Terrible Writing

Although I like to think of myself as a writer, the fact is that I'm not. However, that doesn't stop me from having a critical eye when it comes to watching television or movie writing. I often criticize things for having "terrible" writing, so I thought maybe it was time I defined what I mean.

To me, terrible writing is any writing that calls attention to itself. It's conspicuous. Anytime you're watching something and you think, "That would never happen" or "No one would say that," then you're experiencing terrible writing. Now, to be fair, suspension of disbelief or strong likable characters can overcome those thoughts. In that case, it's more like bad writing that works, or a plot or characters that are so good, the little bad things don't hurt them.

I have a favorite quote from the movie The Rocketeer, as a director gives advice to a hapless young starlet: "Act, but don't act like you're acting." I believe the same applies to writing. If the viewer (or reader) forgets the writer by getting wrapped up in the story, you're doing a good job. Anything that reminds the audience there is a writer is bad.

So, I'm watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles yesterday. Honestly, I don't expect it to be good. But the first episode surprised me, and I thought it was quite good. The second episode, however... terrible.

The first infraction was admittedly minor, but it was so stupid it yanked me out of the show so hard I got whiplash. Young John Connor is working on some random electronic kit. He complains to his mom (the titular Sarah), "You got me the wrong needle-nosed pliers." She responds, "You said the red handled ones, right?" He holds up, gasp, blue handled pliers. Then they get in a little argument about why he isn't allowed to go outside.

What's wrong with this scene? The writer needed something to spark the argument. Grasping at straws, he decided Sarah bought the wrong tool, thereby also establishing John as a Radio Shack genius and his mom as unable to stop the blinking clock on the VCR. But "wrong needle-nosed pliers"? How many types of needle-nosed pliers are there? And seriously, the color of the handles makes a difference? I've used needle-nosed pliers with red, yellow, and black handles. That was the only difference between them. If he had said, "No, the kind with the bent tips on the end" or "These are regular pliers, I asked for needle-nose" I would've been fine with it (dumb as it is). But, those options would've taken a few seconds and not been as effective as the visual of holding up blue pliers. Terrible.

The next infraction was far more of a violation. I use that word both to reflect the seriousness, but also because it broke one of the laws established in the show. I mean, come on. It's only the second episode, and already you're breaking your own rules?

The rule is this: When traveling through time, only flesh can be transported. Clothes don't go through; weapons don't go through; the only reason the Terminators go through is because they're covered in human skin. At the end of the first show, John, Sarah, and Cameron (nice nod to the creator there) pop through a time bubble just as they explode the Terminator about to destroy them. They arrive in present day, naked, in the middle of a freeway. This provides a nice gag and some eye candy. No problem. In the second episode, we discover that when they blew up the Terminator, his head popped off and came with them through the time bubble. Which they had just said couldn't happen. It's another clear plot device (borrowed from a Star Trek: Next Generation episode) that allowed the writers to reassemble the Terminator. Boo. Terrible.

There were many other terrible things in that episode, but I just wanted to point out the two that bugged me the most. It stayed pretty consistently bad the whole time. To their credit, though, I thought the third episode was a little better. Being starved for new sci-fi (or new anything, these days), I'm willing to keep watching for now.

Academy Awards

Well, the Academy Awards list was released a while back. As a general rule, I really don't care about the Oscars. All awards and "Best of" lists are really nonsense. But, since I do consider myself a movie buff, I feel I am forced to care.

One thing I do appreciate about the Oscars are the nominations. These are chosen only by people in that field, meaning only actors can nominated for Best Actor. To me, this means a nomination is a more relevant show of peer appreciation than the actual award, since that is voted on by everyone (including those who never saw the film).

I found this year to be particularly filled with good movies, so my predictions were much more difficult than usual. Here are my current guesses for some of the major categories, though I reserve the right to change my mind right up until that fateful night.

Original Score:
"Atonement," Dario Marianelli; "The Kite Runner," Alberto Iglesias; "Michael Clayton," James Newton Howard; "Ratatouille," Michael Giacchino; "3:10 to Yuma," Marco Beltrami.

Sound Editing:
"The Bourne Ultimatum," "No Country for Old Men," "Ratatouille," "There Will Be Blood," "Transformers."

Sound Mixing:
"The Bourne Ultimatum," "No Country for Old Men," "Ratatouille," "3:10 to Yuma," "Transformers."

Cinematography:
"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "Atonement," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood."

Art Direction:
"American Gangster," "Atonement," "The Golden Compass," "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street," "There Will Be Blood."

Animated Feature Film:
"Persepolis"; "Ratatouille"; "Surf's Up."

Original Screenplay:
Diablo Cody, "Juno"; Nancy Oliver, "Lars and the Real Girl"; Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"; Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco, "Ratatouille"; Tamara Jenkins, "The Savages."

Adapted Screenplay:
Christopher Hampton, "Atonement"; Sarah Polley, "Away from Her"; Ronald Harwood, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"; Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood."

Foreign Film:
"Beaufort," Israel; "The Counterfeiters," Austria; "Katyn," Poland; "Mongol," Kazakhstan; "12," Russia.

Supporting Actress:
Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There"; Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"; Saoirse Ronan, "Atonement"; Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby Gone"; Tilda Swinton, "Michael Clayton."

