Tag: review

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reviews

Fringe

I watched the two hour pilot to the new JJ Abrams produced show, Fringe, the other day so here’s a quick review.

I told M that this was coming up and asked her if she was interested (she’s a huge Lost fan). In trying to describe the show based on the brief bit of blurb I’d read, I think I made it sound like a version of Heroes. When I tried to correct that impression after reading more, I told her it sounded a bit like X-Files (I knew she’d liked X-Files when it was on). She still wasn’t feeling any excitement about it. In the end she explained:

“Looking back I think a lot of the appeal of X-Files was David Duchovny.”

which is fair enough. But now having watched the first installment of Fringe,

  • I can see that Fringe is not just “a bit like” X-Files, it really really wants to be X-Files. Fringe wants to marry X-Files and have its cute little alien babies. More importantly,
  • How many people out there are going to watch for the pleasant day-dream inspiring delights of Pacey from Dawson’s Creek? Ok, ok – unfair I know. I’m sure Joshua Jackson has his fans but, and I could be way off but it never struck me that they were the kind to get drawn in to a pseudo-science pseudo-scifi thrillery thing with a, no doubt, soon to be very convoluted back story.

Now all this sounds very negative which is a shame because I don’t think it’s a bad show, I just can’t quite see it finding a huge audience, but what do I know? Anyway I’ve not really started reviewing yet, so let’s do that.

Fringe is about a CIA-FBI liason officer who gets involved in the case of a flight full of people whose flesh literally melted off their bodies. In the course of investigating this her partner (and lover) gets blasted with a dose of the chemical agents responsible, thus setting up a “solve it in 24hours before he dies” scenario. In order to reverse the effects she needs the assistance of a crazy chemist locked away in a mental institution. To get to him she needs his estranged genius drifter of a son i.e. the aforementioned Pacey/Jackson.

Thus the roles are all neatly defined. She needs to solve the crime to find the plane-poisoner and extract vital information for the cure. Mad old Dad assists with forensics and the final cure. Pacey can speak crazy/science to M.o.D and therefore acts as both handler to him and sidekick to her. In fact his role is a little thinly defined right now. There wasn’t much he did – chasing someone down an alley, a bit of particularly harsh interrogation – that someone else couldn’t have down. In a way he played the traditional female sidekick role, seemingly involved but with little to actually do. However since I don’t believe a golden dawn of radical feminism has yet arisen on Hollywood I suspect he’ll have more of a job to do in upcoming episodes.

But back to the neatness. This was a perfectly serviceable piece of television but I think the thing that stopped it being more than that was that I was too aware of the pieces of series setup slotting neatly and smoothly into place. The core team and relationships. The mysterious billionaire who seems destined to be the ongoing bad guy and his apparently benevolent organisation. The hints at what kinds of things we’ll be exploring in future. Mention of shadowy agency-within-an-agency machinations and some vague idea of a connecting threat called “The Pattern” (which I fear will end up as a holdall container for whatever mystery-of-the-week they want to write[1]) It was all efficiently and relatively unobtrusively done. But I was still aware of it. Maybe that’s just a problem with pilots, or a problem with viewers like me who’ve seen too many pilots.

Overall, ok but nothing here to tempt me into regular viewership – 6/10.

[1]As a Buffy fan I can hardly complain. What else is the Hellmouth but a built-in excuse for so many monster stories in one place?

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not of this blog

Someone New to Hate

Don’t you hate it when you find someone doing what you’re trying to do, only better? Someone to whom, if you’re honest, you can point and say, “look that’s what I meant!” and all your indulging friends will smile faintly and say, “Oh, I get it now.” Well turns out there’s someone like that for me and I’ve just read his blog.

Those of you with a long memory, or who’ve skimmed the archives for the good bits will know that I did a humourous recap of both the series 2 and series 3 finales of the new Dr Who. And you may have been wondering (if you are vaguely in step with the changing of the seasons, the rise and fall of the tides, the TV schedules and so on) whether I had forgotten to do so again, or whether my utter laziness just meant it was late.

