(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Eh..there are things I should be doing today, did manage to get the laundry in to the mat, and do my delicate items (such as the cashmere/cotton blend sweaters which cannot be put in the dryer). Got up at 7.

Watched Merlin S3 Finale, and the series finally progressed. It's no longer this episodic series that ends the same way each time. It actually pulled all its errant plot threads together. My quibble? Same as the last two seasons, we have one nice female character and two evil ones, or a series of evil female guest-starring characters..aka witches, and all the true heroes are guys. Campbell's Heroes Journey at it's shiny best. Watching it I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to switch all the gender roles. To be fair, this has always been my quibble with the Arthurian Legends. So it really isn't Merlin's fault - the legend the show is based on - is sexist. Also what's with all the Arthurian reboots? Makes me want to rent Mists of Avalon.

That said? The finale was rather enjoyable. And I agree Bradley James is quite good as Arthur. He manages to get across a great deal with his eyes.

While at the mat, doing the delicates, I was reading about the making of Scream 4 in EW, and realized once again that being a writer in Hollywood must really suck at times. Even if you are a fairly well-known and highly paid one. No wonder so many of them go do comic books as a sideline or high-tail it to tv. Poor Kevin Williamson (you know him as the scribe of Dawson's Creek and Vamp Diaries, along with the original Scream film). He comes up with this brilliant idea for Scream 4, so brilliant he's penned Scream 5 and 6 off of it in quick outlines. Calls up the producer - Weinstein, who also thinks it is brilliant, and manages to get all the original stars of the series to sign on plus horror auteur Wes Craven - because they see it as brilliant. BUT. Somewhere along the line the producer, Weinstein, decides the writer's vision isn't good enough and tinkers with it. He doesn't trust his writer to deliver a good script on time. The film is slated to go in less than two years. They fight constantly, the producer decides to hire another writer to punch up the dialogue (the writer who had written Scream 3), the producer forces Williamson to rewrite portions of the script, change whole sections, at one point the director is rewriting sections. And to date? The original script-writer, Williamson has not seen a finished version of the film and is not talking to his former friend, the Producer (Weinstein). Unfortunately, this happens all the time, apparently. It's standard operating practice.

Comments

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

That almost makes me want to forgive Kevin Williamson for writing/directing some movies that were not only utter crap - I Know Why You Killed Mrs Tingle Last Summer etc - but also were so successful that almost every US horror movie in the last 15 years has either tried to emulate them (PG13 rating, predictable storylines, awful television actors, etc) or been forced to go to the other extreme (hard R rating, gore for gore's sake, torture porn) essentially turning the entire US horror movie industry into a toothless zombie where the people with actual ideas can hardly even get a film made anymore. I know it's wrong to hold Williamson responsible for that, especially since I actually like Scream 1&2 a lot, but... In 1996, he was the right person at the right place at the right time. I don't know if he had any other tricks in him. Though in fairness I hated Dawson's Creek and never watched Vampire Diaries.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I don't think he did the other films, just the Scream flicks. Although the other films were definitely copy-cats of the Scream flicks.

Vamp Diaries is less melodramatic and navel-gazing heavy than Dawson's also better paced. Actually it is the fastest paced and best plotted gothic television serial I've seen. But that may be less due to Williamson and more due to Julie Plec and a few other writers, such as Dollhouse's Andrew Chambliss and Craft and Fain.

It's difficult to determine in Hollywood who is responsible for what. I know they have to do things really fast. And get burned out. George RR Martin - a television scribe and producer as well as screenwriter, got so fed up with the limitations that he left to become a novelist. You make the quick buck writing for the screen - but eventually you become a hack. Just ask Chandler, Hammett, and Fitzgerald who all went nuts doing it. ;-)

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Well, he wrote both I Know What You Did Last Summer and Killing Mrs Tingle, though he only directed Tingle. Scream is a brilliant film, and much of that is Williamson's doing, but so much of that brilliance comes from how it relates to the material it's ripping off homaging. The commentary on horror tropes is the entire point. Once Williamson (and with him, much of the horror film industry) stopped the commentary and simply went on repeating the tropes that Scream had already deconstructed, always with a knowing "Yeah, we know, this has all been done better before" wink but with nothing to add, I lost patience.

