Tag: Buffy

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Buffy Rewatch TV

Buffy and All that TV

I just watched an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and it made me want to say things on the internet.

For some reason I decided to do that here rather than Twitter and/or Facebook (I don’t use G+ much any more BTW).

First observation – disturbing – is that even though I was watching a later episode (S7, E01, Lessons) I worked out than I am older now than Giles (OK Tony Head the actor) was then. When do I get to be all wise and stuff?

The second, and longer, thing was about why I watched it (and whether I’ll continue).

I watched it because last night I watched one of the Youtube listicle videos – “Ten times a character ruined a TV show” or something – and it brought up a few old series I’d watched but never finished and Buffy. And even though I watched all of Buffy it feels like it belongs in this category as well because, well I read a tweet today where someone talked about having watched every episode so many times.

Well, I feel like I somehow let myself down as a fan because I haven’t re-watched the later seasons as much as the earlier ones. To be fair even though I watched the earlier ones a lot, I haven’t re-watched them in a long time. (Used to be I’d get drunk and end up watching favourite episodes, but that tends not to happen these days)

There are for example, large numbers of season 7 episodes I’ve only watched once. I know! The shame.

But then I began thinking.

Suppose you didn’t have much of a life, never really went out. You go to work, eat, sleep and do the minimum chores necessary to staying alive and you spend the rest of your time watching TV and movies, maybe read the occasional book*. Suppose you are happy with this state of affairs and not railing against the dying of the light to make a change before it’s too late. Even then you find you only have so much time. And we live in a golden age of TV so we’re told. And whether that’s really true, it’s certainly true that I have heard of many ‘good’ series I’d like to check out, and more are on the horizon (just watched a trailer for HBO’s West World show).

So even in this restricted, shut-in existence, there’s so much to spend my eyeball leisure time on. Do I really want to go back and watch Lost to the end? Am I up for spending the next few weeks re-watching Buffy from the beginning because my OCD-ish tendencies tell me I can’t just break in later?

Maybe. Maybe not. OK, almost certainly not in the case of Lost. I think/hope I’ve let that one go.

My current mode of TV watching is to binge watch. Usually on Netflix or other streaming service. So it sort of fits this pattern, and yet…

It is about letting go. Realising there’s more to life, heck more to TV, than being a completist.

But maybe I will “binge” on S7 Buffy so I can say I’ve watched all those eps at least twice. Or maybe I’ll skip the boring ones in the middle.

It’s funny, before I wrote this I looked back at the last few entries. Because it’s my blog and I haven’t written in it in a while. And one of the things that came out was the way I felt my love of reading rejuvenated by letting go of some of my obsessive tendencies re: reading.

I guess this is the same.

*if this sounds familiar it basically was my life until recently, and it has only got slightly more interesting since.

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reviews TV

A Fairy Tale of TV: Grimm and Once Upon A Time

So two of the new TV shows are based on a similar concept – fairy tale characters in the real world. I’ve watched the first two episodes of both Grimm and Once Upon A Time so here’s my thoughts.

Once Upon A Time

The premise of Once[1] is that Snow White and Prince Charming had a daughter but that during the birth the Wicked Queen cursed the entire kindgom so that they, and all the other characters, were exiled to our world. Not only that but they don’t remember who they are. They now all live in a small town in Maine called StoryBrooke[2] where “time has stopped” meaning that the characters haven’t and don’t age.

Meanwhile they did manage to “save” their new-born daughter by shoving her in a magical wardrobe at the last minute. This sent her through to this world too but since she was on her own and not part of the curse she grew up naturally. (How growing up alone, in a series of foster homes, rather than being in a frankly rather cosy looking little town with the benefit of eternal youth counts as being “saved” looks dubious, never mind).

She herself had a child which she gave up for adoption at the age of 18. Ten years later she’s working as a bail bondsperson and her son turns up on her doorstop. He’s carrying a book of stories and wants her to go back with him to StoryBrooke to break the spell. She plays the hardbitten, cynical city girl but she does at least take him home to his adopted mum who just happens to be the Wicked Queen aka the Mayor of StoryBrooke.

And thus the adventure begins.

