In a prolonged lull between jobs, I've had plenty of opportunity to watch TV. There's been a mix of DVDs and electronic copies of stuff handed to us by friends, and far be it from me to say which is which on this blog. In between marathon viewings of the old Twilight Zone, the old Outer Limits and the Ray Bradbury Theater, I've taken in these items of note.
Doctor Who: The Enemy of the World
Doctor Who: The Web of Fear
Well, let's not get off the subject of DW just yet. The rediscovery of a complete Patrick Troughton story and another almost complete one was pretty exciting news in DW's jubilee year. One episode of each already existed in the BBC archives and had been made available, and I'd seen those, but otherwise I came to these stories completely fresh since I don't have the patience for slideshow reconstructions of otherwise missing stories. We've now seen a friend's copies of these, and bought our own copy of The Enemy of the World.
Enemy has a lot going for it. It doesn't have any "missing episode" gaps, for one thing. It takes the show in an unusual direction at a time when almost every story revolved around monsters laying siege to an isolated human community - there are no monsters here, and the whole world is this story's stage. It makes fuller than normal use of its sensational leading man, with the Mighty Trout gamely mugging and accenting his way through a side role as Mexican villain Salamander. It twists and turns, with a reveal in episode 4 that upends the whole story. A flawless split-screen shot of the two Troughtons facing off in the final episode is the cherry on the cake. It's a lot of fun.
Web has none of these points in its favour. Episode 1 was and is brilliant, but the rest of the story doesn't live up to its promise - most of the middle four episodes is spent running up and down replica London Underground tunnels, with occasional eruptions from the BBC's foam machine. The replica tunnels are, of course, beautiful, but we already knew that from episode 1. Two or three episodes could have been cut from this story at the scripting stage and no one would have lost any sleep over it (apart from the producer, I suppose). The standard critical line on this story is that we cannot appreciate the introduction of Colonel (later Brigadier) Lethbridge-Stewart as viewers at the time were meant to, since we know he's going to be a mainstay of the show in decades to come and they only knew he was a potential Great Intelligence zombie; as far as I can see, though, he's already being played and filmed here as if he were the biggest thing to happen to the show all year. Even with the visuals, the denouement is a bit of a mess. It's nice to have it back and be able to watch it, but I'm not itching to buy a copy.
Takin' Over the Asylum
A blast from the past, this. Ken Stott stars as a failing salesman and wannabe DJ who starts up a life-changing patient-run radio station at his local mental institution. Notable for featuring some young fellow by the name of David Tennant as Stott's number one loony protege - we'll have to watch out for that lad, I'm sure he's destined for great things. Certainly not a comedy, although it has its light-hearted moments. Its downfall is that it tends to treat its characters as puzzles to be solved, which I suppose is true of a lot of shows about the mentally ill; but for all that, it's respectful of its institutionalised characters, and never hesitant to show aberrant behaviour in its supposedly sane characters. Good viewing.
Sherlock, series 3
Great stuff. Seems like Sherlock allows Steven Moffat even more opportunity than Doctor Who to experiment with scenes that exteriorise the characters' thoughts, which have gone from supertitles showing Sherlock's deductions to entire non-literal environments standing in for the inside of a character's head. In Series 3 this is taken to such an extreme that it actually sets up the big denouement of the final episode. Meanwhile "I Married a Psychopath" becomes the theme of yet another Moffat TV show, following in the footsteps of Jekyll ("Love is a psychopath") and DW (River Bloody Song, of course) - I'm not sure what we should all be reading into this, but it looks worrying. Season highlight must be the scene of Sherlock deducing while drunk in episode 2, although the "What to do when you've been shot in the chest" sequence in episode 3 is also pretty spectacular. It's hard to fault this series.
Fringe, series 1
Silly. I already know second hand that later seasons focus largely (perhaps even exclusively) on the parallel universe, but barring some material in the last couple or three episodes that sets that up, the first season is pretty much an X-Files knock-off. And I was prepared to allow the series plenty of latitude on that basis, but what broke my suspended disbelief wasn't any of the weird phenomena but the behaviour of the characters, particularly in the pilot episode. The whole series is being carried by John Noble's performance as Dr Walter Bishop, literally mad scientist, but there's just no believable way the other characters would have brought him in in the first place. I might watch season 2, but it's not a priority.
Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, series 1
Australian detective series, based on a popular string of books, set in the ever-popular Roaring Twenties. This is moderately entertaining fluff, but Phryne Fisher is such an extreme wish fulfilment figure that it pretty much breaks the show. She's decades ahead of her time, an independently wealthy liberal (and libertine) polyamorous feminist, dead shot with a gun, speaks a dozen more languages than are required in any given episode, shelters and benefacts the worthy poor, has the Detective Inspector eating out of her hand (and his one and only constable - except where the episode requires the inclusion of a second, corrupt copper - eating out of her maid's hand), knits her own Faberge eggs, and you get the general picture. Not enough interest or novelty in the mysteries themselves to distract from the all-consuming Miss Fisher herself. Passes an idle hour, but not what I'd consider a must-see.
Gravity
Oblivion
Elysium
The three Big Serious SF films of last year, as far as I can tell. Gravity is pretty good, very artfully executed but essentially just Sandra Bullock in a room surrounded by visual effects. Oblivion was better than I was expecting given the prominent Tom Cruise content - probably the prettiest Big Serious SF film of 2013. Elysium is a story I feel I probably would have enjoyed reading, but watching it was a bit trying, not least thanks to scenes of Sharlto Copley with the front of his head missing. Notably, Gravity is the only one of these that's made it onto the Hugo Award shortlist alongside several not-so-serious films.
