Memories: The Dog and The Vacuum Cleaner

(It is near to the anniversary of the death of our second family dog. I wanted to remember her with this.)

The dog doesn't like our vacuum cleaner. By 'don't like,' I mean, she barks whenever it is in use and tries to bite it when it gets too much for her. She hates it more when it is in traditional floor cleaning mode, only getting annoyed with the hose mode when it is pointed in her direction (which is sometimes hard not to do). She yelps and screams and yaps and shouts at the thing, as if this alone will cause it to stop.

This is rather ironic in many ways. Firstly, I'm not going to stop cleaning the house because the dog barks. Simple as that.

Secondly, she seems to almost enjoy the barking, as she enjoys barking at other things (like her food, for example: she loves to bark at it for about a minute before devouring of it. She also likes to bark at the postman, the dustmen, passersby and even when she is about to be taken for a walk. I sometimes wonder if she is not a little mad. So we might as well let her bark. In fact, I let her bark at the vacuum cleaner in the vain hope that she will go hoarse (a nice visual pun, if I don't mind me saying) but, alas, that has yet to happen.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the main reason for vacuuming the house is because of the bloody dog in the first place. She must be the most predigious moulter, and therefore producer, of dog hair I've ever seen. I'm half tempted to get the Guinness book of records round. I have to empty the cylinder about 8 times in the course of cleaning a 3-bedroomed semi-detached house. (Note my lack of branding the vacuum cleaner and using the term 'vacuuming' – I don't like to advertise.) Although it gets annoying, hearing her bark at every turn, it is hard not to resist doing it deliberately at her, which makes her more annoyed and bark more frequently and with greater vigour, if only to piss her off even more.

She now recognises the machine as it is brought into the house. She stands in front of it, eyeing it suspiciously, waiting for the moment to bark. I assume it is the noise that drives her wild, the high-pitched sound of the whirring, for as soon as it is switched on, she begins her barking, and her strange dancing around it. She is encouraged to bark if you bark along with her, but the amusement value soon withers.

The most fun is found in the kitchen and its tiled floor. It is here that the dog hides under the kitchen table, like an impromptu kennel, and calls home, so perhaps feels particularly territorial when it comes to the area. However, the tiled floor provides no grip for her padded feet or claws, and she skids around at the best of times. Even more when a vacuum cleaner is being aimed at her and she desperately wants to get out of the way. Seeing her skid and slide and frantically escape the evil machinations of the vacuum, it almost makes the barking bearable.

Almost.

Film Notes: Road To Perdition

You have to feel a little sorry for someone who wins the Oscar for best director with their first film. What the hell do you do next? Fortunately for us, Sam Mendes decided he wanted to adapt a graphic novel for the screen with Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, with great results. Set in Chicago, 1931, Hanks is Mike Sullivan, a hitman for crime boss, John Rooney (Newman), who treats him more like a son, much to the chagrin of his real son, Connor, who is waiting to take over the family business. After a meeting where Connor and Sullivan kill rival gangsters is witnessed by Sullivan’s eldest son (eager to find out exactly what his father does with his mysterious briefcase), Sullivan’s wife and other son are murdered and he is forced to go on the run with his surviving boy, all the while contemplating his revenge.

Road to Perdition is a beautiful film to watch, with some sumptuously composed shots, the lights and shadows playing across the screen, capturing the electrifying moments that intersperse the story. The story, while successfully capturing the trappings of the gangster genre, is actually about the nature of the relationship between father and sons, comparing and contrasting the pairings of Sullivan and his son, Rooney with Sullivan, and Rooney with his real son. This is the heart of the film, and the actors are more than capable of portraying these characters, both tough and thoughtful.

Hanks is a great tough guy, his character kept at an emotional distance from the audience for the first part of the film, as we see him through his son’s eyes, who sees a distant yet loving father. His son, Michael, played by Tyler Hoechlin, is almost a counterpart for the audience, as we get to know the world of his father through his eyes and their journey together, and is portrayed very well by the young lad. Paul Newman, still electric after all these years, brings his gravitas and nobility to the crime boss, pragmatic yet honourable in the vicious world he occupies. Jude Law is almost unrecognizable as a hitman sent after Sullivan, a wiry, dirty, ratty character oozing nastiness and danger. The film is a wonderful piece, perhaps a little slow in places as it tries a little too hard to be ‘epic’ but not to the detriment of story overall. It doesn't rank with American Beauty, but is worthy second effort from Mendes and a gorgeously shot genre film.

Rating: DAVE

Film Notes: Hellboy

Like my other reviews of comic book movies, I should point out my appreciation of the source material. I really enjoy the Hellboy comic - Mike Mignola's creation is a wonderful idea, the artwork is atmospheric and gothic while still being recognisable as the product of a craftsman, using shadow and line work to express so much, and the stories are a lot of fun, packed with action and folklore tales. So, I was looking forward to this film, especially as it was directed by Guillermo del Toro, who did such a great job with Blade II, and because he is also a fan of the book and got Mike involved in the process instead of taking over.

This IS Hellboy on film – it is a wonderful adaptation to the big screen. Ron Perlman IS Hellboy – while not exactly the same as the comic vision (to my mind), it is just so right, he is the man for the job, acting and sounding exactly like Hellboy should without giving way to focus groups or a bigger film star who would want their face to come through more. The mood and the atmosphere is portrayed as in the comic, as if the comic was simply animated in real life (much like Robert Rodriguez has done with Sin City). It was a joy to watch, a visual delight, and a lot of fun.

It isn't perfect, by any means. Although the story is mostly the same as the comic story The Seeds of Destruction, it uses the introduction of a new member of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defence, a human being from the FBI, as a story telling technique to introduce Hellboy to us. This is a valid way of letting the audience know what's going on without it sounding like a lot of exposition, but it seemed a forced storytelling technique and set the film off-balance. There was little in the way of explaining the story in the books without any confusion or feeling that you were missing out on things, but we comic book readers are more able to take in strange and unusual stuff without needing it spoon-fed.

Our newbie, Myers, is the new 'caretaker' for Hellboy, a 7-foot-tall, red demon with horns, a tail and a stone right hand who takes care of all the nasty things that leak into our dimension, with the aid of Abraham Sapien, a water-based creature and empathic senses, both under the supervision of Dr Bruttenholme (John Hurt), the man who 'discovered' Hellboy when he came to Earth when Rasputin opened a portal to the dimension of the Seven Gods of Chaos during World War II. Meanwhile, Rasputin has been resurrected after his death and his returning to his plans of bringing about the end of the world using Hellboy as was originally planned. But does Hellboy have a say in his destiny?

Selma Blair plays Liz Sherman, a pyrokinetic, who is also the love of Hellboy's life, and their interaction is very sweet. The emphasised dimension is the father-son relationship between Hellboy and Bruttenholm, which comes across as strong and unspoken, with Hurt bringing a little gravitas to the film (but not too much because it's still a comic book film). Myers (Rupert Evans) is rather unnecessary, and unfortunately comes across as rather wet. Sapien, played by Doug Jones but voiced by David Hyde-Pierce, is underused, but looks and sounds good, boding well for a sequel as long as they use a story that employs him more fully. The bad guys are just bad guys – no need for explanation or characterisation, because evil things are just evil things in the world of Hellboy and don't need backstory. Perlman is great, natural and completely in character and totally believable. Guillermo directs with vim and vigour, but the script isn't his strength, with some occasional leaden dialogue and transitions, and the end sequence is a little uneven. Nonetheless, this is a fun film for fans and non-fans alike, and I'm happy about the announcement of a sequel.

Rating: VID

Film Notes: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

(Not all of my reviews are as full as they should be. I'm trying to get all my writing together on this blog, scattered around as it is, so the style of this review might seem different to more recent posts. The theme of this post and the ones over the weekend will be comic book movies.)

