Musings without a good name for my blog

Willy silly nilly all stuffed with fluff

2012-01-03T22:39:00.000+13:00

So here's the thing.

I've complained about the Stuff website in the past, criticising their awful advertising campaign about the timeliness of their news coverage, as well as pointing out when they fell short of that target by publishing an article some ten months after it was even vaguely newsworthy.

So imagine how I felt when I loaded up the website yesterday, Monday 3 January 2012, to find this on the front page...

Zooey Deschanel's Disney challenge
Zooey Deschanel has taken on the daunting task to write a song for a Winnie the Pooh movie.

...with a link through to this article.

Sigh.

So, when you talk about "a Winnie the Pooh" film, is there any possibility you could be talking about this "Winnie the Pooh" film with a song from Zooey Deschanel's musical group She and Him? Surely not. Surely this news article from a news website that prides itself on getting the story first is not going to be about a movie that was released in the UK some nine months ago and the US six months ago, right? I mean, for a start, where is the news value in a story about a nine-month old film. You know who also knows about how Zooey Deschanel has taken on the daunting task of writing a song for the film? My three-year old niece, because she's heard the song, because I bought the film for her as a Christmas present.

I mean, really, Stuff. When is the statute of limitations on front page news? What's the next front-page story? George Lucas has taken on the task of making prequels to his hit Star Wars trilogy? Pixar has taken on the task of making an animated film entirely using computer-generate animation? Al Jolson is going to be starring in a film that will miraculously have both pictures and synchronised sound?

So I open up the article, and I read the opening paragraph:

Writing a song for a Disney animated film puts a songwriter into a long and legendary line that has produced 30 nominations and 10 wins going back to When You Wish Upon a Star in 1940.

Really? 30 nominations and 10 wins? Wow... umm... errr... nominations and wins for what, exactly? I mean, I assume you're talking about the Oscars, since there is a reference in the fourth paragraph to her writing "So Long, one of the film's two Oscar entries", and When You Wish Upon A Star did win the Oscar. But you need to actually define what you're talking about. After all, there are a lot of other award shows you could be talking about: indeed, the article could be talking about the Grammys (for which the song in question has actually been nominated, which could would have been newsworthy back when it was announced a month ago). But I don't think that is what they are talking about, since the word "Grammy" is never used in the article. It could be the Golden Globes, but I doubt it since those nominations were already announced and the song wasn't nominated (plus, you know, it's the Golden Globes, and they're entirely worthless). So it must be the Oscars. So why not just say "30 Oscar nominations and 10 wins"? Does adding that one word make the paragraph too unwieldy?

Here's another bit I love:

...actress and singer-songwriter Zooey Deschanel ... couldn't exactly ignore that history when she was drafted to contribute to this year's Disney version of the A.A. Milne stories.

This year's version? Here's a suggestion, Stuff. Take down the "Cute Cats of 2011" calender you still have on your wall, and go out and buy the "Cute Cats of 2012" calender.

I just don't see what's newsworthy about this article that makes it worthy of the front page of your website. I mean, the film is nine months old right now, the article isn't timed to a local release (since the DVD has been available here for a month or two), and while that opening paragraph seems to hint at a connection to the Oscars, it's not a subject that's really revisited in the article, and besides, the actual nominations don't come out for another three weeks (24 January 2012). And who knows, the song she wrote may not even be nominated - after all, there were 39 songs able to be nominated this year. So this is an article that exists solely as a speculative thing - something that they published on the off-chance that it might become relevant at some point in the future.

(Alternatively, and frankly this is the most likely explanation, it's probably a article that Disney had written for the LA press to try and increase the likelihood of getting an Oscar nomination. But again, that makes it promotional, not news, so why is it worthy of space on the front page of your news website?)

Here's another thing. You see that line of three photos I have lining the right side of this post. That is taken exactly as it appeared on the Stuff website. Yes, the Stuff website felt the need to publish three versions of the exact same photo, one above another above another, each with different cropping, complete with captions that involve (a) a repetition of the annoying "daunting task" phrase, (b) an awful Winnie-the-Pooh/Jungle-Book crossover joke, and (c) just a identification of the photo's subject, in case you couldn't work out that it's Zooey Deschanel from the other two identical photos that also identify her. I enjoy looking at Zooey Deschanel as much as the next guy, but even a picture of Zooey gets boring after the third time I look at it. (The Stuff people clearly also realised this - they changed it this morning, so now only one photograph appears.)

Look, I love Zooey Deschanel. She always comes across as having a very winning and sweet personality, managing to somehow be a non-annoying version of a manic pixie dream girl. I own and enjoy the first two She and Him albums (although not even Zooey could get me to buy their Christmas album). And frankly, if I were to ever meet her and somehow retained the power of speech, I suspect the first thing I said to her really would be "When did you first know you were adorable?" So it's not unenjoyable reading about her.

And it's not an awful article - at least, not when compared to that incompetent Chloe Moretz article. Sure, as I have pointed out it has its flaws, but it generally stays on topic, is clear, makes good use of quotations, and is enjoyable to read as far as "vote for us" Oscar puff pieces go.

And I love the 2011 "Winnie the Pooh" film, which is sweet and funny and innocent and faithful to the books, not just in their events but in their tone. (The only thing I didn't like about the film is the character design, which deviates wildly from the idea that these are 1920s-era toys - but that's actually a problem I have with the original 60s-era Disney design decisions, not with this specific film.) I am genuinely sad that the film flopped, and am actually happy with anything that leads people to discover that there is this really good film out there.

But this isn't news. And I don't see what is so unreasonable about expecting a news website to highlight actual news on its front page. Hell, put the story about Russell Brand and Katy Perry getting divorced on the front page. That may be pure gossip, but at least it involves something that actually happened in the past week or so, and can therefore be defensibly described as "current events." But this? As far as "news" goes, this is just a waste of everyone's time.

And yes, I'm aware that as much time as I wasted reading that article looking for news, I've wasted a hundred times as much time writing this post complaining about the article. But what's the point of having an infrequently updated blog if you can't waste time writing about whatever random things I want to write about. That's the point of a blog. Just don't call your blog a news website.

Fill in the blank: All for one and one for ___

2011-08-16T22:45:00.000+12:00

So here's the thing.

As I commented in an earlier post, I was recently in Australia, pursuing a higher educational opportunity. And I had a great time - the course was great, challenging, enjoyable. And the other participants on the course were great, even if they were all Australian.

So one night, there was a dinner scheduled for all the participants. The food was great, the company even better, and as we left the dinner venue at 9.30pm, it seemed too soon for the night to end. But it was Monday night, and the town was dead. Nowhere was open, except for this one Irish bar just down the street a little bit. The place was more or less empty - you could count the number of patrons on your fingers - but they served drinks, they had a table that could accommodate all of us, and they had a messy-haired red-headed guy in denim overalls playing "Proud Mary" and "Mrs Robinson" on the guitar. The nine of us pulled a couple of tables together, and started enjoying the evening. Drinks were drunk, songs were sung along with, we all even got up at one point and danced. And it was fun; it seemed like nothing could harm the joyful mood of that night. We were so young, so innocent, so naive. So wrong.

By this point, the night was getting on. The music had finished, the place had even fewer people around than before. And then this guy walks up to the table and starts talking to me in an American accent. "I'd like to buy you a drink because it's the 4th of July." I look at the middle-aged guy, who is wearing what looks like a naval military uniform. And he's unbelievably sweaty; you almost felt sick looking at the guy. "No thanks," I said. I was happy with my orange juice, and was certainly not interested in any drinks bought by this strange man. He then addresses the entire table. "I'd like to buy you all a drink to celebrate the 4th of July, my country's Independence Day, and it's also my independence day because after 25 years I am retiring from the navy." People looked at him, said "No thanks," and hoped he'd leave, because he seemed weird. But he didn't leave; instead, he stayed, repeated the offer, at one point even commenting "I don't know what's so difficult to understand about this. I want to buy you all a round of drinks." Eventually a few people agreed, mostly I suspect because the guy clearly wasn't going to accept any kind of "No" answer. We did send someone down to help him with the drinks/make-sure-he-doesn't-do-anything-to-them, just to be safe. So the guy comes back with a round of tequila shots for us all. I tried to insist, "No thank you, I said I'm happy with my orange juice, I said I didn't want you to buy me a drink, so I think I'll..."

