Some links before a break

I never thought I would see Tim O'Neill answer the question of 'who is stronger?' so central to Marvel zombies, but he provides clear and sensible answers to the eternal problem. Most bizarre, and definitive.

Dave Campbell has posted online the first issue of the new comic he has written and co-created, called Templar. The art is very polished and the story is intriguing and interesting; sci-fi versions of the Knights Templar fighting werewolves and zombies. Go check it out.

Tom Collins provides a list of his ten most rewatchable movies, an interesting twist on the classic list post, because it is more personal. Some interesting choices and thoughts behind it; I will provide my list when I return.

One of the films that I will include on my list is Enter The Dragon, a film I have watched many times. So I was dismayed by news in Variety, via Filmstalker, that they were going to remake it. Cue much dismay, angst, gnashing of teeth and bewailing, 'Why, dear God? Why?' However, on reading the report, it turns out not to be a true remake, just stealing the known name and making a new film. Phew.

Empire magazine, greatest film magazine in the world, has finally got its act together and started a proper blog (rather than their feeble attempt of a blog on MySpace, with Chris Hewitt writing for a short while and then ignoring it and then posting again and then giving up. Now where does that sound familiar ...?) and looks like it will be interesting. I hope they keep it up.

I will be out of blogging action for a couple of weeks, after which I will return with some reviews of graphic novels from my great local library and notes on a plethora of DVDs I've watched recently. I'll see you when I return.

Film Notes: Transformers

It seems almost churlish to ‘review’ Transformers – a film about giant robots that turn into vehicles and fight each other. I mean, that summary says it all, doesn’t it?

That is not to say it is a great film but it is a good film and, more importantly, very enjoyable. It is probably the greatest film based on people’s nostalgia for a cartoon series created to advertise a line of Japanese toys, ever.

I should point out that I’m not a Transformers geek; I’m the wrong age to have got into the cartoon, and I don’t really have any strong feelings about the whole Transformers canon (cartoon, comic books, animated movie) apart from thinking that the idea of big fuck-off robots that transform is genius.

Therefore, I had no preconceptions going into this film. I just wanted to see how cool CGI could make the Transformers look on screen. This attitude meant I was pleasantly surprised. Not only do the Transformers look amazing (my girlfriend and I spent the trip home pointing at cars and saying, ‘Is that a Transformer?’), but the film is entertaining and funny (and deliberately so) and well made. It could possibly be the best film that Michael Bay has made.

The story starts off by introducing us to Sam Witwicky, played by Shia LeBoeuf, who is trying to flog his explorer grandfather’s old things to his school mates in order to help buy his first car. When his dad takes him to buy it, the car chooses him and it turns out to be a Transformer. Due to the necessities of a plot, Sam is in possession of an item (his grandfather’s glasses) which contain a map to the location of the All-Spark (which can create life). The Decepticons (boo, hiss) want it to destroy Earth and the Autobots (hurrah) want to stop them. And that’s about all you need to know, really.

There is some side story, which basically tries to explain what is going on in context of the rest of the ‘real’ world, with a far-too-attractive young girl doing sound analysis for the Pentagon on the hacking the Decepticons do to locate the All-Spark and explaining everything (and not being deported to Guantanamo Bay), but that section of the film is not interesting or necessary and verges on the slightly annoying on occasion, stretching belief to breaking point. Anyway, plot mechanics aren’t important – the MacGuffin is the glasses, which have a map to the All-Spark, but they don’t matter in the slightest because the All-Spark is not actually at the location on the glasses (the government-funded Sector 7 already have it, along with the frozen Megatron, at a secret location), so that was a waste of time and effort.

However, you don’t mind. You are being entertained by the humour and charm of LeBeouf and the sight of robots transforming into cars and lorries and helicopters and planes, and then fighting (there is a scene where Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, punches one of the Decepticons so hard it knocks out his eye before Prime sticks a sword extension thingy from his arm into the Decepticon’s head – now that’s what I call family fun). The film is a visual treat – the transforming looks stunning and the robots look real enough to believe in, so everything else is almost eclipsed. They even manage to instil some character into Bumblebee (loved the use of radio music for his voice as a source of jokes), which comes into play at the end, and the annoying Decepticon spy robot (who sounds like a cross between a Jawa and Jabba the Hutt's little creature).

