Caligari’s Children

Between 1919 and 1924 the offspring of Caligari, the Schuerfilme (films of fantasy and terror), flourished in Germany.  You can see one of them, Der Golem(1920), in the previous post I did about Expressionism.   However, in actuality most horror films today as well as numerous science-fiction films derive from German Expressionism.

There were two notable artists to mention in regards to Expressionism.  The first is Fritz Lang,  one of the masters, he gave us films such as Der müde Tod(Destiny, 1921).  For some reason many of the hard to find silent films are only available online in Spanish, not sure why this is but dust off your español for this one.

der müde Tod 1/2 by desfilms
der müde Tod 2/2 by desfilms

Notice that the theme of this film is pure Expressionism, doom, gloom and Teutonic mythology.  What Lang added to cinema was the use of lighting to emphasize lighting and space. This was because Lang was a trained architect and it’s that skill that becomes so readily apparent in his other, more famous, Schuerfilme, Metropolis(1926). 

An inspiration for many science fiction and other films to come, Metropolis is a story about a totalitarian future society, a dystopia,  brilliantly rendered through architecture and film process.  There’s a lot of different versions of this movie floating around.  Here’s one, it’s not a great print but I think is fairly authentic.

Lang managed the conversion to sound and directed several sound films, the most brilliant of which is M(1930).  M seems to be more of an indictment of German culture at that time than the story of a man on the brink of collapse due to the guilt from his past deeds.  Either way, M is not Expressionism, it’s what followed Expressionism, Kammerspiel.  More on Kammerspiel later, first M.

The second notable artist to come out of German Expressionism is F.W. Murnau.  His film, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horrors, 1922) is considered the prime example of the Expressionism movement.   The most incredible thing about this film is that it was made with very limited resources.  The Expressionism comes from camera angles and lighting, rather than expensive studio sets.

So many directors were inspired by this film and the techniques used in it are continually copied.  For example, Orson Wells shot Kane from a low angle – which comes directly from this film, it’s how Nosferatu is shot to make him seem menacing.

And that brings us back to Kammerspiel (intimate, or instinct film).   A film that forgoes the dramatic and tries to bring forth a more realistic portrait of the oppressiveness of contemporary middle-class life.  Kammerspiel retains aspects of Expressionism, they have similar themes and they look similar, but Kammerspiel avoid theatrics.  Instinct films are constructed for their specific media.

Murnau’s next important film is the first truly in this genre.  It’s called Der letze Mann(The Last Man aka The Last Laugh, 1924) and it was written by the same writer as Caligari.    The Last Laugh was one of the first films to make use of camera tracking, the camera is a character in this film.  It was the first film to move its camera backward and forward, as well as up and down and from side to side, in scenes of substantial duration. 

Beyond that Murnau also liked to use subjective camera techniques whereby the camera shot represents the view of the scene from a character’s perspective.

Around 1924,  Hollywood, sensing a rival, started flooding the German market with films.  They also started stealing the German talent,  Murnau was one of the artists who moved to Hollywood.  But there were many and some went on to make important films.

Meanwhile, Germany was recovering from the war and returning to social normalcy. As a result, taste changed, away from the morbid psychological themes of Expressionism and Kammerspiel and  onto die neue Sacklichkeit (the new objectivity).   The new genre was realism, intended to show life as it is, “street” films. 

G.W. Pabst was unquestioningly the master of this new genre.  His film Die freudlose Gasse(The Joyless Street, 1925) was the German screen debut of Greta Garbo.  The film rejects the subjective camera of Murnau and strives to present the grim story of two girls forced into prostitution, all without sentimentality or symbolism.  I’m not certain of the authenticity of this print – it could be the censored version – the only other online choice was a Russian version that had an irritating narration.

G.W. Pabst was also one of the first western directors to be influenced by Sergei Eisenstein's theory of montage.  Which also happens to be the topic of the next blog entry.  

 

Previous article Scandalous Hollywood -Part 2

First article Before Film

Scandalous Hollywood - Part 1

Early filmmakers flocked to Hollywood and it wasn’t just because it never rains in Southern California.  It was because it was close to the Mexican border,  early filmmakers made dodgy deals to get their films made and sometimes they found it necessary to take a sudden vacation.  Hollywood was a recipe for scandal.  

Besides that, arrive in Southern California they did.  The first Hollywood-type studio, however, was called Inceville, built by a producer named Thomas Ince.  Ince started with at American Biograph where he met D.W.Griffith.   They became partners, with another man we’ll discuss later, in a venture called Triangle Film corporation.  When that failed three years later, Ince built Inceville.   Here’s a silent documentary tour of Inceville.

