The Adventures of Robin Hood

Errol Flynn as a possible template for James Bond, full of quips, a devil may care attitude and attractive to the ladies. "The classic swashbuckler" it said on the box. Lots of ribald laughter, lots of mutton legs being torn apart and thrown over shoulders, and Basil Rathbone plotting away.

Rewatch: opening of Magnolia

Our most recent script discussions included this fantastic opening of Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia.



One of our characters sees the world through rationalisation, making things make sense, quantifying experience into formulas. Our note of caution was this: we don't want it to be like the opening of Magnolia. The reason was this: it's simply too good to mess with.

Rewatch: excerpts from Coffee and Cigarettes

This is probably the best way to watch this film actually, cause you can just pick the best ones:







I can't find all of this:

Two guiding stars...

The film I've been working on with Tobias for over a year now has been rather hard work. Most of that work has been mental, a processing of ideas and various attempts at gathering them into a coherent whole. I suppose that is the work of all writers. This has been more difficult though.

The reason it's been so difficult is not really to do with the story. It is about style, and as such should perhaps not be given the notoriety I am giving it here, but nonetheless it has been my biggest - and most consistent - problem. It is this: my attempt to reconcile my admiration for two (apparently) mutually exclusive styles. A documentary-like realism and naturalism and a visually-arresting magical "other"-world. I like each as much as the other, and find it difficult to focus on just one when writing. The result is writing a scene in whichever style I feel I'm "in" that particular day, then doing away with it the next.

However, I think I've managed to achieve some form of synthesis, thanks to two guiding stars, who both, in their entirely separate ways, manage to reconcile these elements: Krzysztof Kieslowski and Michel Gondry. Both manage to ground their stories in a believable, emotionally honest reality whilst acknowledging the magic of everyday life, Kieslowski in his almost spiritual mise-en-scene and pacing, Gondry in his rabid visual imagination.

Of course this voyage of discovery wouldn't be complete without a new problem at the end of it: how not to write a Gondlowski-Kiesry rip-off!

Wild Strawberries

I'm somewhat shamed to say that this was my first Bergman film. In my defence, my degree saw fit to ignore him completely, so I wasn't given a good start.

I get the impression Wild Strawberries is held pretty high in the Bergman pantheon, and I reckon with good reason. Reading Bergman's notes on the making of the film, it seems the dynamic between him and the great Swedish director (and idol of Bergman) Victor Sjostrom, who plays Professor Isak Borg was "tetchy", one of those mythic relationships between arguing individuals that somehow conspires to produce a great work of art. Herzog's entire work with Kinski seems to be based on this relationship.

Sjostrom gives a remarkably toned portrait of an aged professor, voluntarily withdrawn from "social intercourse". As he travels from Stockholm to Lund to receive an honorary doctorate, episodes from his life arrest him as a handless ticking clock looms over his consciousness, signalling the death that surely must come soon. Borg is not merely regretful, or merely sad, but some combination of regret, sorrow, misty-eyed happiness and a gratefulness to whoever gave him life. This last point is important - even as a confirmed man of science, he refuses to be drawn into a debate between two of the "youngsters" he gives a ride to on science vs religion. Whilst they go into the woods to fight over the existence of the Almighty, Borg recites a verse, thanking whatever or whoever gave him, and the world, life.

In his notes, Bergman discusses events in his own life during the making of the film - his estrangement from his parents - and speculates that this film, which ends with a son finding his mother and father in a clearing, is an arm open in reconciliation to his parents. This tone pervades the film. It is that most mature of viewpoints, one that perhaps can only be achieved in old age, of slow consideration, of weighing up; accepting regret and remembering happiness.

(Having said that, Bergman made this film when he was 37).

You, The Living

Does the concept of a hilarious near-apocalyptic world sound ridiculous to you? Well go to see Swedish director Roy Andersson's You, The Living and you will see that world. Shot in shades of beige and grey and following a loosely connected group of people through their daily struggle (and for these people life really is a struggle) in a series of Pythonesque vingettes this is a superb film.

