300: Rise of an Empire

Dear Themistocles, Historical Figure,

You were a pretty savvy guy, and lived though a great age of Hellenic theater, so you’re probably familiar with how the facts of history can be bent and stretched by a dramatist. And there’s no better way to measure what values are held most sacred by a particular culture than to observe how those facts are bent and stretched. Back in 472 BCE when the Aeschylus dramatized the events of the Greco-Persian War in the The Persians, his concern was for divine retribution. Ideas of fate and morality were a popular theme back then (his play even won first prize at that year’s Dionysian festival). You didn’t get a mention in that one, but you’re a big part of a new piece of drama—it’s called 300: Rise of an Empire, and it’s, uh…a movie. Which is like a play, but projected onto a wall. Like a living painting. You see, we’ve figured out how to refract light onto a surface in order to capture the image of…

Nevermind. What I wanted to tell you – because I thought you might be curious – is how you’re being remembered here in the 21^st Century.

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Grabbers

Dear Kelly Valentine Hendry, Casting Director,

At the risk of starting things off on the wrong foot, I must admit that the finer details of the casting process escape me. I have an image in my head of an assembly line of nervous actors hesitantly reading from a script while every few seconds a brusque voice interrupts: “Thank you! Next!” But I know it’s something a little more complex.  So I imagine, when it came time to hold auditions for Grabbers,  you must have been faced with the additional challenge of not only casting men and women who were a natural fit for each part, but who would be able to convincingly act drunk for nearly the entire third act—and do it without compromising any of their natural charisma.

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Non-Stop

Dear Jack McKenna, DGA Trainee,

According to the Director’s Guild of America’s website, the assistant director trainee program you participated in is “designed to provide opportunities for a limited number of individuals to become Assistant Directors,” and comprises of “a rotation system [that] places trainees on the sets of various features, television series, and commercials.”

So, Jack—what did you learn on the set of Liam Neeson’s latest throat-punching action-thriller Non-Stop?

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Live Tweeting the 2014 Oscars

#DearAcademy,

With another Oscar telecast safely in the books, we can thank Twitter for once again making the show bearable. The Academy was praised and prodded throughout the night by film fans worldwide, but the Dear Cast and Crew lead #DearAcademy trend was, once again, the real show to follow. 

Here’s a sampling of the people who made last night more memorable, plus some of our own most retweeted and favourited remarks.

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Omar

Dear Royi Arama, Jib Operator,

Hany Abu-Assad’s Omar opens with a gunshot and a siren. Omar, a young baker (and, apparently, parkour enthusiast), cautiously scales the Israeli security wall, dropping down into the West Bank. One immediately wonders what dangerous mission would lead him to take such a risk.  As it turns out, Omar just wants to hang out with his friends and see Nadia, the girl he loves. It’s just like Romeo scaling the balcony to see Juliet—if the balcony was a symbol of one of the most polemical geopolitical crises of our time.

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