Cool Indy stuff!

At long last the fourth (and I'm guessing final?) Indiana Jones movie - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - is coming this summer. I'm already readying my Fedora and oiling my whip. There's some very cool merch coming out to tie in with the film, including some beautifully detailed statues:



And I spotted my colleague sticking up some (rather more affordable to the pocket money) action figures. Why weren't there Indy action figures when I was a kid? Sure we had the original Star Wars figures (and the even better Micronauts, which were more posable, with more joints, plus you could take them apart, always a plus for a kid) but no Indy figures. I may have to get a couple of these to keep the Doctor Who and Captain Scarlet figures on my desk company. What do you mean I'm too old for toys? Cobblers to that, you're never too old for toys! In fact one of the best things about being grown up is being able to buy toys when you want!

"Space, the final frontier... These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise; her five-year mission to seek out new life and new civilisations. To boldly go where no man has gone before..."

I've been cynical and wary about JJ Abrams' new Star Trek movie - if you haven't been following developments the Alias, MI-3 and Cloverfield creator is taking the series back to before the beginning, with the early days of the classic 60s Trek characters (Zachary Quinto - Sylar in the brilliant Heroes series - plays a young Spock). I have no problems with Abrams' storytelling abilities but I am wondering if I can possibly accept other actors in these roles, even essaying younger versions than we saw. After all I grew up on the original Trek - repeats of that and Pertwee then Baker era Doctor Who were my 1970s televisual SF fixes in those old, three-channel days - and I'm not sure I can take anyone else in those roles. Nonetheless this glimpse of the original, classic 60s style Enterprise under construction is pretty exciting to a geek like me; I especially like the way in the bigger version you can see inside the ship where the hull plates haven't been fixed yet; this looks like the original ship being 'born' and there's something romantic about the big ships, fictional or otherwise.



Trekmovie also had a link to this low quality YouTube someone uploaded of the teaser trailer being shown with the opening of Cloverfield in the US. Little to see except flares of light from welding torches as the camera pulls back to reveal the Starship Enterprise in drydock, being completed for her five year mission. The soundtrack is a mixture of speechs from the glory days of the Space Race, which again appeals strongly to my geek heart (I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up; I still do), from Kennedy's inspirational speech to Armstrong's "one small step", culminating in Leonard Nimoy (who returns to play the older Spock) uttering those immortal words, "space, the final frontier..." Despite my wariness the geek hairs on my neck stood up...

The last man on Earth

Grabbed some time to go and sit and watch I Am Legend before I go back to work. Now I had already surmised from trailers and articles in Empire that yet again Hollywood had not done the book. Third time a film has been made of Richard Matheson's classic 50s novel of Cold War paranoia and humanity's seemingly endless ability for self-destruction and third time they haven't done the bloody book! Come one, please....

That said the film, although different from the book - relocated to New York, which actually works well during the scene of Will Smith hunting wild game in an overgrown Times Square, main character Robert Neville is now an army doctor working on a cure, the scientifically created vampires are now fast, aggressive zombies (although still photophobic) - it actually works very well in creating a sense of isolation and terror as the last man in the world tries to hold it together in a Manhattan populated only by him, his dog and a legion of the infected.

Instead of an unspecified biological agent from a war (as in the book) the cause here is genetic engineering in an attempt to beat cancer, although even if you knew nothing about the story going in you could guess nothing good would come of a medical breakthrough by a character with a name like Doctor Crippen (a cameo by Emma Thompson). Scenes where Neville heads to the DVD store during daylight to withdraw films and return old ones illustrate how he is trying to use routine to keep himself together, rather than simply grabbing whatever he wants from the store. Populating the shop with store window dummies so it looks occupied and he has someone to 'talk' to adds to that feeling, being both slightly amusing and disturbing at the same time, stirring sympathy for Neville.

(SPOILER WARNING: don't read on if you are going to see it, I won't describe the whole finale, but it might spoil it for you if you are planning to see it)

Which makes it all the more annoying when the final section totally destroys what had been so carefully built up earlier, opting for the big fights with masses of CGI infected, big bangs and adding a redemption arc which clashes with the themes established earlier in the same way the original 'happy ending' forced on Blade Runner on its original release, really annoying the hell out of me, Hollywood managing an interesting, bleak, disturbing film then getting cold feet and going for SF CGI action fest at the end. And the CGI is annoying because the infected are hyped up creatures (why? they are diseased, why do they have amazing superhuman abilities now???), leaping up high buildings and their leader's jaws opening preternaturally wide as he yells - yes, they come right out of the Mummy (except some infected dogs which was copied shamelessly from Resident Evil), which was fine for the Mummy which was daft but fun and knew it, this was serious and bleak and psychological then went all cartoony and bollocksed it up.