And as I was speaking, I happened to glance at the guy and realised something with a shock. The guy had a sword. A real, solid, metal sword. Was it sharp? Who knows. I certainly wasn't inspecting the blade terribly closely to determine. All I knew was that this strange man had decided to come to a bar carrying a sword. This is unusual behaviour, and who knows what else a person who does that might do. It was at this point that I also developed a new rule: Never decline a tequila shot from a guy with a sword. I took it, downed it with everyone - ohmyGOSHitwasawful - thanked the guy very much, and hoped he would leave.

But he did not. He stayed around, talking to us for a few more minutes, asked us about the course that we were on, and demonstrated that he was surprisingly knowledgeable on the core subject matter. Whatever the guy's story was, he was certainly well-informed to a degree that few people would be. And he talked about his career in the navy - although we're not sure how true any of it was, because at one point he claimed to be an admiral, while another point he said he was a former spy (because if there's one thing spies are known for, it's revealing that they're spies).

But eventually he decided to leave. He saluted us, one of us saluted him back, and he left. According to one of the bar staff, he was heard to say, as he left, "I'm sick of having to entertain these communist fuckwits." Which seemed like an unusual response - I don't think anyone said anything indicating any communist tendencies (if anything he was the one taking his wealth and redistributing it to the masses, if only in the form of tequila shots), and I certainly would regard myself as being some distance from the communist end of the political sphere. So frankly, that comment offended me. Plus there was the whole calling-us-fuckwits thing, which probably wasn't a positive comment either. Still, he was gone now, and we could get back to enjoying our evening. After all, it's not like he's going to come back or anything.

Fifteen minutes pass, and all of a sudden he's by our table again. And he still has his sword. Now, can I just point out, this means the bouncers let a guy carrying sword into a bar, not once, but TWICE. That does not seem like an appropriate approach to security in a place where there is a reasonable risk that the patrons may become intoxicated. In any case, he's standing by me, still sweaty and creepy, addressing the whole group, proposing that we play a game of Twenty Questions. A couple of people agreed (I'm not sure why - curious where this was going, perhaps?), and the game started. It quickly became clear that this was not the game of Twenty Questions as you know it. This was, in fact, merely some bizarre pub quiz, where the guy would just throw out question after question. "What are the colours on the Torres Strait Island flag?" "What year was the American constitution signed?" "What is the full name of the ANZUS pact? (And a supplementary question: would America really come to Australia's aid if it were attacked? Of course they would! Why do you think I'm here?)" There were some people in the group (mostly the people on the other side of the table) that were playing along with the game. There were some people (mostly those down the far end of the table) that decided to just ignore this and carry on their own conversations. And then there was me, sitting right by the guy with the sword, desperately wanting him to please just go away. I took to having my recently-refilled glass of orange juice up to my lips the whole time but sipping it very slowly, just so that my arm would be raised to protect my throat should he swing the sword at me. Then the guy turns to me, asks me a question about Australian history. "I don't know," I say defensively. "I'm from New Zealand." "Oh," he says. "Then I've got a question for you." He then fires a question about the Treaty of Waitangi at me. I cannot remember what the question was now, but at the time my mind managed to dredge up an answer that satisfied the guy, because he announced to everyone "This guy is good, he knows his stuff, and you should all have him as a role-model." I was just relieved, since hopefully his approval meant that he wouldn't be tempted to swing his sword at me. Still, there's no way I'm lowering my drink.

But as the game carried, the guy started to get more and more aggravated. There were the people who were playing the game, but who challenged his questions. They felt the questions were unclear or imprecise, capable of several answers, but when they'd try to clarify a point, the guy would tense up. "The question was perfectly clear; it doesn't need clarification; what's your answer?" he would bark. Whenever someone challenged him, you could see how tense he was getting, if only because he started banging the sword into the ground - which was horrible, because the sword was uncomfortably close to my foot. Of even more concern to the guy was the group of people at the other end of the table - the people who were ignoring him and trying to carry on their own conversations. "I'm really sorry, I'd love to hear your answers to the question, but I can't hear you because SOME people at the table are being RUDE and are TALKING loudly." This prompted one person to confront the guy. "Who do you think you are? We didn't ask you to come and talk to us, but here you are, making demands, controlling how we enjoy our evening." By the end of her speech she was standing up and yelling at the guy, and all the while I'm sitting thinking "Please, can we not antagonise the guy with the sword?"

But it seemed to work. He clearly decided he'd had enough and left us, wandering over to talk to the woman at the bar, who at this point was pretty much the only other person in the place. There was understandably some concern about her safety - someone even went up to her and checked she knew what she was doing; she said she was fine - but when we last saw the two of them, they were walking up the street together, and she had the sword. (And there were no stories in the news the next day about anyone being slashed to death with a sword, so I assume she was fine.)

Meanwhile it was midnight at this point, so I excused myself, and returned to my hotel room - it was late, I was tired, and I needed to send a few work emails before going to bed. Another guy left - he'd apparently met a girl who invited him to a party. The rest of the group didn't want the night to end, so they all walked off to the nearby casino. I am told, however, that they never made it inside the casino, because they discovered that one of the group had had her wallet stolen while at the bar. It wasn't until the next day's class that we met up with the guy who had left for the other party, and heard that (a) there was no party, and all the bars they went to were closed, (b) the girl was insane, and (c) she kept going on about identity theft for some reason. So now we were pretty certain she is the wallet thief - unfortunately, we had no idea who she was, so I don't think it was possible to follow that up.

Arriving at class the next day, I told the story to the lecturer, who initially asked if this was some kind of joke, and who I think only believed it actually happened when the third group of people came in talking about the guy with the sword. When he heard that this all happened at this particular bar, his response was simply "That sounds right. If I'd known you were going there, I'd have advised against it. It's a bad place."

We know.

Better late than never

2011-07-20T19:09:00.001+12:00

So here's the thing.

This is actually a post I wrote over a year ago, back in May 2010, but for some reason never actually finished. I came across it recently, and was surprised to find it was almost completed - it literally just required the final paragraph to be added - so I'm not sure why I never got around to adding that final touch. So I've added a final paragraph, and have made a couple of minor editorial changes, but otherwise this is the post as I wrote it at the time, while the incident was still fresh in my mind. Enjoy.

--------------------

So here's the thing.

I think a lot of us go through life with these self-illusions, or perhaps delusions is the proper word, about how we would respond to particular situations. We imagine ourselves responding to urgent situations with a blinding deftness and a quickness to resolve whatever problems arise. We really are the heroes of our imaginations. So, for instance, every now and then (being the paranoid person that I am) I find myself wandering through the house at 1am, checking all the doors and the windows in the house because for some reason I have a horrible feeling that tonight someone will break in. And on those occasions, I start to wonder what I would do if some intruder did break into my house, and in my mind, the answer is always the same. I have a cricket bat that a former flatmate gave me as a Christmas present, and it happens to sit by my bedroom door. (It's not there because of this whole imagined situation; that's just the most convenient place to keep it.) So, if someone were to break in, I would have a weapon easily to hand. I would sneak out, surprise the intruder, a couple of quick blows to the head, knock the guy to the ground, then if he happens to have a gun I would take that gun and shoot him in the kneecap (just to incapacitate him), and there we are. Problem solved. The problem is, that's a scenario that comes from watching too many action films, one where I'm basically imagining myself as a marginally more humane John McClane, and I'm not sure I look that good in a singlet.

So it's Sunday morning, and I'm going to church, because that's what I do on Sunday morning. Now, as I've said before, I'm not usually that good at being on time to anything really, but this week I was doing pretty well, in that I was only twenty minutes late for the service. (As a general rule, I feel I'm doing well if I'm less than half-an-hour late for most things.) So I walk into the church, which was pretty much full, very few empty seats, and those few that were empty were generally in the middle of a row. But there was this one empty seat at the end of a row, sitting next to this girl. I walk up, quick "Hello is this seat saved no may I thanks," and now I have a seat.

So the sermon starts, and this week it's all about Deborah and Jael, which is a pretty interesting story. (If you're not familiar with it, you can read it here.) Basically, the story reaches its culmination with one of the characters, a woman called Jael, offering to hide the bad guy, Sisera, in her tent while she stands guard outside. Then, while Sisera sleeps, Jael takes a big heavy wooden tent peg and a hammer, holds the tent peg above his head, and then hammers the peg through his brains. (Incidentally, there are some really interesting stories in the Bible. Also, when I read the Bible these days I'm really shocked at how young I was when I got my first proper non-kids Bible.)

