First off I need to apologize for the tardiness of this entry.  I was infected with the swine pandemic and was unable to do anything but utter “Bbbbraaaiiinsssss…” feebly from my bed.  Now I’m up and about again, so here we go.

One of the first things to do when making your movie is figure out who your main character is going to be.  Now, you may pick your plot first and then figure what kind of protagonist you want or you may pick your characters and write about what they do – it all depends on your style of writing.  In either case, understanding your protagonist(s) is very important since these are the people whom the plot revolves around, who we will come to know and love and who we will follow for the next 120 minutes.  They will be our tour guides through your movie so you have to pick what kind of tour guide you want.  Please don’t get stuck on the names I decided to slap on them, e.g., Heroes, Bad Boys, etc.  These are placeholders so that we are on the same page and nothing else (refer to my comments on genres in Film School 101:Laying Down the Law).  There are three types of protagonists: The Good Guys, The Morally Ambiguous and The No-Good.

1) The Good Guys

The Good Guys are the simplest of the protagonists to write, if only for the fact that they don’t have much, if any, internal conflict.  All of the conflict in the plot with a Good Guy will come from the antagonist, which may be a person or an organization, or nature.  These characters tend to not change much; they are basically the same person at the beginning of the film as they are at the end.  The Good Guys can be further subdivided into three different sections: Heroes, Loveable Idiots and Bad Boys.

1a) Good Guys: Heroes

These are the ones who come to save the day.  The guys or gals who jump out and place their fists on their hips while shooting us a glance at their profile.  All the heroes you can think of (excluding modern superheroes, more about them later) can go into this category.  These characters can do no wrong and everything they do is thoroughly justified and beyond reproach.  When writing heroes you must make sure not to make them too two-dimensional.  Since they are often on a mission that makes them rather myopic, it is important to surround them with fascinating sidekicks or villains or scenarios, To put it more simply, since they are themselves not all that fascinating, their surroundings have to be.  All this said, the most important thing is to keep them likable.  Keep in mind that there is no better, faster and easier way to make someone likeable then to show injustice being done to them.  However, they themselves cannot be unjust, cruel, unkind or uncaring.  They also have to have a great deal of common sense because if the hero starts to make bone-headed decisions, our love for them will wane and we may start to root for the villain to take them out.

Examples: AI – David; Alien – Ripley; Back to the Future – Marty McFly; Amelie – Amelie; Air Force One – President James Marshall; Cinderella Man – Jim Braddock; Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer; The Matrix – Neo; Monsters, Inc. – Sulley; Singing in the Rain – Don Lockwood; The Sixth Sense – Cole Sear; The Truman Show – Truman Burbank; To Kill a Mockingbird – Atticus Finch; Wall-E – Wall-E.

1b) Good Guys: Loveable idiots

This is the group of almost childlike characters to whom things happen.   This group lets us view life again in simpler ways.  It’s the lack of impression that the world has made on them that make them interesting and fun to be with.  This is also the group that is almost always used for comedic value – typically a fish-out-of-water scenario.  It is imperative that, whatever they do, they mean no one any harm.  They have to be sweet, gentle and kind.  However, in writing these people you have to toe the line between immature/naïve and just plain dumb.  Again, almost in line with the Heroes above, make sure that the decisions they make are not completely moronic — otherwise we’ll start to lose faith that they will ever amount to anything.  These characters, I know, will make some pretty dumb decisions but the trick is, when it counts, when it’s heroic and when it’s most needed they make good decisions for the benefit of others.  This group also includes characters that are complete pushovers; people with no backbone that usually find their self-worth by the end of the film.  The same rules apply to them except that they will be different by the end of the movie.

Examples:

Bedazzled – Elliot Richards; The Big Hit – Melvin Smiley; The Court Jester – Hubert Hawkins; Elf – Buddy; Forrest Gump – Forrest Gump; Harvey – Elwood P. Dowd; Zoolander – Derek Zoolander; Napoleon Dynamite – Napoleon Dynamite; Adventures of Power – Power.

1c) Good Guys: Bad Boys

This last subset of the Good Guys is possibly the most fun to write.  Everyone loves a bad boy.  They are on the line between The Good Guys and The Morally Ambiguous.  The main difference is most often the tone.   In most Bad Boy movies, the tone is much lighter.  The filmmakers are not trying to make a point about society or its effect on the psyche of the youth of today.  They are just having a little fun.  These guys, and they do tend to be men,  (please tell me if I’ve over looked some female roles that would fit in this category), may do things which are unjust, cruel unkind or uncaring – things the previous two sub groups could not.  The difference here is you must establish that the evil they are fighting against is far worse then the evil that they themselves do.  In this way, they will be justified when they do unjust, uncaring and cruel things.  We can say, “The Evil People deserved it” and our hero will remain a hero.  Be sure to make the dialogue snappy and give him or her plenty of style.  They should always appear heroic, whether that is intentional or reluctant is up to you.  Still, their main motivation, through their gruff exterior, must be good.

