Gina Harris's Blog, page 175

Band Review: Illustrations

Illustrations is a band from San Antonio, Texas. Keywords they use are death metal, grindcore, hardcore, and punk.
I would have guessed hardcore. The lyrics are shouted in a growl, and the songs are musically aggressive. There are a few things that stand out, including interesting use of feedback.
I was glad to see metal listed, because "Endless Sleep" and "Widower" remind me a little of Metallica, ala "Enter Sandman". Some songs had a higher tempo that made me feel the punk roots, especially "Always Losing" and "In Shambles".
What stood out most though, was something I am not sure how to describe. It comes up most notably on "Heaven". The effect might involve tremolo, as there is a kind of an echoing feel to the guitar notes. It adds something haunting and otherworldly. For some reason it makes me think of Frank Iero, though I can't point you to a specific project of his. It intrigues me.
And, for the variations in what they do with guitar, despite the overall sound being pretty consistent, I have to conclude that these guys are skilled.
My listening has all been from their 2014 album, In Vain, available on Bandcamp for $10.00.
https://www.facebook.com/illustrationshc
http://illustrations.bandcamp.com/
https://twitter.com/illustrationshc

Reading screenplays - the highs

Logan's Run was pretty good. It took a moment to figure out where I was, because at first I read Logan's Run and thought Silent Running. Then, realizing that instead of plants there is a girl, I was thinking maybe Deadlock, but no, this was it's own thing. Having a lot of titles and synopses in your head is okay, but being able to string them together appropriately is nice.
For the most part, reading the screenplays for movies I had seen was good, but it was not significantly better than reading the screenplays for unseen movies. Knowing the story in advance made watching it unfold different, but not less interesting. I don't know if this is a general rule or a personality trait, because I'm not usually spoiler-averse anyway. Really, the main rule of how much I enjoyed the reading seems to be simply how well-written the script was, as a combination of the tale and the telling.
Based on that, I found Ordinary People really moving. Reading Airplane!was fun, and it is interesting to remember that someone actually has to go through and imagine all of those gags happening, and write them out, just like you would with serious action. I loved the Mystery Men movie, but I didn't love the draft I read; the character and plot changes that they made were good ones, and a lot of that was giving it more heart.
The best one was a movie I had never even heard of: Call Northside 777. It came up as the script of the day on one site, but only part 1.
I thought that was odd - it didn't seem to be an unusually long movie - but it was like that on both sites, so probably a result of how it got scanned in. Kind of curious, I started reading, and found this title card for when the opening credits fade:
"The events and characters depicted in this photoplay are not fictional, and any similarity with actual persons, either living or dead, is intentional."
That was a little different. Looking it up, I saw that it was based on a real case, with real people in jail for a murder they did not commit. The title refers to an ad placed by the mother of one of the convicted men, who has been working continually and adding to a fund to offer a reward for information on the murder. A newspaper editor sees the ad, sends a reporter after it, and that's how the film starts.
In the movie itself you do see the son released, but the other man is still in jail. That made the ending a little melodramatic:
NARRATOR'S VOICE"But Tomek Zaleska is still in prison. As recently as March 15, 1947, his application for pardon was denied. Yet, he was convicted in the same trial, and on the same testimony which sent Frank Wiecek to prison. Is he guilty? Or should he, like Frank Wiecek, be adjudged innocent? Only he knows - he and perhaps, WANDA SKUTNIK!"
This movie was made not just to be entertaining, but to get him released. That happened in 1950, after being convicted in December 1932.
The case was interesting because of that, and also because of how relevant it still is. You still have suspects in Chicago being taken to multiple locations without documentation. Many aspects of the criminal justice system are similar, though I think the single eyewitness might be easier to refute today.
In addition, it was a great read for little touches that felt real. As they describe the reporter being called to his editor, I felt the reality of the newspaper offices - that this was written by someone familiar with that setting, and fond of it. I felt it more there than with All the President's Men.
It's also worth noting that I saw early that the reporter was played by Jimmy Stewart, and I could then hear everything in his voice. That enriched it, but it was already a really good script.
The draft I read was by Jay Dratler, and he appears to have worked more in television after this. I haven't seen a lot of his work, but I would try it, based on this alone. I'd read more of his work for sure.
And there probably will be more occasional screen reading going forward. One daily is onerous, but it was a good correction for having gone a long time without reading any.