Pacific Rim
Also on the Hugo shortlist, not at all serious. This was a must-see simply because it was very obviously made as a tribute to - and with real knowledge and love of - Japanese monster movies. It thus puts the 1998 Godzilla film firmly in its place. Highly conventional adventure fare, but look, it's got giant mecha and big weird animals all over it. I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.
23/04/14: And almost immediately, I was reminded of other things I'd watched that deserve a mention but that completely slipped my mind. Proof again that it's important for me to actually write stuff down. Oz the Great and Powerful can be dealt with quickly enough - it's a lovely film, a nice modern take and yet also a good fit for the old Judy Garland film. Sundry superhero films and the ongoing TV series Agents of SHIELD might be better handled in a separate post.
Showing posts with label Film Reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film Reviews. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
First We Take Manhattan
Hey kids, do you like violence? Want to see me stick nine inch nails through each of my eyelids? Zack Snyder does. Zack Snyder sure does love his gore. This is largely the reason why Watchmen is the best film I never want to see again.
Let's see if I can pull a coherent review out of the assembled thoughts that follow. Ware ye big, floppy, luminous blue spoilers.
Positives first. This is unquestionably a very close adaptation of the graphic novel - we'll talk about the small changes in translation in a minute. Visually it's phenomenal, with the title sequence a particular triumph. Dan/Nite Owl's anxiety dream is another notable piece of work. The use of '80s songs to reinforce the story's setting is lovely, and even the incidental soundtrack sounds like something from an '80s film. Very nice indeed. The acting is generally good - I can't think of any glaringly bad performances. The costumes are, perhaps, in the case of the superheroes, a little more 2000s than 1980s, but one can make allowances. All in all, it's recognisably Watchmen.
Only one surface negative - there are a couple of very ropey make-up jobs. Silk Spectre Snr's "old" face and Richard Nixon's big rubber nose and jowls are the two that really stand out. (Now watch some idiot awards ceremony give it Best Make-Up.)
There have been complaints from Watchmen fans that the ending was changed. Personally I feel it was changed for the better. The "squid" ending never felt entirely right to me, whereas I found the film ending a lot more coherent and a lot more satisfying. It all ties in more neatly. So an allegedly alien squid monster levels part of New York - what's that to the Russians? How's that going to affect the course of the Cold War? But a number of cities levelled worldwide, and apparently by America's big superweapon gone rogue - that not only involves other countries besides America, it also puts the burden on America (the only real military superpower even during the Cold War, as we discovered after the man behind the Iron Curtain showed us the rust that had glued his missiles into their silos) to apologise to the world, to be the first to step down and offer peace. As with Lord of the Rings, I think here we see how liberties taken by filmmakers can actually improve a story.
However, there were other liberties, even beyond the cuts and compressions needed to fit the story into a film of less than three hours. I'm talking here about gratuity.
At first it didn't seem as though anything was amiss. The opening scene, with the Comedian fighting for his life, didn't seem out of place. The Comedian's attempted rape of Silk Spectre Snr, if lingered over perhaps a little too long, was pretty much as in the book. The Viet Nam flashbacks were almost frame-for-frame matches for the graphic novel. If the fight scenes overall were more physical, more limb-breaky and nose-bloody than in the book, well, that's just cinema for you. It's easier to stomach violence in comic books, one carefully framed shot at a time, one more step removed from fluid reality. I was half prepared to dismiss my unease as mere preciousness on my part.
And then we saw someone cutting someone else's forearms off with a circular saw. Dammit, I thought, that definitely wasn't in the book. Careful reference to the book confirms that a number of events were gored up beyond reasonable need. Rorschach's confrontation with the child abductor is another one that springs to mind. (What other films has Zack Snyder directed? 300. I don't remember that being particularly over-gory, although I may have made allowances given the subject matter. What else? Dawn of the Dead. Ah yes, that could well explain it.)
But Zack doesn't just like gratuitous gore - he likes gratuitous sex as well. The scene where Dan/Nite Owl and Laurie/Silk Spectre Jnr, fired up by a late-night act of costumed heroism, make love aboard the NiteOwlMobile is a thing of subtlety and beauty in the book. In the film, it's frankly clinical. Or, as Stephen "Bob the Angry Flower" Notley very rightly says, "Where the book has taste and class and frailty, the movie has a porny fuck scene." In fact, go and read Stephen's review (about halfway down the page), for he has many just and accurate things to say about the film.
There's one change that I think stands for the film adaptation as a whole. It's not an especially gratuitous bit. It's the scene where, as Dan and Laurie try to break him out of prison, Rorschach holds them up so that he can go and do nasty (unseen) things to Big Figure in the gents' toilets. It's implicitly clear in the book that he forces Big Figure bodily down the lav and flushes on him - this is backed up by an innocent remark from Laurie about not wanting to dive head first into things, and a knowing reply from Rorschach. It's a moment of sick humour. In the film, the joke is lost and it's blood, not water, that flows out under the toilet door as they walk away. Red, viscous blood in Shining-esque quantities. As I say, this pretty much sums up for me what Zack Snyder has done here - sacrificed subtlety for the sake of being more in-your-face.
(This paragraph left intentionally blank for you to add your own pertinent thoughts about Dr Manhattan's enormous luminous blue wanger. See, even that had to be bigger and more graphic, didn't it? Tsk.)
