It doesn’t look like that on TV

March 10th, 2010 Writing, screen

The last shoot before we wrap – oooh I feel so important using that word – was to be of me and V getting smashed in the face with cream cake. This was something we saw on the French and Saunders Christmas Special. When the cast finally came into the room, the cream that was at first cold and stiff had become a coolish puddle. After explaining the hilarious plan, instead of an enthusiastic spring for the plate of melted cream and cake, the cast began a long discussion about where to stand, who to put cake on the face first, etc. By the time they picked up the cream and cake to actually press my face into it, and the cream had grown bubbles.

ECAs

March 3rd, 2010 atwork, screen

How’s your video, texted my aunt yesterday.
In the middle of it. Ssssh, filming now.

My colleague B in the scene was a disgruntled worker and we were filming his victory dance sequence. The practice didn’t go well. He got the moves but didn’t look the part. He read the lines without effort.  I had no idea what to do. I can’t teach him how to do act when I can’t do it myself – I am a terrible mimic.

“Action!”

I’m not certain what happened. When the camera began rolling, the chap in front of it was not B.  He delivered the dance, the lines, the scowls, the  crying, everything and a thousand times more than what I wrote.  He did what was in my head. We just left the camera on and stuffed our mouths with hankies throughout the filming because he was incredibly funny and we were laughing too much. I love watching live acting done well. And to watch it in front of my face, was amazing.  He makes me want to write more lines, better lines for this brilliant actor.

~

Would I do a film again? There were a few seconds of incredible stuff happening on screen. There were also a lot of incredibly tedious stuff happening onscreen. I don’t enjoy filming, the camera angles, visualising the scene in my head. I prefer writing. I like coming up with jokes more than doing the whole directing, producing and editing stuff.  I will try harder if the jokes are not funny but I get easily discouraged when people can’t do the lines properly,  or they start being human.

Supernatural + Plotting

January 14th, 2010 Writing, screen

I am so hooked on Supernatural I’m reading fandom essays on the show. This meta about the brothers and the plotline of Supernatural has very useful writing advice.

A character’s motivation is rooted in plot and plot spins directly out of a character’s needs and desires. So plot and characterization are like a snake swallowing its tail, where one ends the other begins. And Sam and Dean’s relationship with the story and their conflict tiger roles illustrate the circular-nature of this debate perfectly. More than anything, this story is about two brothers who are fundamentally different but work together all the same. And I think the same is true for how Sam and Dean are tied to the plot and how their characterization is dealt with. Each are accomplished in different ways and delivered through different means, but somehow they compliment each other and are used in tandem to forward the story.

More on Supernatural

January 11th, 2010 elsewhere, screen

I love this long post about Sam Winchester (the character).

“When The Levee Breaks” is another example — we had Sam’s version of events, for about twenty minutes. However, it wasn’t so much Sam as Sam’s sub-conscious (Sam’s brain and body were going through detox) experiencing wild withdrawal symptoms. Sam wasn’t himself; he was too busy conjuring his biggest fears to both absolve and accuse himself before taking on the role of judge, jury and executioner, again for himself. We learned about what Sam feared the most; but little was uttered about exactly WHY Sam was convinced drinking demon blood to go after Lillith (to save the world) was not only an option, but the only option.

It is why I fear showing “The End” while leaving Sam’s motivations –and entire experience– for later will only set up a disappointing and/or anti-climatic explanation that will not satisfy or even explain Sam’s troubled thinking to us or to Dean. It could be a gross disservice to a complex character. I’m not spoiled, and I absolutely don’t wish to be; but future titles give me hope we will see more of Sam from the inside when season 5 resumes.

Convention videos! Woohoo! Big plus: Misha Collins is extremely entertaining – hilarious!

Supernatural

January 9th, 2010 screen

Over the New Year holidays, I saw Supernatural Seasons 3, 4 and 5 and am hooked. Season 5 is incredible. I love the wars between Angels and Devil. The series is getting extremely exciting – the demons are scared of being finished by Lucifer after he finishes with the humans. Castiel is trying to find God to clean up the mess but he’s no where to be found. I have a hunch that the so-called anti-christ child created by a demon in Ep 6 is Jesus being tempted into evil (if it’s that easy to give birth to a demon child, the entire series would be crawling with anti-christs).

Educating Rita vs An Education

January 7th, 2010 radio, screen

In ‘Educating Rita’,  Rita is a hairdresser by day and an open university student by night. Rita is not just seeking an education – she yearns to wear the dress that an educated person wears: the type of person who could speak cleverly, enjoy music, art or even provide a erudite commentary on Literature or Art. In short, Rita wants to be different from the people around her. She seeks this from Frank, an alcoholic lecturer who is sick of the culture and academia that Rita seeks and wants Rita to retain her charm, her spontaneity, her real self just the way she is. Frank thinks very little of Literature (ie, that capital L literature) because it has nothing to do with real life; it is empty.

