Evil twin...

This is going to seem a bit rambling but bear with me, it does relate to something that happened today.

So back when I was at university a friend, I forget which one, mentioned spotting someone who looked like me on a bus. Not so amazing, but they stressed that this person did look exactly like me to the point that they almost went over to say hello. I definitely wasn't on that bus so I decided I must have an evil twin, like The Dark Half. The twin came up in drunken conversations and was occasionally used as an excuse but was otherwise never heard from or spotted again.

Cut to a few years later and I'm living in Chelmsford. There was a shop in the station near my flat that I used to pop into on the way to work everyday for cigarettes. The bloke who worked in the shop came to recognise me and to know what I came in for, but then one day he hands me the wrong brand of cigarettes. He realises his mistake, but explains that there's someone else who has started coming into the shop every day who looks exactly like me but smokes different cigarettes. From that day on he never really confused the two of us again, but would occasionally say things like 'I saw him again the other day - you really do look identical'.

This goes on for a few months, then one day he tells me that the other me is leaving to work in Cambodia for some reason or other (at this point I start to wonder whether my twin is actually the evil one of the two of us as he sounds like quite an interesting chap). He is so convinced that we look alike that he wants us to meet so I can see for myself, so he asks for my phone number to pass onto the other me. This is obviously a bit weird but the bloke is pretty insistent and to be honest I am a little curious so I give him my number.

I don't hear anything for a few days, then I go into the shop and the man says that he gave my number to the other me but the other me said he wasn't going to phone me as he thought it was weird. Again I'm wondering if he's really the evil twin as he seems a lot more sane than I am. Anyway, he left for Cambodia and I never heard anything else about him.

Until today.

So I'm walking up to the office where I now work near Brighton station and as I'm about to go in the receptionist bloke comes out with a pile of letters in his hands and says 'Are you going to the office?'.

'Yes,' I say, because I am.

'Great, glad I caught you in time. Meant to grab you on your way past yesterday but I was too late. Can you take these for me?'

He hands me the pile of letters. This is not completely unusual. He often brings the post up to the office where I work, so I figure today he can't be bothered and has decided to have me do it instead. I take the letters and head inside.

'What? You're coming in here?' he asks, clearly confused.

'Yes, I work here,' I say, also confused.

He then realises who I am, and that I'm not the person he thought I was who obviously looks identical but works in a different office nearby. I see the receptionist bloke every day, we say hellos and goodbyes, he knows who I am and yet this other bloke who looks like me is obviously so identical that even when looking me in the face to give me the letters he didn't notice the difference.

'You must have a double,' he says.

I knew that, but he appears to be following me.

Clowny Clown Clown...

Had to post this, if only to convince Brother Pete that he didn't dream it...



Hope it doesn't give anyone nightmares.

Crispin Glover = awesome.

Exte: Hair Extensions...

So I am just going on about random films this week, but this one is interesting from a scriptwriting point of view. I watched Exte: Hair Extensions last night and as J-horrors go it's not the best but has a lot going for it. The dialogue and characters are all good (as is the translation which makes a nice change), plus Chiaki Kuriyama is awesome and it was cool to see her carrying a film. But the best thing by far, and I rarely say this, was the effects - a really nice mix of practical and CGI that often managed to be effective and suitably disgusting.

The problem is in the script and it's purely a structural issue which is why I think it's worth mentioning as it shows the importance of good structure. The main character is set up really well and we understand her goals and her problems early on (she is even a good example of a character who has the oft-debated wants and needs that are said to be the basis of all good characters). Parallel to this story we are introduced to the possessed hair extensions of the title (yes, it really is a film about possessed hair extensions).

We are led to assume that that the hair extensions and Chiaki's character, Yuko, will clash at some point which will kick off the story. However, what happens instead is that we get another story when Yuko's sister dumps her young daughter on Yuko's doorstep. Yuko finds out that her sister is neglecting the child quite badly and decides to take her in. This causes complications with her career and leads to a confrontation with her abusive sister in one of the most tense dramatic scenes I've seen in a film for a long time. The problem is that it's quite far removed from a story about possessed hair extensions.