The fact of the matter is that I had pretty much decided not to bother because some things are so bad that even to point and laugh is not worth the effort. Or so I thought…

Then I read Mr Andrew Rilstone’s reaction to the final couplet of Dr Who episodes. Check it out. He’s funny, clever and insightful. He makes important points about things I agree with. He understands that there’s a difference between silliness for silliness’ sake and silliness that gets you somewhere. He goes on a bit, but then so did that bloody finale.

He says the kinds of things I’d like to say but does it better. And he’s actually so funny and clever and all that I almost don’t hate him at all.

Almost…

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.

Categories
Buffy Rewatch Season 1

Buffy Re-Watch: 1.06 The Pack

Giles: Xander’s taken to teasing the less fortunate?

Buffy: Uh-huh.

Giles: And, there’s been a noticeable change in both clothing and
demeanor?

Buffy: Yes.

Giles: And, well, otherwise all his spare time is spent lounging about
with imbeciles.

Buffy: It’s bad, isn’t it.

Giles: It’s devastating. He’s turned into a sixteen-year-old boy.
Of course, you’ll have to kill him.

One of the things I’ve noticed about favourite books, movies, TV eps — and The Pack is definitely a favourite — is that it’s often more a question of cool, poignant or otherwise enjoyable moments. A favourite book/movie/episode has a few such moments and the enjoying is not only savouring them but also the anticipation of the build-up and the frisson of the fall-out from them. A truly great episode is simply a collection of such moments one after another, seamlessly and smoothly connected – usually by a theme.

What are my “moments” from The Pack then? Well there are three – Xander being mean to Willow when he tells her he’s dropping geometry, the slo-mo walk toward camera of the pack backed by rock music and the final scene. The first because while it’s awful to see Willow in pain, it’s nice to see her feelings for Xander brought out.

The second, well those things always look cool if you don’t over-do them. I can think of four instances in the first two seasons of BtVS – this is the second.

And the final scene is a moment because it’s where they fix the pain we had in the earlier moment. Xander tacitly apologises to Buffy and Willow whilst pretending not to remember. Plus he lets Willow know that he loves her – clearly it’s friendship love but still… And of course the final joke is funny – which always helps.

Those are the moments but the underlying goodness of this episode the Xander-Willow relationship. (Are you getting the fact that I like the idea of these two as a couple?) There’s also the usual high standard jokes in the dialogue such as “kid’s fat”, “weird behaviour award” and the quote I began with.

Speaking of which, like NKaBotFD, The Pack is summed up by such a quote, it’s another High-School-as-Hell-with-monsters-as-issues metaphor episode. The metaphor is obvious but it works well nonetheless.

Which is odd because in many ways The Pack shouldn’t work as well as it does, the concept is just too silly. Although you could say that about the show as a whole. It works because everyone commits to the silliness, and they write/direct/act well. However there are times when the silliness threatens to show through. It works best when the pack are acting like what the metaphor points to – bratty teens – not what they actually are – hyenas. So in the slo-mo walk or the stealing hot dogs scene the pack are cool and threatening whereas in the scene where they are found sleeping in the woods, drooling from their recent pig-feed, or when they attack the SUV, well the inherent ridiculousness is hard to hide. Fortunately those scenes are in the minority.

Another thing that helps the episode is nice performances in a couple of minor roles – the zoo keeper and the gym class teacher. They both do a lot with relatively little.

Finally I’ve got to note the passing of our first TV principal. I liked Flutie. The actor that played him made him likeable and funny.

So, overall, something a guilty pleasure since a) it’s very silly and b) the stuff I enjoy is the relationship stuff. But once again that could go for the entire show.

8/10

Categories
movie reviews

Spiderwick Chronicles

The Spiderwick Chronicles is a movie based on a series of fantasy books for kids (which I’ve not read). It had positive reviews to varying degrees and I was in the mood for something reasonably light last night so I chose this.

A good choice I think.

Though perhaps a little patronizing of me to call it ‘light’ when Kermode called it ‘a horror movie for kids’. What can I say? I am a wimp when it comes to horror but I can cope with fantasy goblins and ogres. Besides is it patronizing to say that I thought it enjoyable?

