Via the Smart Bitches, here is a music video of “It’s Raining Men” using scenes from… well, you figure it out. I actually had to turn it off because I was giggling too hard and Darin was wondering WTF was going on.
Via the always-excellent Cunning Realist, The Bicycle Threat.
The NYPD: always going after the bad guys. Feeling safer, New York?
The same NYPD that wants to call any grouping of bicycles a “parade” that needs a permit. Assholes.
DARIN
(via IRC to Maciej)
We just saw 300.
MACIEJ
(via IRC)
That movie reminded me a lot of work.
DARIN
(via IRC)
Hopefully not the shell-of-shields scene.
Darin repeats Maciej's comment to Diane.
DIANE
Wow. I'm going to have to stop by your
office a LOT more.
MACIEJ
(via IRC)
Tell her it's not so much six-packs as
it is pony kegs.
300 is ostensibly the story of when the 300 Spartans stood against approximately 1 billion Persians and almost had them at a stalemate. has a lot of half-naked actors with amazingly great bodies who run around with swords hacking one another to bits. In addition, there’s also some amazing photography that had me wondering, How exactly did they film that? (Even given that a lot of the movie is blue screen and not especially high-tech special effects, I was left wondering that a lot. The director of photography and the production designer should be getting a lot of work off this flick.)
Also: half-naked men with great bodies. (Oh. Did I mention that already?) Gerard Butler has two personal trainers in the credits. I figured it worked like this: Personal trainer #1 works Butler over, and then when he’s done, Personal trainer #2 shows up and works Butler into the ground.
It’s not as horribly, untenably violent as I was expecting, probably because it retains its comic-booky feel and the violence doesn’t feel wrenching the way it would in a more realistic movie. If you’re planning on seeing it, you should definitely see it on the big screen.
ETA: How tough were the Spartans? They had smallpox shots. (One naked guy kept getting closeups on his arm and I kept thinking, Did no editor see that and say, Hey, we need an airbrush here stat?)
I’ve been taking the Playwriting course at Foothill College. It’s a great class — if you’re in the area and have the slightest interest in playwriting, I highly suggest taking it. There are some damned talented people in that class; plus, you get actors reading your words, which is the best way possible to learn how to write plays.
At least, I’m hoping it is. Because at the moment, I’m almost completely baffled.
Early in the quarter I turned in a 10 page scene that I had thought wasn’t great, but it was okay. Until it was acted out, and I realized it was a)talky, b)annoying, c)boring. I am not harshing on myself — it was bad. And I’d had no idea of how bad until the actors read my words. I was so scarred from this experience I didn’t hand anything in until a couple of weeks later, and I got a much better reaction, with laughs and good feedback. I figured I should develop this scene a little bit. But while I was working on that, I brought in a scene I’d been working on and was at a loss for what to do with. It was almost straight political polemic, with characters basically stating their cases. While reading it over, I thought I knew what the problems were and maybe a few ways of correcting them, but I didn’t have time to scrap it and start over or even massage what I already had: I wanted to bring something in that night and at least get a reading of how bad it was.
Bad? It was hilarious.
In a good way.
The teacher said I can’t give props to the actors, because they can only work with what’s on the page in front of them, so clearly I had created whatever was there. But the scene played out not only funnier than I had imagined but funnier that I could have imagined. I had thought it was, I dunno, New Soviet Realism or something and instead it’s…well, not.
So here’s my problem: when I write fiction, I usually have a pretty good internal judge of whether it works or not, whether it’s well-written or not. (Whether it’s any good or not I’m still working on.) But I can tell whether a scene is funny, whether it’s doing its job.
With playwriting, I am at a complete loss. I have no idea how what I’ve written is going to translate to the stage. You’d think I would, given that whole Masters degree in Screenwriting thing and all, but in the past few weeks I’ve seen more of my stuff acted out than I did in 2 years at USC, and no, that’s not a compliment to USC.
I’m hoping I’m going to tackle this learning curve in a hurry. Because I feel completely upended when I go to class with a scene in hand.
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