So the sermon is going on, and the person preaching was reading the passage about this death, when I saw some commotion about five rows in front of me. Basically, this guy collapsed in his seat, and the people around rushed to help him. Now, I'm not proud of the fact that my first response to this event was mild amusement at the thought of this person having fainted at the graphic description of the death of Sisera. But my amusement was very quickly tempered by the realisation that this was serious. There was a circle of people surrounding the guy, shielding him from view, which is appropriate - there's something unpleasant about the idea of people sitting and watching like spectators while someone is in serious medical trouble. But despite the circle of people, I could see the guy's hand, which was as close to white as I have ever seen a person's skin. Seeing that really made me anxious for this person, and I pretty much spent the next ten minutes just sitting in my chair, more or less ignoring the rest of the sermon and just quietly praying for him, because what else am I going to do. I figured the guy is probably more or less okay, since the person preaching noted the commotion, and was given a "carry on preaching" signal. (I don't know what they would do if he had died, but it certainly wouldn't be to continue with the sermon.) After about ten minutes, the guy sat up, was helped to his feet, and then walked supported out of the auditorium. So that was a relief. I don't know what happened to him after he left, but when he left he seemed weakened but okay. In any case, the excitement of the service seemed over.

So a little time passes - it's maybe five or ten minutes later, everything seemed normal, when the girl in the seat next to me collapses onto my shoulder. Surprised, I turn to look at her. Her head was rolled back, her eyes vacantly staring, her mouth open. She was shaking, but I don't know whether I remember noticing that or whether it's something that I only think I remember because her friend mentioned it later. All I knew was that she was having a seizure ........... help. What the hell do you do with a seizure? I remember learning what to do back when I did a first aid thing at intermediate school, but that was twenty years ago. I can't remember what time my church starts, how am I supposed to remember something I learned one time when I was 12 years old? And for some reason, it never occurs to me to try and put the girl on the ground, even though that's what I watched everyone do not twenty minutes ago. Instead, for no readily apparent reason I tried to push her back into a sitting position. Meanwhile I turned and waved frantically at a nearby usher, "Get someone!" It's at this moment that events start to blur, and I have no memory of anything that happened. All I can remember is how completely pathetic and ineffectual my response was under pressure. I think I just sat there, holding her upright, thinking "What the hell do I do now?" I remember her friend calling the girl's name at her, trying to get a reaction, but even though I heard her name a good ten or twelve times, two minutes later I had no idea what her name was, and I still don't remember. At some point, I got out of my seat, but I don't know why, and I certainly cannot work out why I thought it was a good idea for me to kneel on the ground beside my seat. (Seriously, the girl is sitting in her seat; what good is kneeling on the floor going to be?) Fortunately within a minute, the paramedic arrived - he was still outside responding to the previous guy who collapsed. And by this time, the girl was starting to recover, which was a relief.

So they went outside, I stayed inside the church, because I'm not going to follow them, because she doesn't want some stranger hanging around. Anyway, she seemed fine now, which I was relieved about, and she had someone there who actually knew what they were doing, as opposed to my ineffectual waffling about. But then the paramedic wanted to talk to me, wanted some more information about what had happened, which really made me feel awkward because I couldn't answer his questions because I had no idea what happened. I remembered the initial shock I had on seeing her, and that was literally all I could recall. And then, having been completely useless at answering any questions, I was unsure what to do. I couldn't go back into the service, since it was just finishing, but it seemed callous and uncaring to just leave. So she was sitting there, talking to her friend, slowly recovering. Meanwhile I stood a distance away, just mulling around in the post-service crowd, anxiously watching her but trying not to be creepy about it (I mean I'm legitimately involved, but still), I'm worried about her, is she going to be okay, I think so, she looks fine now, all at the same time feeling incredibly guilty over my completely ineffectual response. After a couple of minutes she gets up and leaves in the ambulance, along (I assume) with the first guy that collapsed. In any case, I was glad when she left, since I no longer needed to worry about how one behaves around someone who collapsed onto you and who you were utterly useless in helping.

In any case, I now know what to do when someone has a seizure. You roll them onto their side, cushion their head, and keep their airway open. So now the action man that I am is prepared for two eventualities: house burglars or people having seizures. Now I just need to try to keep the two procedures clear in my mind. (Key thing to remember: if someone is having a seizure, do not hit them on the head with a cricket bat.)

Attack of Suspense, Laughter, Violence, Hope, Heart, Nudity, Sex, Happy Endings... Mainly Happy Endings

2011-07-14T20:39:00.002+12:00

So here's the thing.

If you had driven past the Michael Fowler Centre carpark at 6 in the morning on 6 July 2011, you would have seen ... well, I do not know what you would have seen, because for the first time in five years I did not queue for film festival tickets. At the time, tickets went on sale, I was in Australia on an educational course. So I had to make my ticket purchases by fax (did you realise that faxing was still a thing?). As a result, by the time they managed to process my fax, some six hours after tickets went on sale, my seats were nowhere near as as good as those I would have had had I been able to queue. (Sigh.) Plus I have different seats for every film - I much prefer it when I have the one seat that I can occupy throughout the festival. (Sigh.) (I have a hard life.)

In any case, the fax went through, and I managed to secure tickets to the following films:

* The Tree of Life
* Cave of Forgotten Dreams
* Page One: Inside the New York Times
* The Man from Nowhere
* Arrietty
* 13 Assassins
* Tabloid
* Meek's Cutoff
* Let the Bullets Fly
* Taxi Driver
* Footnote
* Submarine
* Fire in Babylon
* Martha Marcy May Marlene
* Project Nim
* Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey
* Metropolis
* Le quattro volte
* The Yellow Sea
* Nothing to Declare
* Senna
* Another Earth
* The Forgiveness of Blood
* Elite Squad: The Enemy Within
* Goodbye
* The Guard
* Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure
* Point Blank
* Pina
* Drive

I'm also planning to try to take a half-day off work to catch a daytime screening of A Separation, since all the night screenings clashed with other films I'm seeing.

Yes, that is 31 films. That is far and away the most films I've ever seen at the festival. And there are still more films I'm still debating adding to the list. (Part of me actually wants to hit 34 films since, with a 17 day festival, that's an average of two films a day.) [EDIT: Indeed, I did add another three films - Hot Coffee, Anton Chekhov's The Duel, and Sleeping Beauty - to bring my total to 34.] But it's a really good festival this year - I had almost 20 films that I recognised and wanted to see even before I started reading the film write-ups, and my initial long list of films was over 50.

Last year, one of my disappointments was that they weren't showing the restored and nearly complete silent-classic Metropolis. But this year, they are. Yay! Sure, I've seen it by now, and even own it on Blu-Ray, but I cannot wait to see it on the big screen with an audience. It will also obviously be exciting to have a chance to see the restored Taxi Driver - arguably Scorsese's greatest film, with Bernard Herrmann's beautiful final score - on the big screen. (They're also showing La Dolce Vita, which I saw once and didn't like. I was going to give it a second shot (since it's La Dolce Vita), but the only screening clashed with something I really did want to see, so I abandoned that idea.)

In past years, the cinemas used for the festival haven't been equipped for 3D films, and so we've frustratingly missed out on the 3D films that screened in Auckland. I'm particularly glad this situation has been rectified this year, since Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Pina are two documentaries ideal for 3D. Cave presents the earliest known cave paintings, using the 3D to capture the contours that the cave artists made use of, while the idea of using 3D to capture dance choreography in Pina is also promising.

Like most people my age, I grew up watching the Muppets, and they hold a very real place of affection for me (I've been known to cry watching this video from Jim Henson's memorial). As someone who grew up in a pre-Elmo era, I do not like the little red monster - I feel the character is just too childish, and he occupies too similar a space to Grover, who was always one of my favourites. But I like what I've seen of Kevin Clash, Elmo's Muppeteer, and I like that he seems to really use his high-profile position as Elmo to publicly promote his artform. So I am looking forward to seeing the Being Elmo documentary, if only because there is sure to be behind-the-scenes footage of people working with the Muppets. And that will be cool.

One of the very first episodes of This American Life covered a story about a couple of guys who, back in the 80s, recorded the audio of his neighbours loudly and abusively arguing, and how these recordings became a viral sensation long before YouTube. I've listened to hundreds of episodes of TAL since then, but apparently that story stayed with me, because as soon as I saw a film listed called Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure, I recognised the titular phrase, remembered the story, and knew I had to see the film.