Fortunately, LeBoeuf keeps you connected to the film as the very believable human lead, with great delivery and poise in the middle of a big action flick. Megan Fox, who plays his love interest but is also handy with car mechanics (what a bit of luchk), has the misfortune to be incredibly gorgeous (as exclaimed by Sam’s mother in the film, in a very funny scene in Sam’s bedroom); she has a beautiful face and a stunning body (Bay lets the camera linger over her whenever possible), and she has to work the most to remind you that she is also acting rather well in the scenes with Sam. Of the supporting cast, John Turturro has the most fun as one of the top people in Sector 7, realising that you have to act big when you are playing second fiddle to CGI robots.

And it’s the robots that work, and work well. The camera swoops and swirls around them during the transformations, as hundreds of pieces of metal swoosh and clank and whirr in giddying jigsaw puzzle of configuration, and you believe that they are existing in the scene with the actors. Watching this is a joy of mindless action; explosions and chases and punches and mid-air transformations keep you constantly dizzy with excitement. You can’t ask for more than that. In the same way that Pirates of the Caribbean was an entertaining film from an unlikely source, Transformers is a dementedly enjoyable (if not brilliant) movie.

Rating: DAVE

Film Notes: Something’s Gotta Give

Written and directed by Nancy Meyers

I don’t know why I can’t stop watching romantic comedy films. It’s some sort of strange weakness. Perhaps it’s my lack of understanding of romantic impulses, the inventiveness of the ideas, the magic of the moment (even though I realise that it is not real – it is a lie about the thrill of the beginning of a relationship, the connection that drives the love, something which wanes in later life but film makes us believe that it is the only reason for two people being together). Like the films tell us, there are some things we cannot control.

My feeble attempt at justifying watching this was the cast – Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Amanda Peet, Keanu Reeves, John Favreau, Frances McDormand, all in one film. That’s gotta be good, doesn’t it?

Jack plays a rich, eternal bachelor who is dating Peet, the daughter of Keaton’s divorced playwright. The mismatched couple go to Keaton’s place in the Hamptons for a naughty weekend, only for Keaton and her sister (a completely wasted McDormand, even if it is nice to watch in anything – well, except for Aeon Flux, perhaps) to be there. Nicholson than has a heart attack and is forced by the local doctor, Reeves, to convalesce at Keaton’s house. During this time, the animosity that existed between Nicholson and Keaton develops into something more, only for silly plot machinations to get in the way so that there can be an excessively romantic ending in Paris.

The film is a traditional romcom but it’s made more interesting by the ‘What if … ?’ factor of the situation – what if Jack Nicholson stopped running around with women much younger than him and had a relationship with a woman he loved? (It’s a bit like the What If concept behind Notting Hill being the drive behind the story.) The role seems based on Jack, his non-commital nature, this charm, his obsession with younger women, yet with a sensitivity. The realness he brings to the role stops the character being one-dimensional. Similarly, Keaton brings an authority to her role, and the two of them share an amazing chemistry on screen – when it’s just the two of them in the ‘finding love’ stage of the film, their scenes are electric and natural, particularly in the beach scenes; it’s an absolute joy to watch, seeing two pros working their magic. It’s a shame that the film has to split them up with the story engine to get them back at the end – the film loses its sparkle when they are apart.

The rest of the cast are not exactly hard to watch but they don’t get well served. Reeves, who is used to stamp his character with an immediate sexiness but nothing else, is wasted and is not a natural in the romance role. But this is indicative of the casting – why is McDormand used in the small role of the sister other than to make it more real in the limited screen time? Favreau has about three scenes and five lines. Peet is a little more involved but it’s mostly as an excuse for Keaton’s character to come to New York just so she can see Nicholson with a younger woman after they have connected so that she can feel spurned and then write a play about their relationship and start something with Reeves doctor (who is infatuated with her, in a slightly stalker way).

