The Fault in Our Stars is the fourth novel by John Green, a young adult author and internet video blogger who built his career writing about teenagers who actually feel like human beings as opposed to morality plays stuffed into human suits. The novel, which became a bestseller and won multiple literary awards, has now been turned into a film starring Shailene Woodley (The Spectacular Now and The Descendants) and Ansel Elgort (the 2013 remake of Carrie and the upcoming Divergent, also with Woodley). Today, 20th Century Fox has released the first full-length trailer.
2013 has been a great year for film. Edgar Wright closed out his Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy with The World's End, a hilarious piece of science fiction horror built on some well-thought-through social commentary and Wright and co-writer/star Simon Pegg's rich character work. Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling followed up the successful Drive with Only God Forgives, a divisive, brutal, brilliant look at the costs of vengeance and bad parenting. Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck's Frozen pushed Disney's storytelling further with a beautifully animated fable about self-worth and familial love. Michael Bay, Sofia Coppola, Harmony Korine, Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott tore the twisted side of the American Dream apart in Pain & Gain, The Bling Ring, Spring Breakers, The Wolf of Wall Street and The Counselor, all of which are worthy films in their own ways. The great Shane Carruth returned to filmmaking after a nine year absence with Upstream Color, a beautifully told science fiction story about rebuilding ruined lives, the necessity of connecting with other people and the power that comes with having control over others' lives. Finally, Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig made my personal favorite film of the year with Frances Ha, a fantastic slice-of-life story about a young woman's somewhat-delayed coming of age and the transformation of her relationship with her best friend.
Arrested Development season four is a resurrection, to get back to the religious imagery for a conclusion in the best sense of the word. It is another shot fired for television-style storytelling in a world where the idea of how television programming is consumed is changing dramatically. It is faithful to what came before without simply regurgitating catch phrases and images, and its new material is frequently worthy. One joke in particular, culminating in a boy who swallows a mouse, stands as one of the series all-time best examples of layered, multilevel humor. The pacing, dated political subjects and that blasted wall subplot do some real damage, but overall, Arrested Development's fourth season is a welcome return to one of fiction's most fascinatingly, hilariously dysfunctional families.
According to Deadline, Chris Pratt has been cast as Starlord in Marvel Studios upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy. Pratt, who is known for his work on television as Parks and Recreation's Andy Dwyer and on film as the head of the SEAL team that killed Osama Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty, was chosen from a group that included fellow Zero Dark Thirty alum Joel Edgerton, Jack Huston of HBO's Boardwalk Empire, Lee Pace of The Hobbit trilogy and the sadly short-lived Pushing Daisies and Eddie Redmayne of the recent theatrical adaptation of Les Miserables.
At least based on this trailer, Fast and Furious 6 seems to be playing to the series' strengths. The plot involves a capital E evil villain whose presence requires Diesel and Johnson, two primarily action-oriented actors with a good deal of charisma to put aside their differences and team up to drive around in beautiful, powerful cars around a visually interesting space in the name of justice and/or revenge.
November seems to be the month for exciting things in the world of film preservation. Last year, Martin Scorsese released Hugo, a lovely film that was just as much about the value of George Melies' films as it was the titular character. This year, Alfred Hitchock fans are in for a treat. Although Hitchcock, the recently released film about the making of Psycho, has been drawing decidedly mixed reviews, the National Film Preservation Foundation has successfully restored part of The White Shadow, Hitchock's earliest surviving film. The film, a 1924 melodrama that Hitchcock wrote, edited, assistant directed and headed the art direction for, is streaming for free here for the next two months.
Violence is a tricky tool for a storyteller in any medium. If it is used poorly, it can damage the work’s overall structural integrity, derail a character’s prior narrative arc and repel the audience from continuing with the piece. If it is used skillfully, it can further both character and plot arcs, and draw the audience in with the developments it brings.
Claustrophobia is a pretty powerful tool for storytelling. By isolating a small cast, their interactions can be made to have far more impact on each other than they might when the parties in conflict can just go home and cool off for the night. Place the isolated environment in a larger world and experiment with the exposure the isolated group has to the non-isolated world, and a solid ground for dramatic conflict is created.
Science fiction is a funny thing. Not necessarily in the “laugh out loud hilarity with every warp jump” way, but in how wonderfully mutable it is as a genre. Time travel in a phone booth and time travel by a tiny metal box that can only be explained with graduate level physics language both qualify as science fiction.
Bryan Singer and Sam Raimi are the two directors most responsible for the current age of the superhero film. Singer’s X-Men and Raimi’s Spider-Man presented their fantastic, impossible worlds as living, breathing entities, and made an effort to introduce a sense of scale to the worlds they built.