Forgoing the usual devices of character, plot and camerawork to exact a story Andersson gives us life in all its inglorious monotony. A punk who keeps telling her boyfriend to "piss off" because "no one understands me", a teenage girl hopelessly in love with the lead singer of the "Black Devils", a worn-down psychiatrist. These are the people through whom we see life. Everything is nice or 'not very nice', everything just so, sometimes someone has a bad day - the rug salesman who has called his wife a hag after she called him an "old fart". "I think hag is worse," says a customer.

Full of dry-as-a-desert humour - the military band man worrying about his investments as his wife tries to orgasm on top of him, the old man dragging his dog along the pavement - this film will really make you weep with laughter and the silliness and banality that life throws our way.

Dekalog: The Ten Commandments Part 3

Writing as ironwork...

The word "playwright" comes from the word "wrought", as in wrought iron, to "work into shape by artistry or effort". I can't think of a more apt etymology! When you write something, you are starting out with something rough-edged and clunky and attempting to fashion something coherent and beautiful out of it. And it's no more glamorous than whacking a bit of iron with a big hammer. In fact it's less glamorous, as you have to create even the lump of iron! Ironworkers have it made!

You have the initial excitement of inspiration, the lightbulb moment, then the awful, exhausting, anguish-inducing transfer onto a blank page, then the happy-go-lucky editing process. At uni a teacher said that the biggest artist on a film is the editor. I've kept that in mind ever since.

I think of it like a sandwich, a sort of reverse-sandwich really, with the flavoursome bits either side. I love coming up with the initial ideas and thinking them through, I HATE the middle bit, and love the 2nd, 3rd, 4th drafts. I could be a professional drafter for that matter, I'd be quite happy drafting away, creating multiple versions of things.

Dekalog: The Ten Commandments Part 2

This didn't quite catch me as much as the first part, most probably due to the somewhat unlikeable character and the slightly-too-slow pace for someone half-exhausted such as myself.

But putting that aside for a moment and trying to think more objectively, I find myself admiring the marriage of pace and subject matter.

This film concerns a woman whose husband is dying in hospital and who carries a baby that is not his. Her dilemma is this, in her own words: if her husband lives, then she cannot keep the baby. She has always wanted children, and this is her only chance to do so. Up until this moment, she thought she couldn't have them.

The film revolves around the series of encounters she has with the doctor caring for her husband. The unlikeable character mentioned earlier is not her but the doctor, a stern, unloving man numbed to humanity by the apparent death of his wife and children, the story of which he re-tells to his cleaner in moments interspersed with the "real" action. He eschews most other human contact and interacts verbally with grunts or the bare minimum of words. He has survived the tragedy of his family it seems through a mixture of the certainties of medicine and the tweeting of his pet budgie.

This life only now being half-lived, the slow counting of days, is mirrored in the husband lying in a hospital ward. He is half-comatose, half-dead already, his link with the outside world a monotonous dripping of rusted water from the ceiling. This is perhaps ever-so-slightly heavy handed from Kieslowski, as with the final shot of a wasp struggling - but making it - out of a cup of juice. Like the husband, it clings to life, barely managing to pull itself out of death. But perhaps that's the film student in me. It certainly works, there's no question about that; in fact the image of the wasp crawling up the spoon out of this red liquid is potentially iconic, and a wonderful metaphor for the seemingly miraculous recovery of the husband.

What this episode does is confirm my feelings about Kieslowski's genius. Part 1 was not an aberration, and my memories of the episode known as "A Short Film About Love" serve to further that impression. He has the ability to say a great deal in so few images, so few words. In cinema, that is a rare - and necessary - quality.

Dekalog: The Ten Commandments Part 1

I'm discovering these anew. It's been so long since I last watched them that I can't remember which ones I've seen and which ones not. I'd forgotten what a master Kieslowski is. He had the mark of a genius. The first Dekalog is devastating, it tells you more about human existence in an hour than Ben Affleck's entire career. Absolutely mind-blowing.

