Original Films (including Spike Jonze's 'Her')

[Sam]

Let's not get into the seven basic plots stuff etc

I mean films that aren't a sequel, prequel, reboot, remake, adaptation, true story, saga, franchise, advert etc. That's not many films these days, at least not of the mainstream variety.

Who are the filmmakers who are committed to writing original screenplays?

The best films I saw last year were The Master and To The Wonder, this year Inside Llewyn Davis. I also have a feeling that 'Her' is right up my street. Has anyone seen that yet?

In the Mud thread I said that Jeff Nichols is shaping up to be a pretty fine auteur.

Richard Linklater, David O Russell...why aren't there more people like this?

[Famous Mortimer]

Christopher Nolan

*ducks*

[clingfilm portent]

Her wasn't original.

[Melodichaze]

Let's not get into the seven basic plots stuff etc

I mean films that aren't a sequel, prequel, reboot, remake, adaptation, true story, saga, franchise, advert etc. That's not many films these days, at least not of the mainstream variety.

Who are the filmmakers who are committed to writing original screenplays?

The best films I saw last year were The Master and To The Wonder, this year Inside Llewyn Davis. I also have a feeling that 'Her' is right up my street. Has anyone seen that yet?

In the Mud thread I said that Jeff Nichols is shaping up to be a pretty fine auteur.

Richard Linklater, David O Russell...why aren't there more people like this?

Scan down the page, there's a whole thread dedicated to 'Her'. There was a thread on 'The Master' a few pages back too.

[Sam]

Her wasn't original.

It's an 'original screenplay', up for original screenplay awards. I made a point of saying in the OP that I mean 'original' to be something not based on something else. Can you explain why it's not original in that sense, without a 'nothing new under the sun' arguement?

Scan down the page, there's a whole thread dedicated to 'Her'. There was a thread on 'The Master' a few pages back too.

I know. Those are threads about those films only; this is for any original idea films.
Besides, Neil prefers starting new threads to resurrecting old ones, plus it's worth having a discussion about 'Her' again because it's now on UK releases meaning more people can pitch in. And this isn't even a thread about that film only.

Two posts there that add zero to the thread. This is a slow-moving board; I'm sure it can cope with my thread idea. What's the point of coming in with such dreary pedantry when there was an opportunity to post something interesting or worthwhile? Jesus.

[Talulah, really!]

Coming up there's Only Lovers Left Alive Jim Jarmusch's take on centuries old vampires with Tilda Swinton shacked up with Christopher Marlowe (played by John Hurt.)

Lars von Trier's Egomania Nymphomania.

Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The most obvious one's, to me, from last year are Ben Wheatley's A Field in England, Shane Curruth's Upstream color and Noah Baumbach's Frances, Ha.[nb]Richard Linklater mentioned in OP[/nb]

Most of them seem to be from directors/writers who favour generating their own original material which operate outside the normal strictures of Hollywood story telling, as I assume you aren't really interested in a film like That Awkward Moment which might be an original script but feels like a hundred films/tv episodes you have already seen.[nb]_{Obvious apologies in advance if any of these are actually based on something else.}[/nb]

[Sam]

Scan down the page, there's a whole thread dedicated to 'Her'. There was a thread on 'The Master' a few pages back too.

And after this wonderful contribution to the discussion, the next bit of input was to give me negative karma! I admire your no-nonsense attitude. The idea of someone staring a thread slightly related to something discussed a while ago is pretty hard to stomach and I can see why that would anger you, Christ, it's enough to make anyone livid!

I'm glad you're policing the boards with such certainty and authority. I look forward to reading your future posts, none of which will ever have been discussed before. Of course, I'm not at all interested in anything you have to say, and I won't be adding anything to your thoughts except to tell you off for posting them in the first place and giving you negative karma if you question it. You seem like a lovely positive person and I'm keen to follow your example.

[Brundle-Fly]

Anyway...

Shane Meadows had a pretty good track record in cinematic original material. Has he disappeared to TV land for good now?

[Sam]

Anyway...

Shane Meadows had a pretty good track record in cinematic original material. Has he disappeared to TV land for good now?

Dead Man's Shoes is great and all the others very good. The acting and writing is always top-notch but I feel that his films and style get a bit formulaic with the same ending more or less for all of them.

I doubt he'll stay in TV land forever.

[Funcrusher]

Who are the filmmakers who are committed to writing original screenplays?