But that's okay, I prefer my horror films to be taken seriously and the depth this subplot adds to the characters is worth the minutes it adds to the running time. The issue is that it's a big enough complication to set a film running on its own without the possessed hair extensions. I'm still waiting for the possessed hair extensions story to collide with Yuko's story so the film can start. But that doesn't happen until at least an hour in, and even then there's still a sense that there are two very separate stories here that have begrudgingly agreed to share screen time even though they'd both rather have their own film. The two stories never quite fit together and the film often feels a bit directionless as a result.

The point is, if you set up character A, then show us big nasty situation B we will naturally assume that A & B will collide at some point and that this will be what drives the film forward. When this collision is actually more of a bump that happens an hour into the film you're in danger of losing your audience.

But I hope I haven't put anyone off watching the film as there is some excellent stuff in there.

New Ten Dead Men review...

It's been a while, but there's a whole new, rather epic and quite fair review by Occulus Orbus here.

So far this week I have mostly been trying to adjust myself back into the work/work balance and completely failing to do so. I have watched a lot of films, including Franklyn which I really really liked:

Back from Devon...

I'm back from a week in Devon, having been away from both day job and writing. Other than Josh Olson having a moan not too much seems to have happened in the week I was away. I always expect to come back to an inbox overflowing with important e-mails, but after I'd deleted all the rubbish I was left with about three that were of any interest (probably because I'd told most people I'm working with that I was going away so I shouldn't really be surprised). And yet this is a good thing because I kind of left whilst in the middle of a number of projects which now need to be finished off.

Highlights of my holiday were:

a) the Gnome Reserve where you are made to wear Gnome hats before going in. Unfortunately this was the one day we forgot to take the camera with us so there are no pictures of me in a gnome hat or indeed any evidence that the place actually exists at all. Although the gnomes do have a website.

b) the little village of Taddiport (which was near the tiny village of Langtree where we were staying) had a lot of houses with very lifelike scarecrows standing outside their front doors. I didn't get close enough to see whether they were actually humans dressed up, but it was quite freaky, especially having seen the Japanese film Kakashi.

c) a spontaneous night out in the nearby village of Torrington where we had the obligatory chat with a random local and saw Telstar at the Plough Arts Centre which was awesome.

It was excellent to get away for a bit, and feels weird to be back into a routine even though it was only a week. I am looking forward to getting back into writing and will hopefully be finishing off a couple of long-running projects over the next few weeks.

The work/work balance...

So today at work I was reading something and started to criticise the motivations of the character and that I didn't really get where the story was going or how this part fitted in. I was on the verge of making notes to this effect when I realised that I was reading a work e-mail and not a script. The day job/writing balance has started to seriously tip towards the latter.

This is mostly on account of getting some paid work last week which then took up the whole of the bank holiday weekend. It's a rewrite/polish of an existing script and I can't really say much more than that at the moment, other than it's hard work but I'm enjoying it. On top of this I have two other scripts I'm working on at present and three projects lined up once those are finished. I am very much looking forward to going on holiday next week!

Meanwhile, there are potentially exciting things happening with two previously completed scripts that are in the casting/funding stages. Both are still a long way off production, but every week there seems to be a bit more news which at least means things are moving forward. Still no official announcement on either of them so I can't into details yet.

I went to Son of Moviebar last night which was excellent as always, partly because our team (Team Shakma, obviously) came first in the quiz, although I disappointed myself by not knowing that George Miller directed the best segment of the Twilight Zone Movie. The rest of the evening was dedicated to screening trailers, some for completed features, some for features to be and one for a feature that was tragically killed in a hard drive wiping accident. There's full rundown at the Son of Moviebar Facebook group with links to the trailers here.

Also, I've linked to it on the right but I don't think I've actually mentioned in a post that Luther Jones who co-organises the event has his own film making blog here which anyone seriously interested in no-budget film production should check out.

Inglourious Basterds and other films...

