The new rates from 2011 can be found on the WGA’s website in PODF format; fresh for you to download.

http://www.wga.org/uploadedFiles/writers_resources/contracts/MOA2011.pdf

If you’re writing a treatment, a screenplay or a television show, your pay went up this year if you’re working on a WAG project, It you weren’t on a WGA show, then it’s down to your negotiating skills.

Simply choosing a male or a female name, their country of abode and finally, the country base of their name (with many global options), you’re presented with a full character profile providing a full character listing. I wish I’d had this available before I started writing ‘Chasing the Will.’ It would have made my life easier. Listing:

• Name
• Address including post code/zip code
• Telephone number
• Website
• Email address which can be turned live
• A password for online access
• The mother’s maiden name
• Date of birth and age (for those without calculators)
• Credit card number and expiry date
• Insurance number or social security number
• Occupation
• Blood type
• Weight and height in imperial and metric versions

From an author’s point of view, this presents a detailed character map that can be used throughout a novel. Often writers map out an entire character’s life story so they’re consistent throughout a novel or screenplay. You still need to add their favourite likes and dislikes, their school record and their greater family make up, but you’ve saved hours of work. Just checking whether the person is online and seeing if you can use the name carefully is another task. You don’t want to use Joe Brown or Fred Smith or Barack Obama for your character’s name, which is the beauty of this software for authors. It provides real names from all aspects of the globe. You want a Japanese name, it’s yours in seconds. If you need a Polish name for a man working in Denmark, all the necessary accurate details are provided.

The problem begins with the incorrect use of this information. Knowing the credit card number is a valid number and all the other information provided starts a team game. Registering gas or electric in the new names, the criminal starts to map out a future. Eventually he’s able to provide full information for opening a bank account and pulling stunts to gain goods and services illegally. This is then just one step away from identity theft. Our criminal can mix real knowledge with false information gained from this website to take over someone’s life.
So how do we ensure only fiction writers use this website?

http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/

More often than not, these blockbuster Hollywood movies leave you disappointed and asking what did they spend a couple of hundred million on? With Rise of the Planet of the Apes they get it just right with an audience leaving the theatre pleased with their ninety minute entertainment.

So what’s it all about?

A single act of both compassion and arrogance leads to a war unlike any other — and to the Rise of the Planet of the Apes. The Oscar-winning visual effects team that brought to life the worlds of Avatar and Lord of the Rings is breaking new ground, creating a CGI ape that delivers a dramatic performance of unprecedented emotion and intelligence, and epic battles on which rest the upended destinies of man and primate.

Writers Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver get the screenplay spot on. It takes us through the journey that leads us to exactly where we need to be; in waiting for the first Planet of the Apes film which, no doubt, will be remade now by this team.

The sympathy lies with the apes after the treatment we see to belittle them. This ties in exactly with the opposite treatment of the humans in the follow up, the first film.

The acting is good throughout although Freida Pinto isn’t given the greatest lines to portray. The skill of the actors is best seen within the ape characters; we entirely forget they’re humans inside brilliant CGI.

The powerful music by Patrick Doyle adds to an ambiance that brings together the senses of sound and sight to form a masterpiece that I’d watch over and over again as opposed to the stilted racism of Avatar where the white man saves the world yet again.

I for one and I’m sure there are plenty of others with me on this, can’t wait to see the next in this series, but we’re all hoping they stay with the high morals attributed to Rise of Planet of the Apes.

3 stars***

Cameron Diaz strides through the process of trying to act like the world’s worst teacher and resolves to become the best in this ninety minute romp through the life of a lazy, money grabbing educator, in ‘Bad Teacher.’ Her worst habit is saying what she’s thinking; exactly.

So what’s it all about?

Elizabeth is a poor Chicago area teacher who curses at her students and abuses substances. She plans to marry her wealthy fiancé, but when he dumps her, she tries to win over substitute teacher Scott, who is also wealthy. Scott’s colleague Amy is also pursuing his affections, while the school’s gym teacher is making advances on Elizabeth.

Most of this type of comedy genre are lacklustre, unfunny movies that stroll along hoping for drunk audience members to laugh more than necessary. This is not so in ‘Bad Teacher.’ The funny lines are fast and furious, placed consistently along the excellent screenplay. Unfortunately, most of the best jokes can already be seen in the ‘Red Trailer’ on Youtube and elsewhere.

The screenplay writers, Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky deliver a tight script cleverly showing how the character of a nice person (Elizabeth’s closet rival) Amy, becomes aggressively less so, with the character arc totally changing her personality by the movie end.

Of course most of our children’s teachers are dedicated, well enthused people, but this shows the ‘what if they’re not’ scenario. If you’ve ever wondered what your teacher might be like when s/he isn’t quite as dedicated as you imagined, this screenplay delivers the lines many teachers would have preferred to have used at some stages of their career, but daren’t for the potential loss of their job.

