Stardust
I haven't sat in and watched a film on a Sunday evening for ages, so I took some time off to watch Stardust on C4 this evening. And enjoyed it hugely. I was already a fan of Neil Gaiman's book, but was aware it wasn't all terribly cinematic - the ending in particular worked fine on the page, but might not do so well on screen. Well, they fixed that. The whole script was tight and faithful to the spirit of the original - though not afraid to take an idea and run with it - and it looked beautiful too, with some lovely visual flourishes. Really great adaptation. The only missing element was four letters of dialogue in Claire Danes' first scene, but I'll forgive it that. I haven't enjoyed a film so much for quite a while.
Eastenders at 25
Dear Eastenders: how did you do that? How did you hide a character in plain sight like that? She had a colossal motive, yet never even crossed my mind. Some excellent misdirection, there. Nicely played.
And your live episode was classy. I assumed there'd be plenty of protracted dialogue between two characters in a room, but instead it was all fast cuts, parties, actors hustling between different places, impressive lighting, tricky emotional scenes - and obviously the huge final stunt. Kudos for challenging yourselves.
I lived and died with it, too. Admittedly Bradley must have had some kind of breakdown in the last five minutes, because I'm not sure jumping from the building made much sense ok, I take it back - watching it again, he fell; I'm not sure why he was up there in the first place, but that makes much more sense than jumping. But despite this and the pre-show announcer dropping unsubtle hints, it was surprisingly affecting. I even felt sorry for Max. Max! Yes, that dick. Well done.
With this and your genuinely upsetting Shakespearean tragedy last year, you're putting the lie to the clichés about soaps. I think soaps are unfairly derided, as they have a unique storytelling potential - no other media can build characters and storylines on a daily basis, taking their time to make me genuinely care about a group of people. I like sharing these characters' highs and lows - it's nice, and something very difficult to pull off in other media. Tonight's show was the culmination of some very hard work, and a great story resulted. It entertained me greatly. Thank you.
One request, though: please don't get rid of Stacey. In a show with plenty of great actors she lights up the screen, and has done for years. If this could turn out to be a red herring, and the actual culprit be Dotty, that'd be swell. Ta.
The Mrs.
I just heard about this, but didn't believe it until YouTube provided proper evidence. It's best if you go in blind:
Really. It's exactly what you're thinking. And yes - the first ten seconds actually happened.
The short-lived show was renamed Captain Janeway Kate Loves A Mystery - I am not making this up - before getting swiftly cancelled. I am now on a mission to find a full-length episode.
(info originally found in the pleasingly positive It Is Just You, Everything's Not Shit.)
Time Traveller’s Wife Trailer
Uh oh.
There's no way I get through this film without crying, is there1? At least I could read the book on my own.
- not a spoiler, promise - all sorts of things can set me off, and the book was full of them. [↩]
Torchwood: Children of Earth
Spoilers ahoy.
I wanted the scene. I wanted somebody to stand in front of that glass screen and say 'no'. And it didn't happen.
See, I have a thing about uncompromising nobility in my science fiction. If there's an unambiguous moral 'dilemma', I'm not interested in seeing the heroes debate it. This isn't time well spent: we know what they'll do. I want to see them make the right choice and deal with the consequences. When the defences are down, there are hoofbeats from the horizon, and the only escape is unthinkable, I want Torchwood staffed by Mal Reynolds, Rorschach, and, as it turns out, Gwen Cooper.
Because Torchwood's primary conundrum was easy. It's just a shame about the leadership. Humanity's elected officials were infinitely puny, and Torchwood was in the hands of Captain Capricious. Rescuing him from the concrete turned out to be their biggest mistake. Darwin only knows what Jack'll do at any given moment, but Gwen - ah, Gwen; she can be relied upon to behave. If it's a choice between condemning 10% of the world's children to indefinite suffering, and all of humanity going down fighting, Gwen'll go John Woo on your ass before you've finished the question. Captain Jack might say the right things, but start killing people and he'll cry and take it all back. Not the point. Gwen would've wept a single tear, then shoved a grenade down Ianto's throat and thrown him through the plate glass, following him up with a hail of throwing stars, hollow-tipped silver bullets, and civil service paperweights. Gwen don't take no shit from vomit monsters.
