A Tale of Two Macbeths
Justin Kurzel’s gritty, saturated, PTSD-riddled character study keeps a few stage conventions but mostly leans into its more filmic aspects, where Joel Coen’s hazy, black-and-white, machination-laden adaptation neatly splits the difference between stage and screen.
Back in The Setlife Again
After a year of being forced to sit on our hands (metaphorically, but also I tried it literally because turns out forced isolation + meditation is hard?), we in the creative space are able to get back to what we love. Despite many of us making a resolution to slowly submerge ourselves rather than fly … Continue reading
Live, Write, Repeat – on EDGE OF TOMORROW’s lead connundrum
If Edge of Tomorrow had come a decade or two earlier – say between The Colour of Money and Jerry Maguire and the first Mission: Impossible or two – Cruise may’ve been able to show other facets. But through a series of personal life and project selection choices, Cruise has created a Movie Persona who overshadows, informs, and essentially rewrites all character aspects which may be on the page.
Character Introduction: Johnny Guitar
Introducing characters is an art form. I’ve been working on a TV pilot and while we’ve had the plot arcs nailed for months, making sure we get the characters across economically while being interesting and not too expository and using action while fitting them seamlessly into the plot and explaining how they relate to other … Continue reading
The Dude With A Thousand Faces: A Screenplay Template
I recently broke down the Stumptown pilot to examine hyperfunctional formulaic writing. Yes, times have changed and templates can be outdated, but I argue a formula isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s how you execute – story, characters, themes, acting, direction, dialogue, every fleshy detail – which matters. So when some mates released this short, … Continue reading
CARRIE and the Split Diopter
While I most recently saw discussion around split diopters after Jordan Peele’s Us, Brian De Palma famously uses these shots often. Like all his cinematic language, it’s not just to look pretty, but has a distinctive effect or feeling to convey. Let’s talk first about focus in general. If you’re sitting in a room, you … Continue reading
How Editing Mimics Memory in Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell”
The Farewell is absolutely one of my favourite films of the year, and one of the few which made me cry (twice, if we’re counting) yet want to rewatch immediately. Awkwafina is a star. I look forward to her career of interesting choices and varied projects. I hope she ends up getting offered all the … Continue reading
Colour in DRIVE and IL CONFORMISTA
Drive and Il Conformista ‘s use of colours make for great comparison and contrast symbolically, emotionally, and technically. First: Refn is colourblind, which impacts his work in a preference for heavy colour saturation. Second: because of its time, Il Conformista required everything from on-set lighting to colour timing to be planned far more thoroughly in … Continue reading
Veronica Mars: The Movie, The Woman
By now you’ve probably all read the reviews, most of which agree Veronica Mars functions more as an extended episode of TV than a movie . . . and then most of which, inexplicably, seem to think this is a bad thing. !!! The film took quite a bit of time updating us on where … Continue reading
Music Video: Pitch Perfect’s “Since You Been Gone”
Start with the fact this is generally an average-to-well edited movie. During the big dance numbers, we get plenty of closeups and glimpses of each character, especially when a character is starting to sing. Still, the overall action is always well-established enough so when it pulls back to a wide/master shot, the viewer is not … Continue reading
Mel Killingsworth - Film and TV blog 