He made a number of films there before he died in 1924. Here’s a brief clip from one his films.  No sound so turn up those tunes.

The third member of Triangle Film Corporation was Mack Sennett.  Sennett was an actor in many of Griffith’s films.  He started directing for American Biograph but he wasn’t given enough creative freedom.   In 1912 he started Keystone Studios  with the financial backing of two bookies, are you ready for that border crossing Mack?

Luckily, Sennett decided to produce comedies, lots and lots of one- and two-reelers and they were popular world-wide.  He liked slapstick and sight-gags.  The hallmark of the studio was the Keystone Cops.

But he also produced and directed several parodies – of Griffith films.   He didn’t direct much after the first two years at Keystone.  Instead, he sat back and discovered an amazing list of comedy actors and directors:  Charlie Chaplin, Harry Langdon, Fatty Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, Ben Turpin, Gloria Swanson, Carole Lombard, Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler, W.C. Fields, Malcolm St. Clair, George Stevens, Roy Del Ruth and Frank Capra.

Keystone went bankrupt in 1935.

Charile Chaplin was Sennett’s most important protégé.  Charlie’s most endearing and enduring screen character was the tramp, which he introduced in Kid Auto Races at Venice(1914).

He made a thirty-four shorts and one feature for Sennett but he found the humour expected by Keystone not subtle enough for his tastes.  In 1915 he accepted a contract with Essanay to make fourteen two-reelers.  He continued the Tramp character through those films, the character was extremely popular.  In 1917 Chaplin had enough star power to sign a deal with First National – his most known film there being The Kid(1921).

Charlie’s star power and his irrepressible sexual appetite made him an easy target for scandal as well.   It started during World War I when he continued to make films rather than fight the war with the British army.  He was labelled a coward in his own country.  Then in 1918, he had an affair and then married (perhaps forced to) the 16 year old child star Mildred Harris.  That ended in messy divorce in 1919 with a huge settlement and lots of press. 

It’s rumoured he had an affair with Marion Davies who was William Randolph Hearst’s squeeze.  That supposedly ended in the very mysterious fatal shooting of none other than Thomas Ince.  Hearst pulled the trigger and missed Charlie – or so it’s told.   Among other things I sure this didn’t help the press’ image of Charlie.

After First National Charlie was free to do his own thing once again and he release of number of his masterpieces though a company called United Artists.  He founded UA with Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks in 1923.  His first film with them being A Woman of Paris(1923) then a return to the screen by the tramp in The Gold Rush(1925).  His personal favourite was The Circus(1928).

Around this time Charlie started adding some additional social commentary to his films, having them say more than the story: City Lights(1931), Modern Times(1936) and his first talkie The Great Dictator(1940).    City Lights is often cited by screenwriting books as one of the finest examples of screenwriting during the silent era – people especially liked the end.

In 1943 actress Joan Barry filed a paternity suit against Charlie and even though a blood test proved it was not his child he was found guilty and forced to pay support. Then they tried to charge Charlie with the Mann Act in 1944, he was eventually acquitted of those charges but his reputation was tarnished forever. 

His last two films Monsieur Verdoux(1947) and Limelight(1952) were not received well publically.  Very soon after the release of Limelight Charlie left for a visit to England on the Queen Mary. The U.S. Government almost immediately revoked his permission to re-enter the country and he was not allowed to set foot in the US until 1972.

But there was more trouble brewing in Hollywood during the silent’s heyday – coming up next. 

Next article Scandalous Hollywood – Part 2

Previous article The Russian Revolution

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The Russian Revolution

Before the revolution films weren’t very popular in Russia so there wasn’t much of an industry.  The working class was too impoverished and the ruling class basically didn’t care. 

However, there were some films produced around Moscow.  A few of those are of note and the avant-garde seemed to be the norm.  

Drama in Futurist Cabaret 13 (Drama v futuristicheskom kabare 13, 1913) by futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

The Picture of Dorian Gray (Portret Doriana Greya, 1915), The Storm (Groza, 1916) and The Strong Man (Silnyi chelovek, 1917)  by Vsevolod Meyerhold – a very famous Russian theatrical director.     

Unfortunately none of the movies  seem to exist online and perhaps may no longer exist in real life, they would have had to make it through a huge revolution.   These pictures will have to do.  