In ‘An Education’ – a film based on a memoir/essay of Lyn Barber, the quarrel with the enjoyment of concerts, theatre, jazz and art is similar. Jenny thinks that attending these things, having the glamour of an older man courting her meant she would be thought of as sophisticated. (Jenny wasn’t completely naive. She knew things have to be paid for with money, or with her virginity.)

Unlike Rita who eventually learns from Trish’s (her glamourous room-mate who enjoys classical music, poetry, theatre) suicide that the dress of an educated person is nothing but a facade hiding the emptiness of her life, Jenny considers her escape to Oxford as a right decision from troublesome real life of a cheating boyfriend, of parents who claim to know everything.

Both stories have different ideas about education.  ‘An Education’ never resolved Jenny’s question to her headmistress: what is she, a woman, to look forward to after being educated? When marriage stopped being an option, Jenny decides she really wants to go to Oxford where she could read English.  It seems to me that the writers all agree that education is a right escape just because it is perceived as a better goal than getting married, having babies, wasting her brilliant talent. I don’t agree it is a better goal. It’s just the paths we choose to take.  I much prefer how ‘Educating Rita’ handled it. Rita wasn’t sure about getting married and having babies early – not that she thought it was a poorer option but that she wanted to be someone else for a change – an educated person – because her life was getting her down. On achieving her goal, Rita discovers that she loves idea of education so much that she didn’t want to question what she learnt and she was wrong – she had to question what she learnt, and not merely accept authority.

Both characters realise at some point in their story that they are reading too much into the choices of entertainment: for Rita, a dress; for Jenny, a pretend sophistication.  Yes, entertainments are what they are but to dismiss it, to rubbish such things because it doesn’t reflect real life?  Jenny had problems with real life and successfully escaped into Oxford.  Rita says that the tutorial hours are her escape from real life. Yet the writers want me to think real life is the tops and that artistic creations should show real life in it? I’m unconvinced.

An Indulgent weekend

May 24th, 2009 books, screen, theatre

Dancing On Your Grave by The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs was a tad depressing. It has its funny moments but some rhymes/ ideas were predictable therefore, not as funny as I would like it (eg, working fingers to the bone + skeleton). I did find one part funny, when someone sang that when he was alive, every seven seconds, he thought about [pause] current affairs. Their idea of afterlife was at first Christian  (Pearly Gates), then, Buddhist (reincarnation) finally completely atheist (Worm food). It wasn’t hilarious but not horrible.

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink feels like an essay masquerading as fiction.

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Nick Mitchell AKA Norman Gentle

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SIFF 2009: Dean Spanley

April 25th, 2009 screen

I picked up Dean Spanley because of Peter O’Toole, Jeremy Northam and that it was a comedy. It’s billed as a fantasy because they are probably all Christians. Perhaps because of that the story is quite interesting since it doesn’t have to obey any rules about reincarnations believed by the Buddhists (such as a violent death is your Karma) and other by-the-thumb-guidelines such as the remembrance of past life requires high level meditation. The set up is not quite believable – that is, on a lark, father and son decided to listen to the lecture on transmogrification of the soul one Thursday arvo and the son meets Dean Spanley (the local clergyman) thrice and decides to ask him over for dinner to discuss about reincarnation. It could have been more random so it fits better into the story but this is the book’s problem, not the film. The show is comedic because of its premise more than verbal comedy. We are to find the believe that a man who remembers his past life as a dog after consuming a lot of Tokay a ticklish point but as a Buddhist, I completely believe it and hence, not that funny to me. Snr Frisk (O’Toole) provides most of the humour in the show by being a sarcastic grumpy old man who make inappropriate remarks. The other bits of humour is from the Australian conveyancer Wrather (Bryan Brown – whom I had thought was Michael Caine throughout the show) who brought the drinks to this party. This is such a English idea of comedy – that with drinks, hilarity will ensue instead of vomit. The show, like the old man, places more importance in the relationship between the dog, Wag (the ex Dean Spanley) and Snr Frisk than Snr Frisk and Jr Frisk (even though there was a touching reconciliation at the end). The last scene where Snr Frisk stares into the camera for a few seconds was to be terribly moving. I thought it slightly unnerving for the audience to be addressed directly since, only Jnr Frisk was the only character aware of the audience.

