By turns inspiring and underwhelming, this compendium is more of a yearbook for the B-List group than a useful guide for...
A collection of screenwriting discussions by little-known and unproduced screenwriters.
This peculiar book is a collection of postings on craft by a group of predominantly aspiring screenwriters. In 2003, Von Altendorf, a former independent filmmaker, began hosting the A-List, an online discussion group on the website of American Zoetrope’s Virtual Studio. After abruptly pulling the plug on the popular group and disappearing for many years, Von Altendorf remerged on Zoetrope in 2010 and began hosting the B-List, the group whose dialogues and musings are presented in this volume. The postings are grouped into chapters on aspects of craft, such as Audience Bonding and Story Development, but, disappointingly, many discussions are rushed—advice on plot, character and theme gets a mere five pages—and the absence of a substantial discussion on dialogue seems like an obvious oversight. However, some of the selections, particularly those by Von Altendorf, are redeemed by a true passion for craft. His tips, such as his method of analyzing screenplays using “scene cards” or his thoughts on making scripts appealing to low-budget filmmakers, are pithy and informative. Unfortunately, many of the postings are simply padding: aimless, repetitive and of limited value to readers not familiar with the group members’ professional struggles. The few brief samples of contributors’ works struggles to establish their credentials as master craftspeople, and there are no selections from produced scripts to show their analyses in action (a close reading of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders is promised but never materializes). Von Altendorf describes his Hollywood career as having been “cut short” and his contacts are as “stale as dry cheese,” yet his entertaining style and the tantalizing biographical snippets sprinkled throughout his sections—his remembrance of the late actor/director Alejandro Rey is the book’s highlight—suggest that he would be an excellent candidate for memoir. Maybe even a biopic.
By turns inspiring and underwhelming, this compendium is more of a yearbook for the B-List group than a useful guide for writing screenplays.Pub Date: July 25, 2012
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 263
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.
A novel tells the story of two spirited girls who set out to save a lame foal in 1952.
Mary, age 12, lacks muscle control of her legs and must use a wheelchair. Her life is constantly interrupted by trips with her widower father to assorted doctors, all of whom have failed to help her. Mary tolerates the treatments, hoping to one day walk unassisted, but her true passion involves horses. Possessing a library filled with horse books, she loves watching and drawing the animals at a neighboring farm. She longs to own one herself. But her father, overprotective due to her disability and his own lingering grief over Mary’s dead mother, makes her keep her distance. Mary befriends Laura, the emotionally neglected daughter of the wealthy neighboring farm owners, and the two share secret buggy rides. Both girls are attracted to Illusion, a beautiful red bay filly on the farm. Mary learns that Illusion is to be put down by a veterinarian because of a lame leg. Horrified, she decides to talk to the barn manager about the horse (“Isn’t it okay for her to live even if she’s not perfect? I think she deserves a chance”). Soon, Mary and Laura attempt to raise money to save Illusion. At the same time, Mary begins to gain control of her legs thanks to water therapy and secret therapeutic riding with Laura. There is indeed a great deal of poignancy in a story of a girl with a disability fighting to defend the intrinsic value of a lame animal. But this book, the first installment of the Dream Horse Adventure Series, would be twice as touching if Mary interacted with Illusion more. In the tale’s opening, she watches the foal from afar, but she actually spends very little time with the filly she tries so hard to protect. This turns out to be a strange development given the degree to which the narrative relies on her devotion. Count (Selah’s Sweet Dream, 2015) draws Mary and Laura in broad but believable strokes, defined mainly by their unrelenting pluckiness in the face of adversity. While the work tackles disability, death, and grief, Mary’s and Laura’s environments are so idyllic and their optimism and perseverance so remarkable that the story retains an aura of uncomplicated gentleness throughout.
A short, simple, and sweet tale about two friends and a horse.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Hastings Creations Group
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.
Keridan’s poetry testifies to the pain of love and loss—and to the possibility of healing in the aftermath.
The literary critic Geoffrey Hartman once wrote that literature—and poetry, in particular—can help us “read the wound” of trauma. That is, it can allow one to express and explain one’s deepest hurts when everyday language fails. Keridan appears to have a similar understanding of poetry. She writes in “Foreword,” the opening work of her debut collection, that “pain frequently uses words as an escape route / (oh, how I know).” Many words—and a great deal of pain—escape in this volume, but the result is healing: “the ending is happy / the beginning was horrific / so let’s start there.” The book, then, tracks the process of recovery in the wake of suffering, and often, this suffering is brought on by romantic relationships gone wrong. An early untitled poem opens, “I die a little / taking pieces of me to feed the fire / that keeps him warm / you don’t notice that it’s a slow death / when you’re disappearing little by little.” The author’s imagery here—of the self fueling the dying fire of love—is simultaneously subtle and wrenching. But the poem’s message, amplified elsewhere in the book, is clear: We go wrong if we destructively give ourselves over to others, and healing comes only when we turn our energies back to our own good. Later poems, therefore, reveal that self-definition often equals strength. The process is painful but salutary; when “you’re left unprotected / surrounded by chaos with nothing you / can depend on / except yourself / and that’s when you gather the pieces / of the life you lost / and use them to build the life you want.” The “life you want” is an elusive goal, and the author knows that the path to self-definition is fraught with peril—but her collection may give strength to those who walk it.
Therapeutic, moving verse from a promising new talent.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-72770-538-6
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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