What makes a brilliant script? Is it quotable lines? Is it nuanced dialogue? Or is it just the ability to move the story along and not get in the way? When looking back through the history of screenwriting, there are plenty of iconic films based on previous work; the Writer’s Guild of America voted Casablanca …
30. Apollo 13 (1995) Lost to: Braveheart In 1995, director Ron Howard brought a true life story of hope in the face of peril and started sweeping up awards. He won the Directors Guild Award. He won the Producers Guild Award. He won the Screen Actors Guild Ensemble Award. He lost the Golden Globe Drama to …
Gangster Squad Directed by Ruben Fleischer Written by Will Beall USA, 2013 At some point, an excess of style only serves to emphasize the hollowness of a story. A director like Martin Scorsese knows how to weave a sprawling tale of vice and amorality while juicing up the proceedings with verve and panache. On the …
Sunset Boulevard (Also known as Sunset Blvd) Directed by Billy Wilder Written by Charles Bracket and Billy Wilder U.S.A., 1950 In cinema, as in life, the past informs and shapes the present, which in turn does the same for the future. One cannot concentrate too much on the present or risk losing sight on the …
The Oranges Directed by Julian Farino Written by Ian Helfer and Jay Reiss USA, 2011 Voiceover narration isn’t automatically a crutch in modern storytelling, but too many writers use it so they don’t have to do actual work. For every clever use of this literary trick—such as the narration in Sunset Boulevard or The Shawshank …
By most accounts, Harry Cohn was a royal son of a bitch. For the uninformed, Harry Cohn was co-founder of Columbia Pictures, and the autocratic ruler of the studio from its founding in 1919 until his death in 1958. He was vulgar, crass, tyrannical, a screaming, foul-mouthed verbal bully i.e. a royal son of a …
The debut of a number of distinctive personalities is one of the important features of film noir. Noir’s main character, for instance, may appropriately be labeled thenoir loser. He is a handsome, middle-aged man who seems to blur the line between protagonist and antagonist. Billy Wilder has very explicitly introduced such personalities as Walter Neff …