Coffee is for closers

A memo from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Mamet (Heist) has shown up on the Internet this week that he wrote to the writing staff of his now-cancelled but entirely excellent TV show, The Unit. The memo is dated 2005, and rather explicitly (and with a fair amount of humour) describes how to write scenes and plot. It's a fantastic read - check it out here. Mamet's work is singular in its sparse use of exposition and its labyrinthine plotting, is is wholly awesome.

Visit Denmark!

While some people may find parts this kind of disturbing (so be forewarned), here's a great story from The Onion on the new Tourism Denmark campaign directed by Lars Von Trier (Dancer in the Dark, Dogville, Breaking the Waves, Antichrist). Anyone familiar with Von Trier's dark, uncompromisingly challenging work should find it pretty funny.

20 Great Movies from the 2000s

Anyone who knows me probably knows that I don't really believe in "Best of" lists for movies - there are far too many factors at play to declare one film better than another (although we can all agree that most are better than anything starring Ashton Kutcher).

So rather than counting down the 20 best pictures of the 2000s, here's a list of what I consider some really great movies from that decade that was, in alphabetical order:

Ali

Almost Famous

The Aviator

Chicago

The Dark Knight

The Fountain

Good Night, and Good Luck

Hot Fuzz

The Hurt Locker

Mystic River

No Country for Old Men

Requiem for a Dream

Syriana

There Will Be Blood

Traffic

25th Hour

Up

Why We Fight

World Trade Center

Zodiac

Special mentions: Michael Clayton, Transformers, Million Dollar Baby, Crash, Iron Man, Narc, Sideways, Dancer in the Dark, Che, The Departed, The Prestige, Wall-E, Kingdom of Heaven (The Director's Cut), The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Children of Men, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Agree? Disagree? Think I've missed something?

Should've gone with Bell...

Check this out, a montage of charicters in horror movies convienently (or inconvienently) finding their cell phones useless when they need them most. As screenwriter John August points out on his blog, it's a necessary evil - everyone has a phone these days, so a writer often has to explain why it's unusable. Hopefully, though, one can find a more elegant way to do so than these...

Before Their Time: John Carpenter's The Thing

If you've known me long enough, you've probably heard me go on and on about John Carpenter's The Thing, a really fantastic sci-fi horror picture from 1982. I just can't get enough of this movie. So it should come as no surprise that I've written a column about said masterpiece, and it's available at BoxOfficeProphets.com - follow the link here.

Public Enemy Number One

Holy crap.

The trailer to Michael Mann's upcoming crime epic, Public Enemies, has been released online, and it looks like Heat set in the 1920s. I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it.

Starring Johnny Depp, looking like himself in a movie for the first time in a while, and Christian Bale, who's also in this summer's Terminator: Salvation, I really hope this is the big hit Mann needs to keep making his exceptionally well-crafted films: Miami Vice held big promise a couple of years back, but didn't make the box office that it's high budget called for.

Public Enemies blasts its way onto movie screens July 1.

Spectaclefest 2009!

A couple of awesome teaser trailers showed up during last night's Super Bowl: G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. (A new teaser for Star Trek, comprised of mostly already-seen footage also appeared, along with the wholly unnecessary Angels & Demons, starring Tom Hanks' hairpiece, but neither rank on the awesome scale anywhere near the aforementioned pictures - maybe it's the lack of colons in their titles).

You remember (or maybe you don't) how when you played with G.I. Joes as a kid, you'd make them do all kinds of crazy moves while sailing through the air in slow motion? Well, apparently the makers of Rise of Cobra do, since that seems to be Snake Eyes' sole purpose in this film. So. Very. Cool.

As for Transformers, it looks like Michael Bay's decided that the giant freakin' robots in the first one were just a little too small, so why not up the stakes a little this time. This explosion-laden 30-seconds gives little inkling of the plot, but I imagine it involves someone falling, then taking revenge.