nostalgic

Best of 2011

2011-12-19T22:21:00.007Z

Best of 2011

Best Films

The Tree Of Life- Amazing style and complicated emotions.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - Terrific reworking on a great story
Living In the Material World – A terrific 4 hour documentary by Scorsese (his best film for years) on George Harrison.
Inside Job - A horrifying look at the financial meltdown. Very well-researched and put together.
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol – Great suspense and action scenes, some decent humour and a game cast, make this the most enjoyable entertainment of the year.
Super – A twisted tale of a wannabee super-hero with a religious edge. Very funny and dark.
Attack The Block - Energetic, fun pulp, done the way it should be. Fun characters, a defined space, and a story that flows logically from one situation to the next, with an emotional resolution. So few modern films can do that.

As I’ve been very busy, I haven’t had a chance to see many films this year. Much of what I’ve watched this year have been films from previous years. To be honest, most new films this year just haven’t interested me. Of this year’s new films seen, nothing much beyond these films truly rated.

Good entertainments

Fast Five – Was simply stupid entertainment of the highest order. A simple heist that’s a backdrop for over the top- action. A bank gets dragged through a city and destroys most of it. No explanations necessary.

Thor – An entertainment that’s more character-based than most superhero films. Nothing original in it but the execution was consistently engaging and the story moved forward with pace.

The Fighter – Shallow Rocky-type story that is predictable in every story beat but the director gave it a solid world to build from, giving the film a pleasing feel. Not a world-beater

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Over-long, and not quite as smart as it thinks it is, (I spotted both twists halfway through). Yet the atmosphere and pleasing grumpiness of the lead characters, as well as the sense of a corrupt world choking itself, keep the story working.

Worst Films

Suckerpunch- Probably likely to be the worst film of the decade. Sexist, tawdry, idiotic and boring.

Super 8 & Source Code – Were fine and over-done in style/acting for a time then the films got into the third act and got stunngingly/insultingly dumb. Annoying waste of potential.

Green Lantern - Was fun in a laugh at it way but was also really stupid in basic plot and character. It had a finale that lasted about three minutes and made little sense, had a dumb finale twist, and generally felt like it had been put together without any real care. A real waste of time and money.

Pirates Of The Caribbean 4: Whatever The Hell Its Called - Boring, repetitive, with a plot that should take up about ten minutes of screen time. For every decent idea, there's about three bad action scenes to drag you down.

Television

I’ve been watching a lot more TV than films. A great year for that.

Dr Who Series 6, Breaking Bad Season 1 & 2, Party Down Season 1 & 2, Community Season 2, Mad Men Seasons 2 & 3, Sons of Anarchy Season 1, Generation Kill, Treme Season 1, Chuck Season 4, Lost (all seasons), Wonders of the Solar System & Universe, Monty Python - The Truth - The Lawyer’s Cut, Star Wars Clone Wars seasons 1 & 2

Best films seen from previous years

Alice, The Gorgon, Hell Comes To Frogtown, Privilege, Piranha 3-d, Coraline, Lilo & Stitch, Only Angels Have Wings, The Smashing Machine, Spellbound

Another bloody Star Wars controversry

2011-09-04T10:28:00.000+01:00

The Star Wars films have a new blu-ray release, a few changes, and of course, whining fans in their forties.

The problem? The addition of two subtle "no's"in the Darth Vader Bobble-head emotional scene at the end of Return Of The Jedi, before he kills the emperor. Now this is not the "nnoooooooooo!!!" like the end of Revenge Of The Sith. Its a simple no. Its quiet. It helps take your attention to the bobble-head movements of David Prowse in the scene. It kinda helps an unfortunately directed end scene to be honest. I kinda liked that one of my least favourite scenes in all six films was improved. Now apparantly people have had enough. Jesus.

Am kinda bored with this. Essentially, despite what geeks may protest, there have not been many changes to Star Wars over the years. The Greedo thing was the most controversial. I wasn't very impressed with the room full of storm-troopers as I can imagine something better (and the added Jabba scene slows down the pace a bit) But who cares. I've seen worse in movies I respect. (Come on, let's complain about all the plot holes in Blade Runner). But over-all, I've never been that bothered. Its not changing plots or doing much damage. The films still work. They're still fun. Its a few minor edits. But for some, ye gods!

An article is on-line suggesting that some people show grow up and I think that's fair.

As I am going to now write about Paul, I should add that, as usual, the most unintenionally funniest hissy-fit came from Simon Pegg. He was going on about the Greedo scene (we got a compromise, give it a rest) and Hayden Christiansen being at the end of Jedi as a ghost. So instead of some old guy that no-one has any connection to, from a very weak, tacked on Darth Vader death scene, who that you see for about a minute as a ghost, and who looks different, we get the guy who played this central character for teh series for two entire movies, and had most of the main dramatic moments. If they hadn't changed it, I would have thought it odd and unsatisfying. So its nit-picking for the sake of nostalgia.

But I am going to be nice about Paul. It was funny. It worked, was a good minor comedy. As with Hott Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, there are good little running jokes and character beats. The stories are constructed to be more like 80's Robert Zemckis films than the obvious Speilberg- Romero influences, especially in this case Used Cars, which had a similar accumulation of crazies and whackoos in central and supporting characters in backwoods America. The director Greg Mottola, was the strongest part of this set-up. He kept the film balanced so it was never too over-the -top in the wilder parts nor too slow in character parts. The main flaw of the film is the usual Pegg weakness, that he's too tied to the past and doesn't manage to find new ways to look at the set-ups. In Shaun Of the Dead the way the zombies mixed with the London urban surroundings and dysfunctional character set-ups made it work and not be a problem but in this one there was less character invention, scene to scene invention beyond relying on actor quirks, and the film at times had the feeling of a collection of I loved that from other movies, especially ET, replaying images without enough tweaks to make it interesting or memorable. By the end it was kinda getting annoying that so little effort had been made to step out of fanboy mentality and try and have an idea of its own. So the film was good but not stellar.

Seen some other films. The best one was by far I Sell The Dead, a low-budget grave-robbing/Burke And Hare derived horror comedy, set in the 19th century, where the bodies dug up turn out to be real monsters. The movie has a lot of charm and invention, has little stories and adventures within the central one, which is of a grave-robber telling a priest of his wrong-doings. It is proud to be a horror movie, to have joy with twisting convention, keeps using its structure and monsters in an intriguing way (one of bodies dug up turns out to be an alien, which is funny considering its time-period setting). It stars horror director Larry Fesseden and former hobbit Dominic Monaghan, and both seem to be enjoying themselves.

I've seen Super, with Rainn Wilson as a crazy wannabee superhero. Its not as good as I hoped, feeling a little over-long even at one and a half hours but does have a lot of good elements that makes it worthwhile. It puts the recent Watchmen and Kick-ass to shame in regards to invention regarding DIY superheroes and how crazy they must be, as well as detailing the levels of nuerosis and weakness that propel them to the need to stake out something for themselves. I especially like the link of pulp morals to Christian fundamentalism and how that can warp someone who a few problems to go absolutely beyond the acceptable. Its low-budget intenionalyl schlocky feeling is sometimes a good thing, when it comes to the nromal part of the film, to character beats, to how fantasy affects people in a the normal world, but can be a limitation as the film moves on, as the film can sometimes feel unintentionally cheap. But its a minor flaw in a fun film.

I also watched MacGruber, which is a fun if slightly over-long 80's pastiche. Its a film that needed a slightly more inventive plot to string the jokes through but soem of the jokes are brilliant so you can't complain too much. Its a fun movie with a good cast hamming it up.

Breaking Bad and Tron Legacy

2011-06-19T10:54:00.001+01:00

Have been watching Breaking Bad Season 2 and Tron legacy.

Breaking Bad has had a lot of praise and its wonderful. The writing is in character and plot is excellent and surprising, is always intrigued by its world, which is important for a TV show. The acting is terrific, especially in small details and looks that often propel the narrative, character weakness in these looks, in small narrative loose ends, always seeming to lead to bad ends.

The fun of the show is watching the incremental details and blind spots that a person has will lead them to staggeringly awful decisions. The choice of a terminal cancer patient Walt saying to himself I'm doing this for a good reason, to give my family money when I die, even though creating pure crystal meth, starts off disturbing, and gets increasingly twisted, as the details of how to set yourself up as a supplier is far more work than imagined, leading to lies, death, a need to feel important. Walt's pride is horrific, as he refuses help that would have stopped the dealer sitution from occuring, or given him an early out, then increasingly pushes his dealer partner Jesse into darker dealer enforcment situations, which Walt refuses to get involved in directly, leading to many deaths and ruined lives. And so many lies.

The irony of the characters keep coming up. Walt's wife, Skylar, who he lies to keep his business from, is as proud, annoying and as headstrong as he is, is a very funny take on the normal character. Watching these two fight is always fun as neither of them are capable of backing down, only beatign a tactical retreat, and they tend to be in action showing the weakness of the other. the weakness of both is rage that the world seemingly doesn't live up to their warped standards, adn that they both feel left behind by the world. Both always act as if they are the rational ones but neither truly are.

Jessie, Walt's partner, begins to slowly become the sympathetic character of the show. He's a weak man, addicted to crystal meth, trying to survive, not that ambitious and initially annoying. But he is driven by Walt to succeed, being pushed into increasingly awful situations by the partnership until he's a shell of a man by the end of season 2.

The show si terrific in all these details. And its has Danny Trejo's head but on top of a tortoise.

I've also been watching Burn Notice. There's not much to say about that beyond its loads of fun. Well-written acted and engaging entertainment, with no pretensions.

Tron Legacy is a fun, silly movie that's far better directed than it is written.

It was written by two guys who wrote for Lost and shares with Lost the useless hero and the attitude of we don't need to answer many questions raised, if in fact any. The crippling aspect of the film is in its story beats, which rips off Matrix Revolutions consistently and badly (a virtual world under threat causing problems for the real world, machine evolution, everything ultimately is tied to duality of a soul and finding purpose from that).

Tron Legacy takes place about 30 years after Tron and is about the mystery of the Jeff Bridges character disappearing from the world and his son trying to find him. After an appalling first few minutes of info dump to link Tron to its sequel, the story of the son searching for his father settles down to the the most solid aspect of the film, taking us from the real world, to the world of Tron, its battles, its power structures. All those elements, even if startlingly unoriginal in every plot point, are solid. Even as the film goes a bit crazy, after the son finds Jeff Bridges in Tron, this element remains solid.

Not that its well written in character. The lead actor Garret Hedlund, who plays the son, struggles with some appalling character work inflicted upon him by the writers. His character is pouty, more than a bit dumb, never listens, never has any real plan, leading to a lack of direction for the film. Its a staggeringly awful peice of writing development scene to scene but the actor, while not able to make the character unique, manages to at least overcome the writing and make the character work within the film. But its leaves the film stranded in a set of sequences without any narative momentum or core, without an interesting goal. Jeff Bridges isn't given much interesting scenes to play either, as the mysterious lost father, who is found and who changes his mind about every ten minutes but being a terrific actor, hides it with eccentricity. So the lack of centre for the film is a major problem. That's the downside. Plus the plot of the virtual characters getting ready to come into the real world to kill us all. That's a dumb plot device that's difficult to overcome.

And yet I like the film. The director Jospeh Kosinski has a good eye, is the main power behind keeping the film working. He seems to be aware of the flaws in script and tries to sell the concepts visually, to use images and cinematic technique to sell the simple idea of a magic techno world. Despite Tron being almost one-note in visual idea, a computer world always stays a computer world, he kept the visuals intereresting and varied by changing perspective, by revealing the Tron world and shadings slowly, knowing to use a strong series of images when there's a dodgy plot turn coming (such as the end and the army of Tron soldiers, which looks so good you forget the dumbness of the idea behind it). He sold the real world and the world of Tron as related to each other in interesting ways, liking architecture, the villains in almost CEO type glass guildings compared to dungeon-like dwellings of the creators of the technology in both worlds. The lack of directoon within the characters is made interesting by how he frames them, making their confusion seem more interesting within the world than it should be. Despite there being no real plot or character development in this area, the journey the lead character takes is sold beatifully by visual information, by the changes in location, pacing of scenes, styles of landscape. The idea of Jeff Bridges fighting another younger version of himself within Tron, of being a soul cut in half, is a non-event narratively, as not much time is spent with either Bridges character but Bridges and the way Kosinski shoots Bridges throughout suggests an intriguing connection and disaffection, a lack of centre to both characters. The finale to this beat works only visually, as the plot reasons seem dull but the idea of a person inegrating two parts of his soul are fascinating.

Tron Legacy almost works as a silent movie. None of the dialogue is worth a damn but the visuals are always intriguing and suggest a more developed and fascinating world beyond the limits of the writers. Its best to view it the way you would view the theatrical cut of Fincher's Alien 3. (the Alien 3workprint cut solves many of these problems but elaboration and detail) Yes there are lots of problems, the narrative starts and stops but lok at how the director sets up shots, places people within landscape, is in love with the visual aspects. So I recommend it, but be aware that its more about the start of a promising director rather than a successful film on the whole.

Lost & Caprica

2011-06-12T11:45:00.039+01:00

I've finished watching the final seasons to Lost and Caprica, finding that both could be fascinating and exasperating, and that they were effective in very different ways. The reason that I combine the shows in one post is that I saw their conclusion within a few days of each other and their respective success/failures interest me in response to one another. Do you want well-done character beats that mean little as it is a genre exercise ultimately or crazy idea-led stories with real-life ties.

In my experience its usually one or the other. The set-up of a complex series of characters tends to make development tricky, with a lack of idealisation in characters redemptions, actions multi-layered and difficult to take a side on, leading to what is in most cases is inertia. Pulp tends to pop along with bells and whistles, is fun. On Lost was that no matter how complex they tried to make the story it was ultimately safe and very unthreatening in ideas, being the hero's journey, which is a cop-out for ideas as its based on a sentimental lie that people rise to the occasion no matter what, rather than conmpromises and inertia leading to actiosn that can take on a positive or negative state. In Lost no-one was ever going to be confonted with anything too complicated. The characters could go dark but there was ultimately a mysterious reason, that could serve as a cop-out to some degree. It never quite got as ambitious in character or situation, or as feral as I would like.

Caprica, like Battlestar Galactica, had a more complicated take to life, to fate, even to the great narrative cheat, divine intervention, where the divine is an ultimately psychotically destructive and disgusting, used when a society has broken down with no chance of escape, the intervention lead on from the insanity of the characters that lead to destruction. It was ambitious but with Caprica the drama was less than involving. A show like Deadwood or Caprica's sister show Battlestar Galactica can have stories of complex ideas and emotions, as well as defined characters that can be linked to genre, can be out of control, so the prinicpal drive is the chaos but the genre brakes are there but can be used carefully, as safe elements for the audience to hook onto, such as characters like Adama. The Sopranos and Mad Men have these safer elements. There is traditional elements in any long-running drama that are always fake, sentimental, that create a sense of life that is not entirely true, that make the more difficult elements easier to take, even if they can be subtly subverted, to tie into audience projections on a character. But characters are the glue to be worked from in television, and tend to be the thing that sinks a show, as the characters get to be too idealised and sentimental. Caprica never really mastered character involvement week to week.

Lost lasted for six seasons, had advantage in being a complete series arc, as well as having stronger dramatic characters, while Caprica was complex, grown up, had superior ideas, and was linked to the story of Battlestar Galactica, a show that Lost never truly could compete with in quality. If I were to be honest, Lost was the more enjoyable show, but it could also be by far a worse show than Caprica ever managed.

Lost started strong, sagged in the middle of season 2 to the later parts of season 3, recovered and was at its peak until the end of season 5 then had an interesting but very confused final season. It was a fantastical suspense show that wasn't always very good at suspense, as it relied heavily on idiot plot, where character have to be idiots for the plot to work. Its strength was in its fantasical set-up and some of its characters, its weakness was in it could be deeply unimaginative on plot solution, on variation of story beats, and had bad instincts on its central characters, making them dull in ways that sentimental deands on characters can be on TV shows.

I'll start with the negatives because I'd like to end on the positives. The central character Jack was meant to be a hero but was a self-righteous moron, a surgeon with a severe impulse control problem. The writers at least recognised this about the character and did increasingly interesting things with it, expanding it around its weird contradictions. The female lead Kate was dumb, a self-destructive loser, was the world's worst fugitive, who was set up to be a kind person with a mysterious past, the ultimate TV cliche. Alas in plot she was always making things worse for herself with entirely useless actions, her reasons being a fugutive was selfish and unforgivable (and very stupid). the character was a disaster of smugness and bad writing and plot movements, working always on the wrong side of playing audience needs to play on underdogs. She only became reasonable halfway through season 5, when she became a little more selfless and self-aware of her own basic stupidity, like the Jack character. The actors playing these parts did a good job but they were acting the dregs when it came to characterisation, with pitiful attempts to play on genre expectations that always seemed to lack any real human tocuhes. The creators seemed to have a blind spot when it came to realising how much these characters were failing.

The mysteries could also be annoying in that I ultimately it had the internal logic of an episode of The Magic Roundabout, and was under-cooked. The writers set things up and generally didn't know how to resolve them dramatically, so moved on to the next idea and explained it away as being mysterious. That's acceptable a few times on a show but occured about five times a season at best. There were many episode of Lost that felt like a how not-to write a TV show in regards to its mythology. The suspense beats could feel the same way. Again its flaws went back to basic takes on genre expectations done badly.

On the other hand, much of the pleasure came from the wonderful situation, of the mysterious island, the Jules verne meets The Shining set-up, with eighties tech, creepy monsters, a thirst for killing off characters once they had served their purpose. It was an infallable set-up that the writers kept finding fun ways to add to, from the crash survivors investigating the island, the ghosts on the island, the hatch, the others, with flashbacks, flashforwards, time travel where the characters set-up some of their future, and even the sideway alternative universe. All of these were intriguing situations that had great moments of pulp character and suspense. As stories expanding from a genre base, the show made strong ties between the character's past, from before they ever met, which gave a feeling of further complexity. The show kept being inventive and atmospheric, having mysteries that worked for weeks or years as suspense tools, which is one of the main needs of a long-running show. The shame came in the reveals, such as in season three, where the others weren't as interesting as the two season set-up had promised. This type of weak ending to mystery is always a dissapointment and was a genuine repeating flaw of the show, suggesting a fatal lack of imagination in details beyond a genre-influenced point. But the show continually built well from its pulp origins, and did a lot around its flaws.

The supporting characters really made the show work. There were many but these characters had very well developed growth, had stages, where the characters were always spiky and intriguing. Lost had some terrific points of interest week to week away from the leads, in Sawyer, Locke, Desmond, Ben Linus, and Hurley, all of whom had continually added complications, who created the sense of depth in the world, all of whom would have worked better as the leads and who were spared the hack-work by not having to be the sentimental projections to the intended audience.

Sawyer started out as a con man, had a very good reading on people, could be guarranteed in early seasons to be sarcastic, selfish, offensive, then selfish some more. The character, who never got off the island until the ending, managed to have growth under constant duress to become the leader over the years, to overcome a horrifying back story with a great pay-off (which felt nasty and had a damaging effect on him, and always made the Kate story look whiney and annoying,), and had the most affecting love story of the series with Juliet, who along with Sun, was one of the few well done female characters. The nastiness of his character at the start allowed the rest of the story to play intriguingly. The writers of this show had trouble when you were meant to like a character instantly but give them a damaged character needing development, they worked wonders.

Locke was a sad story, a man who ruined his life due to delusional behaviour, who had a blind spot when it came to how much he knew, a faithful believer who thought he was asking the right questions but who never understood people. He was a driven character, restless, always pushing ahead. The strength of this character was that it allowed the writers to get their awe of the situation of the island, to personalise it and to keep it to character, to allow it to develop in human touches, as well as to show failure and the darker side of faith and the magic. Even within the genre restraints of the show, Locke always gave hints of craziness, of a series ready to go interesting and beyond its limits.

Desmond was an intriguing figure in that he started off a minor character that the writers obviously liked, who started to develop as a man tortured by the island, by his fate, being being able to see through time, when he wanted a simple life. It was actually a very simple short story planted in the middle of more complex arcs which made it always stand out, as a simple beat that could come in every so often to clarify. He was also the character that allowed the show to have complex plots within a flawed human figure, as Desmond was always a little weak but determined. It was good used of a character adding background detail without a lot of obvious effort.

Ben Linus was a terrific villain in this story in that he was written as an all-out villain but was always human and vulnerable. He was the face of the island at the start, who was forced to do horrible things to protect it, who was always manipulative and dangerous to ftriends and enemies. But his arc, following the death of his daughter in season 4, become one of the more emotional beats in the story, far stronger than the central character dynamics, leading to a great episode where he confronts why he killed his own leader, the effects of his daughter's death, and the rage that followed that, as well as seeing what his life could have been like without the island. The finale gave him a few lovely scenes where he starts to come to terms with his past. It was a character that worked best on the idea of what fate or other influences make you do, and was a great example of a show working aginst the limitation of a genre base.

Hurley was probably the least complex character in the series, in that he basically a decent guy given some very bad luck, but like Desmond, when placed against the other characters, he worked, and deepened with careful handling, year by year, so that the revelation that he was destined to become the Island's protector succeeded beautifully, as it kept the emotion simple. Essentially you gotta love a show where the studly hero's fate turns out to be cannon fodder for the fat guy. Again it was a genre base, the nice fat guy, but it was done with sensitivity as Hurley never had to carry the series.

So Lost was a show that's base idea and supporting characters created a sense of complexity. It never was genuinely complex but gave the illusion of being so at times. But the entertainment was consistent. Like many a good TV series, the strengths of a show tend to make you overlook the weakness that it builds.

Caprica was a crazy show that wasn't quite sure of itself at times, that wasn't always set-up well, could be paceless, that it had a couple of characters that it never had a clue what to do with who could drag the show down, but it had some wonderful moments with terrific sci-fi ideas, was starting to develop itself into a strong show, and started to push its stronger characters in interesting directions.

The pilot is a very good set-up to a series, and highlights its best set-up, the father-daughter dynamic, using the idea of AI and robots as a way to play the frankenstein idea against real-life home tensions, by making the monsters an already living daughter who has died and been brought back to life. The Daniel and Zoe Graystone characters were where the story was strongest continually, in that it used technology to play around how parent-offspring relations can be difficult, emotional and twisted on both ends, in what both sides want, in how selfish both can be. In the first half of the series it was the dominant focus, then lost its way as other elements came into play before returning for its finale.

Some characters who started a bit vague and could be not very bright who started to develop once the writers started moving the story forward so the flaws of the characters in the start-up of a series could be forgiven. Characters like Joseph Adama, a lawyer with mob connections who slowly becomes involved in the creations of the cylons (and is the father of the lead of Battlestar Galactica), Clarice, the head of the terrorists, who is vain, vicious but with emotions that get complicated, and Lacey, the best friend of Zoe who gets trapped into the machinations of the crazy religious terrorist cult were made interesting. Characters like Graystone's wife and an agent investigating the terrorists, depsite have decent actors playing them, never got interesting because the characters were not developed in detail and had little internal drive in character interaction beyond where the story placed them. These two characters tended to sink the show whenever they had focus.

The show was frustrating. It never fully got going but had terrific moments of father-daughter consuion and dysfunction, some creepy highlighting of religious madness and myopia among seemingly rational people, and had some good mob stories. It was a show with everything there but it never quite came together. And yet its characters are more complicated than anyone in lost. its sitution is more intriguing than the games and overdone/kinda silly metaphors of Lost. The first half was too slow and was about ideas and a second half with better pacing that tended to have less emphasis on ideas. But despite all of this, its more unique than Lost.

Both of these shows are recommended but have deep flaws. But what one is more worthy of your interest?

Well Well Well

2011-06-05T09:49:00.007+01:00

So Dr Who series 5 part 1 is finished. Figured I'd watch them all before posting, as it was half a season really.

Essentially its four very good stories, one pretty good story and a dud. Not bad for Dr Who. At least the dud was a one-parter and was fairly painless.

The best stories were fairly obvious. The three Moffat entries and The Gaiman story.

The Moffat stories could be seen as maybe a little too fast on first viewings, beginning with the death of the Doctor and unravelling from there, into the story of the Silence and its invasion, the first moon landing, haunted houses, subliminal images, rage-filled rescues and horrible mistakes, leading up to the revelation of who River Song is, which, while not a suprise, at least is consistant and has excellent internal logic in regards to what has come before. The stories make more sense on re-watch, have a wonderful take of fantasy and humour, of odd, scary moments. They also have terrific side characters, like the Victorian era Silurian and her lesbian maid/lover, or the woman soldier who has been looking for the Doctor. The weakest parts are in the first half of "The Good Man Goes To War", which is a bit busy and could have been tightened a little but the pay-offs in this episode are terrific (even if I'm not writing what they are, as its not been shown in other countries as of yet).

The Gaiman story, of the Doctor leaving the known universe, ending up confronted by the Tardis' soul in the body of a woman, was a simple fairystory idea that worked, as these ideas resonated, were properly worked out but kept visually simple, focused the pace but allowed for breathing room to get into the ideas. The story was directed upon the scary aspects of the ideas, of leaving the universe, of a graveyards of Tardis', of the Tardis being under the control of an alien, malignant creature, and of the Doctor confornting his oldest ally. It was a terrific story that also kept the resolutions affecting.

As for the other two stories, the Matthew Graham ganger story, set in an old castle, may not have had the out of control buzz of the half-season highlights but was a genuinely solid old-school two-parter, with a strong set-up of clones becoming self-aware, had some fun moments of identity-crisis (in a b-movie way) with images of flesh against stone that was lovely, in a sick sci-fi way. It also had some good supporting character turns in Raquel Cassidy's sarcastic boss and Sarah Smart's crazy ganger, and of course had Matt Smith versus Matt Smith, as the Doctor being delighted by his clone. It's one of those stories that may be appreciated a bit better as time passes, as its pleasures were traditional.

The dud was the pirate story. I don't have that much to write about it because it was so badly directed, making it difficult to judge anything else. The writing seemed decent if unexpectional in the mystery and conclusion but it had some momentum, with the black spot curses, the crazy creature coming from the sea, the mystery of the water/mirrors. It could have been at the level of the ganger story with a little added care, with a director with a feel for atmosphere and horror/sci-fi staging, or for modulation of scenes. Alas it was hobbled by this poor choice, which left the the story weakened to a point where interest failed no matter what was thrown at the audience in imagery or twists.

On other things watched in recent weeks, there's Lost, which I'm up to Season 5 in (more on that later, once I get to the end) and a few movies of differing quality.

There's Machete, a gleeful b-movie of many great guilty pleasures, the main one seeing a Danny Trejo starring-movie. This movie also has as highlights DeNiro as a supporting snivelling villain who gets more and more pathetic the further the film goes on (one of his better recent parts) and Jeff Fahey as a truly sleazy businessman (whose daughter is Lindsay Lohan- his interests in her are unhealthy to say the least, she ends up as a crack-addict, an on-line porn star and a nun) Best of all is a one-eyed Michelle Rodriguez leading a gang of illegal immigrant Mexicans to mow down some white racists with a wide range of weaponry. Stellar cheesy stuff.

Then there's Green Hornet, which is the exact opposite of Machete. It's pretty much Michel Gondry's worst film (yep, I've seen and liked Human Nature). It's just so lazy. In the writing, in the acting, in the action, its just fairly dull. Basically no-one involved could be bothered to think up cool things for the chracters to do, have unique or unsual action, or to have a series of inter-connected plotted events that would give the film any momentum. Instead its a dull buddy movie where the buddies have no real chemistry, nor motivation, where the jokes aren't remotely funny, nor are the gadgets interesting or amusing. Gondry shoots the movie like its an 80's era TV show. You start to wonder where is David Hasselhoff and Jan-Michael Vincent. Its a Joel Schumacher Batman-era event I'm afraid. And the Green Hornet tune plays for like two seconds.

Finally there the 5-hour cut of Until The End Of The World. I'll go into it in more detail probably in a serperate post but its one of those films, like Alien 3, where the longer cut feels shorter than the theatrical version. This is because the film is allowed to breathe, to have its pace dictated by the characters and atmosphere rather than thundering through with the plot (which isn't the film's strong point anyway). The female lead is still a little weak but the final half of the film in Australia, where the world may have ended, is fantastic, and a lot of the build-up now has a relaxed charm.

Best Of 2010

2011-01-11T23:42:00.003Z

Best Films (Not a very good year for films. Most of the best are comedies.)

Four Lions - Chris Morris’ first film is a twisted take on movies and point of view, taking suicide bombers with every cinematic empathetic cliché you could imagine, with a parody of the “documentary” movie fad. Plus there’s the dialogue, which is wonderfully, intelligent and inventive look at stupid men arguing.

The Other Guys - Another terrific Adam Mackay -Will Ferrell collaboration, which is a twisted take on the cop buddy movie genre, but here every cop is a step away from the looney bin. Ferrell is odd and twisted as the repressed “sane” cop who slowly loses his calm (and has a repressed and funny
relationship with his wife) while Mark Whalberg starts his career rehab with a really funny, prissy take on a typical Mel Gibson character, who has learned dancing sarcastically. Best of all is Michael Keaton as the over-worked boss, with two jobs to pay for his “DJ son who’s exploring his bisexuality”, who has some truly strange lines. Also Steve Coogan finally has a good American part as the white collar villain. Its kinda brilliant while having a seemingly traditional narrative.

The Informant – Matt Damon in one of his best parts for Steven Soderbergh (in Soderbergh’s most Richard Lester film), playing a delusional corporate whistle-blower, who’s actually more of a crook than those he’s selling out. Layers upon layers of lies are laid out, while Damon gets more and more pathetic, as basic reality and interaction is mocked. Funny as hell, slightly chilly but over-looked film.

Scott Pilgrim Versus The World – A stylish look at a man trying to get over the idea that his girlfriend has dated other men. Its enjoyably OTT in editing and reactions, very old-style in script, visually having 80’s style shallow expressions mixed with older-style framing in direction. Not as original as some reviews suggest, but a hell of a lot of fun. Michael Cera beating people up never stops being funny.

