"1883" takes you on an epic journey with the Dutton family as they leave the heart of Texas for a Montana ranch, the central setting of this present-day series.

After finishing the first season of "Firefly Lane," I couldn't resist sending a WhatsApp message to my daughter: " If you ever want to see what kind of teenager I was, you should check out 'Firefly Lane.' your mum was Kate during her teens and early twenties – the looks, behaviour, the whole package!" To my amusement, she responded with, "Not really my cup of tea for a TV show." I guess her reaction is just like what Kate's daughter, Marah, might say!

In the last couple of decades, a new player has emerged: the antihero while not all Antagonists are Villains. This has turned our storytelling world upside down!

When I first delved into scriptwriting and the art of storytelling, character arcs seemed like an intimidating puzzle. It took me time but I've cracked the code

Let’s talk a bit about backstories. I mean it’s called BACKstory and readers want the STORY. So why do we need it? First, let’s define what is a backstory. A backstory is basically the history of a character, setting, or plot that comes before the story’s main events. It’s like the secret sauce that adds depth and flavour to your narrative. So, why do we need backstories? Well, they do a bunch of awesome things:

Unless you were living under a rock or on a different planet, you’ve probably noticed the rise since 2008 of the phenomena called “Mom & Dad Do Crime”. It’s all about everyday folks diving headfirst into thrilling, illicit adventures that blur the line between right and wrong.

Crafting a character's physicality is like adding the perfect seasoning to a delicious story stew. It's all about creating vivid images and bringing your characters to life on the page or screen.  But hey, hold your horses! While physical descriptions are important, going overboard can actually harm your story.

Gone are the days of the moustache-twirling, one-dimensional villains. Instead, we're presented with villains who are complex, multi-layered, and even sympathetic in some cases. These new villains are intriguing, leaving us wanting to know more about their motivations and backstory.

You know what they say: timing is everything. And the same goes for books! Some books become hits not just because of their story, but because they hit that sweet spot where the story perfectly aligns with what the audience is looking for.

Symbolism and metaphors are the hidden gems in a writer or filmmaker's toolbox. But how can they be used effectively without being too obvious or repetitive? The key is to employ a diverse range of symbolism and metaphors, each one unique and nuanced in its own way.

Developing a character with a clear and compelling motivation is an essential aspect of crafting a successful story. A character's motivation drives their actions, defines their relationships, and makes them relatable to the audience.

We've all made some cringe-worthy mistakes in our writing. But fear not! Sometimes it’s good to make those mistakes in order to create a masterpiece

In today's entertainment landscape, the traditional lines between heroes and villains have become increasingly blurred. With flawed and anti-heroic protagonists taking center stage, the role of the antagonist has become even more important. A well-crafted antagonist is a crucial component of any story, whether it's a book, a movie, or a TV show. 

When a film is advertised as being "based on a true story," it's natural for audiences to expect a certain level of historical accuracy and authenticity. However, translating real-life events to the screen is a complex process that involves navigating multiple challenges and potential pitfalls.

At first, I thought scriptwriting would be easier than writing a novel. I couldn't see myself writing anything longer than 100 pages, so scripts seemed like the easy way out. Boy, was I wrong! Seven years later, I've learned that scriptwriting is anything but easy. 

Having a compelling character is crucial to the success of a film or TV show. It is what draws audiences in and keeps them engaged.

For those who are unfamiliar with these terms, a “Pantser” is a writer who writes without a clear plan or outline, allowing the story to unfold organically. On the other hand, a “Plotter” is a writer who meticulously plans out the story before starting to write, outlining the plot, character arcs, and key events.

Time travel has been a popular theme in movies and TV shows for decades. From H.G. Wells' 1895 novel "The Time Machine" to the blockbuster "Avengers: Endgame," and the latest hit series, Timeless, the idea of traveling through time has captured the imaginations of audiences worldwide.

As a scriptwriter, you’re always looking for ways to take your characters and story to the next level. One technique that can help you do that is breaking the fourth wall. But what exactly is breaking the fourth wall, and how can it be used to improve your script?