The last film of note before the revolution was a Yakov Protazanov production of  Lev Tolstoi’s Father Sergius (Otets Sergei, 1918).  I did manage to find a clip from this film but it’s subtitled in Spanish.  Well worth a look though, the film seems fairly intense. 

Cena de "Padre Sérgio" - Yakov Protazanov - 1919 from Luiz Santiago on Vimeo.

In 1917 a new government took over Russia and the Soviet Cinema was born.   The new government believed in the power of the cinema and wanted to exploit this new media.  They immediately abolished censorship and started producing anti-tsarist propaganda.  Only two of these films were produced, however.  After the revolution there were still battles being fought between the Red and the White Soviets – film stock was scarce. 

One person did get a bit of filmmaking in during this period, his name Dziga Vertov.  He was an editor for the newsreel footage shot during all that fighting.   By 1921 he had made three films from that newsreel footage. 

None of those films seem to exist online so I won’t name them. But in those films he experimented with subliminal cuts of one or two frames each and the dramatic reconstruction of documentary events. 

One, an important technique that views film as a subconscious manipulation tool and the other, a technique for propagandizing history or viewing film as a conscious manipulation tool.   

Then Vertov and his group of Kinoki (kino-oki, cinema-eyes)  went around Russia documenting everything – with a propagandistic slant, of course.  From 1922 to 1925 Vertov released a carefully crafted series of newsreels to test out his theories on manipulation.  This series was collectively called Kino-pravda.   This has no sound so turn up those tunes.

In 1924, Vertov released a film called Kino-glaz which used many different camera, lighting and editing techniques and tricks to achieve what one critic called “an epic vision of actuality.” 

What is essential about these films isn’t just their significance to Russian history but their significance to film history -- in that they are all about montages.  An aesthetic that would dominate Russian cinema for years to come.

Vertov’s silent work culminated in a film named The Man with a Movie Camera (Chelovek s kinoapparatom, 1928).   Some people consider this one of the most important films of the silent era, it is certainly Vertov’s virtuoso masterpiece. This does not have sound so once again, crank up those tunes.

There’s still more experiments to come from the Soviet Cinema, but first I think a scandal may be brewing in Hollywood.

Next article Scandalous Hollywood – Part 1

Previous article Caligari’s Cabinet

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The Birth of a Nation

The Birth of a Nation was not the first film to make an artistic statement nor was it the first epic film -- that second distinction belongs to Quo Vadis (1912), an Italian film by Enrico Guazzoni. 

It wasn’t even D.W. Griffiths first epic.  That distinction belongs to Judith of Bethulia (1914). 

The Birth of a Nation, however, was a masterpiece of cinema and it brought together much of the narrative technique that had been making its rounds among filmmakers.  This includes using some  techniques that weren’t being  used in the context of the story, they were being used as novelty (like close ups).

While The Birth of the Nation is an extremely racist and bigoted film, it was certainly popular when released.  More people saw The Birth of a Nation the year it was released than any film released before it. 

That doesn’t excuse the content of the film – but also the content doesn’t change the history it made.  D.W. Griffith was a racist pretentious filmmaker.  He was also a product of the old South and that’s why he held the views he did.   This film did caused a backlash but we’ll get back to that later.

Griffith chose literary vehicles for his films, most are adapted from books, poems or stage plays.   That was part of his innovation, Griffith believed all films should be based on a good story.   He thought of films as a visual story and he used narrative techniques to tell it.   He experimented with these techniques in over four hundred and fifty one- and two-reeler films he directed for American Biograph (Edison Studios’ competitor).

The narrative techniques Griffith experimented with were:

1. Cutting between different spatial shots.  Cutting from long to medium shots or close ups in order to make a narrative point.  It had been used before but not as frequently or as repetitiously as Griffith used it.   It is believe that the first close-up used for narrative purposes was used by Griffith.

3. Cutting between different temporal shots.  Cutting between scenes in different times and locations.  This experiment was frowned upon by the industry.  Today we can hardly find a film that doesn’t make use of it. 

2. Extreme long shots.   Griffith used them to make things epic.  He also liked to intersperse them with other spatial shots for dramatic effect.

3. Giving depth to the shot itself.  Have a different foreground and background action and using that difference to further the story.  Making the film feel like more than just a piece of film.  

4. Using lighting and camera angles to create visual metaphors.  Though this was touched on in his  earlier films, it really comes into play after The Birth of a Nation.