I am a fan of comic books. I thought you should know this. With respect to the integrity of this review, my natural bias must be admitted. The original limited series (there were six comics that were eventually collected in a trade paperback edition, which the fancier publishers will term as a 'graphic novel' but I am being honest here, remember), as written by Alan Moore and drawn by Kev O'Neill, was something quite delightful. Using literary characters from novels written at the end of the 19th century in and around London, Moore created the concept of a proto-super hero team, seeing as the origins of the super hero can be clearly traced to the fiction of that time. It was fun, smart, engaging, literary and worked very well as a comic book, as that was the intention. Hollywood, never one to miss up the opportunity to steal a good idea, came calling. And that's where the paths diverged.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (or LXG, the embarrassing abbreviation in an attempt to graft some of the deserved success of the X-Men movies onto the film, indicative of the blinkered belief that this film was a super-hero action blockbuster just because it was a comic book) is a sad, lifeless, sporadically almost interesting affair. The changes to the source material don't help. Mina Murray, instead of being a recovering victim of Dracula, is now an actual vampire, with the whole bloodlust, strength, not easily killed, turning into bats nonsense, and has acquired a Slavic accent for no particularly good reason. Tom Sawyer is, ironically for such a venture, anachronistically thrown into the mix (I think he was published in the 1850's, but I could be wrong) for the sake of adding an American, and to give a woeful father-son type relationship with Allan Quartermain, as manfully played by a disinterested Sean Connery. Dorian Gray is turned from a vain Victorian into an invulnerable dandy, although this does provide a glimmer of entertainment, as Sean Townsend seems to enjoy playing the role for the silliness it is. The Invisible Man is not version from the book (another studio has the film rights to that franchise) so instead we get a cockney villain who stole the formula, played by a man doing an impression of Bob Hoskins, as the excuse for the sort of CGI last seen in The Hollow Man. Captain Nemo, while staying true to the original novels, and the comic book, is transformed into a martial art expert, dispensing foes with kicks and sword, as well as being the inventor/engineer.

The plot, such as it is, follows what Denny O'Neill, a comic book writer of old, calls the 'two fights and a chase' story that is the basic of super hero ideas. There is a big fight to get things started, the League chases the bad guy, and then there is a fight at the end where the good guys win and the bad guys get what's coming to them, with some flimsy character arcs thrown in for our heroes. The presence of cars, even in a film with a submarine the size of the Empire State Building, seems irritating. Machine guns, tanks and armour are used just because it makes the bad guys look tough (which is some nonsense to do with the plot, but it is tangential, at best, to the mechanics of the film), and the whole thing smacks of something trying to be more than it is supposed to be.

I believe that every film, even one derived from another source, should be taken on its own merits and not measured by the original (which is why I rather like From Hell, because it has almost nothing to do with the book at all, and turns the film into a period version of the 'cop on the edge' story, which just happens to be based on historical events) but this is just awful. I wouldn't mind so much if it was an amateur who made such a mess of the adaptation, but the script is by James Robinson, himself a good comic book writer of such books as Starman, The Golden Age and Firearm, so he has no excuse. There is almost nothing worth the two hours spent watching this film, which is a great shame, as the idea behind it is great. Go and buy the original story in its beautiful comic book form instead.

Rating: D

Eat In This Order: Chocolate Memories

(A digression from the norm here on Clandestine Critic – an essay about the physical eating pleasure of chocolate, made more odd by the fact that I can no longer eat chocolate due to it giving me migraines.)

There are various aspects of people’s life that possibly define them in life: Religion; family stability as a child; siblings (or lack thereof); scholastic career; athletic abilities; level of intelligence. But, there is one thing that unites us (and it is not Dr Marten’s boots, whatever Alexei Sayle may have sung) – the way in which we eat chocolate.

The consumption of chocolate plays an enormous part of our lives growing up, and the decisions we make then influence us in our supposed adulthood. The way in which we eat chocolate is such a truism that an entire advert campaign was created solely on this principal. Stand up, Cadbury’s Crème Egg, with ‘How Do You Eat Yours?’ Although this combination of chocolate and fondant is supposed to be a seasonal treat, with it’s connection to the celebration of Easter, when the majority of Catholics are once again allowed to indulge after the six-week abstinence of Lent, it is available year round. (Still, you don’t see adverts until after Christmas, because even Cadbury know they aren’t going to be able to sell eggs then. And they still have Quality Street and Roses to fall back on at that time of year, so don’t feel sorry for them.) And the selling point is that it is an amazingly adaptable confectionery, each method of eating defining what sort of person you are.

There are a variety of different ways to eat a crème egg (eat it whole, bite the top off and scoop out the inside, eat from the larger end and mix both part, or eat all the chocolate off to leave the fondant, to name a few.) But they are not the only chocolate which has multiple ingestion methods, yet these are never mentioned outside of drunken or stoned recollections of students at 3 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

Take the Jaffa cake, for example, which is not strictly speaking a chocolate, but is considered under the broad heading of chocolate, as it wouldn’t be the same if it was covered in nougat or marzipan. Some prefer to eat them whole, to get the lovely combination of chocolate and smashing orangey bit in the middle, while some prefer to nibble round the outside to leave the jaffa magic until the end.

The robust Twix has several combinations. Some take it as a whole and crunch away to sample the delight that is chocolate, caramel and crunchy biscuit. Others prefer to eat away the biscuit to leave the chocolate/caramel combo to be savoured, while some strange people enjoy the immediate removal of the caramel layer to leave the biscuit part at the finish, to contrast the excess of sweetness. (An aside; why bother with Twix if you only like the caramel? Why not just have Caramel? Personally, I think the taste of the Twix caramel is nicer, but perhaps it has to be taken into consideration that the specialised manner of eating plays a part.)

Caramel the bar doesn’t lend itself to the complications of other chocolates, being a straightforward eat, more in common with the caramel treats in Quality Street or Roses, just on a larger scale. The only physical manifestation lies in the attempts to break the segments in the wonderfully visual manner employed in the adverts, where individual chunks break off beautifully from the whole, and that segment is split in half to reveal the rich, sweet, chewy centre. In reality, the segments are usually half broken anyway, never in the symmetrical depiction of the advert, and caramel is oozing out of a badly broken chunk. It’s only then you realise that the advertisers needed about a hundred takes to get the perfect caramel break, and the makers are having a laugh at your expense. No wonder they had to use a cartoon rabbit as the spokesperson (or spokesbunny).

Kit-Kats require you to first crease your finger along the foil, to delineate the individual fingers, before you take the fingers and snap them, again in the manner of the advert, although not with quite the same deafening, kung-fu film soundtrack, wood-snapping noise. But, as they taste horrible, you don’t bother to eat them, so the hands-on aspect is the only excitement.

Double Deckers provide you with a clue in the name – you can eat the top or bottom layer first, depending on your perversion, instead of the mundane eating both at the same time. Curly Wurlys – which are a bit of a cheat as a luxury sweet item as they are about 30 % chocolate, 70 % space – create the choice of eating whole or eating individual curls along the way, but even that doesn’t make them last any longer.

Yorkie is the macho chocolate, where you have to decide to eat the thing whole to prove your manliness, or break your thumbs trying to snap off a chunk so you can pop it in your gob and let it sit there, because it is too big to eat properly. Some chocolates don’t bother enticing eaters with elaborate feeding rituals. Bounty, Milky Way, Crunchie, or any of the bars comprised of nothing but chocolate (Wispa, Dairy Milk, Twirl, Flake, etc.) are simple, old-fashioned, unwrap-and-eat affairs, all delicious in their own way, I’m sure, but purely existing on a comfort food level. However, you are unlikely to hear people eulogising these brand names during a stoner’s feast when a case of the munchies comes on them full force.

A chocolate bar that entwines itself into your memory through the tactile enjoyment of anticipation and consummation is a link to the global union of chocolate love. Chocolate is not very good for us, generally speaking, comprising mostly of sugar and fat. I’m sorry to bring the truth, but it’s true. People may talk about the chemicals that cause a sexual rush for women, and chocolate freaks pretending that chocolate is like a fine wine, and companies using expressions like ‘luxury’ and ‘sensuous’ to describe chocolate, but they are only fooling you. Chocolate, eaten in anything other than moderation, makes you fat, has little nutritional value, and ruins appetites.

Why, then, does everybody know what you are talking about when you admit to your chocolate fetish? The mannerised eating of chocolate is a link with other people, a way to understand another human being, to find out if you can relate to them. If you meet someone new, and want to know if have a common bond, discuss the way you pre-chill your Twix in order to allow the easier separation of the biscuit, leaving a more coherent caramel layer for delayed consumption, and look at the reaction on their face to see if they think you are barmy, or a connoisseur like you.