The Hurt Locker – This one works great as an eccentric character story, of a man mad defusing bombs in Iraq, addicted to the rush that comes with the job. It focuses completely on the job and psychology, on the actions to illustrate character, ignoring the politics, as the characters seem to. A terrific film that seems cultish but somehow won the Oscar.

Inception – This one is lots of fun, has some great visuals and ideas, interesting layers between different worlds, dreams, memories. Has good character and performances, has terrific visual ambitions. The downside is its too long, with too much action that doesn’t relate to the central idea. Still a terrific film.

Not Perfect But Fun

The Expendables - Not as good as the latest Rambo, which is old-style 80’s action done to perfection, but is a very entertaining action ensemble. Stallone directs pretty good but has the grace to give the best stuff to his other cast members. Statham gets to have fun with the action moments while
Mickey Rourke and Dolph Lundgren get the eccentric speeches. A bit cheesy but so what.

The Slammin Salmon - Another Broken Lizard film that is ignored by everyone, a funny take on Glengarry Glenross, as a group of waiters compete for the most sales in a Miami restaurant. A slowburn comedy plot that has tons of crazy characters that inject some truly wayward moments. Best is Michael Clarke Duncan as a crazy ex-boxer who is now the boss, who punches a swordfish. His words of wisdom.“First you dominate the swordfish! Then you can sortie it!”

Iron Man 2 - Yes the plot is a mess. It goes on for a bit without finding a narrative centre. It could lose twenty minutes quite easily. The central drama is a bit unfocused. On the other hand, Downey is still fun in the lead, there’s some nice bits of comic book action, Mickey Rourke is a crazy Russian with lots of tattoos who pines for his pet bird, and there’s lots and lots of killer robots. Sometimes looking at the positives makes you realise what’s truly important about certain films.

The Wolfman - An old fashioned Wolfman movie. And that’s it. Of course, there’s nothing new here but its just fun to enjoy the atmosphere, the actors doing some crazy acting, characters wandering around a cold English landscape. And of course there’s the wolfman going on the hunt every once in a while (especially in an insane asylum and through London). Casting Benecio Del Toro and Anthony Hopkins as wolf men did not hinder the wonderful craziness one bit.

Burke And Hare - John Landis’ comeback film, which was unfortunately ignored. A shame as, like The Wolfman, it’s a fitting tribute to an older era of film-making, to the early seventies eccentric hammer movie, with lots of gore and silly jokes. There’s some nice murders, dark humour, and a nice line of equating body-snatching to capitalism.

Predators - The pulpiest movie you could ever find. Its stupid, under-produced, has many wayward narrative moments (anything that’s not part of the hunt is pretty stupid), doesn’t really have an ending. And still it works. Should have a health-warning to the amount of brain cells that will commit suicide while watching the film.

Disappointing

The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus - Expected more from this. It’s not bad but Terry Gilliam never came up with anything new. The idea of the traveling show through modern times was terrific, the cast were good, there was a lot of potential in the images, but the direction seemed to throw a lot at the screen without variation. It’s a minor film by a director who I like a lot, who’s done a lot better work in the past.

Worst

Clash Of The Titans - This one is the front-runner for worst of the decade. Only one moment is at all competent, going to the underground. Which lasts about ten seconds. The rest is a lot of fights that mean nothing, with dull characters and no atmosphere. Worst of all, they waste some truly great myths on their way to incomprehension. Yes, there’s a sequel to dread.

The Girlfriend Experience - The direction is interesting, the acting fine, the idea pretty good. But it has the worst screenplay ever. This film has plenty of dull dialogue (which is worse than bad dialogue, as it drains you as you watch) and never knows how to place its intentionally vague characters in any interesting or potentially revealing situations. Instead it meanders on, testing your patience, as you wonder why the writers are incapable of writing even a basic scene. This is like a short film stretched to ten times its natural length.

Best Films Not Seen Until This Year

Petulia, Up, Alice In Wonderland, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, Blood On Satan’s Claw, The Box, The Vampire Circus, Theatre Of Blood, Count Yorga, Funny People, Observe & Report, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, Fast And Furious, Trick R Treat, Ninja Assassin, In Bruges, The Hangover, Halloween 2.

Most Cliched Film Seen This Year

Michael Clayton – No cliché goes unturned. Self-tortured scumbag lawyer/bagman forced to re-assess his life. Corporations are corrupt. Life is awful, people die. Yawn. Can’t it just go into knowing self-parody and ease the pain. Such a dull, bloody smug and lifeless movie.

Best Direct To DVD

Universal Soldier: Regeneration - Didn’t expect much from this one but it was great. Vane Damme versus Lundgren at Chernobyl. Crazy genetically engineered fighting machines wandering around killing soldiers. Sure its clichéd but is also very enjoyable. One for a Friday night. Best Universal Soldier movie ever. (Practice makes perfect)

Dr Who Series 5 – A brilliantly inventive reboot to the show. It has a great new eccentric lead, a terrific companion, and some wonderfully odd stories and villains. Especially the Smilers and Weeping Angels. The finale is brilliant, twisting the usual end of the world story into an epic but intimate fairy story. This is how you do pulp.

Sherlock – Terrific, funny, spiky reworking of Sherlock Holmes, done with great pace, pulling together lots of great Sherlock Holmes stories from the past. Best of all is the pairing of Holmes and Watson, a mix of affection and real frustration on both sides.

Caprica – It was flawed, had some boring parts, has been dumped by the network. On the other hand it is brilliantly ambitious, crazy, has given Eric Stoltz his best part in years, and makes robot evolution and religion very interesting. Like Dollhouse, its crazy ambition makes its flaws not worth caring about.

Community – Probably the least ambitious TV show premise ever, seven odd friends at community college, somehow works due to great casting and crazy humour. The stories develop at a moderate pace but that’s not ever a problem, as it allows for odd character beats and lines. High-light, a paint-ball Mexican stand-off in the men’s toilets.

30 Rock & Chuck - Old reliable shows that I keep on watching. Have good episodes and weaker ones but the casts work well and the peaks make following the shows worth it. High points were Alex Baldwin as a muppet (30 Rock) and Morgan Grimes, now the world’s most incompetent spy, who has to arrange the rescue all the competent people (Chuck).

Good TV Shows Seen This Year (I have been catching up on a lot of old shows this year for various reasons)

Breaking Bad – This one is all crazy. A man dying of cancer becomes a meth dealer to provide for his family. It’s twisted, vicious and funny, with its central characters becoming trapped very quickly in the choices closing down due to dealing. Lots of gallows humour and moments of oddball humanity. Consistently brilliant, with great acting.

Tinker Tailor Sailor Spy and Smiley’s People – John le Carre adaptations, with Alec Guinness as Smiley, master spy in the body of an old, tired man. Both are terrific in that the world is full of compromises, odd character details and subtle betrayals, all of which feel relevant to real life interaction, not that of a spy world. The tiredness informs the worlds. Great work from a terrific cast throughout.

Carnivale – The fight of light versus darkness, set in the American Midwest during the 1930’s great depression, in a carnival. This is a terrific slow-burning show, set over two seasons, with characters progressing, showing kind and selfish sides, unfortunately cancelled before it could reach any sort
of conclusion.

Mad Men Series 1 – This one is odd in that it’s exactly the show you expect from the trailers. The cover of the 1960’s sophisticated world hiding darkness. And that basic simplicity does hobble it a bit at times. But it also has some great characters and dialogue, situations that go in unexpected directions for some great moments, with a terrific set of central performances. But it still doesn’t feel as smart as it thinks it is, needs a bit more crazy.

The Office: American Version – I have to admit to preferring this to the original British version, which I liked but found to be over-rated and dark for the sake of it but without depth at times. The American version is broader, less consistent in tone but also funnier and more interesting in character, has character depths being slowly revealed, and finds more life, kindness and eccentricity in the situation than the British version.

Psychoville – A twisted whodunit with a very strange conclusion, which is more fairytale the further it goes on, and is full of wonderful oddball characters and ideas. Best bit is clown court, with the hunt for the dinosaur soft toy coming a close second. It also has a great one-shot episode ala Rope.

Sherlock Holmes (Jeremy Brett version) – A terrific moody series of adaptations, with Jeremy Brett being a wonderful, moody, twisted but sensitive Holmes, wondering through a supernatural twinged series of stories. Highlights include “The Final Problem” and “The Sign Of Four”.

The Day Of The Triffids - The original BBC version, made in 1980, which had a great mood about the slow fall of civilization, as the population goes blind and plant-creatures start to eat them. While it sounds pulpy, the story and characters are placed within realistic reactions and motivations, and the darkness comes from how mankind reacts to one another.

Coupling & Jekyll – Two terrific Stephen Moffat series, the first being an energetic comedy on dating, which gets twisted due to basic stupidity and repression of the characters, the second being a sci-fi-focused take on Jekyll & Hyde, which continually builds and focuses on character rather than effects.

Dr Who old stories – The War Games, Inferno, Carnival Of Monsters, The Ark In Space and Revelation Of The Daleks –These are all great old-school Dr Who stories. The War Games is Patrick Troughton’s final story, a ten part epic through various wars, leading to his regeneration. It’s terrifically moody and eccentric, in black and white. Inferno and Carnival Of Monsters are Jon Pertwee, Inferno an alternative world story with evil versions of companions that’s tense and moody, while Carnival Of Monsters the best of this bunch, a terrifically eccentric tale of worlds within worlds, entrainment as sport, and odd dialogue. The Ark In Space is Tom Baker fighting for the future of humanity, against some truly dodgy effects, but it works due to some terrific ideas, character momentum and dialogue “You’re getting smarter. Probably entirely due to my influence.” Revelation Of The Daleks is a Colin Baker story, set on a planet of the dead, which is very slow moving and twisted in character interaction. Unfortunately also saw Time And The Rani, Sylvester McCoy’s first story, one of the worst things I’ve ever seen.

New video

2010-11-22T18:46:00.000Z

I have a new video up at youtube, on 3TFM community radio.

The links are:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhqr_Fl6WdY

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KobhPElQjFU

Recent Remakes Watched

2010-11-21T11:27:00.000Z

This is me trying to get back into the discipline of blogging so this will be a slightly useless one to get started with.

Remakes. I've seen three remakes recently, one from 2003, one from a few years ago, one from this year. I'm not actually too bothered about remakes. You used to fads, such as TV show adapations, (which have fallen away recently), Die Hard rip-offs, rogue cop movies, comic book movies (still being popular for now). There's always a fad.

So there was The Italian Job, The Day The Earth Stood Still, and The Clash Of the Titans. The more recent the film, more more obvious a decline in quality.

The Italian Job was the most fun. The original is a bit better but its a fun heist movie, has the edge on the Oceon's 11 remake of a few years before by having surprises and events going wrong, as well as better jokes. Its a film that there's nothing much to write about as its depth is in presentation, in the fun of the play. Buts its a good example of a remake in that they took a few solid ideas from the first and made a film that's like the first but is not dependent on the first.

The other two remakes fail on that. The Day The Earth Stood Still remake is by far the better, even though its first ten minutes are genuinely awful. Its not until Keanu Reeves shows up as the alien that it gets watchable. It pretty much works as an alien among us film, the alien being a bit of a dick at times, which keeps it interesting. Reevies is by far the most interesting thing about it. But it truly needed a lot of script work, and a better director to succeed. (Shots seem to be very samey, which kills tension or interest.) But its simply a slightly failed remake of an over-rated original.

Clash Of The Titans, on the other hand, is a pretty incompetant remake of a very flawed original. Its one of those films where everything is effects so nothing is surprising. The film has no real characters, just cliches that wander in for a few minutes, in a series of vaguely motivated actions scenes, that are then killed. Sam Worthington makes a dull hero. Liam Neeson's Zeus makes no sense, and the film just sits there, with great mythic potential being squandered, most of the monsters being bland representations of myth. Only the River Styx and Hades has any real interest and Ralph Fiennes isn't given much to do as the latter. A truly bad example of a remake, and a pretty weak film from a director who was once promising in the action sphere, but who gets worse the more money he gets (Frenchman Louis Letterier).

Influences. I've been watching Mad Men (terrific, much better than expected) and there's a real Patricia Highsmith influence. Not just in the idea of a central character who is fake in a sixties backdrop but in the various types of unease, pretense, and developing but stunted emotion. As a Highsmith fan its good to see worked on in a TV show. I've only seen season one so far of course.

Direct to DVD. I've recently seen Universal Soldier: Regeneration. Its a fun movie. The downside is in the writing, which is clunky at times, which plot movement that's not always interesting. On the plus side, Van Damme is trying hard and is effective as a damaged soldier (I generally dislike Van Damme), and Dolph Lungren is back from the dead, and steals the movie in a glorified cameo. He also has a funny ending (Admission, I've always kinda liked Dolph, although he's better and has more to do in The Expandables). There's not much dialogue, which means its more of a stripped down b-movie, which is always fun. The best thing in it is actually its direction, from John Hyams. Despite budget limitations, the film is always on point to story, has some very good and clear action that always has punch, has good use of atmosphere. The best bits are an opening kidnapping and a section where Van Damme takes out a group of mercenaries, which is just brutal. Its got a good early Walter Hill vibe, despite the fact that its a Universal Soldier sequel (its far supierior to the original). So this is a director to watch, who should be getting a bigger budget. Its also much better directed than the above remakes. (another good Direct to DVD title is Undisputed 2)

Am still here.

2010-10-23T07:05:00.002+01:00

I haven't been posting for a while due to being busy but will start up again pretty soon. So am still around.

Dr Who: The Big Bang

2010-06-26T23:53:00.001+01:00

Well the first Matt Smith/Steven Moffat Dr Who series comes to an end with a terrific, twisted romantic episode, where the Doctor jumps between different time zones with a fez and a mop, fights a stone dalek (not very well, he gets shot) dances horribly but somehow saves the universe.

Its a terrifically enjoyable story, the early parts a riot of time zones and fairy tale logic, with some lovely moments of a man protecting his lover for 2000 years, the idea of a man saving himself by turning himself into a fairy story idea given to his companion when she was young, the idea that the cracks seen were the Doctor watching his past as his life ran out, of the universe being rebooted by one person's memory, of a box collapsing into a burning sun to save the universe. The tone was wonderful throughout, was full of ideas that were given with a light touch.

While all the actors were good, Matt Smith dominated as the Doctor, giving lots of energy, anger, absurdity, the fez making him look absurd and oddly grinch-like menacing.

This has been a real high-quality level season for Dr Who. What's great is that not everything is answered, leaving mysteries for the future, such as who is River Song (the doctor's future wife?) and what is the silence, both of whom have fairy tale logic and feeling, which suggests a complicated resolution to come.

New Dr Who episode

2010-06-19T23:59:00.000+01:00

Will go into detail more next week but "The Pandorica Opens" was a wonderful, twisted episode, with cybermen reassembling to kill, the companion getting killed by a clone of her dead love, the Tardis blowing up, and the Doctor always one step behind, ending up trapped by the box he was investigating (but was actually studying him).

What was terrific about the episode was the way that set things up. After a very fast intro, the story settled down, like many Moffat scripts do, to a base few locations and people talking and interacting over a tricky problem (be it Coupling or The Empty Child). Slowly the problem builds, with some nice horror bits in this story, leading to a gleeful monster barrage that would do Godzilla proud, played off against more intimate moments of horror for all characters (all leading to some sort of death), as the universe begins to explode around them. Great stuff. Can't wait for next week.

Vincent And The Doctor

2010-06-06T11:16:00.001+01:00

This was an excellent comeback for the series after the quality dip of last week. It had a good monster, who was't what it seemed. It gave Matt Smith's Doctor weird gadgets for him to have fun with while running away from a monster, and some nice moments of Doctor boredom as he studies the painting of a masterpiece with palpable impatience. Best of all it had Van Gogh, a tortured genius who can see an invisible monster.

Tony Curran was terrific as Van Gogh, depressed but not over-doing it, still human and focused enough to be a credible painter. He played well off the leads and never begged for sympathy. The episode, like an earlier story The Unquiet Dead (with a dying Charles Dickens) gave enough monster moments for a Dr Who story but was primarily focused on character beats, a dying genius meeting an eccentric immortal time lord and his companion, then developing be the story of famous man who is losing his way. Now this can go wrong. The Tennant era, for all its good points, never got the famous character type of story right, only Moffat's The Girl In The Fireplace ever truly working, and that one wasn't quite as good as The Unquiet Dead or this one. When underplayed it can be a moving story. The people involved got the tone here perfectly.

Of course it was the Richard Curtis script. Famous from Blackadder and comic relief, his script was a lot more dramatic than expected. What was good about it is that it played fair with the audience, keeping the story simple, on the people, had plot points that were developed properly and made sense, and had a wonderfully slight, short story feel.

Dr Who - first dull episode of the series

2010-05-29T21:52:00.005+01:00

It started at a good pace. The first episode, The Hungry Earth was fun, had a good set-up and many nice character moments. It delivered efficiently, was not the best Dr Who but was enjoyable.

And then Cold Blood, well, people were captured, escaped, captured, escape, sit and talk for a while, are captured and escape. It just felt like a lot of running around for no real purpose. There is twenty minutes of running around at the start of the episode, everyone is where they would be if they hadn't done anything. Then there are lots of dull talky scenes where the direction of every conversation was obvious and telegraphed by the situation, without any real character work. Ultimately, there was not enough story here for two parts. The writer and producers never found a way for the narrative to kick up a gear for the second half. Victory of The Daleks needed that kind of space as it had too much story for one part. For capture and escape you need dread, surprise, ingenuity to get out of peril. Here people got out of trouble because the other side wasn't very good, or backed away, for no solid reason. Repeatedly. As this is something that hasn't happened this year under Steven Moffat's command then it felt like a cheat, as the show has been intelligent in the get-out-of-peril situation. So putting all the lazy escapes into one episode is angering.

Worse was the dialogue, which felt in style like the Russell T Dvaies era, as if the story was written for Tennant. But not done very well. It felt like first draft, we'll write vague cover dialogue and then work out the real talk later. But then the filler was shot. As the first episode was good yet the second so dull, the reason for the extreme quality drop is confusing.

The direction in this second story was pedestrian. The script never gave the director much room but all the camera moves and set-ups seemed samey, and the actors never were directed towards sharpness of intent. Everyone seemed to wander through the episode.

So this was the duff one. There was some interesting moment about the over-all arc at the end and a companion died but the death should have had impact but didn't (odd, as the character was good). Next week looks moody and odd, so hopefully this is a one episode blip.

Changing your opinion on a film.

2010-05-16T11:12:00.002+01:00

Its a funny thing with the Coen brothers. A year or so ago a friend of mine rewatched Intolerable Cruelty, having hated it before. On rewatch he found it to be a lot better, funnier, not the disaster he initally felt in first viewing. Yesterday I rewatched Burn After Reading. I remember seeing it with friends and being in a rage for some reason about it. Don't know why. I found the story dull, the dialogue pedestrian, the acting obvious and one-note. Basically not in the same league as Old Country For Old Men, one of the Coen's best films. Not even at the same level of Intolerable Cruelty or The Ladykillers, two of the least-loved Coen films (which I have a soft spot for). On the rewatch it improved quite a bit. It is still not among the Coen's best (its dialogue still lacks the weirdness and precision of their best), and slight compared to No Country For Old Men, but a lot better than I thought it would be. The aimlessness I hated in the first viewing seemed more interesting, as these idiots squabble and fight, ego run amuck as everyone is terrified of being found to be old and useless, now seemed interesting and true to life. Funny that.

Also watched that great old Chris Walken b-movie The Prophecy, about an attempt to stop a second war in heaven, placed against the backdrop of the American west. Watching Walken as the angel Gabriel rant about killing thousands and turning towns into salt does wonders for your mood. Eric Stoltz, always an under-rated actor (see him recently keep the annoyingly bitty but fascinating Caprica moving forward) is terrific as a lone angel trying to stop armaggeddon, getting killed half-way through. (the film is vicious in this way) Best of all was Viggo Mortenston as Satan. He out-evil's Walken, which is an achievement in itself, and is one of the better devils in recent years, just subtle and malicious, only needing words and gestures to get his point across.(But is also very good at eating angel's hearts, eating petals and placing his hands on people's shoulders in very creepy ways)

I have essentially gone through the Blackadders in the past few weeks. Wonderful comedies.

To end, Steven Moffat's take on Dr Who is still going strong by the series mid-point. The last two episodes were high-level entertainment. Vampires In Venice was more of a romp while Amy's Choice was more psychological horror with fun monsters. Of the two I preferred Amy's Choice, although Vampires In Venice had a lot of entertainment value, with the Doctor's reactions to meeting vampires "Oh this is like Christmas!" to his showdown with the sympathetic villlainess, as well as being told that he looks like a nine-year old. And of course his library card with the picture of William Hartnell on it.

Amy's Choice had fun villains, whether it be crazy old folk to an ice sun that the tardis is floating towards slowly (used two top-class villain ideas in one episode) but also had a bit more dramatic meat. Two realities, which one is real (turns out neither are), one representing the fears of the Doctor (his tardis slowly dies and gets cold, trapping him and his friends on board to perish) of that or Amy's boyfriend Rory (that his ideal village life goes insane, with all that he helps trying to kill him). Its good stuff, especially as we find that the antangonist is the Doctor's subconsious, so he's the villain.

So the series is gearing up to be the best of the relaunch for me. Hope it keeps going this way.

Director's Cuts

2010-05-02T23:34:00.000+01:00

I'm doing another blog on this as I've seen two in the past week that make we wonder why studios butcher their own films so badly.

I've seen Kingdom Of Heaven and Dark City Directors Cuts and wondered why in hell they were not released in these versions initially. In both films the films are longer but feel shorter to watch, as they are paced properly, so you don't look at your watch, wonder why the stories feel like they have bits missing from them.

Dark City suffered from a terrible introduction in its original theatrical form, that took all the mystery out of a mystery noir film, meaning that you were always watching, impressed by the atmosphere but knowing where it was going. So it was marking time and then whatever they threw at you as an image made an impact but made the film seem disjointed and unsure of itself. This new cut allows the film to be a mystery, seems to have had a few more additions but importantly allows you to enter the world as it was originally intended, meaning that the film feels myserious and interesting, engaging you to follow the images. I hadn't seen it for so long that I'd forgotten some of it. It felt likea proper story for the first time, and its strange ending worked, in a way that was clunky and odd before.

Kingdom Of Heaven, meanwhile, lost about fifty minutes of story. Not sub-plots, not just character bits but mostly actual story and character elements that make sense of what is going on. Its original cut felt like an epic ruined. It aspired to be epic but had a TV-movie feel to its story-telling. No-one had weight. Now adding the rest of the story, all the characters have interesting motivations that cannot avoid causing disaster in response to others, the fights now mean something, the actual story means something. Its one casting flaw, Orlando Bloom, in the lead, remains. He feels too young and there are times when you know there's more in the set-up than what we see. But its director's cut is still a real epic and one of Ridley Scott's best films. (I've recently seen Body Of Lies, one of Ridley Scott's worst, most boring films, which had so many problems, including beign too long)

I still don't get why studios butcher their own films. People watch films for stories. They may like the story of not but why butcher the chance of people seeing the actual story, instead making it alieanating by strange tactics. All it does is make you lose money. Both of these films were financial failures. I can't help but think they would have done better if they were released the way they were meant to be shown.

The Election Polls

2010-05-02T23:16:00.000+01:00

After checking in with the Election Polls and all the back and forth with debates, it turns out that they haven't changed at all. I think its now just best to wait until Thursday and ignore them. No-one has a clue the exact make-up. It seems to still be hung parliament, which seems to be the best thing as not one party seems to have enough of an idea how to get out of this mess to deserve a true win.

Dr Who Series 5

2010-05-02T11:17:00.001+01:00

Its five episodes in and the new Dr Who series is looking very good. Funny, eccentric, with quite a bit of old-fashioned technology design. Its a terrific reworking of the show.

Earlier posts show that I was getting a bit annoyed with the increasingly tired specials but this series has gotten the series back on track. I don't think its had this type of purpose since the Ecclestone year, which was Russell T Davies' first year in charge and had a similar energy in set-ups and making an impression with the set-up.(I think the series got a bit too variable in quality following that first year).

What's especially interesting is the a slight Avengers influence and the new show has a bit more of a fifties/sixties sci-fi movie feel (including the Peter Cushing movies), has a new team, and a surer feel to what its about in regard to its world. Matt Smith has energy and is pretty odd as the Doctor, the weirdness of the world working better in reaction to his strangeness, especially when talking to a giant eye, done intentionally as a 50's sci-fi giant eye, as if its normal. Its one of the interesting elements of casting and mood set-up. Get it right and everything clicks, as if the world is there and ready to be explored, (and allows for weaker plot elements) but get it wrong there is a widening gulf of interest in story that can't be successfully covered, as the internal pacing of all the small details of that world is all wrong.

The first episode, The Eleventh Hour, had a terrific first half, as good as the show gets, then got a slightly obvious plot resolution, and a finale that brought it all together beautifully. But the charm and atmosphere carried everything, the out-there visuals bringing it all toghether. Best moments were Smith's Doctor talking to the little girl post-regeneration. Best joke is that for the entire epsiode Smith's Doctor has not seen what he now looks like but keeps on getting recognised due to a time travel twist, then an alien imitates him, which doesn't work on him because he still hasn't looked in a mirror, saying "That's rubbish, who's that!"

The show truly kicked into high gear with the atmospheric The Beast Below, full of glasses of water, masks, crazy smilers and a joke about democracy, which had another one of the great early Smith moments "I'm going to stay out of trouble... badly." It also had a great moment with him revealing his past to his companion, done with power and precision within ten seconds. It's end may not have had a twist to rival its build but its ending worked and it's an excellent illustration on how to put together a story for a 45 minute running-time.

Victory Of The Daleks was the weaklest of the bunch so far, being a little short, needing a little bit more at the front end of the story, had the fun idea of the Daleks playing nice (taken for an old lost story Power Of The Daleks) and annoying The Doctor, goading him to make a series of bad decisions. Into that we have a series of world war 2 moments that don't feel as interesting as the rest of the plot. There was also a Dalek win and a redesign of the daleks, which apparantly annoyed a lot of people by changing the daleks to colourful 60's style designs, which I of course loved.

The Time Of Angels and Flesh And Stone were a weeping angels two-parter, probably the strongest story of the series so far, definately the most atmospheric, even if the dire circumstances meant less humour at times, although there are subtle jokes that might not be appreciated. (Priests being killed off by going into a giant white light.). The story was very interesting, paying up a wider story arc while keeping to the threat, playing up the terrific visual idea of people fighting for their lives in a tomb, priests fighting images of godhood and losing their lives and past existance because of it. It had a great openign gag, with Smith moving through a museum saying "Wrong!" to almost eveyrthing to keep score and also had a terrific cliff-hanger moment, with Smith facing off the angels with a great speech, and a funny resolution, that's hilarious because it buys them about ten seconds before the next attack.

Three great dialogue moments:

That's not the plan.
There's a plan?

I dunno yet - I haven't finished talking.

Then there's-

Bishop: "Doctor Song, I've lost three clerics today, you trust this man?"

River: "I absolutely trust him."

Bishop: "He's not some kind of mad man?"

River: "... ... I absolutely trust him."

and

"Amy, listen to me; I am 907 years old. Do you know what that means?"
"It's been a while."

So its been great so far. Other terrific elements are Amy Pond, a companion who doesn't take any of the Doctor's rules as something to be followed in any way, a sense of excitement of the universe at large, and an emerging threat that wipes out events from history, that's tied to the companion in ways that are not yet obvious.

So its a great new series.

Other new series I've been watching are Ashes To Ashes, which is better than it has been during its run, now having a real threat, but still isn't up to the standard of Life On Mars, as it heads for the series end (I don't think the end will be that clever. It's red-herrings feel a little too clear). Also Burn Notice, a terrific, light spy series that keeps things fast-paced and has a solid set-up of a CIA forced out and now has to find out who set him up while making a living as a freelance problem solver.

Finally I saw Iron Man 2. Its fun, pretty good, if a little slow at the start. I like the first one better. This one never manages the character/plot balance of something like The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens or Superman 2 but is still well worth a look. It has some funny character beats and situations, even if Mickey Rourke isn't used as much as he should. Nor is Downey Jnr's "I'm dying " dynamic worked as cleanly as it could have been. But can't complain as its good entertainment that sets up a wider world that could be interesting to see in future films.

So there we go. Back to the batcave.

More Election Nonsense

2010-05-01T11:05:00.000+01:00

Actually I was thinking how exhausted Gordon Brown must be. He's been at it for 13 years solid, plus the 1997 election campaign for Blair and its build-up. Then working under Blair for so long (I don't think Blair would make an easy boss). The guy must be so tired.

Its one thing I notice in the debates. The other two leaders have the natural advantage of no real experience, just what they could do. They really have not had the kind of disaster that affects any administration, nor the building of programmes that don't work, funding short-falls, dealing with not alienating voters while doing what you think is best long-term. Not that I'm saying he's right all the time. I don't think he is. But he definitely has the disadvantage in that distinctive "no, that's impractical" knowledge that becomes a hinderence after a while, especially while trying to get people moving behind your ideas.

I think he's doing okay. He was stuck with Blair's legacy, a worldwide financial collapse as soon as he took office, and general media love of seeing him fail. While he made some bad mistakes, I don't think he had a chance ultimately.

Every so often you see a change coming. I don't like the change, think its a disaster in lots of ways, but am stuck with it, hoping the liberals can make a dent now.

So Its Election Time

2010-04-30T11:12:00.001+01:00

Is it just me or do you trust nobody?

I just look at them all and wonder, what the hell?

