Sometimes, you just gotta

BLOG.

Listen. I'm sorry. Not for the fact that I haven't blogged in a million years (six weeks), but that I don't really have anything to say right now. Just a desire to say it.

My life is absurdly, profoundly, obscenely busy, and I'm barely keeping up with the weekly commitment I've made to Rhombus. Poor them. Because I'm awesome.

I DO have good news. A week and a half ago, we finished shooting "One Item or Less." That means that it's at least possible it will be done (meaning ready to SCREEN) in December. That's the goal. And if not that, then January. JANUARY. I'm not sure how, um...good...it is, but I think that it will be engaging to some degree. The footage is really pretty, and some of the concepts we've come up with for sound design and transitions are very, for lack of a better word, neat.

Can I say how incredible this has all been? By the way? Writing a screenplay, organizing a crew, taking the script through pre-visualization and pre-production, casting it, finding a place to shoot it, getting everything pulled together...and then shooting it! It's quite wonderful. And completely, consumingly addictive. I want to do this forever.

I would talk a little bit about the films I've seen recently, but why? You can read my reviews on Rhombus.

What WON'T be on Rhombus is that I watched (with a group of very attractive people) Nacho Libre again last night. If you haven't seen it, fix that. And if you have seen it, but only once, and you didn't like it too well, then watch it again. If you have seen it at least twice...it's pretty great, isn't it? Jared Hess is the man.

And speaking of him, Gentlemen Broncos comes out this weekend in Salt Lake, at the Broadway Theater. That's the most important information I have to share, assuming you didn't already know it. Critics almost universally hate it, and I can't wait to see it.

Anyway.

On a parting, unrelated note, I (and I'll provide no context for this statement at all) love girls. Women. Female human beings. They're awesome.

That is all.

Rhombus

Friends, family, people who I don't know but are no less beautiful for it,

I have just agreed to start writing for a new online magazine called Rhombus. It's local--BYU students run it. It's also striving desperately to replace another local publication called Square Magazine, which was a little bit like Watchtower, left at your door, only vaguely interesting, and suffocatingly self-aggrandizing.

I have a review of the film 9 posted as of yesterday, so go check it out.

The sad part of this tale is that I probably won't be spending much time at all posting on this here blog as long as I'm writing for Rhombus. I want to see that online magazine succeed, so I'll be focusing all of my efforts and sweet skeeels in marketing toward getting that title out there.

Every once in a while, I'll probably throw up a post about something Rhombus probably doesn't care about. But my reviews, and my political views, and my thoughts about important things (of which I have SO many), have now all found themselves a new home.

So go there. And read my review. And then read other stuff too. Cause they got pretty good writers over there, and other pretty cool stuff.

One Item or Less

It's official, I'm making a movie.

Last Thursday, I and my fledgling crew had our first production meeting for the short film "One Item or Less." I wrote the screenplay, and I'm going to direct the film. Wyatt Strain will be producing, and A. Todd Smith is my cinematographer, which means this little movie's gonna be PRETTY.

Here's the short synopsis I wrote for IndieGoGo, and which I don't feel like rewriting. Ever. (Do you know how difficult it is to write a decent synopsis? I'll tell you: very.)

A mysterious caller gives a man a choice. What one thing would he save if his house was burned to the ground? It is an important question because the caller has promised to do just that.

And the tagline: "What one thing is more important than anything else?"

How cool is that? Right? Eh...? EH? (I'll tell you...)

Here are three links that are important:

Facebook Group

Facebook Page

IndieGoGo Page

This little film, as insignificant as it is in the grand scheme of anything, is nevertheless a bit of a big deal for me. I've never directed anything beyond the one to three minute exercises we do in our film classes. In other words, I don't know what I'm doing. All I've got is about fifteen hundred pounds of theory packed into my skull and an absurd belief in my own abilities. It's bound to turn out badly, but if I can create a short film that even some people enjoy, then I will feel encouraged to continue on in my aspirations to become a bona fide director. If not...I suppose I'll...well, I'll probably keep trying.

"Never give up! NEVER surrender!" (Name that film and you get a candy bar. It's true--just ask Kelsie. Right Kelsie? How was your Reeses?)

Mudbison

I'm not huge into the local music scene. Let's be honest with each other. Most of the local bands in Provo are...not very good. Certainly, there has occasionally passed through some very talented artists, but there seems to be an overall aesthetic of drab unoriginality to most of what passes for homegrown music here. Everybody is an acoustic-guitar-playing, Jack Johnson wannabe. Or they're...I don't know, Relient K? I mean, I have nothing against Relient K, but you really only need one of them. And the same goes for Mr. Johnson.