These narrative innovations are what make D.W. Griffith such an important figure in film history.  But what makes him an artist was his reaction to the negative criticism and censorship (perhaps justly deserved) of The Birth of a Nation.

He made a film in response to his critics.  That film is called Intolerance and it’s the first film known that is purely an artistic statement.

And that’s when the German’s began to express…

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The Birth of an Art Form

While most studios were forced into one reels by the MPPC and believing film would never be more than churned out cheap entertainment,  some studios – especially those abroad - started to make longer films, feature films.

Defined by length, the first dramatic feature film was the Australian 70-minute film The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906).

The first European feature was the 90-minute film L'Enfant prodigue (France, 1907), although that was an unmodified record of a stage play; Europe's first feature adapted directly for the screen, Les Misérables, came from France in 1909.

The first Russian feature was Defence of Sevastopol in 1911.  This was also the first film shot with two cameras. No sound on this clip so crank up the tunes.

Watch more on Film Annex

The first UK features were the documentary With Our King and Queen Through India  and Oliver Twist (1912). The first Asian feature was Japan's The Life Story of Tasuke Shiobara (1912), the first Indian feature was Raja Harishchandra (1913),  the first South American feature was Brazil's O Crime dos Banhados (1913), and the first African feature was South Africa's Die Voortrekkers (1916). 1913 also saw China's first feature film, Zhang Shichuan's Nan Fu Nan Qi.

The first US features were imports.  The first import was from France it was the story of Queen Elizabeth staring Sarah Bernhardt a  French stage and early film actress. She has been referred to as "the most famous actress the world has ever known"

The first American produced features were a production of Oliver Twist (1912), From the Manger to the Cross (1912), and Richard III (1912), the latter starring actor Frederick Warde.

Manger to the Cross was renamed Jesus of Nazareth (1916) or so I believe.  Biblical stories were very popular in the US.

 

Despite some moral messages and some general thematic statements most films were still only meant as entertainment.  It took D.W. Griffith, his epic civil war film and his deep south upbringing to make film an artistic statement.  And, in the spirit of artists everywhere, he was going to piss a lot of people off doing it.

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Previous article The Birth of an Industry

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The Birth of an Industry

At first everyone thought films were a novelty.   Early distribution forced the theatre owners to buy the prints of films they were showing.  This didn’t work out well for the exhibitors.  As a result, it wasn’t a good business proposition to show a film. 

In 1903 the Miles brothers from San Francisco established the modern form of distribution by setting up the first film exchange.   They bought the prints and leased them to exhibitors at a much lower cost than buying the film outright. As a result film became an economical win for everyone involved.  This caught on rapidly. Nickelodeons sprang up all over the world and it was apparent film was here to stay.  

People became hungry for new films, regardless of quality, and studios churned them out.  As a result film didn’t change all that much. Between 1903 and 1912 there aren’t many noteworthy creative achievements or experiments – except for a few shorts by D.W.Griffith.  What did change was the amount of film which could be produced.

Originally all film had to be shot with sunlight. This meant that films could only be shot in good weather.  However, with the invention of the mercury vapour lamp several film companies were able to build indoor studios and thereby increase their production.   Still most studios shot outside, and all shot on very low budgets with no retakes of scenes.  Most filmmakers believed what they were doing was grinding out cheap entertainment, and they were.

But even if the filmmakers weren’t taking movies seriously, other groups were.  Once the Nickelodeons sprung up and organised religion and the political right realised movies weren’t going away, they mounted campaigns to suppress them. Between 1907 and 1909 it became commonplace for minsters, politicians and business to be against the movie industry.  Today it’s thought these campaigns were more economically than morally minded because people were frequenting  Nickelodeons and spending their money there rather than at churches, saloons, and vaudeville theatres.

Another issue facing the early industry was piracy. There were no copyright law for “living pictures”.  Exhibitors pirated copies of the films and showed them.  Worse, since the equipment was patented and a fee was expected by those who used it, production companies were pirating equipment.  Anything produced by that pirated equipment was considered the property of the production company that made it.   So even the laws that did govern the industry were difficult to enforce.

In 1909, Edison and a group of patent holders created the MPPC (The Motion Pictures Patent Company) – a trust (a polite word for monopoly) that would try to control the film industry.  Joining the trust was Eastman Kodak, the largest producer of film stock.  The MPPC controlled who got equipment, who got film stock and who got distributed – at least in the United States.

