Ok, So Because of one of our flat mates hiring out The watchmen, We have decided, as a house, that we have a three strike system now in place. (We all work part time at the baseball; so all our lives have a basebally flavour to it at the moment).
Who ever rents a movie is under pressure from the rest of us that it could be a strike. There’s beer involved. And dignity.
So, first up to the plate, quietly confident, is little ol’ imagink. Confident, that is, until she gets to the video store, and gets quietly panicked. They have to be relatively new releases, see, you can’t just pull out an old favourite that you know will be a home run. And there is not much to pick from! And, the flat mates are drinking, so that ads some kind of extra genre picking pressure, and then I went into thinking about what kind of people my audience were, and went way to far.
So I just grabbed the first one that caught my eye. One Week, Starring and executive produced by Joshua Jackson. And written and directed by Michael McGowen.
I’m always partial to auteur films, it’s a Canadian film through and through, and chronicles the motorcycle journey of one man (Jackson) across Canada from Toronto to Vancouver Island. We are all non-natives, all hoping to do a similar trip one of these days, so I thought it would be fitting. I wasn’t worried about my choice. Much.
But, yay, imagink hit a home run. Course I did.
This movie is simply wonderful. Go. See. it. It ‘s one of those movies that makes you think about your life, because you end up feeling so much for the characters and their lives. It’s a film that makes you remember why you love movies. It inspires you. It’s inspired one flat mate to plan a bicycle trip across Uruguay. If that doesn’t say anything…
The acting is superb, Joshua Jackson excels in this role, with one facial flicker, he can make you cry… or laugh.
The directing is solid and the writing simply beautiful. I really want to see more of Michael McGowen, and the Canadian landscape serves as an outstanding backdrop to this man’s important story.
In amongst all this raving though, remember Ali, the housemate who likes Mariah Carey? She didn’t like the movie, her two reasons being that nothing happened and the girlfriend was too ugly for Joshua Jackson. So, perhaps this movie is not for everyone.
But I say, give it a try.
I’m not a huge comic book movie fan to begin with, but the other evening I was excited about watching… the Watchman (directed by Jack Snyder). I had heard a lot of hype about this movie, and friends I trusted with taste had come back raving about it. And It’s everywhere. I had expectations of a gritty intellectual comic book movie. I was verrrily, verrily disapointed.
So I had never heard of the comic book, which isn’t a great start but really shouldn’t have impaired my movie experience. It did, but not in the way you would think. The moviemakers obviously were aware of the popularity, or lack of, in mainstream culture and filled most of the plot with elaborate back-stories for each character. Ok, but these back story’s were increasingly boring and made you dislike every character - except perhaps the ink stained mask of Rorschach- more and more.
This left the movie feeling weak, with no focus on story or plot until about an hour and a half into it.
It was at this point that one of the main characters- Dr Manhattan, who can see into the future, says to his ex girlfriend- “Do you want me to save you the trouble and tell you what happens? All four of us watching the movie yelped, “yes!” at the same time.
This is not a good thing.
But we sat through to the end. It got slightly better, with the plot rounding out somewhat, and a definite conclusion.
But in the end, I was left with this;
Rorschach standing up for his beliefs was the one enjoyable point in the movie in my opinion. That, and the soundtrack.
The soundtrack is amazing in the kind of way where it is a group of brilliant songs that for the most part shouldn’t be on a soundtrack for this movie. It’s not well done. The photography and set design on the other hand is very very well done. The movie looks fantastic.
The characters are all unlikable, even aesthetically. Is Dan supposed to be batman? If not why is he dressed like batman? Why is there awkward soft-core porn in the middle of it? Was there supposed to be an underlying 9/11 reference right at the end? Why? Why did is this movie so goddamn popular?!
My flat mate is intent on re-watching it, sure that we’ve missed something, the whole point of the movie perhaps. I don’t know if I can actually do it… Should I??
So, wanna work in the movies? Why not? Most glamorous industry in the world right? Right? Ummm.. kinda, I guess.
So the movies, is one of ‘those’ industries. One of those ones where it’s all about who you know, and even then, it’s a work your way up from the bottom kind of thing.
It can be completely frustrating and it can kill the ambition right out of you. Which is, I guess, perhaps a good thing as it is also a very small industry, even in the biggest film hubs in the world.
If you’re at the bottom, you’re a P.A. Production Assistant. Even the title sounds kind of glamorous doesn’t it? You’re assisting in the production. Almost gives one the impression that without you, the whole production wouldn’t work. Not really so…
As a P.A., you pick up rubbish. You stop people, regular joe’s, from crossing the road into a shot. You press a button so that a red light comes on over the studio doors. And you do this, repeatedly, for fourteen to sixteen hours a day.
If you do this for a while, maybe 6 months, and you do this well (don’t ask me how you it is possible to stuff it up, but, I guess some people are more enthusiastic than others) then you may work your way up to Van driver. You drive a van with equipment in it.
And so it goes, all the way up to the ultimate, Assistant Director. This is the top of the line, and you’ve still got ‘assistant ‘ in your title. This, by all means, is a great job, if you like the production side of Film & TV. There is not much creativity involved here, from what I’ve seen.
But there are perks of course, even as a lowly P.A. Great food, (free food), all day, every day. You get to see and perhaps even mingle with (but not closely mind) the stars and the high ups and, all in all, it looks great on your resume. And, it’s fun, sometimes.
Depending on why exactly you want to be in the movie business; creatively, the best way that I can see to succeed is to either be a Diablo Cody, and go from stripper to award winning scriptwriter in one go, a Kevin smith, and make your own brilliant award winning movie, or be an electrician. Sparky’s have it made on film sets.
Good luck to any dreamers out there. May you be the next Kevin Smith. Or wait… you can be Diablo Cody, I’ll be Kevin smith….
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