Examples

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – Ferris Bueller; Ghost Busters – Peter Venkman; Star Wars – Han Solo; Indiana Jones series – Indiana Jones; Die Hard – John McClane

2) The Morally Ambiguous

The Morally Ambiguous characters tend to come around when the writer wants to make a more “realistic” character or story.  These are the protagonists we like to see grow and become better because of adversity or struggle.  Some, if not most, of this struggle comes from within them, which is to say throughout the film they spend time trying to figure out who they are or why they do what they do.  The heroes in the Good Guys would not bother pondering such existential themes and ideas, they have people to save and poses to strike.  The characters in this section, however, tend to be a bit more broody.  The Morally Ambiguous is split up into two subsets: Hooker with a Heart of Gold and Vigilantes.

2a) Morally Ambiguous: Hooker with a Heart of Gold

This group takes up all the stories where people learn a valuable life lesson by the end on the film.  Yes, that is a heck of a lot of films but for the life of me I couldn’t see much difference in the protagonists between these films.  They start greedy or crotchety or selfish and end up the salt of the earth.  That’s a little extreme, I know, but the fact is we love to see that change of heart happen.  The darker or bleaker the situation at the beginning, the brighter it will appear at the end.  This is what is called a character arc.  This is where the internal conflict happens.  Since the change has to happen within, they have to be shown, usually by a secondary character, why the path they are on is wrong and which way they should be going instead.  I used the name “Hooker with a Heart of Gold” simply because they are morally repugnant on the outside but it is that glimmer of hope on the inside that shows us they have the ability to be different.

Examples:

About a boy – Will; American Beauty – Lester Burnham; The Aviator – Howard Hughes; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly – Jean-Dominique Bauby; Pretty Woman – Vivian Ward; Good Will Hunting – Will Hunting; Groundhog Day – Phil; In Bruges – Ray; Lawrence of Arabia – T.E. Lawrence; Liar Liar – Fletcher Reede; The Professional – Leon; Schindler’s List – Oskar Schindler; Scrooged – Frank Cross; Sneakers – Bishop.

2b) Morally Ambiguous: Vigilantes

This group is closely related in coolness to the Bad Boy however, as I mentioned in that paragraph, the tone in the vigilante movies is much darker.  This is where most of today’s superheroes lie.  They make tough decisions, not because they want to, but because they have to — and it tears them up inside.  But if they don’t make those tough decisions, many others will suffer.  The biggest difference is again the internal struggle of whether or not they want to be heroes, how they want to go about it and why they do it.  Usually they are started on this path by the death of a loved one or by some great injustice they see or that is done to them.  They are the more three-dimensional Bad Boys.   The end of the film is often marked with a resolution to the internal struggles or at least a happy middle ground where they can find some reprieve.

Examples:

Nolan’s Batman – Batman; Braveheart – William Wallace; X-Men – Wolverine; The Bourne series – Jason Bourne; Falling Down – William Foster; The Fugitive – Richard Kimble; Gladiator – Maximus; Kill Bill – Beatrix Kiddo; Old Boy – Dae-su Oh; Spiderman – Spiderman.

3) The No Good

The No Good are motivated by greed and selfishness.  They are not however “Hookers with Hearts of Gold” because, by the end of the film they have not changed, come to their senses, repented of their ways or anything of the like.  Again, like the Good Guys, there is no character arc here.  By the end, they are still as corrupt as they were when we first met them.  Why would we care to watch such horrible people, you may ask.  Sometimes it’s because the characters themselves are very intriguing.  Although often it’s for the same reason we want to see most films, to see justice be done, to see these guys get their comeuppance.  The stories, however, must be incredibly good in order to support our enjoyment of following such vile people.  We have to be so captivated by what’s happening that we want to see it to the bitter end.

Examples:

Amadeus – Mozart; Memento – Leonard Shelby; Chicago – Roxie Hart; Closer – Alice, Dan, Anna and Larry; Miller’s Crossing – Tom Reagan; There Will Be Blood – Daniel Plainview; The Usual Suspects – Kaiser Soze; Scarface – Scarface

Keep writing in your input. I want to know what you think, if you agree or disagree. If you have any questions for me, anything you would like me to cover in more detail, anything you may think I’ve missed please let me know as this column can only improve with a steady bit of dialogue from you.  See you soon!

It’s a difficult tightrope to walk, making a film adaptation of a book, especially if the book is well-loved.  On one hand, if you change the book’s content too much, you run the risk of angering the fans who will turn on you for all the differences between the story in their heads and the one you’ve committed to film.  On the other hand, if you don’t alter the story enough so that a few hundred pages’ worth of information gets crammed properly into 90 minutes of movie, those who have not read the book(s) will not understand what is going on or why things are happening, and thus will not be able to follow the story thoroughly.  I am sorry to say that Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant does not walk that tightrope very well and, by the third act, tumbles clumsily into the safety net below.

