Okay, 95% of the people reading this will already know, and the other 5% are probably not interested - but for the remaining 0% (yes, that means you!), here’s the Watchmen trailer that came out recently:
Now, part of me looks at this trailer and thinks, “Wow… that is almost picture perfect!” Another part thinks that the last thing Watchmen is about are pretty pictures. This is a trailer, yes, which has one purpose: to get people excited and put asses in seats. But Zack Snyder strikes me as a director enamoured with glossy, stylised images - and that sort of thing tends to detract from the humanity of the characters. And one of the major points of Watchmen is that the superheroes in it (excepting Dr Manhattan, although that would make for a longer discussion) are utterly human. And the book is about ideas, not about wowing the audience with cool visuals.
Having said that, I like much of the casting. I like that Snyder didn’t go for the superstars (although I do think that Adrian Veidt could easily have been played by a good-looking star, since he is pretty much one of the biggest celebrities in the world he inhabits). I like the visual metaphor of the clockwork in the trailer. And I find the CGI representation of Doc Manhattan strangely affecting, especially in that shot where you’ve got three of them.
What worries me, though, is what I’ve heard about the ending. If it’s true… well, there’s one way of pretty much ruining Watchmen, and that’s by screwing with one or two elements of the ending. I just hope that they will be able to resist killing the ‘bad guy’.
Thanks to Hellboy II (or so I would imagine), I’ve been getting lots of hits in spite of a lack of regular updates. Messrs Mignola, Del Toro and Perlman, thank you very much! The film does look quite gorgeous, as do most of Del Toro’s films - obviously they give the Latin American version of Peter Jackson full reign, and his wild imagination thanked them accordingly.
But that’s not what I wanted to blog about. Instead, I’ve come to praise Yorick Brown, not to bury him.
Remember what I wrote a couple of days ago about Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men? Well, Joss is not the only sadistic bastard out there writing comics. Enter Mr Brian K Vaughan, who recently finished his long tale of a man, his helper monkey and a world full of women.
While I enjoyed all ten volumes of Y: The Last Man (the final volume just came out), the series isn’t perfect. There are moments when Vaughan missteps. The plot could do with some tightening. And the hook and setup are so breathtakingly big that it’s almost impossible for the ending to satisfy fully.
Warning: Here be spoilers!
The story strand that perhaps worked least for me was Alter’s trajectory. She’s intriguing to begin with, but Vaughan didn’t seem to know where to take her. She ends up as someone who cannot cope and, as an alternative to suicide, tries to get someone else to pull the trigger by being an all-round homicidal bitch. We’ve had similar motifs with Hero, with 355 (although more subtly, perhaps) and even with Yorick. It doesn’t help that there are entire issues that seem to forget completely about her.
Regardless of that, though, issues 58-60 are heartbreaking. 355’s death (apart from a flashback to Yorick’s intervention in an earlier volume (Safeword) that didn’t work as well as it should have) is done beautifully and practically wordlessly, to devastating effect. Pia Guerra’s simple yet effective art is at its best in the facial expressions: 355’s final look at Yorick, his silent exchange with Alter, and his face as he looks up at Hero, unable even to begin to express what has happened.
Issue 60 is a tricky one: with its “60 years later” conceit, it could easily have fallen flat. And there is something alienating about seeing a world where most of the familiar characters are absent and Yorick appears to be an old, white-haired loon in a straightjacket. My first reaction to the final issue was one of feeling at a distance from the guy we’d just accompanied for several years through a post-gendercidal world, where before he’d always been the ideal screen for all us white, somewhat nerdy male Lit majors to project ourselves onto. But with every flashback filling in glimpses of what happens during the 60 years in between the last two issues, Vaughan hooked me more and more.
At first I would have said that the best, worst moment of the issue is Ampersand’s death, euthanised by an old Yorick wanting to spare his friend the pain. It’s a simple, touching farewell to a character who, with his Eeps and Cheeps has become as much of a person as any of the human characters. This was topped, though, by the silent, moving last three pages, as our escape artist Yorick gets out of his last fix. Vaughan and Guerra handle it perfectly, giving us and the characters just the right note to end on.
So, on that note: Thank you, Brian K Vaughan. Thank you, Pia Guerra. Thank you, Yorick, 355, Dr Mann, Beth, other Beth, Natalya and, of course, Ampersand. It’s been a terrific journey.
And if you break my heart again, Mr Vaughan, I will do real damage to you with the Absolute Sandman vol. 3.
So, I hear there’s this new Indiana Jones film on. What’s that? It’s been out for a month or so? Aw shucks…
I’m probably exactly the right age for the Indy movies. I saw Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade at the cinema when I was 14, and I got Raiders of the Lost Ark on video later that same year. As a teenager I enjoyed the hell out of these films - except for Temple of Doom, which I already didn’t particularly like at the time. It’s got fantastic set pieces but doesn’t hold together very well as a film. (And it’s the one Indiana Jones movie, in my opinion, where the stereotypical natives do become offensive and racist… but that’s not my beef here.)