Reading screenplays - the lows

My screenplay reading got off to kind of a bad start. Reading Dear White People was good, and something I'd been meaning to do anyway, but then the next two made it really difficult.
The second was Interstellar. Again, I know that what I read was not necessarily what made it on the screen. For one thing, Murphy was a boy in the script, but the credits show Jessica Chastain and Ellen Burstyn among her portrayers, so I'm just going to assume they changed that. Maybe they also changed how boring it was.
It just felt like it went on forever. I know there were long time periods involved, but they were supposed to be moving fast enough that it wouldn't have felt that long, right? Like my new name for the movie is Interminable.
It felt like it should have been interesting, with science and new life forms and modes of travel, but the most amazing thing to me was that I had no desire to see how the concepts were executed. About two weeks later I read Logan's Run, and the way they described things I wanted to see that. I actually looked up some video clips before I finished reading it.
That's another interesting point, because I thought part of my problem with Interstellarwas how it was not new and innovative. Of course the guy who has been preparing for the mission all along is the one who freaks out and messes up, and not the last minute addition. Of course the woman initially appears all tough and competent, but she does need to get rescued and she does inevitably fall for him. How could it be any other way? But by that same token, I'm not sure that the characters in Logan's Run really broke the mold either.
I may someday see Interstellar just to see if they did get something more interesting out of it. A lot of people liked the movie. I can't rule out that it became something better after reading the screenplay for The Muppets. It was horrible.
I shouldn't have been completely surprised. I read an interview with Jason Segel where he said that the initial draft was too negative, and they were told that the Muppets don't tear each other down like that. Still, I had no idea how horrible it could be.
Miss Piggy got a bunch of fat jokes, and a stupid bunch of jokes about hating green while she was mad at Kermit. The Muppets compete with each other. They blame each other. They separated because they were all mad at Kermit for seemingly declaring himself the best Muppet, but really it was a misunderstanding due to his tiny bladder, leading to a short burst of pee gags. There is a tedious running joke with people addressing Walter as a washcloth or a badger. If you don't think it sounds horrible, I guess I'm not doing it justice, because it stinks.
Here's the thing. It still became a good movie. I think Muppet's Most Wanted is better, but The Muppets is pretty good, and you wouldn't know it could be from reading that first draft.
And it's really not all that surprising. People working in film today have a strong tendency toward bathroom humor and put-down humor, so that is not a surprising result. However, they didn't have to bring in other writers either. The names on the draft, Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, are the same names on the film credits. They were capable of doing better with some guidance. I think there are some lessons there.
So those were the two worst reading experiences, and I got them out of the way early. Otherwise they were mostly pleasant but with two exceptions.
I hated Goodfellas. It wasn't the writing; just too many loathsome characters that I could not stand. I don't really like gangster movies in general for that very reason.
I was very excited to see a screenplay for Big Trouble in Little China 2. I knew I had to read it. I was wrong.
Now, the movie was never made, and probably when they saw how little there was that they could do without getting the main characters back (the only common character is Egg Shen), there probably were no rewrites and smoothing out. I am sure that they would have been able to go back and fix the poorly written characters, the stilted dialogue, and the uneven flow of action.
There still would have been no point.