Supporting Actor:
Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"; Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"; Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"; Tom Wilkinson, "Michael Clayton."

Actress:
Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"; Julie Christie, "Away From Her"; Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"; Laura Linney, "The Savages"; Ellen Page, "Juno."

Actor:
George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"; Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"; Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"; Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"; Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises."


Director:
Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; Jason Reitman, "Juno"; Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"; Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"; Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood."

Best Picture:
"Atonement," "Juno," "Michael Clayton," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood."

Real Life Speed Racer!

Yeah, yeah. It's been too long since my last post. Believe it or not, I actually have two movie review posts in the queue, but I just haven't put them up yet. I'm really having a hard time getting myself into the habit of blogging. I may have to force myself to make a daily post until I can get more accustomed to it.

I've been dragging my feet on the movie reviews for a couple of reasons. I want to say too much, and yet I feel like writing too little. I'm having trouble finding the right balance. I really love the style and format and the whole shebang as developed by the guy at Movie Quickie. I really just want to copy/steal everything he's doing and make it my own. That's my goal, anyway.

Also, you may have noticed that I've switched to a three column format. I liked it better in theory than I do in practice. It feels a little cluttered. I don't know. The old one seemed to have too much white space. Hopefully, I'll get used to this one.

Anyway, the point of my post. I watched On The Beach last night. It's pretty good, but really not as good as the book. It was nice to see a movie really take time with it's story (although, there was an early radio transmission that gave away the nuclear war idea about 3 minutes into it, whereas in the book that fact was revealed much, much later). It was also nice to see long takes of actors delivering dialog.

But that's not the real point. The real point is the car race. The premise of the novel and movie, if you don't know, is that Australia is the last habitable place on Earth after a huge nuclear war. The end is coming to Australia as well, but they have to wait for several months as the radioactive cloud slowly moves down to envelop the rest of the planet.

Well, being bored and destined to die, several car fanatics decide to stage a car race, just for themselves. These aren't professional race car drivers, just people who want to race. They zoom around at break-neck speeds with zero concern for the safety of themselves or other drivers.

I think the scene is meant to be a little horrific, in that people are dying and they don't really care. But what struck me the most was how much it looked like any number of races from my boyhood-favorite TV show, Speed Racer! The cars look the same, the crashes look the same. Even the lead driver (Fred Astaire) is driving a car that bears a resemblance to the famed Mach 5, with the headrest, white car, and number 5.

Fortunately for you, I've found a clip of it on YouTube, so you can enjoy it without having to sit through the whole movie. Check it out:

Romance & Cigarettes

Romance & Cigarettes is an unusual musical where song and dance appear unexpectedly in a working class neighborhood. But the movie isn't exactly a musical. Sometimes it's a comedy. More often it's a drama. In truth, it's all over the map, but instead of making it a mess, that actually lends it a lot of its charm.

The basic plot revolves around Nick (James Gandolfini), his wife Kitty (Susan Sarandon), their three daughters, and Nick's mistress Tula (Kate Winslet). There are very interesting dynamics at play between all of the characters as they show the different faces of love that they all have for each other. The story goes through the predictable developments, but spices them up with scenes of wit and subtlety.

Of the many musicals that have come out over the past year, this one certainly has less polish. That may be because it was originally released in 2005 and has only now found distribution. However, I think that works in its favor, since it makes you believe the characters are just singing what they feel. Overall, it's a very interesting movie. Maybe not great, but definitely worth a look.

My rating: 3 stars (out of 4)
Ebert's rating: 4 stars (out of 4)
Tomatometer: 49% - Rotten (as of 12/16/07)

The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass is a fantasy movie about a young girl and her adventures in a strange world. The world is strange because even though it looks and sounds like early 20th century England, there is magic, fantastic steam-punk contraptions, talking polar bears, and people's souls are on the outside in the form of different animals, which they call daemons. It is that last bit that has created such controversy.

The source material for the movie was the first book in a trilogy referred to as His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman. The books apparently have a very anti-Christian lean to them which becomes more forceful (and less metaphorical) as the books progress. Fortunately, I have not read any of the books, so I was not predisposed in any direction toward the film.

The plot, as mentioned above, basically follows Lyra, the young heroine, as she learns about her world, flees the evil Miss Coulter, and attempts to rescue her friends. Along the way she has various encounters and meets a multitude of interesting characters. Lyra also possesses a precious device called an alethiometer, which allows her to see the truth of things. This is the golden compass of the title, and although it was important and much sought after in this film, I imagine its real significance will come later.

Overall, I found the movie to be surprisingly boring. The dialog was rather stiff, and there seemed to be a great deal of explaining, even though by the end there were still several things which I would have like to have explained. Visually, it was beautiful. The objects and machinery of their world was fascinating to look at. The talking CGI polar bears were interesting, but they never came close to looking like real polar bears. Perhaps that wasn't the intent.

As for the controversial bits, I suppose they were still there but certainly toned down to make them more palatable to a wider audience. The Magisterium, the bad guys in the film, want to suppress the truth and tell everyone what to do and think. Typical goals for evil. But no mention is made of the Magisterium being a religion in general, or Catholicism in particular.

My rating: 2 1/2 stars (out of 4)
Ebert's rating: 4 stars (out of 4)
Tomatometer: 44% - Rotten (as of 12/13/07)

This review needs a lot of work, but I'll post it now anyway just to get it done.