My favourite one of the films was always Raiders. It had a magic, a rawness and an energy that the others don’t match. Last Crusade is the funnier film, but it comes dangerously close to self-parody - added to which, well, it’s pretty much a rip-off of Raiders. So many of the scenes made me think, “Yeah, cool, but haven’t I seen this one already?” You get the same type of intro sequence, followed by scenes at Barnett College, followed by the story proper. You’ve got rats instead of snakes. You’ve got the wrath of God visited on those undeserving. And all of it tries just a bit too hard to be funny.
Last Crusade fares worst when it comes to the side characters that were introduced in Raiders. Both Sallah and Marcus Brody are turned into jokes - and they aren’t particularly good jokes. If it wasn’t for the interplay between Indy and his father, Last Crusade wouldn’t be much better than, say, TheMummy or any other Indiana Jones rip-offs.
Now, finally, Spielberg, Lucas and Ford got their act together and made a fourth film. Lots of fans hated it. Correction: lots of fans hated it on the internet. There’s something about Web 2.0 that brings out the extremist in fanboys and nerds. Something can’t be pretty good or sort of bad - it’s all either perfect, worthy of geekgasms, or utter shite of the “George Lucas raped my childhood!” ilk.
Crystal Skull is neither. It’s the third best Indiana Jones film. It’s enjoyable but forgettable. And it makes a couple of very unfortunate mistakes:
There’s little to no motivation for Indy. He’s only reacting to what’s happening. For a hero, he’s pretty damn passive. Compare that with Raiders, where something is actually at stake for him. Here the baddies have ten times more of a motivation to do what they do. Indy’s just along for the ride, really.
What happened to the guy who got shot, who bled, who looked worse for wear after his big scenes? Indy’s always survived things that no real human being would survive - but he was never indestructible. Here, one of the first things we see the man do is survive an atomic blast. Yes, it’s funny. Yes, it’s one hell of a cool image. But if a hero isn’t touched by a nuclear explosion, well, are we supposed to be thrilled when he’s being chased by bumbling Russian soldiers?
David Koepp, the script writer, didn’t really know what to do with his characters. Many of them are utterly unnecessary for the plot and take time away from one another. Was Mac necessary? Not really. The Russians could have done what they did without him. Oxley? He was basically a talking version of Last Crusade’s Grail diary. Even Marion, although she had some nice scenes, was basically wasted, as was Mutt. There was no urgent reason why any of these characters were in the film - and if you’re making what should be a rollercoaster ride of a film, superfluous characters slow you down.
I don’t have any problems with aliens instead of religious artefacts - if they’re intriguing. The Ark of the Covenant had mystery, it felt positively alive. (It was also helped by John Williams’ wonderful score, which I’ll talk about in the next bullet.) The Grail was already much less interesting, but Last Crusade didn’t focus on it: it focused on Indy and his father. The crystal skull? It’s a pretty uninteresting gizmo. It doesn’t have much character. And the ending pretty much lacked awe… which the Ark had in spades.
I don’t remember a single one of the new tunes Williams penned for Crystal Skull. All three former Indiana Jones movies had memorable tracks, and the Raiders March is one of the most iconic pieces of film music there is. I can’t remember the last time Williams wrote music that didn’t feel like B-sides. The man wrote some of the most memorable film scores - but from what he’s been producing in the last, say, ten years, he should finally retire.
The villains… Raiders had its iconic Nazis, and it had Belloq, to date still by far the best adversary Indy ever had - because he wasn’t actually that different from the man. Belloq had a great introduction, his interactions with Indy were well written and acted, and he actually had charisma. Cate Blanchett tries hard, but the script doesn’t know what to do with her. Is she evil? Driven? Obsessed? Is she actually a tragic figure? I don’t mind ambivalent characters, but I mind scripts that seem to have an attention span of five minutes. Koepp didn’t really seem to have much of a concept of any of the characters… which is probably why the film feels mostly like a string of episodes, none of which are really terribly compelling. And what’s Indy without a good adversary?
And what’s with the horrible over-exposed wedding at the end? It looked like Heaven in Always! Walk into the light, Indy…
Anyway, the film’s had enough of a critical pummeling. All in all, it was entertaining enough, but not much more so than a competent Indiana Jones knock-off. And somehow mediocrity is almost worse than an out-right bad Indy movie. I just hope that Lucas and Spielberg won’t try to keep flogging this almost-dead horse. At some point it becomes terribly, terribly undignified.
It’s been… way too long. Ages. What’s my excuse? Work. Too much of it.
