By Bobbie Kirkhart

We first see Beat­riz (Salma Hayek) going through morn­ing chores, feed­ing her dogs, and light­ing a can­dle for deceased loved ones, includ­ing her dead goat. She’s in a rush to her work in a holis­tic heal­ing firm. Her last patient of the day is a house call for a mas­sage for Kathy, a wealthy woman in a gat­ed community.

After the house call, Beatriz’s car won’t start, so Kathy invites her to stay for the small din­ner par­ty she’s host­ing for her husband’s busi­ness associates.

It’s the stuff of com­e­dy, a movie you’ve all seen before: The wealthy matron invites an employ­ee to an impor­tant din­ner par­ty she’s host­ing for even wealth­i­er asso­ciates. We have rol­lick­ing fun watch­ing the crude man­ners of the out­sider expos­ing the pom­pos­i­ty of the wealthy. At the end, every­body real­izes that the sim­ple ways of the poor employ­ee are supe­ri­or to the smug friv­o­li­ty of the priv­i­leged. Every­body is hap­py. Every­body learns something.

Spoil­er alert: They didn’t go that way.

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By Kai-Arne Zimny

Many of you might remem­ber Kate Winslet and Leonar­do DiCaprio togeth­er on the big screen, sur­round­ed by water and ice. While “Rose” whis­pers last words of love in the freez­ing air, “Jack” sinks to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. And despite their cold­ish, blueish skin we feel noth­ing but warmth wit­ness­ing those eter­nal words of love. And – with­out a shad­ow of a doubt – we know that his life ends, but their love doesn’t.

Eleven years after Titan­ic (1997), Kate and Leo are back, this time as a mar­ried cou­ple in Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Road (2008), the film adap­tion of Richard Yates’ nov­el (1961) of the same name.

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By Kai-Arne Zimny

 

“To cre­ate a tele­vi­sion show out of thin air, with­out any­body pay­ing you,

requires a cer­tain amount of delu­sion, and that’s tak­en me very far.”

Matt Wein­er, cre­ator of Mad Men

 

Do you reg­u­lar­ly watch a TV series? Prob­a­bly yes.

Have you ever con­sid­ered writ­ing one? Prob­a­bly not.

But if you like TV series and love to write, you might want to recon­sid­er. The recent ser­i­al tele­vi­sion land­scape is diverse and of a qual­i­ty as nev­er before. And pro­duc­tion stu­dios are begin­ning to open their gates a tiny crack to meet an ever-increas­ing demand for series ideas and concepts.

In her book, Writ­ing the TV Dra­ma Series:  How to Suc­ceed as a Pro­fes­sion­al Writer in TV, tele­vi­sion writer and screen­writ­ing teacher Pamela Dou­glas offers an approach to learn­ing how to slide through that crack and gain insight into what’s lurk­ing behind those gates.

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By Kai-Arne Zimny

It’s 1955. David Greene (Bren­dan Fras­er), a Jew­ish boy from a work­ing class fam­i­ly, leaves his home, the indus­tri­al city of Scran­ton, Penn­syl­va­nia, to go to a pres­ti­gious New Eng­land prep board­ing school for his senior year. His tick­et in? A foot­ball schol­ar­ship since David is an out­stand­ing quar­ter­back! “Don’t tell peo­ple any more than they need to know,” the school team’s foot­ball coach advis­es David upon arrival, hint­ing at the social gap between David’s future school­mates and blue-col­lar peo­ple like David and himself.

How­ev­er, David is nei­ther able nor will­ing to hide his social back­ground from his school and team­mates, boys from rich fam­i­lies across the board. Despite the dif­fer­ences, he is able to bond with them and even become pop­u­lar quick­ly. How­ev­er, just as quick­ly he is con­front­ed with the sad truth that there’s yet anoth­er dif­fer­ence the boys won’t be will­ing to over­look that eas­i­ly – that he’s Jew­ish.  Read more »

By Kai-Arne Zimny

Dr. Hen­ry Mor­gan (Ioan Gruffudd) is British, works as a med­ical exam­in­er for the New York Police Depart­ment, and likes scarves and clas­si­cal music. Oh, he is also immor­tal and utter­ly clue­less why.

Fear not, this is not a spoil­er to the show and not even to its pilot as the first episode begins with Morgan’s words about his “first death” two cen­turies ago. Since then he hasn’t aged a day, main­tain­ing the look of a man in his mid to late thir­ties and has nev­er died. Well, actu­al­ly he has died many times but always came back to life with­in sec­onds and with­out a scratch. Hav­ing pre­sent­ed that brief state­ment about his “con­di­tion” – as he calls it – Dr. Mor­gan assures us that we know as much about it as he him­self does. What fol­lows is the unrav­el­ing of the first clues about a mys­te­ri­ous­ly emerg­ing oppo­nent – dan­ger­ous and unpredictable.

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By Lynette Kirschner

The lim­its of my language
mean the limits
of my world.

- Lud­wig Wittgenstein

 

Does time only flow in a con­tin­u­um? Does a sen­tence have to con­tain a verb? The answer to the first ques­tion hasn’t been defin­i­tive­ly answered. The answer to the sec­ond one is def­i­nite­ly no. Both play a role in the sci­ence fic­tion movie Arrival, direct­ed by Denis Villeneuve.

For once, the U.S. gov­ern­ment doesn’t bomb first and ask ques­tions lat­er. When aliens arrive, they send the lin­guist Dr. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to try to solve the mys­tery of their lan­guage so that peace­ful com­mu­ni­ca­tion can take place. This is where my lit­tle geeky lan­guage heart starts to beat faster. Con­cepts such as the Sapir-Whorf hypoth­e­sis (the cor­re­la­tion between lan­guage and world­view), logograms (sym­bols stand­ing for words and not a sin­gle sound), and palin­dromes (words read­ing the same back­wards and for­wards) are used. The movie does an excel­lent job explain­ing these con­cepts so that non-lin­guists under­stand and lin­guists don’t get bored.

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