After the opening credits, which reminded me of a cross between the credits for Spider-Man and the credits for Lemony Snicket, we are thrust into the world of Darren Shan (Chris Massoglia), a boy of utter perfection: all “A”s in school, never gets into trouble, respectful and honest, etc. His parents, however, still take the time to impress upon him that conformity is the key to happiness and to never ever be different.  I suppose this belief is meant to come as an affront when he later becomes one of the “freaks” but he doesn’t really react to his parent’s words, so we don’t know if he cares all that much one way or the other.  The only bad influence upon Darren is his best friend, Steve (John Hutcherson).  We know Steve is Darren’s best friend because Darren tells us so.  If it weren’t for that, I would never have believed it.  Their relationship on screen lacked any evident chemistry – Steve is too aggressive and Darren far too passive – to come off as anything but a plot contrivance.  What it feels like the screenwriters were doing, instead of building real characters, was taking a very long time to set up the final act.  In fact, there were many places in the beginning of the film that used sloppy, shorthand methods to set us up for the big finale.  The screenwriting is really about as lazy as the visuals. Case in point, the methodology used to show that Larten Crepsley (John C. Reilly), a vampire, can move extremely fast.  First, they show us Mr. Crepsley and Darren both on screen at the same time.  Then they cut to another angle and, oh my gosh, Mr. Crepsley isn’t there!  Really?  Yeah, it’s a cut.  It’s not very hard to make people disappear when you cut the film.  They used this trick in “Bewitched”.  That’s how dated it is.  At least there they had Elizabeth Montgomery stand still while Dick York moved off screen.  It’s cheap filmmaking and it lowers the production value of the movie.

Of course the powers-that-be are bringing this film out now in the summer of the age of the vampire.  Anything that sucks blood and sleeps in a coffin gets a film nowadays.  However, these vampires have their own set of rules (don’t they all?).  In this world, there are regular vampires – those who do not kill the humans they feast upon – and the vampaneze, who do.  The latter bloodsuckers have very sharp fingernails, can exhale a gas that puts people to sleep and have spit that will heal their wounds.  On top of that they can run very fast, what they call “flitting”.  They hold their breath while they flit, or they should, although exactly why they must do so is not really explained.

There are two areas, though, where I thought the film excelled.  The makeup department did an amazing job.  The Wolfman, in particular, was brilliantly done and deserving of a much more frightening script.  Also the sound department delivered a great product.  To make the audience cringe when a character gets hit or falls or runs into something requires awesome sound design.  They made me feel the connections when blows were dealt out. Oh, I’d also like to add that Willem Dafoe does an excellent Vincent Price impersonation.  Plus, in this film someone actually says that he wants to “rule the world”, a phrase I have not heard uttered since I last saw Pinky and the Brain.  Sadly, these are the only bright spots in the film.  The CGI – and there is lots of it – is very obvious and, in terms of quality, only just up to par.  The action scenes hide the lack of action hero qualities in their stars by keeping the cameras very close to the actors and cutting quickly so you don’t really know what’s going on.  When that doesn’t work, they speed up the film as if something which is boring and awkward at normal speed will suddenly be amazing to watch when it’s twice as fast.

John C. Reilly is a great actor, one of the best at work today.  He is not, however, known for playing guys who are commanding or forceful or threatening, all qualities which are asked of his character here.  Instead, he looks and feels out of place and ends up chewing some major scenery.  Many well-known faces parade through this film: Salma Hayek, Orlando Jones, Patrick Fugit, Ken Watanabe, Kristen Schaal, Jane Krakowski and on and on. Most are given just barely enough to do to justify signing on for this film.  Perhaps there will be more for them in the sequels.  That being said, the person I feel worse for is Chris Massoglia. The screenwriters didn’t even give him a chance.  His Darren Shan is such a passive hero that things happen to him or around him and he just kind of mopes about it.  When he’s not moping, he’s whining and when he’s not whining, he’s complaining.  Halfway through the film I didn’t understand why Mr. Crepsley was even bothering with Darren at all.  It wasn’t until the very end that Darren started to show the slightest of backbone.  Again, if the movie gods give this film a good opening weekend and if the thirst for vampires and their ilk does not dissipate, let’s hope there’s more of that backbone for him in the sequel.

In 2003’s The Yes Men, Mike Bonanno and Andy Bichlbaum set up a website mimicking and lampooning the World Trade Organization, a corporation they oppose.  Their website, however, was mistaken for the real thing and they were invited to speak at important meetings and functions as representatives for the WTO.  They decided to use the opportunity to hold a mirror up and show the corporations their own greed and hopefully make a difference.  Now, with The Yes Men Fix the World, a sequel of sorts, they have gotten even better at making people think they represent companies they do not.