There are some really exciting documentaries in the festival - films like Page One, following a year in the life of the New York Times, or the new Errol Morris film Tabloid, or the film about the rise of the West Indies as a cricketing nation (Fire in Babylon). And while I'm really not a car racing person, I've heard a lot of self-proclaimed not-car-racing-people give really positive reviews for the Senna documentary, so I think that should be good.

There's no way I would ever have been interested in Le Quattro Volte (which, as primarily a meditation on life involving goat farming, sounds almost like a parody of the worst type of art film) were it not for the memorably passionate review that Mark Kermode gave the film, where he almost seemed moved to tears just by recalling the beauty of some of the scenes in the film. On the other hand, I definitely would have seen Terrance Malick's new meditation, entitled The Tree of Life - it is after all the new Terrance Malick film - but the mixed reviews that came out of Cannes and its general release have me concerned, because I want it to be really good. Still, I'll see it and hope for the best.

Then there's the films I'm seeing solely because of the filmmaker. Meek's Cutoff wouldn't ordinarily appeal - a wagon trail western told from the point of view of the women - but I loved Kelly Reichardt's previous film, Wendy and Lucy (a heartbreaking film about a young woman trying to find her dog - absolutely devastating). Similarly, I'd never even heard of The Yellow Sea, but knowing it's from the same guy who made the cop-turned-pimp-hunts-slacker-serial-killer film The Chaser that I really enjoyed made it a must-see. And Project Nim - a documentary about a chimpanzee being taught to communicate - would probably be interesting anyway, but the fact that it was from the director of Man on Wire pushed me over the edge.

And then there are all the films I've heard about, either during Cannes or Sundance, or just during their general release overseas. I'm looking forward to finally seeing Submarine (a very well reviewed coming-of-age comedy), Martha Marcy May Marlene (about a girl who escapes a cult), Another Earth (in which a second planet Earth appears in the sky), and 13 Assassins (apparently a very good samurai film, and the first Takashi Miike film I've ever wanted to see).

And then there's just the films I've not heard of, but think sound interesting. The Forgiveness of Blood, about a modern-day youth trapped inside his house due to 15-century honour codes and blood feuds? Sounds good. Footnote, an Israeli comedy about duelling father-son Talmudic professors? I've never seen that before. Nothing to Declare, a comedy about French/Belgian tensions between two border guards? Could be fun. And I'm definitely interested in a French fast-paced pulp action thriller like Point Blank, or a 1920s-era Hong Kong action film like Let the Bullets Fly.

My main disappointment this year: I was really hoping they would be screening We Need To Talk About Kevin. I recently read the source novel, about a woman trying to work through the events that led her son to commit a Columbine-style massacre and considering her own responsibility in creating this monster, and while I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, I thought it was very good and was glad I read it. The film version was one of the best-reviewed films at Cannes, and so much of the novel depended on the nature of the way the story was being told that I'm really curious to see how they could make it work as a successful movie. But I guess I'll just have to wait and hope for a general release.

So hopefully this will be a good festival. It will be long and tiring, and I expect to be absolutely exhausted by the end of it, but regardless, I am very excited. We're just over two weeks away from opening night, and I'm counting down the days.

4 8 15 16 23 42

2011-05-24T02:33:00.003+12:00

So here's the thing.

I'm in Sydney at the moment, on a trip with a group of people. My brother lives over here, so I stayed with him and his family for the weekend, then last night joined the rest of the party at our hotel.

Today was the first day of the trip proper, and it was really good. We had a very busy day, going from place to place. But the very last event of the day was cancelled, so we had a few hours to kill. At this point it was late afternoon, about 4.30pm, and since there was still about an hour to go before the shops closed, some in the party wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to go shopping. As we stopped to let those people off at some large shopping mall, I made a sudden and impulsive decision to jump out and also look around the shops, just to see if I could find anything interesting.

I wish I never had.

Here's the problem: I hadn't expected to go shopping, so I wasn't prepared for shopping. Sure, I had my wallet, but I didn't have the other thing just as important to the shopping experience as my wallet - my iPod. You see, I find shopping deathly dull, so I can only do it while listening to something that gives my mind something else to focus on. Without my iPod, I realised I'm not going to cope. Plus, I'm really only interested in a limited number of shops - ones that sell DVDs or books. And with the exchange rate being as it is, I doubted I could find anything that was actually a significantly cheaper than I could get in New Zealand. But I was lucky, and did find a DVD boxset for about $NZ25 less than back home. That said, I would gladly pay that $25 to avoid what happened next.

About 5pm, I decided I'd had enough of the tedium of shopping, and started walking toward the hotel. I walked some three blocks before I saw the Town Hall train station. Knowing that my hotel was close to the Circular Quay station, which is a couple of stops after the Town Hall station, and that it was supposed to only be a short walk from the shopping mall to the hotel, I started to wonder if I was going in the right direction. After all, it hadn't occurred to me to check what direction the hotel actually was. Figuring Circular Quay was a better-known landmark than my hotel, I asked at a newsagent, who said Circular Quay was indeed in the direction I'd just come from. I had been going the wrong way.

So I walked back for a while, when I started to think. Circular Quay was by the water, for obvious reasons, so where's the water? I look up the side-streets, but every street around me slopes rather sharply up, not down to water level. It was like I'm in a valley, not a place with a harbour two blocks away. So I try walking up one of the side streets to work out which side Circular Quay is on. I reach the top of the hill, and look down to a big sign saying "Darling Harbour." Then I start to worry. I don't really have a mental image of what the city of Sydney looks like, but I do know that Darling Harbour and Circular Quay are two entirely different places. So just how far away from where I want to be am I? Which means now I have NO idea where my hotel is.

So I did what any rational mature adult would do. I panicked. I had difficulty breathing, I felt faint, a wave of stress hit me, I started to imagine myself wandering aimlessly around Sydney for the rest of my life. Then I had a thought. I have family that live in this city. They'll know where I need to go. So I call my sister-in-law, but she didn't know where to go, and even if she did, I couldn't have heard her over the traffic noise. I was going to call my brother, who had apparently finished work, when I saw a couple of bus drivers standing around a bus. They'll know where it is, I thought, so I went up and asked "Which way to Circular Quay?" One of the drivers points me to the direction I'd originally started going. So I set off, now knowing that I'd been right all along.

It's at this point that my brother texts me asking "You lost or something?" I give him a call, but again cannot hear him because of the traffic noise. Still I manage to communicate to him where I am. Meanwhile, for some reason I'm starting to have my doubts again about exactly which direction I should be going in. So I decide to ask some people standing waiting to cross at the lights. This very nice girl said to me, "Circular Quay is too far to walk, but you can catch a bus. If you follow me, I'll show you where the bus stop is." We cross the road, walk for a couple of minutes, and then she points me to a long line of buses, telling me which bus to catch. I thank her, walk along to the front of the bus stop... and my heart sinks. Across the road is the shopping mall where I began this whole saga. Half an hour of walking, and I'm back where I started.

Then I have a thought. It's 5.30pm, the shops are closing, if I'm lucky perhaps some of the other members of my party might have only just finished their own shopping. In which case, I can follow them back to the hotel. I start to call one of them when a text from my brother arrives on my phone. It's directions, based on where I had been when we talked. "Walk up two blocks until you find George St. Turn left, walk 1½km until you find your hotel." I look at nearby signs. Hey, I'm on George St. And I did turn left to get to the bus stop. Now that I know where to go, I set off, walking, and walking, and walking, until I find... a hotel I'm not staying at. But it's a hotel I know is near mine, because last night I accidentally briefly logged onto their wireless internet rather than my hotel's wireless. So that must be my hotel behind that other one. And indeed it was. So, some fifty minutes after setting off, I finally was able to collapse in my room. (And for the record, yes, I had initially been going in the wrong direction. If I hadn't noticed the Town Hall train station, I might very well still be walking right now.)

Moral of the story: never leave your room without your iPod. The whole experience would have been a lot more bearable if I only had something to listen to.

Alternative moral of this story, as suggested on Facebook by my friend Kim: "Don't go travelling with Matthew - he starts panicking when lost in an English-speaking urban area, complete with shopping malls, hotels, easily-accessible public transport, mobile coverage and local contacts..."

Well, sure, I guess that's one lesson you could take out of the story if you really wanted to.

Goodbye Aunty

2011-03-05T23:07:00.002+13:00

So here's the thing.

