film - Devils' Lane, CA

The Black List's Back, And It's Worse Than Ever

Hollywood has a lot of lists. The Black List. The Blood List. The Brown List. The Brit List. The Next List. Every December, the results of a survey among execs is "published" as the Black List. It's definitely not being gamed as a circle jerk of votes-for-favours, it's definitely not

film

No, Hollywood. It's Not OK If It's A Sex Doll

There are days when you really have to ask yourself whether there are people in a studio lot's in-house dive bar somewhere, or an art gallery opening, champing at the bit to see how far we can go down the rabbit hole of sexual depravity before an armed invasion of

hollywood

Your Real Visitor's Guide To Old, Secret, and Scandalous Historic Hollywood

Don't pay for a tour. Forget Disneyland, the Studio tours, Griffith Observatory, Rodeo drive,Walk of Fame, and the museums. Hollywood has a century of the most bizarre, controversial history in the strangest places you probably haven't heard of. You pay to put your own star on the Walk of

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Hollywood's Byzantine Generals Moment: It's Time For A Decentralised Live P2P Movie Streaming Network

Amazon recently bought MGM, the last old-school studio in Hollywood. We're now in the laps of Big Tech: the kind of people who describe Friday night at The Pictures as "content". Our future as it currently stands is studios and production companies being commissioned to produce stale, woke garbage for

screenwriting

The Hollywood Writer's Wokescore™ - A Geiger Counter For Filtering Out Irradiated Garbage

We all know it when we see it. Audiences are experts in sensing – and ignoring - the intentions of writers and filmmakers when they attempt to surreptitiously program their perception of reality. Stalin became fascinated with it and made the industrial capture of the art form a top political priority.

film

Fumigating The Radiation Poisoning Of Critical Theory From Screenwriting

Art is not about activism; drama is not about deconstruction; stories are not sociology; plots are not about propaganda or "power dynamics"; arcs are not "analysis"; ideas are not ideology; teleology is not "theory"; juxtaposition is not about "justice"; characters are not low-resolution caricatures; nature is not about "narratives"; writing

screenwriting

Story Catalysts: Accelerators, Instigators, Initiators, Inciters

You've got that dramatic arc you want to play out in the scene, but how do you start it? What kicks off or provokes the action? You need a catalyst or provocation which jumps starts a context for your plot point to exist within. In chemistry, catalysis is the process

screenwriting

Deadly Sins of Screenwriting

Art has month purposes, but its sacred one is to reveal truth. Greek mythology and the Bible all speak in stories. Aristotle uses the same word as St Paul to describe a crucial thing which underpins everything that makes us human and drives art: Hamartia. In The Poetics, Hamartia is

film

Blocking Casting Call Chaos with Amazon Rekognition

Wannabe actors aren’t known for their discernment, or their professionalism. Every casting director has to go through the time-wasting rite of passage, aka The Shitshow, when they put out a casting call. Everyone wants to be famous. You’re looking for males with the age appearance of 25–30,

hollywood

The Hollywood Face: the Marquardt Golden Phi Mask

Is there a scientific formula to on-camera beauty? Are there common characteristics to the facial shapes of the stars we deify in the form of celebrity? The old saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” has its merits, but when it comes to Hollywood, we see a certain

film

Murdering the President: Fighting for the Dark Soul of Drama

Majdanek Concentration Camp in Poland. Extermination camps exist in North Korea, and other communist shitholes. China runs “re-education camps” for people who need “re-training”.Pundits and critics the world over spend years of typing theses surrounding why audiences turn off from American-style melodrama. Let me save you the time: it’

hollywood

Science of the Hollywood Circus: a letter to a talented young actress

Ask any film industry veteran, and they will claim they are in any otherbusiness but film. Bruckheimer infamously claimed he was in the “transportation” business; just as the media tirelessly exhorts Hollywood is simply a marketing machine. The more cynical are far too oft to believe it is the “confectionery

film

If Shakespeare’s plays were Netflix loglines

ComediesAll’s Well That Ends WellA lovesick, unwanted wife fakes her own death and manipulates events to re-gain her wayward husband.As You Like ItA niece is banished from her uncle’s court and sets out on a journey with friends to a forest, where they all eventually marry and

hollywood

Bond. Someone else’s idea of James Bond

Ian Fleming had a very interesting idea. It was an idea that lived for several books and a few films, but was thrown in the trash with his death ten years afterward. As the years have gone on, the Bond that Fleming imagined and designed from his estate in Jamaica