Keaton give a very emotional performance – and not just for the nude shot, which didn’t seem necessary; the build-up to the joke had made it obvious that Nicholson had seen her naked, so there was no reason other than Keaton to show in what good condition she is, in a split-second, full-length bodyshot.

The film is charming and romantic in places, and it is lovely to see older people in a romantic film nowadays, even if the narrative loses momentum with the deliberately forced break-up at the end of Act Two. Not that Nicholson has taken any of it to heart …

Comic Book Reviews – Challengers of the Unknown: Stolen Moments, Borrowed Time

Challengers of the Unknown #1–6
by Howard Chaykin

Howard Chaykin, he’s all about design – the covers are essentially the same, but with different characters in the foreground not showing their whole face, the motifs of the diamond, crown, star, heart and cross above the styilised font all look sharp. He’s always been one of the most stylistic artists in mainstream comics, and he certainly knows how to draw the hell out of a comic book page, even if it’s in a televisual style (perhaps why he felt so at home in television for so long).

He brings this in spades to this project – an update of the DC superhero team, the Challengers of the Unknown, much like his great update of The Shadow back in the 1980s. He starts off with something to stop you flipping the channel, I mean , to keep you reading: the wife of the English prime minister gets her head blown off on live TV. Then Chaykin kicks his design skills into gear; the sound FX as a backdrop for the page, the newsreporters on TV across the pages, and the introduction to the five main characters. For each, there is a page of violence, followed by an identical sequence of panels: the face of the character naming themselves with their hand to their mouth to show their ring with its name-based symbol on it; a close-up of the eyes; then two rows of three panels of strange dreams, then a final page-wide panel of their feet walking away.

The stupidly named Zach Dyamond, Tessa Crowne, Rydell Starr, Kendra Harte, Holden Crosse are our improbable protagonists. They end up at Long Beach, where, on the last page, an oil tanker is blown up …

(It is interesting to note that the DC Hot List This Week column states about the book: ‘In a world devoid of super-heroes …’)

Obviously, with such unlikely names, our protagonists survive, with identical headwounds and identical outfits, of mostly black spandex, while TV covers the ‘terrorist attack’. And Mae Nash Price, 100 years old and looking good, who runs the media (the liberal conspiracy of someone behind everything, dictating world events), is angry because she wasn’t responsible for the disaster – she reckons it must be Tom Byshop, a modern day pirate, as a message to her. She sends Miss Brydge, her operative, to get them but they pull some kung fu moves out of nowhere and they are not captured.

Reporting back to Price, Lowell Parker, CEO of KnowNowNet and one of the most powerful men on the planet, mentions Morgan, Haley, Ryan and Davis (the original COTU) to give us a connection back to the first team.

Our protagonists turn up to what they think are their own safe place (and admit that they had changed their names, thank God), only to be located by Brydge, leading to a great shoot out in the third issue. The sound FX as a constant background art, it’s some great design by Chaykin. The group escape in a chopper and remove the computer chips from their heads. But then they decide to try hypnosis to get some answers. Which they all agree to. Huh? How does that suggestion not get ridiculed? I think Chaykin has spent too much time in LA … However, it does lead to top-notch two-page spread of 40 panels that gives us all the information we need about the five: they’ve been in the armed forces, they were captured, brainwashed, changed their names and weekly visits to an office in Long Beach (all the characters sneering all the time, much as I imagine Chaykin does himself), all of which alter them to become better human specimens.

Now with this knowledge, they end up going to Byshop’s boat, where they start shooting but then it all stops. Just like that. Sounds plausible. Meanwhile, they have been identified as terrorists by the TV channel that Price and Lowell own and control, and Lowell shots Brydge in the head for failure and he gets a new cadre ready.

We are told that the original COTU were distracted with wild fabricated fantasies, just to keep the Hegemony a secret – ‘a secret society of multibillionaires who rule the world from behind a screen of night and fog’ (and who keep the Negroes, Orientals and Hebrews out of this society). Byshop tells them that they were trained to be assassins (he even knows their original names); Chaykin brings out his mad design skills, with another set of fiver near-identical pages showing their original faces, a fight panel, walking on steps panel, fingering their ring (ooer, sounds a bit rude) panel, and a panel of them talking with Brydge. He does know how to tell a story.

