Tag: movies

It’s gonna be a year of movies!

We’re not doing a go-elsewhere vacation this summer, for reasons; so my wife is doing a particular art/craft event and I’m going to see movies whenever I feel like it.  Which means a lot of popcorn flicks, starting next week the beginning of May with Guardians of the Galaxy 2.  Which I really, really want to be silly and relaxed. They got nothing to prove, so they should just go have fun.

…Whoops! Hit Publish too soon.  What are you guys looking forward to?  I ask because I plan to use this license to the fullest extent possible. Ideas always welcome.

Looks like it’s time for some remedial movie watching.

Thor: The Dark World (which I heard didn’t suck) before I get too much farther in Agents of SHIELD (just finished That Episode); and X-Men: Days of Future Past (which I heard was good) so that I can get a few more of the in-jokes in Deadpool before I watch it again (late at night, when the kids are asleep, or preferably visiting their grandmother in another state). Plus I guess I should finish Man of Steel, even though half of my peeps are telling me to skip SVB and the other half aren’t.  So, hey: lots of movies over the next few days.  …Well, three. That’s not even ‘lots’ in Trollish.

…And then I spent half an hour reading about Terry Pratchett, God rest his soul.

…Dang. Normally there’s at least a decent trailer for content.

The best one of the latest bunch though was this extremely macabre one about people being forced to race, or else have their heads exploded*.  I got nothing against that kind of horror flick, mind you – and, done well, it can be pretty scary stuff.  The problem is that you never can count on it being done well.  And when part of the gimmick is having people recite things without affect, you maybe can count on it not being done well.

Moe Lane

*It was called The Human Race, if you’re morbidly curious.

Don’t like summer blockbuster formulas? There’s honestly something you can do about that.

I still don’t feel all that well, so let me be minimalist: here’s that Slate post about modern movies that I’ve been seeing being passed around…

Summer movies are often described as formulaic. But what few people know is that there is actually a formula—one that lays out, on a page-by-page basis, exactly what should happen when in a screenplay. It’s as if a mad scientist has discovered a secret process for making a perfect, or at least perfectly conventional, summer blockbuster.

The formula didn’t come from a mad scientist. Instead it came from a screenplay guidebook, Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need. In the book, author Blake Snyder, a successful spec screenwriter who became an influential screenplay guru, preaches a variant on the basic three-act structure that has dominated blockbuster filmmaking since the late 1970s.

…and I buy Suderman’s thesis, here.  My response is pretty simple, though: movies are becoming cheaper and cheaper to produce privately, just like every other form of art.  So people who want specific kinds of movies should do what people tired of big book publishing companies and music conglomerates have done; start patronizing alternative producers of the material that they want to see.  It’s not like the FX budget is going to be all that onerous… Continue reading Don’t like summer blockbuster formulas? There’s honestly something you can do about that.