And if they had stuck to the bloody book in the first place they might have avoided it. The book is far more effective - each night Neville has to be home and barricaded in his home before sunset. Outside his home many of the infected who have become vampire-like creatures due to the virus are people he knows, friends, neighbours (his next door neighbour bellowing 'Neville!' each night seems worse than simple roaring fiends in the movie, more personal) and in a harrowing flashback we see Neville in the book burying his wife then finding her resurrected by the virus and coming back to try and kill him and feed on him. In the book there are live and dead vampires as the virus mutates living victims but also resurrects the dead, who act differently. None of this comes in the film. In the book Neville hunts them by day as they lie in their comas, staking them and wondering why it is that this method of killing from myths works, all the time becoming more paranoid, more bloody and violent himself, staring into the Neitzchen abyss and having it stare back into him, becoming a monster as he fights monsters.

I won't spoil the ending of the book here, but suffice to say Matheson maintains the bleak atmosphere he established effectively with such commendable economy (the book is very short), a skill he used also as a screenwriter (he would work on many of the Vincent Price-Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe movies), in contrast to the movie which ruins itself at that point. And the title I Am Legend has a very different, darker explanation at the end of Matheson's powerful novel than the film. Film - watchable but be prepared to be suddenly let down at the clunking gear change towards the end (and what a shame, the earlier bits as I said are effective and Smith is allowed to act for once). Book - bloody brilliant, one of my personal top books of the last century, a real insight into the paranoia and fear of the Cold War era which still works perfectly in today's troubled world. You should read it.

Who watches?



Rorschach walking the mean streets of New York (actually a backlot in Vancouver) on the set of the Watchmen movie. I'm still not too sure how the graphic novel will translate to the big screen and am trying not to get excited about it, but then I see a pic like this from the film's blog and I think, hmmm, maybe, just maybe it will be okay - after all I was worried about V for Vendetta and the film version turned out to be excellent.

Seachd - the Inaccessible Pinnacle

At the weekend I caught an absolutely beautiful Scottish film, the Gaelic-language Seachd: the Inaccessible Pinnacle. A man returns home from Glasgow to his dying grandfather back in the Western Isles, which leads to a series of tales - in many ways it is a story about stories. Rather fittingly, since Gaelic has an immensely rich oral tradition, a seam of folklore and tales told and retold by bards, singers and just ordinary folk generation after generation. In one scene the grandfather - who may have a much more personal link to the stories of centuries past he tells - talks to his wee grandson, angry and bitter after the death of his parents, rejecting his upbringing, calling it stupid and his grandad's stories false and tells him "no-one can tell the truth. We all tell stories."


(Angus Peter Campbell/Aonghas Pàdraig Caimbeul as the grandfather. A man well suited to play a storyteller since he was taught by Iain Crichton Smith and then later encouraged by Sorley MacLean at University. He is a published novelist and poet and it shows in his performance - like any good poet he has a feel for the fabric and rhythm of storytelling)

As a lifelong reader its hard for me to argue that point - narrative, story, is central to the human condition, it informs who we are in a personal day to day life (how was your day? You don't just say I did this, this and this, you tell it like a short story) and on the grander scale (the older stories which tell us on a deeper level who we are as a people, stories that repeat again and again - Arthur, the Iliad, Beowulf, Ramayana, the songs of the Dreamtime. We are story, we are words and images - we think in words and images, we talk in them, write and draw and sing in them. They're encoded into our DNA. And Seachd is stories within stories, stories defining and illustrating history, culture and the individuals too.


The film is beautiful to behold - much of it is shot on An t-Eilean Sgitheanach, better know to most of us as the Isle of Skye and the mighty Cuillins range. Even in scenes shot on gray, dull, overcast (very Scottish weather) days the imagery is stunning, clouds reaching down to the tops of the mountains, like angel's wings caressing the earth. The music (which is what is playing from the embedded player I got from the official site over on the left of the blog here) is also wonderful.

