Michael Connelly & Steve McQueen



Michael Connelly

USA Today has a good article on Michael Connelly, author of the Harry Bosch detective series and the Mickey Haller "Lincoln Lawyer" series. Connelly has become one of my favorite writers. I love his Harry Bosch series.
The article page also features a video interview of Connelly, in which he reveals that his vision of the best actor to play Harry Bosch onscreen is the late Steve McQueen. Connelly says when he created Harry Bosch, he was picturing McQueen in his role as the detective Bullitt.



 

Steve McQueen in
The Great Escape



That was a surprise to me, because I hadn't pictured Bosch as being anything like McQueen. But then, it's been a long long time since I saw the movie Bullitt. I'll have to put that on my NetFlix queue. My favorite of the roles he played was his character in The Great Escape, Virgil Hilts, "The Cooler King."



McQueen, who was nicknamed the King of Cool, died 30 years ago. If he'd survived he'd be 80 years old now. It's hard to picture an 80-year-old Steve McQueen.



Robin Hood 2010

Continuing my Robin Hood musings from yesterday, here's my review of the new version of Robin Hood, a 2010 movie directed by Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe.

It's a prequel--that is, it tells the story of how the expert archer Robin came to be "Robin Hood." Crowe plays Robin Longstride, a yeoman archer who's been following King Richard the Lionheart on crusade for ten years. Worn out, bitter and disillusioned, he sneaks away after King Richard is killed while besieging a castle in France. Along the way Longstride and his three soldier buddies happen on an ambush massacre. They repel the attackers and discover the victims are a group of Englishmen who were trying to return King Richard's crown to England. One of the dying victims, Sir Robert Loxley, begs Robin with his dying breath to return his sword to his father at Nottingham. Robin promises he will. He and his buddies return to England disguised as knights--Longstride calling himself Robert of Loxley and bearing the Loxley sword as well as the royal crown. Thereafter plot complications ensue. (For a full plot summary, including spoilers, see the Wikipedia site on the film.)

It has great production values, cinematography, costumes, and period detail. It has lots of action--battle scenes, swordfights, fistfights, chase scenes, executions, etc., as you would expect in a movie by Ridley Scott (whose work I greatly admire--Blade Runner is one my favorite movies).  It has Russell Crowe, a great actor, as well as a cast of other top-notch performers--e.g., Max von Sydow, Cate Blanchett, William Hurt.

But...I was disappointed.

Why? Because there was none of the joie de vivre I associate with the Robin Hood tales. All the movie/TV versions of Robin Hood I've seen have had strong explicit or implicit wit and good humor--an optimism, an underlying happy feel. The Scott/Crowe Robin Hood, however, is grim. Really grim. Everybody is grim. Everything is grim. Oh, unquestionably real medieval times were grim. And yes, the whole Robin Hood thing is just a legend. But we expect legends to fulfill our (often subconscious) mythic fantasies. Mine went unfulfilled by this version of Robin Hood. There's no real humor or happiness anywhere in the movie. Robin Longstride becomes a hero as the movie goes along--he helps save England from a French invasion, and directly saves the perfidious King John from being slain--and he's clearly a leader of men. But even at the end, when Robin, Lady Marian (or, as spelled in the movie cast list, Marion), and the merry men are living in Sherwood Forest as outlaws, purportedly one big happy family, the smiles and merriment seemed forced. And the romance between Robin and Marian (Marion)? Hah. I did not sense any chemistry between Crowe and Blanchett, good actors though they are. I didn't get the feel-good ending I hoped for.

Oh, and I have some quibbles with accuracy, if one can expect historical accuracy from a movie about a legend. The movie has King Philip of France invading England, himself along for the ride. It never happened. And the French troops are being landed in boats with drop-down fronts, just like the Higgins LSTs used during the D-Day invasion in WWII. I didn't tear out my hair at the movie theatre, but I did tug on a few strands from time to time.