I actually did enjoy quite a lot of Once. Jennifer Morrison in particular was good in the Emma Swan (Snow White’s daughter) role. I liked the real world sections most. However they inter-cut these with flashbacks to life in the fairy tale realm. To say these are played straight is an understatement. They are taken so seriously that it undermines any drama in the other sections. They do try to pull off the Buffy trick of playing the weird and wonderful as if it’s perfectly normal for those involved and showing how it feels. However it fails partly because the execution is too on the nose. There’s almost no (deliberate) humour.

Also, by the second episode the main storyline seemed to have developed into a showdown between the Birth Mother and the Adopted Mother (Foretold Breaker-of-Curse and Evil Queen). It suddenly hit me as these two powerful women were squaring off against each other that I was watching Dynasty with fairy tale trimmings and I found it hard to take seriously after that. Certainly not as seriously as they apparently want me to.

Grimm

I watched both Once episodes before watching Grimm and was left with a feeling that whilst intrigued there was something missing. I was also aware that Grimm had received slightly less favourable reviews (going off IMDB and AV Club ratings). So I was pleasantly surprised about 20mins into the pilot how engaged I was.

The set up is much more familiar. Basically the Brother Grimm were actually monster hunters and their stories were written as warnings. They have passed down a legacy of fighting these monsters – who look human most of the time through their descendants and the turn has now come of a young cop in Portland. He’s started seeing weird things when he looks too closely at certain people’s faces and then he gets called out on what looks like an animal attack but becomes clear is a murder. A young woman jogging through the forest in her red hoodie was torn apart by some sort of big bad w… you get the idea.

So in the same way that Angel and a bunch of other shows have done what is basically a police procedural with a supernatural twist, here the twist is fairy tale. But the twist isn’t really that much of a twist so far. Yes our hero has to learn about the various beasties, and he can use his “sight” ability to identify them but so far he’s dispatched them with good old fisticuffs and firearms. And in the first episode the killer happens to be a monster but it’s shot like he is a serial killer of the kind you’d see on Dexter. The fact that he ‘wolfs out’ briefly during the final fight doesn’t add a lot.

I think what I was reacting to in those first minutes of the pilot was how efficiently done the setting up was – following the victim, perky soundtrack, intriguing details, sudden surprise attack. However it soon settled into a familiar groove and whether it actually was clunky or I was just too used to it, it suffered from the fact that I could tick elements off a list. When the “good” wolf character turns up he lightens the mood with some self-aware, self-deprecating humour[3] but I immediately feel like he’s put there to be a source of exposition for our hero to pick up back story. Sure enough in episode two when a new monster appears on the scene, Nick (our lead) pops around to Eddie’s (good wolf) house for some playful banter and an info-dump on the new adversary’s MO.

The nicest thing I can say about Grimm is that it’s very competently done and if you like procedurals this isn’t a bad one.

Which One Wins?

I knew watching these two shows that I really only have time in my life for one of them on an on-going basis, if that, and so part of the process was to decide which was better and which to commit to.

Well despite both being about as good in different ways, the answer is probably neither. I have enough anxiety about all the books, TV shows and movies I haven’t read or watched. I have bookshelves, kindles and hard disks full of the stuff, much of it destined to remain unseen by me. I’m not sure either of these passes the “I just gotta see it” test to make me want to make time for it.

Having said that I’m bailing on Grimm right away (good but too predictable) but I may watch another episode or two of Once to see if it picks up.

[1]I shall be referring to it as “Once” for brevity rather than OUAT which I have seen used elsewhere but is frankly ugly
[2]Yes really!
[3]David Greenwalt, one of the creators of Grimm, worked on both Buffy and Angel and it shows, albeit in a pale reflection kind of way.
Categories
movie

So They’re Really Doing It…?

About a year and a half ago I blogged on the then rumour that a Buffy film might be made without Joss Whedon’s involvement – and that that might not be so terrible a thing.

For those who hate clicking links and actually reading stuff, my argument was boiled down to:

  1. Most movies, even ones where there’s a real script and real people involved, don’t get made.
  2. Most movies that are made aren’t any good.
  3. Sometimes a different take on an idea is better than a continuation.
  4. A movie probably isn’t the right kind of medium for the kind of stories Buffy on TV was about – so even with Joss it wouldn’t be the same.

