anime

Feels like I’ve seen this before…

Maximum Z adventure, anime, Black List, screenwriting, scriptshadow, westerns

Unfortunately, no LUCY progress today. I worked until noon today, had a parent-teacher conference, followed by some extra time with V on her homework.  But I’m working the midday shift tomorrow, so here’s hoping I can finish Act 2.

I did spend part of today reading ALL YOU NEED IS KILL, a Black List script by Dante Harper based on the Japanese novel by Hiroshi Hakurazaka.  It’s definitely an original take on what seems to be becoming a popular concept: reliving the same time period over and over again (a la GROUNDHOG DAY, DEJA VU and the forthcoming SOURCE CODE).  Only here it involves aliens, futuristic weapons and a wide variety of ways to die.

Earth has been invaded by a seemingly unbeatable alien race called the Mimic, capable of instant adaptation to a situation.  Humanity seems fated to be the losing side.

Cage, a poor excuse for a solider, is part of the latest military operation to take on the Mimic.  As he gets thrust into a particularly gruesome battlefield, he becomes hit with the oily black blood/internal fluid of a unique-looking Mimic.  And dies.

Then wakes up in his barracks, 36 hours before he died.  He’s seen all of this before, so he knows what to expect.

He soon figures out that he’s constantly repeating those 36 hours over and over again, each time ending with him dying.  As “time” progresses, he becomes more and more skilled as a warrior, eventually becoming just as good as mega-soldier Rita.

SPOILER ALERT!  As a young, awkward solider, Rita was also hit with the oily black blood, which resulted in her constantly reliving this time period until she figured a way out – kill the alien that sprayed her before it does.

Now Cage has to do the same.  But it’s not as easy as it seems, and there are some good complications thrown in to make sure there’s no happy ending.

Carson Reeves at ScriptShadow says the action scenes are some of the best he’s ever read – “visual, kinetic, unique – You really feel like you’re inside that battlefield battling those aliens.”  I’d agree with that, for the most part.  I couldn’t help while reading some of the battle scenes that either Hakurazaka or Harper might have been influenced by the battle scenes in STARSHIP TROOPERS.  Seems like all aliens really want to do to humans is tear them apart.  Whatever happened to good old-fashioned disintegration?

But I digress.

ALL YOU NEED IS KILL is definitely a visual screenplay.  It moves fast, but requires close attention due to everything that’s going on.  I had to re-read the pages where Rita explains how the Mimic always manage to be one step ahead of humans.

While there’s a lot of attention paid to the battles and effects, there’s also some good character development of not only Cage, but some of his fellow soldiers.  We get little glimpses into their personalities so we see more than just caricatures or cliches.

Also a nice touch: every time Cage starts over, he writes the number on his hand, which is the opposite approach to how it was done in the anime THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME.

This would look great on the screen, but a lot of it would have to be CGI, unless Warner Brothers plans to blow a lot of the budget on makeup and special effects.  They purchased it last year, making sure to include a clause that comes really close to guaranteeing it would start shooting within a year.  Which is around now.  It appears to be tentatively set for release next year, which seems to be the case for a lot of these Black List scripts.

Harper also wrote the script for the remake of THE BLACK HOLE, which I really enjoyed back in 4th grade.

Movie of the Moment:  Another two-fer.  We finished LET ME IN, and I have to say, I ended up being disappointed.  It was trying too hard to stick to the Swedish version that it raised questions that could/should have been answered.  What happens after the cop is killed?  Was Abby following Owen, which is why she was there when the bullies had him in the pool?  As K said, it was too European.  A little more Americanization would have worked better.

I took V and her friend to see RANGO, which I had heard was better than you would expect from an animated western about a chameleon.  While the story is clearly lifted from CHINATOWN (including a turtle resembling John Huston), there were some good laughs in it that sailed over the kids heads and some of us adults in the audience really liked.  On the way home, V asked what I was laughing at; it was too hard to explain.

It was a lot of fun, and even more so if you appreciate a good western.  One thing I couldn’t understand: this appears to be set in the present day, but this little anthropomorphized town is straight out of the Old West.  The reason why is never explained, but in the end still works for the story.

Lastly, there’s a subplot involving a hawk with a silver-tipped beak that I didn’t realize until the next day must be an homage to Lee Marvin in CAT BALLOU.  Very cool and clever, Mr Verbinski.

Yet another burst of inspiration

Maximum Z anime, DC, Lucy Steele, Miyazaki, Netflix, outlines, screenwriting, theme

I don’t know how other writers do it, but when I start a story, I come up with the basic plot and see what theme works with it.

When I started LUCY, I didn’t have one.  I worked on the story, but couldn’t figure out a strong-enough theme.

I settled on one I thought worked.  At the time, it seemed okay.  But it didn’t fit.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but going off to V’s hockey tournament two weeks ago was exactly the break I needed.  It’s remarkable what a few days of watching 8-year-olds skate their hearts out can do to one’s creative batteries.

So when I sat back down to work on the outline, something was different.

Not only was I able to get through a creative block, but on a whim, I changed my one-word theme.  And it really clicked.

Boy, did it.

Even better, it works with a lot of the scenes I already had.

So today I wanted to see if I could keep the creativity flowing for the second half of the first half of Act Two.  I worked on expanding the ideas I came up with yesterday.  In each scene, I would ask “what’s the worst that can happen, and will it ask the central question of the story?”  That helped a lot.