David Cameron remains vague as hell, talking about tough measures, cut taxes etc (fill in cliche Tory policy). No suggestion in anything he says that he has a clue how to re-build an economic infra-structure. I see nothing in his comments that he has a clue beyond let big business do what they want. As someone unemployed (at the moment) living in central Scotland this is terrifying. We literally have companies offering jobs with 16 - 20 hours to save themselves playing people proper scale or benefits, amidst many people chasing the same few jobs. How exactly do you make a living on these types of absurdly low wages? Its very scary. David Cameron will give these types of people even more power. God knows where that's going to take us. Let's face it, he is still a man who supports the people who got us all into this mess, and is going to cut vital services and economy-building measures that directly affect Scotland and the North Of England, as well as vital social and community-building enterprises. Against a strong leader he would falter badly, as he doesn't engage in answering questions, explaining himself. I think he'll alienate the country against Europe pretty quickly.

Gordon Brown isn't exactly Mr wonderful. He allowed much of this economic absurdity to go through under his charge, worked with banks, allowed as chancellor the policies that aided the economic failure. Never engaged enough in economic re-building. That's essentially been the huge failure of new Labour. 13 years and little re-building, re-engagement in trying to build anything, which leaves everyone in dire straights as the economy fails. He's not exactly doing well, calling voters bigots. On the other hand, he probably does have the best clue how to slowly but surely bring us back to stability. He is concerned with not letting the economy collapse to save a few pounds. I like that. I still don't think he's that bad, just is a natural background player. (As someone with similar public speaking defects I can view some of these areas as something that's not important). He still says what he means, unlike David Cameron. But alas now gives the scent of a dying animal.

Nick Clegg looks more like a second in command. He doesn't stop himself saying stupid things, easy platitudes. On the other hand, I like the liberals. I think they can potentially grow into something interesting in they get more of an in-road into middle England, could make Labour and the Tories need to be more original and actually do some actual planning. But its not quite there yet. Still feels like a lot is being thrown out, see if it will stick.

But I do think for now a hung parliament might be the best solution. I feel, and I don't think I'm alone, that both Labour and the Tories look tired, uninspired. They both need to be better.

Video Links

2010-02-28T14:33:00.005Z

Below are links to short webisode entertainment/documentaries that have been created on the subject of the August 2009 broadcast and uploaded on youtube. These are the first of many and shall begin to appear on the run-up to the new broadcast.

The first webisodes is for that of our Chairman/Station Manager, The Wullie Jamison Show, which was our daily mid-morning slot. This show had interviews, competitions and local history spotlighted.

Part 1 is at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr44HgaY-kg

Part 2 is at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a0kxTgVewk

Linked to this is footage of the first ever broadcast of Irvine Beat FM, hosted by Wullie. A few teething problems but it soon got up to speed. Link is at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWw0Qzk7k7M

Next is the daily weekday opening morning slot, the Sandy Clark show, which brought Irvine at new start to the day during August 2009, with news, sports, obscure information and a wide range of music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATEjurykDsk

Next to look at is the Danielle McLaughlan show, called the Youth Zone, which went out nightly between 6 - 8 pm on weekdays. It's a mix of interviews, very modern music, local bands spotlighted and some silliness.

Part 1 is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dHZqyJ0xFc

Part 2 is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W87T4vdLzss

Then there is The Alan Wallace Show, aka The Beat Man. Alan had a few different shows from Fridays to Sundays, with dance music and an interest in older music, which he explains at the below link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VanIzd0IIOM

We developed certain shows as the first broadcast went on, as volunteers got to know one another. Below links are for a two host conversation show with Drew Hanvey and Danielle MacLaughlan.

Part 1 is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyRrGeK4KCA

Part 2 is at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UouAnFLlQZQ

For the local area information, Irvine Beat provided Look North, hosted by Jim McHarg, which gave Irvine residents information on services in the area that could potentially be of great use to them, and which we wish to expand upon in upcoming broadcasts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXj67N9ZNjA

From Garnock Valley area we have the Ben Harrison/Norrie Barr shows. While having their own slots in the afternoon, these two would team up at times so it seemed best to show them as a pair.

Part 1 is at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE_OTcZUMy0

Part 2 is at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6C4XYzRMjKM

Part 3 is at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho-gwQqj0gY

Next we have The Louis Blair Show, which was a daily slot during the month's weekdays. Louis is the station manager at 3TFM and helped with our initial broadcast with both general advice in the lead-up and through his experience during the broadcast.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcYF1DvRZuo

The Wolfman

2010-02-12T22:20:00.003Z

I saw The Wolfman. Its nothing like those terrible trailers that have been on tv. The studio look ashamed of the film they made in those trailers.

Its loads of fun. really, made for people who watch hammer and old universal movies. Anyone who doesn't like these will not like this. The film is moody and odd like those films, loves its eccentric accents, stupid villagers and people not saying anything while walking through villages/forests/old houses. Basically its shot like a black and white movie with a few colours shown ( red blood and yellow lights. The rest are shadows). Its also a werewolf movie and only that. It doesn't try and be post-modern, witty in a smug way. We're in the old world and they stick to old rules, which may annoy some but is great if you're a little sick of those "clever" modern films. Its guy gets bitten by wolf, guy turns into wolf, wolf kills lots of people, manwolf is killed by his love. That basic romantic gothic story is all it is. a terrific peice of horror hokum. That's not an insult. Its great for that reason.

All the cast are in on the fun. They know what movie they're in. Anthony Hopkins is a riot. Its the most fun he's been in years, being basically an awful man the entire film, who kills his wife, sends a young Del Toro into the looney bin, lusts after the fiancee of, then kills his other son brutally, then he turns into a wolf. (The entire film is all his fault basically. He even looks wolf-like and quotes hamlet in an astonishly OTT bit, Hamlet in a werewolf film. and it works in that b-movie cheeky way). You're kind of amazed he was never in a late era Hammer film. Emily Blunt is basically a lust object whose men keep getting killed, so she looks haunted a lot, which she does well. Its one of those tricky have to be interesting without the back-up of much writing and dialogue. But she does it very well, gets into the older style of acting.

For their wolfman, they know that casting Benecio Del Toro is enough (not since Oliver Reed in Curse Of The Werewolf has a man been so aptly found to be a man who should turn into a wolf). You don't need much dialogue. Give him a candle, let him be tortured, let the cameraman go wild for ten minutes at a time, let him sniff Emily Blunt once in a while. That's enough. Then he turns into a wolf and kills everyone. Basically what I'm saying is roll on Frankenstein Versus The Wolfman remake, which won't happen. This film will not make enough money. Its too old fashioned. Del Toro should be doing these movies mixed with films like Che.

The wolf attacks are great. A wolf attack is very fast and kills most people before they know they are being attacked. Its very brutal. People are slshed, burned, slashed again. Policemen are decapitated, killed and further mocked for being useless. The wolfman attacks a london tram and no-one gets out alive. Everything you could want from a wolfman attack. The CGI is not too obtrustive, has some great sound effects.

The film came out astonishingly well, which is surprising as it lost its director not long before it began shooting. Joe Johnstone (who directed two early gems Honey I Shrunk The Kids and The Rocketeer before falling away) took over and did a great job of it. The film is very confident and focused, knows what its about. Its paced a little too fast in early stages but these are minor defects. It still very much works.

Teasers for Floating

2010-02-07T18:35:00.000Z

These are the links for three early teasers for my next project, Floating. It's a 70 minutes arty film. Not much narrative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ym102B-NF_k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B387C7kucw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSIXQdOH8Is

Dr Who - End Of Time

2010-01-02T10:00:00.005Z

The Russell T Davies-Dr Who era unfortunately ends with a whimper.

After seeing all of these specials I wish they hadn't bothered and finished at the end of the last season, which had a strong second half, and generally had a pleasing sense of purpose and most of Davies' strengths, with his pacing and character focus.

The specials droned on, all of them having the feel of being second-hand ideas that should have stayed unused. All had a tired feel, like the fun was over and the hard work to tie the character energies to plot wasn't there, all of them killing time to the regeneration. A year off would have been better as these were damaging. The scripts flaws in keeping interest became apparant as each special dragged on. Also not interesting was Tennant, who was oddly blank on his way out. He seemed as bored as late-era Tom Baker, but without the jokes. The worst offender was the direction throughout the specials, which didn't have much pace, covering events but never really leading any emotions. It was a little shocking to see an exit where people aren't really delivering despite having a general set-up that should provide a platform a very emotive conclusion.

The End Of Time had a better lead-up than conclusion, Part 1, while being messy and slow, at least had a point most of the time, with the regeneration build-up occuring as part of the mood, and John Simm being in a humorous rage. Part 2 basically ignored part 's build-up and implications with a few tricks, left Simm in a room with bad dialogue, having the Doctor and a few characters holed up in an old ship for half the episode before returning for a quick fight that covers what you wanted to see in a way too brief conversation, has a bit of shooting and things returns to what they once were. What they tell us about Gallifrey and the Time war, how the Master was used, is interesting but needed so much more time. Basically it needed interaction and there was none for the episode. Finally the Doctor makes a stupid sacrifice, leading to his regeneration. Its a neat twist on the he will knock four times to be his companion, and it not to be part of an evil plot, but the guy was 80, and they never sold the reason why he doctor would take his place. Its not sold in an intriguing way, is just a twist, which is damaging aftera year of build to this. Then you had the usual companion round-up, an unfortunately weak final line "I don't want to go.", which is whiney and annoying.

Then Tennant regenerates and the story becomes fun for about a minute, as Matt Smith is one eccentric actor, having the license to go nuts. "I have legs! I have ears!", yelling Geronimo as his tardis crashes towards the earth. And in that minute you realise what the episode and the specials have been missing. Life. The lacklustre quality, when the Doctor shows no real backbone or fight, becomes apparant here.

Davies did all of this far better in The Parting Of The Ways. That was actually a moving regeneration story, with intimidating villains who are defeated in a way which made sense within the frame-work of the story, and had a sacrifice that felt earned. It also had lead actors working well and a central actor going out at peak. Not to mention The Caves Of Andronzani, the Peter Davidson regeneration story and the best over-all, which was a fast-moving melodraama and had the threat of the regeneration running throughout. Tom Baker's Logopolis was also pretty intriguing, Baker almost a ghost walking to his own death, as the universe collapses around him, something I think The End Of Time attempted but it never worked.

Its a shame Davies' era sputtered out a little at the end. I genuinely loved the first series with Eccleston and Series 3 with Tennant, also finding the second half of season 4, after a shaky start, to have wonderful moments. Which makes it annoying that he stayed a little too long. I'm sure it was with the best of intentions, to finish the Tennant era, but these stories just never caught fire and seemed trapped by the conventions already set-up, and they just dragged on.

So he had a weak exit. It happens. It was still a confident era, with next series looking really odd and interesting.

Best Of Decade

2009-12-22T10:52:00.004Z

BEST FILMS OF DECADE

The New World (Both Versions) - The New World has two versions, both superior, moving works of artistic genius, about the colonisation of America. Have terrific, subtle performances, moments on otherworldly images amidst seemingly normal landscapes, and terrific use of voice-over to suggest lives living at the moment, unsure of the tragedies and joys that await the characters.

The Sun, Alexandre & Russian Ark - One is about The Japanese Emperor wandering around his garden at the end of World War, one is about an old woman wandering around a make-shift army base and the surrounding area during a war, one about Russian history. All are visually spectacular, subtly emotional masterpieces.

The Werckmeister Harmonies - A stunning Bela Tarr for this decade. Shot after lingering shot of compromised lives, all giving an accumulation of subtle character and mood. An amazing feat of film-making.

Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… And Spring - The life of a Buddhist man and an elderly man trying to teach him how to survive with grace, the younger man making many tragic mistakes before finding his way, seen through the seasons. A wonderful look at life.

Saraband - Ingmar Bergman’s final film, the story of a once-married couple finding one another years later, seeing the tragedies that befell the other. This is the story of people facing up to their own, and others, flaws. Beautiful.

Femme Fatale - A European fairy-tale of a film, where stories are played then replayed carefully, images have many meanings, and cinematic sequences play out simply for the joy of being a film. One of DePalma’s best films, this has spell-binding sequences, and is the best use of suspense and humour for many years.

Animal Factory - A beautiful small-scale drama set in a prison, the story of a young man trying to survive in a system set-up to destroy him. Full of wonderful seemingly slight moments and sequences, this accumulates powerfully, with characters losing and trying to regain their souls in a mundane hell.

Miami Vice - A love story set in the drug world, a depressed cop goes undercover and begins to lose his bearings, in a brutally violent world. A beautiful, under-rated noir update.

The Agronomist - Jonathon Demme’s humane tale of Radio Haiti and the tragedies that befall it and its country.

Punch-Drunk Love & There Will Be Blood - Paul Thomas Anderson really came of age this decade with these two films, one a twisted love story on the paranoia’s and fears of self-revelation to another, both kind and ugly while the other is about self-destruction and mindless greed dominating a life, leading to psychopathic need for tragedy to everyone.

No Country For Old Men - Coen Brothers best film, a tragic, underplayed story of one simple decision, to go for a quick steal, leading to a brutal manhunt that no-one can escape, all for a money prize that is almost abstract. A tragic comedy.

Mulholland Drive & Inland Empire - Two moments of David Lynch genius, the first a love story seen from various viewpoints, all obscured by self-delusion and need for the relief of fantasy, the second a tragic tale of madness and self-obsession, when there is no real self. The visuals are amazing.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou & The Fantastic Mr Fox - Two wonderful Wes Anderson films, the first a comedy about a diver slowly losing control of his own little world, the second a similar set-up but done from a child-like POV, where people can fight back. Visually inspired both, two works of a unique, kind imagination.

Solaris & Bubble - Solaris is a wonderfully depressed remake of a depressed Russian film, about the fantasy of the person you think you love, while Bubble is about longing in a dead environment, where any achievement is brief. Both have wonderful human moments amidst the quiet darkness of their environments.

Elephant & Gerry - Two Gus Van Sant films of long shots and understated characters, one about a school massacre, another of two men lost in a desert. Both are addictive and focus on the build of people within what seems mundane, both about the accumulation of a life experience, not the artificial peak.

A History Of Violence & Eastern Promises - Two Cronenberg crime stories about identity, both about men lying about his past played by Viggo Mortnernson, both about that man finding life very confusing when pressure is put on lies, where the truth of his character is very ambiguous. Both films take time to appreciate.

AI: Artificial Intelligence - Spielberg makes a Kubrick project, sometimes a bit awkwardly in dialogue, but the film has an epic quality, as a robot boy travels the world to find a reason for being, discovering it in complicated ways that he himself cannot comprehend. It’s a sad tale, reminiscent of early Spielberg like The Sugarland Express of Close Encounters. The first third is especially brilliant.

Dave Chappelle’s Block Party - Its not entirely a documentary, nor is it a concert film, instead it follows the creation of a block party, introducing the reasons for the block party, slowly introducing the event while getting an understanding of the area it takes place in. The inter-cutting of music and neighbourhood is beautiful, with Chapelle acting as host. A beautiful little film.

The Devil’s Backbone & Pan’s Labyrinth - Two Guillimero Del Toro films, both about war-torn Spain, both with child protagonists, one set in a boy’s school and is about the sin of the war and death, the other about a little girl going to live with a fascist, with fairytale logic taking over amidst the tragic reality. Two wonderful films.

The Squid And The Whale - A lovely little drama about divorce, and how difficult people can be, both in the lead-up to, and during, a divorce situation. All the characters are complicated, can be selfish but are recognisably human, which gives the film its warmth.

PERSONAL FAVOURITES

The Prestige - A truly wonderful film about the mechanics of showmanship, deflection, misplaced rage, mixed with a real sense of the grandeur of magic. Easily Christopher Nolan’s best film.

Speed Racer - One of the most under-rated films of the decade, a kids movie that truly enters that visual head-space of a five to ten year old, throwing up a cartoony world with fast cars in day-glo colours, with split-screens moving from image to image with ease. The first twenty minutes is especially wonderful. Its horrible that a film this good was so totally ignored by all.

Anchorman - Will Ferrell’s finest hour, as a limited local news anchorman in the 1970’s, facing feminism amidst a series of truly oddball sequences (especially the animated sequences after Ron scores with his lady love. An amazing supporting cast, with Paul Rudd a standout as ladies man Brian Fantana. The added film Wake Up Ron Burgendy, is hilarious also, with three stand-out comedy moments cut from the original film, a bank heist gone wrong “I’m not giving you any money. You don’t deserve it. Your masks don’t make any sense.” Champ Kind’s declaration of love to Ron, and the amazingly sick “What I’d like to do to Mother Nature” monologue. Yes, its deleted scenes are funnier than most movies.

The Revenger’s Tragedy - Alex Cox didn’t get the financing to make many films this decade but this one put most directors to shame. Christopher Eccleston leads the cast, seeking revenge on a powerful family that killed his love. It plays as a revenge thriller and a parody of this genre, as well as being the most twisted and inventive take on updating a magic text imaginable, having many moments of Brechtian brilliance. Eccleston is terrific in the lead. Remember, let those who seek revenge dig their own grave first.

Dominion: Exorcist Prequel - Dumped by hits own financiers, remade terribly by Renny Harlin, then released in a limited form when the remake was deemed an abomination, this was a more difficult than most assignment even for Paul Schrader. And it’s a beautiful film. While never terrifying, it has lovely sequences of build and strangeness (best of all the Northern Lights appearing during the exorcism), focusing on a man trying to regain his soul after the tragedy of World War 2. Stellan Starsgard, always a good actor, shines in this, full of subtle reactions that build powerfully, as he tries to find away to face evil and irrationality in the world.

Looney Tunes: Back In Action - Wired but funny as hell Looney Tunes film by Joe Dante. Essentially its Daffy Duck runs amuck through Hollywood, Vegas and Paris. The painting joke sequence is still one of the funniest of the decade. Brendan Fraser’s only good film this decade.

Office Space - The ultimate how to survive in a job you hate comedy, as a man decides not to care and starts getting promoted. Full of funny, twisted office-area interactions and paranoia’s, this works as an accumulation of details, scene by scene, rather than having a few stand-out moments.

The Way Of The Gun - The best pulp heist flick of the decade, where Benecio Del Toro and Ryan Phillippe kidnap a surrogate mother for the mob, taking her Mexico way. Is full of rich, interesting characters who reveal themselves in spare, careful scenes, this also has a twisted escalation of stakes as the interactions slowly get out of control. Also has great action, especially when Phillippe accidentally jumps into a hiding spot full of glass, gutting half his arm up.

Avatar - This is still too early to say how well it ranks ultimately with me. I only having seen it once, and recently, but gets poignancy for creating a truly original world out of many influences and then having the patience to stick with this world, showing it in careful detail. It has the naïve melodrama of the original King Kong and that’s no insult.

Hulk & Superman Returns - Hulk is a brilliant, distanced yet personalised look of split personalities within the tantalisation and look of a comic book, both and example of and a strangely affectionate study of pulp, melodrama and personal film-making. Is Ang Lee’s most interesting film. Superman Returns is the most romantic superhero film of the decade, is about the mythical aspects of the genre and the characters, is about a strange god who’s confused and affectionate towards the brave flawed people. The film has a lovely retro style mixed with an interest in bigger, expansive science fiction landscapes and feelings. Its a terrific example of personalised epic film-making.

LOVABLY INSANE

The Village & The Happening - Two deeply crazy films, the first due to plot, the second due to plot and truly odd dialogue. And yet they are appealing. They village has a great mood to its opening section, a terrific fairy tale feeling, wonderful use of colour. Its end makes sense in a fairy tale type of way but isn’t set-up properly, as there is still a realistic expectation. The Happening is truly awful whenever anyone speaks. But as soon as its silent, when everything relies on images, there are some very interesting things going on. And then someone speaks and it gets awful. Especially if its Mark Whalberg, who’s terribly miscast. (Even more miscast than he was in Planet Of The Apes remake)

Land Of The Lost - This one is a very eccentric comedy that has not gotten a lot of love. But its eccentrically funny but I covered it on the 2009 list.

The Black Dahlia - DePalma’s mega-weird Ellroy adaptation moves too fast, has some plot points that are not elaborated on properly, has some very eccentric performances. Buts its style and oddness, its dark humour, its odd themes of constant doubling, obsession over the dead, mad hysteria driving everyone nuts is very compulsive. The brakes are off on this one and its great fun.

Hannibal - Hannibal is similar to The Black Dahlia. It has many plot problems, has an unadaptable novel, some OTT acting, a crazy gothic undertone, a very romantic but twisted ending. But the central relationship is interesting and odd, the villains and revenge methods are very strange, and the whole thing is rather wonderful, if under-rated.

Southland Tales - Just crazy. Good luck working out the plot in this one. You have amnesia, porn, incompetent revolutionaries. It has an odd, unrealistic tone and problems with mood. But like many on this list section, its flaws and strange obsessions are what makes it work, and be worth a look.

Ghosts Of Mars - John Carpenter’s only film this decade has Ice Cube and Jason Statham, plus some other character actors wandering about getting killed, and the woman from Species. It is set on Mars, has monsters that are spirits who inhabit humans and turn them mad, cutting their faces up, is told out of chronological order. The downside is its not very good, doesn’t really make sense but is loads of b-movie fun. Dr Who has homage it twice, most recently in Water Of Mars (it’s the same plot, using water instead of air).

Alexander: Director’s Cut - This is a really stupid film. I hated it the first time I saw it. It has terrible, terrible writing, the worst wig ever, dull direction that misses many sane set-ups that would tell the story in half the time and with efficiency. The only person who’s any fun is Val Kilmer. And yet its become bizarrely addictive. This one is a cry for help I’m afraid.

The Truth About Charlie - This got a lot of bad press. It’s Jonathon Demme’s remake of Charade, with Mark Whalberg and Thandie Newton. And its not what you would expect. It doesn’t try to have an old-fashioned feel, instead going French New Wave meets eighties Demme style, where characters are established quick then get twisted and revealed using cheeky genre tricks. It’s a lovely, playful film. And most people hate it.

TERRIFIC FILMS

Before Sunset, The Pianist, Black Book, Tideland, Grizzly Man & Rescue Dawn, Public Enemies & Ali, American Psycho, The Terminal, Be Kind Rewind, Tallegeda Nights & Step Brothers, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, Almost Famous: Long Version, Che Part 1 & 2, Peter Pan, Let The Right One In.

TERRIFIC PULP-BASED MOVIES

Pitch Black, Blade 2, Hellboy 1 & 2, The Mist, Mission To Mars, Spiderman 2 & Drag Me To Hell, Matrix Reloaded & Matrix Revolutions, Star Wars: Attack Of the Clones & Revenge Of The Sith, Kill Bill 1 & 2, Death Proof & Inglorious Basterds, Donnie Darko, Wallace & Gromit: Curse Of the Were-Rabbit, Hero & House Of the Flying Daggers.

WORST FILMS OF DECADE

W., The Fountain, Pearl Harbour, Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle, A Very Long Engagement, The Lady In The Water & Signs (One director, two terrible films. An achievement), The Producers, The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Ghost Rider, Be Cool, Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired, The Invasion, Death Race, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, XXX2 & Die Another Day (Another two film one director achievement) - Can’t be bothered elaborating on their heinous natures. All are despicable or incompetent in one way or another.

MOST DISSAPOINTING OF DECADE

Zodiac, The Darjeeling Limited, Hollow Man, Collateral, Burn After Reading & The Brothers Grimm - All terrific directors yet what the hell happened? Yet Mann, Gilliam, Verhoeven and Anderson followed these disappointments with what I consider some of their best achievements.

Red Dragon, Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines & Die Hard 4.0 - How not to make sequels to terrific genre series‘. Truly dispiriting in their base cynicism. At least Terminator got redemption with the TV show. The other two have withered and died.

Big Fish - Just boring, obvious, unimaginative with a terribly dull Ewan McGregor performance, hitting the cliché notebook. Burton has bounced back a little since here but it’s a bad, bad film to have on the film list. Horribly sentimental also, but without any actual point. Just father and sons don’t understand one another. Probably the worst of this bunch.

BEST OF TV

Drama

Deadwood - A great western-based drama about the painful and stunted rise of civilisation, seen through the gold rush in Deadwood. Ian McShane and Timothy Olyphant were wonderful as the leads, complicated, annoying, slowly losing their moral footing. The supporting cast and the tragedies of these characters made for engaging drama throughout, with major peaks or insanity and grace.

Battlestar Galactica - Great sci-fi, where a group of survivors of an apocalypse, are on the run through space, slowly turning on one another throughout, struggling to find some grace. It started complicated and grew even more complex as time went on, leading to an ambiguous that refused to answer many questions. A very original take of morality and religions.

The Wire - A great drama on institutions, be it drug business, the police, government, schools or the media, where compromise wins always, individuals always struggle, where tragedy awaits. A very humane look at survival in modern society.

Oz- Some of this was shown in the last decade but I never saw it until beyond 2000. And its wonderful, brutal, human and contradictory.

For the rest of the drama is a drop-off to these interesting shows.

Robbery Homicide Division - A Michael Mann produced series, which didn’t last long, it had Tom Sizemore in a rare good performance as an obsessed LA cop. Not a patch on Crime Story yet its still wonderfully compulsive, if alas short-lived.

Dr Who Series 1 - The Christopher Eccleston stories, which set the series up with great verve, which it never quite hit again. This had the most interesting, unpredictable Doctor in Eccleston, who was never entirely sane, who was keeping down a lot of darkness, as well as finding great optimism everywhere, and a terrific central relationship that went stale when Eccleston regenerated. It’s regeneration scene is still a highlight of the revival.

Chuck - The most fun show. Loads of odd situations and scenes, with intriguingly mentally deficient characters. Its exists simply to entertain, with zero pretensions towards itself or the viewer.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Very flawed in many ways but its peaks are terrific. It had an epic, involving story that slowly paid off over time, staying serious in character while keeping its pulpy origins.

The Sopranos - Certain seasons and episodes were terrific, others dull as dish-water. The most inconsistent good show ever, that went on for years too long, repeating the same dynamic in not always interesting ways.

Guilty pleasure - 24 - Not always the greatest drama, with many painful dialogue sequences, not to mention season 6, which was a disaster, but such pulpy fun at its best that its difficult not to enjoy.

Comedy

Comedy was where this decade was very strong, much more than drama in terms of invention.

Black Books - Genius silly misanthropy from Dylan Moran. Whether it be performing native jungle surgery in Canada to writing children’s fiction, via a 900 page tome on Russian misery, this is a truly wonderful show. Bill Bailey makes a great comic fall-guy.

Futurama - Witty, irrelevant, imaginative show with some terrific characters and a twisted sense of nothing being sacred. Zap Brannigan and Kiff are the funniest double-act of the decade, Bender the craziest, especially when starring in a soap opera.

Jam & Nathan Barley - Chris Morris is a genius and these two shows prove why. Jam is like a twisted comedy version of a J.G Ballard novel, all about disconnection amidst absurd situations. But with dark jokes. Nathan Barley then goes on to prove that people are idiots and there is no way out, that the morons have charm and have taken over the ability of semi-knowledgeable adults to make any headway in life. It was a very frustrated show.

30 Rock - Have already written on this but its really funny. One of its strengths is the smaller characters, who slowly go crazy like Scott Asdit’s Pete, who is resorting to shoplifting to feel anything, or Dennis the Beeper king, a man with no brain, played by Oz’s Dean Winters, who objects to Hurricane Katrina because of what the people did to the stadium. Great throw-away gags like “Empathy is as useless as the Winter Olympics.” are also priceless.

The Thick Of It - The entire series shows the fall of labour, from a fairly functional but slightly incompetent organisation, to a party in crisis trying to find a new leader, to a party left with only the people nobody wants. Painfully funny.

The League Of Gentlemen - A complete, original comic-fantasy world, with dark humour that slowly builds and never stops being a bit disturbing yet funny. Too many hilarious characters and situations to list, its darker, sad under-current a dominant feature.

Arrested Development - Very funny comedy about an extremely dysfunctional and delusional family, this works as it builds a farce around characters who are only slight cartoons, taking recognisable emotions then building them into extreme situations which then build and build into gradual insanity. A great cast with the stand-out of David Cross and Dr Tobias Funke, a closeted gay man who can’t face the truth, going to absurd lengths to avoid basic self-knowledge.

Garth Mareghi’s Dark Places - A brilliant parody of ego gone mad, of bad 70’s TV, as a horror writer creates a show starring himself, and lets loose with every idea he has, few of them good in a conventional sense but wonderful as gags. Even though it has a rich set of characters, Matt Berry stands out as womanising drunk actor Todd Rivers, who plays Dr Lucien Sanchez, best bud of the main character. This guy is always funny, even standing in the background doing nothing. His descriptions of acting technique, from beats to soap opera actors and how they prepare, on the DVD extras is stunning and one of the best comedy moments of the decade.

Snuffbox - Matt Berry then went on to make this show, a six-episode one season show that never got any real press, co-written by and co-starring Berry and American comic Rich Fulchner. It’s a wonderfully inventive, silly sketch show that’s difficult to describe, combining music, silliness then very dark sketches, centred by two disreputable characters who work as hangmen. It has a unique mood that’s not mainstream but is wonderful if you get on its wavelength.

Curb Your Enthusiasm - A terrific show that’s easy to under-rate as its so famous. While it has its own defined formula, as defined as a Looney Tunes cartoon, the like that Larry David manages to do a lot with what he has, bouncing off various strange characters as he tries to get through his day amidst disaster and conversations that will get him in trouble,. Odd conversations range regularly from his manager to wife, to people playing twisted versions of themselves, such as Ted Danson or Jerry Seinfeld, to name two whop have really gone for it in weirdness. High-light episodes are the crazy-eyed killer, the one with the dolls hair and the one where Larry insults a religious group by making comments about the Virgin Mary on Christmas Day. And the beloved death notice and incest survivors group. I could keep listing. Its very inventive.

Dr Terrible & Saxondale - Two terrific less than famous Steve Coogan creations, Dr terrible a wonderfully accurate and subtly funny send-up of Hammer and 60’s/70’s British horror (standout: The Killer Lizard story with the line “Ken this and ken this well!”). Saxondale looks at the failure and anger of a man who’s peak has passed him by and he can’t quite understand how life has gotten so dull, as he deals badly with aging and appropriate rebellion. A very funny creation.