So the movie is the story of a family moving into an old house, the eponymous ‘Spiderwick’ estate, they inherited from an old relative. Decades before it was the home of Arthur Spiderwick, a self-taught expert in fantastical creatures, who wrote his ‘field guide’, a compendium of information on the various array of goblins, fairies, bogarts, sylphs (?) and others that roamed, invisibly most of the time, in and around his home. Having completed the book it instantly became dangerous because its secrets would allow the local ogre to take control and then, as one character had it, ‘you all die’. Arthur Spiderwick protected his book with charms and a semi-friendly brownie/bogart and promptly disappears. Eighty years later the kids of the family, two twin boys and their older sister, find the book and get caught up in an adventure trying to protect it, and one another, from the grasp of Mulgarath (that ogre I mentioned).

And as I said it’s a lot of fun. It’s not incredibly original but it’s well done. Hogsqueal the hobgoblin as the slightly disgusting, alternately brave and cowardly, humourous sidekick is the kind of thing we’ve seen before — but nonetheless entertaining for that. If you’re not a fan of CGI then you might have a problem because that’s what’s used to realise the creatures. I didn’t find it any more distracting to the story than I would have done costumes or animation.

It’s quite quick paced and certainly doesn’t out-stay its welcome, despite I’m guessing, having had to cut some material from the books. I think this shows in particular in the part of one of the twins Simon, whose only real function is to get himself kidnapped instead of his brother Jared, whose story this really is.

The film is at its best when we’re chasing or being chased by goblins and wotnot. In a couple of moments of ‘family drama’ it descended into sacharine sentiment. I don’t know, maybe kids need or like an unsubtle approach to emotions but it jarred for me.

In fact I’d say this movie has two messages. The most obvious and least successful of which is about father-child relationships and the importance of being there for your kids. The more subtle and better realised is that knowledge, in the form of learning, is power, and that it can be exciting and an adventure. The central item in the plot after all, is essentially a text book. My inner nerd, the kid that had to be kicked out of the classroom at break time to play with the other kids rather than read under the table, quite likes that.

So overall, an enjoyable, undemanding piece of entertainment.
7/10

Categories
book reviews

Watchmen

I used to read comics when I was a kid. First stuff like the Beano and Dandy and later 2000AD. Being into all things SciFi I thought the later was really cool, but at some point, for some reason, like watching Dr Who, I grew out of it.

Then when I was 21 someone I was working with told me about something called “a graphic novel” which was, so I heard, a kind of grown-up version of a comic book. The particular book under discussion was Dark Knight Returns about the return to cape-dom of a middle-aged Batman. I borrowed it from my enthusiast friend and did enjoy it but I remember thinking that whilst it wasn’t for kids it was still more adolescent than adult, like action movies and heavy metal. (I suspect if I re-read it now I’d be kinder to it. At 21 I was still too young to enjoy things that others might have  thought of as childish.)

I don’t think I picked up another graphic novel until after I’d become a Buffy fan. It was from other fans recommendations that I bought Watchmen. Of course when I saw that it had big stretches of actual text in it I gave up on it.

What can I say? I’m lazy.

But then a few days ago I noticed that there was a trailer online for an upcoming Watchmen movie. I didn’t watch it, instead I pulled out my copy of the book and started to read. I couldn’t put it down and I finished it a couple of days later. And this is my review. I make no attempt to summarize the plot, nor to avoid spoilers. If you’ve not done so already, I strongly encourage you to read it.

So ok, I get it now. Because I read the Dark Knight, I’ve read various Buffy-related comics (mostly the origin one and season 8), and even the two League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ones and whilst they are all to varying degrees enjoyable, I never really got the whole “comic books as an artform” thing. Until now.

Watchmen really is on a different level from those other books. I think it’s because of the depth of it, the layers of story and the sheer density of concept. That and extraordinary visuals. Take for example the iconic cover-art image and see how that’s used and developed on the very first page. This kind of thing — starting on a small detail and pulling back and back until a fuller picture (literally and thematically) is revealed — is done throughout the book. It’s no wonder people want to make this into a movie. It’s like a pre-drawn storyboard for itself.