The Yes Men take a page from Sasha Baron Cohen and two pages from Michael Moore to turn in their elaborate pranks on large corporations.  In the first of four hoaxes shown in this film, Andy gets invited to go on the BBC as a spokesperson for Dow Chemical.  The reason for his invitation is the anniversary of the worst industrial disaster in history, a disaster Dow is responsible for: the Bhopal catastrophe.  For those of you who do not know, in 1984 a Union Carbide pesticide plant released 42 tons of toxic methyl isocyanate gas exposing more than 500,000 people to the toxic gas, and killing over 25,000 people both directly and from exposure-related diseases.  Union Carbide was purchased by Dow in 2001.  Neither company has taken any responsibility for what happened in Bhopal.  The pesticide plant still stands today, unusable and leaching poisonous chemicals into the drinking water of the surrounding cities.  So when a spokesperson from Dow goes on the BBC and announces that the company plans to take responsibility for Bhopal and is setting up a $12 billion dollar fund to help those still suffering and their families, one would expect people to celebrate that someone is finally doing the right thing.  Instead, Dow’s stock drops two billion dollars.  When it’s discovered that the man who came on the BBC to make that announcement was actually masquerading as a spokesperson from Dow and had no credentials whatsoever, you can imagine the tidal wave of emotion, not only from the stockholders of Dow but also from the people in Bhopal who thought they were going to finally get bailed out.  It is an unfortunate side effect of their mischief that Mike and Andy bestow false hope upon the people they are trying to help.  Of course, they find some people to put in front of the camera who say that some hope is better then no hope and that recognition has finally been brought to their problem, but you still feel bad that, at the end of the day, nothing was really accomplished by all of Mike and Andy’s tomfoolery.

This film has very good production values for a documentary.  Lately, it feels and looks like documentaries’ budgets have dropped considerably.  It’s as if the filmmakers felt their point was so strong it could carry the all of emotional weight of the cause and that setting up a stationary camera with a few talking heads was all they needed do to get their point across.  The Yes Men go above and beyond just using talking heads.  There are lots of superfluous and well-constructed shots, cartoons and computer graphics added in to make a point and often also for a laugh.  Alas, there’s the rub – and one of the major problems with the way this social commentary is set up.  The tone is entertaining and often the humor is very tongue-in-cheek, which then diffuses some of the seriousness out of the problems they are discussing.  When they are talking about and showing all the displaced people in New Orleans, it’s almost given to the audience as an aside when instead it should be pulling on our heartstrings.  The filmmakers should know that the most effective way to get people up in arms, to make a change and a difference, is to magnify their feelings of pity and empathy for the victims on the screen above them.  However they seem to be too caught up in their own cleverness to bother with that sort of thing.  On top of that, their Saturday-morning, Beakman’s World approach to explaining complex theories and topics such as “Free Market” and “The Kyoto Protocol” never explain the concepts thoroughly enough for those uneducated about such things to follow what they are discussing.

There are four different corporations they spoof; Dow Chemical, Exxon, Haliburton and The New York Times.  The connective tissue between each of these escapades is often nothing more than a thin segue, making them feel more like four different and distinct pranks instead of a point or a cause they are trying to push and follow through to the end.  Every time they get in front of an audience they try a different tactic to garner a response; first horror, then tastelessness and finally ridicule.  They want to shock their audience awake yet each time they get the same response, a gentle malaise followed by apathy.  The cause of their failure is in the movie itself – what’s shocking to outsiders is normal to insiders.  They seem to be unable to grasp this and ultimately, the title The Yes Men Fix the World is a serious case of false advertisement.  Their efforts, however valiant, do not have the effect on the people they intended because no matter how brightly you shine a light on the problem, changes will not be made if the corporations refuse to look, or see no problem with what’s being done.  Making a film about their antics and showing us, the consumers and sometime victims of corporate greed, what is really happening is apparently the next best thing to getting their point, however unfocused it many be, across.

Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

What is art?  Can a thumbtack on an otherwise blank wall be a picture?  Can someone kicking a bucket filled with chains be music?  Most of us, with good reason, would say no.  It takes more inherent talent to make art; more then just sticking a tack up on a wall or just making seemingly random noise.  If that’s you, go listen to Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band.  Go on, we’ll wait.  It was considered the 58^th best album in Rolling Stone magazine’s “Top 500 albums of all time.”  As you listen to it you may think there’s a lot of improvising going on.  On the contrary, these songs were notated and practiced, in order to be played the exact same way every time.  Crazy, huh?  If that’s not enough, go into any modern art gallery and you will, more often then not, see an entire display of large white canvases with one red dot or some variation thereof.  It can’t be art if every single painting looks the same, right?  Now go listen to Chuck Berry’s “School Day” and “No Particular Place to Go”.  Pretty similar, huh?  On the other hand, have you seen Monet’s haystack series?  Different times of the day and year, but the same ol’ haystack.  So what is art?  Is art the thing itself or the idea of the thing?  As musician Adrian Jacobs (played with a permanent scowl by Adam Goldberg) says in explaining the difference between music and noise, “Noise is unwanted.”  In the same way, art is wherever we want to see or hear it.

