Sportswriter Cliches and The Return of The Bullet Ballet
This has been lying in the edit bay since November 11th...
Yahoo has this little feature that is similar to that "push technology" from seven years ago that was going to change our lives and our stock portfolios. But instead of throwing it on your desktop, you get the relevant information in your mailbox by giving Yahoo a keyword to search with. So I use "script" and "screenwriting" as a search word.
I get about twenty links in two or three convenient emails a day. About eight percent of the links are either good or interesting. The rest? Well, unfortunately, I've also found out that the most abused cliché in the sportswriter's lexicon is "script." As in, "they've flipped the script on Auburn" or "the Niners tore up the script and wrote their own." It's as if athletes do not have to practice their plays or train hard, they just have to do a few Stansislavsky exercises or work with either The Groundlings or Second City.
This abuse seems to be most prevalent in the mid-Atlantic states and the South. I know that you sportswriters are on a deadline, still...please cease and desist.
On another note, this popped up in my yahoo mail...
"Variety reports that Universal has acquired the rights to Hong Kong action film "Cheung Fo" and will remake it as "The Mission." Peter Berg will direct using a Dario Scardapane script.
The movie follows a group of criminals who bond while serving as bodyguards to a crime boss. Their brotherhoos is tested when one of them breaks ranks."
http://www.cinecon.com/news.php?id=0511118
This was the very last bullet ballet that I saw in the theaters and it was the best non-John Woo, non-Ringo Lam, bullet ballet, plot-wise. Hong Kong films of the triad/cop variety tend to skimp on plot and plausibility...wait a minute, there's a title for you Ms. Austen. Anyway, they skip the story almost altogether for the sake of friendship, saving face, and action. In that order exactly.
Certainly the first two values have a significantly higher importance in the Eastern culture than in the U.S. I guess the producers of these films believe that the Hong Kong audience will be so absorbed with the fact that protagonist would take on the entire police department over what believes to be his partner's innocence, that they aren't supposed to notice that a simple ballistics test would clear or convict him.
Of course, that would also negate: the shootouts, the confrontation in the bar where someone always waits until the last second to pull them apart, the tearful take by the girlfriend and Misunderstanding #5 from "Three's Company." Except it will involve guns and triads instead of John Ritter and some casting couch actress never to be seen on TV again. Still, I'm partially stoked, hoping that Peter Berg can get it closer to the original film and the work he did with "The Rundown."
Yahoo has this little feature that is similar to that "push technology" from seven years ago that was going to change our lives and our stock portfolios. But instead of throwing it on your desktop, you get the relevant information in your mailbox by giving Yahoo a keyword to search with. So I use "script" and "screenwriting" as a search word.
I get about twenty links in two or three convenient emails a day. About eight percent of the links are either good or interesting. The rest? Well, unfortunately, I've also found out that the most abused cliché in the sportswriter's lexicon is "script." As in, "they've flipped the script on Auburn" or "the Niners tore up the script and wrote their own." It's as if athletes do not have to practice their plays or train hard, they just have to do a few Stansislavsky exercises or work with either The Groundlings or Second City.
This abuse seems to be most prevalent in the mid-Atlantic states and the South. I know that you sportswriters are on a deadline, still...please cease and desist.
On another note, this popped up in my yahoo mail...
"Variety reports that Universal has acquired the rights to Hong Kong action film "Cheung Fo" and will remake it as "The Mission." Peter Berg will direct using a Dario Scardapane script.
The movie follows a group of criminals who bond while serving as bodyguards to a crime boss. Their brotherhoos is tested when one of them breaks ranks."
http://www.cinecon.com/news.php?id=0511118
This was the very last bullet ballet that I saw in the theaters and it was the best non-John Woo, non-Ringo Lam, bullet ballet, plot-wise. Hong Kong films of the triad/cop variety tend to skimp on plot and plausibility...wait a minute, there's a title for you Ms. Austen. Anyway, they skip the story almost altogether for the sake of friendship, saving face, and action. In that order exactly.
Certainly the first two values have a significantly higher importance in the Eastern culture than in the U.S. I guess the producers of these films believe that the Hong Kong audience will be so absorbed with the fact that protagonist would take on the entire police department over what believes to be his partner's innocence, that they aren't supposed to notice that a simple ballistics test would clear or convict him.
Of course, that would also negate: the shootouts, the confrontation in the bar where someone always waits until the last second to pull them apart, the tearful take by the girlfriend and Misunderstanding #5 from "Three's Company." Except it will involve guns and triads instead of John Ritter and some casting couch actress never to be seen on TV again. Still, I'm partially stoked, hoping that Peter Berg can get it closer to the original film and the work he did with "The Rundown."
Labels: Writing
posted by Writeprocrastinator at 8:52 AM
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