But it’s so much more than that. It has great, intriguing characters. I guess most people like Rorshach – who’s morally ambiguous, possibly mentally unstable but badass in a way that fiction can’t quite resist. Personally I was quite drawn to Nite Owl. I liked that he was shy, fumbling, quiet man when out of costume and yet is so confident and competent with it. I love when he serves coffee and plays music for the victims of a building fire he rescues. Dr Manhattan, who is key to the entire plot, is fascinating too. He is to all intents and purposes an alien, even though his origins are human, and successfully communicating an alien point of view is something that’s done all too rarely, but it’s done beautifully here with the scenes on Mars in particular.

I think the thing I like most about Watchmen is the layering of different story elements in a way that complements or contrasts, but always adds to the overall thematic message. Take for example the sections with the excerpts from the fictional comic (“Tales from the Black Freighter“). I can think of a couple of moments where you go from an entirely different scene and we get the last line of dialogue from that scene, over a panel showing the kid reading the comic, the newsvendor talking about the events in the wider world, some background activity, perhaps the ongoing drama of the lesbian taxi-driver’s breakup, leading into a panel showing horrific scenes from “Tales” where a sailor is trying to reach his home on a raft made from the dead bodies of his comrades. When I first read this I stopped and not only thought how well done it was but wondered whether I’ve ever seen a movie or TV program intermingle so many different elements so successfully in such a short space of time. Then I wondered if it’s even possible and that’s why we need this artform.

Who knows? It’s very possible I just haven’t seen the right movies!

It’s noteworthy that this was written/drawn in the mid 1980s and whilst it didn’t feel dated it was “of its time” in the sense that one of the major themes is the ever present threat of nuclear war. I don’t have a problem with that, because I lived through that age and remember well that sense of impending doom bubbling beneath the surface. It was there in popular culture if nothing else. A younger reader might perhaps, not get those references immediately.

If it has a weakness I think it’s the ending. I’m not quite sure that I buy into the idea that a fake alien accidental one-off invasion would unite the world. At least I’m not sure for how long it would. There was also some stuff with an attempted rape that I was a little uncomfortable with at best. But that wasn’t a huge part of the story.

So overall it definitely deserves its high praise. 9/10

P.S. I have now watch the trailer and they seemed to have included all the main elelments that I’d expect. They’ve made the characters younger by at least a decade but that’s Hollywood I guess. Supposedly this is one of those unfilmable books but I’m not sure about that. I guess people have said that because a) it’s long, b) it’s got complicated effects scenes in it and c) it’s perhaps too adult to get a rating that will sell enough tickets. Well a) anything can be condensed – work out what the heart of the story is and make sure you tell that, b) CGI has come along way since 1986 and c) as has what you can get away with in a 15 (Dark Knight is a 12a!) plus some of the violence can be toned down without losing the tone.

It’s all a question of how good the movie makers are. We’ll see I guess.

Categories
movie reviews

Cloverfield

I’ve only ever walked out of a movie once. It wasn’t because I was offended at the content, or bored, or even because I felt the quality was so bad it wasn’t worth finishing[1]. No, the only time I ever walked out of a cinema viewing was when I saw The Doors. During a concert scene in which the camera was swooping in, up and around the audience, I felt saw nauseous that I had to get up and leave. I tend to have a similar problem with non-steadicam hand-held footage. I made it through Bob Roberts but it wasn’t pleasant.

So for this reason I waited until Cloverfield was on DVD so I could watch it on my not-so-large[2] TV. Even so I still had the problem. I made it about 13-and-a-half minutes in on the first attempt. But I wanted to see it, so today — having had no breakfast yet and armed with remote on pause-standby — I watched the whole thing. And yes it made me feel sick so this blog entry is about whether or not it was worth it.

Why did I want to see it? Well first it had pretty decent reviews. It is clearly a monster movie and whilst they’re not top of my list of favourite genres they are at least genre and I like that. A large part of it was that the writer was Drew Goddard – ex-Buffy writer who was responsible for some of my favourite episodes. I wanted to see if he’d done anything fun with the old monster-attacks-city trope.

Oh, and Kermode, in his favourable, but not quite glowing, review had said that anyone who knows movies should be able to predict the final shots of the movie. I wanted to see if I could, and I did.