Film (p)review: Day Watch

Day Watch is the second film in a proposed trilogy, coming after the first film, Night Watch. (Confusingly, the films are adapted from the novel called Night Watch, each film being one part of the three-story book, even though the novel is the first in a trilogy, with the second book being called Day Watch, but it has nothing to do with the film.) Night Watch introduced us to the basic set up: the forces of light and darkness called a truce 1000 years ago, and have been policing each other ever since so that neither gets the upper hand. The Night Watch are the Light Others, patrolling the Dark Others, whereas the Day Watch are the Dark Others patrolling the Light Others. The story of the first film is that of Anton, who became part of Night Watch when he visited a witch to use magic to get his wife back, which would have affected his as yet unborn son, Igor, who grows up to become one of the Great Others that have been prophesied to immerse the world in dark, who turns to the Dark Others when he is told about what Anton asked of the witch.

The film Day Watch begins with a flashback scene to the great warrior, Tamerlane, obtaining the Chalk of Fate, which has the power to rewrite one’s own history (but not anyone else’s). The film then returns to present day Moscow, a year after the events of the first film. Anton is partnered with Svetlana, the other potential Great Other, and is forming a romantic attachment, even though this is discouraged. On a routine patrol, they come across Anton’s son, who has been sucking the lifeforce out of old people, which is illegal in the supernatural world (permits are required for vampires, etc.). To cover up his son’s involvement in the crime, Anton breaks into the evidence room. In doing so, he happens on information about Tamerlane’s burial site, the supposed location of the Chalk of Fate.

Meanwhile, despite his helping the Dark Others, Anton is framed for the murder of a Dark Other. To protect him, Geser, the chief of the Light Others, swaps his mind into the body of Olga (and vice versa), a high-up Light Other in Night Watch. While in the body of Olga, he goes with Svetlana to stay with her during the investigation. During this time, she reveals that she loves Anton, which leads to the most embarrassingly awful scene in the film: Svetlana takes them back to her flat, where she takes a shower, and Anton (in Olga’s body) admits to her that he loves her. Angry at this betrayal, Svetlana shouts at him and showers him with water from the nozzle. Despite this, he gets into the shower with her. The camera pans around them slowly as the shower nozzle sprays water everywhere, with flashes of Anton in Olga’s clothes, until it swirls around to find them in a giant waterfall and the shower not spraying water. It was so ludicrous that everyone at the screening laughed, which I don’t think is the intention. If this is what passes for eroticism in Russia, I do feel sorry for them …

Having deduced where the Chalk of Fate is, Anton locates it, only for it to be stolen by his son. He decides to go to the big birthday party for his son being held by Zavulon, chief of the Dark Others, and with all the Dark Others in attendance because this is the moment when Igor will bring about victory for the Dark Others. He works out who the real killer was (which was obvious to anybody watching the film), which clears him with the Inquisition (a pair of powerful twins to judge both the Dark and Light Others in matters of law). After Igor comes into his power, via a set-up accident involving Svetlana that causes his blood to be spilled, he rains destruction on Moscow, in a powerful piece of CGI. During this, Anton locates the Chalk of Fate and, after being helped by Geser to escape, he rewrites history so that he doesn’t ask the witch for magic help, thereby negating the entirety of the film we have watched. The film ends with Anton seeing Svetlana and recognising her, and starting the process by which their relationship will continue, watched by Geser and Zavulon.

I have described the entirety of the film so that you don’t watch it. The film is so unfocused and messy and noisy that it is not worth seeing in the cinema. Having the ultimate battle between good and evil end with a love story seems quite ridiculous. Worse was the sound – I saw this as part of a marketing experiment to see if having the film dubbed would increase its marketability, and the dubbing was awful and the sound pretty ropey, which takes you out of the film at moments. One of the few good things about the first film was the individuality of the subtitles, having different fonts for different creatures and having them evaporate or change in evocative ways.

I still think that there is a great idea at the heart of the films, the policing of the forces of light and darkness and the contrast between the realism of Moscow and the flourishes of the supernatural, but these films don’t appear to be them. The almost casual flashes of supernatural (eyes changing colour, people transforming into creatures, etc.) are great and contrast with the bleakness of Moscow, but are few and far between. The story doesn’t unfold organically – Anton sees Svetlana reading a book about Tamerlane, which is enough for him to find the information in the evidence room and set him on the hunt for the Chalk of Fate, which is never explained very well in the film. And the Chalk of Fate (a very silly name) is the most ludicrous Deus Ex Machina I’ve seen in a while. This is a shame, as the director (although using a lot of Hollywood techniques in the film) shows a talent for the visual flair of an action film that bolds well for the future (he is directing the adaptation of Mark Millar’s Wanted graphic novel). Put this down as an interesting but flawed attempt.

Rating: DA

Comic review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy The Vampire Slayer #1 & 2

'The Long Way Home'

by Joss Whedon and Georges Jeanty

When Buffy arrived on our screens, I was soon to become an acolyte of Joss Whedon. In using fantasy to explore everyday problems, he could have a pretty girl fight a demon and still have it mean something. Although I began to lose interest in the seventh series (after season four, Buffy became too whiny), and the show never hit the stride of the first three seasons (with the exception of the Xander–Anya courting in series four, The Body, Hush and any Whedon written and directed episode), I still wanted to see what Whedon would do, now that he didn’t have to worry about studio interference, budgets or stars who no longer want to do the show.

There have been other Buffy comics, but they have never seemed like the genuine article. Fray was good, written by Whedon as he got used to the comic book form, but the other tie-in material always felt peripheral and ‘off’, as if it was nothing more than fanfic. This new series from Dark Horse reads like it’s the television series but in comic book form. And it sounds like the show as well; the characters feel real, their dialogue (Whedon’s gift) just rolling off the page and smoothly to the inner ear.

The truth of the book is helped by Jeanty’s artwork. The likenesses are good without being slavish to photorealism, and he is capable of producing the goods in the talky sections as well as the action sequences.

The comic starts off in the middle of things – this isn’t a book to pick up if you’ve never seen the show before – as Buffy leads a team of slayers on a demon hunt, while Xander runs their headquarters in Scotland with the aid of other slayers, witches, psychics, etc. In the midst of Buffy killing demons (with traditional quippage), there is foreshadowing of a figure in the air, watching the scene.

Meanwhile, the Army is investigating the crater that was Sunnydale, and finding something …

Back at Buff HQ, we discover that Dawn has been turned into a giant by a ‘thricewise’ who was her former boyfriend, which has made the relationship with Buffy more difficult than normal. Buffy is close to being the whiny version, but is saved by lovely dialogue: ‘And sex. Great muppety Odin, I miss that sex.’

‘Subject One’ (and a male somebody else) have been recovered by the Army – turns out to be Amy, who wishes to help the Army kill Buffy …

Issue 1 is mostly set-up; things really get going in issue 2, where we catch-up with Giles, see Buffy training slayers (‘It gets exponentially prefixy’), Andrew talking nonsense, Xander talking sense with Dawn, and the Army general seems to have the same symbol on his body as found by Buffy at the site of the demon hunt.

A Buffy Dream Sequence leads to the discovery that Amy has her trapped in a living nightmare. Fortunately, there is mystical protection in the castle for just such circumstances, although the spell still requires that she can only be woken up by a kiss of true love – uh oh. Simultaneously, the living dead breach the castle (Xander: ‘Man, Amy, you’re doing all the classics tonight.’) and things are looking bleak – which is when Willow arrives on the last page.

This is really enjoyable stuff. It feels like the real thing and we are getting it in comic books rather than having to wait for the show and suffer the ads. It is a great start to season eight, and I can’t wait for more.

TV Round-Up: Peep Show, Get A Grip, Harry & Paul

Even though it’s more television chat, I wanted to compare and contrast three comedy programmes from different terrestrial channels and their relevance to each other. Get A Grip, with Ben Elton, on ITV1; Ruddy Hell! It’s Harry and Paul, with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, on BBC1; and Peep Show, with David Mitchell and Robert Webb, on Channel 4.

When I was a teenager discovering comedy, Ben Elton was my comedy hero. He co-wrote The Young Ones and made Blackadder funny (two of my top five sitcoms). He was the compere for Saturday Live with his spangly suit. His stand-up spoke to me. I won’t say he was a genius, but he produced a lot of material I liked and still remains with me.

I’m not sure when that changed. Was it when he started writing more novels than anything else? Was it when his only TV output was the ‘Dad’s Army As Police Station’ sitcom The Thin Blue Line? Was it when he started to write the words for We Will Rock You? Or was it when he worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber? Or was it when he had Ronnie Corbett as his regular guest on The Ben Elton Show? I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t believe he’s not funny anymore.