Valentine’s Day is associated with traditional romantic love, but in reality, love takes on many different forms. Whether it’s the love between siblings, the love of self, or the unrequited love, there are countless ways to explore and understand the complexity of human relationships. Whether you’re single, in a relationship, or somewhere in between, there’s always something to be celebrated.

Pulling off a successful film to television adaptation is a tricky business. The question we need to ask ourselves as writers is … what do you need in order to turn a successful movie into a greater successful TV show? What did these successful shows have in common?

If you want to be a movie critic that brings value to your readers, why not choose to be KIND? Why not choose to focus on all the aspects that DO WORK? Kindness does not mean ignoring the parts that need improvements, it means giving respect to those people that made this creation possible and giving them something that they can improve for next time.

First time I ever saw what is called a “kick-ass-hottie” I was cheering. However, since then a lot has changed and frankly, each time I see that trope on screen I feel like screaming.

For scriptwriters, like me, the show has been a fantastic example on how to balance between staying true to original source while breathing new life and making it into something different.

Having a good idea is not enough to create a story. Don't just fell in love with your idea, You need to develop it to make a book. A good idea needs to be followed up with the Holy Trinity of writing – Concept, Character and Structure.

The Last Kingdom is a fantastic example of how to take original sources (books) and turn them into a successful TV show.

What is a historical novel? Some books are full of facts. In these types of stories, the author fills in only the details they cannot know like specific conversations, internal monologues, or physical reactions. Then there are other books that are only vaguely historical.

Witches have been a favorite 'dark' element for storytellers from as far back as the bible all the way to current TV franchises and films such as American Horror Story - Coven and The Blair Witch Project. To celebrate Halloween here are my favourite 10 Witches

You hear it all the time - your first 10 pages (or 5 for TV) are your most important pages. To make sure readers and viewers would keep watching what you wrote, your opening scene or sequence must grab us by the throat and get our attention.

Pulling off a successful film to television adaptation is a tricky business. The question we need to ask ourselves as writers is … what do you need in order to turn a successful movie into a greater successful TV show? What did these successful shows have in common?

Pulling off a successful film to television adaptation is a tricky business. The question we need to ask ourselves as writers is … what do you need in order to turn a successful movie into a greater successful TV show? What did these successful shows have in common?

This part is about the lessons that can be learned from the mistakes in the show. Due to the fact that the show was another trick of the wizard to keep his power there were mistakes that were done that brought down the show.

Once Upon A Time… A great wizard breathed life into the oldest fairy tales and made them come alive for generations of kids. Watching 7 Seasons of "Once Upon A TIme" taught me important lessons about Scriptwriting and storytelling in the 21st century.

After spending 10 days binging on Outlander and reading the four books, which the TV series is based upon, I’ve found benefits for binging and lessons to be learned about book adaptations.

It’s 2020 do we REALLY need another adaptation of “Little Women”? But it seems that a good story will always be revisited, maybe that’s the reason it’s called a classic.

You know how sometimes bad things turn to good when you look at them in perspective of time? Well, that’s what happened to me when I decided to commit to writing a weekly movie review. My first lesson was... How I can get out of non-supportive thoughts and turn them around.

In our family, there is a tradition of watching The Bucket List on December 31, just like others watch Love, Actually on Christmas day. This choice might cause a big debate, but I stand behind my opinion about this movie. and here's why....

It’s easy to sneer on Richard Curtis’s work, but I cannot help falling for his rather self-indulgent romantic comedies. My level head might be crying ‘No,’ but my lopsided heart can’t help but say yes. For me, resistance is futile when it comes to his scripts and About Time is just another one of them.

Sunday night is my hubby’s night to choose a movie in our place. Usually I suffer quietly at his choices. Imagine my surprise when out of the blue he came with this fun and enjoyable movie. I wanted to watch it again just for the brilliant lines and the great comedy in this action movie.

At first glance, The Bookshop might look to some audiences like Chocolat with books instead of chocolates, but this film is about a woman who moves to a small town and opens a shop is nothing like that romantic comedy.

