From ALIEN to PROMETHEUS: Visions of Time

Alien: Perfect suspense horror.

Aliens: Perfect suspense action.

Alien 3: Some big mistakes, but decent performances.  I prefer the DVD box set extended-cut to the theatrical.

Alien Resurrection: Also some big mistakes but it's solid b-movie comic book fun.  Love Sigourney... but I wish the film were smarter.

One thing that bothers me about the Alien series is all the time jumps.  I understand that Alien takes place in the year 2115.  I can buy that.  It would probably take that much time to get us into space so often that we'd have regular freight routes like the Nostromo might use.  Then Aliens jumps 57 years to 2172 and that's fine since that duration seems plausible enough for Ripley to have been floating around out there (her daughter and friends back home have passed on, she's Sleeping Beauty).  Aliens leaves her, Newt and Hicks in cryostasis again until Alien 3 picks up... when?  My research doesn't turn up a listing for the year that Alien 3 takes place in, though I feel that it's meant to take place immediately after Aliens.  So, timewise, Aliens and Alien 3 are pretty much one long movie.  And after Alien 3 comes to a close, we jump 200 years ahead to Alien Resurrection, presumably set in 2372.

And all that's changed in 250 years, from Ripley's basic Alien timeline and the Resurrection timeline is...  Cloning?  Laser-melted alcohol?  Sexier androids (Ryder)?  Galactic freighters don't seem to have changed much, nor language, recreational sports (basketball), sexual attitudes (Perlman) or wheelchairs (Pinon).  That's what always bothered me most about Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection: that there just wasn't enough imagination in them.  Scott's Nostromo is both a nightmarish hanuted house in space and a giant live-in truck, basically sent out there to gather materials and transport them home to Earth, isn't it?  In film, it's pretty much the first of it's particular kind (aside possibly from Dark Star and maybe Silent Running).  Cameron's vision of LV-246 is still unmatched to this day in it's realistic-feeling workaday portrayal of the terraforming colony and far more sprawling and even daring in its tech visions (the anime-like cargo-loaders).

Alien 3 and Resurrection feel been there done that in design and portrayal.  The "wooden planet" from Vincent Ward's take on the screenplay sounded promising, though, if only intellectually (and perhaps an early spiritual sister to Aronofsky's The Fountain).  It must be daunting from a design and storytelling sense to have to come up with a cinematic future like nobody's ever seen before.  The Fifth Element seemed a poppy, happy take on Blade Runner via The Jetsons.  The vision of Zion and the scorched surfaces of The Matrix Trilogy got deeply earthy (literally so).  Right now, the only futurist vision that comes to mind as being somewhat fresh is the one of Spielberg-and-Kubrick's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence.  Love it or hate it, the combination of technology and nature (oceans, fields) paints what feels to be a future within something akin to reason, whereas Spielberg's Minority Report comes fairly close except for the auto-drive freeways and cryo-prisons.

In this way, it's interesting to me that Ridley's gone back in time a bit with Prometheus.  Closer to our (the audience's) present time than any of the Alien films, his concepts of a world between the now and the far-off imagined have me wondering just what ol' Ridley's got waiting for us.  By taking the huge gap leaps through time from Alien 3 and Resurrection out of the Alien equation, he might be giving us something unexpected --  an imagined future we could possibly relate to.  This story might not deliver any forward looking predictions of still-further technical times, but then again this story seems not necessarily to need them.  We'll see our future soon enough.  In both the cinema and reality.

Read all about it:
ALIEN 3 - Vincent Ward's "Wooden Planet"
The Unrequited ALIEN 3
The ALIEN Quartet by David Thompson

The Cabin in the Woods: Going Deeper

Note to reader: There Will Be Spoilers...  

Continue only if you've seen the film already.

There are three genres of motion picture that I'm typically less than engaged by.

1. War movies.  ("Yay, let's celebrate humanity's ability to destroy itself.")
2. Weepy family drama.  (Don't we get enough of this in reality?)
3. American Horror Movies.