Over five nights, Gwen and Lois were the sole Guardians of the Awesome. Ianto spent a lot of time mooning then died. Jack wandered around a bit then died, and cried a bit then died, and wandered some more then died, etc.. Gwen, while pregnant, rescued everyone and damn near saved the world. Lois single-handedly performed a hostile takeover of the British government. Go Lois. Nobody came close to their levels of testicular fortitude - until the last five minutes, and that final choice.
That secondary conundrum was also simple, but the choice free of virtue. We can all see ourselves saying fuck you to the hordes of hell, but what if we can only save the world by sacrificing our own humanity? Impossible decision, yet Captain Jack redeemed himself. In an infanticidal way, admittedly, but properly heroic with it. You might say 'we will not sacrifice one innocent child for the sake of humanity'. You would say that. But that isn't the question. Humanity lost. The armageddon is five seconds away. It's not: "sacrifice one innocent child vs. die fighting", it's "one innocent death vs. a million innocent deaths" - it has to be one or the other. Oh, and the innocent death is your grandson. This is the decision that broke Captain Jack. And he knew it would, but did it anyway, without flinching. Properly heroic, that was.
Still. Took him long enough. And he was only there after psycho army lady developed a conscience, and who caused that? Gwen. Gwen, who was spending the end of the world rescuing children from Nazis. I wish she'd had a proper final moment - a shot where she turned, suicidally, to put herself between Ianto's nephew and the armed soldiers. Gwen would have done that.
Great stuff. Season 4? Easy: Gwen leads, Lois learns, geeks flock, nobody becomes a zombie, Captain Jack returns as a vengeful god who must be contained/tamed, and is eventually assigned the task of finding a good storyline involving weevils. I'd like another thirteen-part series, but five consecutive nights was pretty damn exciting. More please.
Die Hard 4
The depiction of computers in movies seems to irritate a lot of people. I've never understood why. Yes, computers don't have fancy graphics, large-text access denied messages, mouse-less operation, and you can't magically hack into anything at will - especially with a gun to your head and, um, other distractions - but it's not real. It's a film. Using a computer is not inherently dramatic - filmmakers have to do something.
That said, I was smiling throughout Die Hard 4: it was clearly written sans geek. My favourite part was "he could download the entire financial data of the US onto a portable hard drive", when the average portable hard drive would barely hold my photo collection. Incidentally, said financial data could then be taken anywhere and used to move money in an untraceable manner...somehow...
Of course, Die Hard made up for it when Bruce Willis jumped onto an airborne F35. Give and take. And it's not as bad as the CIA using Norton Antivirus in The Bourne ThirdOne. That was offensive.
LOST Season 5
I've just finished the fifth season of LOST, which I think brings me up-to-date for the first time in years, and it was pretty exciting1. To still be compelling after five years of the same story is remarkable.
I watched the whole thing on the iPhone - after buying it through iTunes - and that's definitely the way I'll get it in future. No adverts, no tv announcers saying "and now, it's a tragic day for..." or whatever, great quality picture/audio, and the ability to watch in bed / on the train / wherever. iTunes syncs the last few unseen episodes without any effort, too.
- if the tiniest bit scientifically dubious [↩]
Knowing
I saw Knowing this evening. Minor spoilers ahead.
It made no sense. At all. I don't really mind this, as it didn't take itself very very seriously, but it's a shame there weren't fewer 'wait, what?' moments. I was actually more bothered by the gratuitous scenes of mass fatalities: the camera went out of its way to show the realistic, violent deaths of many, many people. I've no problem with this kind of scene generally - if it's part of the plot, sure. But in this case the deaths weren't part of the plot: the event itself was necessary, but the grotesque embellishments were not, and were too close to reality for comfortable viewing. The film was obviously intended as a silly sci-fi blockbuster, and showing how people actually die in plane / train crashes didn't fit the style. I don't mind the implication, but I'm not sure I need to see it actually happen on-screen. Maybe that's me, though - perhaps I'm becoming more squeamish as I get older.
As annoying was the pandering to Christianity which, as Claudia would say, made me want to pull out my eye and feed it to a dog. The whole plot is a bit...biblical...and the godless scientist is considerably less godless by the end. This isn't too surprising, as despite being an astrophysicist he clearly can't think for toffee1. One of the first scenes shows him describing 'determinism' and 'randomness' with all the flair and accuracy of a creationist manifesto, and eventually sinking into deep depression - in front of a class of students, no less - while describing the meaninglessness of existence. Bah. It would be silly to be irked by this standard depiction of scientists, but the line that went something like "my scientific mind tells me to completely ignore this" rankled rather. There was also something about a solar flare with a magnitude of 100 micro-teslas.