Jason Segal isn’t written the most obvious lines; the use of opposite choices works very well. A near naked Cameron Diaz washing cars will keep 90% of the male and 30% of the female audience quite content, even if they miss the rest of the movie.

While this teacher marks student’s work as ‘stupid’ and then ‘stupider’ the mid teen children learn more from her bra size than from the school syllabus.

The twist at the very end brings us into a perfect set-up for Bad Teacher part two. I’d go see it.

The King’s Speech was rewarded as the best movie of the year for 2010 in the Academy’s awards on 27th February, 2011. As well as best film, Colin Firth took best actor, Tom Hooper for best director and best screenplay for the excellent writing from David Seidler. It was clearly the best film to reach the big screen this past year and didn’t have any real clear competition.

To read the screenplay you can go here:

Perhaps the best speech of the evening came from director Tom Hooper who thanked his mother (like everyone who has one does,) but mentioned that she found him the play which he turned into a film.

Melissa Leo earned herself a high number of YouTube hits after her seven letter curse. Go Google it if you really want to know what word starts with ‘F.’

Christian Bale (another Brit) won best supporting actor for his version of ‘The Fighter.’

Natalie Portman won the best actress award. Her stand out performance in Black Swan probably didn’t surprise anyone. Her speech was positively glowing and genuine.

Another Brit win was for Inception for Sound Editing – a British win for Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley and Peter Bebb; the movie also won Sound Mixing, Visual Effects and Cinematography.

One of the evening’s highlights was seeing 94 year old actor Kirk Douglas in fine form. He came on stage to a standing ovation when he presented the best supporting actress award.

The Social Network won for Editing, Original Score and Best Adapted Screenplay.

The disappointment was the night’s general dull feeling. It appeared to lack the glamor and excitement of previous years.

The best film won, but it’s a debate that could rage for years if you felt another deserved the awards your favorites didn’t win. Discuss.

4 stars****

Natalie Portman leaves you in a trance, her performance is so majestic, outstanding and a worthy winner of the gold statue, due soon. Even if you’re not a fan of ballet, it won’t matter at all as this movie isn’t about ballet, Black Swan is about major character change from white swan to black swan.

So what’s it all about?

Black Swan is a 2010 American psychological thriller film directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, Vincent Cassel, and Mila Kunis. Its plot revolves around a production of Swan Lake by a prestigious New York City ballet company. As is usual with all productions of the ballet, the production requires a ballerina to play both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan. One dancer, Nina (Portman), is a perfect fit for the White Swan, while Lily (Kunis) has a personality that matches the Black Swan. When the two compete for the parts, Nina finds a dark side to herself.

The director of photography deserves a large mention for his camera work. His use of close ups and hand held cameras bring a closer feel to this movie. You get up close and personal with a psychotic woman who is falling into her stage character.

Natalie Portman is outstanding and is a must watch for anyone considering taking up acting as a career. You can learn everything you need about emotion and character arc in this great screenplay by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin with the story by Andres Heinz.

Taking just $13 million to make and then raking in close to $200 million is a good days (or in this case, years) work for the producers and director.

It is, however, a very dark movie. There’s so much going on within the ballet cast and the white/black swan’s mother/daughter relationship, this could have panned out into a four hour movie and we’d still be captivated. The lead swan has issues in her mind that she can’t reconcile. We don’t know if what we see is real or in the mind of the swan girl. We’re not sure if the sex and violence are real or a dream. You’ll have to make up your own mind.

The only aside was calling the ballerina Nina. I can’t help but think of my young daughter’s love for the animation of (Angel)ina Ballerina. Maybe it’s no coincidence. Maybe it’s all in my head.

3 stars***

Danny Boyle is a genius. Given a logline that goes: ‘man, by himself, gets trapped, cuts off arm to live’ extending that to a fast moving, poignant movie, is a challenge to say the least. Boyle exceeds as he puts himself into the frame for director of the year, if not the past decade. 127 hours is the result of one director’s dream, fulfilled.

So what’s it all about?

127 Hours is the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston’s remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crushes his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon near Canyonlands National Park of Utah. Over the next five days, Ralston examines his life and survives the elements to finally discover he has the courage and the wherewithal to extricate himself by any means necessary, abseil (rappel) a 65-foot wall and hike over eight miles before he is finally rescued. Throughout his journey, Ralston recalls friends, lovers (Clémence Poésy), family, and the two hikers (played by Amber Tamblyn and Kate Mara) he met before his accident.

The title of this movie doesn’t appear until about fifteen minutes in. That’s maybe a first, or do you know different?

A. R. Rahman’s music sets a fast pace to this movie. Boyle and Rahman ran the Slumdog Millionaire music to award status, so they probably believe (I do) they’re on a good run here.