The main reason I have such a disconnect with the horror genre is simple.  For me: it's not very interesting.  Much can be said about the psychological nature of people, the necessity to spin a frightening story and the cathartic need to both feel that fearful excitement and then purge it.  A horror film isn't like reading a scary novel or those moments you might have known as a kid among other kids sitting around a campfire telling stories about the Hook Handed Man or some such creepy crawly oogy-boogy.  To me, those scenarios, when everything is in the imagination, are far more satisfying.  A scary movie seems like a stranger thing, as what scares one person doesn't necessarily scare another, and what scares someone one day won't necessarily scare them the next.  When I was a child I was full of fear, scared of barking dogs and thunderstorms... but not anymore.  Ghosts and monsters and Jasons and Freddies, they never really got to me.  Also, I've never been a big fan of gore, which was a huge horror movie trope of your 70's/80's horror movies and seemed to come back in a big way with the recent crop of bleached-out, grimed-up, slice-you-up-for-no-particular-reason "torture porn" films of the last ten years that just drove the genre down even deeper, as far as I'm concerned.

That said, there are plenty of exceptions of horror cinema that I really do love.  Mostly, it's monsterless regular person-on-person horror (or "psychological thrillers" as the marketing people call them now).  Classic Hitchcock, The Silence of the Lambs, Cape Fear (both versions), The Shining, Audition, The Hitcher (original). What sets those movies apart is the intellectual intent and/or artistry of the storytellers.  There are a few monster offerings that work for me: mostly Japanese offerings like the Ring and Grudge films and the works of Kiyoshi Kurosawa, classic John Carpenter, Alien, the first few episodes of The Walking Dead. And then there's horror-comedy, a tough genre to pull off but beautiful when it works. Shaun of the Dead, Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn, Scream, An American Werewolf in London, even Ghostbusters if you like...  It's just that for everything that comes out of nowhere and revitalizes the genre like Frank Darabont's The Mist, we're asked to sit through a dozen or more weak sauce offerings like the Saw and Hostel movies.

Which is why something like CABIN IN THE WOODS makes me so happy.  It's a great combo of all of the above.  Part psychological thriller (in that the evil humankind can do is a potent tale), part monster movie (love that anarchistic third act) and all comedy, all told with both intellectual intent and high artistry.  It's an all-too-rare thing: a movie that deconstructs genre and takes the piss from the silliest of the horror herd, all while making you laugh and maybe squirm just a little bit.  The tone of the film's poster just above pretty much says it all.

The following are a few things I've been thinking about regarding Cabin in the Woods.  Not so much a review as a laundry list of what the film does right... and other forms of imagination food and unanswered questions that the film opens doors to but never quite explains.

1. Character identification.  For a change, Cabin isn't so much a film in which we as an audience identifies with the teen/twenties victims. (Not for the most part, anyway.)  This time, the characters that are the most identifiable are the tormenters; those in the Bunker.  These guys are the ones who react the way we would - and do - as an audience as they put the kids through the paces.  The already-infamous "Fuck you" moment; the "Take off your top and show us the goods" lines...   These Puppetmasters are the ones sitting in their chairs with their food and drinks, watching things unfold as they in fact create the scenarios. They are the audience and the filmmakers and we can identify with them as both viewers and behind the scenes storytellers.  They have all the answers, and they have all the best lines.  Cabin is the only horror film I can think of right now where we're actually as engaged by those dishing out the horror, as people, as much as those receiving it. If these people weren't heading up the Sacrifice Department of Endtimes Incorporated, one gets the feeling they'd be fun to hang around with. ("You are not your job." -- Tyler Durden)

2. Image narrative. Cabin is one of those movies in which there are a great many narrative references (and so many great referential visuals) that can reward the viewer during his/her multiple viewings. The ability to slow down and go frame-by-frame via blu-ray or DVD will reveal more jokes and details than the naked eye can take in upon a single theatrical screening. Often, a movie can make a lot more money in its home-viewing run than in theaters and the visually joke-packed imagery of Cabin will keep some people entertained, re-watching and studying details of scenes and frames at home, for years (Example: That one shot with all the monsters in their cubes. I look forward to studying that one.) I like to think I'm a fairly together viewer, and I know there are probably dozens of inside jokes that I missed. Gotta love visual-narrative depth.