Once you start a blog, the next step is making sure your audience will respond to you and opening the channel for conversation to take place. The only way to it is by making sure that what you write inspires them to comment on your blog and express their ideas, knowledge and most of all allow them to express their VOICE!

Anyone that knows me, knows I’m a sucker for rom-com and even Hallmark Channel movies. I don’t see anything wrong in having once in a while a proper cheesy movie that comes from “Never-Land” where you know exactly what would take place and when. Sometimes a girl needs some predictability.

If there is a “go-to” movie in our household that everyone enjoys no matter how many times we watch it, it’s this one. Not an easy feast to achieve when you have a young ultra-feminist sensitive, as my daughter, an action lover, like my hubby and a romantic soul like me.

You know how you have that one small movie, that no one ever heard about, that you are totally in love with, and no matter how much you try to convince your friends and family how good it is, no one sees what you see in the movie? And then imagine after years that you try to convince people how great that movie is, you read that other experts think its also a gem, isn’t that a fantastic feeling?

Movies that go straight to DVD or to very limited cinema showing, are usually not rated high, it’s as if the distributors didn’t think they are good enough and therefore try to get as much as possible from them. Therefore imagine my surprise when such a movie becomes so good it’s sometimes on repeat on our house. This is the case with The Alibi

I often hear this cry… NO ONE READS MY BLOG! Believe in the famous sentence from “Fields of Dreams” “Build it and they will come!”, you’re in for a BIG SURPRISE… and not a good one… Todays’ marketing is based on Social Media and Social media is like a long-term relationship, not a one-night-stand.

Long before Crazy Rich Asian there was Saving Face that gave us the pleasure of seeing another culture, and realizing that we are all humans sharing similar experiences, no matter from which background we come from.

There’s nothing like the holidays to make you turn to rom-com as a last resort to get over that hangover. Last Holiday fit that bill. It is a nice little rom-com, which packs an emotional punch. It is hard to balance these diverse elements, but the film does a good job of doing just that.

No one doubts that there is charm in the shows Amy Sherman-Palladino puts on. The same charm as any nostalgia piece sets can bring. Together with her trademark of rapid-fire dialogues, which can compete with Sorkin, but without the depth. You can fall in love and become addicted to it.

The real story of Breathe, is a love story. It’s the love story of Robin and Diana, it’s a love story to their life and legacy, produced by their son Jonathan Cavendish, and most of all it’s a love story to celebrating life and making the most out of what it gives you.

If ever there were a competition on the best female kick-ass character, Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) would absolutely come up at the top 3. Angelina Jolie, for all intents and purposes, is James Bond in Salt, she never quite says: “The name is Salt. Evelyn Salt” but for all other aspects she is as close as you can get to a female James Bond.

I have a confession, and it is hard for me to admit it… I am not a perfectionist. On the contrary, I’m sloppy, I never think till the end and I always have to come back and correct things I’ve done. If you suffer from this disease called perfectionism let me remind you. All perfectionists have one thing in common. You all achieve… NOTHING.

We all know Aaron Sorkin can write. The one-man brilliance behind The West Wing, The Social Network, Moneyball The Newsroom and more, his confrontational style blends skill, smartness and, particularly, showiness in a way that leaves no question about his talent. But in Molly’s Game Sorkin has entered a new dimension, which is, directing and that’s a whole different ballgame.

Who would have thought that Dolly Parton would become an inspirational figure, but after watching Dumplin’ you’ll also rush out and get your hands on her songs to get inspired and confident, just like Willowdean in the above movie.

We all know the saying that a gun in the first act will fire in the third act. But what happens if the gun is used in the first act, how do you continue beyond it? This series shows you how. Dead to Me presents itself as a mystery show and sometimes maybe as a comedy, but it’s neither that nor that. It’s all about female friendship.

If the Book Club was a disgraceful example of how NOT to portrait the life of senior people, Finding Your Feet is a superb way of presenting it. When it comes to senior-bait cinema that glorifies the act of seizing the day and taking second chances in one’s golden years, the UK has the upper hand on anything that ever came out of Hollywood.

Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen can do nothing to rescue a mediocre script. As far as it goes, Book Club is a mostly painless ride, with a few laugh-out-loud moments, but as Peggy Lee memorably sang, “Is that all there is?”

As a heavy dyslectic person, watching movies about spelling is an act of masochism and humiliation. However, Akkelah and the Bee, is one of my all-time-favourite movies when I need a reminder that nothing is impossible.

Sometimes it’s good to revisit old movies to see how well did they stand the test of time. Revisiting Mr. & Mrs. Smith proves that it is one of those movies that stand that test. Watching the movie years after the tabloid scandal of what took place “behind the scenes” and the creation (and fall) of BradJolina, the movie proves it still keeps its charm and fun.

There is a danger in period-dramas films. On one hand, they can feel like over-the-top escapist fantasies that transport the viewer to a simpler time, or explore societal concepts gone but that can inform our current experiences. On the other hand, they can sometimes feel dull and irrelevant, and also often promote conservative, controversial ideas.

The second season of the Amazon series starring John Krasinski, as Jack Ryan, keeps things exciting and entertaining while maintaining the high standard of writing as the first season. Jack, Jim, and the rest of their CIA buddies are back with a vengeance in Jack Ryan Season 2, and vengeance is not an exaggeration.

The other night my hubby and I were looking for something to watch that would answer both our needs and we stumbled on this movie. Though it's an “oldie” (from last century – 1996) we decided to give it a chance. It’s a movie that makes you think and wonder about the questions it carries even after “The End“ appears on the screen. Isn’t that a good reason to watch a movie?

Whenever I would teach about Marketing 101 this movie would be the perfect example of what it means niche marketing and changing your product when your market has disappeared. The other great lesson we can take from this movie concerning marketing is that the key to your success is ASKING your target group what would they want and not deciding it for them.

By now you know I would watch Emma Thompson read the Telephone book (if it existed) and still enjoy and be hooked by her. But this time it’s the wonderful Mindy Kaling that gets the spotlight in this brutally piercing comedy. Late Night is a sharp and sincere comedy about sexism in broadcasting in the era of #MeToo and social media written and co-stared by Mindy Kaling.

This time it’s personal. Ruth Ginsburg is one of my heroes, she’s been a role model for me as long as I remember myself and from the moment I identified myself as a feminist. So getting two films in the same year about her was a real treat. What I loved about this movie was that it wasn’t trying to compete with the documentary that came out in the same year (RGB).

Sometimes life is writing a better script than any movie can. Trying to capture that on the silver screen can become a risky adventure. In the case of Woman in Gold what saves the day is the performances of those real-life people

The Road Within deserves praises just for the fact that it is a movie where mental health and “normal” life are being discussed. It is an attempt to remove the stigma on mental health and show us that beyond the psychological challenges those people face there are human beings with similar emotions dreams and desires as we all have.

You know how some movies just catch your heart and “have you at “Hello”? Well, Pride is one of those movies. In dramatic terms, the strokes could hardly be broader. Playing to the widest possible audience, Pride employs reassuring cast and familiar Ealing comedy tropes in fine, broad-church fashion.

I really didn’t want to like this series. I even refused watching it. I couldn’t let go of my fan-girl to Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan, so you could understand my surprise when I liked it so much Reviving a known hero figure is always a tricky and delicate process. How do you adapt a character who was a symbol of a bygone era to a totally new political climate and audience preferences?

I’m not a big fan of high schools comedies. Maybe it’s because high school is still a nightmare for me, even after 40+ years, or maybe because it feels immature (it’s high school for crying out loud) and in most cases a waste of my time. However, there are some exceptions whereby they managed to change the conversation from the high school into a thematic one.

The best thing about biopic movies is that they educate you or at least get you curious to investigate an era or a person that the movie depicted. This is what happened to me after watching Dolemite is My Name. I have to admit that I wasn’t familiar with the term Blaxploitation. I had to go and research it and read more about the history of it. That on it’s own is a great proof for the significance of this movie.

Growing up in a house where history was the main topic of conversation around the dinner table (my father being a History professor) loving biopic and historic movies comes as a second nature to me.