So I came out in favour. Partly it has to be said, because I didn’t think it would happen and partly because I wanted Joss to go on and do new and fresh things. Well he did and is. But also it is.

Happening that is.

That is, I mean they really are making it. A new Buffy. Without Whedon, without Gellar and without a lot of the characters we know and love[*].

And I find my theoretical “It might not be so bad” has been challenged somewhat by the reality. In particular:

  • the fact that they’ve hired Whit Anderson (who?) to write the script. Apparently she (seriously who?) had an interesting take on the concept.
  • the fact that it’s perhaps pitched primarily as a comedy (that worked out well for the original didn’t it?)
  • that it looks for all the world like a cynical attempt to cash in on the whole vampire thing that culminated in the Twilight movies. (That Buffy pre-dates most of this by at least a decade has meant I can safely deride this trend without attacking my beloved show.)

So yes, I concede it probably won’t be any good and I’ll probably hate it (though I’ll have to see it of course). But I won’t be joining any protests or online petitions (although feel free to yourself).

Because the other half of the argument – that Joss should move on and do other things – is still valid. He should and he is.

 

[*]I think because the people concerned own the rights to the original movie and underlying concept – but not the TV show and its add-ons i.e. Xander, Willow, Angel, Spike and Giles. Or maybe they do but they just wanted to make it a clean slate.

Categories
movie TV

Buffy vs Edward

I don’t usually do this – partly because, like fan-fic, there are so many of these ‘mash-up’ videos that are mediocre at best – they’re fine but they’re not really my thing.

What sets this apart is that a) it’s really well done and b) it has a valid point to make. Actually more a). I’m slightly uneasy about jumping on-board a critique of Twilight when I’m not familiar with it – either in literary or movie form – but from what is said in the associated article, it does seem like it doesn’t compare too well with Buffy in the gender politics stakes.

Anyway, here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM]

Categories
movie

Buffy Movie Again (Again)

There’s a blog post here with an analysis of the original Buffy movie. Worth a read, it’s a fairly in-depth look comparing the script with the movie with the TV show. No real surprises though I’m glad to see they like Swanson.

My own review of the Buffy movie is here.

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reviews

A Whedon-less Buffy Film? Why Not?

In case you haven’t heard the rights-holders to the Buffy franchise are thinking of “rebooting” Buffy with a movie – without involving Joss Whedon. It wouldn’t star Sarah-Michelle Gellar and familiar characters like Willow, Giles and Xander would not be in the script.

And I think it might not be bad idea.

Heresy? Unthinkable? Me, a self-proclaimed fan of all thing Whedon suggesting that this travesty not only be allowed to continue but that it might actually be a good thing?

Well almost.

Heresy is Good

At the very least I think the unthinkable should be thought about and that contemplating heresy is good for the soul every now and then. One of my favourite Depeche Mode songs is “Somebody” which describes the kind of person the singer is looking for and includes the lines:

Someone who’ll help me see things
In a different light
All the things I detest
I will almost like

I think it’s a truly valuable thing to be able to sympathise with a radically opposing viewpoint. To understand how someone could get there even if you couldn’t yourself.

So that’s the first thing.

Getting Films Made is Hard

Film-making is probably hard. In fact I’m pretty sure it is. But from the little I know and have heard/read that’s nothing compared with actually getting them made in the first place. Most films never get made. Most professional screenwriters have sold scripts that’ll never see a screen. Most actors and directors – big names with a successful track record – have projects that they’ve never quite managed to get made. And of the tiny number that do get made, most are unsuccessful – critically and financially. Remember Sturgeon’s Law – 95% of everything is crap.

That’s the second thing. Try to keep these in mind when thinking about the possibility of a Buffy movie.

Not Giving The Fans What They Want

There have of course been rumours of a Buffy movie for years. And they’ve been just that – groundless rumours, based not on real facts but speculation and fan longing. I can understand this. I too felt a loss when Buffy ended. I can understand wanting there to be more.

But that’s the very reason I never wanted to see a Buffy movie (though of course I would have gone to see one if it had been made). Because I love movies and have done since long before I ever heard of the idea of Vampire Slayers. A Buffy movie would have been more of the TV show and TV shows are not movies – one is on-going stories, dealing with big themes but examining them on an everyday scale in sometimes minute detail. The other is epic and grand with sweeping huge brushstrokes.