A month of reading screenplays

I finished reading the 31st screenplay Friday.
When I first wrote about this, the parameters weren't clear:
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/04/next-phase-of-screenwriting.html
It soon became obvious that trying to read multiple screenplays in a day would be impossible. There are ways in which it would seem like ready screenplay pages would go faster than book pages, but they don't go fast. (And one felt like it was taking way longer than it should have.)
I basically kept up the pace of one a day, except for the 29th of April, when I had to finish a library book before it was due. I need to sleep sometimes.
I mainly went back and forth between two sites: http://www.simplyscripts.com/movie.htmland http://www.dailyscript.com/. I liked that the Daily Script site would highlight a different script each day, and I would often let that guide my reading choice. When that didn't work, navigation the Simply Scripts site was easier.
I started getting pickier toward the end, because I decided I wanted to read at least two from each decade. Even for the 1920s, which I was worried about, there were a few options.
There were interesting moments. One night I was looking for something shorter, and I found City Lights, with 30 pages. I was worried that was cheating, but the movie itself runs for 87 minutes, which is feature length. Generally you expect one script page to equal one minute of screen time. That made me curious about silent movies, so I read the screenplay for The Artist the next day. That was only 43 pages for 100 minutes.
That was a good lesson. The rule usually works for action scenes too, but perhaps when you have almost nothing but action you take less pains to describe it. Also, there was a scene it helped clarify.
In one of the films within the film, Tears of Love, as George is sinking into the quicksand he calls out "Norma, I never loved you." It seemed cruel, though perhaps reflective of where the artist's life was heading. The script noted that he was obviously saying this to make letting go easier for her. That also fits with different things in the wider plot, but it was not obvious. We didn't get that at all.
The other thing about that scene was that the script also said that death was clearly imminent for Norma, as natives were watching George sink, and likely to attack. That was changed. I suspect having the natives there took too much focus off George, and the way the natives were depicted, while in keeping with what a movie of that time would have showed was not great. Also, if she is about to die, she doesn't so much need help in letting you go as encouragement in surviving the next few minutes. Regardless, that leads to the next point: movies change.
I have not seen the majority of these films, but even with some that I hadn't seen I knew they had changed things. Famous scenes, that you saw in clips and trailers, read differently. The scene in Goodfellas where Joe Pesci asks if he's a clown - well, I think the scene was in the script, but that wording wasn't. That's because it came from a real-life experience of Pesci, but it wasn't put in the script because Scorsese wanted the others to be surprised.
In Empire of the Sun a scene that involved both Basie and Doctor Rawlins with Jim did not have Basie in the clip I saw. Based on everything else, that made more sense. You edit and re-write scripts, but sometimes you don't know until you are shooting, or even until you are editing later, what really works best.
It was a good learning experience overall. I will write more about some of them, but first, a list of what I read, in order. The year is sometimes the year for that draft of the script, but sometimes the year the movie came out.
Dear White People, by Justin Simien, 2014Interstellar, by Johnathan Nolan, 2014The Muppets, by Jason Segal and Nicholas Stoller, 2011 (seen it)High Noon, by Carl Foreman, 1952Airplane!, by Jim Abrahmas, Jerry Zucker, and David Zucker, 1980 (seen it)A Christmas Story, by Jean Shepher, Bob Clar, and Leigh Brown, 1983City Lights, by Charlie Chaplin, 1931The Artist, by Michael Hazanavicius, 2011 (seen it)Office Space, by Mike Judge, 1999 (seen it)Breakfast at Tiffany's, by George Axelrod, 1961The Year of Living Dangerously, by David Williamson, 1982Mystery Men, by Neil Cuthbert, 1999 (seen it)Antz, by Todd Alcott, Chris Weitz, and Paul Weitz, 1998The Big Lebowski, by Ethan & Joel Coen, 1998Goodfellas, by Nicholas Pileggi and Martin Scorsese, 1990Logan's Run, by Devid Zelag Goodman, 1976Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, by Sidney Buchman, 1939Moonstruck, by John Patrick Shanley, 1987 (seen it)The 40-Year Old Virgin, by Judd Apatow & Steve Carrell, 200510000 BC, by Roland Emmerich, Harold Kloser, Matthew Sand, John Orloff, and Robert Rodat, 2008Empire of the Sun, by Tom Stoppard, 1987The Maltese Falcon, by John Huston*, 1941The Jazz Singer, by Alfred A Cohn, 1927Call Northside 777, by Jay Dratler, 1948Big Trouble In Little China II, by Charles Proser, 1995Ordinary People, by Alvin Sargent, 1980The Lion In Winter, by James Goldman, 1968Singin' In The Rain, by Adolph Green and Betty Comden, 1952 (seen it)London After Midnight, by Todd Browning, 1927All The President's Men, by William Goldman, 1975Eight Legged Freaks, by Jesse Alexander & Ellory Elkaye, 2000