If you want to read a review of the film by a real movie critic, the esteemed Roger Ebert, go here.

Does all that sound like I'm bashing it? Yet, I still recommend you see it if you love costume dramas, historical settings, medieval battles, and watching great actors in cinematic tropes. It's worth the price of admission, but it may not be what you expect out of a Robin Hood remake.

Musings on Robin Hood

I've just seen the new Robin Hood movie and it has inspired a spurt of Robin Hood nostalgia in me.

First, let me return to the days of yesteryear, when the British half-hour series The Adventures of Robin Hood was one of my favorite TV shows. Starring Richard Greene, the show had a memorable theme song that I still remember:

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, with his band of men
Feared by the bad, loved by the good;
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood!

Too bad I can't reproduce the catchy tune in this blog, but I guarantee that any of you who grew up in the 50s-60s remember it, too. I'd say a lot of my idealism goes back to those days of viewing brave Robin steal from the rich to give to the poor...Ah, how my romantic notions were fed by the idylls of Robin and Maid Marian, with Friar Tuck, Little John, and the other Merry Men cavorting in Sherwood Forest, making fools out of the Sheriff of Nottingham and King John and their evil minions.

(It now occurs to me that King John somehow appeared in a lot of those episodes--strange his predilection for traveling repeatedly to that part of his kingdom and dealing with these lowly subjects, when so many other parts of England and more noble subjects must have been much more to his taste....)

I love almost all the versions of Robin Hood I've seen so far:

• The 1938 Errol Flynn film (The Adventures of Robin Hood), which many critics consider the benchmark of Robin Hood cinema, with Flynn in his most famous role;
• The 1952 Disney film The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, starring Richard Todd;
• Disney's 1973 animated Robin Hood (a favorite of my daughter's childhood), in which Robin Hood is a fox;
• 1976's Robin and Marian, showing the legendary couple in their golden years (and what a couple--the leading roles were played by Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn);
• I even liked 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, despite its star, Kevin Costner (among the most stone-faced of leading men, the other top contenders being Keanu Reeves and Arnold Schwarzenegger), because it had the wonderful Alan Rickman as the Sheriff (whose mesmerizing voice made me almost like the Sheriff);
• Mel Brooks' 1993 parody Robin Hood: Men in Tights, which hilariously satirizes both the 1938 Flynn version and the 1991 Costner version, stars the delicious Cary Elwes as Robin; his best line is when he turns to the camera and smugly announces, "Unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent!" (an overt dig at Kevin Costner's American accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves).

I found the links for these movies on Wikipedia's List of films and television series featuring Robin Hood. That list is much longer than I expected and I've seen only a few of the entries. I know many of those movies are no longer available, but it may be time for a Robin Hood DVD Festival here at the SphinxInk digs. I see there are lots of different takes on Robin Hood out there, including several TV series that I've completely missed.

As for what I thought of the new Robin Hood, starring Russell Crowe and directed by Ridley Scott, I'll post that tomorrow.

A Little Post-Oscars Comic Relief

I devoted much of last weekend to the Oscars. On Saturday I attended a day-long movie marathon that showed five of the ten Best Picture nominees. (Yep, 12 hours sitting in a movie theatre, watching five films in a row.) On Sunday I devoted six or seven hours to watching pre-show interviews and red carpet fashion commentary followed by the Academy Awards event itself.

But somehow it's not enough. I love all that stuff. I'm sorry I missed the first Saturday movie marathon in which the other five Best Picture nominees were presented.

I'm always willing to laugh at our movie mania, however, and here's a clever website (which I found on Jenny Crusie's Argh Ink blog):

Honest Movie Titles: Oscars 2010

These are funny regardless whether you've seen the movies parodied, but of course they're best if you've seen the flicks.

And this -- also via alert from Argh Ink -- has nothing to do with Oscars or movies, but is extremely clever. (Couldn't understand what they were singing, but I love those Rube Goldberg devices....)