Trying to make a movie that fulfils the longing of fans to see “more” of their show and yet works as a movie in its own right is nigh on impossible. Joss almost succeeded with Serenity – I mean creatively it does work in both those ways but it was only a moderate box office success and made money on DVD and largely due to the buy-everything-Whedon fan behaviour.

Joss famously[*] said once that he “needed to give the fans what they need and not what they want.” He was referring to the fact that he couldn’t let the desires of fans to see certain outcomes in the on-going Buffy story dictate where that story went. It was creative suicide and it was actually less satisfying to those same fans in the end.

At least that’s how I’ve always read this comment.

Well not giving them what they want at this stage means not just not giving them a particular romantic coupling or other given story outcome – but not giving them “more Buffy” in the form of a movie that’s trying to carry on its back the weight of a 7-series TV show.

So Buffy needs to be left alone. Left in peace to fade gracefully in our collective memory.

A Different Approach, A Point of View. Different is Good.

…or it needs to be rebooted. Re-imagined. By someone far enough away from all the things that have been done with the franchise already to see it with fresh eyes. Already there are hints in the article that they would go darker, more of a genuine horror experience.

So no Xander, Willow or Giles – they’re all too comfy. It might even not be Buffy but another Slayer. Betty. Bertha. Belinda. Or Martha. OK – probably not the last one.

Whether this will lead to anything good who knows? But it’s an interesting idea. It might spark something strange and wonderful. Or it might just be a curate’s egg.

What about Joss?

Joss doesn’t need Buffy. He’s got other ideas. Newer, fresher, dare I say, better ideas. If I ever doubted that Dr. Horrible confirmed it. Dollhouse started weak but got better and better.

Sure he still has Buffy stories left in him – but he’s got the perfect medium for that in the comic books. It’s an on-going episodic form, similar to the TV show.

Besides what he really needs is to be allowed to make great TV and Movies and I can’t help feeling that being associated largely with an ultra-loyal and sometimes not-so discriminating fanbase kind of gets in the way of that.

But What About the Fans?

What about the fans? Don’t they deserve something? Anyway isn’t it crazy to take something so beloved and take away the thing that made it beloved? On a pure business level surely you want, you need, to please the fans?

No.

The Firefly fans were the most rabid of an already fearsome fanbase. They were as dedicated to their cause as any evangelical cult member. They tried their best to spread the gospel  of Firefly-ness and Serenity. They went to see the movie multiple times, bought up extra tickets to give away, trying to convince everyone and anyone of its goodness. They did all this and yet they still couldn’t make the movie a hit.

The thing about Buffy is that it always managed to have a bigger cultural impact than was reflected by its core audience. References to Buffy, “the Scooby Gang” and “Buffy-esque” dialogue still crop up all over the place. There was an audience of casual viewers that had seen the odd episode and knew it was good. They were not fans but enjoyed it when it was on. They were also slightly put off by the really obsessive fanboys and girls.

Oh and there are millions of them.

All of which means that using the Buffy name, the “brand” to bring in the general populace could work even if you piss off the fans.

It could just work.

But it probably won’t – because even though this is not a groundless rumour, most movies don’t get made and of the ones that do, most aren’t any good. But I’m more stirred by the idea of someone else having a go at a reboot than more of the same. Leaving Joss free to do new things.

OK you can burn me at the stake now.

[*]For values of “famous” scaled to fit the relatively small world of Buffy online fandom. i.e. not very.

Categories
Buffy Rewatch Season 1

Buffy re-watch: 1.12 Prophecy Girl

Giles, I’m sixteen years old. I don’t wanna die.

So I finally get to the end of season 1. I guess in some ways I’ve been putting this off and I’m not sure why. I think I wanted to give it my full attention as it’s a good episode and deserves it. Also I have been busy with writing, exercise and DIY (yes really!). Anyway I got around to it.

I always think of Prophecy Girl as the best ep of season 1 and the start of a step up in quality that carried on into the next season or two. Now that I re-watch it I’m not so sure. It is still one of my favourites but what strikes me is how much it really is a climax to all the themes and story lines of season 1. Particularly the Buffy-Angel-Xander-Willow quadrilateral.

