Screen Dialogic to Return (?)

For those of you who might not know, I was recently laid off from a job. This means that I have a lot of time on my hands, and I need a way to occupy myself. So a new, hopefully improved Screen Dialogic may be returning soon. Right now, I’m working on a new script (and looking for a new job!) that I’m hoping to get finished before I go down to Austin next month, so I will delegating that task with this. I have plenty of new ideas for posts, and as I write this, I realize I really miss blogging.

Stay tuned???

Happy Birthday Chad Hartigan & Joe Swanberg!

I’d like to say Happy Birthday to two wonderful writer/directors, Joe Swanberg and Chad Hartigan!

Joe Swanberg has two movies coming down the pipeline. But if you really need a Swanberg fix, Joe will be appearing in Adam Wingard’s A Horrible Way to Die, which will be premiering at the Toronto Film Festival on September 14th. Here’s a trailer of the film:

Joe and his wife, Kris, also have a personal collaboration forthcoming, as they are expecting a baby boy later this year.

Chad Hartigan’s wonderful debut, Luke and Brie are on a First Date is currently available at Amazon.com’s Video On Demand, and will soon be available at Netflix. Here’s a trailer for that film:

Happy Birthday, Joe and Chad!

Additional Thoughts on “Mulholland Dr.”

Monika Bartyzel writes about Mulholland Drive for the current installment of the Cinematical Movie Club. Bartyzel’s essay uses the postmodern theory of Jean Baudrillard, Frederic Jameson, and Jacques Lacan to explain the movie. I would like to extend Bartyzel’s discussion by offering some other points of view on the film.

Mulholland Drive is not a favorite of screenwriting gurus. In particular, Linda Seger expressed disdain for the film in her book Advanced Screenwriting: Raising Your Script to the Academy Award Level. In that book, Seger criticizes a lot of more offbeat films, but she reserves a special ire Mulholland Drive, which for her embodies what she calls “The Condescending Stance”:

“Some writers figure that they’re so much smarter than the audience that they write deliberately obtuse films to stroke their own egos. In their minds, they’re superior to their audience. They think that their movies always work and that any percieved unclarities, not the writers’ art or craft.

Why can’t anyone figure out

Mulholland Drive? Is this a good thing, that it never adds up in spite of so many moments of brilliance? Some critics and audience members loved the fact that it seemed like a puzzle. We’ve been watching movie puzzles for years, and are mesmerized by their complexity. But even the critics couldn’t put this puzzle together in a coherent way. The pieces didn’t fit to create a whole.”“

%#$! Web 2.0: Introducing Screen Dialogic

The cover of the September 2010 issue of Wired declared that “The Web is dead”. The duelling cover stories discuss the internet’s transformation from a democratized medium centered around gathering and sharing information to one that is powered by apps and devices created by a few companies. Chris Anderson’s article/commentary aligned the evolution of the internet with that of railroads and telephones, citing that the 186 railroad companies existed in 1920 have dwinded down to seven today. So too has the internet evolved from being powered by countless little companies, people and organizations down to being powered by a few key organizations like Facebook, Google, and Apple.

Wired‘s cover story may have a grain of truth to it, and in recent years, I have embraced and utilized these technologies for my own benefit. They have opened up my world in ways I would’ve never imagined in college, when I used to surf fansites (and Ain’t It Cool News) and use AOL instant messenger. Being at the point in my life of Saturn’s Return, I find myself regressing a little and I have the desire to utilize the web to do something more rewarding as opposed to self-promoting.

And so I have decided to create Screen Dialogic. The word “dialogic” is a superficial appropriation of Mikhail Bakhtin’s word meaning a literary work that carries on a conversation with previous literary works. Which is what a lot of blogs do. Blogs like HTMLGiant and This Recording carry on the spirit of “Web 1.0″, and are a reminder to me that there is still an audience interested in reading other people’s writing. Maybe it’s not a TMZ audience, but it’s life-affirming.