The Venture Brothers - Funny twisted sci-fi parody, which would the be funniest sci-fi show ever if it weren’t for Futurama. The level of invention episode to episode is off the scale. Brock Samson is one seriously twisted character and he‘s the straight-man.

WORST OF TV

The Simpsons (recent) & Red Dwarf: Back To Earth - Embarrassing to what were two great shows.

Best Of Year List

2009-12-20T23:26:00.003Z

BEST FILMS RELEASED THIS YEAR

The Fantastic Mr Fox - I love stop-motion yet many of the films made with the technology can seem a little cold, insubstantial. Wes Anderson lets the characters tell the story, uses the technology for mood that strengthens but doesn’t overwhelm the film, and gives the technology a freshness that its long needed. The film has wonderful settings, distinct characters and set-up, proper defined villains who don’t over-whelm the story, and great jokes. A wonderful film.

Avatar - A naïve but beautiful pulp dream, about a man entering an alien landscape and finding direction. The plot doesn’t really matter with this film, the atmosphere and focus is on almost silent film-level narrative focus to evoke a sense of wonder. Which it does, repeatedly. Its flaws don’t matter. Best seen in 3-D, on the biggest screen imaginable.

Inglorious Basterds - A terrific and cheeky verbal grand guignol, where various outrageous characters face off during the war, walking through cinematic conventions and slowly going crazy, especially the Nazi’s. It has lots of warmth within its genre conventions, as well as a proper sense of its situations apparent absurdities, given life in throw-away gestures. There’s not enough delightful Nazi-hunting movies around.

Che Part 1 & 2 - Great on the process of revolution, its boredoms, hypocrisies, vaguely-realised success at best, depressions and ignored yet utter failures at worst, all based on ideals that few ill ever agree upon, even within the inner circle. Less about Che and more about the idea of revolution.

Let The Right One In - Beautifully moody horror film, a delicate vampire story, one of the best quiet vampire films since Daughters Of Darkness and Martin. Has terrific build-up of depressed lives and lack of options, served against the supernatural, which offers its own failures and lack of options.

Public Enemies - A wonderfully moody, straggly manhunt film, based on the Dillinger story but could be any criminal findings his life options winding down after the flashiness of the life dies and all there is left is desperation, paranoia and depression. Depp is good as Dillinger but Bale is wonderful as a very depressed, conflicted, spare FBI agent hunting him down, in one of his best performances.

In The Loop - The film version of The Thick Of It. That’s not a bad thing. Funny as hell about the delusion and departmental insanities and bickering in the lead-up to war, with characters being frequently stupid and selfish, and of course immoral, always with the back-up of a sketchily thought-out reasoning that looks abject and idiotic within seconds of it being said. Brilliant. Only Starship Troopers is funnier about war and its build-up.

VERY ENTERTAINING

Drag Me To Hell - Its about killing a bank worker and succeeding. Funny horror film with only one thing on its mind, giving the audience plenty of cheap, gratuitous scares. And killing cats. A great heroine and villain, does exactly what it needs to, delivers some funny sequences, especially the exorcism gone wrong.

Star Trek - Its about killing Spock and not succeeding. Terrific if shallow reboot, having few actual ideas but a great pace and sense of humour. The cast are game, the plot moves fast between the emotional points, hiding its flaws, and most importantly, the film captures the essential characters and their optimistic world. Its only the lack of purpose that brings it down but its still a hell of a lot of fun.

Valkyrie - It’s about killing Hitler and not succeeding. This is a little b-movie on a large budget. Its an unpretentious little thriller, about an important assassination attempts that came very close to succeeding, keeping its focus to the difficulties of killing Hitler and its near misses, also working on the logistics of the German government under the Nazis, which makes for an interesting world war 2 film. Its strength is the spare focus of the script, using visualisations rather than reams of dialogue for telling story, its weakness is the early parts of the duelling accents, which take a while to get used to.

Land Of The Lost - Its about killing Will Ferrell’s career and hopefully not succeeding. Just so funny and twisted as a film, with many strange backdrops, characters, with very odd character moments. Ferrell twists his innocent idiot acts into new, demeaning heights/depths as a man oblivious to any kind of logic/sanity, who starts a grudge fight with a T-Rex, suggesting that its dumber than the Polish, which is perfect against the strange, illogical backdrop.

WORST

W. - Truly, truly awful film. Just despicable in its soft, sentimental view of a truly dangerous man, not having any guts in character, politics, every character a cartoon. Oliver Stone should be truly ashamed of himself with this one.

BEST FILMS SEEN THIS YEAR

World Cinema - Not seen as many good world cinema films as I should this year I’m afraid. I plan to rectify this. But most of the films listed below are my actual best experiences watching narratives this year.

Voyage To Cythera - A truly amazing film by Theo Angelopolous, about a former resistance fighter returning home and trying to stop the sale of land he fought for years ago, this is a visually and emotionally stunning film that’s probably one of the best film’s I’ve ever seen. The final half hour is literally stunning, even though little seems to happen. A masterpiece.

Culloden - Wonderful film about the stupid tragedy of the battle of Culloden, showing how it was under-planned and fought badly, before going on to show the brutality of the victors and the horrific aftermath of the battle for Scotland. Peter Watkins framed this as if making a new documentary, which leant it a real directness and clarity over the tragedy, making the emotions stinging.

Comrades & The Bill Douglas Trilogy - Stunning films, the Trilogy about a boy growing up in poverty and learning painfully how to be a man while Comrades is the story of a Union born and crushed, studying the poverty and tragedy as it takes its tolls on individuals and their families. These are amazing visual experiences that are difficult to do justice to in words.

The New World: Longer Cut - Stunning re-edit and expansion of Malick’s masterpiece, giving a greater sense of the seasons and lost emotions within the tragic first few years of American colonisation. Visually unmatched of course.

The Agronomist - Jonathon Demme’s wonderful documentary and Radio Haiti and its wonderful, tragic owner/manager. A great portrait of the tragedy of a country seen through the story of one man’s tragedy, told by a friend of the dead man. Demme’s best film, showing many emotions through brilliant use of music and documentary image.

The Cremator - The rise of fascism seen through the eyes of an idiot who eventually kills all of his family to be a good Nazi. A hilarious, very dark tale of a man losing his small soul, causing tragedy to all he touches. Scary in that there were probably many like him, and continues to be.

Satantango & Damnation - Bela Tarr does not make films for easy viewing. Satantango is seven hours long. Damnation is shorter but a masterpiece. What seems to be black and white misery are continual stories of people trying to survive complicated, un-idealised lives. Simply wonderful.

The Merchant Of Four Seasons & Fear Eats The Soul - There are other Fassbinder films seen this year but these two stood out, both operating on the failures of working class men and women, everyone trapped by society and their own demons of what they should be. Truly wonderful and far beyond and more complex to what Britain does with social realism.

The Match Factory Girl & Calamari Union - I have also seen more Kaurismaki than these but these two films stood out, the first about a young woman trapped in a working class hell of dysfunctional family and lovers, the second about the attempt to find a life for a large group of men, all wondering around a city with the same name, never finding any true direction. Two masterpieces.

Alexandre - A Sokurov film about an old woman visiting her grandchild in a war zone, finding the war to be more complicated and tragic than circumstances will allow anyone to acknowledge. This film takes its time, showing the humanity and flaws of all. An amazing experience.

How I Won The War & The Bed-Sitting Room - Two Richard Lester farces with more on their mind than jokes, both evoking an atmosphere of dread and lack of basic comprehension. War has an idiot leading a group of soldiers to death in World War 2, always sticking to a social convention that is corrupt and useless. Bed has survivors of World War 3 trying to find a way to survive a surreal landscape, where meaning is gone and direction is absurd. Two intelligently bleak films.

I have also been rewatching lots of Ozu, which I’ve covered before. Ozu is one of the greatest directors of the twentieth century. Practically every film he makes is of stunning quality. It is difficult to spotlight only one or a few of his films.

Pulp

The Mist - Frank Darabont finally went nasty with this one, easily his best film, a twisted tale of human survivors trapped in a supermarket during a deadly mist, slowly turning on one another. Essentially a very downbeat siege movie, with a decent cast and a killer punch line. Rarely do horror films go as dark as this.

The Orphanage - A terrific Spanish-language film, about a mother looking for her adopted son, slowly trapping herself in a large house, driving herself mad with trying to work out what happened. The twist, when it comes, while perhaps not entirely surprising, does have an emotional punch (even if it has a slightly OTT coda) but the film is creepy, atmospheric and always striking visually.

The Legend Of Hell House - A creepy little movie based on a Richard Matheson novel, about four people trying to solve the mystery of a haunted house, getting the problem right yet wrong. Has a terrific set-up and development of characters into nasty violent and sexual situations, some decent actors working these problems, ad a decent pay-off, which is where these tales usually fail. A nice little ghost story.

Brides Of Dracula & Kiss Of the Vampire - Two wonderfully atmospheric vampire films. Neither of them are the most famous of these films but are among the best, Brides being a Peter Cushing-led vehicle, trapping vampires at a local castle then a girls school while Kiss has a family of vampires trapping a travelling couple. While the plots seem anonymous the atmosphere to both are wonderful, with top-level visual sequences and great individual shots. Kiss almost works as a pulp version of Eyes Wide Shut.

Demons Of the Mind & The Reptile - Top-level eccentric Hammer, Demons focusing on the incestuous madness that traps a rich family, twisting conventions and monster stories to reveal what made the legends of the horror genre while The Reptile has a father trying to protect his daughter, failing and leaving a lot of dead bodies behind. Yet it is affecting. Two truly wonderful, under-seen horror films.

Rasputin The Mad Monk & Plague Of the Zombies - Two oddball hammer films. Rasputin, enthusiastically played by Christopher Lee, who uses his powers to manipulate Russian aristocracy, becoming a unique and twisted monster, while Plague has an aristocrat simplifying the local population for profit, while providing some great atmosphere. While trying to have the normal horror elements, these are actually strong stories that don’t need the horror.

The Curse Of Frankenstein, The Revenge Of Frankenstein & Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell - Three terrific Frankenstein films starring Peter Cushing, the first two showing early promise, starting with an ugly monster, then in Revenge having a handsome monster. Both have wonderful pathos and savagery, Cushing a cruel mean protagonist. Monster From Hell finds Cushing at the end of the series, as an older man, watching yet another monster fail while working in an asylum, the film having time to have the monster story against wilder characters and a wonderful, near absurdist atmosphere. Outside of James Whale, these are the best Frankenstein tales.

Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter & Paranoiac - These two are utterly insane films with great moments that directors being respectable would never manage. Whether it being a vampire who travels through the day, stealing youth instead of blood or Oliver Reed caressing a skull, these two were unforgettable. B-movie work at its very best.

Tarzan The Ape Man & Tarzan And His Mate - Two great Tarzan films, that set up the Johnny Weissmuller-Maureen O’Sullivan films. They have a terrific air of leads, Weissmuller a great Tarzan while O’Sullivan brings the acting and the needed story beats, some terrific villains, both natives and white hunters, and some terrific action. Tarzan movies could never really top these two films. Tarzan and his mate also has nude swimming.

30 Days Of Night - A great little vampire movie, with Josh Harnett leading a group of survivors through a night that lasts for 30 days, while being attacked by vampires. Like the similar Pitch Black, this is superior atmosphere and character-led pulp that eventually lets loose with some terrific monster action.

Halloween (Remake) - This one was very under-rated, a film I fully expected to hate but didn’t, spending time with a young Michael Myers before he goes on his murderous rampage. While the second half horror stuff is fun its not as good as the original. What is terrific is the first half, as young Michael slowly goes mad, with some very striking visual moments. Not a great film in its totality but its moments gives it a lot of drive and its better than many a smug genre title.

Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift - Best full-on trashy b-movie I saw all year. In fact I saw it in January 2nd and twice since then. The plot is basic butt the movie is fun, has a good lead, a great car chase gimmick in drifting, and a general, appealing unpretentiousness and good humour. And its in Tokyo, which is an interesting backdrop. What more do you need for a b-movie. Easily the best of the generally under-achieving series.

BEST TV SHOWS

Battlestar Galactica Season 4.5 - Great ending run to a terrific show. Highlights were the mutiny (especially Zarek wiping out the civilian after they had been spineless and stupid one time too many) and Tigh getting messed around by his various loyalties to human and cylon, and his conflicting emotions, with a terrific moments of thematic threads coming together at the conclusion, topped off with an ambiguous ending and a great final line for Baltar “I used to be a farmer once“.

30 Rock - Funny as hell throughout, with many strange, strange jokes and plot lines, is the most insane current comedy, with the best right-wing parody in Alec Baldwin’s character that there’s been for years. They will parody anyone for a laugh, with a stunningly good run of great supporting characters. Best supporting character, of course, is Dr Leo Spaceman, a man who advises a large breakfast before major surgery. And that’s one of his more responsible decisions.

The Thick Of It - Now focusing on the failure of labour itself, rather than one weak minister, its humour has gotten sadder and tired but is subtly vicious, as everyone looks trapped within a cycle of defeat made by their own horribly stupid ambitions, unable to see beyond them, even the competent people like spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker. No-one has a clue and everyone are like tired animals ready to be put down. The Nicholson-Tucker “This shit just got real” take-away scene might be the funniest of the year.

Chuck - The most engaging show of the year, aiming to please and not being bogged down by angst. It has a terrific lead and outside of 30 Rock, the oddest and funniest supporting cast. It pretty much delivers exactly what it promises, a silly fun spy romp set in the workspace.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 7 - Some great comedy, odd situations, such as how to dump your cancer-victim girlfriend without looking like a bastard, best of all was in little moments between Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, two wonderfully twisted individuals.

Futurama: The Wild Green Yonder - A great finale for the series of films, which then led to a renewal and more shows. Has a great nasty sense of humour about environmentalists and industrialists. Fry is even more stupid than usual, which is an achievement in itself.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Season 2 - Much stronger than the first year, with a wide range of characters, some nasty twists and a brilliant ending. After the disappointment of the films, this one really redeems the Terminator storyline. It has technology versus humanity subtly developing in strange plots, looks at the oddness of time-travel at a personal level, is about the futility of the struggle for most of its characters on the day to day. The characters coming back from the future wars were especially interesting, all doomed in one way or another. The John Connor character also showed interesting, devious moves that suggests a cold, calculating leader, which was very appreciated.

24: Season 7 (makes up for 24: Season 6) - Melodramatic and implausible yes. But grittier and pissed-off than before, with the return of Tony paying off, as he is a frustrated and damned, going full-bore into something that’s usually back-story, about how to truly go under-cover. Interestingly the finale was more about ostensibly supporting characters and their arcs (Tony and a FBI agent Renee, who goes extreme into unconventional methods) rather than Sutherland’s Bauer character. Was the same guilty pleasure that it was before, mixing the compulsive with the insane.

Dollhouse - This came together in the second half of the first season then has started a great build that has developed into the second season, the stories developing a very dark undercurrent of an apocalypse beginning with technological prostitution and dreams of what could be, as people’s memories are wiped and reprogrammed every week, starting small but becoming a larger conspiracy. As the situation becomes increasingly insane and paranoid, it gets more interesting, playing with identity and exploitation in a twisted way. Has a very good collection of flawed and compromised supporting cast-members, they developing to be the dark life of the show around a engaging lead.

SHOWS SEEN FROM PREVIOUS YEARS

Monty Python’s Flying Circus - Brilliant. I’ve only seen individual sketches and episodes before. This year I watched them all and it was terrific, smart, silly, twisted, disrespectful. Bets of all is that they truly went for the insanity in ways that many modern comedies never would. Even the episodes that are weaker had enough connective brilliance to bring them up to a level above and beyond. Some of the better later episodes had episodes that kept the same characters throughout, which gave it another edge of lunacy and darkness as things got crueller and nastier and led to the films.

Star Trek Seasons 1 - 3 (The Shatner episodes) - Shatner being moody then sensitive, then going after any available woman, Nimoy being stable and dignified. Old school effects, decent traditional sci-fi stories that had the appel of freshness in their playing. What’s not to love. Still superior to everything hat followed.

Old Dr Who’s

The Invasion - An old Troughton serial, versus the Cybermen in London. Great fun.

Genesis Of the Daleks, Pyramids Of Mars, The Brain Of Morbius, The Deadly Assassin, The Talons Of Weng-Chaing, City Of Death, State Of Decay - Tom Baker being eccentric and genuinely alien, the plots being gothic yet fresh, the dialogue having lots of subtle humour to it. Best era Dr Who.

The Caves Of Androzani - Best Peter Davidson story is his final story, with lots of crazy factions killing each other and Davidson trying to survive. And failing. Has the best new doctor first line by Colin Baker.

Miami Vice Season 3 - At the point of about to get worse and unwatchable but not quite there yet. Still full of terrific, stylish, dark mood.

Buck Rogers In The 25th Century - 70’s insane camp. Can’t really defend this one but liked it. Oh my.

G. I Joe

2009-12-11T17:12:00.002Z

G I Joe is exactly the film you'd expect. Its utterly terrible yet fun because its so bad, so utterly without merit, like a fat seagal film with a mega-budget. From the director of Van Helsing.

What's interesting is the slumming actors. There's the usual awful leads, this time unknown but are still terrible. But this was the film that many a decent or known actor figured, it'll be woeful but the part's small (or minor so you're in the shadows for months) so will pay well, as its a megabudget film and Michael Bay isn't directing. So you have Adebesi from Oz slinking in the background, a guy from loads of indies like Three Kings doing the same. Seinna Miller is in it and is one of the best "performances" in the film, as she knows she in a really, really stupid film and plays along, camping it up.

Best of all are the villains. We have Joseph Gordon Levitt (from Myserious Skin) as a freaky scientist up to no good and Christopher Eccleston as an arms dealing scumbag who figures it'll be fun to kill everyone for no real good reason. Now these two obviously read the script and are going all Olivier-ham excessive in their total lack of commitment (or even basic professional courtesy) and should have gotten centre stage because the movie they're in is a lot better than the one we're watching for 90 percent of the time. Levitt wanders around like a man who has escaped from a Marlon Brando acting class and is trying to out-do the master, with a penchant for kidnapping his sister and turning her into a sociopathic whore who wants to destroy paris. He has a gas mask the entire film, that's all I'm saying. Eccleston has the most excessive Scottish accent in history (He did a good one in Shallow Grave so we know he can do it properly) that's a total parody in itself, the accent so insane you know that it's intentional, seeing what he can get away with and get paid, who's leeching on Sienna Miller like a serial rapist, having a thug kill any man that even touches her. (The only bit of sicko acting in the film is Eccleston interacting with Miller. He's obviously thinking things you can't do in a film called GI Joe while slumming in a untoward manner.) Its a shame late-era Brando or Orson Welles are dead because with them and with these two crazy bits of acting in the film, and a script as nuts and as bad as gi joe would make cinematic bad movie nirvana. I think most of the goodwill this film gets from viewers is because its villains are so obviously dismissive of the film that its wonderful. I just hope Werner Herzog sees this one and puts Eccleston and Levitt two together in a film set in a strange country. I think this has to happen.

So while being a truly awful film it has its moments. So its a must see in a strange sort of way.

Okay, so I watched the Rambo movies.

2009-11-22T10:08:00.000Z

In my defence I have been watching good films such as The Cremator and Che but come the weekend you do get the urge to watch something a bit more brutal. Thus Rambo.

It wasn't even entirely in order. I watched Rambo, the last one, first. Then it was in order. There's a guilty pleasure aspect to the films but I have to admit enjoying them all on some level.

First Blood is the best one in a lot of ways, as it has proper points about returning vietnam veterans amidst a terrific manhunt movie. Its not quite as deep as it thinks it is and while some of the action is terrific (manhunt through the forest and stalking through the town at the end) there are a few dodgy action bits, the bike chase now looking a bit a-team in lots of movements but no-one action getting hurt. I've read the book that its based upon, which is far more serious and intense. The good news is that on DVD you can actually hear what Stallone is mumbling about at the end. Its kind of a strange film in that its good as an action flick but you can see where it could be better.

Rambo: First Blood Part 2 is not a serious film obviously. On the idea of finding POW's years later its a bit ridiculous, as is some the the fashions and comments about Rambo. "What you call hell he calls home," is the best, most insane line. But it works as an action film, which is why it was a hit. Again its a manhunt film, with lots of running, fighting, captures, tortures, and a brutal final action orgy. And the CIA are the actual villains outside the Russians. It's funny how for a film series that's meant to be about a patriotic American hero, the films seem to downright loathe the US military, police and intelligence agencies throughout its entire run. The interesting thing is that it was co-written by James Cameron. Watching the Avatar trailers, having watched Rambo, I kind of wonder how much cross-over will come about, as its about a veteran who comes to hate his own government, going native in the jungle, fighting the military in an orgy of violence. Is Avatar a slight remake of Rambo?

Now to Rambo 3. Its the weakest one of the bunch, a bit weak and repetitive in the action dynamics, as the first half is talk, the second half unrelenting action that loses its way as its simply too much killing without character beats to create interest. I was in a forgiving mood while watching it, and there was a good cave sequence but the script is basic to a degree that it ignores basic action tension requirements. The other problems is that its set in Afghanastan, where the people are seen as to a man noble and brave, without variation, which obviously isn't the situation in reality. The best stuff comes early, with Stallone fighting the guy with sticks for money and the monks, with Rambo trying to turn his back on violence. More of that in the second half might have done well.

The til now final film, Rambo, is a lot better, is the best one since the first. While it is basic in character beats like the third one, the first half being about missionaries in Burma being transported and then caught, the second half being the rescue,with Rambo and some mercenaries, its a lot more to the point. The setp-up, going into Burma, is spare but effective. The action, in catching the missionaries, is brutal. It sets up the situation better than any of the other sequels, then we wait and watch for Rambo to become a brutal fighting machine. When this comes, a good half hour before the end, its very enjoyable, and the resulting rescue then escape through the jungle keeps focused for its duration. And its very violent. Anyone who hates violence in films should stay away. I feel very guilt-free about enjoying this one. While the last two sequels had moments that made you think what am I watching, this is basically a good little genre flick, no more, no less. Rambo finally seems human and haunted, which gives a lot of tension to the build-up, as he reconnects with a few people, and tortured by his own methods. The fact that he has a lot more characters around to interact with helps a lot in making his character work.

So it was a mixed bag in films. I enjoyed them all, some being more guilty pleasures than others. The interesting element is how string Stallone is through the series, despite not saying much ever. As he's been in so many bad films its easy to under-rate him when he's good, but he has real movie-star presence in these films, spare and careful throughout.

In the verbal violence stakes, I've also been watching The Thick Of It, which is terrific and funny and I'll get to in full at the end of the show's run.

General film views

2009-11-21T08:02:00.000Z

Still pretty busy and couldn't be bothered going to see what's on my local (2012 and Jennifer's Body), both of which I wnat to see but not just now. It's also been bucketing down and I don't want to drown walking to the bus-stop.

I have been watching some DVD's of course, the good and the bad.

My favourite so far is Che Part 2. Saw part 1 but missed the second part as I was skint then bed-ridden when it was in the cinemas. I intended to see it is what I am saying. Part 2 is a terrific film, more down-beat than the first, in that Che is in a campaign that seems under-funded and lacking in manpower from the off and keeps on going, even as his people are knocked off continually by the army. Its a sad film, about the end of a life, of a man wnating to keep going but not recognising the limitations of the situation around him, all contrasted with the success in Cuba from part 1 (although this was also portrayed as a tenuous action for much of the time). The theme seems to be of the tough process of revolution, not the idealism of it's aims, as the characters, while idealistic, have to survive in the real world and keep working, even when it seems absurd. Del Toro is terrific. I am not sure which section I prefer. I really like both of them.

Now to the ridiculous. W is a silly, silly film, even moreso than Alexander, is the Showgirls of political biopics, except Showgirls was better. The one good thing you can say about the film is that Josh Brolin is good as Bush. But he was better in No Country For Old Men and is beaten down by the rest of the film, which goes through his life in terribly written and played broadstrokes, before doing the Iraq war. Now the probloems are legion. First of all Stone lets everyone go Batman And Robin OTT. Everyone is terrible. Its like a panto (Showgirls actually had stupid characters to explain the acting and made more sense that way). Secondly there is no real dramatic structure. It goes back and forward in time but with no reason. Thirdly Stone has no take on Bush. He's just this guy who had lots of powerful friends and was stubborn. Even though I couldn't stand him, Bush seems far more interesting than portrayed here. Its just a wasteful, lazy mess. Stone has yet to make a good film this decade. He seems to be focusing on torpedoing his credibility.

Have seen a few other good films I'll go into detail with later, such as How I Won The War, The Bed-Sitting Room, The Orphanage.

Have also been watching The Simpsons Season 11. Its pretty good so far. I've been avoiding the later episodes as the quality dipped pretty badly after a time but this season doesn't seem so bad. Yet.

Also watched the Dr Who special Water Of Mars, which was not bad but wasn't as scary as it could have been due to everyone running around too much, yelling and shouting, not allowing an atmosphere to settle. Plus the plot was very reminiscent of John Carpenter's very flawed Ghosts Of Mars, with ex-inhabitants of Mars coming back to haunt the humans on the planet. I'm glad the show is getting a reboot as these specials are essentially useless. Instead of having a series of gutsy end of era stories with real stakes being upped, they simply seem content to be the same old stuff with vague additions to the end.

Anyway, I'm off.

Again am busy

2009-10-31T14:15:00.002Z

I have been reading, editing and writing, so have been pretty busy recently.

Recently haven't seen much in terms of films, since I'm not near indie cinemas to see the latest decent film and the films around my local area all look awful (like The Vampire's Assistant, gimme a break). There's not even a decent looking horror film coming out locally.

I have seen Tyson, which wasn't as good as hoped, was essentially a magazine article done in film. Just a very dull film. I expected more from James Toback. The Love God is another recent viewing (is not, I repeat not, the Myers comedy The Love Guru). It's from the sixties, star Don Knotts, and is pretty funny. Its not great, is not specific but has some wonderful little scenes and ideas throughout, is eccentric and unusual, in the late 60's kind of way.

Also saw 24 season 7, which was a massive improvement on season 6, and in one of the better years. Its best in it early episodes, where they keep the conspiracy smaller and the style paranoid, getting a bit OTT as it goes on but it keeps the interest up throughout, which is good for 24, a show that always usually has a slump in some part of the season. Its best where it focuses on the characters and their past over the previous years, most now angry and a little broken. But importantly he keeps the suspense going.

Been a tad busy

2009-10-03T18:19:00.002+01:00

I have not been blogging much recently due to being busy. I've been helping with Irvine Beat FM's month trial, which went well, and am putting together footage on this event that I shot. I have also been chasing up jobs, doing some writing, some of which will appear on the blog, and have been setting up my new computer and its programmes. I should have a new film, it nearly finished being shot and a documentary being edited so its been nose to the grindstone.

But I still managed to watch the new Knight Rider and it is stunningly terrible.

District 9 and Inglorious Basterds

2009-09-04T17:55:00.004+01:00

For District 9 I have to say I wasn't too keen on this one. I've just seen it and found it to be disappointing due to the hype and basic script and film-making flaws. While its one of the better films I've seen released the past few months, that's not really saying much. The characters were base at all times without really being elevated by detail or world ideas that weren't just ripped off better movies. The lead character was essentially a remake of the typical plucky, a bit eccentric and conservative trying to make good under horrible circumstances Peter Jackson character (Brain Dead and Bad Taste to Lord Of The Rings all have that at the centre) but kinda watered down without the horrible details Jackson does. The alien monsters are essentially Dr Who rejects who start off scary but turn out good. (how many ET 80's clones did that in a dull fashion) And then they had all these dull action scenes with cliche-ridden moments or capture and sacrifice that are horribly corny and Black Hawk Down music in the last half-hour to suggest soul. All you get really is racism is bad and corporations are scum. Big deal. This one really needed more work in the planning stages.

Inglorious Basterds meanwhile, is a riot. Its a movie-mad orgy of odd scenes and characters, grand gestures and twisted logic, where Nazi's can be scalped by vengeful Jews, where hunted women can calmly burn down a cinema with Hitler inside while dying from gunshot wounds and where there can be a healthy obsession with German movie propaganda. There are a few off moments (the opening is too on the nose for the first minute in its spaghetti western influences while a Cat People song insert is just a mess)
Some of the best moments came when people were at tables. Firstly we had the German "Jew Hunter" interrogating a farmer hiding Jews, which lasted about twenty minutes and was very tense, while another had some of the Basterds hiding as Germans in a bar surrounded by real Nazis and trying to fit in to avoid being killed. Finally we had a terrific scene where the Jew Hunter tries to sell out Hitler to the Basterds to ensure his own survival. There are other wonderful moments throughout but the table moments stick out.
I read the script in a moment of weakness when it leaked on the internet but it didn’t ruin anything as I had forgotten many details. That script didn’t suggest the mood or tone of the film at all, feeling brutal, without the details of the close-ups and pauses. I don’t know if bits were cut but in the script the first Jew-Hunter scene seemed over-written but was prefect on screen. (It’s that Hawks comment, if it reads well it won’t play well). The script was solid and interesting but the execution raised it.
Of huge importance is the DePalma influence. I was emailing this to a friend how the final section felt completely under DePalma’s influence, from the strangling (which also feels a little Fritz Lang in execution, and that’s a big compliment), the vaguely 60’s paranoia of cynical deals being made by unseen voices (Harvey Keitel if I’m not mistaken) and the sacrifices of many major, sympathetic characters, the Carrie burning section (with a very Hi Mom style of arts being dangerous) and the Scarface like massacre at the ending. I don’t think this was in any way a rip-off, just conscious/unconscious influence within his own ideas (and I’m probably reading too much into them but I’m a massive DePalma fan and I enjoyed spotting the influences)
The other two influences I think were Sam Fuller and his fifties movies (also check out Pitt’s big red one on his uniform (although that was a 1980 film)) and Jean-Pierre Melville films, which were either Resistance or gangster films, the subtle paranoia and pacing of both types were felt throughout Inglorious Basterds.
So Inglorious Basterds is terrific and District 9 is only slightly better than Terminator Salvation, which is no sort of state for the hip sleeper summer hit to be in, is it.

