Category Archives: News

News about this site.

Aaron Sorkin Is A Dick

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Recently followed this link from the IMDb, which includes some truly precious quotes:

I have considerably more power as an individual than I do as a member of that group, and I am forced to be a member of that union in order to work. Moreover, because the vast majority of the members of that union are not employed, frankly, the Writers Guild works best as an organization not to protect writers from management but to protect people who want to be writers from people who already are. I have never had any trouble with a studio, with a network, with a producer, with a director, with a star; I have only ever had trouble with the Writers Guild.

Translation: “I am the biggest writer who ever was! And because I am so successful, and obviously a perfect writer, everyone who is not successful must be a failure and a bad writer. The studios love me for writing superficial ‘zingy’ scripts with little reference to the complexities of the real world, so I think it’s terrible if I have to make even the tiniest of sacrifices for other people who may not be as rich as I.

I’m also one of the 9 percent of the Writers Guild who did not vote to support the strike. By the way, I now will not get a WGA nomination, we can rule that out. [Laughs.] It’s not a coincidence that it’s roughly that 9 percent of people who are employed.

Translation: “Everyone who disagrees with me on this is an unemployed hobo hack.”

My feeling is if you want to get the extra three cents on the streaming video — frankly, I never even understood the issue behind the strike because I don’t know anything about technology — if you want to get the extra three cents, write better. Your agent will get it for you. Be good, be in demand [and] your agent will get it! Let the markets work!

Translation: “I make so much money that I don’t give a shit about anyone else. Why don’t they eat cake? And that technology stuff, I don’t know what it’s good for, but I’m sure it will not play any part in writer’s lives in the future. And even if it did, the multibillion-dollar corporations that run the business aren’t really out for profit… they just want to help you! They believe in fair play and niceness, because that way everyone gets what they want! No, we don’t need any safeguards against unethical behaviour, because we know that big industry never behaves unethically.”

Well-said, you overpaid sellout prick.

Updates and other news

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As you may have noticed, updates here at Commentarium have lately (or perhaps always) come in bursts. One of the reasons for that is that we’re working on several big projects; the other is that we would rather provide you with interesting content than with generic nonsense or information and gossip reposted from the IMDb.

These gaps can, however, become a little too large, and it would be silly to pretend that the only thing that’s interesting on the internet is our articles. So we will try to post interesting links or shorter articles every now and then, but only when something is genuinely noteworthy or fascinating. Feel free to send us suggestions!

Another thing we’d like to do is support independent filmmakers. We know all too well how difficult it is to be an indie – we’re in that situation ourselves, and in multiple artforms at that. Any tiny bit of exposure helps, even if only in the form of encouragement. That does not mean we’ll be promoting any indie material that comes our way, no matter how bad; but we’ll gladly watch anything people have to offer, and do interviews and the like. Again, suggestions or queries are very welcome. We’re nice and approachable and not particularly pretentious.

Finally, note that RSS feeds of Commentarium are available in the sidebar menu – they weren’t there when we first changed themes, but we have been reminded that people use them and have thus put them back where they belong. Enjoy!

A Little Project

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The Monsters review isn’t done yet, so here’s something else I’ve been thinking about for a while.

As you may or may not know, I am not a huge fan of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. It’s not that I have a problem with adaptations per se – I don’t – or that I think The Lord of the Rings is unadaptable. I just think Jackson’s adaptations are not even remotely true to the spirit of the novel, even if so many geeks think that the presence of elves and dwarves (or rather caricatures thereof) somehow counts as faithfulness. But precisely because of the blind adoration of so many geeks and critics, the movies get praise for aspects that are crappy by even the most objective of standards, like the shoddy CGI (while movies that actually look good and consistent get shouted down for not using “bigatures”).

But it’s not really the CGI that bothers me. What bothers me is the ineptness of the presentation and the way the writers have gone out of their way to invert the meaning and values of the original story, in some cases making the false accusations of racism the books are often slandered with actually come true.

Now, good things have been written about this subject. Not as many as I’d like, but I’ve seen some excellent essays and articles – one series of essays in particular, hosted in some subsection of a now-gone website called Odd Lots, was particularly excellent. But, as the previous sentence implies, some of these essays are now being lost, or are getting harder to find. This should not be. So what I’d like to do is to put together lots of links in one place, and more importantly host copies of those essays that are in danger of disappearing from the net forever.

It is quite likely an archive of links already exists, and if I find one that is particularly great, I won’t make another one. But I’d certainly love to create a place for keeping alive some of the wonderful contributions that will otherwise fall prey to Time and his Hounds.

If you have any links or suggestions to share, please let me know!