Cloverfield is actually a pretty straight forward monster movie — out of the blue a monster attacks New York, whilst everyone else is fleeing Rob, our hero, and a few of his friends head straight into danger by trying to get to and rescue, his not-quite-girlfriend — she’s the one who got away, the one he should have said I Love You to but never did. They reach her but then they’ve got to get out of the city and not all of them make it out alive. So that’s a fairly out-of-the-box kind of plot, what Cloverfield does that’s different is use the idea of ‘found footage’, it’s all supposedly coming from a video camera that one of the friends happened to be using at the time of the attack. Hence the shaky-cam and my spinning head.

Actually in some ways it’s a pretty good device because it allows them to do that thing that Jaws did[3] which is to hardly ever show the monster and then only glimpses. The movie then becomes much more about the effects of the monster rather than, the special effects that made it. This also gives the movie a feel akin to The Zeppo that we’re watching a story (a guy trying to find the woman he loves before it’s too late) that’s the foreground to a much bigger story (monster eats New York). Not sure it works that well because it’s not trying for humour but it does work.

I’ll just say briefly that there’s a clear subtext here. Just like some 50s alien invasion movies were really about paranoia about communism and the original Japanese monster movies were about anxiety over new technology and things like nuclear testing, Cloverfield could be read to be about 9/11. Indeed one of the characters is heard to say early on “Do you think it’s another attack?” Certainly there are plenty of parallels — the monster appears apparently out of nowhere, no-one really knows why it’s attacking and even the military are unable it seems to stop it. That sense of being caught up in a disaster that you have no real idea how or why it’s happening, is quite familiar. Even some of the imagery is reminiscent of 9/11 news footage. I’m thinking of clouds of dust and debris rolling down streets toward the camera. I don’t really want to say anything more about that just nod to it on my way past.

So the big question is, was it worth it? Was it worth making myself ill for? Well possibly, but a lot of that is the smug feeling of guessing the final shot correctly. But I could have gotten that from the FF button. I think it does work well when it’s evoking a sense of “WTF?” about what’s happening. I think showing the monster in passing is good. I approve of putting the human story front and centre and relegating the CGI to it’s proper place. I’m just not sure I cared enough about the people. The camera-device that works well for the monster makes it harder to show the intimacy of the central relationship — or maybe that’s the acting I’m not sure.

Also it was a fairly downbeat ending, but par for the course for monster movies, so maybe my lack of outright love for this genre let me down. And of course, selfishly, I can’t help thinking that they could still have had essentially the same movie without the need of a camera style that sets off my motion sickness.

Probably worth it if you’re a monster movie nut – 6/10

[1]I’m talking about at the cinema, TV is a little different.

[2]23in – I love TV, I love movies, I don’t see the need for a massive screen.

[3]Although it did it largely out of necessity because of technical difficulties with the rubber shark as I understand it.

Categories
book reviews

The Time Traveller’s Wife

At the end of last year when I was in the full grip of my new found enthusiasm for writing, when my sister asked me what I wanted for Christmas I told her to buy me a book, but make it one she’d read and enjoyed. She bought me We Need to Talk About Kevin[1], The Kite Runner and The Time Traveller’s Wife. Last weekend I finished the later.

But it would be unfair to suggest that me taking six months to read this book was any kind of reflection on the quality of the writing. It has more to do with me trying to re-kindle that reading habit when there are slightly less taxing forms of entertainment competing for my time. In fact, having picked it up again after a couple of months, I finished the last half of the book in a couple of days. Of course I was partly avoiding a writing deadline…

Anyway, enough of stuff you don’t care about, how about the book? Well the central idea is simple yet effective – we follow the life of a woman and her husband who travels, involuntarily, in time. Hence her present could be his future or past leading to some interesting encounters. It’s an idea that was recently borrowed by Doctor Who writer Stephen Moffat for the episodes “Silence in the Library” and “Forest of the Dead”. Given this device one could label this SciFi but really it’s more about the relationship between the two and though there is some discussion about the mechanism involved[2], it’s much more about the effects, the emotional effects, than the mechanics of time travel.

I enjoyed the book and especially in that final half I was driven mainly by wanting to see how it ended. Given the nature of his condition we know about 2/3 of the way through how things will end for the main character but it’s still intriguing to see exactly how that plays out. Giving away the ending but still creating a sense of suspense as we head for it has to be a sign of good writing in itself.

