Hi, I’m Bert and I’m a screenwriter. When I’m not writing entertainment, I am writing about it. This site contains short reviews of things I am watching, playing, reading… Completely on my own time. I tend to focus on the stories and narrative and try to figure out the age-old question: how did they do it?
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“War has a way of distinguishing between the things that matter and the things that don’t.” (Matthew)
Well, we’re back. The year is 1916 and we’re in the middle of the first World War. The stakes are high but still everything has its usual casual charm in Downton Abbey’s second season.
“I think there’s no one else in the all the world; there’s only you and me.” (Gillian)
Okay, I’m not going to beat a dead horse for long, other reviewers have done this already. But please do allow me this short rant: Boardwalk Empire has never been more blatantly Oedipal than this. In one episode, Jimmy Darmody went from shellshocked criminal to tragic victim of his surroundings. And to think it was as easy as letting his sleep with his mother and kill his father.
“How’s your thirst for adventure, Captain?” (Tintin)
It should be no secret that I’m a Belgian. And, as is mandatory on our dictatorial catholic schools, where the whips are aplenty and fagging is still a hip new thing, I have read all Tintin comics. When applying for a job, the topic would casually pop up: “What do you think of Thomson’s motivation on page 23 of The Temple of the Sun?”* To which we would find a fitting answer. Common practice.
Then came Steven Spielberg and we, the mighty Belgians, roared with outrage! What had he done to our ageless blank slate male? What had happened to the clear line drawing, Hergé’s trademark style? And – gasp! – character development? Seriously?!
In all seriousness, it turns out Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is actually pretty darn good.
Monsters, Inc. is an amazing film. The first Pixar movie not to be directed by John Lasseter, it further consolidated the already wildly successful California-based computer animation studio, showing that it wasn’t just a one-genius operation. Monsters, Inc. let Pete Docter in the director’s chair and with great success. But why is it so great? In two articles, I’ll be digging a bit deeper into the story structure used in this surprisingly unconventional flick.
Today, I’ll talk a bit about the way Monsters sets up its world. Continue reading
“How Nucky shoes be fitting these days?” (Chalky)
If you say you didn’t see it coming, you’re pretty much blind. Sure, it’s HBO – if Boardwalk Empire were a network show, Angela’d been dead ages ago. But, even with HBO’s budgets, a role can be so piss-poor that not even money can save it. So Angela bit the duts in what would otherwise have been just another Boardwalk Empire episode.
“Sometimes I feel as if I were living in an H.G. Wells novel.” (Violet)
For an episode spending so much time on introducing a telephone and with a very predictable cliffhanger, I was surprised to not see two and two put together. It appears that, in case of war breakout, the good old telegraph is still the way to go. Downton Abbey finished off its spectacular season with a bang followed by a very predictable non-existent cliffhanger. Jeez, it’s 1914, we all know the war was coming.