Adrian and his brother Josh (Eion Bailey) are both artists although Josh is a painter rather then a musician.  The other big difference is that Josh is successful.  His paintings are selling by the truckload to hospitals and hotels that like his soothing, non-confrontational pastel swirls.  However, he wants to break free from what is making him successful and become a more critically considered painter.  Adrian, on the other hand, has no commercial success.  He is lucky if he gets six people to come to one of his concerts and he feels dejected by it all.  Then again, his music is praised for being beyond its time by “those in the know”.  The grass is always greener on the other side within an artist’s world.  Goldberg and Bailey play both brothers with enough narcissism and pity to – well, to come off as believable.  Goldberg in particular shows the hurting, tortured soul of someone who feels as if his dream, his vision – nay, his purpose for living is not understood.  Those few and far between who do understand him, who praise the great advances he’s making in atonal music, he berates and chases away.  He wants to be upset and, in a way, he thinks everyone should feel as he does.  That is, he thinks so until Madeline Gray (Marley Shelton) comes around.  She is a modern art gallery owner, through whom Josh is selling all his paintings.  In fact, Josh, and the revenue he creates, is the main reason she is able to keep her gallery open.  She is invited by him to go to one of his brother’s concerts and she is astonished (in the good way) by what she hears.

Marley Shelton’s performance is as stunning as her bleached-blond hair.  She is the ultimate avant-garde connoisseur, the perpetual fan to all the misanthropes who grace her gallery.  To her, everything can be art, down to the stylish, but very artsy, clothes she wears.  Her wardrobe, especially at the beginning of the film, was extremely, and unbelievably, noisy. I thought them to be incredibly distracting and that perhaps there was a problem with the sound mixing.  It turns out they were making a point, but I still think they could have brought it down a little in the mix.  The original score, done masterfully by David Lang, is full of atonal crazy music like Adrian’s and shows how it can be the sound of the city or the sound of a party or the sound of two brothers fighting.  It is very creative how he incorporated the score into the sound design.  One of Madeline’s most prized artists is Ray Barko – played by Vinnie Jones.  He is a commercially successful artist whose art consists of taxidermied animals posed in awkward positions.  At his shows he prattles on about how, “the past doesn’t influence me, I influence it” and other such non-sequiturs that just add to the absurdity of the entire movie.

I must walk a fine line here.  I understand that the film is a satire and that it takes what is real and pushes it just a little further to make it bizarre and therefore humorous.  The problem is that taking the real and pushing it a little farther – is art!  There are people who would see the creations in this film and crave to see or hear more.  I know these people!  I know artists who are just looking “to communicate, to express, to be loved.”  I know patrons that see a chandelier made from dead possums as something deep and profound.  So to say that the art or the artists depicted are over the top and ridiculous… the truth is, no they’re not.  At times, they are bang on the money.  Which is often sad to think about.  But, as they say, “it’s so funny ’cause it’s so true.”

We’ve all gone to the movies and said “I can make a better film then that.”  Personally, I’ve said that more than most, being a part-time film critic and part-time filmmaker.  But how easy is it really to make the Next Great American Film?  Truth is, not all that simple.  To say that the stars and the planets have to align in order to make a great film is not that far from the truth.  There are many, many things that can derail a film. You could hire the wrong actors, the wrong cinematographer, the equipment could fail – heck, the Craft service table could have non-refrigerated mayo and give everyone food poisoning.  However, I am of the belief that we make our own luck and that having the proper knowledge will increase our chances at success.  Therefore, over the next few weeks I will be dissecting many movies to tell you what ingredients you need to make a great film.  I will take them apart and show you in as much detail as possible, a great film and what makes it great.  That being said, I have to give a few caveats up front.

It is very rare for any film to be purely and solely one genre.  Let’s take the thriller/suspense genre for example.  In the following paragraphs, I will define what I consider a thriller, but please keep in mind that you may consider some of my examples mysteries (The Silence of the Lambs) or action/adventures (The Bourne Series) or film noir (The Third Man) or sci-fi/fantasy (Alien) or crime (North by Northwest) or horror (Psycho) or political (Clear and Present Danger).  On top of this, films can be categorized by as many as three or four genres at once.  Alien can also be under horror.  The Bourne movies can also be under espionage.  However suspense/thriller ideas and motifs are just seasoning, additives that can be (and should be) sprinkled over any crime/mystery/sci-fi/etc. story, just as any crime/mystery/sci-fi/etc. should have suspense and thrills.