SIFF 2009: Flame & Citron

April 20th, 2009 screen

Perhaps that it matched the weather of the internal landscape, I liked Flame and Citron more than Dean Spanley. More on Dean Spanley later.

Flame & Citron (Flammen & Citronen)
This film picks up the story of the two members of Holger Danske WWII Danish resistance group, Jørgen Haagen Schmidt (Citronen) and Bent Fauerschou-Hviid (Flammen) when the Danish populance is getting restless and upset about the Germans in Netherlands. The opening scene of a misty dawn was gorgeous. It said clearly and simply why heroes are willing to die for Motherland – it was beautiful and it was theirs. Then the story begins with Flame narrating it in a low monotones. He and Citron went about their business killing Danish Nazi collaborators. Their method of killing is somewhat surprising to me. Hollywood assassins plan so much before the murder act but Flame and Citron would just come up to their victims, or ring their doorbells and shoot them in the head without even a hello. Surprisingly efficient and surprisingly unchecked for that many killings. The director was rather sweet to the audience – once, we got used to the ugly business of revolution, he then began to show us that the resistance in shades of grey: the abuse of power, greed, confusion and suspicion of double crossing, internal leaks, the confusion of rumours and conflicting information and realpolitiking that goes behind the hard work of saving one’s Motherland. The audience remains in suspense about all the characters in the show – are they the good guys or the bad – and as the show progresses and lies become exposed, it emerges that there were no good guys, no bad guys but people who vacillated inbetween – only in the foresight of history, could one read goodness or villainy in their acts. Even Flame and Citron whom we, the audience, sympathises with, were not spared from this bleak (shall I use realistic instead?) view – at the end, Flame said in a letter to Ketty Selmar, Where will we be afterwards? When this [war] is over. Is there a way back? Is there a way forward? Maybe. Maybe not
. It sounded to me that the director was saying that it was perhaps a good thing that they died – they were killers, efficient and ruthless in their job and somehow Danish history had elevated them to the status of heroes. After the war, society would have no use for two murderers.

This is what I dug out from the internet:

LWLies: Did your opinions of these two men change a lot over the research process and during production?

Madsen: Well it did, yeah, because it was so long. Nobody wanted to fund the film, nobody wanted to finance the film, we couldn’t find investors, so we just kept researching and doing other films. It changed. In the beginning I was more into the traditional interpretation of them as war heroes. During the work, I could see that the guys they had been hanging out with were really bad guys and that the truth about this side of the resistance is not very pretty. It’s grey. They are doing both the right thing and the wrong thing. So I decided at one stage that the film should be about that, about how difficult it is to do the right thing.

That the director didn’t want to go into the heads of Flame & Citron, preferring to tell the tale like a documentary, made me sometimes feel disconnected from the lead characters’ motivations – not a lot, but enough for me to wonder why they “fell in” together. They were more like colleagues than friends. So I was surprised when Citron sacrificed himself at the last capture so that Flame could run away. Did Citron want to die? Why did Flame let him? Or did they know they could run away easily? I think I shouldn’t be surprised because this is a great film but I am – there is something not quite complete about the story.

Of the two characters, Citron is more complex, more interesting and is well-handled by Mads Mikkelsen who downplayed his handsomeness and made himself look quite the nervous wreck for the show. Thure Lindhart has the easier role of the good looking, fanatical youth hero, Flame who was ultimately betrayed by a woman Ketty Selmar (Stine Stengade).

More from the interview

LWLies: Was the war something that was discussed in your family?

Madsen: [SPOILERS] No, never. And one thing that is not correct in my film is that Citron at one point he shoots the Gilbert character and actually he didn’t. He almost did, but he didn’t. Actually it was one of my grandfather’s friends that did it. But none of these characters are normal. They’re all very special. It’s the kind of character that comes out when there’s a war. You can start with Ketty Selmer. She’s having a love affair with Flame, she’s working for the Resistance and she’s working for the Gestapo and having a love affair with the Gestapo chief and she’s working for Gilbert, the Abwehr officer, and she was also strongly bisexual and had as many relationships with women as she did with men.

LWLies: That bit wasn’t in the film.

Madsen: No I had to take that out because nobody would have believed this character.

Wow! Ketty Selmer is a really a double agent in the fullest sense of the word. Thinking about it, if I didn’t know that a few sites said it was a fact I would have thought the femme fatale element of the story was a cliche – not that it wasn’t a believable cliche, after all Flame (Thure Lindhart) is quite a looker.

Film Fest this year

March 27th, 2009 screen

I am looking forward to the first and second. The third seems too serious. I want a laugh.

DEAN SPANLEY – Must go!
HOW TO BE – says comedy so I’ll go
FLAME & CITRON Maybe?