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sunset, then the lesbian aliens
I snapped this image late this evening down by the River Corrib in Galway city. The Film Fleadh kicked off tonight, so I passed a long line of people, some dressed up smartly, waiting to get into the Rowing Club. That’s the official after-movie venue for the Fleadh, and it has a lovely section at the back that overlooks the River. It’s a splendid spot to quaff a few drinks and take cinema if the weather is good. Those were the film buffs who’d been in to see the opening film, Parked (written by Ciaran Creagh and directed by Darragh Byrne). I was on my way to watch a black…
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dialogue is not uncinematic
Last night our screenwriting group watched the black and white classic 12 Angry Men (1957)–which was directed by Sidney Lumet, and written by Reginald Rose. Afterwards we had a great discussion about a variety of subjects, including what makes one project work for television but not for cinema, and vice versa. What’s lovely about our group is that when we don’t have material to assess we like to mix things up. So we can watch a film, or examine a topic of interest, or, as in the case of our next meeting, go to the theatre to see a play. As I’ve said before, being able to spend time in…
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respect the early masters of the genre
Yesterday, much to my delight, I got delivery of The Val Lewton Horror Collection (region 1 only). For those of you unfamiliar with the man, Val Lewton was appointed head of the Horror unit in RKO in 1942. He proceeded to commission a series of films that only had to conform to three rules: 1. The budget had to be under $150,000. 2. The film could not run more than 75 minutes (each film was shown as half of a double feature). 3. The title of the film was supplied by Lewton’s supervisors. The obvious 4th rule that is not normally mentioned is that it had to be scary. Horror…
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one to keep an eye (of the devil) on
Often, there are subjects that I want to tackle on this journal, but the press of time doesn’t allow me the opportunity. Over the coming weeks I hope to tackle a few items that have been on the mental back-burner for some time. For instance, I’d want to mention a horror flick I saw at the end of October, when TV channels were dripping with slasher pics and creature features. On TCM late one night I caught the beginning of a film called Eye of the Devil (1967), and made a snap decision to watch its entirety despite the fact it was going to cost me the next day. The…
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creepy films
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about horror. For the next meeting of my screenwriting group I’ve agreed to discuss the horror genre, and show a classic horror film. Since this is for the purposes of writing, I picked a film that would be well-known by everyone, had a script online that everyone could read in advance, and I decided that I’d go with a movie that was not based on previous material (book, comic, short story, etc.). If we’re trying to flex our writing muscles to generate new concepts I figured we might as well look at how an original idea was developed for the screen. So, I chose…