I had to look up the Ten Commandments and even then it's rather more confusing than you'd assume, as different religious traditions assign different numbers to different commandments, but the general gist of the first is "I am the Lord your God and you shall have no other Gods before me". Kieslowski moulds this into the tussle between science and religion, between the reasoned measurements of the computers Pavel and his father are fascinated by and the unpredictability of the weather, the randomness of probability. I fear to say more unless I give it away, but it's completely riveting cinema.

I've been dipping in and out of Robert McKee's infamous Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting recently and one particular passage sticks in my mind. He says that part of a successful screenplay is managing to unearth a "universally human experience, then [wrapping it into] a unique, culture-specific expression". If ever this idea was born out in film, then this is it. The snow-covered, wind-battered Communist tower blocks of 80s Poland could only be of that time and place, the dominance of white and grey, the restrained pallet, but those archetypal themes of faith and belief, of youthful wonder and questioning, could be set down anywhere in the world.

My Brother Is An Only Child

Wonderful Italian film from the writers of The Best Of Youth, about two brothers growing up in the 60s, the eldest a handsome, charming Communist, the younger nicknamed Accio (Bully), wily and a Fascist. Perfect acting, superb writing and great camera work, everything works together for the good of the film.

Like The Edge of Heaven last week, My Brother Is An Only Child seems almost effortless. The bond between the family is quickly established through countless smackings, brotherly rough and tumble and shouting matches through the apartment the five of them share. The pertinent information about them simply appears in your brain without need for a eureka moment of understanding. It's all in the swirling camera-work and the way the dialogue is performed, with everyone talking over each other, not finishing sentences, resorting to insults.

Luchetti achieves the right balance between the fanaticism of the two brothers' ideals and their fraternal bond. Whilst in the context of two rival protests coming together in a brawl they can fight each other, in the more personal context of Fascist friends of Accio burning Communist Manrico's car, then blood comes before ideals. It's an ongoing tussle, complicated firstly by Accio's lack of true Fascism - after rebelling against his family he renounces it after Fascists storm a concert by a Communist orchestra who've "de-fascisted" a Beethoven symphony by writing pro-Mao accompanying lyrics, and secondly by Accio falling - slowly, and without anything ever really coming of it - in love with Manrico's on-off girlfriend and mother of his child Francesca.

It's a testament to the acting that this works, given how hard it is to pull off. They're both believably fanatic but when they break through their beliefs or discard them all together it makes sense and is completely free of sentimentality.

Out Of The Past

From Jacques Tourneur, made in 1947 and starring Robert Mitchum, also known as Build My Gallows High.

Rewatch: Lost In Translation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep, Dazed & Confused

It occured to me that perhaps I should note down films I re-watch. These are recent ones.

Head On & Slacker

These are only lumped together because I watched them around the same time, but interestingly they share an importance: they are both interesting from the point of view of tracing a director's development.

Head-On I went out and bought the day after I saw The Edge of Heaven. The themes of displacement and the uneasy relationship between Germany and Turkey, and the conflicted identities of those born in one but raised in another are present in Head-On as much as they are in The Edge of Heaven, but there's a certain fear perhaps of going too far with them. Maybe not, maybe I'm looking for differences when actually there aren't any. Having said that, I enjoyed The Edge of Heaven more, perhaps for apparently superficial reasons like there being a character who was a lecturer in it or perhaps for deeper, more-difficult-to-enunciate reasons. I think I felt that The Edge of Heaven was more assured, less afraid to tackle big themes. Someone in the Guardian called it daring, whereas Head-On was more tentative.

