How Do I Blog?

2008 wasn’t a very good year in itself but it will be remembered as a turning point, both personally and globally.

A world in the grip of financial crisis driven by excessive greed caught in a vicious ouroboros-like cycle balanced out by the world’s number two economy electing a man who a little over a hundred years prior would have been only considered suitable as a slave.

These, my friends, are interesting times and we proceed into these uncharted waters without a compass.

It remains to be seen if Obama can do anything for the US and whether the US can do anything to stem the bloody flow of the world’s markets, but there’s one thing that I know I can do while all that’s happening and it’s not what I did this year - sitting on my ass and letting things happen.

I’ll briefly refer to an earlier post I made on resolutions at the start of 2008 but mostly I want to talk about my own view of the year.

I stagnated, physically, personally, professionally, and possibly even emotionally. Procrastination is probably my number one weakness, the resolutions list will make that clear, and it isn’t improving with age like a fine wine. I’m now in a position where I need to clearly re-evaluate my priorities and put them into action.

A lot of loss, appetite, friends, interests … and goals. No longer. What’s lost is lost and if it comes back to me through the course of my pursuits, so be it - if it doesn’t, then it wasn’t meant to. The time has come to shake off the cobwebs and put to rest old ghosts, break some new ground and truly begin to look forward to what life has in store and what I need to do in order to get there, not just how I’ll manage to cruise by it on the road of life.

My failed resolutions for 2008

1. Find inspiration everywhere
Not necessarily failed, as I continue to take pleasure in many simple things in life but I haven’t utilised it to its potential. Every morning my daughter’s smiling face provides me with fresh enthusiasm as a parent, I need to find that sort of energy for the rest of my pursuits.

2. Learn more about cooking / Culinary school / “Stahge” in a kitchen
Didn’t develop much beyond my afternoon at II, although I continue to make reasonably good foodie food for an amateur. I still adore food and wine and will continue to experiment. I have started making great thin crust pizzas in addition to my steaks!

3. Stop playing online poker
Let’s not talk about this one. At all. I am done, again.

4. Read at least one book a month
I read one book on screenplays. I want to read more of them.

5. Produce at least one page of writing per week
Not sure if I wrote enough in concentrated bursts this year to cover 350 odd pages but the entire latter half of the year was entirely fiction-free to my chagrin.

6. Watch less TV
This actually happened sort of organically. Despite splashing out on a big home entertainment system, I’ve watched less TV and more movies which is a good thing. I don’t have The Wire to watch yet and I’m nearly done with what I am watching, so I’ll be taking a break from TV land again very soon.

7. Cook less rich/fatty/creamy foods
Not enough of this going on, though we have started eating a lot more meat + veg / salad type combos which is a good mix.

8. Gain a stone or two in muscle
Nada. Zip. Literally zero exercise, outside of a few “activities”.

Disappointing eh?

Well, my Goals for 2009 look something like this:

Health
- Wake up earlier, get to bed earlier
- Jog at least twice a week
- Exercise with weights at least twice a week
- Swim as often as the weather allows
- Moderate my alcohol consumption (rare blowouts excepted)
- Minimise fattier foodstuffs to twice a week

Family
- Minimise computer time at weekends
- Family walk or outing at least once a weekend (chores permitting)
- Find time for Clare and I to get out
- Support my wife and child with a positive outlook and loving attitude
- Talk to Evelyn constantly

Hobby
- Write two screenplays, first the Aussie one, then Cloverfield at Sea
- Do a cooking class, preferably something French/Italian/Seafood-based
- Put in a good session at the casino once every two months (I’m making money at it, so why not?), never play online poker again
- Not through choice and spurred on by Clare’s cheeky xmas gift of Dummies guide to DIY, I’ll need to fashion myself as some kind of Mr Fix-It
- Keep my restaurant reviews up to date

Professionally
- Develop myself into a role or find one that suits
- Earn as close to the “ton” mark by the end of the year

Other than that? Well, that’s enough to keep me busy - the rest I’ll take in my stride. Speaking of stride, I bought a Walkman mp3 player today and with my new trainers, no excuses not to get started with jogging tomorrow.

Every day, one step at a time.

Taking Cox’s interpretation of McKee from Adaptation as sacrosanct, I’d like to think that he’d be pretty fucking pissed off with the number of movies violating the 3-act rule these days.

