Watch this film. It's really great. There's some really interesting use of the frame and some great editing (except for the scene where Juliane Moore and Colin Firth have dinner...the editing in that scene is absolutely awful. It's trying to do the Hollywood thing, but fails miserably. It looks like a film student cut it. OK. Film nerds, remember Suture? This is so NOT that. It constantly reminds the viewer--not that they're watching a film, which I wouldn't've minded--that these shots are coverage. The director should've just stayed on the wide two-shot. One of the most well-lit, beautifully framed shots in the whole film.,.when you see it, you'll know what I'm taking about). There's a moment early in the film, where Firth's character, Geo, learns about the death of his longtime boyfriend (that scene is sad on so many levels) and he runs through the rain to his friend, Moore's character. The only sound is the rain pouring, and though they're speaking, crying, screaming, the viewer can't hear a thing. Just the rain. Aww. It's such a great scene. The filmmaker also does this really interesting thing with POV. He'll show Geo looking closely at someone, then cut to weirdly focused shots...and when Geo stares off into space, he'll cut into flashbacks. Really great. But that's enough of that. Go rent it. Warning: It's fucking sad, but its ironic ending is beautifully touching and actually surprising perfect for the film. The filmmaker made tough choices that a lesser writer/filmmaker may have not seen. You'll know what I mean.*
I've been writing a lot of poems lately, which is nice because I've been working on The Story Thief for a while now. It's also good, because I'm getting some editorial comments for one of my manuscripts in two weeks or so. Then I have to revise.
*
I know I got a million freaking projects, but I've been thinking a lot about this story I wrote years ago (actually the catalyst for Bumping), and my friend Chris Swanson, me, and Caleb worked on a screenplay for it for a long time. We put it away to focus on other things, but I've been thinking about it, and thinking about how it could become a short novel about three days in east LA. We'll see. I wrote a page. I like it, but we'll see. I also revisited a story I wrote for my workshop this spring (based on a play/screenplay I wrote at Western) called "We're Not Murderers." It's too short to be a novella and too long to be a short story (plus I have pages upon pages of transcript-like dialogue and long silent stretches where people are trying to free themselves from being tied up and gagged), but I came up with an idea about a young woman recalling her father's past through a discovery she makes in his thirties about how the man she called her father is, and who her real parents are (and what happened to them--it's fucked up). I don't think I'll really work on that for a while, but I wrote two pages today and was pretty stoked. I might just tinker around with an outline, and voice, and let it stew for a bit. But again, we'll see. We'll see.
*
Mad Men Season 4 starts soon. Inception comes out soon. Shit is getting real.
Love,
Joshua
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