Kingge (what’s with the names?) and his cadre find them all and Zach gets his head cut off. The beginning of the fifth issues see his head rolling still on the first panel – that grabs your attention. To keep things going, Byshop gets shot in the head in the next page. These challengers aren’t expendable.

We get more about the secret rulers of the world (with mentions to Elvis, Walt Disney and Princess Diana) – I can’t tell if this is supposed to be a piss take or not – who are responsible for Hitler, Stalin, stock market crash, the Depression, Marilyn Monroe (Brave New World and 1984 being clues to their existence). The original COTU, the ‘so-called comic book’, ‘subliterary forms’, ‘using popular culture as an instrument of social engineering’, all part of the plan. So, our remaining group go to Price who shave’s off their hair and take’s them to Hegemony’s secret lunar colony, where they’ve been for 50 years with all the tech the German scientists developed, where the Hegemony will stay and leave Earth to the mongrels.

Things don’t work out quite as expected, as these things never do, and the new Challengers of the Unknown are created. Although, based on the lack of anything resembling new material featuring these characters, it would appear that the new group didn’t quite take. It could be the times; this isn’t the ‘80s anymore (the update does feel a little old school), and the modern comic book fan doesn’t want anything too new. Although the story isn’t too bad, it’s nothing particularly special except for Chaykin’s stylish artwork. It’s an interesting footnote to the COTU timeline that seems out of place in today’s comic book world. At least Chaykin is back in comics again …

Book Review: The Devil You Know

By Mike Carey

I expect that most well-read comic book readers probably came across Mike Carey first via the Lucifer series from Vertigo, a spin-off from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, about the fallen angel after he gave the keys to hell to Morpheus – he must be a brave (or desperate) man to work on something related to Gaiman’s landmark comic book series. Subsequently, he has moved onwards and upwards, working on a long run on Hellblazer and now writing Ultimate Fantastic Four and The X-Men. In between all this, he’s managed to find time to write prose novels, of which The Devil You Know is the first in the Felix Castor series.

Felix Castor, which is a great name for a central character, is a former freelance exorcist – he grew up being psychically sensitive to the paranormal, and found he had an ability to exorcise ghosts when he got fed up being pestered by the ghost of his dead sister. He hasn’t worked in a year because of the exorcism that went wrong when he was trying to help his friend who had been experiment with some dangerous magic. However, his landlady (an old friend from his brief college days) is behind on her mortgage, and he is behind on his rent, so the fates determine that he cannot turn down the opportunity of some relatively easy money when he gets called to perform an exorcism at the Bonnington Archive in London. Obviously, things don’t go smoothly or there wouldn’t be much of a story.

And a good story it is. Carey has created an intriguing character in Castor and his first-person narrative. It’s squarely in the noir domain but not limited to investigations – in fact, by definition the source of the story is already dead. This is an interesting basis for a recurring character – the world of ghosts allows for a large cross-section of society for the purpose of story-telling. Carey adds to this by having his world witness a tipping point in the ghost world equilibrium causing more and more to appear and become part of normal existence. He also allows for ghosts to be an explanation for animalistic paranormality – one character Castor comes across is a loup garou, a ghost who has changed the shape of an animal into a basic human form, increasing the scope of worlds to be used.

Another aspect that is central to the story is London itself. Castor, like Carey himself, comes from Liverpool and moved to London and sees it from a different viewpoint, looking at the city in an absorbing manner. It makes the novel very English, particularly with the narrative style – any character who references the famous last line of commentary from the England World Cup win of 1966 gets my vote even if it might alienate others who don’t get it. The prose and the dialogue are filled with Englishisms that make the book breathe and come to life. The little details display the thought behind the story and the skill Carey brings to this world he has created – the basic premise and character might have some similarities to the star of Hellblazer, John Constantine (a Scouser who dabbles in magic), but the results are very different. The Devil You Know is a satisfying and engrossing read, with an interesting character in Felix Castor that makes me want to read more. I look forward to the next book in the series.

