“Woody Allen is not ever going to milk a cow.” GQ interviews Werner Herzog
May 23, 2011 § Leave a comment
I am watching The Expendables. It is fascinating.
May 22, 2011 § Leave a comment
This movie is unrelenting in its drive to be enjoyable. But it’s not cloying. It works towards its aim by carefully controlling information to suit audiences in a variety of contexts.
Let me tell you what I’m seeing.
*Each shot is clear, high in contrast, and contains just one important piece of information. This movie was shot to be shown on airplane seat backs. You do not need a large screen to enjoy The Expendables.
*Also, each shot appears to have been composed to be easily panned-and-scanned. So while it looks good in widescreen, there isn’t so much information distributed across the screen at any time that it can’t be chopped down by a third.
*Audiences worldwide know Stallone, Statham, and Jet Li; and cameos by Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis don’t hurt. You do not need to learn new faces to enjoy The Expendables.
*Irony exists in only one scene (the Willis/Schwarzenegger cameo) but it reaches no further than the careers of the film’s biggest international stars. None of the humor is idiomatic. Only a few scenes between Statham and Stallone have any nuance in tone or delivery. The result is that the whole movie is easily translatable. It would even work well in markets where dubbing is done by one actor for a whole film. You do not need to speak English to enjoy The Expendables.
*The “dirty CIA” plot plays to American conservative values to the extent it needs to as an action movie, but the film comes up well short of flag-waving. You do not need to love America to enjoy The Expendables. And even if you hate America it’s not so bad.
*At a running time of 103 minutes, you don’t need to have more than a couple of hours to kill to enjoy The Expendables.
This is a film that’s fit to be sold into every distribution channel you can imagine. Which means The Expendables doesn’t give a good goddamn if you enjoy it. The producers made their return before this thing hit theatres.
No, seriously: this is one of the best things I’ve read on the web in weeks
May 16, 2011 § Leave a comment
I posted about this interview with Robert Gottlieb a couple weeks ago, but I’ve only just finished reading it.
It resonated with me so I’m recommending it again. Click the link and add it to Instapaper, Read It Later, Evernote, or whatever you use to queue up long-form reading.
If you care seriously about the creative process, excellence, craft, books, writing, or reading, you owe it to yourself to read this. Nowhere else will you find Michael Crichton, Toni Morrison, and John Le Carré speaking so candidly about how their books are made and what they have in common.
@OReillyMedia Book Xylophone
May 8, 2011 § Leave a comment
2 observations:
1. *Of course* this was done with O’Reilly books.
2. Given the arborial origin of the books, it’s perhaps more appropriate to call this a “Book Marimba”?
The sci-fi roots of al-qaida
May 7, 2011 § Leave a comment
Robert Gottlieb on the art of editing in The @ParisReview
May 4, 2011 § Leave a comment
Kyle Minor—This interview with Robert Gottlieb is probably one of the most interesting things ever published in The Paris Review, which, as you know, is saying quite a lot.
Revisiting my post on @wrongologist
May 1, 2011 § Leave a comment
Nathan's blog 