It was this reason that made me watch Get A Grip, his new show on ITV1. Co-hosting with Alexa Chung (a thoroughly annoying and uncharismatic young lass who presents something for ‘yoof’ on Channel 4) but writing it all himself, it is essentially his most recent stand-up tour, also called Get A Grip, but in television form and with someone to bounce his 'jokes' off and do the self-deprecating for him. And it was horrible to watch. Ben uses the same type of routine and style as he did over 10 years ago, only with lots more jokes about babies (as that is all the reference he seems to have now – see, or rather don’t, his recent sitcom with Ardal O’Hanlan, Blessed) and, more embarrassingly, jokes about mother-in-laws. I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears. People have accused him of selling out before, but to do jokes about mother-in-laws? Ben, what’s happened? Entertainers have to adapt to the times, or they get rightly mocked by the new boys on the block, as Ben did before him with his attacks on Benny Hill and Bernard Manning. Ben Elton hasn’t and he seems to have got worse by not realising he is doing the jokes he used to rail against in his youth. Truly sad.

Compare this with Ruddy Hell! It’s Harry and Paul, a new sketch show from Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. Harry Enfield hasn’t really done anything since the sitcom Celeb, which came out exactly the same time as The Osbournes and thus negated its existence. Enfield has never been a particularly gifted comedian, although he does have some small talent for impersonation and accents, and he always looks incredibly smug and like he is about to corpse all the time when performing sketches. He has been more lucky than anything else, getting in on Saturday Live at the right time with his Stavros and Loadsamoney characters, and then turning the comic Viz into a television series (without Viz having anything to do with it) with Harry Enfield’s Television Programme/Harry Enfield and Chums.

Some of his work has been rather good (the Cholmondley-Warner stuff was particularly satisfying), and some of the characters were worthy of the repetition. His best comedy was probably Sir Norbert Smith: A Life, and shows what he can do mimicking styles. He has mostly been supported by the more talented Whitehouse, who was main creator of characters for him, and who had his own success with The Fast Show. So it is quite surprising to see them together after so many years apart.

However, although they haven’t reinvented the sketch show or developed the scope, they have remembered that the point of a comedy show is to be funny. For the most part, they succeed. Starting off mocking of football with Jose Arroganta and Peskowitz, it is just about laughs – Abramovich buying somebody’s son, the very funny piss-take of Bono and The Edge, and the belated-but-still-funny (particularly the bouncing from side-to-side to escape congress) Laurel and Hardy Brokeback Mountain – which makes for a pleasant change. Not all of it works – the Polish girls in the coffee shop and the South African man in the gym are pretty woeful and very London-centric; the Bill Gates/Steve Jobs sketch was rather obvious and easy; and the juxtaposition of enlightened discussion between builders before sexually harassing a women seems to have been done before, if not by themselves – but at least they are giving it a try and not having to succumb to Little Britain-style antics. Anyone who has a sketch with Nelson Mandela selling his own alcopops can’t be all bad. Not brilliant stuff but not bad either.

Compare with the new series of Peep Show and those two programmes are instantly forgotten. I have long been a fan of both Mitchell & Webb and Peep Show and am really happy to see them doing so well (even if they are doing adverts). Their radio show, That Mitchell and Webb Sound, became the most enjoyable sketch show of recent time, That Mitchell and Webb Look, which was a sketch show that was actually funny and not requiring the crutch of the well-known characters; yes, there were some repeated characters, like the snooker commentators and being themselves between takes, but it wasn’t just catchphrases. They even ridiculed catchphrases with the Numberwang sketch. These were smart, well-written and performed sketches to entertain and amuse. It was a breath of fresh air (the two Nazis talking to each other, which admittedly they had done on the radio show: ‘Are we the baddies?’).

Peep Show, back for its fourth series, is still as blisteringly funny and painful as ever. Mark is marrying Sophie, even though he doesn’t love her, so it’s a challenge as they go back to meet her family for her birthday. (She picks out trend things to wear for him. On picking out a t-shirt with Chairman Mao on it, Mark complains: 'He killed 60 million people.' Sophie: 'That’s more than Stalin.' Mark: 'It’s not a contest.') Mark brings Jez with him for moral support, which backfires terribly when Jez sleeps with Sophie’s mum, after helping Sophie’s Dad firebomb the barn of someone he believes is sleeping with his wife. The beauty, as ever, is in the first-person narrative, as we see people’s faces and hear the thoughts we don’t want to. It is funny and real and unreal and it is a crying shame that it only gets just over 1 million viewers.

Film Review: Seabiscuit

With the voiceover starting out as a history lesson, the immediate impression of Seabiscuit is quite serious and authoritative. As it was based on a book about true events, the film can be forgiven for this unusual storytelling approach. It helps that the narrative and the actors are sufficiently engaging that the method is forgotten; what happens in the end is what matters.

Jeff Bridges is a millionaire who loses his son and is looking for meaning; Chris Cooper is a former mustang breaker, using his horse taming skills in the races; Tobey Maguire is a gifted jockey, who had to turn to backstreet prizefighting to make ends meet during the depression. They come together with the arrival of Seabiscuit, a small horse with no hope, and develop winning ways that bring hope to people who lost so much during that bleak period of US history.

Throw in William H Macy as a radio narrator of the races, and you have the ingredients for an inspiring tale of success in adversity, and of the little man (and horse) when down. Gary Ross uses some alumni of his also enjoyable Pleasantville to create a well-made film that leaves you with a smile on your face and the Capra-esque belief in something decent.

Rating: VID

Film Review: Holes

Disney films are usually shoddy, hackneyed pieces of merchandise advertising or require insulin injections to combat the nauseating levels of sentimentality in them. I generalise, of course, because I am a blogger – it's part of the job description.

However, Holes is not any of those things. It is a film about kids that doesn’t have a message to preach or lesson to teach; it just tells an engaging story, with a flashback structure that fills in the details as you go along. (This reveals the fact that it is based on a novel.) It helps that it has a ‘grown-up’ director, in the form of Andrew ‘The Fugitive’ Davis, and some classy adult actors (Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight, Tim Blake Nelson) who don’t go overtop as the ‘villains’ of the piece.

I will admit to being pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable the whole endeavour was, as our hero is sent off to a strange labour camp in the middle of Texas to dig holes, only for the stories of the ‘curse’ on the males of his family and the legendary female cowgirl converge with the mistreatment of our protagonist and his friend. An undemanding joy.

Rating: VID

Film: Review: Girl From Rio

I’ve just talked about how much I love Hugh Laurie, He was one half of the great ‘A Bit of Fry & Laurie’ and was wonderful in Blackadder, so I will watch him in just about anything. After watching Girl From Rio, I’m not so sure about him in films.

He plays a bored bank clerk who lives only for his time as a samba teacher. His boss runs off with his wife just before Christmas, so Laurie steals a lot of money and flies to Rio, to dance samba and find the girl from the samba tapes he has watched endlessly. To cut a long story short, he finds the girl, she steals the money, she has it stolen from her, he gets the money back and tries to return it, only for it to all turn out right in the end. Gosh, what luck.

The samba star appears to have never acted before, the annoying comedy taxi driver (apparently a big star in Latin America) is irritating, and the film plods along as if it was put together by a novice with no film experience (rather than the director of The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain). What might have been an attempt at an Ealing-like comedy is just a woeful blemish on a CV. The only reason I believe that Hugh wanted to do this film was because it meant he would get paid to be in Rio de Janeiro, because it certainly wasn’t the script.

Rating: D

Film Review: Hope Springs

There are usually reasons why I watch a film. The reasons I watched Hope Springs were based on previous form: the director of Brassed Off and Little Voice; based on a book by the writer of The Graduate; starring Heather Graham and Minnie Driver. I wish that I had known what it was like in advance, so I could have told myself not to bother watching it.

Colin Firth, a man who seems to have a career based solely on being Mr Darcy in a well-respected TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, plays a man who runs away to America after being sent an invite for his fiancee’s wedding to another man. He ends up in Hope, Maine, and proceeds to draw portraits of locals using charcoal and have lots of sex with Heather Graham. Then his ex (Driver) turns up, to tell him that there is no other man, it was just a hint to him to marry her. Which is pretty fucking stupid, even for a film. She seems to want him back, even though she doesn’t actually show it in any emotional way whatsoever, and there is some stupid farce-like misunderstanding of intent and story that is frankly embarrassing.