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass - Rube Goldberg Machine version


Oh, and hey -- isn't it cool a woman finally won Best Director? And for a truly worthy effort: The Hurt Locker is excellent. You go, Kathryn Bigelow!

The Difference Between "Mediocre" and "Very Good"

Writer Alex Keegan has a good article in the Internet Writing Journal on what transformed the Oscar-winning film Gladiator (2000, starring Russell Crowe) from a B-movie action flick to an excellent film. In "Shoot the Rhino," Keegan discusses the choices made by the screenplay's three writers. He points out that with only slight differences in the color and sensibility--the tone--the whole movie would have become less appealing. Instead, the writers focused on developing the hero, Maximus, as a man rather than just as a warrior, and made the dialog scenes weightier, "almost Shakespearean." Keegan discusses other tacks the writers took that gave the movie more impact--including convincing the director to leave out a particular special-effects scene. (Keegan doesn't say where he got the information. I assume it must be from interviews in Extras scene of the movie DVD.)

Caveat: If you haven't seen the movie yet, but want to, don't read Keegan's post because it gives away the ending.

Quote of the Day (and good to remember when I'm composing a blog post):

Most blogs suck. I'm being blunt, but no one wants to read about what you
ate for breakfast unless you're a dingo and you ate a baby.
-- Bob Mayer in He Wrote, She Wrote: the Crusie-Mayer Writing Workshop.

Riffing on High Concept

Sidney Williams had a recent blog post on high concept. My writers' group has discussed high concept repeatedly, because that seems to be the best way to pitch books as well as scripts nowadays. It's a term that started in the movie industry and has spread to publishing.

In brief, as Wikipedia defines it,

The plot of a high concept movie is easily understood by audiences, and can often be described in a sentence or two, and succinctly summarized by the movie's title. ... Often high concept movies are pitched as combinations of existing high concept movies, or unique twists on existing titles. ... High concept movies often have themes which tie into an area of popular fascination and have a ready-built foundation of subsidiary issues and ever-ramifying facts that can feed the marketing machine, from magazine articles to weblog chatter, on levels ranging from the superficial to the intellectually or factually exhaustive.

Some of the high concept movies Wikipedia lists are Beverly Hills Cop, Home Alone, Jurassic Park, Speed, Star Wars, and Jaws.

On the other hand, screenwriter Steve Kaire defines high concept differently. To him, it's not just a story that can be pitched in one sentence; nor is it one film crossed with another film. In "High Concept Defined Once and For All," an article at the Writers Store website, Kaire says,

Story ideas, treatments and screenplays can all have High Concept premises. But only High Concept projects can be sold from a pitch because they are pitch driven. Non-High Concept projects can't be sold from a pitch because they are execution driven. They have to be read to be appreciated and their appeal isn't obvious by merely running a logline past someone.

According to Kaire, there are five requirements for a high-concept story: (1) The premise should be original and unique; (2) The premise has to have mass audience appeal; (3) The pitch has to be story-specific; (4) The potential must be obvious; and (5) The pitch should be one to three sentences long.

Sidney Williams made several funny high-concept story suggestions in his blog. For example,

North by Northwest meets The Seventh Seal. (Think about it: Death in a crop duster chasing Cary Grant.)

Play along at home if you like and stop chuckling. This is how Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man came about. Curt Siodmak was joking around about movie titles at the Universal commissary one day and wound up with an assignment.

In the comments on Sidney's blog, the ever-inventive Charles Gramlich made some hilarious suggestions, including "Wayne Allen Sallee Versus Stewart Sternberg"--which is the topic of Sidney's followup blog post, "Manly Concepts"--including Sidney's verrrry funnny version of a poster for movie of same. (FMI, see Wayne's blog, Frankenstein 1959 and Stewart's blog, House of Sternberg.)