If I had problems with the novel I think there were times when I had trouble identifying with the time traveller[3] as he had to be quite ruthless and violent in order to survive the consequences of his random excursions in time. Turning up naked in some random place and time is a problem and I can see how he might need to be an accomplished thief and skilled in fighting to cope with this. But these are consequences of a deliberate authorial decision so I feel like Audrey Niffennegger wanted me to feel some ambivalence towards Henry’s morality. Which is fine but it a) distanced him from me a little and b) jarred a little with the cultured, urbane, son of a musician and a singer who liked hanging out in a library, of the rest of the book.

Another problem for me was that the ending was sad. The actual ending, or coda perhaps, redeemed it somewhat but I still felt a little unsatisfied. I liked the relationship between Clare and Henry and so it was painful to see what happened to them. I like happy endings – so sue me!

I do think that that relationship, which is the core of the book, was well drawn. And particularly later in the book, the sense of happy domesticity which even extends to the necessary accomodations made for Henry’s condition is well described. I especially liked some of the sex, which felt real, intimate, casual in the sense of everyday and most of all bonding. It was definitely erotic but much more so it drew me into the depth of feeling at the heart of Clare and Henry’s marriage.

I’d definitely recommend it, especially if, unlike me, you’ve got the patience to let a book breathe a little.

8/10

[1]Later replaced by A Thousand Splendid Suns since I’d already read Kevin.

[2]Which was organic rather than technological, hence again lessening the SciFi feel.

[3]I realise the main character in the novel is, per the title, Clare, but as a bloke I can’t help trying to identify more with Henry.

Categories
Buffy Rewatch

Buffy the Movie

So this was where it all started.

In 1992 the original movie of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was released. It was written by Joss Whedon, a TV writer who’d worked on Roseanne and would later go on to work on Toy Story.

It wasn’t very good.

But before we get to that, I’ve actually been here before. In 2001, at the height of my fandom, I bought the movie when it was released on DVD. I then wrote this review. It’s interesting how positive I was. To explain/excuse that I should say that it was written for/to the fan community, the received wisdom of whom was that the movie was rubbish and should not be considered as connected to the TV show, which we all loved of course.

Although some of my thoughts on the movie have changed, I don’t intend to write a full re-review as it were. In this blog, I’m largely interested in how things fit in with my own history as a fan.

I can remember hearing about the movie around the time it was released on what was probably Film ’93. Barry Norman thought it was an interesting concept but poorly executed I think. On the strength of that, as was my usual custom at the time, I didn’t make any effort to go see it. When I finally did see it, I was already a fan and happy to find good in it. Now having watched it again with a little of that distance I spoke of yesterday, what do I think?

The thing I think is best about it is still Kristy Swanson. If there’s a moment I liked or a joke I laughed at, she was usually responsible for it. Actually there were other funny moments from Stephen Root as the Principal, but that comedy seemed a little divorced from the film itself.

Two things really stand out on watching it again. One is how static it is, especially in the action scenes. It’s more than needing to “do flippy things and kick each other a bit.” it’s the fact that the reality of any stake (pun unavoidable) or any threat is undermined. Not seeming to either run toward or away from the fight, or expend much effort in it, leaves a feeling that that character doesn’t care much about the outcome. And if they don’t why should I?

The second is the blase way in which everyone reacts to the discovery that vampires are real. Apart from Hilary Swank, whose screaming whilst scenery chewing was way over the top, everyone seems to treat the discovery as mildly annoying or irritating. Even where they say things as if they’re scared for their lives, the acting and delivery of the lines betrays that. Again they don’t really care, so I don’t. I think this comes from a misunderstanding of how to do comedy (he says as if he’s an expert!) – no matter how broad the joke, the actor should play the character’s reactions as real, because to them, within that fictional world it’s real – even if it’s ridiculous and funny to us. As the TV show later proved, you can have great emotional reality and humour side by side.

Anyway, the big question – for me at least – is if, in 1992/3, I’d seen this movie, would I have seen enough in it to want to check out the TV show 5 years later? I think the honest answer is no. I might still have watched but it would have been despite not because. I don’t think I would have thought “here’s a good concept done poorly” I think I would have just dismissed it as a bad movie. Not a bad movie with good parts, just bad.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie: 3/10.