When I was a kid, I wasn't exactly sociable. So, when I was about 14, my parents applied their parental pressure to force me to go to the church youth group. I didn't want to go - it was on Saturday nights, and I had things to do on Saturday nights (mostly TV watching). But they forced me to choose between a couple of choices, and the youth group seemed the best of my options. So, rather unwillingly, I started going. In hindsight, it was one of the best things that happened to me. I met a lot of great people; my best friends, people I will be close to for the rest of my life, come from that group. And over the next 3½ years, we grew to be such a strong group. And I met Daphne.

Daphne was the woman who ran the group, along with her husband. She would have been in her late-40s at the time, and she was wonderful. The family didn't have a lot, but what they had was always freely given. For all of us, she was less of a youth group leader, and more like a second mother. Many was the time when I would just go around to her place after school, unannounced, just because I felt like it, and I'd walk in to find a few other members of the group already there, having also decided to go around for a visit. And we'd just stay there for hours. If our parents were trying to find us, Daphne's was always the first place they would go to look. I'd even heard stories about how people would take the new person they're dating around to meet Daphne for her approval. Daphne was someone we all loved, so, so much, and she was one of the defining influences for all of us during our teenage years.

As I'm writing this, there's one moment that really comes to mind - something I haven't thought about in years. I was at church one night, and I had a thought come to mind; "Give Daphne some money." I won't say how much, but it was a specific amount of money, one that was very daunting as a high school student working just a few hours a week to have to give away. But I knew I needed to do it. So the next day I went to the cash machine and got the money out, then went to their place. Her husband was there, and said she wouldn't be available for quite a while. I said I'd wait. About 45 minutes later, Daphne emerged from her bedroom, looking grave, then surprised to see me. We went out, sat on the steps outside the house, and I handed her the envelope, saying that I felt I needed to give this to her. She looked in the envelope, was startled, and refused to take it. I pressed her, said that I was really certain that I had to give it. "Why?" she asked. "I don't know," I replied. Then she remembered a particular expense that had just come up, and the money was just enough to cover that. And then she started to talk in vague terms about another situation that she was going through. I don't know what the situation was - she never provided details and I didn't want them since it wasn't my business. But I know it was serious. She'd just spent the last hour in her bedroom praying for a resolution to that particular situation, and as she prayed she really felt that God was saying that He was in control and would provide a solution. And then she walked out of her bedroom, to find me with a gift that would help with a different problem. It didn't solve her big concern, but she told me how it restored her confidence that everything would be okay, whatever the situation. And her face at that moment, this mix of burden and relief, of discouragement and faith restored, was just wonderful. For all the encouragement, for all the support that she'd given me, it was a blessing to be able to encourage and support her when she needed it.

Long after she stopped actually working with the youth, she remained a central part of the church. Having a conversation with her after the service bordered on impossible. There were always people - her friends, people who were once part of her youth group, or as years passed even the children of those former youth group members - coming up for a hug or a talk. And she was inspirational - a number of the people who went to that group are now themselves involved in the youth ministry, either in after-hours work or in one case as his full-time occupation. And I know that they will all cite Daphne as a role model, and point to that group that we had as being the perfect example of what they want to see develop among their youth.

Sadly I lost a lot of that connection with Daphne when I left home. When I came home on holiday, I'd see her at church, and I'd say Hello, and she'd hug me, and I'd get embarrassed. I'd say "Certainly I'll come around to visit," and then often wouldn't, because I didn't get around to it, or I had other things on, or sometimes I'd just forget, or whatever excuse I had. But it didn't matter, because I knew that I'd be able to catch up with her next time. And that's how years would pass without my ever revisiting that house, years in which our relationship was made up solely of brief interrupted conversations after a church service.

About 18 months ago, I was back in my home town for a week, and was sitting next to Daphne during the Sunday morning service. During the sermon, Daphne just keeled forward and stayed there, her head resting on the back of the seat in front. She wasn't moving, just still. I was shocked, thinking "my gosh, is she dead?" But her husband didn't seem surprised or bothered by it - he just sat there, rubbed her back, and after a few minutes when she recovered, he got her a glass of water - so I figured whatever was happening, it must have happened before. But it was still significant enough that, during the following week, she went in for tests. When I saw her the following Sunday, she had the results: she had cancer, and it was serious.

There's nothing like the prospect of losing someone to realise just how much you actually care about them. Now, every time I went back home, I always made a point of visiting and spending time with Daphne. We'd catch up, she'd reflect on her life, tell me stories, and offer suggestions about how I should be living my life. It was wonderful to spend time with her, to see the way her face would light up with excitement whenever I'd appear and say Hello. But always there was that moment when I'd have to ask how things were going, and a cloud would come over. She'd talk about the treatments she was going through, and she'd ask that I remember her and her family in my prayers. She was always optimistic, never lost her faith, always believed that she would be healed. But she also knew that, even if she never recovered, she'd lived a good life, would be going to a better place, and her influence would live on after her in those of us that she worked with.

I was back home for a few weeks over Christmas, but just after I arrived, I became horribly sick. Even after I recovered enough to leave the house, I stayed away from Daphne. I was still sick, and figured it's not wise to go spreading bugs to someone who is already unwell. So, other than a quick "Hello, Sorry I Couldn't See You, Goodbye" at church on the day I left, I never saw her. And I was disappointed by that, but no matter. I'll see her at Easter.

And then I got a phone call this morning from a good friend of mine, someone who was also in the youth group. If the out-of-the-blue early morning phone call wasn't enough of a clue that something was wrong, you could hear the sadness in his voice as he greeted me. "My gosh," I thought, "what's happened?" And then he said it. "Aunty Daphne died earlier today."

Daphne - I love you. I miss you. I thank you so much for everything you ever did for me, for always being someone to talk to, for just being there. Thank you for your encouragement, for your constant joy. I hope you knew how much you really did mean to all of us. You've gone too soon, but I'll see you again, and I look forward to that day. Until then, I'll always remember you.
To her family - I know how hard things must be for you all. Just know that my prayers, and those of the many many people who knew and loved her, are with you right now.
And to all those who knew her - You'll agree with me that it has been the richest blessing to have her in our lives.

Goodbye Aunty.

8648 minutes

2011-02-28T00:58:00.003+13:00

So here's the thing,

I first became aware of "the Facebook movie" when it was announced that screenwriter Aaron Sorkin had joined Facebook as part of research for the film. Most people reacted to this news with bemusement at the idea of a Facebook movie, but not me: Sorkin is a genuinely talented writer (at least when he's not using his writing to settle personal scores), and if he thought that the creation of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg was a story that's worth telling, there must be something there. I was more curious about the idea of Sorkin having a Facebook page - Sorkin rather famously went onto the internet and engaged with fans once before (it didn't end well), and even Sorkin's announcement about his Facebook account (which stated that Sorkin's long-dead grandmother has more internet savvy than he does) implies that the common suggestion that "Sorkin hates the internet" may not be that far from the truth. All this had me waiting for Sorkin's entry into the world of Facebook to explode.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) there were no notable disasters coming out of Sorkin's Facebook account, and when David Fincher became attached to the project as director, my interest really shot up. Fincher is one of the most vital filmmakers working today: Se7en and Fight Club are two of the highpoints for filmmaking in the 90s, and the phenomenal Zodiac marked a maturation in the director's style, as he became less focused on show-off stylisations and more focused on simple storytelling and characterisation. My excitement rose even further as we started to see glimpses of the film - especially the film's main trailer, which frankly moved from mere promotional material to standing as a compelling work of art in its own right. (There were a number of times when I would watch and rewatch that trailer five or six times in a row, in awe of how just perfectly constructed it is.)

And then I saw the film.

(Comments on The Social Network, along with this year's other nine Best Picture Oscar nominees - The King's Speech, Black Swan, True Grit, The Fighter, Inception, 127 Hours, Toy Story 3, The Kids Are All Right, and Winter's Bone - follow after the jump.)

With that level of anticipation, it would have been so easy to be disappointed by The Social Network - if anything, it would have been difficult for a film to live up to my expectations - but instead, I was astonished, invigorated. Sorkin and Fincher have taken one of the least cinematic ideas for a movie - the creation of a website - and turned it into one of the most alive pieces of cinema in the year. Just look at the early sequence where Mark Zuckerberg creates the Facemash website. All that happens is a guy hacks into a number of private Harvard websites, steals some photographs, and then makes a website. But as shot by Fincher and edited by Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall, counter-pointing sequences of debauchery from the final club with the initial events that would lead to the creation of a worldwide final club, with Zuckerberg's own words (apparently taken from his actual blog posting from that night) narrating events, and the score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross providing a propulsive tone, it's utterly thrilling.