Film Review: Clerks II

Kevin Smith is seen as King of the Geeks; he makes films I enjoy watching. I wonder what that says about me … ?

Ever since I saw Clerks, his black and white, low-budget debut, I’ve been a fan of his films. The dialogue is such a delight to listen to (which compensates for his earlier lack of visual flair). His characters discussing pop culture matters was something I could relate to, and the films themselves have a lot of heart (even if it is hidden under an avalanche of swearing and knob and fart jokes).

When it came to this much delayed sequel (of sorts) to the film that made his name (and most still hold as his funniest), I wasn’t part of the camp who were decrying the idea. The concept of visiting his characters after approximately ten years wasn’t a problem, and is in keeping with his comic book-inspired nature of the cohesive universe of characters that interact, sometimes in extremely loose ways.

In this film, Dante and Randall, the original clerks, are now working in Moobys, the Askew-verse fast food joint after their original place of work burnt down. However, Dante is in a relationship which will see him move to Florida and start working for his future father-in-law, leaving Randall to his own devices. Obviously, things don’t turn out as simple as that …

This is very much an updated version of the first film, with Dante choosing between two women, while Randall stays true to himself whatever the circumstances. Rosario Dawson, as the other women, is a geek dream, and blatantly far too hot for Dante – as Smith himself says, she deserves an Oscar for making you believe that she would fuck Dante. As the big name in the small cast, she integrates easily and is utterly charming, funny and sexy. And she is good – the line at the end where she says ‘What took you so long?’ is delivered so perfectly, it had me choking up a little.

It is strange seeing the world of Clerks in colour, perhaps why it starts and finishes with shots in black and white. There is no new ground compared with the previous, just a new set of parameters, but that doesn’t harm it. The main draw is the Smith dialogue, which flows with profane hilarity. The donkey scene isn’t nearly as funny/gross as it thinks it is, but the rest of the film makes up for that (even the completely bizarre yet cute musical number). Like nearly all his films, Smith is making a love letter to the person in his life, the message being about the importance of ‘getting the person’ in a relationship, and that’s something I can relate to.

John at Sore Eyes posited his rule of thumb that any film made more than five years after the previous entry in the series is guaranteed to be dreadful. He certainly has a point, but I think that Clerks II might be the exception that proves the rule …

Rating: DAVE

Film Review: The Departed

I’m fond of Martin Scorsese – this, for instance – but even I was amazed when this film won him his Oscar at last for best director. I guess when the fates align – he’s been ignored for so long, the film had a VERY starry cast, it was a success at the box office (his biggest?), and there was nothing else (apparently) – you can’t ignore the justice of giving the man his statue after he has deserved it for too many years, even if this film is merely very good rather than great.

Remakes are kind to Marty – his remake of Cape Fear showed the studios that he could make a mainstream picture to budget and schedule that would make money – and this remake of the excellent Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs was very kind indeed. Following the same basic (and brilliant) premise as the original film, we are introduced to an undercover cop (Leonardo DiCaprio) infiltrating the local Irish mob and a criminal (Matt Damon) from the Irish mob becoming a policeman to work as a mole for the mob boss (Jack Nicholson), which becomes more tense when Damon gets handed the investigation to uncover the mole in the police force.

What follows is some great acting, great directing, great use of pop music as soundtrack and a thrilling and violent film. It has a great cast: in addition to the big names above, there’s Martin Sheen as the Leo’s boss; Mark Wahlberg as his snarky but smart second-in-command; Alec Baldwin as a police captain; and Ray Winstone as one of Nicholson’s top men. It’s quite something to see them all working together, chewing on some sharp dialogue.

However, a problem in the story is that, in accommodating Nicholson into the film by boosting his role, it unbalances the story. It shifts it from the dazzling central conceit to the examination of the protagonists’ relationships with Jack. When he dies, near the end of the film, a lot of the energy and drive goes out of the movie, almost undercutting the drama of the final act. Fortunately, everything else is so well done that it doesn’t overpower the film completely, allowing such wonderful scenes as the ‘no dialogue mobile phone’ scene with Damon and DiCaprio to shine.

Rating: DAVE