eternal sunshine Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Cinematical Seven: My Favorite Screenplays of the Decade
Filed under: Classics », Comedy », Drama », Romance », Scripts », Home Entertainment », Cinematical Seven », Remakes and Sequels »
Well, it's official. The Writers Guild of America is going on strike tomorrow. Here's hoping the strike ends quickly and that all parties come away happy. And writers? Use this time off to study my choices for the seven best screenplays of the 2000's:
The 40 Year Old Virgin by Judd Apatow & Steve Carell
The blending of improvisation and the written word gives Apatow's two classic comedies -- Knocked Up would be the other -- a feeling of authenticity that is all too rare in today's film world. Apatow takes the strategy of writing for specific performers and their strengths, and it really pays off. Scoff if you want at a sex comedy making the list, but for a movie to be this incredibly funny -- while keeping an oddly touching romance and a spot-on character study afloat -- the screenwriters deserve high praise.
About Schmidt by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor
One of the saddest comedies ever made, and one of the most truthful and painful portraits of old age. Payne and Taylor specialize in scripts about people on the verge of cracking, depressed souls who tend to find the smallest redemption possible. Payne/Taylor characters never go from Point A to Point B over the course of the screenplay, they go from Point A to Point A.1. The small, gradual changes in their characters are reflective of the way actual humans (as opposed to movie humans) work. Warren Schmidt's personal growth is so minor that it is confined to the last thirty seconds of the film, but when it comes it's an emotional punch in the gut.
Sundance Review: The Science of Sleep
Filed under: Foreign Language », Independent », Music & Musicals », Sundance », Warner Independent Pictures », Festival Reports », Cinematical Indie »
All week long, people have been telling me that Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep "would've been great – if Charlie Kauffman had written it." Gondry, of course, made his first two features out of scripts created by Kaufman – Human Nature and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – after spending ten years making gorgeously weird and often very funny music videos for a-listers like The White Stripes and Madonna. There's no question that the guy's brain is full of images; but is he capable, when left to his own devices, of threading the pretty pictures through with any kind of traditional narrative strain?
Well, no, actually, as it turns out, The Science of Sleep is not particularly effective, story wise, and no, it doesn't match Eternal Sunshine in terms of emotional resonance. But god, I loved it, so, so much. It will certainly frustrate those who want directors to essentially present them with neat little packages, fully contained narratives wrapped with perfect red bows. It's not an easy thing to comprehend, and it requires work, although like Gondry's last film, its convolutions would almost certainly benefit from repeat viewings. But I think those who miss Kaufman's uncanny ability to tightly structure his stories around a given non-linear gimmick are missing the point: The Science of Sleep structuring gimmick is that it doesn't have a structuring gimmick: what little narrative it has gets its potency from the fact that the thing is a glorious mess.
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