Right now, I’m in the middle of a necessary sequence, and hopefully tomorrow can get to the end of it.  Working the midday shift has a better chance of yielding success.

If I can keep up this kind of progress, I’m hoping to be done with an outline I like by the end of February.  Later than I originally hoped, but the point is: IT WILL BE DONE!

And then the real fun begins.

Movie of the Moment: THE LOSERS, which I completely forgot was based on a DC/Vertigo comic.  Overall, it was a lot of fun with some really predictable moments (I saw the smoldering teddy bear a mile away).  It definitely had some good parts, but sometimes the cheese got a little overwhelming.  Glad I didn’t pay to see it.  My biggest complaint: Jason Patric as the bad guy. Either he was really playing up the camp or the only one not taking it seriously.

Since V is on her Miyazaki kick right now, tonight’s feature was MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO.  I’d seen it a long time ago, but couldn’t really remember anything about it.

It’s yet another charmer, full of warm-fuzzy moments.  Watch it with your kids.   And explain to them that, yes, Japanese families take baths together.

Lastly, it really too much to ask for Netflix to be a little more vigilant about scratched-up discs?  We missed about 12 minutes out of the whole thing because it would freeze, and then jump ahead.

V still loved it.

Cowboys and soldiers are MY kind of crap

Maximum Z anime, I Blame Ninjas, Miyazaki, movies, Netflix, Veronica, westerns, WWII

Through some miracle unbeknownst to me, my Adobe reader at work was up and running, so I was able to read through Patrick Sweeney’s GHOST TRAIN.  Due to time constraints, I got halfway through, then finished it at home.  I want to read it again because I’ve got some questions that a second read may answer.  Comments will be posted Monday.

In the meantime…

K is out of town for the week, so while it may mean the usual readjusting of child care and a slightly different menu (my dishes tend to run simpler when it’s just me and V), it also means I tear through the stuff I put on Netflix I know she won’t watch.

Which usually means westerns, WWII flicks and cheesy recent releases.  Not so much of the first two categories this week, but some of the stuff I’ll be watching over the next few days includes: GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA (which looks really, really stupid, but I can’t help myself), THE LOSERS (mixed reviews), and THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (I read the book, but don’t have any desire to see the upcoming American remake).

I regret not being able to do much with LUCY this weekend, but this whole parenting thing is quite time-consuming.

Speaking of which, V got HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON for Hanukkah.  She loved it when we saw it in the theatres, but I think I’m more interested in watching it again than she is.  Which is okay.

She’s really into Miyazaki films lately.  HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE. KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE.  She wants to see MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO.  Tonight’s feature is CASTLE IN THE SKY.  I saw it when she was really little, but don’t mind having it in the house again.

I don’t know which is more fun to watch.  The movies or her reaction to watching them.

Someday she may even want to watch STEAMBOY, which is just wicked cool.  It was made by Katsuhiro Otomo, the same guy who did AKIRA.  While AKIRA is cool to look at, the story just gets too confusing.  At least for me.

What’s playing at your place?

Totally unexpected but much appreciated

Maximum Z anime, blog, I Blame Ninjas, loglines, Netflix, outlines, screenwriting, scriptshadow

After weeks of agonizing self-doubt and re-examining of whether or not the outline works, I may have stumbled onto the solution I’ve been looking for.

And I owe it all to a guy I’ve never met.

During some of my downtime earlier today, I was checking out some of the screenwriting blogs I like. Some of those led to links, which led to some I’ve checked out once in a while, to a few I’ve never seen.

This guy falls into the middle category.

Patrick Sweeney lives in the Sacramento area and runs the blog I Blame Ninjas.  He wrote a script called GHOST TRAIN, which is also a western-adventure, but apparently with a more supernatural bent.  I asked him if I could take a look and he sent it without hesitation.  I plan on reading it tomorrow.

I also asked him what his logline was.  He sent it.  It is totally kick-ass, and put mine to shame; anything that includes the phrase ‘a train carrying phantom gunslingers to Hell’ has to be good.  But instead of wallowing in self-pity, I realized mine could be almost as good.  So I tinkered.  Now I’m definitely closer to a better one than I was a few days ago.

It also got me thinking that my existing outline is NOT written in stone, and that I CAN make changes and take liberties and all that.

So I did.

Right now I’ve got a completely different beginning, which I like a lot.  I still need to work on the rest of it.

And by reading a script review on Scriptshadow, I also discovered what had really been holding me back before in terms of my antagonist: his motivation.  Why does he do what he does?  For now, it’s one of the two standards: money or revenge.  I’m not sure yet, but both have definite possibilities.  He can’t just be bad because it suits the script.

I also thought of introducing yet another subplot about a treasure map (to tie in with that whole ‘money’ motivation), but I don’t need any more headaches over this thing, so I’ll stick with what I’ve got.

No Movie of the Moment today, but I’ve been enjoying the risque anime MOUSE about a cat burglar and his three buxom assistants.  More or less PG-13 material, but typical Japanese sex humor and not for kids.  Unless you’re a teenaged boy who gets a big kick out of skits on Benny Hill.

Amazingly, I’m not the one who put this on our Netflix queue.  That honor goes to the lovely K.  But I’m really grateful she did.

Really grateful.