I am growing very fond of Cinema 21. My first impression was that it was kind of a dive, but it is clean, and the service is consistent, and while I am not sure that the seats are supposed to move as much as they do, they are still pretty comfy.
Where they have really become important is that they show very compelling fare on a regular basis. Also, you generally only have a week to see whatever it is, with no guarantees about it turning up later on TV or DVD. I have gotten pretty apathetic about making it down to the megaplex with stadium seating, enormous tubs of popcorn, continuous commercials, and poorly crafted storytelling, but Cinema 21 keeps luring me down. Anyway, this time they got me with Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten.
I did not fall wildly in love with the movie, but I am glad I saw it. It filled a lot of things in where my knowledge was spotty. It was not as energetic or comprehensive as The End of the Century (also seen at Cinema 21), but it had its own mood and its own point, and it did okay.
I did read up on the film a little before going, so my viewing experience was framed somewhat by comments from other viewers. For the complaint about no captions done on any of the interview subjects, yes, that did make things harder. You are constantly trying to guess and identify, and then pieces come together and you are ‘okay, former girlfriend’ or what have you. At one point I was thinking someone might be his brother, but then no, his brother has been dead for decades. So that is hard, but I think it worked within the context of the film. The interviews are done around campfires, which was an important tradition for Joe, and that brings a mood that is informal and intimate and captions explaining whom everyone was would not fit. For more informed fans a lot of the faces will be pretty familiar anyway, where that is less of an issue. Since I went in recognizing almost no one, and was still able to derive meaning, clearly the film is still accessible.
The other complaints were about some faces that were too familiar, in that they had big names that provided no value. I think I was okay with Martin Scorsese, though I am not sure he added a lot of value, but John Cusack definitely fit in fine, and what he added was short and was appropriate for that section of the film. Actually, not too many people complained about them. There were many more complaints about Johnny Depp and Bono, and there I have to agree.
For Johnny, I just don’t think his comments were valuable, and also despite being himself, instead of Captain Jack Sparrow, he had the headscarf and the braided beard and it was just a joke. Maybe they caught him during the middle of filming one of the Pirates movies, but yeah, it jarred.
Bono’s comments were irritating and probably unhelpful, but I may be being unfair here because he bugs me a lot. He shouldn’t. He speaks out against poverty, which is a cause close to my heart. He seems to try and do good things, and I feel guilty for disliking him because my sisters and a friend really like U-2 as a band and admire him as an individual, but the more he talks the more I want to tell him to shut up, and yell at him to shut up. I don’t know, I guess I can’t always be logical. Nonetheless, he speaks in platitudes that don’t work if you think them out, and their music is overrated. In my opinion.
One thing that seemed lacking is that I felt throughout like there could be more of Strummer’s voice, even though they did use lots of footage and clips and cartoons he had drawn, but despite lots of material I was feeling it needed more him and less commentary by others on him. They interviewed him in The End of the Century, and he was dead by then (Joey, Dee Dee, and Johnny Ramone and Joe Strummer all died so close together. I mean really, it was three and a half years, but it felt like every time you turned around another legend was gone), and he was so personable and well-spoken that I just remember feeling that loss, and I wanted to hear more from him. So as I was watching, I was thinking that, but as the end approached, it became even more intimate, and it ended with a fairly long speech for him, that was really a plea to the world to rediscover humanity, and it was very beautiful and the note it ended on was good.
Anyway, the point of all that is that I am glad I saw the film. I will not be posting again for at least ten days. Yeah, that would actually be pretty good for me, but I mention it because I have a specific plan here. When I last wrote, I was going to print the screenplay on Monday, read it in one sitting for general flow, and then start editing. Well, I did print it Monday, but it took me the rest of the week before I did the read through and I have not done any editing. Also, although things are much more caught up at work, they are not completely caught up and I need to do a major presentation on the 27th. So, I am pretty much grounding myself from the Internet until then.
Obviously I will use it at work as most of my tools are web-based, but the browsing for fun that quickly turns from a few minutes to hours it out. I have specific things I can do each day, like checking email once, and people to whom I will send email, and paying my bills online when the next paycheck hits, but it is all very structured, and I am hoping it will pay off.
That being said, the flow of the script was good. Certainly the dialog needs to be reworked, but that is normal. When you are really in the zone you might get an exchange or a paragraph just right on the first try, but good writing is rewriting. I imagine that it will need this rewrite and then a third draft before I will consider it marketable. Have a happy Thanksgiving all, and be grateful for good music and good movies. It feels like they become increasingly rare all the time.
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