This Savage Art » diablo cody http://www.thissavageart.com a steady diet of obsessive cinema and screenwriting in the dark Tue, 10 Jan 2012 15:11:13 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= Copyright © This Savage Art 2010 wsperuzzi@gmail.com (This Savage Art) wsperuzzi@gmail.com (This Savage Art) http://www.thissavageart.com/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/powered_by_podpress.jpg This Savage Art http://www.thissavageart.com 144 144 a steady diet of obsessive cinema and screenwriting in the dark This Savage Art This Savage Art wsperuzzi@gmail.com no no Finally, It’s Over http://www.thissavageart.com/2008/02/26/finally-its-over/#utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=finally-its-over http://www.thissavageart.com/2008/02/26/finally-its-over/#comments Tue, 26 Feb 2008 12:29:54 +0000 William Speruzzi http://www.thissavageart.com/2008/02/26/finally-its-over/ A minimal wordpress theme by Jared Erickson

]]> The 30 Second 80th Academy Awards Hangover Edition Obligatory Post Rundown:

  • Miley Ray Cyrus enters the coliseum. We are one incremental step closer to the end.
  • Jon Stewart, witty stuff, good job. Classy move giving the Once singer/songwriter Marketa Irglova a chance to say her piece after being rudely ushered offstage by the music cue cut-off.
  • Diablo Cody wins “Best Original Screenplay.” Where does her fairy tale career go from here?
  • No memoriam dedication to actors Brad Renfro and Roy Scheider. I don’t care about the dates covered. Bad taste!
  • Bardem takes the Supporting Actor award for playing “some expressionless guy who goes around blowing shit up.” More>
  • Plainview drinks the Academy’s milkshake. Now we can all officially stop referencing “that” scene.
  • Introduced by Marty, the Coen Brothers take home a couple of little golden men in their usual aloof demeanor.

Overall analysis: yawn.

Related: What’s really going down at the Independent Spirit Awards.

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]]> diabloNow Juno will now be connected to the much celebrated first screenplay of one Brook Busey-Hunt. Name doesn’t ring a bell? How about Diablo Cody? Yeah, I thought so. We’ve heard the story. College educated young lady walks into scummy airport strip joint, has a moment of clarity where she wants to be on the pole, works the required amount of time it takes to gather enough information to write about it on a blog which eventually becomes Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper. Attention comes her way, Juno makes the rounds and she lands the white hot Hollywood career you keep wishing you had. The gender neutral nom de plume. The tattoos. The truck-driver mouth. It all strikes me as uh, a little calculated.

Truth is, Juno is a pretty solid film and an impressive achievement for a first-timer. Before I went to see it yesterday I really didn’t want to like it. I thought it was going to be filled with smug, I’m-smarter-than-you-pop-culture-infused-fuck-off-for-not-being-cool-enough-to-be-in-my-world dialogue. That is there, there’s no denying it but it slowly starts to melt away and gets a little more down to earth once we get out of the showy, self-aware first act. The dialogue does crackle and I can see why it is the selling point of her work but the screenplay does go beyond. It works. I noticed a kinship with films like Thumbsucker and Ghost World. Like those two films about teenagers in crisis, the characters ring true and the pressure of their circumstances force them to reveal who they are at the core.

Cody is kind of a polarizing figure in the screenwriting world right now. I mean, how many 13 year old female audience members know who the screenwriter of the film is? Is that necessarily a bad thing? I’m curious to see where her career goes. I know another screenplay of hers is on deck for Jason Reitman to direct again. And oh yeah, there’s the Spielberg television series too. By then we should know if she’s the real deal.

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