"This feature gets to the heart of my blogging and general film philosophy: bringing that which I see on screen into real world applications for my daily life. With these examples, the flow just happens to be in the opposite direction. Please feel free to share your comments on these stories and suggest or email me others that you find. All rights reserved if any Reel Life stories ever make their way to the big screen...just kidding...but not really..."
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"Child Elopers' Africa Plan Foiled"When I was 3 or 4 years old I proposed to a girl in my preschool class, whispering in her ear, "Let's get married when we grow up" - or something to that effect. She shrugged her shoulders in affirmation; I don't remember her name. Maybe not the best story to base a movie on, but not too far off from this amusing report out of Germany about two romantic kids, aged 4 and 5, who stole off to the airport in the middle of the night to get married in Africa, "where it is warm", as they described it. Packing sunglasses and bathing suits and with an official witness (one of the kid's sisters) in tow, the trio made it less than a mile to their destination before being picked up by a security guard as they waited at a train station. Not the ending they might have hoped for, but obviously not the ending that we'd see in the movie. Done tastefully, this could be an adorably adventure movie for kids.
Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film
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"Recruited For Jihad? What Happened to Mustafa Ali?"
and "Somali Youth from Minneapolis dies in homeland"
Living in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, home to more Somalis than any other place in the U.S. or Canada, I don't really have a sense of what the majority of people elsewhere know about Somalia or its people. My guess is that the general knowledge is tragically limited to the jingoistic Black Hawk Down and the recent Somali pirate madness, which is why a film about someone like Mustafa Ali, an 18-year old from St. Paul who was among a group of almost 20 young Somali men who disappeared earlier this year and are suspected to have been recruited by terrorist cells back in Somalia, could be extremely illuminating.
Although I admit Gran Torino tackled intercultural understanding in questionable fashion, the majority of people left that movie with a much better understanding (or likely an initial understanding) of the Hmong people and their culture. This movie, or a related documentary about Ali, could also shed light on the challenging transition many Somali refugees have had to make in Minnesota and elsewhere in the West.
Update: This story was published in February, and just this weekend it was reported that Burhan Hassan, a 17 year-old teenager from Minneapolis who left Somalia as an infant and returned around the same time as Ali last year, was recently killed in Mogadishu, the details of his death unclear. What is going on...?
Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary; documentary short
and "Somali Youth from Minneapolis dies in homeland"
Living in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, home to more Somalis than any other place in the U.S. or Canada, I don't really have a sense of what the majority of people elsewhere know about Somalia or its people. My guess is that the general knowledge is tragically limited to the jingoistic Black Hawk Down and the recent Somali pirate madness, which is why a film about someone like Mustafa Ali, an 18-year old from St. Paul who was among a group of almost 20 young Somali men who disappeared earlier this year and are suspected to have been recruited by terrorist cells back in Somalia, could be extremely illuminating.
Although I admit Gran Torino tackled intercultural understanding in questionable fashion, the majority of people left that movie with a much better understanding (or likely an initial understanding) of the Hmong people and their culture. This movie, or a related documentary about Ali, could also shed light on the challenging transition many Somali refugees have had to make in Minnesota and elsewhere in the West.
Update: This story was published in February, and just this weekend it was reported that Burhan Hassan, a 17 year-old teenager from Minneapolis who left Somalia as an infant and returned around the same time as Ali last year, was recently killed in Mogadishu, the details of his death unclear. What is going on...?
Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary; documentary short
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"Komodo Dragons Kill Indonesian Fisherman"So there have been tons of movies already made about killer dragons, alligators, lizards, and other scaly reptiles, but has there been one specifically focusing on the venomous and razor-sharp-toothed Komodo dragon, the threatened species native to Indonesia? Not that I'm aware of, though monster movies aren't really my bag so I've probably missed one. This story about the horrifying attack on a fisherman who was "trespassing on a remote island in search of fruit" is tailor-made for an Anaconda-like thriller.
Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film
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Until a few weeks ago, Sri Lanka had been mired in a brutal civil war for 25 years. Fighting between the government and the rebel Tamil Tigers claimed the lives of 70,000 civilians during this time, with hundreds of thousands more displaced by the fighting. This violence, compounded with the devastating tsunami of 2004 (31,000+ killed in Sri Lanka), has to have caused severe physical and psychological damage to the people of this island country. What's going on in Sri Lanka now? How has this country recovered, and how did this horrible war eventually come to an end?
Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary
Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film; feature length documentary
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"Galaxy May Be Full of 'Earths', Alien Life"While the graphic looks right out of Danny Boyle's Sunshine, the story is right out of Alien, Contact, Star Trek, or, well, any movie ever made about intelligent beings living on other planets in our galaxy and beyond. With this new "evidence", why not one more? Or how about a documentary on the subject, from an expert's perspective but for a layperson's understanding? I'd like to know what the future plans are for space exploration, and I'll probably never tire of sci-fi movies about it.
Story Potential: Extremely high
Project Possibilities: Feature length film franchise, feature length documentary
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"Dutch Harbor, Alaska: The Police Blotter Read 'Round the World"
This article makes the Dutch Harbor area of the port city of Unalaska, Alaska sounds like the Wild West - drunkards, brawls, wild animals, crazy people, etc. Though kind of amusing, the actual police blotter doesn't appear to show anything too exotic. Nonetheless I think there might be potential for a zany comedy - maybe even a Shaun of the Dead style horror comedy - to come out of this piece.
Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary
This article makes the Dutch Harbor area of the port city of Unalaska, Alaska sounds like the Wild West - drunkards, brawls, wild animals, crazy people, etc. Though kind of amusing, the actual police blotter doesn't appear to show anything too exotic. Nonetheless I think there might be potential for a zany comedy - maybe even a Shaun of the Dead style horror comedy - to come out of this piece.
Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary
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"How Do You Get to Sesame Street?"Recently I read that President Obama is the first U.S. president to have grown up watching "Sesame Street", or at least grown up within the first generation that watched it. Surprisingly, this show has been broadcast into the living rooms of American households going on four decades now. What is the lasting power, the secret behind its success? Also, what about the controversy in recent years that older versions of the show (from the 70's and 80's) are no longer appropriate for children to watch (you know, Oscar the Grouch being homeless, etc.)? I want to know more.
Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Feature length documentary
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"S.D. Rancher, 23, Lassos a Powerball Fortune"
Boom, you wake up tomorrow and you have $88 million in the bank. What happens next? I'm always curious as to how and why certain types of people win the lottery, like the most recent winner, a 23 year-old rancher from South Dakota who insists he'll just keep on ranchin'. I'm not really interested to see another Mr. Deeds or Billy Madison style comedy, so give us the straight story - maybe even make us feel a little better that we didn't win (or didn't even pay to play). How about a thoughtful drama or a documentary about the winners of these massive lottery purses?
Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary
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"Is Abu Omar al-Baghdadi a Terrorist or a Mythic Symbol: A Tale of Iraqi Politics"
In the last 18 months we've seen a sharp decline in the number of movies about Iraq, though that will be on the uptick again this year with The Hurt Locker and Green Zone. I think the combat situation has been covered enough for the time being, but there's so much more going on behind the scenes of this war. In this story lies a potential mystery thriller about Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a jihadist leader and vapor of a man who's impossibly been captured, identified, and killed multiple times. The Iraqis have somebody in custody right now but aren't entirely sure who it is, or if al-Bagdadhi is even a real person. Why is this an important and/or otherwise interesting issue? As one source notes, "“the jihadists have been pledging allegiance to a state and a man they can’t see, and they have willingly given up their lives for that.”
Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary
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"Young Couple Moves In With Her Ex-Husband"
For as quickly as Hollywood is able to fasttrack movies through production, it's almost surprising there haven't been more "recession comedies". How about this one? To save money, a woman, her husband and their two children moved in with the woman's ex-husband (20 years older than the new husband), who lives with his mother. Get me Kristen Wiig as the woman, Danny McBride as the new husband, Kathy Bates as the ex-mother-in-law, and - why not - Will Ferrell as the ex-husband.
Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, reality show
For as quickly as Hollywood is able to fasttrack movies through production, it's almost surprising there haven't been more "recession comedies". How about this one? To save money, a woman, her husband and their two children moved in with the woman's ex-husband (20 years older than the new husband), who lives with his mother. Get me Kristen Wiig as the woman, Danny McBride as the new husband, Kathy Bates as the ex-mother-in-law, and - why not - Will Ferrell as the ex-husband.
Story Potential: Moderate
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, reality show
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"S.D. Rancher, 23, Lassos a Powerball Fortune"Boom, you wake up tomorrow and you have $88 million in the bank. What happens next? I'm always curious as to how and why certain types of people win the lottery, like the most recent winner, a 23 year-old rancher from South Dakota who insists he'll just keep on ranchin'. I'm not really interested to see another Mr. Deeds or Billy Madison style comedy, so give us the straight story - maybe even make us feel a little better that we didn't win (or didn't even pay to play). How about a thoughtful drama or a documentary about the winners of these massive lottery purses?
Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary
"Chinese Hunger for Sons Fuels Boys' Abductions"
From China comes this horrifying story about abducted children in the southern rural areas of the country, "where a tradition of favoring boys over girls and the country’s strict family planning policies have turned the sale of stolen children into a thriving business." It's a nightmare of a situation that at the very least deserves some consideration as an awareness-raising documentary. Perhaps framed like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, somebody also could make a powerfully affecting thriller from this piece.
Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary, documentary short
From China comes this horrifying story about abducted children in the southern rural areas of the country, "where a tradition of favoring boys over girls and the country’s strict family planning policies have turned the sale of stolen children into a thriving business." It's a nightmare of a situation that at the very least deserves some consideration as an awareness-raising documentary. Perhaps framed like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, somebody also could make a powerfully affecting thriller from this piece.
Story Potential: Very high
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary, documentary short
"Is Abu Omar al-Baghdadi a Terrorist or a Mythic Symbol: A Tale of Iraqi Politics"In the last 18 months we've seen a sharp decline in the number of movies about Iraq, though that will be on the uptick again this year with The Hurt Locker and Green Zone. I think the combat situation has been covered enough for the time being, but there's so much more going on behind the scenes of this war. In this story lies a potential mystery thriller about Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, a jihadist leader and vapor of a man who's impossibly been captured, identified, and killed multiple times. The Iraqis have somebody in custody right now but aren't entirely sure who it is, or if al-Bagdadhi is even a real person. Why is this an important and/or otherwise interesting issue? As one source notes, "“the jihadists have been pledging allegiance to a state and a man they can’t see, and they have willingly given up their lives for that.”
Story Potential: High
Project Possibilities: Feature length film, feature length documentary
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