The dialogue from Sorkin's pen is on par with some of his best work on The West Wing. This is a film about intelligent people, and Sorkin's delight in being able to write for them is clear. This is particularly true of Zuckerberg, who is presented as being so constantly focused on a multitude of issues that he's always five steps ahead in the conversation, at times taking a while to realise the conversation he's in isn't the one he thought he was in. What's particularly impressive is just how compelling Zuckerberg is as a character. There's been a lot of discussion about the level of truth in the film, and in particular in the portrayal of Zuckerberg, but, while I do have sympathy for the man (after all, public perception of him will for the rest of his life be shaped by Eisenberg's performance), issues of strict truth or accuracy are irrelevant, even in a film ostensibly based on a true story. Zuckerberg's recent appearance on SNL may have demonstrated just how far Eisenberg's performance of the character might be from reality, but I'd rather have Eisenberg's great performance as it exists than one that holds closer to the real Zuckerberg.

And the movie Zuckerberg is, as Erica points out in the brilliant first scene, an asshole. He's not the villain of the film (that role is pretty unambiguously given to Sean Parker, presented as the devil himself in a smarmy performance by Justin Timberlake), but he is cocky and arrogant, he lies, he hides information, and he's constantly determined to prove himself the smartest person in the room. Yet he remains sympathetic throughout. And I think that may be because of the duelling perspectives of screenwriter and director. Sorkin the internet-hater clearly seems to dislike Zuckerberg and the world that he has been instrumental in creating, but Fincher, who never met a technology he didn't immediately want to play with, seems to approach the character with a lot more sympathy and understanding. And that all leaves the film's view of the character rather ambiguous - in a good way. It's astonishing just how differently people view Zuckerberg following the film, almost as if the character has become a Rorschach test, with your perception of the man saying less about who he is and more about who you are.

There's very little gratuitous showing-of by Fincher as a filmmaker. The camera never travels through any coffee-mug handles. Instead, there's only one stylistically noticeable scene - the great moment where the Winklevoss twins row in the Henley regatta, and the scene is presented almost as a series of impressions. But other than that, it's just a skilfully constructed film. Right from the opening scene, where Zuckerberg is dumped by Erica Albright, we can see just how great the direction is. I've heard reports that the Sorkin script was too long for a two-hour film but, rather than cutting the script, Fincher just told his actors to speak faster. I don't know if that's true, but the opening scene certainly feels like it. And the shooting and editing of the film has that pace as well - apparently there are 114 separate shots in the scene, which give the otherwise standard talky-breakup scene remarkable urgency. It challenges the audience, tells them that they'll need to work to keep up with Zuckerberg, and then having put the audience in that mindset eases up a little bit to actually make the film accessible. (In some ways, it reminded me of Moulin Rouge!, which was also deliberately assaultive in the opening sequences to force the audience out of complacency.) But while the film does settle down in later scenes, it never becomes dull. Instead, there's a constant urgent motion, as well as a sense of inevitability, that pulls the film forward. This is heightened by Sorkin's decision to frame the story with scenes from depositions hearings in the two major lawsuits that arose out of the film's events. It gives the film an added tension, reminding us of the massive commercial and personal consequences of Zuckerberg's every choice.

(EDIT 4 March 2011: I just came across this excellent article that analyses exactly how Fincher's direction works, and just how skillfully-crafted the film is. And yet Fincher did not win the Best Directing Oscar. Stupid Academy.)

Everyone's talked about the performances in the film, and that's understandable. Jesse Eisenberg is nominated for Best Actor, and deservedly so. What's surprising is the lack of nominations for anyone else. Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Max Minghella, even Rooney Mara in the small but pivotal role of Erica Albright, all give compelling performances and manage to give a natural flow to Sorkin's dialogue. Of particular note is Armie Hammer, who created the Winklevoss twins thanks to some remarkable face-replacement work. Fincher has clearly stopped the excessive camera moves to show off his technical know-how, and instead moved to uses of cinema technology that are simultaneously more impressive and more subtle than anything he once tried. The face-replacement in this film is a flawless technological achievement that never once seems fake or unreal. But it doesn't work without skilled actors able to convince that these are two separate characters, and Armie Hammer (working closely with Josh Pence, who gave an acting job that was only ever seen on set) does great work. Not only is each character identifiable as their own person, we also get performances that feel real, that convince as actual people, and never feel constrained by the technological needs involved in the doubling. It's an impressive performance by Hammer, largely because it actually feels like acting, not a special effect.

The thing I was relieved by, given my concerns about Sorkin writing the film, was how little attention was actually paid to the internet in the film. There's really only one moment when Sorkin actually gives voice to his views about the online world: when Erica makes it clear how much Mark hurt her with what he wrote on his blog, commenting "You write your snide bullshit from a dark room because that's what the angry do nowadays." (I disagree - I will myself admit to being an angry person, but right now I'm writing this while sitting in my lounge with the lights on.) Other than that moment, sure, there are inevitably scenes where people huddle around the computer, but this isn't a film about websites or the internet. This is a film about class, about envy, about empty success, and about the tragedy of close friendships being destroyed by the lure of money. The business may happen to be Facebook, but this is a story about human emotions and people behaving the same way they always have. It's one of the most essential films of the year, and one of the most thrilling.

At the start of the Oscar race, The Social Network was the presumptive winner. But in the past few weeks, the tide has turned, relegating the Fincher film behind The King's Speech. Looking at the film, I was a bit dubious - a film about a stammering king and his speech therapist? A film where (as Mark Kermode has pointed out) the happy ending is the completion of a speech declaring that England will be at war for the next six years? Having seen the film, I'm not convinced it deserves the title of Best Picture, but it is a very good film, and much better than I was ever expecting.

Most people accept that the Best Actor Oscar will be going to Colin Firth, and that's absolutely understandable - it's an excellent performance, and his stammering king has been pitched perfectly. He never goes overboard with a th-th-th-thing; instead, it's almost more like a halting hesitation, where it's a struggle to even start to get the words out. But not only does Firth provide a subtle but convincing speech disability, he communicates the absolute terror that the disability inflicts, the paralysing fear that takes hold of the speaker, and how that heightens his difficulties. And you get a good sense of how this problem infects every aspect of his life - it's one thing for the stammer to affect him when he's addressing the nation, and another thing entirely when it hits him as he's playing with his daughters. But there's a lot else going on in the character - there's the reluctant monarch element, his inherent shyness, his anger at his brother for abandoning his responsibilities and running off with that American woman, his sharp intelligence, the growing awareness of the oncoming war, and the complicated relationship between the king and his speech therapist (Geoffrey Rush, who is good, but a little overly eccentric tending toward comedic in the role). And the great thing about Firth's performance is that he never gets bogged down in the stammer. Many actors will lose track of the totality of a character when they focus on a particular showy aspect of the performance, but there's never any doubt that Firth is portraying a fully-rounded individual.

I did like the way the film approaches the issue of stammering so seriously. Speech disabilities are something that, on the rare occasion that we do see them on-screen, is usually played for laughs, and so in some ways it was disorienting to see the issue played so seriously. The script addresses the problem with insight, exploring not just the consequences of the problem on George VI himself, but also the burdens created by changes in media, and how essential it was for Britain as a whole that he overcome the problem. And when the film reaches that final wartime declaration address, I was surprised to find that he wasn't cured of his stammer - it's still there, quite noticeably. It's just that he's now equipped to work through it. Which to me seemed like a more honest portrayal of what must have happened than one would normally expect in a movie portrayal.

The film is certainly solidly-made. Director Tom Hooper is a relative newcomer, although he has worked on several well-received projects previously. And he does a good, but unspectacular, job, although there is something of a sense that he may have just sat back, watched, and avoided getting in the way of his actors (which is easy to do with actors of this calibre). It looks good, it's well-shot, very good cinematography. The film is well-written: surprisingly well-written in fact, given that the screenwriter's previous highest-profile work in his 20-plus year career was the late-90s cartoon version of The King And I (the one where the schoolteacher falls in love with the king AND fights an evil wizard) as well as the TV movie Come On, Get Happy: The Partridge Family Story.