So let me define what makes up a thriller/suspense movie for the sake of furthering this discussion of the distinction between genres.  To do so, I turn to the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock.  In 1962, Francois Truffaut interviewed Hitchcock for five days.  During that time Hitchcock explained it thus: “Suspense bears no relationship to fear. Instead, it is the state of waiting for something to happen”  In further discussing what makes for good suspense he said, “…if you have a scene where two characters are conversing in a café, and a bomb suddenly goes off under the table, the audience experiences surprise. On the other hand, if the audience sees the saboteur place the bomb, is told that it will go off at one o’clock, and can see a clock in the scene, the mundane conversation between two cafe patrons now becomes one of intense suspense, as the audience holds its collective breath waiting for the explosion. Fifteen minutes of suspense, as opposed to fifteen seconds of surprise. It was therefore necessary that the audience be as fully informed as possible.”

Therefore, a suspense/thriller is a story where an audience is waiting and anticipating something to happen.  We are held, suspended, waiting for the other shoe to drop and we are thrilled with the prospect.  This is in contrast, although not in direct opposition, to a mystery film because a mystery is a story where something has already happened and we need to find out who did it or why they did it.  In a mystery, the viewer is often a step or two behind the detective, aware of all the evidence collected to solve the mystery but missing one crucial piece to complete the puzzle.  In a thriller/suspense film, the viewer is often a step or two ahead of the protagonist.  We need to know that there is danger, how severe the danger is and where it happens to be lurking so we can yell at the screen “Don’t go in that dark alley!”   Movie genres are almost as subjective as movies are themselves.  You may not agree with one of the movie/genre parings I made.  Oh well.  I bring this up because I will be referencing many films and I don’t want you to get hung up on my categorization of When Harry met Sally as a comedy with some drama when you think it’s a drama with some comedy.  As they taught at my church, “In the non-essentials, liberty.”  Sometimes we’ll just have to agree to disagree, okay?  I’m also going to be going on the assumption that you know the basics of storytelling and its terms – e.g. protagonist = hero; antagonist = villain.  If there’s something you don’t understand, well, you’re on the Internet.  Look it up.

Let me stop here and declare that if you are able to write a solid story, it will mean you’re able to work in all genres.  Write a good story and it will take a fairly large amount of bad acting, directing, lighting, camera work, etc. to keep you out of the limelight.  Story is king -  always keep that in mind.

For now, we will be going over characters, plot, music, conventions vs. clichés and endings.  I say “for now” because I want this column to be something that is fluid and organic.  I want to get input from you.  If you have any questions for me, anything you would like me to cover in more detail, anything you may think I’ve missed please let me know as this column can only improve with a steady bit of dialogue from you.  In any case, drop me a line and we’ll see you here next week.

You can’t crush a man’s dreams, even if they are only to be the best air drummer in the world.  That’s the premise in this Rocky-meets-Napoleon-Dynamite picture written and directed by and starring Ari Gold as the titular Power.  He looks like a dorky Spike Jonze with a Members Only jacket and a perpetual sweatband.  For some inexplicable reason they refuse to begin the film’s title with some sort of definite article.  I assume they were going for a play on words, but that feels a little high-minded for this film.  This movie is so chock full of quirk that none of the characters are even remotely believable. It’s geared towards the youth – kids and teens who thought the aforementioned Dynamite was hilarious and quoted it incessantly.  It is also, a very clean film.  The raciest thing in the entire film is the back of a topless woman and I don’t remember any swearing at all so parents can feel okay about leaving their children to see this while they catch something a little more mature.  Most people out of high school will have a couple of chuckles and that’s it.  However, those younger or with a younger sensibility will find lots here to giggle about and new lines to quote incessantly.

Power grows up in the small mining town of Lode, New Mexico.  He lives in the basement of the house of his aunt, Joanie (Jane Lynch), although his father Harlan (Michael McKean) works in the same copper factory.   Power gets fired from his job at the same time that his father starts a walkout for more pay, or better benefits, or something.  Power tries to join the picket lines but his father sends him away, having to remind Power that he’s been fired and no longer has a stake in what happens at the plant.  There’s something wrong with Power.  He’s a little mentally slow, and not in a cute Forrest Gump kind of way.  More in a he-shouldn’t-be-walking-around-without-a-helmet-on kind of way.  I don’t particularly like this tactic of garnering sympathy for the hero of the film just because he’s an idiot and doesn’t know any better.  It feels weak and a bit exploitative, but I may just be too sensitive.