One of my favourite movies from the past few years was the Bond franchise reboot, Casino Royale, and I picked it up on Blu-Ray for my birthday a week ago. It was many things, a great reinvention of the Bond character as a hard-edged, ruthless assassin-type, it had a solid plot with one of my new loves involved (although the final poker hand could have been avoided) and great bursts of action amidst decent characterisation. It did however, keep going. I remember it reached the point where Bond had recuuperated and was lying on a beach with Vesper and I thought, this’ll be an unusual ending point for a Bond movie - but it wasn’t, it kept going and a fourth act sort of appeared out of nowhere. I enjoyed the movie overall but this structural flaw bothered me and having recently seen Quantum of Solace, I now understand why.

I’ll refer you to my analysis of The Dark Knight, where I suggested that perhaps Two Face’s ultimate reveal (not to mention, dispatching - which effectively provided a fourth act) should have carried over into the next Batman movie. Or perhaps it shouldn’t have featured at all and after the warehouse trick the Joker pulls, it neatly moves into Batman going nutso trying to get the Joker, gets him, kills him and has the cops after him as the movie closes.

The follow-up Bond movie pulls a similar deal with Vesper being vanquished and Bond’s motivation being to find and kill Mr White, and any others associated with his little consortium, and this is supposed to be the narrative drive for the movie. Pacing, characterisation and direction of the action scenes aside for the moment (and they provide much of the movie’s problems), there simply isn’t any resonance of Bond’s emotional state and this isn’t helped by any of the above. Characters drive the story and as long as you - as an audience - are engaged to your characters and their plight, it’ll tend to work. Hence as a result of this pruning of motivation, the narrative in QoS is entirely lacking and they fabricate a female lead as a parallel for Vesper, unfortunately weighing the movie down with cliché after leaden cliché.

The result is a breathless action film, terribly shot for much of the action, and entirely lacking in direction and character development. So in line with what I did for TDK, I’ll rework how CR should’ve ended and QoS should’ve started for the most effective narrative and character development - the following obviously contains spoilers:

Casino Royale
Act 1 ✓
Act 2 ✓

Act 3:
- Mostly the same til the end… ✓
- No ridiculous 4-way all-in poker showdown
Change: People who understand poker don’t slap themselves in the face, i.e. ME
- Le Chiffre kidnaps Bond and Vesper; tortures them; is slain by White ✓
- While Bond recuperates: Mathis is nabbed; Bond resigns; Vesper and he are in love ✓
- Ends with the one-shaded sunglasses dude watching Vesper and Bond from the shadows
Change: mystery!
Change: gets around the rather stupid time-elapse problem I noted in CR regarding the money exchange not being picked up on IMMEDIATELY and Bond’s quickly recovery from debilitating injury

JAMES BOND WILL RETURN

Wait… what? How could you… Bond can’t… But he’s…

Quantum of Solace

Pre-titles opener:
- Florence sequence as opener, mostly as is ✓
Change: M arrives in Florence not only to persaude Bond back but because the money never showed up, at the same time Vesper is kidnapped by Quantum

Titles
Change: hopefully not some terrible song and gay-ass title sequence, maybe incorporate the nice parallel of Vesper’s drowning to the drought in Bolivia…

Act 1:
- Bond murky, brooding, finds info on White ✓
- Nabbing Mr White, followed quickly by the car chase ✓
Change: heightens the tension of holding Mr White
- Extended interrogation
Change: M shown to be softer for a moment with Bond as the pain is raw and new, not a distant memory
Change: Bond shown to be more in the moment with his rage
- Roof chase etc as is ✓
- Bond brought home while they find out who the betrayer was
Change: Allows for emotional/character development of Bond
- Money laundering connection; off to Haiti; ✓
Change: M lets Bond go because she can only trust him at the moment