So yes, it's an excellent film, both in itself and as a version of Watchmen. It's remained complex and thought-provoking, if less nuanced than the book. But it's just rather horrible in places. The story itself is horrible, philosophically speaking - an "end justifies the means" fable with no happy ending and no easy answers, although that in itself may serve as a comment on Alan Moore's true feelings about the "end justifies the means" worldview. But the book is a lot easier to stomach.
Let's see if I can pull a coherent review out of the assembled thoughts that follow. Ware ye big, floppy, luminous blue spoilers.
Positives first. This is unquestionably a very close adaptation of the graphic novel - we'll talk about the small changes in translation in a minute. Visually it's phenomenal, with the title sequence a particular triumph. Dan/Nite Owl's anxiety dream is another notable piece of work. The use of '80s songs to reinforce the story's setting is lovely, and even the incidental soundtrack sounds like something from an '80s film. Very nice indeed. The acting is generally good - I can't think of any glaringly bad performances. The costumes are, perhaps, in the case of the superheroes, a little more 2000s than 1980s, but one can make allowances. All in all, it's recognisably Watchmen.
Only one surface negative - there are a couple of very ropey make-up jobs. Silk Spectre Snr's "old" face and Richard Nixon's big rubber nose and jowls are the two that really stand out. (Now watch some idiot awards ceremony give it Best Make-Up.)
There have been complaints from Watchmen fans that the ending was changed. Personally I feel it was changed for the better. The "squid" ending never felt entirely right to me, whereas I found the film ending a lot more coherent and a lot more satisfying. It all ties in more neatly. So an allegedly alien squid monster levels part of New York - what's that to the Russians? How's that going to affect the course of the Cold War? But a number of cities levelled worldwide, and apparently by America's big superweapon gone rogue - that not only involves other countries besides America, it also puts the burden on America (the only real military superpower even during the Cold War, as we discovered after the man behind the Iron Curtain showed us the rust that had glued his missiles into their silos) to apologise to the world, to be the first to step down and offer peace. As with Lord of the Rings, I think here we see how liberties taken by filmmakers can actually improve a story.
However, there were other liberties, even beyond the cuts and compressions needed to fit the story into a film of less than three hours. I'm talking here about gratuity.
At first it didn't seem as though anything was amiss. The opening scene, with the Comedian fighting for his life, didn't seem out of place. The Comedian's attempted rape of Silk Spectre Snr, if lingered over perhaps a little too long, was pretty much as in the book. The Viet Nam flashbacks were almost frame-for-frame matches for the graphic novel. If the fight scenes overall were more physical, more limb-breaky and nose-bloody than in the book, well, that's just cinema for you. It's easier to stomach violence in comic books, one carefully framed shot at a time, one more step removed from fluid reality. I was half prepared to dismiss my unease as mere preciousness on my part.
And then we saw someone cutting someone else's forearms off with a circular saw. Dammit, I thought, that definitely wasn't in the book. Careful reference to the book confirms that a number of events were gored up beyond reasonable need. Rorschach's confrontation with the child abductor is another one that springs to mind. (What other films has Zack Snyder directed? 300. I don't remember that being particularly over-gory, although I may have made allowances given the subject matter. What else? Dawn of the Dead. Ah yes, that could well explain it.)
But Zack doesn't just like gratuitous gore - he likes gratuitous sex as well. The scene where Dan/Nite Owl and Laurie/Silk Spectre Jnr, fired up by a late-night act of costumed heroism, make love aboard the NiteOwlMobile is a thing of subtlety and beauty in the book. In the film, it's frankly clinical. Or, as Stephen "Bob the Angry Flower" Notley very rightly says, "Where the book has taste and class and frailty, the movie has a porny fuck scene." In fact, go and read Stephen's review (about halfway down the page), for he has many just and accurate things to say about the film.
There's one change that I think stands for the film adaptation as a whole. It's not an especially gratuitous bit. It's the scene where, as Dan and Laurie try to break him out of prison, Rorschach holds them up so that he can go and do nasty (unseen) things to Big Figure in the gents' toilets. It's implicitly clear in the book that he forces Big Figure bodily down the lav and flushes on him - this is backed up by an innocent remark from Laurie about not wanting to dive head first into things, and a knowing reply from Rorschach. It's a moment of sick humour. In the film, the joke is lost and it's blood, not water, that flows out under the toilet door as they walk away. Red, viscous blood in Shining-esque quantities. As I say, this pretty much sums up for me what Zack Snyder has done here - sacrificed subtlety for the sake of being more in-your-face.
(This paragraph left intentionally blank for you to add your own pertinent thoughts about Dr Manhattan's enormous luminous blue wanger. See, even that had to be bigger and more graphic, didn't it? Tsk.)
So yes, it's an excellent film, both in itself and as a version of Watchmen. It's remained complex and thought-provoking, if less nuanced than the book. But it's just rather horrible in places. The story itself is horrible, philosophically speaking - an "end justifies the means" fable with no happy ending and no easy answers, although that in itself may serve as a comment on Alan Moore's true feelings about the "end justifies the means" worldview. But the book is a lot easier to stomach.
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
2007 late round-up: films
Let the belated blogs continue. (Even a week and a half off work hasn't allowed enough time to catch up on the backlog of material...) There are four fantasy films we've seen post-wedding that I think merit some online waffling, and I propose to start with the most recent, and the most tenuous.