What held film back, at least in the US, was that the MPPC believed film audiences had a short attention span.  Therefore they would only supply one reel of film per week to member companies and they would only distribute films of that length.  So because of the MPPC,  audiences in the US were watching epic plays like King Lear or novels like Frankenstein boiled down to under 15 minutes.

However, the feature film was about to be born. In the US filmmakers like D.W. Griffith tried to distribute two reel films, one reel each week - which didn't work because of continuity issues.  But, in other parts of the world filmmakers started making longer films and despite what Edison might have thought, the longer films captured the audience's attention.

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Previous article A Shot in the Narrative

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A Shot in the Narrative

The shot is more than just a close-up.  It is an integral part of what film is today.  A film is a series of shots put together through editing to fictionalize an event - to tell the tale of it. 

Méliès had discovered that two different pieces of film can be put together to create the illusion of something which couldn’t possibly happen.  Now it was time to use that knowledge to create the illusion that something was happening.  Something real.  

The two discoveries that were made which made narrative film possible were the close-up and parallel editing.  

The close-up was cut into  Méliès tableaus in order to bring the viewer closer to a specific action.  To show them detail  of the action happening while it happens. 

Parallel editing was editing two different simultaneous lines of action together into one line of action.

Firemen spray the exterior of a building.  Inside a baby cries as flames near its crib. Outside a fireman climbs a creaky ladder.   Inside a mother tries to cross a line of fire to reach her baby. 

Around the same time that Méliès was active in France a couple of English gentlemen from Brighton were experimenting with both of these concept -- George Albert Smith and James Williamson.

James Williamson was supposedly the discoverer of parallel editing.  I say supposedly because the films I’ve found don’t seem to match up with the history I’ve read.  Plus the history even says many of these early films don’t exist in their original shape.  Take for example this film:

It’s supposed to contain examples of parallel editing but I just don’t see them.  If you happen to find a copy of this film or  Stop Thief or Attack on a China Mission that contain good examples of parallel editing or if you happen to see it in this film then please let me know.

Funnily enough  while searching through the web, I discovered Williamson’s most popular films today seem to be the following.

The second film, The Big Swallow, claims to be the first close-up.  

However, historically the discoverer of the close-up is considered to be George Albert Smith (our other English gentleman).  And the first example of a close-up I can find from him is in this film from 1900.  So it seems that maybe he actually is.

Other films from G. A. Smith that are of interest are the first Christmas film from 1898. You can see the Méliès influence in this one.

And also this tragically funny film from 1903 called Mary Jane’s Mishap.  That’s Smith’s wife in the lead.

And last but not least I made an error in the Méliès post and attributed this film to him.  It’s actually Smith’s film. Méliès made a film of the same name a year earlier – proof of the competition that early filmmakers faced and that they had good knowledge of their competitors. 

Then in steps Edwin Porter a projectionist for the Edison company until he became a director in his own right.  He started out directing a few actualitiés then, after picking up on the narrative advances of Méliès, Smith and Williamson, directed the first true narrative film, The Life of an American Fireman. 

I found this copy of the film which has subtitled information on the important narrative structure (Thanks to Ashley Hughes). This film has no sound so crank up your tunes.

Life of an American Fireman Narrative Structure from Ashley Hughes on Vimeo.

However, there is some controversy about this being the first narrative film because two copies exist.  One with parallel editing and one without.  No one is certain which came first and the second may have come much later than the first.

So the first indisputable narrative film is the Great Train Robbery. 

However, even that film has it’s controversy.  Many believe it was “borrowed” from this earlier British film.

Either way the shot and narrative film were out of the bottle and there was no putting them back.  The way was paved, the structure in place, for the upcoming great silent directors like D.W. Griffith.

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The first narrative films

Up until around 1896 all films were recordings of real time events.  Some may have told limited stories but ultimately they were the equivalent of sketches or stage acts.

The man credited with discovering the potential of film as a narrative device (and also it’s potential for trickery) was Georges Méliès.  The story goes that  Méliès  while filming an actualitié, he was filming a bus coming out of a tunnel and the film jammed.  When he got the film started again the bus had been replaced by a hearse.  When the film was projected it seemed like the bus had transformed into a hearse.  Nothing like having the first epiphany about the power of film editing.

As the father of special effects George Méliès made use of what he had learned.

He was the first to put editing to narrative use though, because he thought of his films in terms of theatre, as a series of tableaus which he edited together.

He also made extensive use of tinting. He had a shop full of ladies that hand tinted his films. He is probably best remembered for his masterpiece Le Voyage Dans La Lune (Voyage to the Moon).  The first sci-fi film.