Yes, I know - it’s a feeble excuse, but it’s the only one I’ve got. Sorry.
However, you’ve all been on my mind… or rather, the blog has. Every one or two days I’d think, “Hmm… I should write about this.” And then nothing would come of it. Okay, admittedly, it’s not as if I was at work 24/7 - but the combination of lots of things to organise (after all, I had to bring five young climate activists to the inaugural meeting of Kofi Annan’s new organisation - no pressure!) with lack of sleep doesn’t exactly make for diligent blogging. In any case, I am deeply sorry about being so silent for the longest time.
So, what sort of things did I feel like blogging about?
The EURO 08 and the woes of having high-definition digital television and the only things on are football and tennis. (You can count the grains of sand!)
The latest Hellboy collection, which I enjoyed quite a bit. And the Hellboy 2 trailers - Guilhermy goodness!
House of Leaves - postmodern horror or horrifically postmodern?
I, Robot - there are some films that aren’t even worthwhile when you can watch them for free…
Team Fortress 2 - but then, everyone’s already blogged about TF2, so I’d only out myself as perennially late.
In any case, I’ll leave you with an impression of the latter. Great fun if you need to blow off some steam. (For gamer nerds: no, that pun wasn’t intended.) Never before has carnage been such family-friendly fun!
Today I finally became the proud owner of a digital TV set-top box. I haven’t really checked it out that much yet, but it finally allowed me to see the Future of TV. More pixels. Full HD. And lots of other terms that basically boil down to “Let’s let the boys play a bit, shall we?”
So far I’ve checked out three of the HD offerings: HD Suisse, BBC HD and lastminute.tv. The latter was basically a glorified travel ad for last-minute trips, BBC was showing some nature documentary and HD Suisse was broadcasting a classical concert. Not exactly the most exciting programming imaginable. But I was sitting there going, “Wow, look at that image, you can read every semiquaver on that violinist’s sheet music, and even his notes, and check out that Capuchin monkey. see how every single hair on its head is visible? And that cheap, computer-generated price tag for the hotel, you can hardly make out any aliasing on it! This is what TV is all about!” (Okay, that last one is even more wildly exaggerated than the other examples.)
If they actually showed Lost or Battlestar Galactica in Full HD, chances are my brain would implode and I’d end up a drooling imbecile. Right now I don’t drool yet.
And my girlfriend’s reaction? “Cool, they’re showing Doctors on BBC!”
Talking about the future of this and pixelly goodness that, the latest entry in the AV Club’s “My Year of Flops Case File” is a highly enjoyable panning of Speed Racer, latest proof that the Wachowski siblings’ worst movie may not have been a Matrix sequel. Share and enjoy!
“I think we lost him.” That is still one of the most chilling final lines of any movie I’ve seen. (Another very effective last line, and one of my favourite, would be: “Ernest Hemingway once said, ‘The World is a fine place and worth fighting for.’ I agree with the second part.”) And whatever else you may think about the film, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil has one of the most effective endings in film history.
On the whole, I like films the way I like my sharks: single-minded. (Okay, that wasn’t exactly the most successful simile this side of Metaphysical Poetry.) Films that are trim, lean, effective. I also like the sprawling epos, but if a film is messy - if it’s jam-packed with ideas and images that in the end don’t really lead anywhere - I tend to lose patience.
Brazil is a big mess of a film. Terry Gilliam isn’t exactly a disciplined film-maker, and Brazil is one of his least disciplined movies. There are dozens of scenes, incidents and characters that seem to be in the film because it seemed a good idea at the time. It’s garish, cartoony and unfocused - very much like its central character, really. Nevertheless, for me it’s the best, most affecting dystopia on celluloid.
Part of this is Gilliam’s success at using a handful of characters and actors to anchor the film in some sort of emotional reality. Yes, so many of the characters remain flat cartoons that are there for a joke or to make a point (which usually kills a film’s credibility for me), but then you’ve got Mrs. Tuttle’s anguished “What have you done with his body?” or Michael Palin’s greatest creation, Jack Lint… or Sam Lowry, Jonathan Pryce’s funniest, saddest part ever. The forlornly happy look on his face at the very end, after he’s “escaped”, still breaks my heart. And the interrogation scenes are still both funny and frightening (although I could do without the “pinball prisoner” scene).
Would the film be better if it was more focused, if Gilliam had been less sprawling, running off in several different directions at once? It’s impossible to say - a streamlined, single-minded Brazil would be an entirely different movie. Sufficient to say, though, that Brazil remains my favourite Gilliam film, even after a dozen viewings. And its happy ending is the saddest ever filmed.
Just make sure not to watch the “Love Conquers All” edit, unless you have an unhealthy fascination with watching road accidents as they’re happening - or if you can dissociate yourself enough from what you’re watching to observe, clinically, how a different edit can change a film into a grotesque mockery of itself.