Transformers
I'm cheating slightly by including this one, having seen it with work colleagues earlier in the year, but we saw a relative's DVD copy over the holiday, and this time I felt an urge to write up my observations.
Perhaps it's stretching it a bit for me to class this film as fantasy, but I don't think it entirely qualifies as science fiction either: a magic cube of unknown origin creates living machines that magically disguise themselves as domestic terrestrial objects. I'm using "magic" here as shorthand for "complete absence of even an attempt at explanation". Of course it's not really SF, nor really fantasy, but just a narrative advert for a range of toys, as was the cartoon series that preceded it. The plot, such as it is, isn't, but we all know and admit that the film doesn't need a plot, because the entire point is to watch giant transforming robots beating the stuff out of each other. This spectacle is provided in abundance.
All right, it's a fetish film. Techno fetishism, but more specifically ordnance fetishism. The Transformers are described as weapons systems, and this they are, with all manner of cannons and handguns magically appearing on the ends of their arms. Caught in the middle of their giant robot war are the jets, armoured vehicles and portable weapons of the US Army, and incidentally the soldiers who operate them. Sure, there's one attempt to objectify the female lead, but it's fairly ham-fisted and soon pushed aside to make room for the big, loud, visually confusing, pornographic grindings of metal on heavily armed metal. Is this still a promotional device for a range of toys, or has it become a "get-'em-young" recruiting drive for the military?
Stardust
Excellent, excellent, excellent. I couldn't find fault with this slightly tongue-in-cheek fairy tale. A friend compared it to The Princess Bride (in favour of TPB), but I think it benefits from not having Columbo giving framing narration. It's also nice to have such a British fantasy blockbuster - the cast, bar the big name guest stars, is crammed full with Brit comedy performers, and when we compared notes afterwards we found we'd all been playing Name That Face throughout. Well, y'know, when we weren't laughing or cooing. Probably my choice for Film Of The Year.
Beowulf
Like Stardust, it has Neil Gaiman's hands on it. Unlike Stardust, it's presented entirely in CGI. The technology's advanced enough that you can make things like hair and water look realistic, but not so realistic that it doesn't still look like a computer game. And really, the only obvious reasons for using CGI here are a) Grendel, b) Grendel Mk II, the dragon, and c) to give Ray Winstone the physique of a thirty-year-old athlete. They might just as easily have cast someone else in the lead (or swallowed their preconceptions and run with a chunky older Beowulf, and why not?), CG'd just the two monsters (optionally three, if you feel you need to actually see Grendel's mum in non-Jolie form, but let's face it, you can get away with as much as they did here just by suggesting it) and made it as a live action film. I mean, if the idea was to make it look as realistic as possible...
There's an amusing sequence when Beowulf strips off for the night and prepares to fight Grendel naked. (And yes, it turns out, he does this in the Old English source text.) Suddenly all you can think about is Austin Powers, as objects strategically interpose themselves between your line of sight and Beowulf's groin. And then Grendel bursts in, and suddenly the possibility of seeing Beowulf's computerised balls isn't so funny. (Although bouncy Yoda does spring to mind at times during the fight.) Yes, the action sequences are good, both of them, but the rest of the film drags somewhat. These are the moments at which you're left to admire how much Anthony Hopkins' character looks like Anthony Hopkins, which only leads you to ponder why you're not looking at Hopkins in the flesh. Ditto most of the cast. It just draws attention to the fact that they've felt obliged to "improve" Ray Winstone.
I dunno... it's good, but somewhat lacklustre.
The Golden Compass
Or, as it used to be called in book form, Northern Lights, part one of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Here it makes strange sense that they changed the title, because the film-makers have cut the story short, and it doesn't actually feature any Northern Lights except briefly in a slide show near the start. Perhaps, as with the second Lord of the Rings film, the exciting ending's had to be bumped to allow more time for the effects people to do the big climactic effect justice. In both cases, the film ends with a lull in the story as the characters journey towards the ending.
The film makes more sense than the stage show and feels less rushed, but I have the same problem with the story (which suggests to me that this may be down to Pullman after all, and perhaps I needn't read the book). To wit: our heroine makes allies by ambling from set-piece adventure to set-piece adventure, meeting one single defined representative of a race or species, who then pledges the faceless mass of their kin to help her in the final set-piece adventure, when a bunch of Cossacks with dogs appears from nowhere on an icy plain and is surprised by the equally abrupt appearance of the heroine's allies. There's no sense that this means anything, there's no sense that Lyra's progressing at all, she just wanders around collecting groups until she arrives at the secret polar laboratory and returns to the plot.
On the other hand, the blending of live action and CGI is very nice (which only shows up Beowulf all the more) and there's some good acting on display. On balance I'd probably take this over Narnia. I doubt, though, that it's destined for the greatness of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Transformers
I'm cheating slightly by including this one, having seen it with work colleagues earlier in the year, but we saw a relative's DVD copy over the holiday, and this time I felt an urge to write up my observations.
Perhaps it's stretching it a bit for me to class this film as fantasy, but I don't think it entirely qualifies as science fiction either: a magic cube of unknown origin creates living machines that magically disguise themselves as domestic terrestrial objects. I'm using "magic" here as shorthand for "complete absence of even an attempt at explanation". Of course it's not really SF, nor really fantasy, but just a narrative advert for a range of toys, as was the cartoon series that preceded it. The plot, such as it is, isn't, but we all know and admit that the film doesn't need a plot, because the entire point is to watch giant transforming robots beating the stuff out of each other. This spectacle is provided in abundance.