You can watch the complete film here.  Méliès went on to make many other films until he was put out of business by Pathé Frères in 1923. Hand tinting was expensive.

Unfortunately Méliès never quite went beyond the use of his discovery for trickery or scene changes. To discover a “shot” it would take a light bulb moment from a projectionist named Edwin S Porter who worked for Edison Corporation in New York.

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The Earliest Films

The earliest films were non-narrative documents of mundane events or entertainment acts.  The competing companies where those that had projectors.  In the US, Edison Company had the Kinetoscope.  In France, the Lumière Brothers had the Cinematograph.  And in England, Charles Jenkins had the Phantoscope (which was the first machine to project a motion picture).

There earliest known surviving celluloid film was shot by by Louis Le Prince on October 14, 1888 in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England.

Edison Company produced many short films using the Kinetograph, the most famous of which (for some reason or other) was Fred Ott’s Sneeze (1894).  This was considered a documentary.

However, the sneeze wasn’t the earliest.  The earliest by Edison that I could find was Dickson’s Greeting (1891).  Dickson invented the Kinetograph technology for Edison.

Other Edison films were entertainment acts.  Edison Co were trying to make money after all and the best way to do that was to entertain.  Here’s a compilation of some early Edison films for your enjoyment.

The Lumière Brothers were also interested in cashing in on this new medium with their actualités.  Here’s a compilation of their films for your enjoyment.

But most of these short films were for the Nickelodeon arcade traffic.  Soon, films would become longer and they would start to tell stories. 

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Before Film

Before screenwriting was even in the picture, we needed the picture – a moving one at that.  The first “motion pictures”  came to us in the form of mechanical devices.  One was called the Phenakistoscope which was invented by Joseph Plateau.

Plateau was credited with the invention even though the idea had been around since Euclid.  The Phenakistoscope disk above was done by Eadweard Muybridge.  More on Eadweard later. 

The other invention was the Zoetrope.  Invented by Ding Huan in China in 180 AD but modernly credited to William George Horner.  It became popular in the 1860s.

Eadweard Muybridge, mentioned above, is considered the first person to make a motion picture – capture live images.  Eadweard captured the images of a horse using 24 trip wired cameras to settle a bet made about  whether a running horse ever had all four legs lifted off the ground at once. 

After Muybridge the first motion picture camera was invented by William Friese-Greene.  But his ‘chronophotographic’ camera only ran at 10 frames a second which was far too slow for practical use.

 

The example chronophotography is another by Eadweard Muybridge, Woman walking down stairs.

In 1891, K. L. Dickson working for Thomas Edison invented the Kinetograph (aka Kinetoscope)  which took a series of instantaneous photographs on standard Eastman Kodak photographic emulsion coated on to a transparent celluloid strip 35 mm wide. 

And though it might have looked a bit different than today’s cameras, the age of motion pictures had begun.

Next article The Earliest Films

A Nightmare on Elm Street

I noticed while surfing that the remake of this film was getting lots of attention.  I’m still wondering why, I guess it was just released on DVD.  However, I did find out an interesting tid-bit while investigating this.

But before I go into that I would like to say that I loved the initial trilogy of Nightmare films.  Before they got too full of their own franchise.

They were cutting-edge (see what I did there) horror for their time and they introduced us to a number of actors we would see much later.  Johnny Depp (before he was nicknamed Stinky) and  Patricia Arquette.

I recently watched the first one again and it holds up – even after all these years.  That is film-making.

I haven’t seen the remake but it looks good.

I can already tell from the trailer that there are plot holes.  The original didn’t dwell on this as much as the new movie promises but if Freddy Krueger went after little kids while he was alive, why is he going after late teens now?  Wouldn’t it make much more sense if the people having the nightmares were younger?

Plus this film seems to take itself far too seriously.  That’s usually a recipe for disaster in just about any horror film.  They’ve thrown out all of Freddy’s one-liners when they replaced Robert Englund with Jackie Earle Haley

The reviews for this film seem pretty much to agree.  This is the same type of remake as Halloween was.  The same sort of thing as Batman Begins where we find out a bit more about what makes our hero or villain tick.  Where the film-maker tries to make them more human or less.   

The reviews also suggest that the effects, however primitive, worked better in the first film.

The interesting tid-bit I found out was the Wes Craven was not pleased about them remaking the film because he wasn’t consulted about it.  I would be a bit ticked off too.