Apparently, there’s just one scene different in the movie, from what really happened. The pool didn’t happen. It’s a good addition. Perhaps it’s just another dream.

The highlight of this movie is the latter stages when the tension builds. Should he cut off his arm with a blunt knife? If you wrote that into a screenplay you’d been laughed out of film school. Here, as in the real life events, it’s so true as to be frightening. Could you have cut your arm off to live? Even if you might, can you then scale a rock-face one handed and then run miles to seek help, while losing blood from a deep cut?

The moral of the story is simple; don’t go into dangerous sports without telling people where you are, lacking support at hand if you need it and certainly not into a desert with almost no water supplies. Otherwise, sit back and see this unfold in a movie theatre; it’s much safer. 127 hours will still knock you back in your seat.

The new people playing the old characters have done their jobs well. If you haven’t seen the ‘old’ A Team, then this ‘new’ A team fits in well.

So what’s it all about?

A group of Iraq War veterans looks to clear their name with the U.S. military, who suspect the four men of committing a crime for which they were framed and there’s lots of explosions, lots of blowing things up and generally expensive stunts.

The story is quite thin, but the action very active. You can see where most of the money went; straight into the explosions that appear to fill so many movies these days.

Unfortunately, while I used to watch the A Team on television, I can’t remember enough about the stories to remind myself whether this Joe Carnahan, Brian Bloom and Skip Woods screenplay is true to the old storylines or just moves along hoping we’d all forgotten.

I felt as though I was watching a mixture of Mission Impossible crossed with any of the recent James Bond movies. The entertainment value was good, but you won’t need your common sense with you. Leave it at the door. To be fair, I don’t believe the director was aiming any higher.
There’s one twist that will leave no-one wondering; it’s so obvious they might as well have written it in big letters on the screen.

I might also guess that the ‘Murdock’ character might have a hand in writing this script, while still in character.

This (Sex and the City 2) could go down as one of the worst movie in recent times. It’s lazy, poorly put together with a screenplay where I expect the writer will be pleased about his salary, but not from satisfaction of work completed.

So what’s it all about?

Who cares? Some will. Most won’t. If you are interested then here goes:

Two years have passed since Carrie Bradshaw finally bagged John “Mr. Big” Preston, the man she was always meant to be with. Just as her friend Charlotte must deal with her young daughter’s “terrible two’s”, Carrie must deal with her relationship taking a turn for the worse – Big likes to watch old black-and-white movies on TV and eat take-out food, which prevents Carrie from feeling like the free-wheeling party girl she used to be. Meanwhile, Miranda copes with a new boss that can’t handle an intelligent, powerful woman, and Samantha works a public relations angle that gets the fashionable foursome an all-expense-paid trip to Abu Dhabi.

I enjoyed the series; I didn’t mind the first movie, but this franchise version 2, is just so disappointing. The character arcs are there, but they’re so weak. The story is also feeble and condescending to those of the middle east traditions and ethics.

Maybe it’s time has passed; perhaps the characters need to have some major life changes to liven it up. I won’t go see SATC3.

It really only gains one star for Penélope Cruz’s smile. She oozed acting ability.

2 stars**

Ashton Kutcher is still better known as being Demi Moore’s young husband, but he’s working on it as we see more of him than her, on the big screen, these days.

Movies need their stars to surpass a certain chemistry, for their new found love to be believable. It could be that Mr Kutcher’s wife was on set during the making of this movie which would explain why there was a lack of chemistry, but Katherine Heigl starred opposite Gerard Butler in The Ugly Truth and that lacked more than just chemistry. Perhaps it’s just not meant to be and Ms Heigl needs to select better screenplays as sadly, she’s also responsible for Knocked Up. That’s a trio of movies that most would want to avoid from an actor’s acting point of view, but then the money must have been very good, which may be enough to sway the talent.

So what’s it all about?

Spencer Aimes (Kutcher) is just your average, undercover, government-hired super-assassin accustomed to a life of exotic European locales, flashy sports cars and even flashier women. But when he meets Jen Kornfeldt (Heigl), a beautiful, fun-loving computer tech recovering from a bad break-up, he finds true love…and happily trades international intrigue for domestic bliss, until Spencer and Jen are on the run for their lives.

The movie starts of as a mild laugh and then gets serious. It’s like being in two completely different movies, except that both only just do enough to keep the audience interested. The twists and turns are just plain tedious and are obviously meant to come across that way, but it only succeeds in the ticket payer thinking they’ve been had.

The silliness wouldn’t be lost in a Monty Python film, but here is just looks like a seven year old wrote the screenplay at times. Perhaps Blake Synder’s Save The Cat would be helpful here.

This movie had a good chance to be great but it missed out buy a long way. Perhaps they should get their chemistry set out again if they intend a follow up.