11-12-2012, 02:39 PM
...but I still got a chance to peruse this.
Firstly, as we've discussed before, I don't care for the screenplay format. That's nothing against your work, Greg. It's just my personal issue like my dislike of Statham and Paltrow. There's something about dialog-based writing that seldom works for me unless its Shakespearian-level poetry or Samuel Beckett or such. I confess, I was tentative especially knowing that your 'formula' for writing often opens with a rhetorical question and then answers itself, which I worried would get you trapped in stale dialog. Fortunately, your dialog was pretty good overall. I was amused by the ninja pirate comment, as well some offhand references where you were processing the martial world, like Suxi's pagoda (mind you, he was not really ever an abbot, at least, not according to the 'official' party line statement now). The names tripped me up. There is a logic to Chinese names, a distinction between Mandarin and Cantonese which is pivotal when it comes to filmmaking as one is PRC and the other HK. Also, some names that just don't exist because there are only a few hundred actual Chinese names, believe it or not. The names started sounding a little Long Duk Dong to me, but that's nitpicky. Nevertheless, it's entertaining, and I would enjoy seeing it as a film, assuming you could add a Bollywood number or two.
Have you seen Ah Kam with Michelle Yeoh? It's sort of a stunt person film, an odd flick because she got seriously injured during production, and the film comes to a screeching halt as the rest had to be rewritten to accommodate an injured Michelle (they show it all in the NG). You might also check out Craig Reid's Red Trousers, which is a doc he made on the topic.
Firstly, as we've discussed before, I don't care for the screenplay format. That's nothing against your work, Greg. It's just my personal issue like my dislike of Statham and Paltrow. There's something about dialog-based writing that seldom works for me unless its Shakespearian-level poetry or Samuel Beckett or such. I confess, I was tentative especially knowing that your 'formula' for writing often opens with a rhetorical question and then answers itself, which I worried would get you trapped in stale dialog. Fortunately, your dialog was pretty good overall. I was amused by the ninja pirate comment, as well some offhand references where you were processing the martial world, like Suxi's pagoda (mind you, he was not really ever an abbot, at least, not according to the 'official' party line statement now). The names tripped me up. There is a logic to Chinese names, a distinction between Mandarin and Cantonese which is pivotal when it comes to filmmaking as one is PRC and the other HK. Also, some names that just don't exist because there are only a few hundred actual Chinese names, believe it or not. The names started sounding a little Long Duk Dong to me, but that's nitpicky. Nevertheless, it's entertaining, and I would enjoy seeing it as a film, assuming you could add a Bollywood number or two.
Have you seen Ah Kam with Michelle Yeoh? It's sort of a stunt person film, an odd flick because she got seriously injured during production, and the film comes to a screeching halt as the rest had to be rewritten to accommodate an injured Michelle (they show it all in the NG). You might also check out Craig Reid's Red Trousers, which is a doc he made on the topic.
Shadow boxing the apocalypse