Regardless, Power gets around.  In fact his air drumming dream takes him to Mexico where he stumbles across an underground illegal air drum competition (where the losers get mauled by chihuahuas and chickens) then to Newark to practice with the best air drummer in the world, Carlos (Steven Williams).  Carlos used to really play the drums but he is now a double amputee.  Funny!  The story is common “underdog makes good” and there is nothing terribly superb from the actors (Lynch and McKean are both desperately underused) except for Shoshannah Stern.  She plays Annie, a deaf girl (she lost her hearing at a Styx concert) in Newark that Power falls in love with.  Her charisma and backbone made up what Power had been lacking the entire movie.  Scenes where he is “showing” her the music he’s listening to were actually touching and I thought it a brilliant idea.

Power’s adversary is Dallas Houston, played with smarmy aplomb by Entourage’s Adrian Grenier.  He is a country/rap/rock artist who’s selling millions of records but really, deep down in his heart, only wants to be an air drummer.  Dallas’s father, Dick Houston (Richard Fancy), coincidentally, owns the copper factory Power’s father is picketing.  See how this sets up an ending where Dallas and Power face off AND their fathers face off?  There is a large Newark air drummer competition (that is televised, by the way, so the people back in Lode can watch and cheer Power on) where air drummers from around the country compete to see who is the best air drummer.  Can I say air drummer any more often?

In the end, the film will work for children, for teenagers, for adults who think like teenagers or children.  It will inspire people to see that all you need is some air drums to sound your own beat upon.  I can see kids putting on sweatbands and holding air drum competitions in their back yards while blasting Genesis or Rush.  For anyone looking for something with more substance then air, look elsewhere.

Rating: ★★½☆☆ 

First of all, it’s all-cards-on-the-table time.  Zombieland is only the third zombie flick I’ve ever seen.  I know,  I know.  I’m sorry.  28 days later and Shaun of the Dead are the other two.  Not even one of the real “Dead” series.  They’re on my Netflix queue and have been for quite some time.  I just haven’t gotten around to them.  Things come up, y’know?  Wha’d’ya do?  I also saw Planet Terror, but I’m nearly done blocking that from my memory so it doesn’t count.  That all being said I got to go to an advance screening of this film, sat down with some popcorn and soda (as is appropriate) and thoroughly enjoyed Zombieland.

Before the film started, a gentleman, I’m assuming from the studio, got up in front of the theater, asked for our attention and told us we were one of the first audiences to see this film.  He said that the film was incomplete and had imperfections that would be fixed before it gets released.  I did notice some CGI that needed work, the color correction wasn’t finished, some night scenes were very grainy, and there may be some editing and music cues that will be fine-tuned.  None of it was really distracting, but I am intrigued to see how different the final product will be.  The CGI that was there looks like the computer jockeys were taking a page from the “Zack Snyder Style of Filming Violence” – extreme slow motion and blood that looks like cherry Jell-O.  Even the opening credits’ style was nearly identical to what Snyder did in Watchmen, except that each vignette shows either a zombie kill or a zombie chase – all set to “Knights of Cydonia” by Muse.  It is effective, so I don’t blame them for ripping it off.  I am led to believe that zombies come in two flavors: fast and suh-low.  The ones in this film are fast, sprinting at people and ripping them apart in gory ways, all while bodily fluids of all disgusting sorts spew from their gaping maws.

Our narrator (yes, there is heavy voiceover throughout the entire film and somewhere Robert McKee is shaking his head) is Jesse Eisenberg as Columbus.  This being Jesse’s second “–land” film of the year, he is making a nice niche of being Michael Sera’s understudy.  However, I prefer Eisenberg over Sera since Sera seems to be unable to get past an awkward stammering shtick.  In this film Jesse does the unconfident shtick but he adds in personality – some heart and some guts added convincingly when the story calls for it.  I see Eisenberg someday being Woody Allen’s alter ego in one of Allen’s films.  When we meet him, Columbus is on his own as the zombie apocalypse has turned everyone he knows into a flesh-eating monster.  Along the way, he has created 32 rules for staying alive.  These rules get posted on the screen as they are used, often to very comic effect.

Before the film gets too far into Omega Man territory, Columbus meets Tallahassee.  All the main characters are named for the cities they come from… or are heading to, it was unclear.  This is supposed to keep them from getting too close to one another in case one of them gets bit and the rest need to put him away.  Woody Harrelson, no doubt summoning Mikey Knox back up from where he lays, plays Tallahassee to Snake Plissken perfection.  He is an unapologetic sociopathic badass with a heart of gold, played to the hilt, and he will go down in history with the best of them.  Pure fun.  As Columbus is being dragged on Tallahassee’s ongoing quest to find one more Twinkie to consume, they meet sisters, Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin).  There are many trust issues between the four survivors that threaten their wobbly alliance throughout the rest of the flick but the girls become the motives for the guys for the rest of the film.