If you’ve seen this film, let me know what you thought. 

The Social Network

A subject we all have come to know and love, Facebook.  It’s founder Mark Zuckerberg the protagonist in the film.   Here’s the official trailer.

It’s out but I haven’t seen it yet.  Though from the reviews it sounds a bit odd.  It is often compared to classics like Macbeth or The Great Gatsby.  Most agree it is not a flattering portrait of Zuckerberg.   Even he wants to distance himself from it.

Because I haven’t seen it I won’t go into a review here but will instead link you to a couple I’ve found. This one is from the Geeks of Doom  and here is one from Screen Rant. 

Being that it was directed by David Fincher, who was also responsible for Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, and Curious Case of Benjamin Button – it’s likely this will be an excellent movie. 

My biggest question is, after I see this film will I feel differently about using Facebook?

The horror of having your short screenplay filmed

It’s been a while, but I’ve been busy. I know we all say that at one time or another but it’s true…I’ve been busy.

However, I wanted to share with you a short post about having one of my screenplays filmed by someone else. I’ve been through this situation before but I’m a fringe author so it doesn’t happen too often.

Anyway, this film was made from a short script I wrote called The Honeymoon is Over. I wrote the script for a web series script call because my log line was chosen. However, the log line was supposed to be for a finished script. So when they asked me for the script I only had a few hours to produce one. I wrote this in 6 hours.

The web series never seemed to get off the ground as so many of them don’t. Very soon after I finally gave up on the series, the director of this film asked if he could produce it.

After all the agreements were signed it took nearly forever for the film to be completed. Or at least it was very late compared to the schedule given me. So late that I actually gave up trying to find out if it was finished.

Then one day while going through my email I came across my last email to the director and decided to ask him one last time before I made the script available again. To my surprise he replied that it was done and gave me a link which I could use to view it.

He did a good job with the film, I couldn’t really complain. He changed my script a bit without asking but nothing I couldn’t handle. But then the credits flashed by. I was all ready and excited to see my name in white at the end -- but it never happened. There was no writing credit for me in the film.

At first I was furious, I posted a few angry posts in forums. I figured it was likely that I wouldn’t get him to add the credit and the film would have to be forcibly removed from the web. But if I approached it with all the anger I was feeling, then he would respond with anger and it would definitely end with the film being removed.

So, I calmed down and wrote him a gentlemanly email asking if he would correct the oversight. Which he did, surprisingly quick and he apologised profusely for forgetting to put the credits in. There’s a valuable lesson in there somewhere but I’m not sure exactly where.

So without further ado, here is the film. Give Anniversary (yes he changed the title) a watch and let me know what you think.

Logan's Run Remake

Last night I had a Logan's Run double feature, I watched the movie and I read what I think is one of the screenplays for the remake in 2010 (it didn't have the correct name attached but it felt right). What did I think? And I'm going to try and do this without any real spoilers.

Well first we should refresh our memory on the 1976 version. Logan our sandman protagonist encounters a runner that has a special symbol around his neck. The controlling computer sends him on a mission to seek out Sanctuary. He follows up some leads most notably Jessica who he found on the sex circuit. With her reluctant, at first, help he sets out to find Sanctuary and meet those that help the runners find it. They end up in a ruined earth and meet an old man and his cats. Logan transforms he is no longer the sandman seeking Sanctuary, he has been freed. After killing Francis, the antagonist (or at least his helper) he goes back to free everyone.

A long time ago I read the book Logan's Run. I don't remember many of the details but I do remember it was very different from the movie. The new screenplay for Logan's Run is not as different from the original movie (it is obviously inspired by the movie not the book) but at the same time it's radically different. I liked it but at the same time I missed some of the stuff that was removed.

I guess I could tell you what was removed, technically that isn't a spoiler. You won't see any of the following in the remake.

No Box, they don't meet on the circuit, no romance, and no old man and his cats.

As a matter of fact, the new script has changed so much that some of the characters have even switched sides. Plus there is the introduction of new characters that must be there to offset the removal and changes in the old characters. The biggest change is the location, the remake happens in space. Yes, in space. And the habitat has cats.

This next section doesn't really tell you anything specific about the script but does include my interpretation of how the three main characters have changed. Logan in my opinion is not the protagonist in this script, he is a main character but he does not undergo a transformation and his goal never changes. For this matter, I don't really think Jessica's undergoes a transformation either but I think she is more likely as the protagonist. Francis does undergo a transformation in this script, he goes from antagonist's helper to protagonist's helper during the course of the story. This is one of the biggest changes in the remake and is offset by a newly introduced sandman character.

