What I Watched

• Adaptation. (4 stars): I’d watched this a number of years ago and totally didn’t get it. At all. I was urged by a friend (Writer-Nurse-Student-Comedienne-Extraordinaire, Joselyn) to give it another shot. I did. And I loved it this time. Maybe it’s the whole, now I’m an aspiring artist bit, but I thought it was hilarious and sweet and par-for-the-course-Kaufman-style-crazy.
• Easy Virtue (5 stars): Seeing this on the big screen instead of a dinky computer monitor has caused me to up my star assessment. I adore this movie. It’s sort of Meet the Parents meets Farce of BBC Films. Everything about it is gorgeous (the cinematography, the scenery, the sets, the music, the actors and actresses), except the characters’ psyches, which makes them entirely interesting. It’s a dark, dry comedy with some dramatic twists along the way, but it’s packaged a charming and wacky box that you leave feeling energized rather than moody. Or at least I did. Anyway, point is, this is one worth putting a little extra effort into seeing. Besides, a trip out to your local indie/arthouse theatre is good for the soul.
• The Proposal (3½ stars): This romcom is pretty standard, but still enjoyable. It serves up a lot of typical clichés, but it also adds a little biting wit you don’t often see in these sorts of typical fare. Honestly, without the casting of Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock, I think this film would have had a hard time ekeing out that extra ½ star. But, as it is, the two leads’ chemistry makes the film work much better than it would have otherwise.

What I’m Writing

My sister and I started a children’s book class last week, which was pretty interesting. I’ve got an old idea I actually wrote in the 4th grade that I was planning on using as my workshop piece. But then my Sister the Artiste was having trouble coming up with a narrative. She knew the sorts of images she was interested in doing, so I started thinking along those lines and managed to come up with an idea for a story. I wrote it out the next day, and she liked it. So I guess we’re going with that now.

In a way, children’s books and screenwriting (and graphic novels/comics, I’d imagine) are sort of like distant cousins. Both deal with using words to evoke images that eventually manifest either on screen or on the page of a book. Both require attention to pacing, to the rhythm of language in regards to a scene. I may post some images here once we have them and if my Sister the Artiste gives permission, of course.

Beyond that, I’m working on a dark comedy script called ‘TIL DEATH PARTS US while still trying to work out the story for the doppelgänger script. I had a potential breakthrough of sorts on that one during my morning drive today. Hopefully my subconscious will continue working on it while I’m focused on TDPU. It’s much easier when the muses do the work for me.

That’s all for now, folks. Have a lovely week!