...why aren't there more people like this?

Mostly directors from non English-speaking countries, particularly now that the US studio system won't even think about financing even vaguely auterist films. Even someone relatively mainstream like Soderbergh is saying that there's no place for him there anymore. I guess Haneke, Kiarostami, Claire Denis, Wong Kar Wai, Koreeda, Jia Zhangke, Apichatpong Weerasethakul  would be likely candidates. I liked Pablo Larrain's loose trilogy on Pinochet era Chile. Last year I enjoyed 'Biancanieves', 'Neighbouring Sounds' and 'Museum Hours'. Miguel Gomes' 'Tabu' and Christian Petzold's 'Barbara' were good the year before. In the US I like Kelly Reichart and Oren Moverman's first two films were decent, otherwise just the usual suspects.

[Melodichaze]

And after this wonderful contribution to the discussion, the next bit of input was to give me negative karma! I admire your no-nonsense attitude. The idea of someone staring a thread slightly related to something discussed a while ago is pretty hard to stomach and I can see why that would anger you, Christ, it's enough to make anyone livid!

I'm glad you're policing the boards with such certainty and authority. I look forward to reading your future posts, none of which will ever have been discussed before. Of course, I'm not at all interested in anything you have to say, and I won't be adding anything to your thoughts except to tell you off for posting them in the first place and giving you negative karma if you question it. You seem like a lovely positive person and I'm keen to follow your example.

:-)[nb]Please also see the Lars Von Trier - 'Nymphomaniac' thread[/nb][nb]Chill out, am just winding you up...can hear your carotid artery pounding from here[/nb]

[Sam]

Yeah, chill out Grandad I was just being a cunt, that's what all the kids are like now, yeah? You just act like a twat when you like cos it's funny and when people say
hang on it's like whatevs. Laaaame!

;) lolzor!!11

[Funcrusher]

Anyone seen 'Her' yet? I saw it yesterday. I'm not a big Spike Jonze fan but I enjoyed it a fair bit overall. My issue with his films in the past has tended to be that they start by establishing characters and a situation I feel engaged by, then the more fantasy/ flights of imagination take over and that doesn't appeal to me. This has a similar structure, but I did feel quite moved by the whole thing even when it veers off into the more fantastical ideas. It maybe doesn't cut to the heart of issues of individuals turning away from real relationships towards digital simulations, and I have some reservations about it, but it was enjoyable and original in some ways, so fits with the thread title.

[Bored of Canada]

There is literally three separate threads about Her. I'm not including nor talking about this one, as it seems a delegate thing about screenplays.

One is still on the first movies page. A few of us have seen it and talked about it there, so that's where you can find our impressions, Funcrusher.

And Avatar was an origninal screenplay, in that it was one of the very few not adapted from anything. If you check out how many films have won academy awards in the past ten years, you could likely count them on your hands the amount that are 'original' screenplays not based on anything. Even Forrest Gump was based on an article. Tarabtino's probably one of the big ones, save Jackie Brown.

[Funcrusher]

There is literally three separate threads about Her. One is still on the first movies page. A few of us have seen it and talked about it there, so that's where you can find our impressions.

I shall go there.

[checkoutgirl]

I'm right in the middle of watching Bufallo '66 by Vincent Gallo. It's quite funny. It's from 1998 but it's still pretty good and probably qualifies as an original screenplay.

Shane Carruth must be some kind of genius, his films are very realistic and interesting. Ben Wheatley likewise, A Field in England is great fun and gets very confusing and trippy at the end.

[checkoutgirl]

A good way to keep aboob of new films coming out is to go to the DVD part of Moviefone here - http://www.moviefone.com/dvd

...and then torrent anything you like the look of. There's a lot of shit on there but also a lot of interesting stuff and odd indy type stuff. About 8 or more new DVDs a week come out. More than enough to keep the casual film buff going. It's a lucky dip really.

[Kane Jones]

I love your Captain America avatar, Checkers. Excited about the new movie, presumably?

[checkoutgirl]

Excited about the new movie, presumably?

I am now.

[Wet Blanket]

Her made me feel a bit sick, I found it impossibly creepy, and thought it was needlessly crude in places too, like with the foul mouthed computer game. Not as much as the old couple who walked out after the

Spoiler alert

illustration of anal/armpit sex

[close]

Limmy may have ruined a key scene for me too, because during the

Spoiler alert

cyber sex

[close]

scene I couldn't help but think of his "I want you inside me, hen" bit.