Band Review: The Millenium

The Millenium are a pop band from Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Although the single "n" in the name has been driving me crazy, I have enjoyed listening to the band. Their songs are full of heartfelt emotion, augmented by singer Matt Hassenmueller's higher pitch. He is joined by Kyle Culver on guitar; Kyle Featherstone on guitar, piano, and vocals; and Sean Koran on bass.
The band adds nice symphonic touches as appropriate, not just with synthesizer, but even by adding orchestra musicians to a recording session that is available both through their Bandcamp as Pine Hollow Sessions, but can also be watched as a video on Youtube. It all works together to lend a sense of openness, both in accessibility to fans and emotional vulnerability.
A good example of the musical detail is "No Knocks Tonight", especially listening to the intro, but "Ghost Town" has probably been my favorite track, and the video for it really works, so that may be the best starting point. It is also worth checking out their cover of Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open The Door"
The Millenium currently show a fairly heavy playing schedule for the last week of May, covering multiple states. That could be a coincidence, but it looks like they are hardworking as well.
This band should be one to watch.
http://themillenium.net/
https://www.facebook.com/themilleniumWI
https://soundcloud.com/themilleniumwi
https://www.youtube.com/user/TheMilleniumWI
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/its-so-much-friendlier-two/id828582248
https://twitter.com/TheMilleniumWI

Band Review: Are You Alice

Are You Alice is a metalcore band from Windsor, Ontario.
I did not come to them through my usual mode of one of them following me on Twitter. Instead, a band that had followed me, Buried By Tomorrow, had broken up by the time of the review. I commenter on the review said that Are You Alice was one of the member's new projects. I am not sure that is true, because the names don't seem to match, but I have been listening to them anyway.
I preferred Buried By Tomorrow because I felt like there was more variety in the music. Are You Alice is very much growl shouting followed by more growl shouting. They do it fairly well, with a skilled and aggressive guitar accompaniment, but I find it less emotionally evocative.
I did appreciate them including the lyrics on the Bandcamp page, because while I would think that there is no way of deciphering the growls, when you are looking at the lyrics the individual words can be heard quite clearly. The lyrics are meaningful, but focus more on personal angst than the political outrage that I associate with this tempo.
If you like metalcore you will probably like Are You Alice, and you will be pleased to know that they are spending some time in the studio.
https://www.facebook.com/areyoualiceband?_rdr
http://areyoualice.bandcamp.com/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3i9uV2ZHw3H0guURch_VFQ/feed
https://twitter.com/AYA_Band_

