End of line...

Spoiling the shit out TRON so if you haven’t seen it stop now.

The movie starts with the Disney Castle all lit up in the TRON style which is awesome. It sets the bar high right off the bat then bangs it’s head on it.

The visuals in this movie are awesome. The action sequences are pretty cool. The light cycles and planes are beyond awesome.

Daft Punk score. I will definitely own this.

My Issues:

There are shades of Star War slash Jedi stuff that kind of make me wince. Some of the costumes and weapons are too similar.

This story feels like fragments of several story lines developed over the production of the movie and they mashed them all together.

Somehow, for some reason, Flynn’s son is brought into the “Grid”. We find out CLU is the one that brought him in and that is it. That story never plays out. Presumably CLU does this to draw Flynn out but that only happens because the son chooses to go out and the father has to follow. Reactive, not proactive.

Quorra is some special, self manifested program. That whole story line was great and I thought the movie was headed in the right direction finally. No. With flashbacks and boring expositional dialogue they puke out the story of that whole mess and that’s it.

CLU creates this massive army and we never see it in action.

There are hints of some insurgency that never gets explored.

WTF was up with ZUES channeling some combination of the Jack Nicholson’s Joker and Jim Carrey’s The Riddler. What the what?

The TRON story line pisses me off the most. The build it up only to let it fizzle at the bottom of the ocean. So frustrating. The movie is called TRON damn it. You can’t even resolve that story line of the namesake? Weak.

This movie is not about video games as it should have been.

The hero brings his physical skills into the Grid instead of learning new skills and using them. This was supposed to be about a geek manifesting greatness. Some spoiled rich kid is not my Hero.

What security guard would walks out on a crane? Come on. So disappointed.

That is all.

-Jim

How to train your Dragon and in the mean time write a kick ass movie...

I'm from the Snyder-Ackerman school. Blake Snyder taught me how to break down a story and Hal Ackerman taught me the process of building a story.

Walking out of the movie theatre this weekend after seeing the excellent "How to Train Your Dragon" I was ticking off beat points, recalling the inciting incident and identifying the universal device. It was awesome. Makes me think I am finally learning something.

Off the top of my head;

**** Minor, vaguely referenced Spoilers ****

The opening image and the final image were complete opposites.
Fun and games were funny, scary and action packed.
All is lost was heart breaking.
A and B stories intersected perfectly at the beginning of Act 3.
They actually stormed the castle.
The universal device was spaced evenly and called back at the end.

**** Done ****

Most people think their rebellious artistic side are selling out by following a template to write their stories. Well who fucking cares? If you can keep a theatre full of six year olds rivited to the screen so much so that my son wouldn't take his eyes off the screen to lean over and tell me he wanted this movie on DVD... 10 minutes before it ends, you're doing it right.

Go see "How to Train Your Dragon". Good stuff.

Oh, and fuck 3D, it's just fine on normal mode.


-Jim

Here I go again on my own...

Time for a monthly update I suppose…

Struggling to finish my first script. I have several stories queued up to write. I need to get this one out of the way. Doing a good job of writing two hours Saturday mornings at Starbucks. I need to make sure I get a few pages done each day of the week now.

Conversations with my son…

He is reading Dr. Suess’s ABC book. I tell him that the pictures show him what words he is reading so use them. He sounds the next word out; C… a… m… e… l… He struggles a bit. I ask him what the picture is… “It’s a Llama Dad.”

As I am leaving for work one morning.. ‘Dad, don’t forget your iPot”. “Ssshh buddy not so loud”.

Movies...

"Drag Me to Hell" was awesome. I expected it to be another silly movie about weddings and marriage staring that flaming wench Katherine Heigl but I was pleasantly surprised!

“Up” was great. Saw it in Digital 3D. Blew me away. Son loved it. He wanted it on DVD before we got to the car.

That is all.

-Jim

If at first you don't succeed whine and cry until Dad's ears bleed...

You ever see those commercials on TV where the Dad is teaching his son or daughter how to ride a bike. It’s all smiles right. The Dad runs behind the kids bike and lets go. The kid sails gloriously down the sidewalk, the tall flag attached to the seat waving triumphantly in the air as the kid wobbles his way to bike riding glory…

Well that is total horse shit.

Saturday my wife and I taught my son how to ride his bike. It was nothing but crying, yelling, and cussing… on both sides.

He wanted to quit, ride his scooter, play on the playground, clean his room, do the dishes, wash the car, finish his homework… pretty much anything other than get back on the bike and try again.

But we held strong, refusing to let him quit. And after one of the most miserable hours in our families history… he was up and riding his bike around the park. And I am proud of my little buddy.

Of course we didn’t bring a camera…

Pulled off a double feature this weekend. Angels and Demons Saturday and Star Trek on Sunday night.

A&D was ok. Still think Tom is out of his wheel house on this character. Another scavenger hunt with an foreign hottie-with-a-naughty-body in tow. It was entertaining. The best part was all the shots of the Large Hadron Collider. Worst part was the disorienting shots of the Large Hadron Collider and when the camera spins really fast around character for a reaction shot. C+.

Star Trek was pretty good. I think we are going to see a few more flicks with this crew. Lots of laugh, decent action, good actors. I didn’t get the chills when I first saw the enterprise like I did with the first Star Trek movie. But this is a new crew in an [SPOILER REMOVED – GO SEE THE MOVIE] so I am excited to see where it goes. Who knew Uhura was that fricken hot in her younger days… damn. B.

Writing is moving along. I bought a motivational book at the recommendation of some good friends of mine. The Success Principles. With my daily schedule so tight most of the time writing falls to second or third on the list of shit I do at night. Need to work on moving it up to first.

Pitched a new idea to some friends this weekend. It’s a sci-fi action adventure with a dash of Independence Day mixed in with some Explorers that starts with a very obscure phenomenon that has been occurring throughout history that scientists have not nailed down yet that I attribute to a theory that’s way out there. Fun stuff. More later.

That is all.

-Jim