Act 2:
- Bond finds geologist dead
Change: assassin geologists are a bit stupid sounding so let’s actually have him murdered by Greene’s henchman - to at least make the bowlcut spastic seem mildly intimidating
- Bond researches geologist’s work, attacked by a Greene goon
Change: action sequence keeps the pace up, goon gets away, Bond chases via bike or whatever, and after losing him - spots him approaching Greene and watches at a distance
Change: Oh, you’ve noticed Olga’s character is gone? Yes. She’s staying gone
- Intro to Greene as is; Bolivia deal set-up ✓
- Off to Austria; Bond follows; La Tosca ✓
Change: Bond recognises the British PM’s aide; makes him go underground on M given that Quantum’s reach seems far indeed - perhaps a seed is planted that M is in on it (how could she not know about her closest aide being one? being a comment)
- M kills his passports; Bond goes to Mathis ✓
Change: Bond is given chance to reflect on who to trust and how far
Change: M is unaware of Quantum infiltration to government and cannot see the manipulation happening at the high level
- Off to Bolivia; Strawberry Fields; Party with Greene ✓

Act 3
- Mathis & Fields killed ✓
Change: Bond shuts down emotionally and goes into full-on badass mode
- Bond returns for Greene, doesn’t find him but does waste three or four of his bodyguards
Change: Bond goes nuts, lets get dirty with the character and make him really brutal, kills useless bowl-cut bastard here when he can’t get info - Greene escapes via armed guard (CIA?)
- M cannot stop executive orders against Bond, goes dark (covert) ✓
- Meets with Leiter (extended) ✓
Change: Bring Leiter’s character out - is he conflicted, is he a game player, USA rah rah, or tired of the way they are operating? This was confusing in the film
Change: Drop the contrived CIA action squad scene
- M tracks Bond down alone just as he goes to board a plane he chartered
Change: rather than the contrived TAKE HIM DOWN, a personal moment between the chief and her charge, a character beat allowing for the understanding to develop and the reveal about Quantum’s infiltration - also her tracking him down reveals her resourcefulness
- Bond surveys land tract, spots weird structure, parachutes in, communicates finding to M, kicks off her calling in Leiter and CIA as back-up
Lets just get to the meat and potatoes of the plot shall we…
- Bond interrupts Greene’s meeting with Bolivian dictator in above-ground structure just after plot is laid out
Changes: Fuck the eco hotel bullshit, fuck the HIGHLY UNSTABLE hydrogen fuel cells, fuck all that noise and just have a good dirty fight…
- Bond wastes the corrupt chief for revenge on Mathis and gets in gunfights with guards/soldiers
- Greene escapes during the fracas
- Bolivian dictator gets away only to get caught by Leiter (and elaborate from there if he’s good or bad)
- Bond catches up to Greene in the desert
(same as before except harder-edged: shoots out his kneecaps, demands info on White, doesn’t get it, but gets the honeypot info, leaves him with the motor oil)
- Post-game wrap-up: much the same ✓

Of course, this would still only be close to as awesome as CR provided they can nab the same (or as good as) director for this one, as opposed to Monster’s Ball wankfest director whose idea of action scenes is to induce epilepsy. But you do see now, don’t you? Don’t remove the dramatic imperative! Keep the focus on what matters and don’t distance the audience or the characters from their motivations! I feel like The Dark Knight has left itself in a similar predicament having wrapped up so much in its fourth act that it leaves a hard starting point to launch from.

I waste far too much time thinking about this stuff.

Quite the weekend.

Had a BBQ spectacular that lasted almost the entire of Saturday, we did the early morning markets gauntlet at Rocklea gathering our meat and vegetables (hunter-gatherer mode activated), prepared a ton of dishes simultaneously (honey-soy drumsticks, chicken-satay skewers, italian-style burgers and potato salad) because I rock, got the bbq fired up (man-mode activated), drank some wine (-50dkp manliness hitpoints), cooked meat for about six hours, socialised, drank more, started a huge fire in the backyard as night fell and the temperature plummeted. Still, a few hours later, a couple more bottles of wine down and people were harmonising around a youtube karaoke of Nothing Else Matters and Unforgiven by Metallica.

So yes, quite the weekend.