The ever-enjoyable Oliver Platt is in it and not used to any real affect, and then the story ends with Firth proposing to Graham (even though he does it, as everything, fairly woodenly) and then carrying her all the way back to his motel room. The film only seems to exist because of the quaint notion that there is a small town in America called Hope, which is tenuous to say the least. A romantic comedy that is neither romantic or comedic is not a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes.

Rating: DA

Film Review: Sweet Home Alabama

(I'm compiling some comic book reviews, so I'll keep posting a selection of smaller reviews of films I've seen on the small screen, in an effort to talk about them without doing full-blown discussions. Expect to see a lot of these – I like to watch films and talk about them, if you hadn't guessed from reading this blog.)

Sweet Home Alabama broke box office records for the most money taken in the month of September ($38M) and made over $125M domestically. After watching it, I have no idea why.

Sweet Home Alabama is a very ordinary romcom, seemingly made to be cinematic wallpaper, to watch with your partner on a Sunday afternoon, after which the memory of the film slips away like a cloud on a windy day. The redeeming factor exists in the form of Reese Witherspoon; despite the 'Greasy' nickname coined by Kevin Smith and her calculated approach to her career, she is a good actor with a lot of charm (stretched to breaking point in Legally Blonde 2, but it’s hard to hold it against her). It was a surprise to discover that she stepped into the role at the last minute, taking over from Charlize Theron who jumped ship due to an actors’ strike, as the concept seems to be made-to-measure for Reese; still, they both have Oscars now so there probably aren't any hard feelings …

Reese is Melanie Carmichael, a newly successful fashion designer living in New York, who has to go back home to her redneck roots in Alabama to finally divorce her first husband (Josh Lucas) after she is proposed to by the son (Patrick Dempsey) of the mayor of New York (Candice Bergen). Only, after being there for a while, she discovers it’s not so easy, as we learn why she left there seven years ago, changed her name and hasn’t been back since …

A romantic comedy should, by definition, be romantic and funny; otherwise, it’s not a romcom and should be something else. This film isn’t particularly romantic or funny, and just sort of sits there, hoping for an identity. Even the climax feels wrong; Dempsey’s character just walks away from Weatherspoon, just so that she has no impediments and can go back to her original husband (and the alleged excitement of the reveal being that she forgot to sign the divorce papers, which is apparently enough for her to dump the eligible man she was going to marry and take up with someone she hasn’t seen for seven years prior to this return trip). It’s just so flat.

Maybe it’s because it is named after a popular song; not the original film title (must have been a product executive decision), the song is played not once but twice during the film, as if to justify the annoying habit of giving romcoms the title of well-known pop song. A non-entity of a film with not much going for it; at least they didn’t make a sequel (Even Sweeter Home Alabama?).

Rating: DA

Book Round-Up: Purity of Blood, Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance, Waking Dragons

In my attempt to catch-up on the reviews of the things that have been entertaining me during my most recent sabbatical, here are a few notes on books I've been reading (which are hopefully better than my rather rubbish commentary on the Queen & Country novels; those books are even better than my misguided attempt to summarise them in three paragraphs).

Purity of Blood (An Adventure of Captain Alatriste) by Arturo Perez-Reverte

This book was a Christmas present from a friend. It is an historical novel by a former journalist, translated from the original Spanish, written in the first person by Inigo Balboa, the young ward of soldier of fortune, Captain Diego Alatriste, set in the early 1700s in Madrid. The story involves a father and two sons asking for help to free the daughter, who is being kept in a convent by a powerful chaplain who does unpleasant things to the novices. On helping, it turns out that it is a trap to capture Alatriste, who escapes, but our narrator is captured by the Inquisition.

Herein lies the problem with the story: our narrator is relaying these events as his life in the past from some time in the future. How is there any tension involved? He also talks about how he and Alatriste would have other adventures after this incident, so you know Alatriste won’t die. You know that nothing dangerous is going to happen. The slight story is therefore devoid of suspense. It is very bizarre. The real work in the novel is the research into the details of the period, which the author does admirably. You get a feel for the world in which our protagonists live and the way that society operated (and the accurate yet not exactly pleasant attitude to Jews, shortly after they had been driven out of Spain).

The translation works well, demonstrating the clear and descriptive prose well. The only place where translation and the original prose falls down is in the multiply used device of inserting snatches of witty poetry of the time – every other character, particularly the narrator, feels the need to show off their literary knowledge and poetry skills, which gets really annoying after a time, and the stanzas have been translated such that they rhyme in English. A well-written tale, but lacking that certain something that makes you want to read it.


Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M Pirsig

I have had this book on my shelves for a while as one of those books I’ve heard about and should read. I finally got round to it but don’t know if I got anything out of it. In it, the author talks about the metaphysics of Quality, which he does while going on a motorcycle trip with his son and interspersing this narrative with the history of Phaedrus, the name of a character in a Plato dialogue that he gives to himself to describe his university days and the original search for the value of quality. The philosophy stuff is out of my league, but it is written in a clear and accessible style that puts across all the relevant points without being excessively dry or academic. The travelogue is more readable, with a simple, elegant style seemingly honed from writing technical manuals for a living. He talks a lot of sense, but I don’t know if I can fully comprehend the meaning of everything. It is an interesting read, if not exactly a page turner.


Waking Dragons by Goran Powell

Waking Dragons (which is a great title, and the book has a great cover to match) is a non-fiction book about the author’s life in martial arts and his physical and mental preparation for the 30-man kumite, where the karate-ka must fight 30 other karate-ka (all with at least a second dan black belt) for a minute each at full strength, full contact. I have done a bit of karate (it is too external and physical for me – I prefer the internal power and beauty of Chen Taijiquan) and so know a bit about the physical hardships involved, but Powell (a copywriter by profession) is able to bring across this to someone not versed in martial arts, as well as being very emotionally honest about the mental aspect of the discipline.

The prose is efficient but not captivating, but that’s not the reason for reading this. Although the main draw might be to those of hardcore martial art mindset, all about the hardness and physicality involved, it appeals to the general martial artist and those interested in sport, discussing the discipline and training and hardships, both bodily and in relationships, and the passion involved in doing something that you love.

From A Library: The Witching Hour

The Witching Hour TPB (collecting issues 1–3)
by Jeph Loeb & Chris Bachalo

I thought I would remind you that I do talk about comic books as well. However, the choice of material reviewed doesn't necessarily help. In fact, I disliked it so much, I haven't bothered to post an image of the cover to accompany this post. And the art is the only aspect of the book that is worth admiring …

I’ve never got the appeal of Jeph Loeb: why exactly is he a big-name writer? Is it just the ‘Early Years’ material he has done with Tim Sale, embellishing on the origins of popular heroes (such as Batman, Superman, the Hulk and Daredevil)? I can only assume it’s not for his sterling work with Rob Liefeld for Awesome/Extreme/Maximum … He doesn’t come up with particularly interesting ideas, his dialogue is corny and his prose is so bloody irritating in its attempt to be literary while actually being trite and clichéd. After all, this is the man who co-wrote Commando and Teen Wolf.

It is the pretentious Loeb who is in full swing in this three-issue prestige format series, supposedly ‘a bubbling cauldron of horror and fantasy’ but actually a load of bollocks. I dare anyone to find anything horrific in this series (apart from the terrible running commentary by the character Grey) – seriously, apart from one chap being attacked by a roulette table, there is nothing remotely horrific about this bilge (well, except for the prose), a story vaguely about some witches interacting with modern life but without actually being about anything in particular.

The series doesn’t seem to have any real story line, no development, no narrative, no reason to read it in the first place, apart from the art of Chris Bachalo. Ever since Shade, The Changing Man and the two Death mini-series, his sense of design and gorgeously delightful and sexy cartoon style has been a selling point on any book, no matter the character or writer. Until, that is, his over-experimenting in panel layout and obtuseness in the stupidly cluttered and confusing Steampunk, something he hasn’t quite got out of his system to this day. He has always had an unusual eye; his habit of picking a tiny item in a panel as the start of the progression of the ‘camera’ movement, where only by following through to the end of the page do you finally realise what you’ve been looking at in the first place. It was always forgivable due to his marvellous, oddball figurework and framing. That and he draws very sexy women (especially here, although, given the opportunity to draw nudity in a Vertigo book, I can’t understand why he still thinks it is a mainstream comic, as he covers up the female form with appropriately placed scarves or dialogue).

Even Bachalo’s artwork is not enough to compensate for the shit that is the story, and people who purchased this in prestige format must be kicking themselves for shelling out for this colossal waste of time and money. I read this from a library, and I felt cheated. Not recommended.