3. Reverse humor. The first act is nothing less than brilliant, in that all the jokes and lines that are the funniest are actually being told backwards. We're getting the punchlines before the set-ups. We can relate to and understand the humor in a line like "maintenance screws up a lot" from daily experience without being told what business we're in and who any of these characters are. But these lines still work, because they're idnetifiable in a real-life context. And the more info we're given as the film goes on rounds out that world further and helps make these moments and dialogue lines make more and more sense. To tell a joke backwards and a few moments later have it become even funnier than it would be if we knew all the facts beforehand is an unusual style of humor and more challenging and even rewarding. I applaud Cabin in the Woods for that sort of puzzle styled narrative construction.

Odds and ends: The chamber at the end. The one with the blood-filled wall etchings. It's like a missile silo, a long vertical tube at the bottom of which The Ancients seem to be hanging out. Is that platform "The Director" and our Last Two Heroes are talking and fighting on there for a reason? At first I thought "Well, maybe it's acting as a cork to keep the Ancients down there." But it seemed that the Ancients could break through anytime they wanted if they so chose to violate the Pact. Do the bloody wall etchings have a caretaker? Someone to make sure the Ancients know things are going as planned? Sounds like an intern's job to me...

If the Jock thought he had a cousin who bought the cabin but didn't really have a cousin, how did the Company make him think he had a cousin? A hired impersonator or actor like the Harbinger? A gas that makes you imagine family members? Just how long have these kids been on the Company's radar, anyway?

The Company Men (Jenkins and Whitmore) make a lot of references to "Guys Downstairs." (The Ancients) But when the Red Danger Phone rings, I remember someone saying "It's the guys Upstairs." Did I hear this wrong, maybe? And if I didn't hear it wrong, who are the "Guys Upstairs?"

I wonder who originated The Pact with the Ancients and how the monsters are decided upon and conjured/created. And what could the Ancients gain from making a Pact with humankind anyway? The blood in the wall etchings? Respect from or fear from what little of Humankind actually knows that the Ancients exist? If they just took over, they'd get all the blood/respect/fear they want. Until they killed everybody, I guess? Maybe that's why there's a Pact. To ensure future blood/respect/fear for the Ancients. I never understood this about sacrifices made to appease the gods. Sorry for my lack of knowledge regarding ritual.

And lastly, Ancients making pacts with humans... Isn't that a little like people making a pact with ants? Has there been a film or novel in which a world is entirely populated by gods like the Ancients with no humans?

Maybe some of this was all fully explained and I just missed it while having so much fun watching the film. I've always been a fan of the nuts and bolts of world-building in narrative. At least Cabin in the Woods has a depth of mythology to be considered and explored in a fun way. A lot of movies seem unfinished due to the laziness or the lack of care of the writers. Cabin has the extra-added-bonus of giving us gaps that feel as if they've been left for us to fill in the blanks ourselves, challenging us to be creative in our own right, rewarding us by jump starting our own imaginations.

You know... Just like kids sitting around a campfire telling stories. :)


Theatrical
An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt ****
The Cabin in the Woods ***1/2
The Raid: Redemption ***

DVD/Home Video
Running Scared (1986) ****
Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) ***1/2
Futurama: Volume 5 ***1/2
Future Cops (Hong Kong, 1993) ***
Raising Cain (1992) ***
52 Pick-Up (1986) ***
Love at Large (1990) **1/2
Rumble Fish (1983) **1/2
RocknRolla (2008) **1/2
The Dukes (2007) **1/2
Ricochet (1991) **1/2
The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981) **
Enemy Territory (1987) **
Nothing (2005) *1/2

Literature
Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger's Irish Mob (Kevin Weeks) ***
Frank Miller's Holy Terror **1/2

Music/Spoken Word
The Best of Bill Hicks ****
Rollins' Choice (Henry Rollins, Blue Note) ****
John Carter (original score by Michael Giacchino) ***1/2
Laserhawk: The Vistors ***
Charlatan: Equinox **1/2

No News, More Reviews...