This film is not a horror film – it’s a action/comedy in the Shaun of the Dead vein.  On top of that, it’s a road trip and their destination is wherever they see hope on the horizon.  Wichita and Little Rock are on their way to an amusement park near Los Angeles called Pacific Playland.  It is a place that held good memories for them both and it becomes the main set piece for the finale.  But before getting there they decide to crash in a Beverly Hills mansion they believe is unoccupied.  This leads to one of the funniest parts of the film and one of the best cameos I’ve seen in a long time.  I’ll say no more here, for to do so would spoil the fun.  Suffice it to say this movie is filled with all sorts of pop references which may date the film, but which will not take anything away from it.

Zombies on film are often used as metaphors.  From indictments of the Vietnam War, commentaries on the Civil Rights movement or critiques of our own consumer-based culture, zombies have been stand-ins for many many things.  So what are the filmmakers trying to portray with the undead here?  Thankfully, they obliterate any uncertainty in the last line of the film.  “Without other people, you might as well be a zombie.”  And with that they set up a sequel very nicely.  If it comes, I’ll be there on opening weekend.

Rating: ★★★★½ 

Paris is a magical city.  Being introduced to the ancient architecture and the thick, rich culture, especially for an American not used to it, can be overwhelming.  I was fortunate enough to visit twice.  The first time was with a group of three other Americans.  We were stationed in England and had to leave base for the weekend.  Since we didn’t need visas and because we figured we might not have another opportunity, we pooled our money together and had enough to get us on the ferry ride across the Channel and the train trip from Calais into Paris.  We stayed three days two nights as vagrants wandering the streets of Paris, sleeping under the Eiffel Tower or in a subway station or in the nearest McDo, each of us taking shifts ordering a coffee so we wouldn’t get kicked out while the others grabbed a few winks.  Sleep was hard to come by.  Though I had on an overcoat, a shirt, a tee shirt and thermal underwear, the bitter April cold seeped in and any rest we all got was fitful at best.  On the third day there, just before heading back to England, I went up on a high point that overlooked the entire city.  It might have been the lack of sleep or the overwhelming beauty or a combination of both, but something hit me looking out over the vast cityscapes and brought a few tears to my eyes.  The film Paris starts off with those cityscapes.  All the emotions of that weekend came flooding back and I fell in love with the city all over again.

The film weaves the stories of many different people together in a Love, Actually sort of way but without Christmas hanging over everything to promise happy resolutions to everyone involved.  We first follow Pierre (Romain Duris), a dancer who has just found out he needs to get a heart transplant.  He is the brother of Elise (Juliette Binoche), a single mother working in Immigration trying to make ends meet and so completely devastated by her divorce that she has stopped keeping up her appearance so as to repel all male advances.  One of those advances comes from possible suitor Jean (Albert Dupontel) a fishmonger at the local open-air market Elise often visits. She also knows him because their children attend the same school in the same grade.  Jean has recently gotten a divorce as well and is trying to find his own footing again in the dating world.  The open-air market is also visited by Roland Verneuil (Fabrice Luchini), a lonely man who teaches French history and whose father has just died.  We meet him, and his brother Philippe (Francois Cluzet), at the funeral.  Philippe, an architect, has recently gotten married and is trying to have a child.  After the funeral Philippe invites Roland back for dinner where Roland informs them that he is falling for one of his students, Laetitia (Melanie Laurent, most recently of Inglorious Basterds).  Laetitia, however, is unaware that Roland has feelings for her.  Moreover, she is unaware that Roland overheard her tell someone her cell phone number, which he memorized and used to begin texting her anonymous messages of love.  She lives in a small apartment across the street from Pierre – and the six degrees of separation between all our players slowly vanish in this thriving, bustling but shrinking world where all these (and many more) people become part of the tapestry that is Parisian culture.

With such an amazing cast, nearly all of them from great French films (Three colors Blue, Irreversible, A Very Long Engagement, Tell No One, The Girl from Monaco, etc.), the acting is superb all around.  Almost all the characters share a deep sadness that makes us empathize with who they are, but keeps us from becoming mired in or depressed by their lives.  On the contrary, we are engaged, enthralled, and very entertained.  As with any ensemble cast movie, good editing becomes essential so we don’t forget a character, lose track of what or who we are following and don’t become confused in the massive crowd a multi-threaded story like this can generate.  The editing does shine, at times becoming a bit too showy but keeping the story clear and concise all the way through.  As I stated before, the city looks beautiful thanks to cinematographer Christophe Beaucarne, who brings out the color and vibrance in every frame.

However, this film’s greatest triumph is the way it allows the stories to just “be”.  There are many films that will take their characters and wring some semblance of a life lesson out of them.  It maligns and distorts the story arcs as it attempts to be accommodating of plots the characters were never meant to inhabit.  Here, on the other hand, the people are just people – weird, wacky, messed-up people living their lives. We watch them as we would watch our own friends and family live out their lives.  The film is not trying to be anything; it just is.  It is life.  It is love.  It is loneliness.  It is a city, where no one is ever happy. It is Paris.

Rating: ★★★★½