TV Round-Up: Lost, Entourage, House

Lost
Another instance of reading about it on blogs before it came to these shores, Lost was a big deal when it arrived on Channel 4, and it lived up to the hype. An intriguing and interesting setting, characters that had layers and you cared about, and a mystery to keep you coming back. The build-up to the end of season 1 was genuinely riveting, and the series could be enjoyed at the level of simply watching it on a weekly basis, or by re-watching/trawling the internet for clues that are placed throughout to make it an even more impressively made series.

The anticipation for season 2 was high. What would happen? What were all the secrets? What was the hatch? Where’s Walter? However, watching the second series became an endurance event, especially compared to the first series. Presumably due to its own success, the show introduces new characters and new mysteries in order to keep up the momentum for a continuing series, that pushes aside some of the characters in which you have invested emotional connection and gives the show a sprawling feel that disperses focus on the genuine mystery that once was the core. Some episodes were so slow in their depiction of an aspect of a character that it wasn’t worth the effort to get to the reveal at the end. The show felt too bloated and dull, and I ended up not really caring what happened. That was such a shame for a show that had bucked the trend of stupid, vapid reality shows and had returned to intelligent, well-written drama. I wasn't disappointed that it was snapped up by Sky One so that I couldn't see it …


Entourage
I do like a behind-the-scenes look at the world of entertainment, so an entire series about the notion suits me just fine (even if I have to watch it on ITV2 – why isn't it on the main channel?). That it is based on the real-life adventures of Mark Walhberg gives it more of an edge of reality.

The first series introduces us to Vincent Chase and his entourage – Eric or E, his manager and life-long friend who used to run an Italian restaurant; Johnny or Drama, his brother who is also an actor who had some success on a TV show, but is now hanging on his brother’s coattails; and Turtle (real name as yet unrevealed), another life-long friend who drives the car and does other odd jobs. The show follows their (mostly) non-adventures as Vinnie decides to make an independent film with a Vincent Gallo-alike director, while having lots of sex with woman, Drama doesn’t get jobs through his arrogance, Turtle tries to get sex by being part of Vincent’s group, and E tries to be a manager in a world of sharks.

Ostensibly, the series doesn’t really focus on Vincent, but on E, as the character with his head screwed on and as a route for the audience to see the venality and cut-throat quality of Hollywood. This doesn’t make for particularly interesting viewing, which is where Jeremy Piven comes in. He plays Vincent’s agent Ari Gold, based on Wahlberg’s agent, and is the star of the show. He plays the character exactly as horrible as an agent is, but with a spark of humanity deep within that isn’t cloying and sentimental. It’s quite impressive and he deserves all the accolades he had been given.

The short first series has the fun moments of real-life cameos and in-jokes but doesn’t spark into life the way the second series does. Ari gets a character arc and the story of the Aquaman film is very funny (who knew James Cameron was so hilarious?). It does suffer from comparisons to Sex and The City but, like that programme, it is about the bond between the small group that keeps you. I don’t know if they don’t make Vincent more of an interesting character because they don’t want to offend executive producer Wahlberg (it sometimes seems like it’s bragging about how much pussy he got in his early Hollywood days) but it doesn’t really matter when Jeremy Piven is on the screen.


House
House is watchable just for Hugh Laurie. Each episode is more or less the same: ill patient, treat patient, patient get worse, treat patient, patient get worse, House’s moment of revelation, patient cured. Nothing wrong with a formula; the fun is in the treatment. Sherlock Holmes (the role model for Gregory House) was the same formula, but it didn’t stop him from becoming one of the most famous fictional characters in history.

As a long-time fan of Hugh Laurie, I think it is wonderful to seeing him doing so well and winning all those awards. He is great as House, being smart, grouchy and funny, but also not afraid to be really unpleasant – the latter half of the second series saw the character just being quite nasty to other human beings – but able to show the humanity within. And to think that I used to watch him on Young Ones/Saturday Live/A Bit of Fry & Laurie …

(An aside: comparisons between Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie and Peter Cook & Dudley Moore? Fry/Cook wrote successful theatre shows at young ages. Fry/Cook seen as the more cerebral of the pair. Laurie/Moore were the cute, cuddly part of the partnership. Laurie/Moore both play/write music. Laurie/Moore have success in the US. I believe that Fy & Laurie are still friends, so let’s hope they don’t have the Cook/Moore split that stopped Cook from producing so much in the latter half of his career.)

It’s funny to see the success of House duplicated almost exactly in Shark. James Woods, who is the only reason to watch the show with his scenery-chewing performance, plays a brilliant lawyer who doesn’t try to be liked, and even has a sexy female boss (Jeri Ryan), even though Lisa Edelstein is far more enjoyable to watch in her version of that role. Woods is not as likeable a person as Laurie, but you can’t help but watch him, and he makes the most ridiculous dialogue seem plausible, and I’m glad for his success, even though I won’t be watching another episode.

House is a programme I enjoy watching when I see it, but I don’t go out of my way to catch it, and don’t need to watch the episodes again. However, there isn’t much on that does the same to that quality, so I’ll take what I can get.

Films about films about films

As someone who enjoys watching films perhaps more than the average, I enjoy films that love films. This can be a film that has nods/homages/steals from other films, little Easter eggs dotted throughout, to films that are about films and film-making. Some people think it far too incestuous, a cinematic navel-gazing that disappears up its own rear end, and therefore only of interest to other people in the business of making films. Who wants to watch a movie full of in-jokes and cameos and references to other films that can only be understood by people who watch too many films?

Well, I do. Among the many things that can contribute to a good film, one of them is writing what you know. When the screenwriter knows the story so intimately, it allows the film to breathe, and the film can be about its subtext, instead of the surface. Being about the film industry, in which presumably the screenwriter is involved (and the director who films it, as well as the actors who play the parts therein), there is a natural understanding that comes across, from the years of experience, as well as an attention to detail that helps to create a believable film.

The Bad and The Beautiful is a film about films that doesn’t use the in-joke/referencing mentioned but is very much about people making films. It uses a flashback structure to examine the affect of Kirk Douglas’ once-powerful producer on three former friends (a successful director, a successful screenwriter and a successful actress) who subsequently became stars, even though they ended up hating him for the way he treated them, but come to realise that it was because of this hardship they were able to succeed. It uses the film industry to examine relationships and the paths people take and their reasons. It is a very enjoyable film that gives you a sense of how things were done in the bygone age of Hollywood.

Another black and white film about the old days of Hollywood is Sunset Boulevard. One of the many great films made by Billy Wilder, it starts out with the corpse of a screenwriter (William Holden) in a swimming pool (which is one of the great beginnings of a film ever) and relates in flashback of how he comes to be involved with Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), a star of the silent era who never made the transition to talkies but doesn’t realise how detached from reality she has become. This film does involve cameos (Buster Keaton, Cecil B DeMille) and in-jokes (DeMille is actually filming a genuine film when Desmond comes to visit him and calls her by his nickname for Swanson; Erich von Stroheim, who plays the butler who had formerly been a famous director, had been a famous director [of a film that starred Swanson that is shown in the film] who now only got work as an actor) but it is also a great study in how fame affects people. And it has great dialogue, apart from the famous lines …

Living in Oblivion is about the trials and tribulations of making an independent movie in modern times. Tom DiCillo, the writer-director, uses his previous experiences to portray an up-and-coming writer/director trying to get his movie made, with an actress with buzz, and an actor who is a big star who is doing everyone a favour by being in the low-budget film (and who was most definitely not based on Brad Pitt, with whom DiCillo had just worked on Johnny Suede, definitely not). It is an inside look at the indie film world, but also a look at people and their relationships in an unusual setting, with plenty of humour and hysteria and dwarfs being used in dream sequences. And if you ever decide you want to make a film, you should watch this film and think again.

The Player, adapted from a novel, is perhaps the most notorious film about films, especially with its huge roster of big stars playing themselves in small cameos, filled with snipes at Hollywood (Altman had never been a particular fan of the system, and Hollywood felt likewise) as well as sly in-jokes, such as the 15 minute opening scene, which is all done in a single continuous take, in homage to Orson Welles’ A Touch of Evil, which it mentions specifically in the scene. The film is about what a man will do when in a dark and desperate situation, and the ramifications of the actions, more than Hollywood itself, but there are plenty of inside details and jokes that let you feel that what you are seeing is a documentary rather than fiction.