All right, it's a fetish film. Techno fetishism, but more specifically ordnance fetishism. The Transformers are described as weapons systems, and this they are, with all manner of cannons and handguns magically appearing on the ends of their arms. Caught in the middle of their giant robot war are the jets, armoured vehicles and portable weapons of the US Army, and incidentally the soldiers who operate them. Sure, there's one attempt to objectify the female lead, but it's fairly ham-fisted and soon pushed aside to make room for the big, loud, visually confusing, pornographic grindings of metal on heavily armed metal. Is this still a promotional device for a range of toys, or has it become a "get-'em-young" recruiting drive for the military?
Stardust
Excellent, excellent, excellent. I couldn't find fault with this slightly tongue-in-cheek fairy tale. A friend compared it to The Princess Bride (in favour of TPB), but I think it benefits from not having Columbo giving framing narration. It's also nice to have such a British fantasy blockbuster - the cast, bar the big name guest stars, is crammed full with Brit comedy performers, and when we compared notes afterwards we found we'd all been playing Name That Face throughout. Well, y'know, when we weren't laughing or cooing. Probably my choice for Film Of The Year.
Beowulf
Like Stardust, it has Neil Gaiman's hands on it. Unlike Stardust, it's presented entirely in CGI. The technology's advanced enough that you can make things like hair and water look realistic, but not so realistic that it doesn't still look like a computer game. And really, the only obvious reasons for using CGI here are a) Grendel, b) Grendel Mk II, the dragon, and c) to give Ray Winstone the physique of a thirty-year-old athlete. They might just as easily have cast someone else in the lead (or swallowed their preconceptions and run with a chunky older Beowulf, and why not?), CG'd just the two monsters (optionally three, if you feel you need to actually see Grendel's mum in non-Jolie form, but let's face it, you can get away with as much as they did here just by suggesting it) and made it as a live action film. I mean, if the idea was to make it look as realistic as possible...
There's an amusing sequence when Beowulf strips off for the night and prepares to fight Grendel naked. (And yes, it turns out, he does this in the Old English source text.) Suddenly all you can think about is Austin Powers, as objects strategically interpose themselves between your line of sight and Beowulf's groin. And then Grendel bursts in, and suddenly the possibility of seeing Beowulf's computerised balls isn't so funny. (Although bouncy Yoda does spring to mind at times during the fight.) Yes, the action sequences are good, both of them, but the rest of the film drags somewhat. These are the moments at which you're left to admire how much Anthony Hopkins' character looks like Anthony Hopkins, which only leads you to ponder why you're not looking at Hopkins in the flesh. Ditto most of the cast. It just draws attention to the fact that they've felt obliged to "improve" Ray Winstone.
I dunno... it's good, but somewhat lacklustre.
The Golden Compass
Or, as it used to be called in book form, Northern Lights, part one of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Here it makes strange sense that they changed the title, because the film-makers have cut the story short, and it doesn't actually feature any Northern Lights except briefly in a slide show near the start. Perhaps, as with the second Lord of the Rings film, the exciting ending's had to be bumped to allow more time for the effects people to do the big climactic effect justice. In both cases, the film ends with a lull in the story as the characters journey towards the ending.
The film makes more sense than the stage show and feels less rushed, but I have the same problem with the story (which suggests to me that this may be down to Pullman after all, and perhaps I needn't read the book). To wit: our heroine makes allies by ambling from set-piece adventure to set-piece adventure, meeting one single defined representative of a race or species, who then pledges the faceless mass of their kin to help her in the final set-piece adventure, when a bunch of Cossacks with dogs appears from nowhere on an icy plain and is surprised by the equally abrupt appearance of the heroine's allies. There's no sense that this means anything, there's no sense that Lyra's progressing at all, she just wanders around collecting groups until she arrives at the secret polar laboratory and returns to the plot.
On the other hand, the blending of live action and CGI is very nice (which only shows up Beowulf all the more) and there's some good acting on display. On balance I'd probably take this over Narnia. I doubt, though, that it's destined for the greatness of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Monday, March 26, 2007
"Wealth! Women! And One More Thing - I Want A Uniform!"
This weekend's cinema viewing: 300, the stylised fantasy rendering of the Battle of Thermopylae. A pretty good film, although clearly if you go to see a film about an ancient battle, you're not looking at ingenious plot twists and engaging characters; you're looking at severed heads spinning through the air, horsemen jerked from their saddles by a combination of spear and Kirby wire, and heroes who just won't die even when there's so many arrows in them they look like porcupines. It's silly, it's violent, but the cinematography's good and it's got a good mythic feel to it. And it's better than Alexander on every conceivable level.
Apparently some critics view this film as some sort of jingoistic parallel with the current situation in the Middle East. In other words, the precise sort of thing you'd expect American cinemas to show at a time when the President is asking for more troops to be sent to the Gulf. This despite the fact that it's based on an eight-year-old graphic novel, itself based on a legendary/historical event some 2487 years old. I've looked and looked, and can't find this opinion anywhere online, but apparently the notion is out there.
The thing is, if you want to play the Analysis Game - if you're generally inclined to read far too much into films, perhaps, or if you've been primed by all this nebulous talk of "jingoism" - then it's fantastically easy to read negative political messages into 300. This film is just full of things to offend your average pro-war Republican, and I'm not just talking about the homoerotic aspect of seeing the Persian hordes squaring up to 300 toned, extremely waxed, slightly oiled men in posing pouches.
