such intense dramatic issues in such a quiet, almost serene tone, that it gets to your entire body. The Japanese anime director Makoto Shinkai is another interesting example. I remembered his films when watching the trailer for Welcome To The Rileys.

Welcome To The Rileys deals with loss, like the films of Shinkai. But unlike Shinkai, it seems like the writer/director of The Rileys is following every Hollywood cliche possible. Too bad that James Gandolfini, an actor with great talent, is sucked into such a bullshit drama that probably will get some Oscars.

Remember the Dardenne brothers with their film The Son? It had the same basic theme as The Rileys, parents coping with their son's death. You didn't hear anybody saying the son was dead. But you just knew it. They used cinema, not cheap soap-style manipulations to give you the story.

Tim Burton Writes a Poem About Johnny

Tim Burton wrote this poem to his friend and alter-ego Johnny Depp, and also made the illustration. Tim Burton is so very talented, this is no news, but this poem reveals a bit more about his relations to Johnny. But maybe poems are just poems.

Boardwalk Empire: building the set

I just came across this wonderful youtube video on the HBO channel, in which they show (time lapse) how the set for Boardwalk Empire was built. The set is a recreation of Atlantic City Boardwalk area in the 1920. Great video, not sure if it's relevant for any of you on your next production though.