It makes my blood boil that the numpty heids at BAFTA have decided not to support this Scottish film and put it forward as their non-English language selection for Oscar consideration - not because they had something else they preferred to put forward either, they just didn't put Seachd or anything else forward, which totally undermines their supposed commitment to supporting British film-making (and nice to see London still haughtily mistreats Gaelic culture, some things never change it seems). BAFTA has attracted a raft of criticism, starting with the Scottish arts community, the Parliament and now worldwide condemnation for this shameful and inexcusable lack of support and rightly so. With the fine reception the film is receiving it makes BAFTA's ignorant decision look all the more foolish and ill-informed and I hope they are quite humiliated by their disgusting actions.



But enough negativity - the film itself is truly beautiful and moving; the seemingly simple idea of an elderly storyteller telling story after story doesn't convey the feel of the film. As with any story it isn't just the story, it is how the storytellers tell the story that often makes it and that's the case here. Its hauntingly beautiful, stories that you can feel on those deeper levels that the truly good stories can reach. Go and see it.

Atonement

Caught a couple of extremely good movies this weekend; last night Mel and I went to see Atonement, adapted from Ian McEwan's 'unfilmable' novel, which means it arrives with the burden of being an adaptation of a highly respected work of literature. It lived up to the challenge exceedingly well, deftly moving from different character's perspectives and times, from the heavy stillness of a warm, summer day in the country to the chaos of the Dunkirk evacuation, yet rarely confusing the audience despite the multi-perspective, non-linear narrative. The use of colour, perspective, music and sound is fascinating right from the start, from the staccato of a typewriters leading into the rhythm of the music to the sound of a bee trapped by a window leading out to a scene which is seen from several viewpoints around a fountain (water motifs repeat throughout). Intriguing story, very good performances (especially Keira Knightly and James McAvoy, Kiera looking at home in those 40s fashions) and a beautifully crafted film which has obviously had a lot of attention and love paid on it.



Also caught a film I have been waiting for, 3:10 to Yuma (a remake of a movie from the Western's heyday in the 50s) with Christian Bale, Russell Crowe and Peter Fonda. I have to confess that like many wee boys who grew up to be big kids I still have a soft spot for a good Western; it's a once all dominating genre which has faded away into the sunset like many of its stars did at the climax of their movies years ago. In the last couple of decades there haven't been many, although we have had a handful from the highly enjoyable like Tombstone (silly but great, especially Kilmer's Doc Holliday) to the superb like Unforgiven (a brilliant distillation of years of Western films into a dark, brooding masterpiece) and the quirky, odd gems like Dead Man and The Proposition.



Now we have 3:10 to Yuma, with a Jesse James Western starring Brad Pitt on the way in a few months too. I may have to dust off my cowboy boots. The movie itself doesn't try to re-invent the wheel - the Civil War former soldier turned farmer trying to struggle to provide for his family, the corrupt local landowner, the outlaw gang, the contrast between honesty and crime and how they Won the West, all well worn grooves in the genre and Crowe's violent nutter who may - or may not - have a latent streak of decency and Bale playing a troubled hero aren't new either. But damn, it is a good Western. Oh, and it had Alan Tudyk from Joss Whedon's brilliant Firefly/Serenity in it too, never a bad thing.

Simpsons

Since we were going to see the Simpsons movie on Saturday I thought I'd swing by and get the tickets in the afternoon in case it was busy later, although in the event the auditorium was half full. I think I got the ticket clerk who is either the stupidest or, being kind, perhaps just having one of those days. I tell her I want the 8.45 showing and she says, right, 4.15. No, 8.45, please. She looks a bit confused and then goes, oh, okay (not sure where she got 4.15 from at all, but hey); I tell her I need two tickets, putting one on my cinema pass card, paying for the other on my debit card, handing her both as I do. She takes them and looks at them like she has never seen a plastic card before (bear in mind this cinema has its own card which I use regularly).

I have to explain to her again that I want two tickets for that performance and am paying for one, the other is on my own pass, again waving the cards in front of her so it is pretty obvious visually if she can't grasp spoken words. She takes them slowly, looks at them uncertainly then picks at her keyboard. So, that would be one ticket and one other ticket - so you really want two tickets? Er, yes, one and one would be two, which is what I've asked you for several times now... She did finally get there, although she forgot to ask me which seats we wanted. Jeez, we all have off days, but this girl was slower than a tortoise on Prozac.