Theatrical Reviews
Life Without Principle (Hong Kong)  ***
John Carter  ***


DVD/Home Video
Audition (Japan, 1999)  ****
Koyaanisqatsi (1982)  ****
Japan's Tsunami: Caught On Camera (Documentary, UK)  ***1/2
Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)  ***1/2
Visual Acousitcs (Doc, 2009)  ***1/2
At Close Range (1986)  ***1/2
Kikujiro (Japan, 1999)  ***1/2
The Bank Job (2008)  ***1/2
The Natural (1984)  ***1/2
Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcarde (Doc, 2007)  ***
The Million Dollar Hotel (2001)  *** 
Noriko's Dinner Table (Japan)  ***
Bright Lights, Big City (1988)  ***
8 Million Ways To Die (1986)  ***
Panic in Needle Park (1971)  ***
Moon Over Parador (1992)  ***
Modern Problems (1981)  ***
Family Business (1989)  ***
Take Me Home Tonight  ***
Out For Justice (1991)  ***
Captured (Doc, 2008)  ***
State of Grace (1990)  ***
Nobody's Fool (1994)  ***
Spies Like Us (1986)  ***
Three Amigos (1986)  ***
True Believer (1989)  ***
The Killer Inside Me  ***
Crossroads (1986)  ***
The Expendables  ***
The Outfit (1973)  ***
Revolver (2005)  ***
Iron Man 2  ***
They Came Back (France, 2004)  **1/2
A Prayer For The Dying (1987)  **1/2
Love Exposure (Japan)  **1/2
The Killer Elite (2011)  **1/2
Streets of Fire (1984)  **1/2
Suicide Club (Japan)  **1/2
Quiet Cool (1986)  **1/2
Perfect (1985)  **1/2
Rambo (2008)  **1/2
Tank (1984)  **1/2
What Women Want (Hong Kong)  **
The Legend of Billy Jean (1985)  **
Comin' At Ya' (1981)  **
Breathless (1984)  *1/2

Music/Spoken Word

The Adventures of Tintin (score by John Williams)  ***1/2
War Horse (score by John Williams)  ***1/2
Van Halen: A Different Kind of Truth  ***1/2
Mitch Murder: After Hours  ***
Mitch Murder: Television EP  ***
Mitch Murder: Elevator Music EP  ***
Mitch Murder: This Is Now EP  ***1/2
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (score by Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross)  ***
Worship: The Dome EP  ***
Worship: Out There EP  **
Stephen Falken: Phantom Tracks, Volume One  ***
Lazerhawk: Redline  ***
Com Truise: Galactic Melt  **1/2


Literature/Comics
Drew Struzan: Oevure  ****
Spider-Man: Noir (Marvel)  ***
Spider-Man: Noir - Eyes Without A Face (Marvel)  ***
Machine Man: Four-Issue Limited Series (1982)  **1/2

Fall/Winter - 2011/2012

Theatrical Reviews:

The French Connection (1971)  ****

Battle Royale (2000, Japan)  ****

The Terminator (1984)  ****

True Romance (1993)  ****

Poltergeist (1982)  ****

Manhattan (1979)  ****

Annie Hall (1977)  ****

Hugo (3D)  ****

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (USA)  ***1/2

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol  ***1/2

The Adventures of Tintin (3D)  ***1/2

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy  ***1/2

War Horse  ***1/2

Drive  ***1/2

The Rum Diary  ***

Real Steel  **1/2

The Thing (2011)  **

DVD/Home Video:

Until The End of the World: Director's Cut (1991)  ****

Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse  ****

Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987)  ****

American Graffiti (1972)  ****

Miller's Crossing (1990)  ****

Something Wild (1987)  ****

Harakiri (Japan, 1962)  ****

Ugetsu (Japan, 1953)  ****

Midnight Run (1988)  ****

1941 (1979)  ****

Enter The Void (France)  ***1/2

Kwaidan (Japan, 1965)  ***1/2

Onibaba (Japan, 1964)  ***1/2

Naked Lunch (1991)  ***1/2

High Fidelity (2005)  ***1/2

Beetlejuice (1988)  ***1/2

Insomnia (2002)  ***1/2

The American  ***1/2

Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (HK)  ***

Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1983)  ***

The Life and Legend of Buffalo Jones (1976)  ***

Space Battleship Yamoto (Japan)  ***

The Man From Nowhere (Korea)  ***

Hide In Plain Sight (1980)  ***

Snuff Box (UK, TV Series)  ***

Cyborg She (2008, Japan)  ***

Winnie The Pooh (2011)  ***

The Rain People (1969)  ***

Kuroneko (Japan, 1968)  ***

We're No Angels (1989)  ***

Promised Land (1987)  ***

The Town (2010)  ***

Shaolin (HK)  ***

Southland Tales: The Cannes Cut  **1/2

Ghostbusters 2 (1990)  **1/2

At the Sinatra Club  **12

Countdown (1968)  **1/2

Feeding Frenzy  **1/2

The Car (1977)  **1/2

Slither (1973)  **1/2

Woochi: The Taoist Wizard (Korea)  **

Lulu on the Bridge (1998)  **

Underworld (1997)  **

Drive Angry  **

Born To Raise Hell  *

The Films of Humphrey Bogart: 

The Petrified Forest (1936)  ****

Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)  ***

Dark Victory (1939)  ***1/2

High Sierra (1941)  ****

The Maltese Falcon (1941)  ****

Casablanca (1942)  ***

To Have and Have Not (1944)  ****

The Big Sleep (1946)  ***1/2

Dark Passage (1947)  ***

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)  ****

Key Largo (1948)  ****

In A Lonely Place (1950)  ***

The African Queen (1951)  ***1/2

Beat the Devil (1953)  **1/2

We're No Angels (1954)  ***

The Desperate Hours (1955)  ***1/2

Classic/Noir:

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)  ****

The Steel Helmet (1951)  ***1/2

Mystery Street (1950)  ***1/2

Pickup on South Street (1953)  ***

Satan Met A Lady (1936)  ***

Out of the Past (1947)  ***

Act of Violence (1948)  ***

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)  ***

Gun Crazy (1949)  ***

Murder, My Sweet (1945)  **1/2

Lady in the Lake (1947)  **1/2

The Maltese Falcon (1931)  **

Music/Spoken World:

Miles Davis: Elevator to the Gallows (soundtrack)  ****

Tom Waits: Bad As Me (Limited Edition)  ****

Scrooged: Danny Elfman (La La Land)  ****

Mitch Murder: Burning Chrome  ****

Blade Runner: EMS Recombination (soundtrack bootleg)  ***1/2

DJ Z-Trip & DJ P: Uneasy Listening, Volume 1 (2000)  ***1/2

The Adventures of Tintin (score by John Williams)  ***1/2

Beastie Boys: Hot Sauce Committee Part Two  ***1/2

Michael Ian Black: I Am A Wonderful Man  ***1/2

Die Hard: Michael Kamen (La La Land)  ***1/2

Explorers: Jerry Goldsmith (Intrada)  ***1/2

Michael Ian Black: Very Famous  ***1/2

Drive (original score/soundtrack)  ***1/2

Dexter Gordon: Gotham City  ***1/2

Joe Bargar & the Soul Providers: Two Sides  ***

Isaac Hayes: Hot Buttered Soul (1969)  ***

The State: Comedy for Gracious Living  ***

Chrysta Bell & David Lynch: This Train  ***

mc chris: Marshmellow Playground  ***

David Lynch: Crazy Clown Time  ***

James Hyman: Pulp Mixin'  ***

Jeff Bridges (2011)  ***

Michael Showalter: Sandwiches & Cats  **1/2

mc chris: Race Wars  **1/2

Literature/Comics:

