Okay, so this blog page is just an excuse for me to post this photo, which contains a rather nice image of me. Considering that I’ve reached the age where it’s ‘flaunt what you’ve got left,’ I think I’m entitled. (That’s me on the far right, in the black wrap dress!)
Now, the movie which was the excuse for this party, The Time Traveler’s Wife. It was all one long 2nd act. There was no first act, and no third act. They can’t be together, they can’t be together, they can’t be together, he’s going to die so they can’t be together, and now he’s dead so they can’t be together. That’s the plot. The 2nd act. The entire movie.
Not that I minded. This was an enormously appealing movie. I mean, it’s about LOVE, how can you not love it? And Eric Bana is a stone cold hottie (I’m pretty sure my undies crept up under my armpits while I watched him), and Rachel Macadams is a world class beauty. They’re fun to watch. I thought their chemistry was good. I was suitably sighful at the end. Yep, good fun.
Just goes to show: who needs a 1st or 3rd act when you’ve got love, Eric Bana, and Rachel Macadams? Screenwriting classes be damned! Rules were made to be broken!
Now, terms of screenwriting. Let’s talk District 9. This was really well done. I wouldn’t call it ground-breaking like Bladerunner. But I would call it well structured, well acted. Compelling. I saw it at the upscale Loews 68th Street movie theater, the big one with the bas relief elephants and the red velvet curtains, and the jaded NYC audience broke into applause at the end.
District 9 was about justice. Not about love, though I won’t go into the effort it must have taken to make a cute little alien baby prawn who could cry, with heart-rending effect, “Father! Father!”
The transformation of the hero in District 9 was just that: a transformation. On many levels. Complimenti to the screenwriter and the director. We don’t get to see transformation very often in movies because, I suppose, studio execs think we don’t need it or else can’t handle it. Maybe it’s not even about them, but about the theater owners, who want plentiful butt$ to come fill $eats and buy conce$$ion$. Perhaps they don’t believe that transformation accomplishes that goal. But love and big stars will.
So why are so many of the really good screenplays and TV shows written by non-Americans? Did you see Torchwood: Children of Earth? It was excellent TV, the kind of first-rate writing I haven’t witnessed since M*A*S*H or Roots. We used to know how to write good stories, the kind that have values that suck in viewers. But now we’ve got love and big stars, so we don’t need good writing and strong values….