Oh, and while we’re at it: one of the most fascinating (Un-)Making Of documentaries must be Lost in La Mancha, which documents the disastrous production history of Gilliam’s take on Don Quixote. If you ever want to see a mad ex-Python as unwitting King Lear, or if you have any interest in how films come about, check it out.
Anthony Lane is one of my favourite film critics. I don’t always agree with him, but by and large he’s got a great bullshit detector when it comes to movies. His dismembering of Revenge of the Sith is a classic - I got considerably more enjoyment out of it than out of George Lucas’ third dismal prequel:
The general opinion of “Revenge of the Sith” seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones.” True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion.
(Thanks, Robot Chicken.)
The New Yorker website has now put Lane’s review of Sex and the City(one of the few HBO series that would probably make my head explode). Again, it’s great fun to read - I doubt the film could make me laugh half as much:
Secrecy has clouded “Sex and the City” since it was first announced. When would the film appear? Who would find a husband? Would one of the main characters die? If so, would she commit suicide by self-pity (a constant threat), or would a crocodile escape from the Bronx Zoo and wreak a flesh-ripping revenge for all those handbags?
If you like wit as sharp as a well honed knife, do browse Lane’s reviews. Well worth it, especially when it comes to the films you hate.
Okay, this is a bit of a cheat entry - but I was just surfing DVD reviews and was reminded of one of my favourite trailers ever. So, without much further ado, here it is:
What else? I’ve started rewatching The Sopranos, and I’m surprised at how many of the scenes I remember best are actually from the first season. What happened in seasons 2 to 5? (I haven’t seen the final season yet, but I’m very, very curious. From what I’ve heard and read, I could imagine being one of those Hipster Douchebags(tm) who actually like the way the series ended.)
This film nerd here is a complex beast. On the one hand, I get as much childlike joy out of well-executed genre films that follow the formula to a T. I enjoy the climactic showdown between Hero and Villain. On the other hand, I cackle gleefully when a film (or a book, for that matter) frustrates my expectations. No Country for Old Men is a good case in point, where the supposed hero dies off-stage and isn’t even killed by the bad guy of the piece. Even Raiders of the Lost Ark, a genre movie if there ever was one, doesn’t end with the hero triumphing: it ends with the hero tied to a stake as the ultima deus ex machina comes and melts the faces off a bunch of undeserving unbelievers.
I just finished re-reading Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. I’d last read it in the summer of 2001, just after graduating. I have fond memories of sitting in a French café in Edinburgh during festival time, drinking good coffee, eating croissants and not looking up from my book until I’d finished half of it in one sitting. What I remembered much less was the plot, at least beyond the broad strokes. What I definitely didn’t remember was how differently it told its story from how Hollywood would (and, from what I’ve heard, did) do it. Here too, we don’t get a showdown with the villainess - instead, we get a melancholy coda and a bittersweet ending that made me realise how rarely Hollywood does “bittersweet”. I know that most Gaiman fans prefer American Gods, but I must say that even without Charles Vess’ pictures (I have the non-pic edition), this is a beautiful, wonderfully light, exquisitely crafted fairytale. In comparison, I feel that American Gods collapses under its own ambition, because its dozens of ideas never really come together in a fully satisfactory way.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering about the title of this entry? Well, we’ve just started watching The Wire season 1. Very different fare from Buffy, if you would believe it… But intriguing, with carefully drawn characters and lots of shades of grey. Definitely looking forward to seeing more of it - and telling you all about it, in epic detail. Shudder and despair.
Well, no, actually I’m not. I’m sitting in a hotel room at the City Inn in Westminster. In the meantime we’ve moved, and most of the boxes have actually been emptied and are now clogging up our cellar - but instead of being at home and helping my lovelier half make the flat into less of a transitional mess, I’m off gallivanting in London.
Okay, that’s not quite fair. I’m here for work, and most of the last three days I’ve been busy working on a commissioning proposal. My suffering fills vast halls hewn from black obsidian stone that cry black sooty tears. Of suffering.
And so that you can share in the suffering, here’s what YouTube comes up with when you search for “commissioning proposal”:
(Anyone sad enough to watch all of that: does it get more interesting at some point? Don’t answer - in all likelihood, you’re clawing bloody fragments of skull and brain from your eyesockets with sheer boredom.)
Okay, I apologise for that icky image and the gratuitous gore. But may I just remind you: COMMISSIONING PROPOSAL.
Good. I feel better now. And this is me telling you: from now on, there will be more frequent updates again. And to finish this Grand Return entry, here are two good things about being in London:
And their cocktails aren’t half bad either. So, next time you’re in London - whoever you are and wherever you are - check out Ping Pong, the best dim sum place this side of the Yangtze river. (Thanks to Monique for introducing me to it!)