Slacker I didn't like very much. It looked far too much like an exercise, an experiment, than an actual film. Nevertheless, I'd never considered it in the view of Before Sunrise and Sunset, films I love and which share a similar walking-and-talking aesthetic. But whereas those films are full of the warmth of well-drawn characters, Slacker is empty, almost vacuous. Perhaps it was intended - as a reflection of the characters? - but it doesn't hold up: once you've seen one switch of characters, you've seen them all. You never get to know any of the human beings in the film and in fact the greatest character is the city itself, despite the fact you're never actually told what city it is. Writing that I'm reminded of Gus Van Sant's Elephant, but whereas that film managed to create an entire world simply by wandering its physical parameters, Slacker seems naive, not thought through, as if Richard Linklater had this concept and padded it out.

The Edge Of Heaven

Aka: Auf der anderen Seite (On The Other Side, its original German title)

Made by Fatih Akin (Head-On, Crossing The Bridge) this is a remarkable film, haunting, memorably and superbly made. I knew of Akin as a film-maker who tackles the complex relationship between Turkey (where his family originates) and Germany (where he grew up), but wasn't aware of seeing his films before this one. As it happens, I've seen Crossing the Bridge, a documentary following Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten as he explores Istanbul's musical melting pot. I got into traditional and contemporary Turkish music off the back of that film and those exotic, comforting sounds accompany this film.

I don't want to give a synopsis, but you can find one here and here.

This film really blew me away. You know those trailers with the trailer-voice-man saying things like "one man's journey to another world" and all that sorta stuff, the stuff they've buthered the Persepolis trailer with in the UK? Well this film is the reason such trailers exist. It tracks the emotional journey of a group of people, connected deeply but not really knowing it, and it also tracks the history of two countries, the history of history really.

Oh just read those two links. They're much better at wording it than me. And see this film. It's out in June on DVD - rent it!

Here's a couple of trailers:

Rules for Writing

On my walk down to the bank today two rules for writing popped into my head. Once they had, I thought about coming up with a framework that makes me write more than I do at the moment. My own personal set of rules, that whilst not useful to everyone, might make me more productive. As it happens, the last few days have been very productive, so perhaps I have been subconsciously adhering to these rules before I realised I'd thought of them.

1. Don't second guess yourself, go with your instincts.

2. Get it on the page; edit on paper not in your head.

I'm going to be editing and changing this but I think those two rules (or guidelines, if you prefer) are between them a lot of percent responsible for my lack of finished product.

The Wire

I read an article a while ago that wondered whether the more challenging and complex screen-based work was in fact not appearing on cinema screens but on its smaller cousin, the humble ol' TV. On the strength of my just-completed viewing of Season 3 of HBO's The Wire, I would be tempted to wonder the same thing.

That The Wire is superb in every conceivable way is I think uncontestable. I'm fairly unanimous in my review of this, based entirely on 20% of its content. (I still haven't seen Seasons 1, 2, 4 and 5).

Here's Charlie Brooker's view on it. "I reviewed The Wire on my low budget, miserabilist BBC4 show Screen Wipe, calling it "the best TV show of the past decade" in the process. I was wrong. I hadn't seen the fourth season then, which subsequently convinced me it's the best TV show since the invention of radio" he says.

Here's another bit of praise: "If Charles Dickens were alive today, he would watch The Wire," ran one plaudit, from the New York Times. "Unless, that is, he was already writing for it." That gets at the immense view of the interconnectedness of society The Wire has, but I would also add that Shakespeare would be sitting next to Dickens at the story meetings, creating not only lines to sit alongside his more famous "hits", but making sure that HBO's series had the majestic, all-too-human sweep of his plays.

Take a look at this confrontation between Omar and Brother Mouzone:



Or this war speech from Slim Charles:



Or McNulty getting "schooled" by Freamon:



There are countless examples like these. This show just blows everything out of the water.

And, right now, I feel a bit like the first coupla paragraphs of this, ya feel me bro?

UPDATE: There's an interesting article in the May issue of Sight & Sound (bizarrely in the shops but not on their website as yet). It's a little over-harsh on some of the acting, but it does place The Wire in the right context, and doesn't give too much away.