Brief Notes On Films Seen

2009-08-02T09:03:00.003+01:00

Am a little busy so these won't be too long.

Let's start with the stupidest. Val Kilmer and his amazingly camp performance in The Saint. This is a film that's way too long, self-serious despite idiocy (cold fusion formula is best placed in a woman's bra, not making this up), and doesn't get around that all the Saint disguises are terrible. But this is definitely one of my guilty pleasures, to be watched every once in a while. Its sheer accumulation of bad or dodgy moments make it irresistible.

For better stupid we have Tron. Its plot is dumb as hell, its pacing basic and very uninspired but it's consistently visually beautiful, now having a wonderful retro feel, a very silent movie meets video game stylisation that's consistently intriguing. Its silliness just makes the entire thing work even better. The sequel is coming and hopefully will stay visually interesting but have a plot worth following.

For brilliantly stupid we have Land Of The Lost. Its this year's Speed Racer, a wonderful film that will alienate most of the audience as it drifts away from conventional set-ups into odd images and very peculiar jokes. The film feels like an update of its very sixties premise, adds a bit of TV Batman knowing ridiculous yet playing it straight (Will Ferrell would make a great TV Adam West type Batman) and some sexual humour. All of its big effects shots are thrown-away in the background while the strange characters discuss the absurdities from strange viewpoints or argue over minor details. Ferrell ends up in a feud with a T-Rex by insulting the T-Rex's intelligence "He's even dumber than the Polish." If you like the sound of that joke you'll love this film. If not, stay away.

In the better than it ever should have been category there is Rob Zombie's Halloween. I thought this was a a terrible idea and the film does have substantial flaws in the latter half, when it has to replay some moments from the first film and isn't as interesting. But the first half, with the young Michael Myers slowly going mad (the kid playing young Michael is great), has some wonderful moments and Zombie does possess some real visual skills that you would not expect from someone called Rod Zombie, and I'm actually glad it was made. Its in the Psycho remake territory in that most people will hate it but if you are on its wavelength there's something intriguing going on.

In the worse than it should have been category we have Virtuality, a TV pilot based on a decent idea, of astronauts going from Earth to our next star system, to find an inhabitable planet, while things go wrong in flight, adding some aspects of reality TV and virtual reality and then messing it all up. The script, by Battlestar Galactica duo Ronald Moore and Michael Taylor, does have good ideas but feels under-written dramatically, with not enough early intriguing events and ending on what felt like halfway through the first story. What's worse though is the casting, where they cast interesting women (with one exception) and dull men. Few characters end up emerging as people you want to follow. The biggest flaw is the direction by Peter Berg. It has no momentum, no building of pace for scenes to contrast, uses the actors horribly, cut ups important scenes so you can't visually follow it or are distracted to lose the point of what you are watching. Its one of the worst directing jobs I've seen in a long time and I think a better director could have gotten better performances from the actors and made the flaws far less obvious, Because the pilot obviously had a lot of potential, despite the flaws, that could be built upon, and was starting to go in an interesting direction by the end. But its probably not going to continue and understandably so.

So that's its for now.

George McBride Remembers Space Zeppelin

2009-07-24T20:07:00.005+01:00

From the memories of the late George McBride, edited slightly from what was given in interview:

Space Zeppelin was a wonderful experience, starring actors you probably have never heard of. George Muffin Taylor, Brian Tellidude McNut and little Anne Wainthorpe. Made in the early sixties, it was my first non-exploitation film. It was my first time with a real effects budget. Alas it was not my first time with good actors but at least they were professional and sober.

What makes a good actor. I'll tell you. Focus on the lines. Don't inflect, don't whine, don't shake your arms and any other noteworthy body parts. Be serious. Be courageous in trusting that the writer knows what he is doing. For the first time my actors did that. And that's all you can ask as a director.

You know the plot of course. Zeppelin's appear from space, float into atmosphere and amass all over the world. Then the world begins to get paranoid, madness spreads, mothers killing sons, daughters killing fathers, children killing clowns, while the Zeppelin's do nothing. Of course in the second half the massive robots attack. Kinda like Daleks but we got out three months earlier. Too bad about our publicity budget, as we called them in those days, didn't stretch very far.

You know the writer objected to the robot attack. Said it would be scarier if the Zeppelins remained, were never explained, as they didn't quite make sense, thus would be creepy. What rot! People can imagine space zeppelins and that's all you need as the base for a man versus robot movie. Our way of getting rid of the robots was wonderful. There was rain and they all rusted. That was a wonderful touch by the writer, although he said it was sarcasm. Their winding down I think was wonderfully haunting, as they yell die, unable to move, as their Zeppelins wind down and crash into the cities below. It was one of my best reviewed films, is quite the cult oddity now.

Black and white is a wonderful visual too for a director, especially with models. Nowadays its all colour this and bulging that but in the good old days of acting and craft, black and white could save you a bob or two and give you the reputation as a craftsman.

That's all I have to say about the film Space Zeppelin. It literally speaks for itself.

The New World: Extended Cut

2009-07-11T16:45:00.002+01:00

I'll blog on this probably later but the extended cut of The New World is a stunning achievement. The film was already a masterpiece and this cut made it far better. The extended moments added depth to the great images and gave them context beyond what was there in the original cut. I've just finished watching it so will need distance before writing something that is intelligent.

Terminator's Future

2009-07-10T22:42:00.004+01:00

This is just me musing as I try and avoid going to bed (or ever see Transformers 2).

Where the hell is this series going? It's vomited all of its goodwill as a film series into the lap of the brain-deadened consumer, especially after Terminator 3. I mean I liked Terminator Salvation more than average but it wasn't the most imaginative of films, as it didn't suggest a truly intriguing world, nor the most interesting of narratives or character arcs, and basically didn't have that kick that a proper film needs. It was like a Planet Of the Apes sequel. Fun, okay-ish, I'd happily watch it on a Saturday night, would watch it over part 3 any day of the week. I like Christian Bale ranting like a madman. But I'd rather watch a Mad Max movie first. Or the first two Terminators. How the hell did they manage to piss away all the audience goodwill from the first two films? I don't think even the most enthusiastic of terminator fans are now that interested in Terminator 5. (I'm probably one of them but a note to G.S. you never read this sentence. Go back to sleep. This entire article is just a bad dream. Look behind you. It's a Bresson film. Or a Bunuel film. What is reality? Is reading this article just a projection of your up-coming madness?)

So the glow has gone and now middle-age, impotence, insomnia, bad backs, premature ejaculation (Terminator 3, sorry, couldn't resist), all that good stuff, has now afflicted the series. And there seems to be no cure.

And yet the TV show grew slowly but surely into something interesting, if a little slow at times. It had solid characters, good b-movie premises that followed on from the film. I admit the dialogue sometimes could be as subtle as using a crowbar to pick your nose but it was better than the last two films by a wide margin. The show actually had a decent, intriguing ending. It had sub-plots over the development of machines that, while not stunning developments, did progress the story well. It's character's progressed and got more interesting over time. It had a sexy Terminator that the hero frankly kinda wanted to bone, which was an interesting story choice. Given a choice, that's the story terminator fans would be more intrigued by.

I say give the guy who wrote the TV show a shot at the films. The films now have to be at a lower budget, which will probably improve them no end as it forces more novel story solutions, and truly need a character and story focus over action. The first two films had stories you remember and had real character moments and continuing beats. The last two films feel like an effects orgy, hoping no-one will notice. They may even be able to do subtle things to bring together the time-lines, or simply follow the end of the TV show. It could definitely open up some kind of continuation, especially of the one line that still has story interest.

Anyway, that's all. I'm off to watch Blade: the Series starring Sticky Fingaz (just kidding).

Torchwood

2009-07-10T22:06:00.004+01:00

Torchwood is cheesy as hell in so many ways yet is still a lot of fun, killing off loads of people and damaging others apparently. Still, what's the deal, Dr Who the show kills nobody really (annoyingly actually) but Torchwood is like Friday The 13th of British TV. Anyone who appears is gonna end up dead eventually. And since they all have sex I'm guessing they must deserve it or something.

Of course its dark in a kind of safe way. (Even its gayness is done in a very safe, unsexualised way. Come on, annoy some people please!) Its entertaining but you don't really remember much of it later, unlike Battlestar Galactica, The Wire or Deadwood. The characters still feel like TV safe cliches at the end of the day, not having enough humane and complex elaboration for the situations to stick, something the flawed but more complex show like Terminator eventually developed. For example Torchwood in the past year and a half has killed all but two of its leads and yet nothing as is affecting as the death of a boy in Deadwood, as you saw how it affect an entire community in a complex way over time, like it would in life, or the arrest of a stupid and irritating character in season 2 of The Wire, as it lead to a stunning scene between two character at a children's play park, reminiscing while drunk, which was heart-breaking, as it delivered broken character and the sense of the waste of a generation. Torchwood doesn't fill in these human gaps, doesn't take its time, even in its character moments. Everything is too broad and signalled, even its supposed complexities. It never hit the stunning depths of the mutiny near the end of Galactica's run, where the villain's had a point, conscience, and the deaths were truly a result of the protagonist's inability to treat opponents with the most basic of human rights. Even the Terminator show, which had the same genre and populist constraints, did much better with human moments, the best being the soldier from the future who had to kill his love for a betrayal, something that had tremendous ambiguity and a sense that all had a point of view and and after it all, most of the characters probably wanted to be sick. It had kick as the human moments were built carefully over time and had a real pay-off when the time was right to deliver.

So Torchwood remains in a weird spot. Its better than it should be (its a spin-off of Dr Who after all). It's watchable but without distinction. It has good episodes that are neat but ultimately derivative. Its bad episodes are really bad. At this point I kinda get the feeling that its never going to find its feet to really pull everything together and will wander on for a year or so before disappearing for good.

Wanted

2009-07-10T19:52:00.001+01:00

This is the quickest post I'll ever write. This film is really stupid.

George McBride Obituary

2009-07-06T16:29:00.005+01:00

While many a celebratory dies and are feted, no matter how unsavoury some parts of their lives were, some passings go unnoticed. One of those is George McBride, an elderly gay director whose career spanned many eras, from fifties quota quickie sci-fi to sixties nudie zombie biker movies, Roger Corman and American TV.

His producer, Jackson Tulord Breen DeWitt Delauncy 111, an elderly gent himself, (over 100 years old), remembers McBride fondly.

Old George was a strange one. I first laid eyes upon his ghastly nervous shell as he rebounded from a car driven by a thirteen year old child. He got up, took it with grace and got back to work, although the scenes he shot that day for me were a little lacking. Strangely the film made money, yet it was about a dog fighting an alien and its pet floozy in a small English village, so I think it was partially the writing. I remember a great suggestion of repressed sexuality in that one, that George would know all about.

George hated being asked personal questions, especially about his sexuality, which he would try to hide by buying obscene amounts of adult literature. Even the most perverted man could not get through a third of what he bought. He would be an exhausted shell, like the victims in one of George's infamous Nazi-fetish German alien invasion film Herr Slutz Die Neiberling. He was also deathly dull. That line from that semi-remake of George's 1965 bomb Abomination Wolf said it best. "Have you ever talked to a corpse. It's boring." George was like that.

Also, now I come to think of it, many a time could be stunningly unobservant. He always thought I was seventy when I was only twenty years older than him, the cheeky bugger. And his films were deadly and grotesquely paceless, to the point of masochism in regard to watching them, which why he has a following many have observed. They didn't intrigue, rise the passions, dip a little while the writer was drunk, then have have an orgy of either sex or violence (my rule, one, the other, or both!!!!).They meandered on like a serial killer looking for his next skin, like having sex with a vicar, a subject in which many, including myself and George, know a lot about. So they were bloody boring. God, I hated dailies when he was directing coma victims. In my day, producing quota quickies, we would hire the most pervy sicko's just to get through the day, on-screen and off. George had no truck with that so I only saw his films by contractual obligation.

Continuity bothered him even less than me. As I was a producer, that is damning. He didn't really show any interest in actors, actresses, dialogue pacing, story progression, scripts even. His motto was how many pages and where's the pub. And that's an attitude unfortunately lacking in today's directors.

After I fired George for giving oral sex to a leading man five minutes before a start of a day, I never saw him again. Oh I heard of his projects yet I never bothered to look them out as they seemed trashy, probably not in a good way. I never really had any interest in his personal life and would probably have walked by him in the street, given the choice.

I went to his rainy, cheap vulgar funeral, as I felt I should. His few friends had expired years ago from AIDS, there being ten people who sort of knew him. They said it was lung cancer officially but most youngsters sulking around the grave,, trying to cry with passion said it was the booze finally that left him adrift and exiting this mortal.... you know the rest. Ah well. So George McBride is dead. This may sound cruel buts its probably for the best.

A note: Some McBride fans object to the suggestion of why McBride left DeLauncy's employ, most saying it was other studio's offering him work. They also refuse to acknowledge his gayness, which is odd. But McBride was a strange, probably over-rated director. His cult continues to grow.

Brosnan Bond Movies

2009-07-05T09:46:00.004+01:00

Basically, why in the hell were the Brosnan movies so bad.

Was just wondering about this. Roger Moore gets a kicking, a lot. but really, save his last one, View To A Kill, the rest were fun and did what you'd expect from Roger Moore. A lot of droll, campy fun, with Moore delivering in a very deft way that looks effortless. Its kind of like Adam West in Batman or Shatner in Star Trek. It's not classical acting, is over the top, but you have to acknowledge a certain skill. And its loads of fun. What more do you want? The Moore films, despite being of their time, hold up very well as entertainment.

Connery- Great, nasty, even in the weaker ones. Shame about the rest of his career where he became one of the worst actors ever to assault the screen, save a few odd moments.

Lazenby- Not a great Bond, a bit thick, but brutal, with one terrific, dark film. He puts Brosnan to shame and was a model to boot.

Dalton- Very under-rated and spare, with a warm sense of humour and sparks of humanity below the darkness. Both Bond films were terrific spy movies. He more or less lead the way to the Craig films of now and is definitely worthy of study.

Craig- Casino Royale was terrific, made with real bite and nastiness but Quantum Of Solace wasn't. It was okay but he really needs a good third film and some expansion in the role before he becomes two one-note. And on a personal note, he still isn't forgiven for The Invasion.

Now Brosnan. Terrible jokes, a bit smarmy. He made the two worst Bond movies ever (yes, worse than the sixties Casino Royale) with Tomorrow Never Dies and Die Another Day. These are unwatchable. His two better ones still had very long minutes of dullness, were very long (could have lost a good twenty minutes each), and had a leading man who wasn't well, very good. Basically both could have starred any other Bond and been drastically improved. Brosnan is a weak actor without much inner drive, which leads to a constant blandness, inertia and vague nervousness that dulls any interest in what he's doing. So why is his stint tolerated, or viewed as good? Lowering standards? Enough explosions? A desire to see a bond movie? Who knows but try watching any of his bond films now.

So that's the rant. If you like Brosnan as Bond I pity you.

Snuff Box

2009-07-04T18:46:00.004+01:00

Snuff Box is brilliant. Written by and starring Matt Berry and Rich Fulcher, its a twisted, absurdist romp between the strained friendship of an annoying American and a boorish Englishman. Both work for a hangman, bicker and treat each other and others shoddily, and play multiple characters. There is eventually some time travel, odd brothers and various other absurdities. Yet nothing is taken seriously.

Set mainly in an English upper class club, the fun of the show is that it takes nothing seriously. Its made up of cliches that the creators enjoy then twists these cliches by strange reactions, word use and a haphazard set of events. Nothing is ever close to make sense and no narrative is put into the show for anything other than to parody it. I'm not going to give away any of the jokes as its best to experience this as fresh as possible.

While I'm not familiar with Rich Fulcher, although I've kinda seen him in things, Matt Berry will be recognisable to many viewers who appreciate cult TV as Tod Rivers aka Dr Lucien Sanchez, from the endlessly hilarious Garth Marenghi's Darkplace. Here Berry really is allowed to let loose and is a hilarious swine throughout. Fulcher is the sensitive one and is just as funny, as the butt of every situation.

This show is for people who like the more oddball style of The League Of Gentlemen, Dr Terrible, or Black Books. Its got a wonderful affection for old culture and their absurdities that is very appealing.

Public Enemies

2009-07-04T15:54:00.005+01:00

Public Enemies is the new Michael Mann film and it is beautiful. Its about death really, about people hanging onto something, adrenaline, a person, a job, to try and find a heartbeat, as life slowly draws to a close. The film is also about the rise of the FBI, from a series of state-controlled cop shops to one that is organised under J Edgar Hoover, with an eye to stamping down on organised crime.

The film is tied to the general facts, that Dillinger was released from jail, went on a crime spree, was caught, escaped again, things slowly going wrong for him as his people are slowly hunted down one by one by the feds while organised crime turns its back on him, leaving Dillinger with no way out. But its the details that really pump life into it.

We start, as with many Michael Mann films do, is by following the central character, seeing his world. Its is a world of detail, the setting up of the crime, the spread of people, Dillinger working out exactly what he needs to do to be successful while being very careful about the dangerous world he is in. We see the world quickly through details within action but Dillinger is always still, always focused.

Dillinger's problem is that he is defined by his society. He truly doesn't have much to him beyonds his smarts and what he thinks he is fighting for, which is money and to escape a lack of direction through direct action. Society and its appalling sins throughout the 1930's provides an enemy to him, something to define him. So when this society changes and gets wise to him, he has nowhere to go, has to wait slowly for death while those who he has genuine bonds with die one by one, usually in front of him, leaving him haunted, adrift and in hiding. The editing of the film is interesting in that the longer you spend with Dillinger without cutting away to others, this aspect comes through. This is a man in his own tomb, society around him focusing him in a way that leaves him few choices. Depp is great at suggesting a man adrift. I think this might be one of his very best performances, no longer fidgety, bored or distracted, which are some of his weaknesses at times as an actor. Here he always seems to be in the moment, seems challenged. Its pretty awful when you realise how little he is usually challenged by parts, always being too defined as quirky. This and his great turn in Sweeney Todd hopefully will lead to better work.

Bale is great also, is the film's secret weapon in that he's stunningly precise, being given little in elaboration but works on the details to suggest life behind a very careful exterior. Melvin Purvis is a civilised man who has to hunt psychopaths, has to be brutal for the public to survive such types. Bale gives wonderful reactions throughout to suggest both the civilised man and animal hunter existing side by side, always both, always a painful thing he has to deal with. Like Depp he is a good actor who gets half-written parts to elaborate upon. When working with a director such as Michael Mann, the details become the character without speeches so Bale can really do what he does best, which is instinctive, without giving speeches that elaborate and dull what he does best without words. In some ways this is what I wanted to see Bale do with Batman. In this he seems so much sharper and alive than we've seen since The Prestige or Rescue Dawn, two other recent Bale highlights. I really hope he continues to work with Mann as I think there could be some amazing work if Bale moves centre stage in the next Mann film.

Marion Coitallard is also terrific as Dillinger's girlfriend, playing what could be a dull part with a sense of the society that defines her. She doesn't have much screentime but really makes it a presence. Mann also gets back together with Stephen Lang, who plays Bale's lead hunter. Lang was in the masterpiece Manhunter, but more importantly, was the moral focus in Mann's other great work, Crime Story. Here he plays what should be a cold hunter and gives it stunning complexity. The film is great on the hunters of Dillinger, even though nothing much is said as its what's going on with looks and little shrugs, how someone studies a paper. Stephan Graham as the loony Baby Face Nelson is another indelible performance in a short time, as the guy is a nut but is cunning and animal like.

The film is full of moments of grace, from Bale hunting Pretty Boy Floyd, to the bank robberies, which start off as a rush and keep that pace, even as they start to suggest doom and no way out, toe Dillinger's end, one of the great death sequences in cinema.

The film is shot on video and looks terrific. Mann truly has worked the technology to be what he needs it to be. This film again shows that Mann is one of the few serious directors, along with Cronenberg, working today. Its an amazing experience, and like Miami Vice, sure to be underrated in favour of a more flashier type of film-making.

Quick general views on films seen

2009-06-28T08:45:00.005+01:00

Been a little busy recently, thus few updates but here are some comments on films I have seen.

Lets starts with the worst, The Invasion. A truly wretched film. I never thought you could mess up Invasion Of The Body Snatchers but this managed it. Its just awful. The first half is full of wandering scenes with dull dialogue that feels to be unmatching to what we just saw. There is no scene that adds tension. Its just a collection of shots with no dramatic purpose. Then suddenly the film has fits and starts into action that don't make much sense and make the situation even more confusing and dull. Or maybe I just fell asleep. Its obviously been hacked around but there's little to suggest a film that was ever any good (in fact the obviously added on ending is actually more fun than the rest of the film).

Now onto a film that got a lot of bad notice but wasn't so bad (at least visually) The Happening. Yes the film has terrible dialogue and acting to match. As everyone acts the same unfocused way you have to blame the director as they couldn't all have made the same duff acting decisions. Some of the dialogue is laughable. And yet the film has many terrific silent sequence, simply of wind blowing, people losing the ability to want to stay alive. If the film was a silent movie it would have been much better.

Finally a no-holds-barred good monster movie The Mist. A group of people trapped in a supermarket after a mist falls on a town, with many monsters within the mist. While the set-up sounds hokey its played for real, from the point of view of people in the situation acting like normal people (some are suicidal, some go religious). While under pressure, things get out of hand between the survivors and they start killing one another eventually, due to basic human weakness. The ending, although badly scored, has a terrific punch as its pretty ballsy. This one is like Tremors or Arachnophobia. It takes a b-movie premise and elevates it due to simple craft and focus.

Terminator Salvation: A decent enough film, not really worthy of the ire its been getting. Its main trouble is that its not very surprising and that the Terminator TV show did a lot more with character detail and expanding the world than this managed, even with all the money it had. Christian Bale is actually fine as John Connor. Not as good as he's been in other films but he did his job. And the future world was interesting to a degree, in that you've seen it all before but it worked in a b-movie way. I think this film is getting the rage than Terminator 3 deserved. Its not a film that's ripe for rediscovery but its fine. In the fun movie blockbuster stage Star Trek is much better but I can imagine Transformers 2 will be much worse. I can imagine now that the Terminator TV show will be the best remembered follow-up to the first two films.

Drag Me To Hell is a riot. Its incredibly shallow but that's not a criticism. The film is simply a scarefest, best seen in an audience full of screaming people. It has loads of sick images and cheap scares but simply delivers on what is needed.

Have been watching some Fassbinder films and Angelopolous but those would take a more thorough posting than I have time for at the moment, as they are a lot more thoughtful, as well as the masterpiece Satantango.

Quota Quickie Directors Notes.

2009-05-31T16:21:00.006+01:00

From the diary of George McBride, director of Dracula's Soho Virgin Bride.
Written 1957

Terrible morning. Woke, went to the studio to see Gustav before filming begins tomorrow, that bore with his grotesque wandering accent. Where does this fat and annoying man come from? Seems to have no real past, accents and stories wandering from all over. Most of them were made up from what I've have heard but have moments of truth, like the story of him helping Howard Hawks dispose of a body in someone's pool. I hear it had something to do with a homosexual actor in one of Hawks' films, a night of passion gone awry, and no police. Or the tale of helping three forgettable hussies rip-off a Howard Hughes flunky of no little stature and doing it so well that Hughes himself gave them better parts in his movies, as he found the story so tremendously funny. He calls me the jock and complains I offer no direction. How to direct a man as offensively verbal as he, whose response to avoid leaving the light is I'm Dracula, I know what Vampires do, and then spins off a yarn involving Valentino's dead body and a cabal of strange yet well-paying fans, who wanted the body for reasons that he would not go into but assumes me that its got to do with his portrayal of Dracula.

Walking into the ramshackle studio in the morning, saw a dead body of a young actor lying at the front door. Recognised the actor. He's not very good so its no great loss. That grotesque leading man Michael Deer walked up behind me, saw the body and started kicking it violently for ten minutes, in a rage, yelling obscenities at this deceased thespian. The stagehands then took the body and threw it over a bridge nearby, then called the police, who found the body. Now the bruising and method of death is a great mystery but is free publicity for three as yet unreleased of my films, which this actor tried to ruin. With Help from Mr's Deer and Trebeck.

Jackson Tulord Breen DeWitt Delauncy 111 called me into his office, where he crawled from the door back to his seat, his desk surrounded by lots of paper that he'll never read. So much dust in this office that it's hard to breath. He is our studio head as he calls it, owns 30 percent of studio, some annoying lord owning the rest but wants to keep it quiet. In his mid-seventies, wears a ridiculous brown wig like a teddy boy while he coughs for breath. He is most famous for a line he said last week when his accountant (who was in his mid-fifties and still lived with his mother) decapitated a minor actor in a rage. He said "There's an ugly head in my soup and I know ugly as I work in the British film industry!" Informs me that I owe him three more films in the next two months so I better get cracking. Also informs me I'll have a good writer for one of them but doesn't know what the plots are as of yet. Also says don't worry about the dead body outside. Payments have been made. His accountant also has gotten off as they have framed the now-dead actor and said they were after the same woman. Which is odd as the one who died last week was gay and the other one had his balls cut off. Which led to a unique acting style that is difficult to write for.

Met with two writers.

One was an actor, then my assistant, now a writer. not bad for a man who has been here six months. He's pitched me the sequel to Soho Bride involving lesbians but I have been told by Delauncy 111 that no lesbians shall pass in a horror nor any other British movie. Therefore the new blood have to be male. I think we're onto something yet the writer looks disappointed.

The other one is an alien invasion movie set in a public school. I give the nod, having no idea how we'll be able to afford it. It'll get cancelled and they'll still have to pay me.

Met with third writer in private. He is drunk and a national poet (and pulp writer under an alternate name for the money). he can only come here while drunk as we offend his dignity but is paid and says he'll come up with something. Which is good enough for me. I'm going up in the world.

P.S. His name is Alistair Brian Jones McLellan and his poetry is bloody awful. As are his novels, and lamentably, his film scripts.

LATER IN WEEK

Shooting is going okay. Gustav Trebeck continues to annoy and molest the leading lady but she doesn't say anything, is terrified of losing this job. Getting fired from here is the next direct step to prostitution. Although she can probably keep the same agent for those services.

The set looks bloody awful and my DP keeps spitting up blood. I do say eventually that he should go see a doctor but he says "No bloody way do I go see a duck." I don't know exactly what that means. It kind of makes sense yet the way he said it was crazy enough for me to think it meant something more sinister and oddly sexual.

EARLY NEXT WEEK

Gustav has started importing prostitutes and is grooming his leading lady to be one of them. And she seems willing. Odd his late forties fiancee is watching with interest and not disgust. I just don't get these people and am not sure that I want to. A mature-looking youngster also appears on set, making Gustav very nervous. He makes some sinister visual suggestions to his fiancee, who nods in a way that suggests, well, I don't want to know.

MID-WEEK

Gustav refuses to learn his lines. He has them placed out of camera view, meaning few establishing shots are possible as this vampire talks way too much, most of it improvised so why demand that there are cards. I can't see any rise or lowering of quality in the improvising though, to be honest. The D.P worries me. he seems to be very ill.

LATE-WEEK

Gustav Trebeck died this morning. Heart gave out after being drown in fat and being full of s**t. Oh god, what do I do now? On the plus side, my D.P looks to be a lot better now.

EARLY THE NEXT WEEK

Start shooting Dracula's Virgin Soho Bride with a stand-in for Gustav. Kinda looks like him and I am assured that no-one will notice the difference. I am not convinced but am under contract and will do as I am told.

Caprica

2009-05-16T17:33:00.002+01:00

I've seen Caprica, the new Battlestar Galactica prequel.

The good news on this project is that, following a slightly dramatically unfocused first fifteen minutes, it becomes a terrific sci-fi show. It isn't as unrelated to Battlestar as the producers have suggested, although I do think if you haven't seen Battlestar, there isn't anything that will alienate. But if you are a Battlestar fan then there's a lot of details that will thrill.

The big link is that Adama is in it as a child. But he's not developed in a way to suggest that he will be significantly confusing. He's a child who has lost his mother and older sister and that is it. The central drama is between his father Joseph, and Daniel Greystone, a genius advancing AI. They both lose their families in a terrorist attack and are hell-bent on finding a way to get their families back. With the advance in AI, there may be a way to do this.

The show has two areas of interest. First is in the central two characters, One Joseph, has shady mob connections, the other Daniel, is a genius with a mix of compassion and coldness that mirrors Battlestar's Baltar, although his demons are unique. Daniel is the most intriguing character in the show, the one who is most likely to do odd, immoral actions. He gives the drama its life in the pilot, and is the character you want to see in his full mad-bastard glory as the show continues. Eric Stoltz plays him and its great casting, as Stoltz's coldness and suppressed emotions that are there usually as an actor give his character as sense of an odd, unusual life.

The second interest is in the technology. The Internet has advanced in this show to be able to project avatars as people going through virtual landscapes that resemble real-life locations, so people can go to clubs, take part on group sex without ever doing it physically. By the time the show has begun, Daniel's daughter has found a way to download memories, emotions, so an avatar can be a person. The existence of this avatar is the propellant for Stoltz and how he goes to hell. he finale, where Stoltz downloads his daughter's avatar into the first cylon, is a great moment, both for Battlestar fans (as it explains so much about what follows in various ways) and in sci-fi, as you see a new life form emerging, evolving.

Like Battlestar there is religion and it is intriguing, propelling the plot, with a belief that society is sinful and failing, that there is only one true god versus other religions. But this is set-up in the pilot, so it doesn't propel the story as interestingly as the central characters.

There are flaws. As I stated, the first fifteen minutes don't work so well. There's an investigator character that's pretty dull. That's kind of s situation where they need to invent a new character that can slot into a plot-line that is building rather than anything else. But that's two minor flaws in a great new series. It's not as strong as the Battlestar Galactica miniseries but its still pretty great.