A real-life example of high concept, and how it can sell your manuscript, is exhibited by a new book coming out this week. According to USA Today, first-time author Patricia Wood pitched her book Lottery as "Forrest Gump wins Powerball," and bingo! she hit the jackpot with a six-figure deal.

Now that's high-concept.

OD'd on celebrity gossip

Last night I discovered Ask the Answer B!tch at the E!Online website. I spent the next couple of hours overdosing on it. Readers can ask the Answer B!tch any question they like about Hollywood filmdom and celebrities...the AB can probably find the answer. Her snarky, witty, smart-ass approach makes her columns fun to read. Her archives contain over 170 questions. The mixture ranges from the serious ("What is Method acting?", "What do stand-ins do, exactly?") to the inane ("Which cell phone plans do the stars get?", "Why hasn't Britney Spears written me back?", "Does everyone in Hollywood get colonics?"). The Answer B!tch's responses not only offer interesting facts, but also make inanity a hoot.

Even the AB, however, has to tiptoe around some topics ("Who in gay Hollywood can I look up to?"). At least one query is of interest to writers: "Why don't writers have any power in Hollywood?"

Stranger Than Fiction

I recently saw the movie STRANGER THAN FICTION, which stars Will Ferrell, Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal. It was well-worth seeing, especially for writers/booklovers. Not great, but entertaining, and thought-provoking in a Hollywood way. It poses two questions: (1) If you discovered that your life exactly parallels the life of a character in a book, and the book has a tragic ending, what would you do? (2) If you were a novelist and discovered that everything you write comes true, what would you do?

Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson) is a famous novelist who's having problems completing her eighth book. The main character of her book is Harold Crick, an uptight, repressed IRS auditor who lives a carefully structured, precise existence in which he does the same things every day in the same order, in the same way. Emma's book deadline has long expired and she's agonizing over how to finish the book.

Harold Crick (Will Ferrell) is an uptight, repressed IRS auditor who lives a carefully structured, precise existence...in which he does the same things every day in the same order, in the same way. One day Harold hears a voice narrating everything he's doing--while he's doing it. The narration continues, day after day. He starts talking back to The Voice--actually, shouting back to it. His boss is concerned, so Harold ends up seeing a psychiatrist--in fact, two psychiatrists. Neither can help him. The first one suggests that he needs a vacation and a hug. The second one tells him that the word for his condition is schizophrenia and he needs medication. When he refuses meds, the second shrink tells him that if the voice narrating his life is telling a story, then maybe he needs to see a literature professor.

So Harold finds a literature professor, Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who doesn't laugh at his claims, but tells him he needs to figure out whether he's in a comedy or a tragedy: "If it's a comedy, you get married. If it's a tragedy, you die." Hilbert is indifferent to Harold's plight until one day when Harold bursts into his office and tells him he heard The Voice narrating, "Little did he know his death was imminent." Hilbert becomes hugely excited, telling Harold, "Little did he know! Little did he know! I wrote a book on 'little did he know'! I've done papers and seminars, I've taught courses on 'little did he know'!" From that point on Hilbert actively assists Harold as Harold searches frantically for The Voice.

A simultaneous plot thread follows Harold's budding romance with Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a rebellious young woman whom he's assigned to audit for the IRS--an opposites-attract pairing, because he's stilted and inhibited and doesn't know himself at all, while she's wild and crazy and believes in following her muse wherever she leads.

The third thread follows blocked author Eiffel's despairing progress as she tries to squeeze out the final section of her novel--and her horror when she eventually discovers that her character Harold Crick is a real person.

Will Ferrell plays against type as the extremely repressed Harold, but does it well, showing his acting chops go well beyond the zany comedy for which he's known. Emma Thompson does a good job as the Tortured Author (Thompson wouldn't give a mediocre or bad performance in any role). Maggie Gyllenhaal is delightful as the kooky, rebellious free spirit Ana. But Dustin Hoffman steals the scene from all of them as the literature professor: the "little did he know" scene is priceless (especially to this former English major).

I rate it 3 stars on a scale of 5.