You might say that there is “nothing new under the sun” when you watch this movie from a feminist perspective, but the fact that this movie was written (Lissa Evans), adapted (Gaby Schiappe) and directed (Lone Scherfig) by women shows that we did create some progress since the period this movie depicts. You need to be stone-cold heart not to fall in love with this movie.

Growing up in Israel, death was never a topic to laugh about. It was a serious morbid topic we all had to deal with, even as children. As I grew up I chose to look at it in a different way, which was that we should celebrate the life the person had, not the moment of his or her death. I was happy to discover that this view is shared in this comedy.

Let’s start by a confession – If I had to take only one author’s books to a deserted island it would be Terry Pratchett. Hearing that Good Omens was turned (finally) into a screen version got me into two minds. First I was delighted then I remembered other attempts to turn Pratchett’s books into a movie and how disappointed I was, but not this time.

This should have been an easy one, a movie just down my alley, but strange things happen. My grandmother used to make ice cream saying: “What could go wrong if you have good healthy ingredients”. It was the worst ice cream you could imagine. The Big Wedding is just like my grandmother’s ice cream.

I was hesitant to watch Stan & Ollie. I didn’t want to shutter my childhood image of those two comedians who gave me my first taste in humor. What I found was a gently melancholic homage to this wonderful duo. It’s never quite as funny as might have been expected, but it tugs at the emotions throughout.

Mr. Church is a great example of a movie where audience liked it while critics and any screenwriter tore it to shreds. That’s the difference between watching a movie when you understand the craft and when you are blissfully ignorant and rely on how it makes you feel.

I HATE running to a point that I once said “I have a note from God that I’m not allowed to run… and I’m from Jerusalem, so that’s the real-deal”. So, running movies are not my thing, I’m too scared that it would convince me that I should run.

The minute I started watching "Jane The Virgin" I was hooked. It should not be considered as “fluff” or guilty pleasure. It is a masterpiece in creating a show that is both dramatic and funny by touching and discussing issues such as faith, immigration, abortion, sex and parenting.

I’m a HUGE fan of Emma Thompson and in my book she is infallible. Add to it Stanley Tucci, it would always be a good reason to watch a movie. Though "The Children Act" has all the elements of a great movie, somehow I wasn’t moved by it.

I love What-If movies and alternate timeline stories with all its complications. For All Mankind has a brilliant premise and the execution of it is done incredibly well. The show presents an alternative history whereby the Soviets won the race to space and were the first ones to land on the moon.

To be honest, I’ve watched only 3 episodes, but had no urge to continue watching. The Morning Show is a proof that no matter how much money you throw on a show, and how many big stars and great actors and actresses you get involved, if your message is not clear the results would be mediocre.

I have a confession to make… I LOVE musicals, maybe it’s the romantic in me, maybe it’s my age. It seems that musicals about music groups are an IN thing. However, nothing can be as different as Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman. Rocketman holds nothing back.

Unbelievable is masterpiece of writing and performances. It is one of the best feminist crime show I have ever seen. It has amazing display of the power of feminine energy and women and the difference it can create, without falling into your typical “look at women being badasses” way that Hollywood often does feminism.

Even though people might think the movie is about What-If you woke up one day and your icon people were not known, or about another love story, for me the movie was all about a debate on what would you rather be happy or successful. What I loved was the solution written into the script.

The only reason I would watch sci-fi movies is if it puts some light on current affairs and show where we could go. When I read, that Elysium is about the gap between the rich and the poor and gives a futuristic commentary on the immigration debate, I was intrigued. Besides I can never resist anything that would have Matt Damon and Judie Foster on it.

I like goofy rom-com, but lately it’s hard to come by one that would satisfy both my romantic soul and my intellectual self. So, when once in a while I get to watch a funny, warm and smart one it’s a night to celebrate. Juliet, Naked, is a movie about second chances, hope, and redemption from a life of missed opportunities, loneliness and boredom.

Put the word "Diversity" and “We want something like… but different” and you’ll get Widows. Though Widows can be easily categorized as a Heist movie, it’s not your average heist movie with a twist of an all-female cast. Nothing can be far from Widows as Ocean 8.