30 Days Of Night

2009-05-09T22:45:00.002+01:00

This will be brief. 30 Days Of Night is a terrific little vampire film starring Josh Hartnett. Set in Alaska, in an area that have thirty days of darkness, the occupants have the misfortune to be attacked by very brutal vampires, who act like animals on the hunt rather than humans. Cut off for these thirty days, these people have to hide from the attacking vampires, in the middle of a very cold winter, over this time, being picked off one by one.

The film has a wonderful sense of build. From the start something is off, little details adding to unease as the characters are introduced, the vampires finally going brutal at the thirty minute mark, taking out most of the town in a coldly executed style. In the next section of the story we watch the survivors hide and get hungry as days past, all of them very human, making the kind of mistakes that would be expected under pressure, getting themselves and family members skilled, which is fascinating to watch. In the final section, as the final days before sunlight approaches, the humans and vampires both get desperate and up the ante in horrific ways.

What the film has going for it is its bleakness. Decent people are established and are killed, have their families suffer in the most horrific ways. Even Hartnett, as the hero, is given few hero moments, any he does have coming with tragic consequences. Its probably one of the darkest horror films in events since the eighties with films such as The Thing and Day Of the Dead. Its got that essential bleakness which is thrilling in a horror film, having been lost for so long in a genre that is gimmicky as hell. It has good solid performances all round and is calmly framed within the horror, kept at a distance for the more horrific moments.

So this is a very good film that's likely to be a cult film pretty soon and deserves that status. It was produced by Sam Raimi's production company, the first really solid film I've seen from them. The Grudge remake was okay but weak in comparison to the terrific original, and the rest of them have had reviews to make you want to avoid the films like the plague.

So this and Star Trek has made it an excellent weekend for films for me.

Star Trek

2009-05-08T17:58:00.003+01:00

This is a very brief blog for now. Just saw Star Trek and thought it was loads of fun. Its was well cast, fast-paced and tied its plot together pretty well (even if the third act seemed pretty short). It had its plot contrivances but nothing that was painful, all done to keep the story moving at a fast pace. It had good character moments through-out, on the pulp level, and had a nice build and mix of scenes that kept the story constantly interesting. Most importantly, while it never went for the more idea-led idealistic face of Star Trek (which a lot of the times leads to dull pretension) it got back to the fun side of the show that has been achingly missing from Trek for years, with the Next Generations and the like, who simply talk slowly to signify something needs thought and leave out the fun. This Trek blows up planets and has Kirk screw a green chick. It reminds of of the fun movies of last year such as Iron Man, Speed Racer and Hellboy 2, where the emphasis was on fun. Basically its a drunken riot, and can that be wrong.

J. G. Ballard 1930 - 2009

2009-04-20T10:05:00.002+01:00

Ballard was a major writer for me, a huge influence. The news of his death is a huge shock. Early novels such as The Crystal World to later works such as Crash, High Rise and The Kindness Of Women, as well as his many short stories, were stunning works. One of those deaths where I can't help but think someone important has died.

Hammer Part 2

2009-04-17T14:09:00.002+01:00

While I have blogged already regarding Hammer, I have been watching more films from this brilliant b-movie studio.

The Kiss Of The Vampire - Directed by Don Sharp, this is by far the greatest of the films in this grouping. Starts with the obvious cliches, a couple stranded by fate in a village near a castle, invited by strange people while horrified villagers look on. But save a slightly stiff leading man, this one is a stunner. The film starts with a funeral that is interrupted by the dead young woman’s father drunkenly putting a shovel through the heart of his vampire daughter, making people run like hell away. The strange people who turn out to be vampires are fleshed out as an interesting, complicated family who seduce the family for days before kidnapping the wife at a masked ball, having everyone say that the husband came alone. Its full of great atmosphere, the masked sequence and the strange look at a repressed marriage in many ways foreshadowing Eyes Wide Shut. I don’t say that lightly. Both films have odd, intimate atmospheres that get under your skin. This is a brilliant film of odd details, sequence upon sequence of wonderful atmospherics, leading to a conclusion that is brilliant but with a sense of humour (similar to but shot at the same time to the Birds. This is the superior film of the two.) This is the best of the Hammer vampire films, along with The Horror Of Dracula.

Brides Of Dracula & The Curse Of The Werewolf - Two Terrence Fisher gothics, both having flaws narratively made up for by stunning images and sequences. Brides Of Dracula stars peter Cushing, even though he really has a supporting part. Dracula doesn’t appear. Instead a disciple of Dracula is the dreaded vampire. We follow a school mistress, abandoned by her coachman at a village, invited to a nearby castle to stay the night by an old woman. She goes, is seduced by, and frees the woman’s vampire son, who is loose. The school mistress escapes, is found by Cushing’s Van Helsing, is sent out of danger while Cushing hunts the vampire. The vampire follows the school mistress, creates his own vampire disciples as he goes. The film is of two great sequences. The first half hour, of abandonment and going to the castle, up to the freeing of the vampire, is a terrific build, matched by the finale section, of the vampire and his brides focused on the school mistress, being hunted by Van Helsing, leading to a great windmill finale. These are terrific as they a visual sequences where there is story but plotting doesn’t get in the way of visual splendour. The bit inbetween, joining these two great sequences, is solid but has plotting concerns amidst some great mainly silent moments, but needed another pass. The film is still in the top rank, at the level of Dracula Prince Of Darkness. The Curse Of the Werewolf isn’t as solid, has a very clunky, suspense less script, but has amazing sequences and moments, scene by scene, which makes up for an obvious story and lack of momentum. It also has Oliver Reed as a werewolf. The first half hour covers the creation of the werewolf curse, telling the story of an imprisoned beggar, a cruel lord and a mute serving lady, leading to a cursed child without parents, taken in by a kindly academic. This is the best part of the film, is its own little story on life’s cruelties. Then we get into the werewolf section, of the child becoming a man, which is solid but is achingly unoriginal compared to what came before. But the film does always build great moments, and does place a great reason for the worse, not based out of being bitten by someone but more of being the victim of sin, weakness, and cruelty. The end section, where Reed becomes a werewolf (the bit you want to see for the entire film) is top class. Reed makes a great monster, is the best under the make-up.

Frankenstein Must be Destroyed & Evil Of Frankenstein - One of these Frankenstein was directed by Terrence Fisher, the other by legendary cinematographer Freddie Francis. Fisher’s Frankenstein Must be Destroyed is a late entry in the cycle and suffers from the same stop-script weaknesses as the other films mentioned above. The first twenty minutes are slow but eventually the film finds its feet, its theme being of moving a brain from one body to another. There are two distinctive areas in the film. First is the treatment of the monster. This monster looks human, has the brain of an intelligent man and can reason yet finds the world an unworkable place. But he can reason and articulate. it’s a wonderfully moving performance, giving the last third real resonance. The other area of interest is that the real monster is Frankenstein, who blackmails a young couple, essentially ruining their lives throughout the film. He rapes the woman and later kills her brutally, ruins the man professionally, is deserving of his grisly fate. Its very interesting to see a character so unlikable at the centre of a film. On the pulp site the film does have its fare share of insane asylum’s body parts, all the pulpy fun stuff. Francis’ The Evil Of Frankenstein is pulp. The film opens with a little girl witnessing her father’s body being stolen, to be used by Frankenstein, who attacks a man of the cloth within the first five minutes) We have a fairs, hypnotists, a hunchbacked mute woman, a brutally murdered burgermaster. You couldn’t accuse of it of having ideas but it is very enjoyable and atmospheric, and has a creepy, very dead-looking monster at its centre. Its kind of a freak show of a film, which is no bad thing, held together by Cushing.

The Vampire Lovers & The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires - These are two insane Roy Ward Baker films (director of A Night To Remember and Scars Of Dracula). The Vampire Lovers is the Hammer going for the lets get cash with a lesbian (but not dyke-looking) vampire, who seduces young women and confuses their fathers. Its stupid, badly scripted, doesn’t have any real pacing nor narrative momentum, made by a director who is not very interested. What it does have is lesbian vampires so all is forgiven. The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires is tosh. It doesn’t try to hide that and is oddly lovable for that. Van Helsing goes to China to fight vampires (who can do karate), has his own karate group, ends up in a Seven Samaria plot. Its dumber than Vampire lovers but made with more energy. What the film does have OTT colours, some odd looking zombie vampires, kung fu and a general weirdness. Even Dracula shows up for no real plot reason. Basically, I want a sequel. Its a film, like Tobe Hooper’s Lifeforce, that you can’t help but love in some way.

Night Creatures - A film about ex-pirates becoming smugglers on the English coast, directed by Peter Graham Scott, who I’ve never heard of. This is one of those likable solid films. Its not going to stun anyone with originality, has moments where the plotting could have progressed in a manner that is a tad more inventive but it has Peter Cushing as a pirate disguised as a priest, a fat nutcase whose tongue Cushing tore out and left for dead for raping Cushing’s wife, a troop of soldiers trying to shut down smugglers, a scarecrow who warns smugglers, skeleton soldiers, Michael Ripper in a larger role than normal, and Oliver Reed as the romantic lead, who attempts to marry Cushing’s daughter. So it has lots of good elements that cover the duller parts and is well worth a look.

Non-Hammer Gothic

Fearless Vampire Killers - Roman Polanksi’s Hammer homage is a fun film on its own, and is visually brilliant, but comparing the film to the source of its mockery, Hammer films, shows up the film’s lack of imagination. An old fool and a half-wit assistant arrive in a small village near a castle in winter, to find it under the threat of vampires from the castle. After a few hijacks they travel to the castle, verbally spar with the vampires, escape and accidentally cause the spread of vampirism around the world. The problem with this film is that its got a thirty minute plot with no sub-plots. The good thing about this film is Polanski the director is great at atmosphere so the pace is careful and you don’t really notice, except at the end, where you kind of wonder, is that it? Its never actually scary nor hilarious, even though it always stays amusing. Its one of those decent films where you wish they spent more time being inventive in the script to make a film worthy of its director, as well as creating incidents that would allow Polanski the range to make some proper horror sequences, and give the film some kick. It doesn’t even manage to compete with the solid to best hammer on the odd fairy story feel that they could create. If it weren’t directed by Polanski it would be seen as a good solid effort but seems slight in comparison to Knife In The Water, Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby and his brilliant early shorts.

The Fall Of The House Of Usher & The Pit And The Pendulum - Two Roger Corman films starring Vincent Price. Best get the worst out of the way first. Some of the acting around Vincent Price is stunningly bad. You get used to it and shut it out, incorporate it into the style. What’s great about these two films, apart from Price, who was born to play romantic, mad, incestuous, nutters with a tragic family past, is the writing and atmosphere. Richard Matheson wrote the scripts and they are very good, with premature burials, strange family pasts that destroy any chance of happiness, doomed romances. They are pacy, stay to be point so that even when you get ahead of the story in places, there’s always something dark and twisted coming in a few minutes. The atmosphere feels doomed, the buildings old, full of ancient chambers, family tombs, torture chambers and crumbling houses. Its terrific and a potent alternative to the Hammer films.

So that’s Hammer and their cousins. This is unlikely to be the last of the old-school horror films covered here as I have that kind of taste.

The Father of Dalton Trebeck

2009-04-03T14:30:00.006+01:00

While researching the life of dead movie star Dalton Trebeck, I never felt the need to go into the life of his father, Gustav Trebeck (1901-1957). After all, they never met, the father marrying a nineteen year old who had been released from an insane asylum for imagining she was being stalked, before knocking her up and dying in mysterious circumstances. But the more you look into it, the more fascinating this man becomes.

By the end of world war 2, this contract player of dubious indie studios z-level films, making fifty in all within a decade and a half, mostly thankfully rotted, was in career trouble. He was a frequent co-star of a failing Bela Lugosi, viewed as a fat yet low-rent Clifton Webb, was hitting drug addiction and the blacklist. He was in fact brought to the attention of the McCarthy scum by his attempt to bugger Trotsky in Mexico not long before his death. This got the McCarthy people interested, as did a commendation for his acting ability by Stalin. It wasn't long before Gustav was on the run from the US then forgotten, because is a bad actor really of any interest to anyone.

Finding himself in London, and failing to get himself any work, even in theatre, he went into the quota quickies, always leeching onto any new black-listed actor or director than came his way (Joseph Losey kicked him in the nuts more than once, also threatening to knife him). He always hoped these people would show loyalty to a fellow lefty but all saw him as a fake. Not even Orson Welles would hire him as an extra.

With every insult he returned to the quota quickies, working as back-up to many a staple of two-days film runs backed by American studios trying to get their product into British cinemas. Working from a Yorkshire studio mostly, he supported the tawdry comedy of the Dalry Sisters (later convicted of cannibalism, their victims young newlyweds), Mick McDick (an old man who liked very short women off-stage, which somehow, due to his manner, made people feel uncomfortable), more often than not in some rambling thriller/horrors where he would be the sex-addicted killer. His most notable credit during this time was a never released film version of James Bond, made in 1953. He played M with a very Russian accent, and as a flaming homosexual. Bond was also played in a very camp way, by alcoholic forties acting legend Michael Deer, who looking down upon playing "such an appalling scallywag". The fights were laughable, the dialogue worse. It was written by Warwick Jehane the second (Grandfather of Dalton Trebeck's future master director, also on the blacklist, before returning to American television, after all that nonsense subsided.)

So he stayed in Yorkshire for a few years, on these terrible films, his girth expanding by the film, alcoholism and rumours of bisexuality out of control, before finally giving up altogether and not bothering to learn lines. In the modern era this is called doing a Brando but in that time it was called who cares, who will see this film. His acting improved a lot during this era, when he was just making things up and ignoring the story. Apparently the studios here were haunted, had aliens, had many suicides, but this might simply have been viewed as a respectable way out of a failing career.

His final role was that of a fat Dracula in a quite terrible, amazingly tacky low-budget rip-off of Christopher Lee's Hammer film. This was his only film in colour, he at one point vomiting blood on a young virgin. Gustav died halfway through the film, replaced by a dwarf-like actor. It was set in the modern-day, a bald fat Dracula hitting on hookers in Soho, slashing them to death at times also, a la Tod Slaughter. While some writers say its may have influenced Peeping Tom, can anyone really imagine Michael Powell watching a dubious Gustav Trebeck vehicle (assuming he knew who Gustav Trebeck actually was) named Dracula's Soho Virgin Bride. I think not.

As you can see, this was a man forgotten in his own time. Dalton never talked about this man, never acknowledged this man's staggering failures. Its sad but true.

Battlestar Galactica Finale

2009-03-22T16:19:00.003Z

This will be brief for the moment. I've just seen it and there's that kind of relief that a lot came together with some disappointments (the end essentially remakes The Matrix Revolutions with more character and less wonderful weirdness). So its a odd one. Its sort of like the conclusion for Homicide and The Wire for me. Lots of wonderful moments and character beats finally coming together but with a little overt sentimentality and some missed elements which felt important in the run of the shows.

There were lost moments. There's one nasty moment that I feel went too far because it hadn't been built up enough and lacked proper dramatic resolution (Tyrol kills Tory for the murder of his wife while saving his son, a situation on which he was partially responsible for, as well as being very responsible for the mess they found themselves in the finale, which also destroys a fragile truce, causing more deaths). Now the act was shocking and nasty, powerful, and hopefully a longer released cut will fill in some blanks, but there's so little afterthought, so little balance that its resolved as the bitch is dead. As the situation was more complicated, you wanted more, especially as they had built up Tyrol's disenchantment with everyone and Tory's falling into the background, trying to hide from the past, throughout the second half of the season. You kind of feel that you got all the build-up, then horrible violence and no dramatic pay-off. It also means that the image of a man killing a woman and then walking away is distasteful and leaves a lingering bad taste after the finale. The Adama-Roslin finale has the opposite problem, feeling too long and self-indulgent, getting and repeating points so often that it grates by the time you're meant to feel emotion.

There's a lot of good stuff. Baltar finally comes together, shows some guts and loyalty, creating a truce by showing his madness and talking common sense. He faces his worst fear (basically its settling down with someone who knows him), the character arc really working, a more traditional ending likely seeing him dead. Lee also worked well, someone who saw the mess around himself and realised that everything had moved too fast, that everyone was damaged, out of control, to have realistic expectations (over-coming his main flaw in his own life). The Kara reveal was good, nicely unforced and mysterious, a figure disappearing, not really revealing much. Its nice not to be told too much.

The finale, the jump 150,000 years later worked okay but was a little forced. Am still not quite sure what to think of it but will probably blog on it again after a few days.

Watchmen The Film: What A Horrible Mess

2009-03-21T09:37:00.002Z

As a fan of Alan Moore's Watchmen, the real Watchmen, this Zack Snyder film is an obscenity. Gratuitous violence, an ending that both ignores the book and changes itself into something dumb and horrifically anti-climatic (the film ends with twenty minutes of, is that it? That's the stupid moment you've been building towards). The actors are at best miscast, at worst woeful (take a bow the guy playing Rorschach for all those horrific and misplaced line-readings). The camera moves all over the place but forgets to actually frame and cut to suggest subtext, nor to place actors in frame that gives the film drive and feeling. Action scenes extend themselves far longer that what Moore suggests, and are in love with blood. The music is just awful, plastered on every few minutes loudly, with no reason.

Above are the base problems with the film. For narrative problems we have simple bases not covered. The world is not set up coherently. If I hadn't read Watchmen I wouldn't have had a clue what was going on a lot of the time. The film spends a lot of time showing the characters in different time zones yet never establishes character nor emotional context. The point repeatedly made in the comic book is that these loony superheroes are at base an expression of various absurd forms of cultural immaturity made manifest in different time periods in American history, suggesting bizarre dreams of of an immature American culture that in the forties gave us noir, in the fifties the cold war, the sixties Vietnam, the seventies distaste and civil revolt, in the eighties all-powerful American expansion policies. Moore takes these feelings to the extreme by showing his characters, setting them up carefully in context, in carefully separated and chaptered segments of the story, have stories within stories (such as the Black Freighter) that introduces the fiction of this Watchmen world, which gives atmosphere, character and subtle plot details as well as to suggest how the fiction influences and creates absurdities in the minds of those reading it. Within the main narrative itself you have these stories flashing back and forward, always compact within themselves to suggest what the characters are feeling, with much clearer suggestion of the emotions in the fictional world of the characters and the real world we live in that has been given one last fantastical push by Moore into various myopic absurdity. (All the Watchmen characters are myopic, thus who watches the watchmen)

The film doesn't get that. The idea of stories within stories is dropped, the social ideas in the books are placed up and made to look stupid, not having the wonderful sense of humour and of the absurd that Moore gave them, where the joke is any type of self-appointed ambitious leader is a total nut in one way or another, now lets look at them. The Vietnam sections in the film are absurd, make you think what, while in the book its handled with a lot more humour, of immature wish fulfillment and brutality, not as a plot point. There are civil disputes in the seventies that are brutal yet suggestive of something worse, make narrative points while in the film are crude and have no punch, make you wonder is that it. There's no sense of humour to the right-wing fascism shown throughout in the story while its all over Moore's comic.

Another example of the lack of humour is the film tries to make a character called the Nite-Owl sexy and dangerous, this a character who intentionally always looked silly in the comic. They try to make his characters actions exciting where in the comic there is a wonderful grace to the moments where he flies his ship and does things because it looks goofy. That's one of the main points where the film kept losing me. The mocking tone on the world and what these characters think of themselves, as well as their subtle brutality, is not there, is instead replaced by scenes that go on forever and make a fan of the book bored. Watchmen is a pretty boring film based on something that is clear and self-contained.

I could go on about what the film gets wrong, such as a truly awful sex scene (worse than anything in Showgirls) replacing a wonderful moment in Moore's original, a dull prison scenes, the lack of stillness in the story (the comic had a wonderful sense of framing to suggest emotion amongst what should be pulp absurdity). But the film is just a mess. The only reason its not the worst Moore adaptation is because The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen exist. But the theatrical cut is a very weak, ignorant film in dire need of a good director and writer. It hasn't raised the level of the genre (and who cares about that, these movies are meant to be imaginative and a little pulpy). All its done is make the source look stupid. I think Alan Moore has had enough of that already. I just hope they leave the poor guy alone and stop adapting him.

A Nightmare And Other Horrors.

2009-03-14T21:57:00.005Z

I have been watching the Nightmare On Elm Street films. So I'll give a brief look at them.

Essentially the best of the bunch are the Wes Craven films. A Nightmare On Elm Street is a taut little b-movie. While its no Halloween, it does have a load of energy, even after years of being ripped-off and sequelized. What's really good about it is that it takes its premise seriously. There's no jokes, people being brutally murdered, there always a proper atmosphere of unease through-out, which is something that's lacking in most horror films. The dream idea still feels pretty fresh when rewatching as its played honestly so you do follow the story and atmosphere. Plus they have a focus central protagonist that actually thinks her way through the situation, which really keeps you involved in the narrative. Also Freddy is a seriously under-played nutcase in this one. He's out to kill for his own reasons, is pissed off and revenge-driven. He's always in darkness, his tricks always having a nasty edge to them. That's very refreshing in a horror film.

Wes Craven's New Nightmare for me is the creepiest of the films. Its all about madness, the fear of someone thinking that they are slowly losing their mind, that they will hurt family members as they go crazy. Which is a very scary idea that the film keep jabbing at, getting terrific moments as a woman keeps thinking her child may become dangerous or mad, inherited from her. What's great about this is that the madness spreads and no-one is safe, no-one sure what to do or how to react to mental illness. Which is something that horror should do more often, tying up a metaphor from real life within a film narrative. There is also a good idea of how horror movies cage fears that flow below society within their movies, allowing people a way to escape from the fears darker than a horror movie can show.

Now to the rest. The other films are not at all serious nor are scary. But some are loads of fun. And other aren't. They lack the intent to tie the narrative to the characters, nor to have the pace be something that can be oppressive, that can add to the horror.

Number 2, Freddy's Revenge is the gay-subtext one. Unfortunately that's the only vaguely interesting thing about it. It takes the first film and ignores everything that works in it. This one goes for demonic possession rather than dreams so has a kid possessed by Freddy killing people (the most thorough of these seem to be naked men or good looking guys lying in their own beds, which is helping with the gay sub-text. The guy also runs way from kissing his own girlfriend to got watch a man sleeping). There's also a pool party where teens get killed, which is generic slasher movie territory. Its not bad really, scene to scene but there's nothing to really focus on (even the gay subtext gets boring). And its not in any way scary, the sense of mounting possession never truly worked out to induce fear as they simply go for kills and weird meandering scenes that annoy and make you lose interest. There's no big scary idea to get under your skin and the film continues to ignore momentum and build.

Number 3 and 4 are much better. These are the fun sequels. They aren't remotely scary but Freddy is an actual threat and you can follow the sequences coherently, even though they add up to absolutely nothing in narrative terms. And they have soon to be famous writers and actors slumming. Part 3 was written by Craven and Frank Darobant (from Shawshank Redemption) and takes the idea of people learning to fight Freddy in their dreams. The leading lady from the first film is back, and, as is the way of things, is written stupidly. In this film, all adults are stupid, the kids utterly moronic. Essentially, you're wanting Freddy to kill them all horribly. Which he does (he's reliable in that way). Patricia Arquette and Laurence Fishburne show up and its not their finest hours but they are professional. Craig Wasson from Body Double is in it and is horribly wet yet doesn't die. So all this talent and no real story. What is amazing by now is how they really struggle with story. I watched Dracula movies by Hammer a few months ago, and while they are not all great, they do make a good attempt at story. But these nightmare films stalled at number 2 in story and only got a good one at number 7. And these are the better of the eighties slasher films for story.

Number 4 is a Renny Harlin film and is probably the funnest of the non-Craven movies. It also has the least interest in story. The first third kills off everyone from the previous film (thus killing any story development possibilities). The next third kills off anyone remotely interesting. The final third has heroine versus Freddy. And that's it. Thankfully its all very energetic. Five minutes after the film you won't remember the plot but people are trapped on dreams in interesting ways and the film does have the sense of a director having a bit of fun. It was written by the guy who wrote LA Confidential. Never has a writer with respect has had a script that he should disown instantly as this. This has wall to wall bad writing. Now we should mention the director Renny Harlin, for this is his best film. While Harlin has made two other decent films (Cliffhanger and The Long Kiss Goodnight), one guilty pleasure (Driven, which is just awful yet somehow I can't help but love it in a way that I can't understand), a Die Hard sequel (worst Die Hard film, whose title is awful yet the best thing about it- Die Hard 2: Die Harder, what he hell does that mean?) And then there's the dreck. Of those I have seen there's Cutthroat Island (an abomination) Deep Blue Sea (mutant sharks no less) and Exorcist: The Beginning (where do I start. Agreeing to remake a good unreleased film with a terrible, unwatchable, dire, insulting, hacky etc etc... film). This man also made Ford Fairlane (with Andrew Dice Clay), a horror movie called The Covenant (which has disappeared from existence) and a Christan Slater/Val Kilmer direct to DVD serial killer hunter movie whose title I can't recall. If you want a definition of what not to do with your career, Renny's your man. It's kind of a miracle that this one worked, when on average he has managed to make a fool out of himself consistently. But if you're making A Nightmare On Elm Street 4, its not a good sign for your taste.

The series really went to hell when Renny Harlin left. Number 5, directed by Stephen Hopkins (who's had a mixed career, some duds but did make the delightfully pulpy Predator 2 and the first season of 24). This one has a script that's woeful, that over-explains everything. Hopkins does a pretty good job of it mostly (there's a few music video inspired moments of what the fuck that someone should have said, please don't) but the film doesn't work at all, is incoherent in the extreme. Yet it does have some nice bits.

Unfortunately its the first one where Freddy is in no way threatening. Robert Englund had been keeping this series going a long time by keeping Freddy somehow a threat despite some inane one-liners and images, still making Freddy work despite some watering down. he has really kept it afloat but here he had no support, was now simply a jokey monster. Its now you can sense the boredom creeping in.

Now we have the nadir. Number 6, Freddy's Dead. This one is unwatchable. Its hard to tell what's worse, the writing or directing. (Both were done by New Line executives. It's a case of hire professionals please). The plot lurches forward without anything interesting happening, story lines started, thrown away without coherence, back-story explained without any interest. Its so dull that whenever anything happens, you're trying to think of a reason to care, with every fight played for laughs. This is the Robocop 3 of the series, a film so bad you can't quite believe it. Freddy is lit brightly the entire time so has no chance of being scary. Englund looks bored through-out, has nothing to work with. Yaphet Kotto is in it, and must have really needed the money. He's professional but must have known what a dog it is. Luckily he moved on to Homicide after this. And the series moved onto New Nightmare, a sudden return to form.

Finally we have Freddy V Jason. Its not very good, isn't scary, is stupid, has idiot characters. But it is fun and energetic. Its the kind of film that's hard to say anything about as it does what you would suggest, nothing more.

So there we go. the Nightmrae series before the inevitable awful remake.

What If Horror Remakes Showed Imagination?

2009-03-02T10:21:00.004Z

I think we've all seen the posters and trailers for the glut of recent horror movies. As someone who likes a good horror film I'm kinda appalled. 1960's & 70's horrors were cheap, nasty, full of ideas.

Now while the producers might want to keep the base focus of the story they were buying, changing up lots of background details can keep the story as original as it can be. Maybe expand the story in odd directions that could be useful in creating interest.

So here's a few suggestions how a few horror franchises could have proceeded if done at a certain time in history.

Friday The 13th- Let's says you change the setting of the murders to Nazi Germany. Jason is the "mentally challenged" son of a woman who was enjoying herself a little too much during the 1920's party era, who's baby-sitters, young accountants by day, were too busy cross-dressing and shooting heroin to pay attention, so he falls out of a window into a local river, apparently drowns. Jason's mother goes mad, becomes a cross-dressing razor slasher during the rise of the Nazi's, gets caught and killed by her own upper middle class peers, who are all heading towards the power, which is Nazi-ism. During the Nazi regime, while Poland is being invaded, Jason comes back from the grave, starts taking out those who killed him and his mother in brutal ways, as well as their families, these middle class people now rich, apparently isolated, snobbish, not wanting to hear of their youthful failings. Some of the youth are becoming soldiers for the cause but won't make it to the front line, are brutally murdered by a machete-wielding, brain-dead zombie Jason, who after massacring many a Nazi and more importantly, those who fund the invasions, heads towards Poland. The sequels will just write themselves.

A Nightmare On Elm Street - Little Freddy Krueger gets systematically sexually abused as a young soldier in world war 1 bunker. Even by Hitler. Was an idealistic young man who joined under-age and got horror upon horror thrown at him. Leaves the army after the war, tries to become an artist, gets burnt alive by a jealous Hitler, who can't sell one painting. As the expressionistic film stylisation finds its feet Freddy infects the dreams of the youth, as they watch the films, he tries to interest them into sex then murder at the moment that people are not expecting it. As a series of sex crimes infects down-town Berlin, no-one is sure where to turn. Through dreams, Freddy lures innocent young virgins of both sexes into opium dens and decadent night clubs, into nightmare situations, then even inspires more murder of leaves them to their consciences. Freddy is defeated by the rise of Nazi-ism, that abhors this decadence. Thus many of the places are closed and Freddy is left with only a few slash murders a week. Defeated once more by Hitler.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre- The US based franchise stays at home. At the rise of the depression, a mom and pop operation starts to expands, by cheerfully killing the poor that wander through in a desperate search for jobs, eating them yet also passing free human meat onto other poor and needy in the neighbourhoods. It's broken down as such. Local people are safe, their kids can play in the street without worry. Outsiders are meat. Eventually the kids in the neighbourhood get the idea and start killing entire travelling families to suck up to mom and pop. Mom and pop are happy with that arrangement. They like the power but stay modest. The kids grow up to be preppy, patriotic, interested in oil and god. That is the early story. In World War 2, many a young idealistic young man is asked to sign up and the preppies have made a pledge to go fight in Europe. Mom and pop disagree. Not their fight. Even though the depression is over times are tough so the preppies set up an elaborate series of games, trapping happy families travelling through area, putting them through a series of sick, torturous tests, many family members not surviving and becoming the meat, simply to distract Mom and Pop. As the games go on, the preppies disappear one by one, until none are left, all having gone to sign up for war, to be heroes. All their children gone, mom and pop are angry, brutally murder the survivors, are left to wait for the survivors of the war, their town empty.