The remake relies much more on plot than the original did and it also has much more fast paced action. It has a pretty solid structure and in my opinion it is a much better script than the original. I'm looking forward to seeing the remake when it comes out, even though they'll probably muck things up a bit during production.

Godzilla vs the Smog Monster

Started my new job yesterday, we won't go into what I do there because I promised this blog would not contain technical stuff. At the moment I'm a bit bored and unhappy with all the reading I've been doing. Things should improve though.

Tonight as I type this, I'm watching Godzilla vs the Smog Monster (Gojira tai Hedorâ). This is my favourite Godzilla movie. Besides the swinging 60s feel and message. This one even has some animation it. It's loads of fun and Godzilla even gets to be a hero during it. You didn't know Godzilla was interested in the environment did you? I probably will long be done with this blog entry before it's over. I wish I could find the discotheque scene on You Tube but no dice. Here's a couple of snippets of it anyway.

Sunday Night at the Movies

Last night I was just about to add a post to my blog when I accidentally deleted it. I felt like such an idiot. Here is what I remember from that post along with some extra. Had a bit of a movie night on Sunday.

If you've been following my blog, you know that I needed to watch The Strangers because we are doing the script very soon with the Script Club from Simply Scripts. So I watched it. It was a similar sort of movie as Halloween and even borrowed some imagery from the movie, a masked killer sort of thing. It managed to keep an adequate amount of tension throughout, while trying to deliver a bit more character than usual. This would have worked well, but the acting by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman was pretty average.

I'm not saying I didn't like the movie, but I thought it could have been better than it was. I had a couple of issues with the story itself. First of all they never quite explain why there is so much drama between the young couple at the beginning of the film. They sort of explain what happened to cause the struggle but they never fully explain her reasons. Trying to be oblique and artsy in a movie where that sort of thing clearly does not belong.

The other thing was that I had a believability problem with the killers. Toward the end of the movie they make it pretty clear that they haven't done this killing thing very often - or at least one of them hasn't. Yet for some reason they are able to appear and disappear with such mastery while they terrorise the young couple and they never make a mistake once. Never get seen when they aren't supposed to be seen, never get clumsy, never have any problem at all with their reign of terror. This to me was unrealistic.

Lastly, this movie really didn't scare me much. If I lived in a remote location and was home alone then I probably would have been terrified. But my neighbours are very close and this sort of thing didn't strike me as something that would easily happen here, so it really didn't bother me. I'm sure I'm not the only one that is going to feel that way about it.

Earlier in the evening I watched Fracture. This was a fairly run of the mill but well-written thriller, a courtroom/catch the killer at his game sort of movie. The pacing was good and the story interesting enough. It was recommended to me by the girl at the video rental place because she likes Anthony Hopkins. And she must really like Anthony because his performance, to me, seemed like he was pretty much going through the motions. Whether that really affected the movie all that much is up to how much you like Anthony.

The other performances Ryan Gosling and Billy Burke were quite good. It didn't knock my socks off like The Illusionist did but then again I'm not even sure why I keep comparing the two in my head. They were vastly different movies.

The best part about this was the DVD because it had alternate endings. I watched both. I liked the one they actually used the best.

Anyway, that's it for me. Tomorrow I start a new job and I have lots I want to do before I head off to bed tonight. Will I get it done? Probably not but I give it a try anyway.

Back to work

Today was my first day back to work after the long holiday. I'm feeling surprisingly good after the workday - perhaps it was that afternoon cup of coffee. To be honest it made me shaky when I first drank it, now it seems to have mellowed.

The Script Club at Simply Scripts has almost decided to review The Strangers by Bryan Bertino. It should be interesting once we start - which should be in a few weeks. You should drop by and have a gander at what we say about the script. This time we should mostly have watched the film and should have an entirely different spin on our script review. We should cover what has been dropped from the film and what has been added (if anything). I'll provide a link once we start.

The other thing happening over at Simply scripts is the Shiva game. It's a screenwriters game but we are trying to produce a writable script using the technique. I'm trying to inject a bit more story into the game script. I was trying not to have to write too much of the story beforehand, but it looks like that is not working. The next time we do this we will have to include more of a treatment.

That's about it for tonight. Working on a webpage but I won't talk about that in this blog. In the background Star Trek TOS is playing in the background. The episode where Spock goes Amok. Love that word.