Anyway, there's one band that blows me away. Well, two, but one of them isn't quite local anymore. These two bands are RuRu (Isaac Russell), and Mudbison (Spencer Russell). These boys are TALENTED. I'm not talking clever or charismatic--they have serious talent. They are musicians of the highest order and songwriters to be reckoned with.

Isaac has gotten himself signed with a major label, and no longer qualifies to be considered part of the local scene.

But Spencer (of Mudbison) is just getting warmed up. You can still see him locally on a pretty regular basis. I tell you this with some urgency, noting that they probably won't stick around small time for long.

Here's an important article.

And here's a sweet song (which also happens to be a Youtube video):



I'll admit that the reason I know about these guys is because they are the sons of one of my favorite (FAVORITE) professors, Tom Russell, who teaches many important film classes.

Mudbison is a big deal. Go see them, if you can, on the 25th of this month at the Velour. They're wonderful.

NEW!

First, here's a quick review of a movie I saw last November (the Third in my Netflixing series.) No, hang on, even before that, I feel like I should admit that I won't be reviewing every movie that has come into my house from that intrusively marketed company (I really feel like once I sign up for the service, I should stop getting pop-up advertisements for it). I'll just go over the good to great ones I missed.

Shotgun Stories. I really, really enjoyed this one. It's naturalistic and slow, which is something that's very difficult to pull off well. The characters are all southern, white trash types. They hold dead end jobs or no jobs at all, and they barely get along with each other. But the story is powerful, and the themes it illustrates are extremely meaningful and complex.

On the outside, it's about a family feud, hence the title. But it ends up being about transcending the baser instincts of revenge and pride. The ending is beautiful. I recommend this film. It's not for everyone, being as slow as it is. And it's definitely gritty and heavy. There's not a lot of joy in this film. But I still, very highly, recommend this film.

So what's "NEW": I'm going to only be posting once every week in the coming months. School started and I no longer have time to just blog away all the time (much as I love it). So that means cutbacks, people. Don't blame me. Blame life.

Books (also J names)

This is a movie/media blog (which technically encompasses books as well, but...), so here's a movie review:

Julie and Julia is both a book and a movie. You probably knew about the movie. And the book. Probably. But MORE probably, you knew about the movie, cause it's out in theaters right now, and that's where I saw it on Wednesday night.

I'm beginning to suspect that Meryl Streep is mentoring Amy Adams. It's a good match--they're both absolutely brilliant actresses, but very different in style and range. I think Streep can probably do anything, and Amy Adams has this ability to cause every single person in the world to fall in love with her, and believe completely in her sweetness. She gets her audiences thinking, "Well, if she's really that wonderful, then I guess the world can't be that bad after all." (It is--but she certainly makes it better.)

All I need to say to qualify my deep approval for this endearing film about French cooking is that it was adapted and directed by Nora Ephron (You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally). Also, not for the sake of redundance but in spite of it, Amy Adams and Meryl Streep are really, really grand (see: Doubt).

But this post is really about books.

I went walking through the library today (BYU has one of the largest and most awesome libraries this side of anywwhere), shopping for a new stockpile. I like to have two or three books out at a time so that if I finish one, I can go ahead and just start on another that same day or the next. Or, if I don't end up liking one of them, I can switch with terrible swiftness.

I just finished the 2nd book in the Rigante series by David Gemmell (whom I love), and now it's time for a change of scenery. So I went through my Goodreads account and picked out a handful of titles that sounded good--"No Country for Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy (an author I've been meaning to read for over a year now), "A Scanner Darkly" by Philip K. Dick, and "Embraced by the Light," which is an I-died-and-came-back book by Bettie J. Eadie (and Curtis Taylor, who happens to be the father of one of my very good friends.)

Libraries are magnificent structures. They are deep repositories of human knowledge, collected, refined, and utilized over the thousands of years of our recorded history. Granted, the vast bulk of it all has been written, printed, and distributed within the past few hundred years, but even so, all of the words we write and the thoughts we think are at least subtley influenced by the countless generations that have spanned the preceding millenia. Walk into a library, and you have entered a sacred place where knowledge and understanding have been worshipped since recorded time began.