On the plus side, there were a couple of scenes that creeped the hell out of me. And I was entertained enough to want to know what happened at the end. So it wasn't a total waste.
- note: I will actually think for toffee [↩]
Watchmen
[spoiler-free until warning]
It's a few years since I read Watchmen, so I went into the film knowing roughly what happens, but fuzzy on the details. I find this a good way to be, as spoilers don't work but there are still plenty of ah-yes moments. This certainly helped, although what helped more was the film being utterly goddamn excellent.
And not even slightly too long. The backstory was necessary for the thematic elements to work, and nothing was too drawn out. The visuals were gorgeous, the line between comic-book exaggeration and character drama nicely balanced, and the translation of the 'unfilmable' graphic novel exemplary in both plot and spirit. Did I mention I thought it was great?
Obviously you lose a lot on-screen. Although the film packed in an impressive amount, there's still a lot more going on in the graphic novel. I remember that it's possible to figure out Rorschach's identity if you look carefully, for example, and there's lots more characterisation and symbol-based play. But you gain plenty: spoken dialogue puts different interpretations on familiar lines, actions scenes have a visceral excitement, and the story flows that much more smoothly. This needn't be the case, and it's clear the filmmakers put in a hell of a lot of work. For example, the visuals were obviously painstakingly authentic, as I kept recognising panels - pretty impressive given the small, different-aspect-ratio originals. It's certainly one of the better comic -> screen adaptations, and easily the equal of Sin City.
The soundtrack was curious. I'm not interested in the critics' opinions, but I should imagine they've laid into the frequent use of 80s music. I thought it worked ok with the general 1985 atmosphere, but it'll be interesting to see how it resonates in a few years. I shouldn't think it'll be a problem, actually - the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it was a worthy touch.
I think it's by far the best adaptation of any Alan Moore book, and it's a shame his name was nowhere to be seen. I can understand his hostility to the studio system, but after this and Frank Miller's success with Sin City, it's a shame he hasn't taken a different approach.
Ok, that's the end of the spoiler-free section...
I re-read the last chapter after hearing rumours of plot deviations, and the ending is indeed subtly different, with large consequences. In the graphic novel the NYC attack is blamed on an alien, and the planet comes together to face this exterior threat. In the film the (much more extensive) devestation is blamed on Dr. Manhattan, and the planet comes together in fear of him. The latter has obvious parallels with religious ideas: mankind needs the fear of a higher power in order to behave properly - it's not a perfect analogy: the cities were actually destroyed by a higher power, but the statement is clear nonetheless. That's fairly different from the original story, and possibly less interesting. Psychology seems to show that human relations are heavily weighted by Us and Them, where We are friends, and to be protected from Those People. Alan Moore's exterior threat places all of humanity into the Us pile, shifting the Them to an alien race. This isn't unreasonable as a psychological strategy for peace. But the world uniting in fear of a Higher Power? Wouldn't work. Humanity'd get uppity, and look for ways to kick its ass.
The new ending does, however, exponentially increase the awesomeness of Rorschach. He's my favourite. Ok, so he's a right-wing psychopath, but I love it when he walks away at the end: 'never compromise, not even in the face of armageddon' is still one of my favourite lines in comics1. When he walks into the snow in the graphic novel, it's an incredibly difficult moral decision: even Rorschach knows he can't do what he needs to do, and Dr. M will have to kill him. But he does it anyway, and I try to decide whether I agree. In the film, I'm with Rorschach. Ozymandias wants to save the world by having everyone live in fear of a vengeful god? Screw. That. Rorschach's mask shifts into a solid blob of moral certainty as he dies a hero. Night Owl II / Silk Spectre II sink into wussery.
It's still a fascinating ending. For me it's a little less satisfactory than the original, but not enough to get worked up over.
In conclusion: yes, very much yes. Do see it.
- I'd noticed this line hadn't been foreshadowed, and I was worried they might have cut it - but it was there, and delivered just right [↩]
Hello!
Hey, thanks for coming! I'm Andrew, and this is where my headthinks come to breed. They often dance around humanism, photography and general wonderments, but there's dabblage aplenty.
Do feel free to email me - I get lonely:
Your hair looks swish, by the way - have you done something new?
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