The problem with the film is that it is one of those films that seems to have been made in a calculated way to get Oscar attention. Every year, we get films like The Queen or Atonement or The Reader, where you can tell the movie exists, at least in part, because the producers want to stand on the stage of the Kodak Theatre, and they think this is the vehicle that will allow them to achieve that dream. Now I'm not saying these Oscar-bait films are necessarily bad (although The Reader was); indeed, sometimes they can be really good (I was surprised just how much I liked Atonement, for one). But you can see that the films aren't just being made because the producers believe in the story. In the case of The King's Speech, it's an inspirational true story, it's a film about a man overcoming his disability, it's about the British royalty, and it's about World War II - four aspects that, in and of themselves, the Academy has shown itself to be partial to. When combined into a single film, and presented with a nice "prestige film" sheen, it's the nearest thing to a sure-fire Oscar winner. And that's unfortunate.

Look, I'm not saying The King's Speech is a bad film; it's a very good film, and I can't think of a single negative thing about the film. I walked out of the film very happy, was glad to have seen it, and actually learnt a few things. Afterwards I looked at a friend's copy of a commemorative publication dating back to George VI's coronation, which (since I usually have no interest in royalty) I found fascinating solely because I had enjoyed the film so much. But best film of the year? Never. In five years time, I'm not going to be thinking about the film. When I'm watching the 2016 Oscars, and they have the Best Picture winners montage, I'll see The King's Speech listed and think "I had forgotten that film even existed; I think I remember liking it." And then I'm going to think "But The Social Network really should have won."

My five-year-old niece is learning ballet. And, by all accounts, she has some talent for dancing (allowing for the fact that she is only five) - at least, I know that she was moved up to the "proper" ballet class earlier than they normally do. And so, as a family, we are all very encouraging of her in her love of ballet and very proud of her. But watching Black Swan, I'm not sure that this is something to encourage. I don't think the ballet world is entirely healthy.

I've enjoyed Darren Aronofsky's films ever since seeing his first film π at the 1999 Film Festival. Requiem For A Dream is a striking movie that somehow manages to be beautiful even while exploring all the nightmarish degradations the characters undergo. I'm one of those who genuinely loves The Fountain - an incredible, moving, visually-stunning film that is one of the most gorgeous Blu-Ray discs I own. And even if I was a little disappointed by The Wrestler, feeling it was a film of great performances and striking direction let down by an unsurprising script, it's still a very good film. So I was always going to be excited about seeing Black Swan. And I like the fact that he made The Wrestler and Black Swan one after the other. The Wrestler is the story of a man who constantly abuses his body in the pursuit of one of the most base forms of entertainment; Black Swan is the story of a woman who does the same in the pursuit of great art. And the style of the two films are strongly influenced by their respective subject matters: The Wrestler has a seedy realism appropriate for a world where people beat each other to a bloody pulp, while Black Swan embraces the over-the-top melodrama, theatricality, and artifice that is present in ballet and opera.

(To be honest, I wrote the last couple of sentences thinking it was an original point, only to later realise that I had some months ago read Aronofsky himself make much the same point in an interview, where he also revealed that the two films had their origins in a single project about a love affair between a wrestler and a ballet dancer.)

Natalie Portman provides the centre of the film as Nina, the ballet dancer who is given the lead role in a production of Swan Lake after the company's previous lead ballerina (a scene-stealing Winona Ryder) is forced into retirement. The company's director has reservations about the choice - he thinks Nina will be ideal as the beautiful, pure White Swan, but worries that her frigid dancing and focus on technical perfection will limit her ability to portray the Black Swan, a role that requires her to be wild, free, seductive. So Nina tries to perfect her dancing while exploring her dark side and her sexual being, all the while under the eye of her controlling mother, and aware that waiting in the wings is Mila Kunis, an ideal choice for the Black Swan role, looking for the opportunity to steal the part. And then there's this weird rash she's developing on her back that just will not go away. All of which starts to disrupt her mental stability.

If you're after a nice film about ballet, do not see this film - watch The Red Shoes, which was recently given a beautiful restoration and which deals with some similar ideas in a more real-world setting. On the other hand, if you're interested in a campy exploitation film where a beautiful but emotionally-fragile woman is slowly driven insane by brutal physical demands, clashing egos, fierce rivalries and jealousies, a lecherous director, an overbearing mother, and the occasionally indulgence in masturbation and lesbian sex, all the while undergoing a bizarre physical transformation, then this is a film that you want to see. It turns out that's a film that I really want to see, because I pretty much loved every over-the-top minute of it. It's utterly insane, but in a way that is appropriate for a melodramatic artform where the most famous piece is one where a woman is turned into a swan and commits suicide after a prince marries her doppelganger. By the film's ending, which I won't spoil except to say that it completely breaks with any form of reality, I was so completely caught up in the emotional catharsis involved that the absurdity of what plays out on screen almost seems irrelevant. It's not a film for everyone - and if you don't love the film, you're going to haaaaate the film - and I'm surprised that such a divisive film would be so well-received that it managed to be nominated, but I'm glad it was.

Aronofsky is a skilled and deliberate filmmaker, and his shooting style with the film is quite fascinating to watch. There has been a trend in modern filmmaking toward greater use of the close-up, and frankly it's not a filming approach I particularly like (it tends to result in a shot/counter-shot film structure rather than one where actors actually act against each other). But here, Aronofsky almost seems to have no other tools in his basket other than the close-up. While he may step back in many of the dance sequences, allowing us as an audience to enjoy the actual dancing motions, outside of those moments he almost seems to be thinking "Can I use a close-up to express what I want," and only goes to a mid-shot or long-shot if he has to. And it's not just a close-up, but an uncomfortably-close-up. He seems to delight in pressing in to Natalie Portman's face just that little bit more than most directors would, creating an effect that is weirdly unsettling, as though we're so close we're inside her fractured psyche, where every slightest motion declares her current mental state to the audience. When we're not staring at her face, we're following her, almost breathing down her neck as she walks through backstage, like an unseen stalker. The film therefore forces the audience into an awkward position. We're so uncomfortably and intrusively close to her, even while she's in public, that it feels inappropriate, and once we go into her private world, it just seems wrong. (There's a moment where Natalie Portman thinks she's alone, only to discover after a minute that she's not, and the horror of that realisation is writ large on her face. The fact that the audience was initially watching her from the position of the other person - even if the shot technically isn't a POV shot - forcefully reminds us that we are in a position of watching her when she does not want to be seen. Which is unsettling and uncomfortable.)

Which brings me to Natalie Portman's performance. General wisdom has Portman winning Best Actress come Oscar night, and there's a good reason for this. Portman is set a real acting challenge for this film: she's playing a person who is going insane, which is exactly the type of role that prompts actors to go completely over-the-top in their performances. But Aronofsky's shooting style doesn't allow her to go over-the-top - he's so close in to her face that any overacting, or even just standard-level acting, would be intrusive on the big screen, even in a melodrama like this. So Natalie Portman almost needs to underact the pressures, the stresses, the fears and panic that lead to her going insane, relying on twitches, small changes in expression, glances, breathing, to communicate her character's deteriorating mental state. And it works, it utterly convinces. It's not my favourite acting performance of the year - I still love Jennifer Lawrence and the way she communicates her character's emotional state behind a stony expression of determination - but it is a genuinely good performance in a challenging role.

Also noteworthy is the Clint Mansell's score. Mansell, one of the more original and varied composers working today, drew strongly from Tchaikovsky's music (which obviously already has a strong presence in the film), breaking the music down then reconstructing it so that, while it is in fact an original work, it is still so reminiscent of the Tchaikovsky in the instrumentation, the phrases, the note patterns, that it's difficult to recognise where Tchaikovsky ends and Mansell begins. It cannot have been an easy task to compose music that can seamlessly exist with one of the most famous compositions by one of the greatest composers that ever lived, and the fact that Mansell achieved it is to his credit.