The Adjacent Grimm

Reminiscing about these shows and when I started watching them, it reminded me that I had been hoping to write some sample episodes and apply as a writer.
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/05/why-i-wanted-to-like-alcatraz.html
The problem was that I was more interested in writing for "Grimm" than any other show, and the strongest ideas I had were for Grimm episodes. That makes total sense, but wasn't practical. The prevailing wisdom is that you need to send scripts for other shows.
In the end it didn't matter. When that was going on I was in the middle of the comic book, which kept me busy through October, when I started writing Family Blood(the screenplay, not the book).
That's been okay. I'm still more interested in writing movies than series, and I feel good about publishing the books. I really hadn't seen that happening three years ago. However, I have been thinking about creativity a lot lately, and there is something kind of interesting about the episodes I had in mind.
One was going to be centered around something that looked like a vampire attack. The initial suspicion would fall upon a bat-like Wesen, but it would really be a lamprey. For the other idea, there would be a Grimm who wasn't aware of his background so thought he was seeing demons and attacking them. Nick would come to the aid of one very meek Wesen who was terrified of him, but then by the end of the episode the victim would tell Nick he was a good man, and it would be a moment.
Shortly after I thought of that, we got a bat-like Wesen, the Murciélago. Halfway into the next season, the lamprey-like Lebensauger appeared. No one got exsanguinated that time, because Ryan was not comfortable with his abilities, but that happened later, toward the end of season 3. At that time, we were getting to know Trubel, a new Grimm who had not been raised with any information about her heritage, and yes, it had led to some institutionalization and crime.
Also, Nick has helped plenty of crime victims who have been freaked out by him by now.
This is in no way to suggest copying was going on. I never wrote anything on those episodes - I only thought of them. It's like when I was in high school I had this idea of dinosaurs being loose in the modern world, because some unhatched eggs were revived. Then, when Crichton's method was DNA in the blood of mosquitoes trapped in amber, that seemed so brilliant - way better than my idea. And maybe the point is just to get the dinosaurs there, but that idea was electrifying. (And the movie was pretty exciting.)
In addition to remembering that, I am able to see it in a different light after reading Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You, which led me to Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovationby Steven Johnson.
What they have talked about was "the adjacent possible". There is the field of existing knowledge, and then all around that is next steps - things that we have enough information to figure out, but haven't figured out yet. One metaphor that was used is that for every door you open, there are more doors beyond that.
Those books were focusing more on inventions and technology, but stories work like that too. Once you have Wesen as a thing, then you can look at all of the different types of animals out there and imagine new ones. Once you have Grimms you can have different levels of adjustment to it.
The Murciélago story had a lot of heart in it. I like what they did with it. Having one Grimm go nuts and be hauled away to an insane asylum can be one story, but it can be a better story to have a protégée for Nick, plus then there's someone to keep Josh alive. Some plot twists eliminate some possibilities, but they keep opening up more.
That's just been something that's been fun to remember. Every now and then someone will say that there are really only three stories, or seven, or thirty-six. Even if you agree that's true on one level, that doesn't begin to describe the rich variety that can entail.
Creativity is a beautiful thing.

Still watching Grimm

Seeing the trailer burn was painful, but one thing that occurred to me is maybe that could be a sign that they are going to break away from escalating the aforementioned Wesen weirdness.
Honestly, the trailer wasn't much of a secret anymore anyway, but the new location, implied to be more remote, seems less realistic with everyone traveling back and forth between the trailer, spice shop, and precinct. Bringing the remnants from the trailer to the spice shop is a consolidating move and should prove practical. The flashbacks for Nick, Hank, Monroe, and Wu were a nice touch.
That's what keeps bringing me back: they have a good set of people there, as actors and as characters. There are also interesting things happening with them.
Wu coming in to the secret (and embracing it so heartily) has been great. The aftereffects of Renard's shooting are frightening. Adalind interacting with the rest of the cast has gone better than I would have expected. I did not like her rape of Nick, but it looks like the fact that everyone feels guilty for their part in Diana's kidnapping seems to be helping.
(What they all seem to be missing is that while the kidnapping itself did hurt her, the real problems came from letting Adalind think that the royal family had Diana, leaving her desperate to please them. But I digress.)
It's also pretty brilliant that Juliette is a hexenbiest.
That plot is starting to drag a little now. I suspect they need to wait on certain things to bring her into her next phase, but there probably could have been a smoother transition between "I want my life back" and "I don't want to change".
Regardless, this can be a really good thing. Juliette has defended herself successfully a few times now. Nick has worried about her safety, and his responsibility to protect her - hey, she can take care of herself now.
It's unfortunate that no one is listening to her about that now, but of course the reason for that is her personality keeps getting worse. That does not feel quite true to the character. I mean, I wouldn't expect an easy adjustment, but she could have been struggling, trying to adjust, and then learning that Adalind is pregnant with Nick's baby could have sent her on a bender easily enough anyway.
I mean, we don't know that hexenbiests have to have horrible personalities. Elizabeth and Henrietta seem fairly pleasant. They're a little arrogant, perhaps, but maybe they just seem that way because they know more and are more powerful than everyone else in the room.  
So yes, I still have reservations about the writing, but there are interesting ideas, and with characters I care about, and I'm not ready to give them up yet.
Shooting on this season has wrapped, so then who knows how next season will go?
I've cared for the show enough that I can give it some time.