...Yeah, I take horror movies seriously. ;) You're right, it's probably not fair to hold Williamson responsible for something that goes way beyond the power of any one screenwriter, but his post-Scream movies are a very good example of everything I dislike about what happened to the US horror tradition.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Well, the main problem with Know What You Did was it took itself way too seriously (which was the same problem he had with Dawson's Creek and most likely Mrs. Tingle (skipped over that one, so can't comment)). It also started the whole Urban Horror Legend copy-cat movie craze, which intrigued me but only because I studied/analyzed Urban Horror Legends in college and collected them.

Williamson is at his best when he's not taking himself too seriously. Which was well, Scream 1. The best thing about the Scream films was Jaime Kennedy, once he left the premises the films lost their ...oomph. (Which was in the second film.) Love humorous horror flicks - like Tremors and Aliens.

While you can do a "serious" horror film well - few do. I've seen a handful. I tend to veer away from the serious ones most of the time - because I like to be able to sleep at night and the dang things keep me awake. Still have issues with Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween oddly never bothered me.

My favorites are the weird psychological ones such as Robert Wise's minimalist classic The Haunting, the Jodi Foster/Martin Sheen film - The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, the Lucas Han film about the ghost girl that I can't remember the name of,
The Vanishing (the original not the stupid US remake), The Skeleton Key, and Let the Right One In.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Well, the main problem with Know What You Did was it took itself way too seriously

Actually, I'd say its problem is that it doesn't take itself seriously enough. That is to say, it never bothers to make us believe it, it just goes through the motions of what a horror movie should be without being one. A good horror movie needs a sense of humour (which may or may not include a single remotely funny moment) to surprise the viewers, but it also needs to be serious enough to make us care what happens. I was cheering for the death of everyone in IKWYDLS long before the halfway point. And that included the people behind the camera. (Well, not really.) A good horror movie needs guts, brains and heart (often literally); IKWYDLS has neither. And it became the blueprint for every new US horror movie for 10 years.

...I need to catch a plane in six hours so I better stop there or I'll be up half the night defining good horror. :)

Speaking of Arthurian legends, I watched the first 3 eps of Camelot and I'm done with that. Morgan is great, but the rest is dull, dull, dull, with a thoroughly annoying Arthur looking constantly surprised in the middle. I think I'm sticking with Monty Python and Excalibur on that one.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

I re-watched Excalibur the other day (for the 99th time) and it still works.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Eh. No need. I'm not defending IKWYDLS - since I admittedly don't remember anything about IKWYDLS except the bit with Sarah Michelle Gellar cutting off all her hair, while Ryan Phillipe looks on. Forgettable movie. She did a lot of forgettable horror movies. The 1990s was a bad time for teen movies. We were at the height of the Freddie Prince Jr, Mathew Lillard and Jennifer Love Hewitt Craze (we can blame Party of Five for Hewitt). Unfortunately it has not gotten any better. You know I never thought the 1980s would be known for teen movies?

Speaking of Arthurian legends, I watched the first 3 eps of Camelot and I'm done with that. Morgan is great, but the rest is dull, dull, dull, with a thoroughly annoying Arthur looking constantly surprised in the middle.

Can't really comment on Camelot - since I haven't seen it. But all the reviews I've read online agree with you. The actor playing Arthur just does not work. Which is a problem, since he sort of is the center of the whole thing. So, I guess I can blatantly ignore it? Yay!

No disagreements, the only Arthurian presentations I've enjoyed to date are Excalibur (which has the noted distinction of being the first R-rated film that I ever saw in the theater - I was 13 I think, I don't what my parents were thinking - possibly that
it was a Fantasy and should be okay for kids? The first ten minutes killed that illusion.) Rather adore that movie, even if Nicole Williamson overacted.

And Monty Python has the distinction of being the only Arthurian version to make it to the stage, outside of Lerner and Lowe's Camelot (which I rather adore, although have seen one too many times). Yes, I've seen both Camelot and Spamalot on the Stage.;-)


I think I'm sticking with Monty Python and Excalibur on that one.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Ack. Clearly, I was having issues with LJ last night. That last line should not have been there. ;-)