Saw Nick Cave again this morning, in the same cafe in Hove where I saw him last time, the difference being that since then I have tended to deliberately look inside said cafe on the way past in the hope of seeing him again. Now I have seen him again I feel rather like a stalker, which kind of takes away any possible celebrity-spotting excitement. Then again, I suppose it's more comparable to the various other familiar faces I see on the way to work whom I never acknowledge but am always curious about. I imagine this is a very British way to react to people you see every day on the way to work - maybe I'll start by saying hello to Nick Cave and work my way up to the randoms from there.

Nothing to report on the writing front this week - have mostly been busy doing coursework for an exam for the dayjob which has taken up far too much time. Today was the first day in weeks I actually managed to leave the office on time.

I have managed to see some films.

Last week I saw Inglourious Basterds which at first I kind of resented having to see. The new Tarantino film has become the cinema event of the film enthusiast and is now required viewing as a result. And with good reason - I am of the generation that watched Reservoir Dogs and thought 'I want to write films like that'. More so for me because after seeing that film and Pulp Fiction I went back and watched all the films Tarantino had referenced thus making him responsible for much of my early film education (actually my dad was really responsible for that, but Tarantino definitely boosted my interest). This was fine until I sought out Ringo Lam's film City on Fire from which Tarantino had lifted not just the plot for Reservoir Dogs but whole sequences. I felt a little bit cheated and lost interest for a few years, not realising that I'd kind of missed the point and that what was great about Reservoir Dogs was the writing and the dialogue and the characters and not the framework those things were hanging from.

But rediscovering Reservoir Dogs only increased my disappointment with films like Kill Bill or Death Proof that I neither enjoyed nor understood. When I was in LA I was speaking to someone at a party who was at that time working as Tarantino's personal projectionist, showing obscure grindhouse films up at his house in his private cinema. To me this was kind of what his films had become - private screenings of oddities that had for some reason struck a chord with the filmmaker but went over the heads of everyone else. He seemed to be making films for himself rather than his audience and I'd lost interest.

So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself really enjoying Inglourious Basterds. There were parts I didn't get along with, particularly the structure and the fact that the final scene is completely devoid of tension as a result of the way it is set up, but generally I found it entertaining and interesting.

Thinking about it the following day I found myself liking it even more. It's a film about language and performance, and about how different people use those things to get what they want about how it translates into film. And it's about how powerful film itself can be, or perhaps how powerful we wish it could be. In this film the greatest weapon available to the Allies is cinema, which I guess is a filmmakers fantasy in that it suggests that art can have a physical influence on the world outside the cinema.

All this rambling is kind of proving my point - that it's a film that made me think and for that reason I found myself really liking it. Plus the German actors are awesome.

I also saw G.I. Joe which also made me think, although mainly I thought about the films I saw in my youth in which I always preferred the bad guys. And it reminded me of seeing big stupid films with friends who then told me I was thinking too much as we left the cinema. Mostly it made me realise that it was for kids and not for me, and made me think of going back to the cartoons of my youth and realising they were the same every episode and a bit too noisy. It was marginally better than Transformers 2, in that it was at least an enjoyable ride, and there were a couple of set pieces that made sense. And it was cool to see Arnold Vosloo and Kevin J. O'Connor in a big screen film again.

For the rest of it I felt like I was being slapped in the face with CGI, although that was partly due to drinking a few too many beers beforehand. As Brother Pete pointed out it also feels a lot like a live action version of Team America. If I can say something about the script without being accused of over-thinking it, it was a bit like being told a story by an excited child - so this happens, then this thing happens, then there's this cool fight, but hang on you need to know about this bit and so on. There were odd moments that seemed so random it's hard to imagine no one pointing it out at the script stage, but in reality I know these things happen for reasons beyond the writer's control. I also found it hard to separate the Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Levitt characters in this film from their psychologically scarred soldier characters in Stop-Loss.

But the best film I saw last week was probably Transsiberian - a neat little thriller on a train in which Sir Ben does an accent and Woody Harrelson has improbable hair. In all seriousness it is a very well-produced and entertaining film with some excellent characters and tense set-pieces - the closest thing to a proper film I'd seen all week.