Grimm, Season 4

I still watch "Grimm". I still care about what happens with it. I am finding it more frustrating this season. I'm going to go over the frustrations first.
I can relate this back to 2011, actually. Back when I was picking up the three new shows that I am still watching, I was also letting go of another show that I had watched for a long time:
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/05/requiem-for-svu.html
At the time "Law & Order: SVU" was driving me crazy. The desire to amp up everything led to an over-reliance on gimmicks, and suddenly everyone had become worse cops, which was not only annoying but struck me as disrespectful to both the cast and real-life police.
Now, there are plenty of reasons to have issues with respecting the real-life police, but we have been accustomed to think of Nick, Hank, and Wu as good. They are good at what they do - skilled and competent - and good in that they want to do the right thing and care about those around them.
That is why it is disturbing to see them breaking into a house without a warrant in episode 17, Hibernaculum. At that point they haven't located the taxicab yet, which would establish that the suspect is there. A common last name and the presence of other cars makes them think they have the right place, but it seems kind of iffy for probably cause. They then disturb the other hibernators, do not explain why they are there, and this unprofessional contact nearly gets everyone killed. For all we know, if they had explained that they were pursuing a murderer, the others might have turned the suspect over. Then, after letting the suspect freeze to death, which they had to have known would happen, they decide to leave the car, and the broken window, and the dead body, because it would all be too hard to explain. That's showing them as callous and incompetent, and they haven't been that before.
That was just one episode, but there have been a few where they had to irreparably alter or kill the newly-introduced Wesen because its traits were such that there was some risk or issue that could not be resolved in any other way. In the case of the arsonist, they did not know it would kill him, and preventing him from combusting was necessary. That episode alone could have been an interesting diversion, but then the widow shoots the high voltage Wesen, and it wasn't really necessary at that time, and they brush it off. And they "kill" the female half of the Hermaphrodite Wesen, and they give lip service to the moral question, but it is only lip service. I guess it was nice that they asked the frog girl for permission and warned her it could be bad.
I'm sure that is being at least partially driven by the desire to create ever newer and stranger storylines, but the stories don't need to be strange as much as they need to be good.
One thing I have noticed this season is that they are doing more effects with night lighting, getting things to look cool. It does look good, but if it's not combined with substance it's hollow. The first time they did it, I was wowed, but it has already lost its appeal, especially because it now acts as an omen that they have gone shallow.
There was another thing that bothered me. It could be minor, but it will depend on what they do with it.
Wu still being fairly newly initiated, he asked Captain Renard what percentage of crimes in Portland were Wesen-related, and the captain replied "All of them."
One thing we have really been brought to see is how normal Wesen can be. Yes, some are criminals, but lots aren't. So is the captain now saying that only Wesen are criminals? That's surely not right. The other likely meaning could be that Portland is unusually full of Wesen, with very few non-Wesen. That is possible, but it seems likely that more people would know about it if that were the case.
So I'm still watching, but there are some hindrances on my enjoyment, and based on the message boards, it's not just me. I'll write about the things that keep me watching tomorrow.

Band Review: Shout London

Shout London is the work of Tyler Whiting, an alternative-pop-rock singer from Orlando, Florida. He identifies as appealing to fans of Mayday Parade and All Time Low.
That's not unreasonable, but he reminds me more of Boys Like Girls, with a bit more of a pop sound with Southern proximity. It is a youthful sound, and perhaps that is why, despite the energy, there was a lightness to it. The music did not stick with me.
Given that Whiting is the only regular member, using a backing band for performances, it is surprising how much of a band feel there is, with a full sound, and echoes that imply collaboration and cooperation.
Music can currently be heard and shared via the Warped Tour Battle of the Bands: http://warped.battleofthebands.com/u/ShoutLondon
http://shoutlondonmusic.com/
https://www.facebook.com/shoutlondonmusic
https://www.youtube.com/user/shoutlondonmusic/featured
https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/shout-london/id632120649
https://twitter.com/ShoutLondonBand