So these are three simple ideas anyway, how you could simply change the settings, keep the bases of each story but have a new feel. Of course, would never happen in imagination impaired Hollywood.

Battlestar Galactica Season 4.5 - It's almost over.

2009-02-17T14:32:00.004Z

This is a brief posting as the season is only halfway through and I'm waiting for the end to write anything on the show but this show is really storming towards its finale. Save one minor episode (A Disquiet That Follows The Soul) which was more quiet than bad (but could have lost a few minutes and had a bit more focus from the mid-point onwards to be honest), this show is storming towards its finale, with great atmosphere and both human and story moments (best human moment, Starbuck finding her own dead body, best story moment, Zarek massacring the entire civilian government, as one review said, someone show this to Obama). You also do get a sense of it going somewhere specific at great urgency, that no-one is safe and anything can happen, as people are getting knocked off every week, especially the characters who would normally be safe on any normal show. So many shows hove slowly collapsed towards a conclusion (I never made it to the end of The Soprano's and The Wire final season had an epilogue feel) so its good to see a show with five or six episodes left still feeling vital.

In just over a month it'll be all over. Which is horrible news, even though I want to see how it all ends.

Sublime to Ridiculous - Homicide Season 6 and V: The Series

2009-02-17T09:41:00.012Z

During this credit crunch, where some of us lack jobs, you can use the free time to, if you're like me, try and write a novel, make an obscure film, and watch entire seasons of TV shows.

Let's start with the near great. Homicide Season 6 is the last great Season of Homicide. It was followed by an enjoyable yet patchy season 7, which I'll write about at another time. This was the drug war season, an escalating tale of revenge getting out of control following the questionable shooting of drug kingpin Luther Mahoney. Its about people compromising themselves to survive, the theme seeming to be about how people survive in hell.

In this season there were three new characters. Every year Homicide gains and loses characters. In the later years there was a large turn-around, not always for the best, as the characters became more like traditional TV characters and less like the confused strange types of the early seasons. This season was the transitional on that. What's angering in the progressive weakness of these changes is that is that the characters on Homicide were always the best part, more intriguing than plots. The Wire may be many great things but it's nowhere as complicated in character as Homicide at its best yet this is the season where Homicide started to lose its way. Three new characters were introduced, none of them quite working out, all looking a tad white-washed compared to the more established types. It was a writing problem mostly, writing becoming more broad-stroke and less specific to character failings and moments of honesty, arguments starting to state judgements and not as part of a character neuroses. The best new character was Ballard, a female cop from Seattle who was interestingly off but was never really developed beyond that slight oddness. That was frustrating as the character seemed to be very fresh at the start of the run. Gheraty was a older cop seen to be a coward and was stuck to type. He was enjoyable but not really necessary (unlike the Polito or Beatty characters from earlier seasons). Falsone was the most troubling character. He wasn't as annoying as some writers suggested at the time of airing but was meant to be the voice of justice, someone who knows that something is wrong within the unit, which doesn't work as the character is very unsubtle and never seems to grasp what is going on beyond the basics. Which might be the idea but its done gratingly and without an interesting tie to the main drama.

Luckily the wide canvass has enough passion to make up for this and has enough old-school characters to make up for the flaws. The situation set-up, of the drug war, created partially by actions by Detectives Kellerman and Lewis, is of a sin that destroys all around it, is powerful and is left to linger for an entire season before it explodes, in a police office shooting and all-out drug war that sees many police dead and careers ruined. It is wonderful. It allows you to see characters in detail, under pressure, sometimes not seemingly reacting but giving subtle indications of doubt, guilt, yearning for some kind of redemption or release. But they never get it. Kellerman is paranoid and cynical, tragically forced to be the opposite of what he once was a a man, almost begging to be caught out of his sin due to guilt which he can't acknowledge save cynicism that would have appalled his earlier self (whistling happy birthday to a corpse is the best one, in an episode where every Kellerman line is misanthropic genius). His actions indirectly lead to the shoot-out, as do Lewis', who uses police information, while on suspension, to spark a drug war. Kellerman is forced to resign, Lewis allowed to stay, even though Lewis' crimes following the original shooting, are actually far more extreme and troubling. Lewis' avoidance of responsibility and distance from his actions becomes one of the more haunting aspects of the story.

The other cops caught up in this mess is Pembleton, once the great, all-knowing judgemental super-cop who is slowly developing unwanted emotions on his cases, who is forced, in one of the show's all-time great scenes, to ruin Kellerman and get the confession, then watch the confession be covered up, have Lewis get away with all he's done, ruining Pembleton's faith in his job. What's terrific about this character arc is that Pembleton's pride is ruinous and unrealistic, is what destroys him, yet has noble aspects. Also oddly noble is the decision to hide the crime, the questionable shooting of a psychopathic drug dealer and killer in a truly messy set-up, as its a mess where nothing can be gained from more trauma's revealed. Revealing the crime would be destructive to the city and thus is necessary. It's a fascinating problem. During the final moments in this season, you find yourself on both Pembleton's and Kellerman's side. Its a tragic ruination of two complicated men.

The show never got better than this. They were other good episodes (such as Kellerman PI, which shows Kellerman out of the police, surviving) that were wonderful but the momentum was lost after this season. Essentially the firebrand characters were gone, leaving the calmer types, like Bayliss and Lewis, who came alive against the extreme characters like Pembleton and Kellerman (characters who could start a problem in an empty room). There was a lack of propulsion afterwards that no plot could really fill. The show never really had the spark to cause unwarranted trouble after this, which was the unpredictable life of the show. It was a show about the irrational under the supposedly rational investigations.

Now to the silly. V: The Series. Oh what a guilty pleasure. So many stupid plot actions (catching a killer by fingerprints when they are actually lizards in human masks and body coverings, Lizard brother of dead character recognised while human masked and then told you look like your brother, I wish I were making this up), insane alien rituals, an ability to kill off or write out any character played by someone with talent while keeping the uninteresting around. This is a show that writes out Michael Ironside, who keeps the first half of the season afloat, and keeps around Marc Singer (a man of a thousand strange moves during action scenes). This is a show that can be campier than Adam West's Batman when dealing with the psycho aliens, who wear human disguises even in private yet the entire world knows they are lizards. Everything they do with the aliens kill off any possible threat, as aliens are always easily defeated, are moronic at best. This is a show that changes what it is every two weeks, have people written in and out with bewildering speed, a show that has the crazy clone episode (a signifier of doom for any show) early in its first and only season. Yes, it's kind of depressing in how bad a lot of it is, especially as the mini-series aimed so high, yet is a lot of stupid, stupid fun. And the dialogue, oh the dialogue. I can't remember any of it but its all bad. Yes I watched all of them. (Link to Homicide is that Homicide fell only slightly, this is how bad it could have been)

So there we go. I am planning to write more another Homicide season, as well as The Wire. have promised that before but will try and actually do it this time.

Hammer Horrors

2009-02-09T16:32:00.016Z

I've been buying up some Hammer Films recently, in a Dracula set and the Ultimate Hammer box set (yet doesn't have Vampire Circus. Shameful.) I have my eye on another box set by the way, then I should have most of the films that I want.

So below is a brief run-down of the films seen, informing if they are worth a watch. Not all are.
Blood From The Mummies Tomb - A stunner of its type. A Hammer & Mummy movie must means something good on the prowl and this delivers. The plot is odd but the script by Chris Wicking is loads of fun. It concerns re-incarnation, a man sacrificing his own daughter to an ancient evil and objects that come alive to kill. That may make it sound bad but its the way its done that really works. It has a great villain spouting lines such as "The meek shan't inherit the earth, they wouldn't know what to do with it." The director of this film died during the making of it. Its a cynical, nasty movie.
Demons Of The Mind - Its a late-era film that has more than a hint of incest. Another script by Chris Wicking, this time taking on the idea of family madness, inherited misogyny in people and culture, the rich preying on the poor, as well as the evolution of treating mental illness. Its also has some great murder scenes in a rose garden. It's one terrific film that sneaked by hammer as they didn't pay attention that more or less attacks most of the conventions of their other films.
The Devil Rides Out - Early era Hammer, based on a Dennis Wheatley novel. An under-seen top-level entry by Terrence Fisher, which has Christopher Lee as the good guy and has some creepy astral projection sequences (I know how that sounds but its done very well). Its one of those films where the plots not very good but the atmosphere is so terrific that you don't care.
Horror Of Dracula - I wrote about this on best of year. In short, its amazing, has stunning colour schemes, suggested sexuality and pacing, as well as a great final chase. One of the great screen Dracula's.
Dracula Prince Of Darkness - Needs no introduction- Best Dracula movie in lots of ways. Dracula is brought to life due to the blood of a traveller and preys on his friends and family, stalking them even to a church. Is cut to the bone in narrative, has amazing anamorphic atmosphere, and just keeps going a fairy story gone wrong fashion.
Dracula Has Risen From The Grave - Another film I wrote about before about on best list. This is slower than earlier films and does mark the point where the Dracula films went from being great to interesting but has some terrific moments and well worth a viewing, even though there are slow spots.
Taste The Blood Of Dracula - The best of the later sequels, although the end is rubbish. Dracula is reborn due to the actions of three bored, rich hypocrites, Dracula stalking them through their children. Its a full-on attack on Victorian repression and mores, and has sympathetic victims to make the suspense horror work.
Scars Of Dracula - In lots of ways its kinda stupid but I like this one, mainly for the production design, which has many blood reds and light blues. Its got great atmosphere and many nice moments, that makes up for the fact that its not really any good at a story level, or that the leading men are woeful.
Dracula AD 1972 - The worst of the bunch. Just dull, awful film with black masses yet no pace. A film about youth made by people in their fifties, its a film with no atmosphere or tension, and has the dullest deaths you could ever find in a vampire film.
The Satanic Rites Of Dracula - The final Dracula film is a surprising return to form. Its not a great film but is a solid b-movie with some nasty moments with Dracula preying on the weak and stupid, as well as his apocalyptic designs for humanity. Has a great final section and a wonderful final death scene for Lee's Dracula.
Frankenstein Created Woman - Peter Cushing as Frankenstein experimenting on women. Where do I start watching? Its actually fun but start and stops in pace and interest throughout. I don't have much to say on this as it a b-movie Frankenstein film. There isn't enough atmosphere nor incident to really get it going but it is enjoyable.
The Horror of Frankenstein - A rare non-Peter Cushing Frankenstein. Ralph Bates takes over. Its really bloody, funny and vicious. I love it. Its got a bad rep but is in need of re-evaluation.
The Plague Of The Zombies - Top-notch zombie flick which has a great reputation. Its one of those films that any zombie fan will love and a film fan should find a lot through its atmosphere and subtle build-up. Anyone who doesn't like this film ought to be shot. Its a simple statement, isn't it.
The Reptile - From the same team from Plague Of The Zombies, another great film. Same rule as above applies. Its a must see and saying what its about would only put you off.
One Million Years B.C. - This one is really stupid. Not exactly a surprise from the title but it has Raquel Welch as a prehistoric bimbo, getting pawed at by ugly brutes. This film has dinosaurs (a combination of Ray Harryhausen monsters at best and animals blown up to look huge at worst), cavemen and essentially 2001-like apes all in same time period. The film is awfully slow to get going, only really works during the action but does have some great photography, shot on Spanish deserts, which frankly belongs in a proper film, not this one. Best bit is cavemen verses a giant turtle, who eventually goes for a swim (might have just been going for a walk and wondering why these scruffs are attacking him.)
Prehistoric Women - It's about a tribe of beautiful blonde women enslaved by their brunette queen in a hidden paradise. Ah, the delights of prehistoric women. Man goes into jungle, man trapped by many black men, man transported into a world dominated by women in lioncloth due to the magic of the white rhino. Man is fought over by many a slut. White women scared of masked black man. White women chain their own men into manual labour and no sex. Women dominated by a crazy bitch. The entire film is a checklist of stupid ideas, basic racism (the big scare, white women approach by masked black men). Its both deeply awful and truly wonderful. The first ten minutes are stunningly awful, then the women show up and you don't care. You're trapped by the madness of this thing, by the inescapable fact that the leading man is stupefyingly awful in ways not usually seen even in Western cinema but that's not where your attention is. It's with the women. Even Steven Berkoff shows up at the end. You must see this film. Its a catalogue of the bad and wayward. In the world of Obama as president this film cries out for a remake.
Quatermass And The Pit - Great version of an even better 3 hour TV show. Loads of fun, even the now bad effects. Can't say anything beyond its a must-see film.
Rasputin The Mad Monk -Christopher Lee is Rasputin, a drinking, whoring man of god, who can bend all to his will, even the Russian royalty (you know, before that embarrassing revolution). Its great, especially when they keep trying to kill Lee and he won't stay dead. Lee is great, being the dangerous life of the party rather than a shadow figure.
Now we are on to the weak films.
She & Vengeance Of She - Pretty dull, unintentionally hilarious films. The first one has a budget, the second has not. Both are watchable but most notable moment is in the first film, where Peter Cushing and Bernard Cribbins dance with belly dancers in post-World War 1 Palestine.
To The Devil A Daughter - A weak but odd late hammer film. Its not as bad as reputation suggests but is a guilty pleasure due to a story that can't be saved by any stylisation or script (which are actually competent), an ending that doesn't make much sense, and in Richard Widmark, a terrible, terrible leading man. Christopher Lee shows up and lends it a bit of class.
The Witches - Joan Fontaine as a woman going mad in an English village. Now this should work. It has a decent cast, a solid script by Nigel Kneale but truly terrible, dull direction that never suggests any terror until late in the day. Hammer made great b-movies with dodgy plots such as Blood From The Mummies Tomb (where, let's remember, the director actually died) but this one gets killed by the direction when it should have been one of their best. There's a middle-aged lesbian subtext between Fontaine and the villainess which really helps keep the film going at times.
The Viking Queen - Worst film I have ever seen. Worse even than an Ed Wood film. Ancient Britain's versus Romans, Romans led by an American. Terrible, terrible script, tedious direction and acting that's beyond atrocious and enters a new realm in itself. Its one of those films that are difficult to properly describe in their awfulness. Not even Uwe Boll bad covers it. Best worst line of dialogue "I understand your problems, Nigel."
Fear Of The Night - Kind of a weak film. Not offensive but not really very good. The first half is best, as there is a build-up of unease that could go into the territory of is she mad or not but once the plot kicks in (a rip-off of Les Diabolique) it gets a bit dull with fun asides. This is the kind of film where the duff elements run the good stuff for you. Yet the film is a good candidate for a remake as there are elements and settings that could be made unique, if explanations are made to be less obvious.
Straight On Til Morning & The Nanny I haven't watched and may be some time to get to them as they are lesser hammer. But I'll see them eventually.
That's about it. The Hammer films I'm still dying to see/own are Curse Of The Werewolf with Ollie Reed (as the werewolf), Brides Of Dracula (apparently an amazing film, rarely shown, Peter Cushing hunting down female vampires, what can I say), Vampire Circus (title says it all, except its terrific fun, way better than it should be) and of course Legends Of The Seven Golden Vampires (vampires and 70's kung fu. Okay I can't defend that one)

Coming Soon...

2009-02-09T09:43:00.002Z

Am still alive. Have been putting together my film again, after a full system crash. That and some other family situation have taken up a lot of my time.

Have also been watching lots of Hammer films and Homicide Season 6. So expect write-ups on them soon.

Valkyrie and Che

2009-01-23T18:37:00.004Z

I'll extend this in the coming days. Have been a little busy but both of these are well worth a viewing, both are about the over-throws of a repressive government (kinda like losing one George W Bush).

Che is the more self-serious of the two, is about Che in the Cuban revolution. Its a bit long and unstructured but is interesting in its showing about how difficult it is to manage and execute a cultural revolution. I've only seen part 1, which is why I'm so brief. Its difficult to talk about half a film but Benecio Del Toro is great in the lead.

Valkyrie is about the plot to kill Hitler, is sold as an old-fashioned World War 2 romp. Its a lot of fun but has a terrific set-up that makes the story of a failed plot interesting. What is it like to be a military man in a fascist dictatorship whose ideals you find disgusting. It follows that line for the entire film, keeps at the idea of the army trying to escape from Hitler and the SS's insanity to save Germany in some way, and is fascinating in how close they came to killing Hitler. It also has some terrific visuals and uses its inventive images rather than dialogue to give mood, cultural and story information. Its had some bad reviews so far, which is undeserved and feels like critics trying to be serious for when they rave about The Reader (which has a terrible trailer and is based on a horribly over-rated, stupid book)

To end, Benecio Del Toro and Valkyrie writer Christopher McQuarrie made a terrific crime film The Way Of The Gun years ago. Its very underseen and is the best crime film of the decade by a long way.

The New Dr Who

2009-01-03T18:50:00.002Z

So the newspapers got it wrong. What a shock.

Last month I wrote in regards to casting the role:

Or even try the re-animated corpse of the recently dead.

Now enter Matt Smith. Who kinda resembles the Frankenstein monster. I kinda feel like I got closer than the respectable media on this one.

But he did seem eccentric in the confidential show I watched. He looked like the right kind of weird fella that should play the part. So from the outside it looks like good casting.

So we'll see next year (yep, its only three days into this year).

Happy new year

2009-01-03T18:39:00.003Z

Although to be honest I've had a full-system computer crash over the holidays that I'm still recovering from. So I should be feeling good about the world around late January at the earliest. By the first Obama disappointment and the next line of bank collapses (hopefully not mine)

But on the plus side I bought some planet of the apes movies today. "Kill all humans!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Pretentious List

2008-12-17T13:38:00.009Z

FILMS RELEASED THIS YEAR THAT I LOVED
I couldn’t make ten films, nor were these on the whole the deepest films I saw this year. Just they were the best ones released this year, ones I loved for different reasons.
There Will Be Blood - An oppressive, moody crazy film, about a greedy bug-shit crazy oilman, who travels around with his adopted son, stealing off the gullible, creating a subtle war with the local preacher, making loads of money even though that‘s not his real love. His love is the land dominates, of mining, everything driving towards working the land, even as he ruins everything. It may have won a lot of acclaim but this is a crazy film, which is its charm. Has lots of silent sequences, giving character and life through mood and glances, all cinematic. Second great film, after Punch-Drunk Love, from Paul Thomas Anderson.
Silent Light - A near silent film. The story of adultery within a religious farm community, done with long silent shots that slowly grips with the details, with the story slowly developing in subtle actions that aren’t locked down to obvious behaviour. Best moment is the death of the wife by the side of the road, while the end is the a little too Dreyer-influenced but doesn’t really matter.
Rescue Dawn - A Werner Herzog epic, about a pilot in Vietnam shot down behind enemy lines and becoming a POW. While its an escape film, the story is structured of a man against nature, both in terms of the jungle, that traps him, with foliage, disease and lack of a sense of direction, to the other men, who, who prisoner or not, are as ambiguously dangerous as the jungle. Has a career best Christian Bale performance, who’s genuinely more crazy and expressive than he is ever allowed as Batman or on any other mainstream film. Steve Zahn is also great as the desperate sidekick also tried to escape. Amazing sense of dangerous atmosphere through-out.
Speed Racer - Have already written about this so will be brief. Its wonderful. Has split-screen, a delightful retro look and emotional feel, stunning chases, a deranged chimp. What’s not to love. First twenty minutes are especially lovely, jumping back and forward in time with real confidence. The cross-country race is the chase at the most genuinely excessive, no action scene in the rest of the year coming even close for cinematic invention.
Step Brothers - Brilliantly deranged film about bonding between two men who have yet to grow up, even though they are in their forties. What’s great is that it takes its point of view from the central characters, never trying to move away from that. So the details always give great humour and character, as well as a free-wheeling plot that wonderfully refuses to come together. Which is correct for a comedy.
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army - A Ray Harryhausen-type monster movie, with Hellboy fighting monsters who’s views he finds sympathy with, in an attempt to save the world. What’s terrific about this film that it knows what it is, which is a poetic monster action movie, doesn’t have any shame in regard to itself. Has wonderful sequences through-out, is wall-to-wall with them actually, highlights including a great throwback-style credit sequence and an amazing scene where Hellboy fights a tree monster in the streets of New York.
The Puffy Chair - A little film about a couple slowly breaking up and going nuts with each other during a road trip, they trapped with the man’s brother. They are stuck with an idea to buy the father a birthday gift that is something that is tied to what the central male character wants, likely not the father‘s idea of a gift. The film studies the three characters act childishly, stupidly, sometimes with a little self-knowledge, capping it off with a brilliantly twisted ending, using one character’s cowardness to a pretty devastating effect. Is a very well acted film.
Redacted - It’s flawed in some ways, the acting a bit broad, but its about people playing to the camera and revealing themselves unconsciously. The idea that these men go crazy and rape and kill the people they are meant to protect is an old one but helps make the point of the insanity of a military occupation that refuses to make sense, the film parodying the idea of the normal liberal film to show the nasty anger and frustration lying below supposed civilised representation and distance, the film knowing that its own narrative can‘t illustrate the mess and making this a theme within its medium.
Bee Movie - A Jerry Seinfeld written and acted animated movie about a Bee becoming buddies with a neurotic florist and decides to sue the human race over its use of honey. Which turns out to be a bad idea. This is part of what’s wonderful about it. The plot turns out to be a bad idea. Most films wouldn’t have the guts or the sense of eccentricity to find that funny. After a slightly weak first ten minutes this film really takes off. Like Step Brothers its narrative is a bit messy but it goes all over the place in a wonderful way, has great gags, odd supporting characters. Its just terrifically cheerful, silly, very aware of itself. Like Hellboy 2, that’s what is great about it. That’s rare in modern film.

OTHERS I LIKED
These are all very flawed films. To me, all have scenes and sections that jump out as being problematic. Yet the areas I like keep them afloat.
I Am Legend - Terrific moody first two-thirds, much of it silent, one man alone on Earth it seemed, was great pulp sci-fi set-up done well, until other people showed up and the film fell apart fast. Was great fun while it lasted.
Sex And Death 101 - A man finds a list of all the women he will ever sleep with, then panics. Takes time to find its feet, the first section too broad but once the central character starts acting odd, slowly going mad, it emerges as a twisted little tale of the nastier urges within the average male. The finale third is especially strong, up to a suddenly weak conclusion.
Iron Man - Its silly but well-crafted pulp fun. The plot itself is lazy but the characters and the execution of the origin story really pays attention to the details, which gives it a real thrill as the story evolves. Downey Jnr is terrific, especially when he’s by himself, building the machines. Too bad about the finale, which was dull in build-up then over way too quick, just as it seemed to be getting potentially interesting. Owes so much to Verheoven’s direction in Robocop its not even funny.
The Dark Knight - It’s a bit pretentious. And the ending is pompous. Have written about it already. It is an enjoyable film but simply lacks the imagination and sense of complicated tortured hero that Burton brought to the films. But it has lots of terrific moments, even if none match what Nolan managed with the terrific The Prestige.
Margot At The Wedding - Wasn’t a fan of this when I saw it, and it has loads of problems, is a film that severely needed a re-write to focus it. The film wanders all over the place, doesn’t have an interesting ending (it tries a non-ending to suggest complexity but never set up enough complexity to pull it off). But the film has stuck in my head and does have interesting scenes. Hopefully a minor film from a previously interesting director.

MEDIOCRE FILMS THAT ARE KINDA OF NOTE
None of these are films I hate. They have nice moments. I could easily watch them again but they don’t have much direction or originality. So none are bad but they are time-fillers.
The Darjeeling Limited - It’s a very weak Wes Anderson film, far worse than expected him capable of. Its his Body Double. Its really obvious, has a terrible second half, and horribly miscasts Adrien Brody. Every revelation feels thudding. Yet its obviously made by a talented director and has odd little bits that work. So its more frustrating than an outright terrible film would be.
Quantum Of Solace - Have already written about this. Essentially miscast the director so the film never had the build that it needed, the under-writing feeling weak rather than base and focused. Still way better than the Brosnan messes but lacks a focus of Casino Royale, not the mention the subtlety.
Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of the Crystal Skull - I liked the alien skulls and the fifties stuff. Essentially the Lucas-type obsession I liked. But the plot was weak and the father-son stuff was painful and badly written. The first twenty-minutes was also very weak and slow. Some second-half weirdness and odd visuals saved it. I like it better than Last Crusade, which I find to be very dull.

BLAH FILMS OR WHY BOTHER WRITING OR THINKING ABOUT THEM, BECAUSE THEY ANNOYED ME IN SOME WAY AND DIDN’T DISAPPEAR
Had great premises yet never managed to do much with them. Seem better in your head than in seeing them direct.
Tropic Thunder - Where were the jokes? It’s a Three Amigo’s rip-off without the charm and oddity of the Landis film, nor does it have its own identity. The plot lumbers on in a stupid fashion yet doesn’t have the jokes that has been set-up for, the characters vague and one-note, never interacting in interesting ways. Only Robert Downey Jnr and his insane performance saves it. As a fan of Zoolander, this one was painfully weak and ill-thought through.
The Badder-Meinhof Complex - Incredibly stupid, lazy version of a fascinating piece of social history. There is no proper writing, characterisation is zero, the mood is never developed, its approach to the politics is laughably simplistic and never explored. You sit there watching things happen for two hours and never once know why. A disgrace.

WORST FILMS I SAW THIS YEAR OR CAN THESE DIRECTORS GO TO A CAVE FOR A SHORT TIME AND THINK OF WHAT THEY’VE DONE
Easy to explain. These were terrible, objectionably bad films. They stop you watching films, not wanting that kind of awful experience again. Not all were made this years but this is when I saw them. Have already blogged on most of these and can’t face writing anything more. This is a simple restatement or warning.
The Lady In The Water
A Very Long Engagement
Burn After Reading
Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired
Ghost Rider - Worse than Superman 4 or Batman And Robin. (And this is from someone who defends Daredevil) A film where reaction shots don’t tie into the main drama or action, where plot falls asleep for an hour and then drops dead on reawakening, and a love story between childhood friends where one actor seems twenty years older than the other. The action and effects are dull, monotonous, and when direction given for story, is especially stupid.
The Hills Have Eyes 2 (Sequel to the original)

FILMS THAT I LOVED AND SAW THIS YEAR ON DVD
These in some ways are my real top films as, save the top nine, were the films that really got me passionate about films. And there’s a lot. Not just doing ten. That’s way too polite and yet deeply boring. Don‘t worry, its not all highbrow. I have not one but two women and prison movies. And Bergman movies, which are similar but with less shooting.
Weekend, Made In USA, Pierret Le Fou & Le Petit Soldat - Four Jean-Luc Godard epics. Weekend is about a couple going from being a rich bored couple to revolutionaries, having amazing visual and emotionally odd and disturbing sequences throughout. Made In USA is a twisted take on an American crime film, changing the protagonist to a woman, throwing in Marxist theory. A difficult to define film. Pierret Le Foe is about a couple in a crumbling relationship, which gets crazier and more disturbing throughout, full of betrayals and barely suppressed rage. Le Petit Soldat is about a man trying to be a revolutionary and failing. Black and white and full of disturbing moments.
The Testament Of Orpheus - Cocteau’s final film, a beautiful moving black and white gem about death, art and relation to how to survive life, as well as how to live with your own legacy. Its difficult but very worthwhile.
Wild Strawberries, Face To Face & Fanny And Alexander (4 and a half hour version) - Three Bergman films. One a black and white film about an old man thinking of his past. It’s a gorgeous, unsentimental look at how time affects people and those they interact with. Face To face is a woman within dreams, going mad after a suicide attempt. Very daring, with a wonderful atmosphere. Fanny And Alexander is an epic about a boy and girl, who, following the death of their father, are forced to live with their mother’s new husband, a religious tyrant. It’s a wonderful, sometimes dark, very intriguing film. Despite the darkness of the subject matters, none of these films are humourless, all of them giving complexity within the confines of the stories.
Jan Swankmajar short films (DVD set, of all films made all up to approx 1990) - Spanning about 30 years of work, these claymation shorts from Eastern Europe, looking at humans, objects, their thematic interactions. A major piece of work spread over thirty years, never repeating, always moving forward with constantly with stunning imagery.
Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volumes 3 & 4 - These are different cartoons from various eras, from early, very musical number-based stories to the late joke-based entries. Some wonderfully bizarre cartoons, including the classics Robin Hood Daffy and Birds Anonymous.
Zabriskie Point & Beyond The Clouds - Two Antonioni masterpieces, neither of them getting much respect critically. Zabriskie Point is about two students, one on the run from the police after student riots, the other a spoiled brat having an affair with a rich man. Stunning desert images through-out, a criminally under-rated film. Beyond The Clouds is a collection of stories, all visually precise, especially a story set in a town by the sea, all about failed love.
The Conformist - Bertolucci’s stunning parable of Fascism, about a man who fails in life, emerging into Fascism because its easier for him, as well as a great impersonal façade to hide his crippling demons, which turns him first into a murderer then a joke as it turns that he has chosen the wrong political side.
Christ Stopped At Elobi - A liberal exiled in fascist Italy. A long story, watching the man slowly becoming part of the landscape and interact with the people, who are kind but won’t let him leave. A lovely, complex film.
Shoah - 10 hour documentary on the holocaust. Interviews with survivors, moving from location to location, giving simple testimony over the horrors unleashed. Devastating through simple accumulation, some scenes feeling unbearable. It took me days to watch it.
The Son, Mother And Son & Moloch - Three Sokorov films. Mother And Son watches a son watching his mother die, Moloch about Hitler in holiday seclusion as World War 2 rages and The Son about the Japanese Emperor at the end of World War 2. All slow, moody, never gives obvious psychology, simply allowing us to watch and interpret ourselves. And its visually stunning.
Weeping Meadows - Three hours of Eastern European history, the story of a family, from a couple meeting, running away together, trying to survive in an unforgiving world. Finally comes the war where tragedy hits. Beautiful images, stillness suggesting an evolving and world and a struggle to survive within it. Images of floods are especially beautiful.
Damnation & Weikmeister Harmonies - Two Bela Tarr films, both stunning, moving, elaborate shots on depression, living Eastern Europe. Stunning.
Palms - A three-hour meditation on life, through shots, continues voice over, mood. Once you get into the mood its addictive, various emotions that might not seem to link come together in beautiful ways the way they would in an inquisitive mind.
Edward Munk - Peter Watkins epic about the early 20th Century artist, dramatising some of the history but mainly using silence, voice-over and a sense of stillness to suggest the inner torment of a genius. A true piece of art.
Bob Le Flambour & Leon Mon, Petre - Two Jean-Pierre Melville films, one about a gambler down on his luck planning a heist, the other about a priest during World War 2. One realistic, one not. Both atmospheric, humane. Both stunning pieces of cinema.
Pauline At The Beach - A stunning Eric Rohmer film, about a girl and her aunt at the beach, watching the affairs with adults. A mood of complicated romantic feelings and point of views, no-one ever truly sure what the want. An indispensable film.
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter… And Spring - A story of a boy becoming a man, finding out about love, loss, murder, before finding peace. Its a wonderful film. To explain any more would give away too much but simply has to be seen.
Show Me Love - Swedish lesbians but it is better than it sounds. A very interesting, subtle, non-exploitative love story, done against a working class background. Just a lovely, beautiful film.
49th Parallel - Nazi’s get sunk in Canadian waters in pre-1941 America, having to travel through Canada to get to the safety of America, getting picked off by fate one by one. Has great moments, such as Nazi’s meeting German farmers and finding another kind of Germany, which they turn out to hate, as these Germans show decency and humanity, as well as the Nazi’s against a writer living in the backwoods, who simply shows them up with humane ideas and competency. A beautiful film.
Sansho The Bailiff - A bailiff is killed and his family are split up, the son and daughter becoming slaves to the killer of father. They grow up, the son escapes, slowly tries to get his family back together, and get back the pride of his family past, fighting for the fairness his father proposed, only for life to take darker turns. It’s a lovely, delicate film, having one of the most beautiful and subtle suicides ever in film. It involves a lake and is so simple that it takes your breath away. Even though the tale has dark elements, inhumanity and cruelty are never allowed to dominate.
Cutter’s Way - A wonderful film about loss, about life failing, about how to deal with life’s failures, about people‘s disappointment with one another. I wrote about this earlier this year so won’t stick around but it was the start of Jeff Bridges becoming a terrific actor.
Inland Empire - An odd, non-dramatic dream of what life is. I can’t really write a short piece on this as its still rolling around my head. Just a beautiful film that will grow over the years.
Tideland - A story of a girl going perhaps mad in mid-western America. A beautiful film about the fantasy and oddity going on inside everyone’s head, no matter how normal they deny individuality.
Southland Tales - A wonderfully odd, messy story about Bush America. It may be silly, it may have lots of strange aspects that never come together in a plot, but it’s a mood, a story of emotional dysfunctional amidst your own stupidity, and those elements are integral to the pulse and heart-beat of Bush America. A weird twin to DePalma’s Redacted.
The Big Doll's House & The Big Bird Cage - Another two films I wrote about before this year so won’t say much. Just lots of fun, an unapologetic pulp. Women in prison. What more do you want.
Horror Of Dracula - Is cheating as I have seen it before but not for years, not in proper ratio, not in a transfer that shows up the wonderful technicolour. Has a wonderful sense of suggestion, in its erotic aspects, in its suggestion of sexuality. Its terrific in how it uses visuals to give its undertones, never explains, yet manages to be very clear in its interests. A beautiful film that ages wonderful.
Dracula Has Risen From The Grave - Same as above as I have seen it but not for years and not in proper treatment. I originally thought this was one of the weaker Dracula’s but on rewatching find it to be interesting, with wonderful moments such as the Castle Dracula castle hitting the tip of a church, thus cursing it, Dracula turning a priest into his slave, a savant who’s obnoxious a lot of the times, Dracula fighting an atheist and Dracula being impaled on a cross. It’s got a lot of energy that I can’t help but love.