Other films use film-making as a background for drama. Shadow of the Vampire is a fictional account of the making of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, with the intriguing idea that the method actor playing the lead actually became a vampire for the film. However, it is a look at the obsession of an artist in getting his film made. Ed Wood examines the world of the most notorious worst director, but is about people with dreams, and how we shouldn’t dismiss the dreamers. Barton Fink is the film about a writer with writer’s block, a film the Coen brothers notoriously wrote while suffering writer’s block on Millers Crossing. Although it mocks the Hollywood of the late ‘40s, it a portrait of despair and alienation, and is both funny and scary at the same time.

Films about film-making are a source for comedy. Singin’ in the Rain is a wonderfully entertaining musical (and how many times can that be applied to films?) that homages and pastiches old Hollywood musicals and the beginning of talkies. Get Shorty parodies the world of Hollywood and the B-movie directors, by comparing them to the mob, with John Travolta’s Chilli Palmer making his way into the film world using his gangster methods. Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back is full of in-jokes and digs at the modern world of film, from digs at the studio that produces the film, to the hilarity of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon sending themselves up in a fake sequel to Good Will Hunting, called ‘Hunting Season’ (‘Lion Face Lemon Face’ still makes me laugh hysterically). All of this isn’t surprising considering it was made by Kevin Smith, a big film-geek with a love of movies, who constantly references other films in his own. Hollywood may be an easy target, but if the jokes are this good, it doesn’t really matter.

The films about film-making idea has now entered the television world, as Entourage continues to bring us cameos, film references and in-jokes to the masses, so one has to wonder how much more exploring of the notion can be done at the cinematic level. However, if it continues to produce enjoyable films around the conceit, I’m sure that that this small genre will not fade away.

Television Round-Up: Battlestar Galactica

I thought I would write about some of the television series that have been entertaining me recently, even though they are way behind the times. But this was going to happen a lot, especially when the shows are coming over from the US and don't appear on free-to-air channels (in other words – I don't have Sky One).

Let's start with the show that has blown my mind the most: Battlestar Galactica.


My blog-reading meant that I had heard good things about BSG long before it arrived over here. As far as I know, it hasn’t reached terrestrial UK television yet, only airing on Sky, but it shouldn’t be long before one of the channels will have the good sense to snap it up and put it on at a sensible hour. It’s that good.

I arrived fairly late to the BSG party, back in June of 2006, but the sheer entertaining quality of the show meant that I quickly developed a taste for it and had to devour it as quickly as possible.

I saw the thirteen episodes of series one (with the prequel mini-series on DVD in between) in chronological order. When I saw the cliffhanger at the end of the series, I knew I had no choice but to see series two on DVD because I couldn’t wait that long until it came out on (on Freeview channel) Sky Three.

The brilliance of this update of the cheesy original is that it does everything right – from the characters to the acting to the action to the suspense to the twists to the story development. It’s almost impossible to believe that something this good sprung from something so ordinary. It is the power of the bond that develops between the characters and the audience that makes the cliffhanger at the end of series one such a palpable shock.

Essentially the same as the original, this version of BSG sees the Cylons destroy most of the human population of the twelve colonies by infiltrating important positions with Cylons that look human and are almost impossible to detect. The only battleship that survives the attack from the Cylon fleet is the Galactica, an old ship that was to be decommissioned but, due to its age, is immune from the attack to the computer systems that disables the human fleet. Using this ship as the beacon for the surviving human (civilian) ships, including the new president of the twelve colonies, the former school teacher and Secretary of Education, the Galactica – under the leadership of Commander Adama – heads an exodus away from the Cyclons and towards salvation.

That is a mere taster of the basis of the series. With its real-world feel to the science fiction and its use of real-world issues to drive stories, this is compelling, rewarding, intelligent drama that just happens to be set in the sci-fi genre. When Time magazine said it was one of the best six dramas on television, they were right. However, they said that about the second series, which wasn’t as strong throughout its 20 episodes (Scar wasn’t as strong, and the episode introducing of Lucy Lawless to the cast seemed a wasted hour except for the reveal) as the even better series one. That’s how good it is.

Having devoured the second series on DVD in a heady rush of a few weeks, I now have to wait for some time before I see the third series because I don’t have cable/satellite. Every week, the Guardian Guide recommends it as one of the programmes to watch on its day of airing, and I have to not read that section in order not to have it spoiled for me. With the end of the second series pulling off the wonderful trick of having an incredible ending to all the plotlines AND setting up the next series by having the last ten minutes fast-forward to a year after the events of the that just happened, I have to confess that the wait is absolute agony.

Film review: Azumi

A young girl is orphaned, taken in by old man who has also taken in a group of boys – mind out of gutter – who teaches them to be wielders of the sword. They discover that the old man is a former samurai for the shogun and has vowed to train assassins to eliminate the other warlords in order to maintain peace. However, as a final test, he takes the ten students (nine boys, and Azumi) and tells them to kill their training partner. Why would he do something stupid like that? Surely ten assassins are better than five, especially after all the training and with such an important mission? Apart from it being a powerful moment, it is completely stupid and illogical. This lack of thinking things through is indicative of this Japanese film, following the adventures of Azumi and her sword skills.

The remaining five (obviously including Azumi, or it would be rather a short film) go with the old man and then kill one warlord. Then kill another, only to find that it was a double because his general had planned for it. The general used his ninja (who seemed to be wearing a monkey hat for no discernible reason) to track them. (The old man also has a ninja to help them out, but he doesn't wear an animal hat). One of the assassins dies from poison from a ninja star that hit him during the attack on the double.

The group stop in a town between killings, because even assassins need some down time, and one of the boys falls in love with the head female gymnast because being brought up in an isolated community of assassins-in-training is the perfect way to develop emotions. Meanwhile, the hat-less ninja finds out that the warlord was a double, and the warlord's general hires some mad killers to kill the assassins. However, because they are stupid and we need to see how nasty they are for us to favour the young assassins over crazy killer, they turn up and kill all of the gymnasts except the women the assassin loves, and the assassins turn up to kill the nastier murderes fairly easily, despite the film setting them up as hardcore fighters.

Next, the general sends his monkey-man ninja to get a psychotic killer (who likes to wear white clothes and make up but fortunately is expert with a really, really long sword) out of prison to kill the 'good' assassins. He kills the boy who likes the girl – the boy assassin has gone off with the woman gymnast because the samurai left the poisoned assassin to die (as Azumi has done). Azumi finds the woman gymnast and they go off together (with Azumi considering that life might be better if she didn't have to go around slaughtering people) until they nearly get raped by brigands. This makes Azumi return to her top-assassin ways and she kills them all, but bizarrely leaves the women she saved to go off on her own (obviously not caring if she avoids being raped by brigands in the future), and goes to find the old man so she can help with his stupid mission.

The non-monkey-hat ninja, who is close to death from being stabbed by monkey ninja (he should have worn a monkey hat as well, perhaps?) while spying on them, turns up to tell the old man where the real warlord will be. The old man and the two remaining boys go there, but it is obviously a trap – there is lot of bloody swordplay and one assassin gets killed and old man gets crucified. Azumi turns up (how did she know where to go exactly?) and kills absolutely everybody (with the help of the lunatic killers who had been hired by the monkey ninja, who turn on them when monkey ninja’s forces shoot guns at them to kill Azumi – what a stroke of luck). She ends up killing the previously invincible killer-who-wears-make-up-and-white without seemingly breaking sweat and finds the only surviving assassin, and she swears to go on killing people in the mission (because she would be nothing without the old man in the first place – this is not great logic, but she is obviously a bit backward).

We last see Azumi appearing out of nowhere on a boat in the middle of the sea (she has no boat of her own in sight, and yet she is completely dry when she appears – how does that work exactly?) killing the warlord that had been protected by the double, before jumping out again and going for a swim.

This is all very silly indeed. It is adapted from a manga, which explains the cartoonish nature of the white-wearing camp swordsman and the monkey-man ninja. Azumi is seemingly unkillable and pretty and good with a sword – quite a male fantasy figure – but with nothing in the way of characterisation or justification. The film starts out well, but loses momentum and energy halfway through with all the introduced extra elements (which is fine in a long-running manga series but doesn't in a two-hour film). However, the real disappointment is in the fight scenes, the meat of the film, which don’t really fizz. They are more like old-school sword fights but with new cameras, with people are actors flinging swords around without looking like they've been training at it all their lives. There was only one scene which indicated something novel and interesting, where Azumi was fighting some ninjas in a forest – the camera trickery had her moving without moving very quickly and the ninjas moving slowly as she sliced them up. If only the rest of the film had shown such ingenuity …

Rating: DA

Book review: Queen & Country novels

A Gentleman’s Game and Private Wars by Greg Rucka

Queen & Country, from Oni Press, is a great comic book series, with a complex leading character in Tara Chace, that looks at a more realistic view of the world of modern espionage, specifically the Special Operations Section of the British Secret Intelligence Service. It was a shame that the series went on hiatus while Rucka wrote these novels and ended up as one of the architects of DC’s weekly series redefining their universe, 52, but it was worth it when I read these books.