It’s not hard to see why I would like this episode. It’s got that four-way love mismatch played out to its consequences (Xander is rebuffed and takes refuge in country music). It’s also got a couple of those “moments” that I mentioned about The Pack. There’s a beautifully acted angsty one between Buffy and Giles where she finds out she’s going to die. There’s a cheesy-but-it-still-works one where she power-walks to her show-down with the Master to the tune of the theme song, not breaking her stride to deal with a vampire (“Oh look, a bad guy!” cool). Then there’s the running gag about Buffy’s dress. Xander going to get Angel to help. (“You’re in love with her/Aren’t you?”) and that heart-breaking moment when Willow describes how it “wasn’t our world any more, they made it theirs”. And that bloody hand on the TV still feels creepy and wrong.

Of course there are also things that don’t quite work and never did. Less than a minute after telling Xander, between panting, that Buffy is dead, Angel informs him that he has no breath. That’s ok, I’m very forgiving of such things. It irks me more that the “prophecy” concerning the Anointed One turns out to be that he’s able to lead Buffy to the Master because Buffy knows that’s what the prophecy says and decides she wants to face the Master anyway. Doing what some text says you will do because you read it is not a prophecy it’s a to-do list. But I guess that’s the nature of prophecy in the Buffyverse – tricky as the Master points out.

Those are things that I’ve always known about. What was new to this viewing, was the degree to which the special effects and CGI really were quite poor. That rubber tentacled monster? Did that ever seem state of the art? Perhaps the effect of 11 years of continuously improving special effects has caused me to forget what was normal back then. Or perhaps I had my fan-goggles on and was concentrating on characters and story – which are now so familiar that I’m forced to consider the wallpaper again, as it were. A bit of both probably.

Anyway to sum up. It holds up as a good episode, still probably the best of season 1. I’m not sure it’s as good as what we’re about to see in season 2 though (unless that’s faded with age too). However it has some pleasing interaction between the characters, some unrequited and requited love, a cool fight, some jokes and Buffy dies. Buffy dies and it really matters. OK she’s resussitated two minutes later and much much later she’ll sing about having “died twice” with a glibness that doesn’t fit the impact here – and that’s all fine, but it doesn’t take away from the power of having her die.

8/10

Which means that season 1 has an average of 7.5 – pretty decent. Let’s see how that holds up against coming seasons.

Categories
Buffy Rewatch reviews Season 1

Buffy re-watch: 1.08-1.11 Robots, Puppets and Other (Invisible) Nightmares

So this is my first multi-ep re-watch review, and as you can see my titles aren’t getting any snappier. I’ll try to work on that. I deliberately left myself the final episode as a ‘oner’ because it’s my favourite season 1 ep and because it deserves a longer review than the few lines these four will get.

1.08 I Robot, You Jane – IRYJ or “Robot” is definitely a guilty pleasure. It shouldn’t work because it’s so cheesey and silly. Even for 1997 the computer stuff in this episode is just so off-beam. But you forgive it all that because it’s fun. And it’s fun because you’ve got all this lovely relationship stuff – Giles and Ms Calendar, Willow and Malcolm/Moloch with Xander getting jealous. And of course the last line and reaction which is pretty much the mission statement as far as BtVS romances go

Buffy: Let’s face it: none of us are ever gonna have a happy, normal
relationship.

Xander: We’re doomed!

Willow: Yeah!

So even with the element of cheese it deserves a good healthy 8/10

1.09 The Puppet Show – this is another episode that shouldn’t work as well as it does. There’s a long and glorious history of “devil doll” horror movies, and none of them quite get over the inherent silliness of a toy attacking a human. The fact that The Puppet Show almost does is testament to how good it is. I think that’s partly the way it’s shot, partly the voice acting for Sid the dummy and partly the plot. This ep introduces Snyder and he’s one of about 4 characters who you could genuinely believe is the killer. So it keeps you guessing. And laughing. This is a very funny episode, especially with Giles’ reaction to having to produce the talent show.