For instance, the sight of the Spartans misusing Persian bodies for psychological purposes resonates uncomfortably with the Abu Ghraib scandal. When King Leonidas kills a Persian messenger, against the accepted civilised convention, for telling him something he doesn't want to hear, I'm reminded of that time an American tank opened fire on the Iraqi hotel where everybody knew all the international journalists were staying, killing three of them. Or the bombing of al-Jazeera HQ. When the corrupt politician character starts turning the situation to his personal gain... well, any number of parallels suggest themselves.
On a more scurrilous note, the Spartan queen wants to try to persuade the Senate to send more troops (are we supposed to identify George W Bush with the queen of Sparta?!), but to secure an audience she ends up letting the corrupt politician rape her. Translation: If you value your way of life, you've got to let the government **** you. Was I meant to take that message away? It doesn't help her in the end, as the corrupt politician's been paid off by the other side.
Actually, there's a strong case to be made for reading the film the other way around. The Spartans are the insurgents - a small, renegade force, acting without official sanction, operating tactically but with barbarity, obsessed with their own deaths and perceived glory. The Persian hordes are in fact the Americans - a large, expansionist force, more technologically advanced and preferring when possible to kill their enemies at a distance (arrows and gunpowder grenades = carpet bombing?). Meanwhile, by night the commander of the Persian forces retreats to a haven of self-deluding luxury (a "green zone", if you will) where he can be surrounded by all the comforts of home (sexual degeneracy for Xerxes, poolside parties and hot dogs flown in for the Americans). Oh, stop.
The clincher against taking 300 as any sort of allegory for the Gulf situation is that both kings are on the battlefield. When Dubya takes up a rifle, flies out to Basra and draws straws to see who gets to wear the platoon's kevlar jacket, that's when you can make comparisons between this film and reality.
Apparently some critics view this film as some sort of jingoistic parallel with the current situation in the Middle East. In other words, the precise sort of thing you'd expect American cinemas to show at a time when the President is asking for more troops to be sent to the Gulf. This despite the fact that it's based on an eight-year-old graphic novel, itself based on a legendary/historical event some 2487 years old. I've looked and looked, and can't find this opinion anywhere online, but apparently the notion is out there.
The thing is, if you want to play the Analysis Game - if you're generally inclined to read far too much into films, perhaps, or if you've been primed by all this nebulous talk of "jingoism" - then it's fantastically easy to read negative political messages into 300. This film is just full of things to offend your average pro-war Republican, and I'm not just talking about the homoerotic aspect of seeing the Persian hordes squaring up to 300 toned, extremely waxed, slightly oiled men in posing pouches.
For instance, the sight of the Spartans misusing Persian bodies for psychological purposes resonates uncomfortably with the Abu Ghraib scandal. When King Leonidas kills a Persian messenger, against the accepted civilised convention, for telling him something he doesn't want to hear, I'm reminded of that time an American tank opened fire on the Iraqi hotel where everybody knew all the international journalists were staying, killing three of them. Or the bombing of al-Jazeera HQ. When the corrupt politician character starts turning the situation to his personal gain... well, any number of parallels suggest themselves.
On a more scurrilous note, the Spartan queen wants to try to persuade the Senate to send more troops (are we supposed to identify George W Bush with the queen of Sparta?!), but to secure an audience she ends up letting the corrupt politician rape her. Translation: If you value your way of life, you've got to let the government **** you. Was I meant to take that message away? It doesn't help her in the end, as the corrupt politician's been paid off by the other side.
Actually, there's a strong case to be made for reading the film the other way around. The Spartans are the insurgents - a small, renegade force, acting without official sanction, operating tactically but with barbarity, obsessed with their own deaths and perceived glory. The Persian hordes are in fact the Americans - a large, expansionist force, more technologically advanced and preferring when possible to kill their enemies at a distance (arrows and gunpowder grenades = carpet bombing?). Meanwhile, by night the commander of the Persian forces retreats to a haven of self-deluding luxury (a "green zone", if you will) where he can be surrounded by all the comforts of home (sexual degeneracy for Xerxes, poolside parties and hot dogs flown in for the Americans). Oh, stop.
The clincher against taking 300 as any sort of allegory for the Gulf situation is that both kings are on the battlefield. When Dubya takes up a rifle, flies out to Basra and draws straws to see who gets to wear the platoon's kevlar jacket, that's when you can make comparisons between this film and reality.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Another culture-packed long weekend
1. Robin Hood. It's getting grim in Nottingham. I'm quite surprised the Sheriff didn't get some of what's coming to him this week. Still, presumably they can't kill him off and have a second series. The chances of me watching that second series have got gradually better over the last few weeks, but will largely depend on whether the final couple of episodes maintain the standard or revert to sledgehammer politics and cop-out endings. Even at this stage I don't dare to rule out the latter possibility.
2. Eragon. Oh, the transparently named Eragon. (He'll call the sequel "Fragon" - d'you see what he did there?) I may only have read one Anne McCaffrey novel (my eyes, it burns my eyes...), but I'm pretty sure I've seen this idea of Dragonriders and telepathic dragons somewhere before. Hmm, "Eragonriders of Pern". A trip to IMDB reveals that the plummy blond Brit kid is not actually the same plummy blond Brit kid who starred in Stormbreaker as Alex (Dragon) Rider.