There is a trend, in the rush to modernization, toward perfect efficiency and absolute convenience. In a digital age, we welcome the steady decline of wasted paper that creates mounds of transiently useful printed material. We think, all of us, even if we forever refuse to admit it, that hard copied, flesh and blood books will eventually die out. To look out over the world at production management and streamlined industry, the printing, sale, and reading of actual, physical books does seem to be an increasingly dated artifact of an older society. We'll keep them around for a while as a memory. We'll put them on shelves and never read them (much like we do already). The ones people actually read will go into museums before they've had a chance to turn to dust, a right to which all living things are ultimately entitled.

We know they'll die. We know it. Things like the Kindle are a meager beginning to what our immediate future surely holds. Eventually, a la the iPhone, we will all purchase some brand of some device that really does do it all, including store every book we could ever read or possess in a lifetime.

And why not? It's more efficient that way. Cheaper. More sure. Once something gets saved digitally and globally, it's forever. The data of our public consciousness is backed up and then backed up again. The words of this blog might not ever really die--who knows?

In this line of thinking, however, lies our greatest misunderstanding about ourselves. We built computers to increase our productivity, and thank the heavens for it. But we are not like what we've built. We have not created computers in our own image, we have created them in the likeness of machines, without aspirations, dreams, or comprehensions. Once we built them, however, we somehow began to worship their god: Efficiency. Not all of us, but an ever-expanding number of us. And even those who do not bow to this god believe in its existence and omnipotence. The older generations meekly accept that this god will one day cow the world. "Every knee shall bow...even if I don't, my kids, or their kids, will."

Maybe. But it will be a false god, and will only shrink and diminish us. We are physical creatures. Efficiency can be a virtue, like fire, but it must be used, not worshipped. Our bodies must be in motion, and our hands must be at work, no matter the power and utility of our machines, or we will die by becoming less than what we've built.

Pull a book from a shelf. Open it. Read it. Turn its pages and let it speak to you as only it can. Have you ever noticed how silent the words on a screen are? Those words are not meant for hands. They are aritifices, illusions, unfiltered information. They have they're use (as I, sitting here and typing my thoughts, obviously believe), but they are more limiting than we usually realize.

Reading a book is somewhat sedentary, but it is natural and powerful. When we read something projected into our eyes, nothing else moves. Our bodies are captive. The orbs in our heads flick back and forth almost imperceptibly, but our flesh is motionless. What happens after several hours in front of a screen? You fidget. Your body shifts, stretches, writhes. These are the motions of attempted escape.

Of course it is far from impossible to read too much, whether it be from a computer or from bound sheets of paper--either way, an excess of physical inactivity is supremely unhealthy. But books are better for your soul, and by that I mean the combination of body and spirit (or mind, if that suits you). We are dual, composite creations. Books are good, and not only because they have assisted us in our intellectual evolution--not just as a stepping stone toward perfect efficiency. They must endure because we need them in order to remember who we are.

It's nothing new to say that we've lost as much wisdom as we've gained knowledge. We know so much, but the stature of our minds seems to be shrinking. How much of what afflicts us as modernized human beings could be amelioratedo mended by the simple action of picking up a book in your hands? And opening the cover. And turning the pages....

And reading.

Il y a longtemps que je t'aime

In English: I've Loved You So Long.

This is a movie most of you probably haven't heard of. It's French, so made and so written. And it's a bit of an arty film about two sisters who are reunited after 15 years.

And it's excellent. They marketed this film brilliantly:













That is the face of Kristin Scott Thomas. She is wonderful in basically every way. There is not, to my knowledge, a more elegant, beautiful, and supremely talented actress alive--she sells the film better than anything else could have.

I don't want to give too much of the plot away, because it's much better unraveled slowly, carefully, with the artistic precision intended by the filmmakers. It is a story about immense pain and suffering that took place in the past--outside of the frame. But the past events, even cloaked in mystery for so much of the film, provide a profoundly dynamic and compelling foundation for everything that happens within the story we see.

The acting was all-around incredible. There wasn't a weak spot in the cast. But, of course, Thomas steals the show with the impenetrable depth behind her eyes. You may never have seen anyone communicate so much with so little expression. Her performance is understated to a degree that is extremely rare in today's Oscar-grabbing climate.

In order to truly impress me, however, a film must display humanity with grace and power. That means believable, redeemable characters. I have little patience for "bad guys" in films. I understand their utility in melodrama, but the truth is that most of us don't know many truly bad people. And no one in this film is bad. Some of them are weak, but only sometimes. Some of them are wrong, but not always. There's intolerance, but only temporarily. Most of all, there is love, in abundance and in all shades. And the love carries the story and the characters. By the end, the message is clear: Terrible tragedies visit the best of us, and it is only love and compassion of others that can help us through. We need other people, and sometimes desperately.