When I was deciding what to score this ep I dithered between a 7 and 8. I’ve decided there’s no point having a 10-point scale if you award say 7.5 but whilst The Puppet Show is definitely better than Never Kill A Boy… is it really on the same level as The Pack (my favourite so far)? Then I remembered the credit sequence. After that, no problem. 8/10

1.10 Nightmares – The best moments in this episode are just that – moments. But not in the way that I described for The Pack, these are moments that stand alone, they’re simple jokes really, based on what we think individual characters might find scary. I guess I find the ending a little too simplistically moral. But we have some fun along the way. 7/10

1.11 Out of Sight, Out of Mind – this is the Buffy take on the Invisible Man story. Here though the invisibility comes from being ignored and once again, making an everyday issue into a mystical reality works really well. This is one of the few Buffy episodes that genuinely creepy or even scary. I think slashing Cordy’s cheek with a scalpel whilst she’s tied to the chair has impact because it has resonances of serial killer movies and so on. It’s good that we get to see a little more complexity to Cordy in this ep. I love that she can make us sympathise with her, because she’s lonely in the centre of attention, and still be the queen bitch. 8/10

So a good strong run up to the end of the season.

Categories
book movie reviews

Atoning for the Lack of a Proper Ending

Stupid title, oh well.

I recently read Ian McEwan’s Atonement for the Ship of Fools Book Club, and then, since it was availble in Tescos for a fiver, I got the DVD and watched that too. So here’s your all-in-one multi-purpose Atonement review.

The Book

I really enjoyed the book, well most of the book. It’s in four parts and the first four tell the story of Robbie and Cecilia a couple whose fledgling love affair is almost prevented by class, family, war and false accusation of a crime. The final part reveals the fact that the previous three parts were a novel written by Briony, who made the accusation, regretted it and is atoning by writing the story. Only she reveals that she may or may not be telling the truth, part of her atonement may be to tell a better version of the story, one which gives Robbie and Cecilia the happy ending that real life denied them.

Except of course it’s all fiction any way so there is no “real life”, so it doesn’t matter right? As McEwan, speaking through Briony says,

I know there’s always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened?

Well yes, and sorry Mr McEwan but I am that kind of reader. But I’ll come back to that. Anyway if you want to hear my musings on the ending read my comments on the Ship thread.

As for the parts I enjoyed, the other 90% of the book, let me say a few words about that. The first section was slow to start but very atmospheric, something quite deliberate as we’re later told this is one of the flaws in Briony’s writing style. It’s very clever in the way it switches perspective and moves around in time, without ever being confusing. As someone who’d like to be a better writer I envied McEwan’s talent and will go back and look at those parts to learn I suspect.

The second section of the book is Robbie’s journey to Dunkirk through a war-torn France. I haven’t read a lot of wartime fiction (though I’m aware there is a lot) so perhaps it was that that made me so engrossed in this section. I learnt a lot and like the first thirty minutes of Saving Private Ryan it put me there in that situation and gave you that feeling of how utterly brutal and yet random the sufferings of war can be.

The third section is the story of Briony training to be a nurse and treating some of the victims of that suffering. Again it was the things I learnt, the empathy evoked for the suffering and the sense of Briony’s growing up. There’s also a very real sense of wanting to know what will happen, how it will play out when, if, Robbie and Cecilia are re-united. This leads up to a riveting scene where Briony meets with them to tell them she’s recanting and to make her atonement.

Of course it’s this very sense of wanting to know what happened that is frustrated in the final section. Although at the very end there’s a cosy call-back to Briony’s childhood which if not making up for her ripping the narrative rug from under us, at least leaves a better taste in the mouth.

But the unsatisfying ending is all the harder to take because the rest of the book is so good.

8/10

The Movie

In terms of structure the movie is very faithful to the book. It’s beautifully shot, especially the first section, but then almost all period dramas are. I guess once you’ve got gorgeous locations and wonderfully made period costumes that it seems a shame not to make the most of them, and so the cinematographer is given his head.

My problems start with the middle section, the France section, which in the book was my favourite and in the movie is truncated. That’s ok, adaptations have to cut stuff out, but what they removed was most of the tougher stuff, so that sense that the journey was perilous and at any moment you might be killed, or saved, by pure dumb luck wasn’t really in the movie. The scene at the beach at Dunkirk, a masterfully shot 4-minute one shot, gave the impression that it was merely that things were a bit disorganised.