(The only other thread I could find on this was on page 2 and hadn't been active since Jan 22. Maybe there's one with a slightly more obtuse name that I overlooked. Apologies to anyone annoyed that I've shared my opinions here, like)

[Melth]

Her was very disappointing. It reminded me of Black Mirror in that it was trying so desperately hard to work as a fable of the near-future, but making a point that has been made more succinctly and more eloquently elsewhere. Theodore was far too much of an archetype of a generic lonely guy with unrealised ambitions and emotional baggage from the past. The thinness of his character was probably part of SJ's intention, but it was quite hard to think of him as anything more than a cipher for a fairly unoriginal message. The basic idea that

Spoiler alert

the language of relationships is so formulaic, clichéd and fatalistic that artificial intelligence can map, mimic and exploit it, and that even this can be satisfying or even exhilarating for someone as emotionally wounded as Theodore

[close]

is adequately interesting and, occasionally, the film drew attention to this with a lighter touch, such as when

Spoiler alert

Theodore pointing out that Samantha didn't have to breathe so heavily when she spoke

[close]

. But the premise would probably have suited an hour of TV better than it did a film. Invariably, I thought back to the way in which Craig Schwartz was presented in Being John Malkovich which is, without a doubt, my favourite screenplay (not scripted by Jonze, I appreciate). BJM never missed an opportunity to add extra layers of eccentricity to its characters, even the more minor ones; as a consequence, you end up investing in a premise which could so easily have just felt wacky or gimmicky. It also followed its unusual premise through to quite a neat conclusion, whereas the sequence of false endings to Her just felt irritatingly untidy - once again, probably intentional on Jonze's part, but my attention had definitely started to wander after about an hour. 

[phantom_power]

I don't think your first blacked out bit is what the film is about at all. I think we are meant to believe that Samantha is an advanced enough intelligence to genuinely have those feelings and emotions. Unless it is me who is misinterpreting the film

[Melth]

I think we are meant to believe that Samantha is an advanced enough intelligence to genuinely have those feelings and emotions. Unless it is me who is misinterpreting the film

Perhaps we are - I don't think you're necessarily misinterpreting it. My instinct was just that, through scanning all his old data, she had familiarised herself instantly with the sort of romantic language that he and his ex had used and was able to offer him the sort of relationship that he had once enjoyed with her - but her intelligence can only

Spoiler alert

mould itself around the contours of a previously unsuccessful relationship, acquiring all the vague language of disquiet and dissatisfaction that will culminate in a break-up. Their relationship doesn't falter for any particularly concrete reason, but she's following a particular paradigm that she's recognised

[close]

.

[phantom_power]

Spoiler alert

I thought their relationship ended when she evolved beyond finding human interaction interesting. She was having hundreds of relationships at the same time to keep her occupied and eventually could only be interested by other AIs.

[close]

[Funcrusher]

This thread now waits impatiently for Sam to watch 'Her'.

[Famous Mortimer]

I guess its rather odd structure would qualify it for a thread like this, but I just saw Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, directed by John Krasinski off of "The Office". A woman is bummed out about a break-up, so interviews a bunch of men who talk in incredibly intimate detail about sex, relationships, what women want, etc.

The structure is odd - so you'll get a monologue from a guy, but then he'll see the younger him in the corner of the room, or the monologue will cut from place to place and time to time without missing a beat. The actual plot itself isn't much of anything, and while it's as good an attempt as you could possibly make to film this book (which I fucking adore) it's still not a terribly good film. Krasinski gets a monologue at the end, and it's just him reading a story out loud, which none of the others do, even though they're not the most natural speech you've ever heard.

I don't know. It's amazing that DFW is having films made of his stuff, and Krasinski is obviously an enormous fan, but it's more an experiment in form than it is a film.

[Old Nehamkin]

Even Forrest Gump was based on an article.

A novel, even.

[Van Dammage]

The Place beyond the pines was fairly original, especially for a pretty mainstream film.
Also Nicolas Winding Refn is original when he decides to be really arty.

Park Chan Wook is also great, Ignoring oldboy because it was based on a manga, The rest of the vengeance trilogy was great and Joint Security Area is a classic.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Richard Linklater, David O Russell...why aren't there more people like this?

David Gordon Green...

[Sam]

His latest with Nic Cage is meant to be good.

The other stuff I've seen was too derivative of Malick for my liking.