Frank Miller's Sin City: The Hard Goodbye  ****

Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For  ***

Frank Miller's Sin City: The Big Fat Kill  ***

Frank Miller's Sin City: That Yellow Bastard  ****

Frank Miller's Sin City: Family Values  ***1/2

Frank Miller's Sin City: Booze, Broads & Bullets  ***

Frank Miller's Sin City: To Hell and Back  ***1/2

Woody Allen on Woody Allen (Stig Bjorkman)  ***1/2

The Blade Runner Sketchbook (Blue Dolphin)  ***1/2

Art to Choke Hearts & Pissing in the Gene Pool (Henry Rollins)  ***

Ghostbusters Infestation: #1 & 2 (IDW, miniseries)  ***

Ghostbusters #1 & 2 (IDW, monthly)  ***

Wolverine Noir (Marvel)  ***1/2

X-Men Noir (Marvel)  ***

X-Men Noir: Mark of Cain (Marvel)  **

Dennis Hopper: A Madness to His Method (Elena Rodriguez)  **1/2

Dennis Hopper: Movie Top Ten (Jack Hunter)  **

100 Bullets: First Shot, Last Call (DC/Vertigo)  **

Internet:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Review (Red Letter Media)  ***1/2

Star Wars Uncut: Director's Cut (on youtube)  ***1/2

David Wain's Wainy Days (wainydays.com)  ***1/2

Black Lodge: "Twin Peaks" Atari 2600 Game  ***

2011: The Year's Ten Best Films:

The Tree of Life

13 Assassins

Midnight in Paris

Blank City

Page One: Inside The New York Times

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part Two

Norwegian Wood

Drive

Hugo

The Booth at the End

Sky & Sea, Boston - August/September 2011

Theatrical Reviews:

The Shining (1980) ****

Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982) ****

DVD/Home Video:

One False Move (1992) ****
Norwegian Wood (Japan) ***1/2
City of Hope (1991) ***1/2
The Killing (1956) ***1/2
Sexy Beast (2000) ***1/2
Out of the Blue (1980) ***
Dark Passage (1947) ***
Five Corners (1987) ***
Fear City (1984) **

Internet:

The Booth In The Corner (Hulu) ****
Half in the Bag (Red Letter Media) ***1/2

NYC (and a bonus) - August 2011

Style and Execution

July 17th, 2011

It's been a few beautiful, dry and cool days lately, during which I had to work. (Of course.) Now the 90 degree heat's come back again... and on my day off. (Naturally.) The humidity wasn't scheduled to arrive again until nightfall though, so I grabbed my notebook, Diet Coke & cookie and went to my spot at the Park. The swelter didn't phase me in the slightest as I started the outline for the story, proper. All the backstory work I'd been doing lately fell right into place. The story was originally going to be a real-time investigation sort of thing, but now I see the value of flashbacks and imagined realities in this particular story and they seem to flowing in their places pretty well. It has to do with what the Hero has grown up thinking is a particular truth or two about his past, only to have the actual truth given to him from two or three other people, even as we suspect that those people might be coloring their own particular meaning of the truth in their own way... Flashbacks and such really are the only way to make this come alive visually. I guess noir films use them for a reason, after all.

The key, if I'm allowed by fate to direct this film, is to differentiate between the actual/real past material and the imagined past material, visually. Soderbergh used color temperature in Traffic to split up his Washington/Mexico/Los Angeles based storyline. I'm thinking "locked-down camera" for the false/imagined past and "handheld but not shaky-cam" as the actual/real past. I've long felt that the great films of the 60's/70's always had that handheld you-are-there news camera sort of realism (Medium Cool, for one). Maybe this is a way to go. Or maybe the other way around would be more interesting, almost turning the convention on it's own ear. Will have to think about that...