I also had a problem with the casting. Keira Knightley does ok, she’s as good here as anywhere, and James McAvoy is slightly better but in key moments they fall short of the source material. That killer scene I mentioned earlier, the confrontation with Briony, contains a moment where Robbie becomes enraged and may even harm Briony, and Cecilia brings him back from the edge by force of will, her love and holding him with her eyes. The scene is in the movie but it has none of the sense of physical menace nor the restraining power of Cecilia’s love communicated in a look. I watched it and thought, they just didn’t nail it.

Perhaps where the movie is most different is the ending. They replace the putting on of Briony’s play with a TV interview about the publishing of her book. In doing so Briony tells us exactly what happened. That Robbie and Cecilia both died, unre-united in separate senseless losses of the war. That her atonement was to write them a happier ending and that that’s precisely what she did.

Watching this made me realise that whilst I didn’t like the ending of the book, I preferred some remaining ambiguity to the certainty of the movie. The movie ending did have at least one thing going for it though, and that was showing Robbie and Cecilia enjoying their happy ending, playing in the surf near their seaside cottage. And leaving them on a happy moment, even a false one, is nice that it otherwise would have been.

6/10

The Buffy Episode

No really.

The discussion around the ending and the nature of storytelling has reminded me of the Buffy episode Normal Again. Naturally I’ll be getting to this in the Buffy Re-watch project but since it’s season 6 and therefore it’ll probably be 2019 before I get to it I’ll mention a few thoughts here.

Normal Again is superficially just BtVS’s version of a staple plot in genre TV – the alternate reality story where two interpretations of events unfold and the hero is not sure until the end which is real. In this case Buffy is attacked by a demon which infects her with some kind of drug that causes her to hallucinate that she’s really in a mental hospital. Her dead mother is alive and visiting with her abandoning father. It’s explained that Sunnydale, the monsters, her powers and all her experiences are an imaginary world she’s created as a kind of comfort.

It’s cleverly done but so far so Star-Trek-did-it-first. What sets apart Normal Again is that it ends the wrong way. There are certain conventions about this kind of episode. One is that you tell it from the hero’s point of view until you’re ready to reveal which reality is the true one, but Normal Again pretty much sticks with thirdy party pov all the way through. The plot is set up so that Buffy has to choose which reality she wants to live in – if she kills her friends it will “kill” the hallucinatory Sunnydale world and be cured, able to return to her mom and dad. What she actually does is kills the demon and the hospital world disappears.

But the kicker is that it ends, not in Sunnydale, but with Buffy catatonic in her hospital room, the camera pulling back slowly. In TV language that’s saying this is the true reality and it (it being the whole series so far) was all a sick girl’s imagination.

This made a lot of people angry, as Atonement apparently did also. However I think that given that we know from the consistent point of view and the fact that the show carries on and is in fact about Buffy fighting monsters in Sunnydale, that that final shot is about something else. It’s about saying that like Buffy we get to choose which reality we want to live in. We can choose to suspend disbelief and we get the fantasy world of Buffy with all her exciting adventures.

This episode came at a time when there was lots of discontent amongst the fans, a lot of which was around how unrealistic, how untrue to the characters, the show had become. There was also a lot of nitpicking over plot holes and inconsistencies. I always thought of Normal Again as a sly dig at those fans, as an appeal to suspend disbelief again and thereby enjoy the fantasy.

I guess the difference is that BtVS managed to do it in a way that didn’t make me angry.

In case you’re wondering, I’ll rate Normal Again when I do a proper review.

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Buffy Empowers Women to Leave the Church

I’ve got to say this raised a smile. Here’s a slightly more sensible reporting of the same story. Apparently women are leaving the Church of England twice as fast as men and following Wicca instead because Buffy made it cool. Or something.

It made me laugh because

a) blaming it on Buffy is silly (though that’s just the tabloid-headline-grabbing meme there’s a reasonable point of view in there somewhere) and

b) on SoF we’ve just finished one of the regular rounds of “Why are there so few men in the Church?” discussions. It’s going to be a shock to some to learn that it’s women not men leaving in droves.

Oh well, I guess soon nearly everyone will have left but at least there’ll be gender equality. In the meantime I gotta say it, in the words of my favourite Wicca:

“Bored Now!”