The first, A Gentleman’s Game, is the more powerful. The story involves wahibist extremists bombing the London underground – the build up and the characters detailed with an accuracy that is overwhelming. Tara is brought in for the unofficial retaliation, doing the job too well and taking out an unfortunate (but important) witness. She is cut loose by everyone except the head of the Minders, Paul Crocker, who helps her to make amends by doing another job, which she can only do by bringing in former minder and former lover, Tom Wallace, to get the job done. The power of the real-world events (researched and presented in an engaging manner) with the personal conflict and emotional aspect that happens to Tara make this a compelling read, especially for Q&C fans, but equally riveting for novices to her world.

The second novel doesn’t have quite the emotional resonance for me as the first; it tries to draw parallels to the family situation between Tara and another major character, but it doesn’t quite connect. It involves the delicate political situation in the former Russian state of Uzbekistan and its position in the war on terror and oil. Again, the detail and suspense Rucka brings to the novel make for a fascinating and exciting read, but it feels more like one of the stories in the comic book (which are excellent), rather than the ‘special’ nature of the first book, which seemed more appropriate in novel format (life-changing events for Tara and the requirement for the intimacy of prose versus the words-and-pictures combination of the comic book).

From A Library: The New Frontier (Vol. 2)

The New Frontier (Vol. 2)
by Darwyn Cooke

Much like the book itself (except for a sentence or two on the back cover), this review has no ‘What happened before …’ blurb (see my review of volume 1 for some history). What I will say about the presentation of this book – it’s nice to see heroes smiling on the cover of a comic book for once …

A lot of what I said in my review about Vol. 1 applies here – Cooke’s cinematic sytle takes a little time to get used to, but it is perfect for the story, with the three widescreen panels giving a lovely rhythm to the pages and breathing room for the story; knowing DC history helps to get the most out of the books, but is not essential to proceedings; and the full-page spreads used for the money shots are powerful and arresting.

The sense of this story occurring in real history is what gives this story its sense of scope and depth. The age of rockets, trust in the government, Ed Murrow talking about John Henry’s death – it gives proceedings weight and enforces the feel of recounting a 'true' history.

A large emphasis is placed on Hal Jordan and his becoming Green Lantern, as if this was the turning point of the Silver Age (and the link between the superheroes and the rocket era). I have never been a big fan of Hal, but I have to admit that the joy of his discovery is highly infectious.

There are lots of nice moments for fans of comics peppered throughout the book, such as Superman meeting the modernised Batman and Robin: ‘I set out to scare criminals, not children.’ The story itself is about the giant floating island from Vol.1, The Centre, and the danger it presents to the world. It is a plot-driven ‘Big Bad’ (if I may borrow the phrase from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), which is quite refreshing, leading to a genuine reason for the 'gathering of the heroes' scene, with the powerful moment of Superman’s ‘Who’s with me?!!’, and the following shots afterwards.

Everyone in Silver Age DC seems to turn up – the magical folk, Ray Palmer, Adam Strange and many others – that provides the sense of scope and respect for what has gone before. There is a great double-page spread of all the team going out to carry out the plan, there's Flash running fast, you have Superman NOT saving the day, Aquaman showing up at the end for some plot resolution – it's a real joy to read.

The epilogue covers a lot after the end of the story, catching up to the final page with the cover to the first Justice League of America comic book, but you can't blame Cooke for trying to cram so much into this wonderful story. This is most definitely good comics.

Film review - Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason

I had a strange reaction when watching Bridget Jones: The Edge or Reason. It made me not want to write about it on the blog because that would in some way validate its existence. This made my brain go a little funny, which is more than this pointless and annoying sequel ever did.

I’m not going to say the original film was the greatest romantic comedy ever, but it had a certain charm about it and left the viewer with a smile on their face. However, this film does nothing apart from wishing it never existed. The film falls into the classic trap of bad sequels: re-creating the first film but making it slightly bigger. This proves a bit of a pain, as the two lovers had come together at the end of the original, meaning that invented tension is enforced to lead to a split so that there can be something approaching drama and allow the return of Hugh Grant as Daniel Cleaver, before it all comes out all right in the end.

It takes four writers of experience (Andrew Davies, of many literary adaptations; Helen Fielding, who created the character; Richard Curtis, modern maestro of romcoms; and Adam Brooks, who brought us Wimbledon, Practical Magic and French Kiss) to come up with this debacle. What’s worse is that it is not funny. It just repeats the bits people remember from the first film – Bridget’s bum on camera close-up? Check. Bridget saying something inappropriate in front of a lot of people? Check. The big pants? Check. Colin Firth and Hugh Grant having a bad fight? Check. It’s embarrassing. It’s like fanfic.

Practically everyone who was in the original is back, even if they are hardly in it (as well as wasting Jessica Stevenson, who has about five lines). James Callis and Shirley Henderson, as two of the friends of Bridget, turn up to spout exposition (at least Sally Phillips, as Shazza, gets some more scenes). Gemma Jones and Jim Broadbent, as Bridget’s parents, must have wondered why they were there, especially as they seem to do nothing at all about the Thailand incident.

Ah yes, the Thailand incident. In the logic of sequels, things must be larger because of bigger budgets, so Bridget (and her friend Shazza) are in Thailand with Daniel Cleaver to work on the travel show that Cleaver is fronting. Shazza shacks up with a young man who gives her a fertility bowl; it doesn’t fit in her suitcase, so Bridget says she’ll take it. That feeling of dread you now have as you can see what is going to happen is worse when watching the film. Because, in the middle of a light-hearted romcom, the lead is put in a Thai jail for drug smuggling. Hilarious. You’re laughing at the thought of it, aren’t you? Unbelievable. What is worse is the line of jokes they go for, as Bridget bonds with the rest of the women in jail, and she teaches them to sing the correct lyrics to Madonna’s Like A Virgin. No, I did not just make that up.

That was the lowest point of the film. I still can’t believe I watched that part without kicking my television. The stupid reason for this is so that Mark Darcy, who happens to be a human rights lawyer, has the perfect opportunity to do his lawyering thing and ‘rescue’ Bridget (without her knowing it) and prove to Bridget that he loves her even though he acts coolly to her after it appears that she has slept with Cleaver. It is inane.

The film is insulting on a general level, from this stupid plotting to the use of popular songs to indicate what mood the viewer should be feeling, if they are too retarded to work it out. Bridget walks out after standing up to her boss – Think by Aretha Franklin. Cleaver seduces Bridget shortly after she has broken up with Darcy – I’m Not In Love by 10CC. Bridget running through Inner Temple, soaked to the skin, to tell Darcy she loves him – Crazy In Love by Beyonce. Sledgehammer subtlety.

The one tiny spurt of imagination comes in the form of a conversation with a horrible woman who says things in a casual manner which are quite horrible, the equivalent of a jellyfish barb as they describe in the film. So, when she says something horrible, a small jellyfish in the corner keeps count, and a retort to one of these reduces the counter. This small part of a scene is the one piece of originality in the whole film.

Of course, this spark of novelty is lost in the depth of awfulness. Perhaps the worst incidence of direness was at the end, with the overexplanation of lesbian attraction for all the stupid people watching who weren’t paying attention. The woman who has supposedly been played as potential love threat to Bridget states at the end of the movie that it is always Bridget she has been interested in – and then they play the bits of the film where she has interacted with Bridget AGAIN in order to show that she fancied her all along. It was the most insulting piece of TELL I have ever seen in a film.

This film is bad, bad, bad. The worse thing about this film is that is degrades the original. The whole point in the previous film was for the clumsy, dumpy, quiet, ordinary Bridget to find her true love and walk off into the sunset together. The sequel therefore makes it redundant and pointless. Now that is the sign of a bad film; its toxicity affects other films. They completely miss the point. It’s like the people who thought that Cinderella needed a sequel (Cinderella II: Dreams Come True). Please avoid this film.

Rating: D