At any rate: I felt the first, real sense of accomplishment today. It feels like I've planned out the entire film now, from the opening shot to the closing credits, on paper. After four-plus years, the story is now finally all laid out. The tough part's over. Next is the mostly-easy part. The actual writing of the first draft.

August 7, 2011

Spent my last few days off getting life stuff done. Finally relenting and putting the air conditioner in, paying bills, cleaning the room, seeing the occasional film, house and cat sitting. These all cut into my creativity time a little. I did get around to gathering all my little notes on scraps of paper and color-copying them to 8.5 by 11 inch sheets, so now I have fresh new versions to refer to, should I need them. Maybe I should digitize them and keep them on the laptop and iPod Touch, too. Having them available to me at any given moment sounds like a decent idea.

I've also decided to have another sort of back-up plan. The story I'm working on, you see, is sort of a remake. But not really. That is: there is a terrific old thriller that I've always enjoyed. To film-people it's a classic, however to most average audiences it's largely unknown, which is a tragedy since, at least in my opinion, it really should be as recognized as The Big Sleep, Cape Fear, White Heat and a host of others. The thing that always struck me about it was it's amazing opening scene. Not to give it away but it's a tough and sparse slow-burn of dramatic perfection. Beautifully written, directed, photographed and performed... and it's probably my favorite opening scene of all time.

Some time ago, I figured it would be a great idea to keep that amazing opening scene, line by line and shot by shot, exactly as it is in the original film, then veer off into uncharted and deeply personal (to me) territory, as a way of both paying homage to the classic original, while striking off on my own and telling a story that only I can tell.

Only recently did I consider this: What if I were not able to get the rights to the original material? That could be a huge problem, since I couldn't really start with the Scene Two and expect to have the same dramatic or emotional impact. If you can imagine, say, what Reservoir Dogs might be like without the pre-title sequence with the "Like A Virgin" conversation in the diner where we meet Keitel, Madsen, Buscemi and the rest, you might get the picture. The film would just start with Tim Roth crying in the backseat of a speeding car. You'd miss out on the impact of the moment, the shock and some of Tarantino's most well known dialogue. You'd just jump headlong into screaming and blood. It wouldn't work nearly as well. The same would happen with my story.

I then decided to write a back-up first scene. If I couldn't get the rights to the material I needed, I wanted to cover myself. I kept the same general idea but altered the setting, time of day, the players, moved some of the characters around like chess pieces. I brought in a character, someone who wasn't scheduled to show up for another ten or fifteen pages. I'm trying to keep the same slow-burn feel of the original but bringing it another, more shocking and possibly more contemporary place. The only difficulty is that I can think of at least two other movies that start in a similar way, yet different enough - I think - to be considered separate and unrelated pieces. In a genre story, it's surprisingly difficult not to repeat (or even unintentionally steal from) what you've seen and loved in film before. Tough guy dialogue, familiar settings... I'll have to keep a close eye on this. I'd really love for this to be something wholly original, emotional and special.

At any rate, now I'm on the fence in that I really like the new opening. The way I see it in my mind visually, the way that I imagine it lighted, edited and performed... I think it might actually suit the rest of the story better than that classic scene that inspired it. It seems more of the same world, more fitting. Maybe I'm deluded. Or, maybe that's a sign of some sort of artistic maturity. Something the makers of remakes and reboots should try to feel: that it's all wonderful to pay tribute to those who inspire you, but it takes more courage to go your own way...

I guess we'll see.

Theatrical Reviews
Blue Velvet (1985) ****
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part Two ***1/2
Rise of the Planet of the Apes ***
Captain America ***

DVD/Home Video
To Have and Have Not (1944) ****
High Sierra (1941) ****
Naked (UK, 1993) ****
Stanley Kubrick's Boxes (Documentary) ***1/2
Eyes Wide Shut (1999) ***1/2
SubUrbia (1997) ***1/2
Spartan (2004) ***1/2
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part One ***
It Came From Outer Space! - 3D (1953) ***
Outrage (Japan) ***
Blow Out (1981) ***
Judgment Night (1993) **1/2
Times Square (1980) **1/2