BEST TV I SAW THIS YEAR. MOSTLY ON DVD SO NOT ALL MADE THIS YEAR.
I never watch TV shows when they’re made as most TV ads annoy me. So most are seen once the fad is over, with a few exceptions. Thus a few are older shows that I became obsessed by this year. And the reasons stated are longer in some cases as the shows can be complex. As the below list shows, I’ve had a great year watching TV shows. (and watched loads of Adam West Batman’s. Sweet.) So that’s the explanation.
Battlestar Galactica: Razor and Season 4 - I’ll be getting to this one as the final season begins in January but this is one terrific series about a society escaping from genocide. Last season ended with the nastiest twist in sci-fi television history (not writing what it is). The entire show is full of selfish, odd characters, a weird meld of politics, action, character and religion. Unmissible.
The Wire Seasons 4 & 5 - Will be getting to this one also in more detail. Even though it is now being over-hyped to hell to a degree that now seems to ignore the rest of television history, which is never a good thing, it’s still an amazing series, full of terrific character and breadth, into the cyclical nature of modern society and bureaucracy. Its full of strange, selfish yet intriguing actions throughout. Highpoint is the death of Bodie in Season 4, the kind of action that knowing the character for four years in various situations makes all the more tragic.
Deadwood (All Seasons) - A total stunner. I don’t like westerns and only started watching as I got a disc free on a season of The Wire (which still took me about a year to watch). And then the obsession begins. Will write more on this at some point but the idea of epic history taken slowly, from the point of view of those on the ground, not knowing where their fate leads, is usually never delivered upon. But this show does , focusing on the confused, angry fate meted out to the inhabitants of Deadwood, as the lure of gold ruins everything. The show moves forward in slow increments, with close contact grudges, communication between those who have to stick together but don’t like one another, betrayals that lead to problems lasting for years. All the actors are terrific, all have great moments but the Sweregen-Bulloch interaction gives the show a wonderfully confused, grudgingly tolerant heart-beat.
The Venture Brothers Seasons 1 & 2 - This one is difficult to explain in that it’s a strange sci-fi animated comedy, with a sixties style that has been left to wither and die into the modern era, has clones, magicians, and lots of nerds. Its hilarious once you get into it but will take a few episodes. Can’t write anything more about it without giving away what should be simply experienced to see whether you’re on its twisted wavelength or not.
Futurama: Bender’s Big Score and Beast With A Billion Backs - Bender’s Game let things down a little with its dull fantasy game section but the first two were wonderfully inventive sci-fi comedies. The Lovecraft with jokes Beast movie was my favourite, especially Nixon’s head saying “And King Kong’s too old.” Genius.
Robbery Homicide Division - A Michael Mann show that lasted about ten episodes before being cancelled. It was shot to HD, was about cops and stars Tom Sizemore. Despite looking like just another cop show it’s the best cop show on the decade outside of The Wire. Mann doesn’t do anything new in regards to moving off old obsessions but these demons have enough juice to keep the new show going. Sizemore gives one of his best acting moments in this and the story has a wonderful, continual sense of non-stop predatory madness fighting against responsibility. These are long-term addicts to street violence working in the show, which makes it a hard sell. Its not as good as Mann’s Crime Story (best cop show of the 1980’s) but comes up well with early, darker Miami Vice episodes.
The League Of Gentlemen - I was always annoyed by the existence of this show before, thinking it one of those hip new shows that get on my nerves, without ever seeing it. It just annoyed me. And then this year I watched it and got addicted very fast, buying all seasons, Christmas special, film, pantomime, concert film within a scarily short time. Full of odd characters and points of views, jokes that are subtle and performance/character-based rather than one-liners, lots of odd horror influences and instincts moving through a traditional English village. Just hilarious and genuinely odd. One of those shows you think it’s a miracle its so popular but sometimes that simply happens.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - It’s a nice little show, probably the least in this list as it can have weak sentimental moments, but does pay service to the films that inspired it, and does have nice little human and odd moments throughout. It’s solid sci-fi, which is harder to pull off than anyone would expect (as anyone watching the last season of Dr Who can attest to.) So even though its patchy, the interesting moments, such the John Conner- Cameron the Female Terminator sub-plot, the dysfunctional uncle, are always interesting, and make up for weaker moments. It’s kinda like Firefly in its likable minor tone.

TV ED WOOD AWARD FOR SO BAD I CAN’T TURN IT OFF
Heroes - All I can write is that its still stunningly addictive in its awfulness. You know you’ll feel dirty in the morning but just can’t help it. It’s like a bad itch, a urinary infection, an embarrassing trip to the doctor. But at least its better than Lost.

Step Brothers

2008-12-03T09:39:00.004Z

I'm actually writing this brief posting due to a pretty dumb article that House Next Door posted (as they are normally a very good site this one was a bit of a shocker) but it was about Judd Apatow (Guy who made Knocked up and 40 year old Virgin, and producer of many other films) and Adam McKay, who made three brilliant film with Will Ferrell, which were Anchorman, Tallageda Nights and Step Brothers.

Now I know when writing about film, sometimes the urge to be pretentious can get the better of you (or to out-pretentious the film) but this article http://www.thehousenextdooronline.com/2008/12/step-brothers.html

is self-serious to an absurd degree.

Its very old-fashioned as writing, seems to be suggesting (boringly) that the films by Apatow are better as they are more realistic, try to bring in realistic emotions and follow-ups to situations. Which I don't think they do. Now I like the films well enough but they are rude sitcoms, with more swearing and a few more pot-holes in plot but always end up back at a conclusion that feels obvious in the set-up. Which is fine. As entertainments they work well, are better crafted than most. But Apatow has only directed two films, so he is probably still developing but he hasn't really shown uniqueness as a director as of yet. His stand-up film looks promising though, a bit odd in idea.

As a producer he has been much more interesting, working on The Garry Shandling Show and producing the Adam McKay films. These are broad, absurdist films. No-one is quite human but there are stunning little details and bits of dialogue throughout that throw the films off into their own universe. They films are always taking on the vibe of their protagonists so these obsessions seem to dominate the look and mood of the films, characters always structured broadly around the main part, to up the absurdity, whether it be a fantasy news room in Anchorman or the broad white-trash family. Structurally they don't correspond the the typical three-act structures the way Apatow's do, while broad have people saying and believing things that are as odd as anything in life. (We live in a world where George Bush was elected twice, where religious maniacs of all faiths kill for obscure reason, where people hurt others for the most stupid reasons. A sitcom-type fairy-tale of happy endings and understanding is bogus). Any time McKay's films get near a typical narrative structure its to do an insane parody that will go on and on, with odd dialogue (my favourite "I'm going to pleasure myself tonight to the thought of you punching him in the face"), pushing the limits of convention. Which makes the strange motivations feel real and funny, if you keep your eyes open for how insane the world is. Its very much constructing what's going on, making it feel broad but still threatening, be as far as you can get away with and still be funded. Its very much in keeping with what 1940 and 50's directors were doing with noir, romances, westerns, taking a conventional genre and making it personal with odd character streaks, motivations, don't try and be perfect, see what happens. Step Brothers is a far more naked parody and twisted working on delayed maturity than the realistic take of other films of its type, of growing up, even though that's not what these types ever want, then playing on that instinct. Step Brothers lets all the strangeness creep to the surface, actually builds from honesty about oddity. Its the healthy side of culture. (and you know, seeing two grown men kicking the hell out of a group of annoying kids is the perfect way to end a film)

So this is my very base contrast and reaction to what I thought of as a very stiff, unimaginative and regressive article.

Odd movies

2008-11-30T09:34:00.003Z

This is just a collection of random thoughts from someone who has been in the mood to watch dumb movies for the past day.

Well save one. I did watch Breach, the movie about an FBI guy who sells secrets to the Russians over fifteen years, played by Chris Cooper, who is being watched closely by an underling, played by Ryan Phillippe, who's trying to catch him out. This is a good but not great movie. Objectively I would says its the best film I saw of the bunch that I watched yet isn't as much fun as the dumber stuff. It's about liars but is a bit self-serious. It really is lacking in wicked fun. The director Billy Ray, also made Shattered Glass, another film about a liar, which was also good but had the same fatal lack of humour. I'm not suggesting making them comedies or ignoring the damage the central characters do but at least have a sense of humour, have some fun with the wickedness of the central character. perhaps make those chasing him a little less noble, more messed up, ambitious, less mouthpieces of morality, so the drama can have some bite. It does have some terrific subtle sparring scenes between the two actors. Cooper is great, both scene to scene and later, when you realise the performance does make sense when you think of the various facets of the central spy, who is a man of many contradictions. Phillippe does well with the under-written young innocent guy part, is again showing signs of being an interesting actor on the make, who just needs to age a little. Laura Linney also shows up, as the agent over-seeing the investigation. She's got all the exposition yet manages to suggest someone human. It's an excellent, spare performance. So the film is worth seeing.

The other stuff is pure hokum and all the more fun because of it. To start with a Roger Moore Bond, For Your Eyes Only. This one was where Moore started to show his age, and would have been better if they had changed to Dalton here, would have had some real charge in this story, which has lots of diving, foot chases, hanging out of helicopters, lots of scenes for a young man. (Octopussy and View To A Kill have the same problem, amazing stunt, cutting to a man in his mid-fifties looking old, back to amazing stunt. Which is fun in a different sort of way.) But after a shaky first twenty minutes, the film does have a decent plot of double-crosses and Greek smugglers which you can follow, has some terrific action beats (especially a snow chase and a final mountain climb), and despite his age, you do have Moore. I used to dislike these Moore films, when I was being a little pretentious in my late teens, but really Bond played by Moore is a blast. He shows Brosnan how campy Bond should be done.

From sublime hokum to ridiculous hokum. Mission Impossible 2. My sister got me this for Christmas one year. I used to not think much of it, of it being a weak follow-up to the terrific DePalma film, which copied set-pieces (another hi-tech break-in but this one has no tension) and has a really dumb plot (man decides to kill millions to profiteer on shares to sell the cure, even though if he has the cure it shows he was likely the perpetrator). The film is directed by John Woo and lacks a lot of his usual shoot-him up style. Its also essentially a rip-off of a great Hitchcock film Notorious (man sends in a woman who he is in love with to spy on another man, who has they key to the plot, who once had a relationship to the woman). The script is by Robert Towne, his worst ever in lots of ways (it goes from decent scenes to clunky scenes with abandon). So lots of talent and the film never works as a high-speed Mission Impossible film. But time has been kinder to it than expected. Away from the expectations, it kind of works in its own dumb way. Woo is way over the top in direction, a lot of it cheesy but it kinda works in a comic way. And the villain is a total beast, is actually oddly more sympathetic and a Woo-like creature than Cruise (he has a great bit with a scarf and has a henchman who's obviously in love with him). Its kind of like Hard Target, where it jumps between good stuff and utter tosh, and is riddled with Cruise doing ridiculous action moves that he thinks looks good but are just so funny (like Van Damme). But it has aged well into being a slightly guilty-pleasure movie, far better than expected. And its way more entertaining and cinematic than the TV-like part 3, which had action which you couldn't follow and a plot that you couldn't care enough to poke holes in.

Now to the films I couldn't sit through. Started to watch Wicker Park, which had a decent plot (I fast-forwarded through it on realisation that the film was defeating me, and it should have worked) but has terrible direction by Paul McGuigan. The film had good shots at times then really dull ones thus had no momentum, pace or story-telling that you could focus on. It was about obsessive love but was shot cold, never felt that there was any build or character. It was like watching a series of shots that didn't connect. It was alienating even in the most basic set-ups that someone like DePalma could have made brilliant. It's lead Josh Hartnett, who I've liked in other films, was awful here. I could sense what he was meant to suggest from story fragments but never saw it ever in his acting (I use the term charitably for this film). Twenty minutes in and I couldn't take it anymore. No-one was doing their job properly and I'd had enough. So I did a quick fast-forward to get the general idea if I was missing anything, wasn't.

Also tried to watched another old Christmas gift out of basic curiosity, which also lasted about twenty minutes, Van Helsing. Now I saw and kinda liked this on release (but I was hung-over at the time so who knows) but since I got this film I've tried to get through this thing and failed. Its just so stupid. It never takes a break from being stupid and soiling the monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman, Jekyll and Hyde) that it uses. Just terrible. Hopefully my lust for pulp has been sated and I can move on. I blame Wicker Park. That was the first one I tried to watch and it sent me to inanity afterwards by its awfulness.

Till next time. Same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel.

Inland Empire

2008-11-25T22:32:00.006Z

This will be brief. Inland Empire, David Lynch's video-shot three hour epic is an amazing film. I urge anyone who reads this to watch it. Laura Dern is brilliant in a lead part that changes at times drastically scene to scene, going from the highest to the lowest of society, a character that evolves into something more complicated than originally suggested. Lynch meanwhile keeps the film paced brilliantly, going on seeming detours that always click into place at an emotional level when he needs them to, without ever showing a through-line for an obvious plot.

The trouble about writing about this film is that saying anything about what occurs both will be confusing to the reader and will spoil the film. Its a film that's best simply to be experienced as it unfolds. Like Bunuel, Lynch keeps strands of mood, acting and ideas building, plays them against one another to continually surprise the viewer in its ideas and accumulative mood. The film does add up to a complete experience that doesn't cheat and is very satisfying. (although stay for the end credits as that's part of the film and its mood) So basically, try and avoid finding out anything about the film before seeing it.

Its a film that's another argument that Lynch, along with Cronenberg and Malick, is the best of the directors to emerge from the 1970's.

New Dr Who

2008-11-25T00:02:00.003Z

Since its being ridiculous so far (yet still not really going far enough for me as of yet into moronic suggestions) I'd say seriously get someone from the League Of Gentlemen as the new doctor, if you want wacky, potentially dark and interesting.

Now, also going older why not Christopher Lee. Sure he's old but Peter Cushing got to play the doctor and I don't think Lee should be left out (plus he'd scare the hell out of any monster).

There's also make the doctor a lesbian (with a monkey). I'd accept David Morrissey with a monkey (but Morrissey seems too obvious, doesn't he).

Or even try the re-animated corpse of the recently dead.

Tidelands

2008-11-24T23:31:00.002Z

Tidelands is a wonderful, very misunderstood film that had the bad luck to follow both Del Toro's wonderful Pan's Labyrinth and Terry Gilliam's woeful Brothers Grimm.

Pan's Labyrinth, like Tidelands, follows an abandoned child through a dangerous, fantastical arena that may be in her own head. The child in Pan's is in war-torn Spain while the Tideland protagonist is in middle America following the death of her parents. They are very different films. Pan's has a romance to it, despite the genuine danger of fascists and their kind, has a wonderful sense of romanticism in the images dreamed up by its heroine. Tidelands is far more psychotic. It's protagonist is in denial about her dead father rotting in a decaying house (she is first seen preparing his heroin), about the madness as shown by the two humans she meets, a mad semi-lobotomised dreamer who wants to destroy a train and his strange, twisted sister. She talks to doll's heads, sees her father taxidermied by her human friends, seems childish throughout, unsure. Its a very brave film in that the heroine is unlikable some of the time, yet is always interesting. It's very difficult to write more about the film without giving away much of its pleasures but it is a film that has to be seen by serious cineasts. It's slightly messy but is that adds to its charm.

Its 180 degrees away from The Brother's Grimm, which was a film so wretched that no auteur would ever want to be caught downwind. That was a film that made you wonder if Gilliam had gone completely senile, was lacking in basic character and pacing, had one of the dullest final acts that's ever been my misfortune to watch. And it was really stupid, lacking anything tied to the wonders of dark European fairy tales. And in Tidelands, within a simple narrative, he gets the old European fairytale tone exactly right, plays on the horror in mid-America but never over-does it. The pacing here is deliberate, is never boring. Its a wonderful, under-rated film that deserves a lot more attention than it gets. In some ways, it feels like a companion piece to Fear And Loathing, with its view of rotting America both outside and inside the character's heads, and is potentially as unlikable to many viewers. But its is a tough, adventurous film, they kind that should be made and acclaimed. It makes you wonder how Gilliam went so horribly wrong in Brothers Grimm, which now seems like a jarring mess amidst a series of strong films. At least Gilliam is back to being a proper director and his forthcoming film looks fascinating.

Speed Racer

2008-11-17T10:55:00.004Z

Speed Racer is an odd one this year. Its a film that simply put people off in advertising. To be honest, is it wasn't for the Wachowski's directing and writing it, I wouldn't have bothered either. But its such a unique film, like Ang Lee's Hulk, Robert Altman's Popeye or Walter Hill's Streets Of Fire.

The latter, like Speed Racer, was produced by Joel Silver, who also produced Hudson Hawk and The Hudsucker Proxy, other very odd films hated by many and loved by a select minority. Silver usually makes blockbusters like 48 Hours, Predator, Die Hard and Lethal Weapon. And then he goes a bit mad for some tastes. And in odd times, his mad turns helps create the Matrix trilogy and V For Vendetta, odd popular films for the masses.

But that is a divergence. Speed Racer is such a fun film for those who get on its wavelength, and such a disaster for those who don't. It does have video game look at times but that's CGI. It's really a live action movie that sticks to the car-crazy focus of a child who loves toy cars, silly ninja's, monkey's. It's a film for your inner eight-year old visually. The cars do things you wanted to see at that age, made by proper directors who remember such things, who can think of what a child would think a future-world should be like, what it would be like to play with those things on a sugar-bender. (the film shows this literally also) The film is terrific at knowing those small bits of fantasy that's plying inside the heads of certain characters (Speed, as a child, imagines driving in a race, done in the style a child would draw, which is a visual stunner, his little brother always imagining himself an his pet monkey in epic crude anime fights, which we see). If you don't get the joy of that type of fantasy, the film is not for you. The film has cars spinning, flipping over other cars, making insane skids, blowing up, making long jumps, cars going on gravity-defying loops, climbs and descents.

Its not flawless. There are some moments where the film gets a little too literal in dialogue and voice-over (its meant for kids so sometimes things are spelled out a little too much at times). Half an hour in, while setting up the villain, the film does sag a little. Its only for a few minutes, things that could have been pruned but you do feel it. But some of the editing is tremendous. The brilliant first twenty minutes jumps back and forth through two races, between Speed racing and his brother Rex racing, gives small flashbacks within these races that gives all the backstory needed, with clear emotion, framing, pacing while still having a tremendous dramatic punch that is unique to proper cinema craftsmen. All the races work beautifully, especially the brilliant Road Warrior-influenced middle race, which is all about going fast against people who are brutally vicious thugs, which includes flipping a car and punching the driver of the other car as you flip over him. The final race does have a little bit too much exposition but manages truly insane shots, such as a long 90 degree dip of road, with a crashing car falling towards Speed as he navigates it, and adrenaline rushing moments as cars skidding on the edges over many long drops.

The best visual element DVD is that the colours are brighter and clearer in the chases (film goes so fast you have to be paying attention to what's going on but is more focused with brighter colours) and all the shots of images flowing in and out of one another make definite visual sense. It is a film that was best seen for certain moments on the big screen but it does translate better to television than films such as The Incredible Hulk, which looks cheap and unforced in comparison. (This comparison also rang true in the cinema).

To end, this one still is my favourite by far or the summer movies, followed by the eccentric Hellboy 2. Others, such as Iron Man and The Dark Knight (which I'm warming to, despite its flaws) work well but don't go to that extra bit of madness that for me great cinema thrives upon.

Don't trust a sequel with Requiem in the title

2008-11-16T15:46:00.008Z

Its not a good idea.

Two sequels, Alien V Predator 2 and Battle Royale 2, have the word requiem as sub-headings. Both films are considered embarrassments.

It's difficult to say which one is worse. Battle Royale 2 follows a well-respected first cult film, and Alien V Predator 2 followed Alien V Predator (and is actually better than the first one, not a difficult feat, by having one fairly decent idea, of aliens amuck in a hospital, doing unseemly acts).

Battle Royale 2 does try and be different from the first but is unfortunately moronic in how it puts its ideas across. The ideas start off well. First Battle Royale was about kids fighting one another on an island, forced by neck straps with explosives on them, this plan worked by adults who are sick of the children's awful behaviour. The first half of this film has one of the kids escaping from Battle Royale 1 learning to fight, returning to Japan as terrorist, blowing up buildings, declaring war on the grown-ups, having his own group of armed kids. A nice idea, kids finally having enough of adult behaviour and getting rough. The adults send another batch of doomed kids after the first lot, still with the explosive neck straps. Are told kill the other kids on an island base or die themselves. So they attack the island. That bit works. Its very Saving Private Ryan in look. As soon as the kids fight their way to their enemies, a way is found to disable the neck explosives and so the kids join up. Now the pulp joy is gone. The kid from the first film makes speeches, which are dull, take about half an hour it feels like. They are moronic and the actor saying them is awful. He is living in a cave (like Bin laden) but talks about saving the children's smiles (like... em Michael Jackson) And then encourages all his people to fight against incoming troops even though there has been an escape route they've known about forever. So we have a half hour of them fighting when they could have escaped a long time ago. It's over and over while you wonder why you're watching the fight and what does it have to do with the first half or any resolution. It also goes on without much sense of tactics. Just fighting similar moves, is very repetitive. Its even worse than Robocop 3 (oh yeas, by the by the director of Robo 4, the reboot, made requiem for a dream, so don't get too excited over that film, with this requiem curse in effect) Its good that girl as well as boys get to have their peckinpah-ish slow-motion death throes but that's all its got. There isn't really an ending but people wind up in Afghanistan, sentimentalising that situation, just like Rambo 3. It's just so stupid.

The real problem with this film, beyond terrible plotting and lack in basic filmic craft in the second half, is that the characters are objecting to something that was an outlandish satire, not the real world. So they're objecting to nothing real, the film-makers not tying it to anything that a viewer can connect with. The best idea, child terrorists against their parents, could have been very, very dark satire but is used for speeches that say nothing about anything.

Alien V Predator 2 has a base plot but I can't be bothered explaining it. Aliens fight predators in the rain, and we can't see much of it (but more than the first film, so it wins out over that one).

So which one is worse. Really, who cares. Just be careful of sequels with requiem in the title. Take it from someone not wise enough to know better.

Watchmen trailer 2

2008-11-14T09:57:00.001Z

Well this trailer is even worse than the first. I don't get it. Every time anything on this film comes up it's stated as looking brilliant, suggested that anyone who doesn't like it are kill-joys. Even though they've changed the great ending to something (which has a great sense of cosmic awe) to a loose nuke cliche that sounds awful. As someone who knows the book very well I'm getting pretty mad about this one. You see more oft he film scenes in the new trailer and everything seems shot like an eighties Queen or Duran Duran video (tons of effects, campy looks, riffs on other's images with no substance) I was watching what were visually stunning moments in the book that I got bored watching in the trailer. Lots of dull slo-mo and moody vain actors trying and failing to suggest depth. It's not a good sign for the film. Worse is that everyone seems to be acting in a comic book manner, very dull gruff voices. What Alan Moore wrote was not anything like that (see my earlier post on Watchmen). All the positivity on this film feels to me like desperation for a Watchman film being made, so you can't say anything bad about it. Hope I'm wrong and the film's good but its looking less likely the more I see.

Mars Attacks!!!

2008-11-11T23:13:00.006Z

Ak ak ak!!!!

Have just been watching Mars Attacks, with sound system turned way up, to hear every ray gun, thundering of every building and army tank blown up, every absurd martian scream. Its a riotous film, one of the late nineties nasty sci-fi satires/amusing rip on sci-fi conventions (along with Verhoeven's amazing Starship Troopers and the Wachowski's Matrix films, as well as Carpenter's Escape From LA, which wasn't as good) before sci-fi got bland again. It's Tim Burton at the end of his great run (From Pee-Wee to this film, with heights such as Beetlejuice, Batman Returns and Ed Wood) before he forgot to edit out the boring scenes or to hire proper writers. (Planet Of the Apes and Big Fish have some truly awful writing and Charlie and The Chocolate Factory lacks solid, focused imagery)

But this is the good stuff. We have an absurd notion of fifties-style martians attacking and the government treating it like they would anything else, stalling, putting off decisions, failing to ever have an idea how to proceed but worried about the press. Hundreds die, including some of their own people, before they do anything. Even then its too little too late. The martians make no sense and the film has a terrific mood of normal common sense invaded by something. People still grip at reality even as the film gets completely absurd and out of control. The film is full of small details that accumulate, has lots of clutter dominating all these people, they unable to get out alive.

See Nicholson's president have important speeches that no-one listens to, that the film puts of to the side of the screen, sounds and visuals of other people getting on with their lives dominating, or proclaim that "I want the American people to know that they still have two out of three of the legislative branches working for them, and that ain't bad" or give the least assuring, most nervous speech to the nation after a national disaster ever. See Nicholson try and talk the martians around while patronising them to an obscene level. George W. Bush must have seen this performance and decided he had to challenge it in incompetence. But even here he fails. He simply isn't as interesting as Nicholson. (It's great to see Nicholson and Rod Steiger talk about little green men as if it's a serious situation)

See the martians blow up congress, Easter island statues, Las Vegas buildings, attack trailer trash and old folk homes. See Jack Black killed as he tries to surrender to the invading hordes while holding the American flag. See the martians saying we are your friends as they mow down innocent people. See Danny Devito killed in a junkyard of old Vegas signs, as he offers the martians his services as a lawyer "You want to conquer the world, you're gonna need lawyers!" See Martin Short try to seduce a martian dressed like a woman, never noticing that something is very wrong while bringing her into the white house (to the Kennedy room to get laid). See the dove of peace and the family dog killed viciously by martians. See Pierce Brosnan give his best performance as a clueless Brit professor who ends up decapitated and declaring his love to Sarah Jessica Parker (whose head is attacked to her dog) in a crashing spaceship. See two black kids defend the president in a white house attack, as they've played video games and know how to mow down the little buggers while everyone else gets killed. The invention goes on and on. I'm amazed that no-one noticed how nuts this film was during production. Its got the look of a film that got away from the studio.

So its fair to say that I'm a fan. My advice to anyone reading this is to track this film down and watch it immediately. And turn the sound way up, because that's where you'll get the best effect.