Caught The Dark Knight again too; the second viewing crystallised a few things for me, namely:
- the movie’s too fucking long for what plot it should’ve dealt with or not long enough for the plot that it tried to deal with
- fuck Hong Kong and several other scenes off as unnecessary ballast
- okay, what the hell, here’s my take on how they should have structured it - take note Christoper Nolan, I’ll doctor your next script…

Act 1:
- Character introductions as is ✓
- Wayne enterprises merger with crooked US business
change: completely remove HK element
- Mob / cops / Batman stuff as is ✓
- Batman goes after “on the lam” US crook
change: introduce sonar here as part of a tense snatch & grab
- Dent takes the case to court etc ✓

Act 2
- Joker’s next targets as is etc ✓
- Bruce Wayne again / intercedes in a Joker attempt on Harvey
change: not at the fund raiser, that stupid scene is gone
- Pressure on Batman / Dent = Batman etc as is ✓
- Truck chase ✓
- Dent/Rachel in warehouses ✓
- Joker escape ✓

Act 3
- Harvey in hospital ✓
- Joker bomb threat ✓
change: following this Harvey is unknown to be dead or alive
- Bridge & tunnel threat ✓
change: Gordon gets reports of his team being missing
- Ferries & hostage situation unfold simultaneously in different locations to stretch resources thin again
change: separate locations for each, Batman has to help hostages first then in process gets hunted by police after sabotaging/attacking SWAT
- Batman & Joker
change: police on Batman’s tail, reports of dead cops comes in to Gordon but with no perpetrator.
another change: Joker confronts Batman with the truth that Harvey is now Two-Face and is out there, killing people, getting revenge and he’ll destroy hope, Gotham is doomed.
yet another change: Batman stops him with the detonator as before but this time…
- Joker dies
change: Joker hurled off roof as before, sailing towards cars, cackling, laughing, Batman tries to save him but fails! Cops see part of this and presume Batman has dropped his ‘code’ and is now a murderer.
- Gordon finds Batman before SWAT
change: the truth about Dent’s fall, Gordon realises Dent is killing people, they need to find him, but the cops are after Batman, the murders now get pinned to him too so the Joker doesn’t win, he’s hunted, he escapes

The End.

Reasons why:
- It’s too much for one movie, we get this. It’s too huge to cram two complete arcs in there without sacrificing one of them, Dent gets short-shrifted in the last 30 minutes into an incidental villain to be quickly dispatched; gone
- The HK stuff is just plain flabby and ruins the pacing and bloats the movie to fuck, it also adds nothing except for some coolness; gone
- Similarly the poor editing and nothingness of the fundraiser offers the question: why was this included in the end movie? it adds nothing; gone
- I have a lot of issues with the last forty or so minutes of the movie, so separating the hostages and ferries seemed natural because not only does it not make sense for the Joker to attract the SWAT team to his location (did he have any kind of plan for escape?) but it also allows some of the confusion in that scene to be alleviated and the dramatic tension to shift from that situation to the ferries again without polluting and diluting both scenarios with the same fight. Plus, it allows Batman to start getting tailed by the cops to allow for the pinning of the murders onto Batman and the creation of the same premise anyway.
- Leaving Dent alive offers an excellent parallel for the third movie, the white knight has turned dark and the caped crusader is as reviled as ever by the public and now has the police hounding him like a criminal too, a time for Gotham to be so dark offers a nice chance for them to try to reclaim Harvey before he goes too far.

That said, The Dark Knight is still far and away the best movie I’ve seen in 2008. I doubt that’s going to change. As I sat there in the lead-up to the big truck chase, my heart was pounding - that’s pure powerhouse cinema right there. I fucking LOVE it.

Anyway, no work on the screenplay, but I’ve been percolating lots and lots of ideas, character beats and so on in my head. Not necessarily for this screenplay but for others. That’s probably a result out of helping a friend with his project and that always creates sparks of critical thinking in the brain, forcing you to look at your own stuff in a slightly different way.

On the other hand, I’m actually looking to tone down the movie watching. I watched The Mist again on Friday night and made another believer out of Hugh, then half of Payback: Director’s Cut and half of The Terminator the next night.

But I’ve got a solid gold opportunity arising with Clare travelling to Portugal to not just fuck around at night and watch movies until I’m starring in a movie in mind, like a spiritual sequel to Thomas Jane’s Homeless Dad where I just want my kids back!

Arrested Development joke there, just to keep you kids on your toes.

I had a point though, it was that I need to spend the next couple of weeks writing my ass off. If I can solidly break out a screenplay or two out of the half-written draft phase and start refining it, maybe I can get into a regular habit of this creativity lark again and actually produce something worth getting to someone sooner or later. I’ve been reading again lately too, so there’s NO DAMN EXCUSE.

None whatsoever.

Except that I’m a tool.