(IMDB also reveals the disappointing truth that Black Christmas, seen named on the outside of the cinema, is a horror film. I'd imagined it as a seasonal blaxploitation movie:
"Damn, it's foggy outside. I'm gonna have to find me the shiniest-nosed brother in the 'hood to pull my sleigh tonight!" "Screw yo' sleigh, Santa, you deliverin' presents fo' da man! How can you do that, Santa? How can you deliver presents fo' da man?" "Shut yo' mouth, Rudolph!" Etc, etc. Why, it's as if the last thirty years never happened.)
See, sometimes it's good to watch a... differently good film. Gives you more to say afterwards. The prologue:
V/O: Everybody used to fly around on dragons until one man killed off all the other dragonriders and became king. His name is Galbatorix. Look, here's a picture of John Malkovich, just so you know who's playing Galbatorix. He's the king, by the way. Did we mention that? So anyway, somebody's stolen a valuable stone from the king, Galbatorix. He's being played by Malkovich, in case you'd forgotten. He's not very happy about it.
MALKOVICH: Somebody's stolen a stone from me. I'm not very happy about it.
HENCHMAN: I shall find it at once, Galbatorix.
MALKOVICH: Address me by my proper title!
HENCHMAN: Sorry, o King.
MALKOVICH: That's better. I wouldn't want any four-year-olds in the audience to miss the important plot points.
Later, in the tavern, haggard old mentor Jeremy Irons explains the premise of the film again:
IRONS: Everybody used to fly around on dragons, you know. That is, until the king killed off all the other dragonriders.
SOLDIER: Silence, fool! We don't like expository talk 'round 'ere!
Enter the hero:
ERAGON: Golly gosh, I'm only a simple farmhand. It's jolly hard work, you know, although I do enjoy a bit of roister-doistering with my equally plummy cousin.
Then, after he and his dragon have saved a community from ogre attack by torching the entire area:
VILLAGERS: Hooray, we cheer for you! We cheer for you in the burning ashes of our village!
Some of them were even cheering while he was doing it, the flames leaping up around them. Takes all sorts.
At least it wasn't as bad as Inspector Gadget. Perhaps I shouldn't demand so much from kids' films.
3. Torchwood. Ah, the effort to make Owen look like a human being has begun. It's too late, Mr Chibnall, too late!
Now, I don't stand for the obligatory knocking of the head honcho when it comes to Doctor Who. Many fans used to knock John Nathan-Turner, but while his mistakes are undeniably plural, he did a lot of good for the show too. I see many fans online now, knocking Russell T Davies, but wrongly in my opinion. I don't hold with this idea that the producer alone can drag a show down - and yet with Torchwood I find myself uncomfortably drawn to just that position.
It's like there are two Torchwoods - one written by Chris Chibnall, in which everyone is unlikeable scum, especially the rapist-in-waiting character called Owen, and one in which a variety of exciting things happen to a team of interesting people, one of whom is a mildly unloveable chancer called Owen. If it was just one or the other, I'd be better able to process the show as a whole. The problem now is that because of the Chibnall episodes, my perception of Owen is such that I can only cheer when his tiny leathery grey heart is crushed by love, and can only look forward to the beating next week's trailer promises. I can sense, frustratingly, how much more engaging these episodes would be if I didn't hate the character.
And overall I didn't think it was a bad episode at all. In fact, quite a good quiet character-driven episode (with much gratuitous sex). It's just that one area - making Owen sympathetic - in which it fell down, because the rug was pulled out from under it several weeks ago.
Oh, there was just one other thing - the flashbacks at the end seemed a bit pointless, yet I was left waiting for a final scene to round the episode off. Those minutes could've been better spent, people.
4. John Barrowman's Musical Christmas. Hooray! It's on BBC Radio 2 on Friday at 7.30pm, and everyone must listen to it (on pain of painfulness). Well, that's the second time now that I've driven over Westminster Bridge (invaded by Daleks, 1964) and parked up for some theatrical culture just downriver from the Millennium Eye (Nestene transmitter, 2005). We even found the same Italian restaurant we went to the last time. A jolly Monday evening was had listening to the talented Barrowman and friends crooning out show tunes and festive songs, and I'm sure my female associates - Sarah and The Lovely Jo - got even more out of it than I did. Tsk. He's gay, ladies.
2. Eragon. Oh, the transparently named Eragon. (He'll call the sequel "Fragon" - d'you see what he did there?) I may only have read one Anne McCaffrey novel (my eyes, it burns my eyes...), but I'm pretty sure I've seen this idea of Dragonriders and telepathic dragons somewhere before. Hmm, "Eragonriders of Pern". A trip to IMDB reveals that the plummy blond Brit kid is not actually the same plummy blond Brit kid who starred in Stormbreaker as Alex (Dragon) Rider.
(IMDB also reveals the disappointing truth that Black Christmas, seen named on the outside of the cinema, is a horror film. I'd imagined it as a seasonal blaxploitation movie:
"Damn, it's foggy outside. I'm gonna have to find me the shiniest-nosed brother in the 'hood to pull my sleigh tonight!" "Screw yo' sleigh, Santa, you deliverin' presents fo' da man! How can you do that, Santa? How can you deliver presents fo' da man?" "Shut yo' mouth, Rudolph!" Etc, etc. Why, it's as if the last thirty years never happened.)