And was it worth it after that? Well, no. My friend pointed out one of the biggest problems with the Simpsons movie is that it isn't really a movie. As with the X-Files movie it is really just a longer than usual episode with a bigger budget, which doesn't carry a movie. And as with the X-Files movie I have a general dislike of TV shows making a movie version while the series is still running. After the end of the run, as with Firefely or Star Trek, sure, but generally doing a movie when the show is still continuing seems to be to be just a flagrant cash cow. South Park is an exception here as it offered something unusual and different from the series as well as providing a story that worked as a movie. The Simpsons didn't. Don't get me wrong, parts of it are funny, there are some scenes that made me laugh, but it doesn't hold together and overall seemed weak and somewhat futile.

Mind you, I've not thought much of the TV episodes either in recent years. I really loved the Simpsons for many years, but the last two or three seasons have been poor; as with the movie they have some scenes which are brilliant but I can't recall an entire episode which worked for me in the last few seasons, only some scenes, but never an entire episode; magnify that problem by the length of the movie and you have a very poor offering which dilutes the genius of the earlier show. Heresy perhaps to suggest the Simps is past its sell-by date, but it hasn't worked for me for a while now and the announcement that there would be several seasons more after the weak movie depresses me because it tarnishes the reputation it had during its high water mark. As with the X-Files, good shows need to know when and how to bow out, not just keep milking a tired series for money and so ruining the memories of the earlier, better years (of which there were many). Meantime they are talking about another X-Files movie...

Web-slinging

After all the hype and PR frenzy around the world Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 3 finally hit the cinemas this weekend, and off we went to a packed theatre to catch it. Two major villains this time (three if you count some bits with Harry Osborn's son of the Green Goblin), more personal and romantic trouble for Peter Parker (including a rather awful Emo look which makes him appear like a reject from My Chemical Romance) and the introduction of Gwen and Captain Stacey - if you aren't familiar with the comics that might not mean much to you, but they are (especially Gwen), very important characters from the comics. Shame then, that they were barely used, making me wonder why all the hype to excited fanboys about her appearance...

The film itself was very disappointing - far too 'busy' as my mate remarked, like they were thinking, must outdo the first two movies, pack more in regardless of the effect on the story. Don't get me wrong, it isn't a bad film; if it were the first Spidey movie you had seen you'd probably enjoy it more, but it lacks some solid direction, has too much squeezed into it for no reason other than trying to make it look 'wow' (which rarely works if it makes the story suffer) while the emotional arc was just a tiny bit tedious this time, unlike the previous movies. It is still worth seeing though - there are some great scenes there, the Sandman is well done, Venom looks just like he should from the comics (but as with Gwen, not used properly) and I liked the humanised version of Flint Marko, a petty hoodlum, but one driven to crime because he is desperate to find money for treatment for his ill daughter.



And the usual brace of cameos from Ted Raimi, Bruce Campbell (as a brilliant French maitre'd from the Clueso school) and, of course, Stan the Man Lee. Enjoyable Saturday night movie, not brilliant but not bad, suffering mostly by comparison with the first two since we know they can do better than this. Here's hoping Pirates of the Caribbean 3 is better (what is it with 'part 3's in movies this year?) - the second one was rather by the numbers and lacking heart, made me think of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom compared to Raiders of the Lost Ark; bigger budget, the right set pieces and cast (apart from the female lead) but it lacked heart and felt like blockbuster by the numbers. Here's hoping Pirates 3 is more Last Crusade then, so I can enjoy some damned fine swashbuckling.

License to be petty

British Airways proved how mature they were by editing the latest James Bond movie Casino Royale for in-flight screening on their fleet. Why did they make some edits? Well, they edited a tiny blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from Richard Branson and also excised the tail fin of an aircraft with logo of Virgin Air glimpsed in the movie. I'm no fan of Branson (especially since his millionaire's pissing contest with Murdoch means I don't get to see certain programmes on cable anymore while he still demands the same amount of money from me for his company for a reduced service) but how damned petty is this? And just think, this is someone's actual job. BA actually pays someone to make petty little cuts like this to in-flight movies. Perhaps if they left that to one side and employed more staff doing proper jobs they wouldn't have the worst record in Europe for losing passenger's baggage? Just a thought.

Indiana Jones and the Lost Tenure

Picked up this Indiana Jones gem via my good chum the Silvereel; perhaps this might be the plot of the almost mythical fourth movie we've been promised for the last umpteen years? Oh well, if it doesn't happen perhaps we can see Tony Robinson and the Time Team gang in a big screen adventure instead?