and I'll see you at the Movies...

   I was having this discussion at work the other day on the topic of going to the movies and how we watch movies. We were talking about 3-D and someone said they can't watch it because all they do is look for the overlap and mistakes in the effect. I quickly responded with my film watching philosophy " When I go to the movies I leave all my film making/industry knowledge at the door and let myself get lost in the film/story." After all that's what we go to the movies for right? To be told a story...
   Well I'm about to embark on that journey. I'm gonna start writing a movie...finally!!! If this were LA It's as common as taking a dump, everyone does it. I've wanted to do this for a very long time now and now events and time have extended their hand and so my journey begins. I have come to the conclusion that anyone can write a film after some of the crap I've seen and boy have I seen allot! I watch everything and now with Netflix on my Wii I see my choice of crap!

  What qualifies me to write a movie? Nothing! Nothing but my ideas on what I think is a good story. When I was teaching I used to teach screenwriting as part of the curriculum. The one thing I drilled through the kids was you have to tell a story, you just can't shoot video off the top of your head or put what you think is cool. There as to be some sorta structure to your story. You know, boy meets girl-boy loses girl- boy gets girl back or some convoluted version of that, as long as there is structure.

   Now days being a screen writer is not easy , you have to be clever and creative in your dialogue and storytelling, It's not easy! But I feel I'm up for the challenge. What am I gonna write about ? Am I gonna use my experiences as background ?  What genre will I write for? These are all the things I have thought about and drove my ideas. Will I tell ya whats it about? As they say in LA "It's an Idea I've had in my head for a while..." Stay Tuned!

Wild Things

I LOVE going to the movies, good or bad, happy or sad I see it! Today I went to see a beloved childhood book come to life "Where the Wild Things Are". I was real skeptical when I saw that there were gonna make this movie. Somethings are sacred and should not be messed with and this was one of those. How could they possibly recapture the magic of that book, my imagination like Max's used to soar when I read that book, I wondered how big the creatures were and was it cold where Max was? So many things that Maurice Sendak put in this book were so cool and weird to me, almost like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory even though the book only consisted of 10 sentences.

Usually with films like this CGI is used to portray the characters because of their complex appearance and stature but I like others felt they had to be real so they could be believable to both the audience and actor. They ended up using CGI only for facial expressions otherwise it was Henson's Creature Shop who created the Wild Things and they couldn't have been more real. The film was touching and magical and was, at least I thought poinient for today's single parent family. I often caught myself in the parents and child's shoes throughout the film and felt for their pain and problems. Growing up sucks no matter what age you are, the responsibilities and losses you assume are necessary though. I used to pride myself on being able to put myself in my kids shoes but have slipped lately, this film jolted me back to their POV and their trials of growing up.