See, sometimes it's good to watch a... differently good film. Gives you more to say afterwards. The prologue:
V/O: Everybody used to fly around on dragons until one man killed off all the other dragonriders and became king. His name is Galbatorix. Look, here's a picture of John Malkovich, just so you know who's playing Galbatorix. He's the king, by the way. Did we mention that? So anyway, somebody's stolen a valuable stone from the king, Galbatorix. He's being played by Malkovich, in case you'd forgotten. He's not very happy about it.
MALKOVICH: Somebody's stolen a stone from me. I'm not very happy about it.
HENCHMAN: I shall find it at once, Galbatorix.
MALKOVICH: Address me by my proper title!
HENCHMAN: Sorry, o King.
MALKOVICH: That's better. I wouldn't want any four-year-olds in the audience to miss the important plot points.
Later, in the tavern, haggard old mentor Jeremy Irons explains the premise of the film again:
IRONS: Everybody used to fly around on dragons, you know. That is, until the king killed off all the other dragonriders.
SOLDIER: Silence, fool! We don't like expository talk 'round 'ere!
Enter the hero:
ERAGON: Golly gosh, I'm only a simple farmhand. It's jolly hard work, you know, although I do enjoy a bit of roister-doistering with my equally plummy cousin.
Then, after he and his dragon have saved a community from ogre attack by torching the entire area:
VILLAGERS: Hooray, we cheer for you! We cheer for you in the burning ashes of our village!
Some of them were even cheering while he was doing it, the flames leaping up around them. Takes all sorts.
At least it wasn't as bad as Inspector Gadget. Perhaps I shouldn't demand so much from kids' films.
3. Torchwood. Ah, the effort to make Owen look like a human being has begun. It's too late, Mr Chibnall, too late!
Now, I don't stand for the obligatory knocking of the head honcho when it comes to Doctor Who. Many fans used to knock John Nathan-Turner, but while his mistakes are undeniably plural, he did a lot of good for the show too. I see many fans online now, knocking Russell T Davies, but wrongly in my opinion. I don't hold with this idea that the producer alone can drag a show down - and yet with Torchwood I find myself uncomfortably drawn to just that position.
It's like there are two Torchwoods - one written by Chris Chibnall, in which everyone is unlikeable scum, especially the rapist-in-waiting character called Owen, and one in which a variety of exciting things happen to a team of interesting people, one of whom is a mildly unloveable chancer called Owen. If it was just one or the other, I'd be better able to process the show as a whole. The problem now is that because of the Chibnall episodes, my perception of Owen is such that I can only cheer when his tiny leathery grey heart is crushed by love, and can only look forward to the beating next week's trailer promises. I can sense, frustratingly, how much more engaging these episodes would be if I didn't hate the character.
And overall I didn't think it was a bad episode at all. In fact, quite a good quiet character-driven episode (with much gratuitous sex). It's just that one area - making Owen sympathetic - in which it fell down, because the rug was pulled out from under it several weeks ago.
Oh, there was just one other thing - the flashbacks at the end seemed a bit pointless, yet I was left waiting for a final scene to round the episode off. Those minutes could've been better spent, people.
4. John Barrowman's Musical Christmas. Hooray! It's on BBC Radio 2 on Friday at 7.30pm, and everyone must listen to it (on pain of painfulness). Well, that's the second time now that I've driven over Westminster Bridge (invaded by Daleks, 1964) and parked up for some theatrical culture just downriver from the Millennium Eye (Nestene transmitter, 2005). We even found the same Italian restaurant we went to the last time. A jolly Monday evening was had listening to the talented Barrowman and friends crooning out show tunes and festive songs, and I'm sure my female associates - Sarah and The Lovely Jo - got even more out of it than I did. Tsk. He's gay, ladies.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Part 1 - "What you are about to see is considered safe."
Saturday's bit o' culture - away to the cinema to see The Prestige. Well, I had to applaud at the end, because Christopher Nolan has performed the magical act of transforming Christopher Priest's very literary book into a very filmic film. Yet without forcing the effects in our faces (a little doubling up of actors, a spot of Tesla lightning) he's managed to keep the air of a Victorian ghost story - the subtle horror of the situation rather than the unnecessary gore of the modern horror story. In fact, by just changing one small aspect of the central premise he's actually taken the horror of the original story one step further, and all the other changes between book and film follow entirely naturally from that one small change. Clever old Nolan.
Acting's top notch as well. I'm not quite convinced by Christian Bale's accent, but it's just brilliant to see him and Hugh Jackman outside their respective superhero flicks and giving it everything they've got. I think the real revelation, though, is David Bowie as Tesla. What a restrained performance! Admittedly the only other film I've seen him in is Labyrinth, playing himself, so I was expecting "eccentricity", but wow! Proper acting!
I'm still not entirely sure which, if either, is better - the book or the film. They're both great in different ways. Still, I think Nolan could win me over if he, perhaps, were to make a film of Priest's The Glamour, hint, hint.
Acting's top notch as well. I'm not quite convinced by Christian Bale's accent, but it's just brilliant to see him and Hugh Jackman outside their respective superhero flicks and giving it everything they've got. I think the real revelation, though, is David Bowie as Tesla. What a restrained performance! Admittedly the only other film I've seen him in is Labyrinth, playing himself, so I was expecting "eccentricity", but wow! Proper acting!
I'm still not entirely sure which, if either, is better - the book or the film. They're both great in different ways. Still, I think Nolan could win me over if he, perhaps, were to make a film of Priest's The Glamour, hint, hint.
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