One of the most exciting things about cinema at the moment has been the resurgence of and acclaim given to the Coen Brothers. During the 80s and 90s, Joel and Ethan Coen had a perfect run of nine great films, from Blood Simple in 1984 to The Man Who Wasn't There in 2001. These were brilliant films, displaying a slightly twisted, arch sensibility. Sometimes the films were actual comedy, sometimes drama, but they always displayed a strong humorous line to them, as well as a passion for subverting their ostensible genre. But then something went wrong. They tried their hand at romantic comedy (as well as their first and only effort at reworking an existing script), and we got Intolerable Cruelty, the blandest work the Coens ever did. Then they tried a remake of the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers. The premise (incompetent criminals try to kill an old lady, kill themselves instead) should be a perfect match for their black-comedic sensibilities, but instead we get a tonally-inconsistent film, jumping from Tom Hanks' polite southern gentleman to Marlon Wayans' foul-mouthed obscenities to JK Simmons' flatulence, that was just agonising to sit through. It seems that after that disaster, they must have sat down and reconsidered where they were going as filmmakers, because it was three years before their next film. That film, the remarkable No Country for Old Men, won them four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Director, and since then every year they've given us some excellent cinema. Burn After Reading has certainly divided audiences, but I love the cynical comedic tone it brings to the Washington espionage thriller genre; and I've already discussed my feelings about A Serious Man, back when that film was nominated last year.

And now we get their new film, True Grit, nominated for ten Oscars. The film tells the story of a 14-year-old girl who hires a run-down, one-eyed, drunk old US Marshall to hunt down the man who murdered her father. I confess I've never seen the earlier 1969 film of this story, which I'd only ever heard of in the context of being the film that won John Wayne his Oscar. But then, I'm not much of a western fan, and never really cared to dig too deep into the genre. So I wasn't too bothered by the idea of the Coens doing a remake of this film: I was more bothered by the idea of them doing a remake full-stop, since their only previous remake was such a disaster. Still, it was an interesting idea - so many of their films, be it O Brother Where Art Thou or No Country, had a distinctly western tone in a non-western context, and I was curious about how the Coens would approach making a genuine entry into the genre.

And they did well. The brothers reportedly went back to Charles Portis' original book, rather than the earlier film, and drew massive amounts of material from the book - supposedly 85 percent of the dialogue is taken straight from Portis. If so, the Coens found a source material that is perfectly suited to their own long-established sensibilities. Yet, for the first time in their career, the brothers give us a movie that operates as a straight effort operating purely within its genre. There's none of the subversion, irony, or commentary on the genre itself that we might expect from the Coens. Nor is it the revisionist or deconstructed view of the western that we've seen so much of of late. It's just a good story, approached with a serious and honest intent, and told extremely well within a classic style. It's a straight story of revenge, with a slight acknowledgement of the personal impact of violence, but none of the posturing on the issue that we see in most modern westerns. Now, all this is making it sound like a terribly serious film, and it is, but that's not to say that it's not funny - I doubt the Coens could ever make a film that doesn't feature some laugh-out-loud moments, and there's one scene in the film (around a public hanging) that manages to simultaneously be hilarious, horrifying, and thought-provoking in exactly the way we expect a Coen Brothers film to be - but the natural laughs that arise in the course of the film never take away from the film's serious determination to function as a true entry in the classic western genre.

Many have commented on the fact that Hailee Steinfeld's nomination for Best Supporting Actress is frankly absurd. The film is her character's story - it opens with Mattie, it closes with her, Mattie narrates the film, and I don't think there's a single scene in the film that doesn't feature her. If anything, she is the lead character in the film, and Jeff Bridges (with a Best Actor nomination) is a supporting character. The Supporting Actress nomination reflects only the film studio's desire to push her into a category where she stands more of a chance of winning. What isn't absurd is the idea of her being nominated for this performance. Mattie Ross is exactly the type of character you almost don't want in a film - a young girl, forceful, determined, fast-thinking, convinced of her own righteousness, able to bend situations to her advantage, someone innocent enough to seem a child, yet someone who is undeniably a young woman, and someone who can convincingly seem willing and determined to kill. It must have been a nightmare to cast, especially since the role is so central that, without the perfect Mattie Ross, the film just fails instantly. One of the first scenes in the film has Mattie negotiating with a stable owner for a payment and the purchase of various horses. And as the girl runs rings around the stable owner, wearing him down until she gets exactly what she wants, it's a relief, because it's clear that Hailee is up to the challenge. Her performance seems completely natural, there's never any sense that she's acting here. But nor does she come across as some precocious kid, annoyingly old for her years. She just is Mattie Ross, exactly as Mattie Ross would have had to have been in those circumstances, and it's great to watch.

The one person taking attention from Steinfeld is Jeff Bridges, playing the role John Wayne played: the eyepatch-wearing Marshall Rooster Cogburn. This is only the second time Bridges has worked with the Coens - the first time gave us Jeff "the Dude" Lebowski, probably the role he is best known for, and if there's any role that will ever come close to topping the Dude as his most iconic character, then Rooster Cogburn would be it. Just a month earlier, I'd seen Jeff Bridges essentially playing Jeff Bridges on Tron: Legacy, and the stark disparity between Tron's Floyd and True Grit's Rooster is striking. There's no sign of the laid-back dude that Bridges seems to be in real life: Rooster is a harsh man who is utterly remorseless over the lives he's taken. In one scene, he even pulls a gun on Matt Damon, and it's chilling to realise that you're actually convinced that the cocking of the gun was no idle threat. Meanwhile, the character's drinking and incomprehensible mumbling seem less like a western cliché, and more like a pivotal detail that says a lot about the character and his place in the story - that this was once a man who was great, who was legendary, but who is now rendered pathetic by the inevitable passage of time and his reluctance to accept it. At the same time there's a genuine bond that develops between Rooster and this girl, and I'm aware as I write this just how standard this all sounds - tough guy comes to care about young girl - but it doesn't play like that. Bridges and Steinfeld so inhabit the roles that we're not watching two movie characters working through a cliché, but two people developing a natural bond. (This of course makes his eventual fate, and the breaking of that bond, especially tragic.)

Yet the most surprising thing about the film is how much Matt Damon, playing the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf, seems to have been overlooked. Now, we all hopefully know by now that Damon is a much finer actor than his pretty-boy status would suggest. But LaBoeuf is a curious, difficult character that must have presented a definite challenge for Damon. Given that the man they're hunting for is absent for much of the film, LaBoeuf essentially fills the role of the antagonist until Chaney turns up. Yet LaBoeuf is also the comic relief character. He needs to be a skilled Texas Ranger, yet not so skilled that he stops being something of a blundering idiot. He has to be vain, self-interested, and cocky. And he has to be incredibly inappropriate to the 14-year-old girl at the centre of the film (when we first meet LaBoeuf, he's talks about trying to kiss Mattie while she's sleeping; later on he bends her over his knee for a very harsh spanking). And despite all that, he also has to be one of the film's heroes, someone that we genuinely like, so that we want to cheer when Mattie eventually accepts LaBoeuf as someone who can help her. Damon manages to navigate the myriad of pitfalls in the character, and becomes someone I really did enjoy watching. Around about the point where Cogburn and LaBoeuf have a shooting contest against each other, I realised I would be happy if the rest of the film were just the trio bickering. It's a perfectly-pitched, very wry performance from Damon, one that is essential to the film, and one that has been unfairly overlooked.

One last note: please, can someone just give Roger Deakins an Oscar. Deakins is one of the best cinematographers in the business, and it's shameful that (despite eight previous nominations) he's never won an Oscar. His work on True Grit has again been nominated, and I'm worried that (the also very well-shot) Black Swan may take the award. But True Grit is another fine piece of work from the man. It's beautifully shot, with no finer display of his skill than the courtroom scene. Watch that scene carefully, notice the way the lighting almost has weight, how much character it lends to the film. It's truly striking award-worthy cinematography that is utterly deserving of recognition.

Last year, I commented that, with the introduction of the ten nominees, we could use the Best Director nominees to determine which of the movies were the five "real" nominees, and which were the "also-rans." That was not strictly true - historically, there seems to usually be one Best Director film that doesn't get a Best Picture nod (and vice versa). This year, I suspect that film would have been David O Russell's The Fighter. Russell has been basically been missing ever since his some-love-it-some-hate-it-no-one-understands-it I ♥ Huckabees, which is a shame since he is a talented director. So it's nice to see him back working, and interesting to see him bring his indie-film sensibility to a film that, in other hands, might just have been a generic underdog boxing movie, but that in his hands turns into a more interesting family drama with some boxing. While it definitely has its flaws, and Russell's inclusion as a Director nominee at the expense of someone else does bother, it's still a very fine film.

The film is based on the true story of two half-brothers, Micky Ward and Dicky Eklund. Dicky is a local hero, having once gone the distance in a boxing match with Sugar Ray Leonard, but 15 years later he's a crack addict, being followed around by a film crew making a documentary (which he believes is about his career comeback). His younger brother, Micky, grew up idolising Dicky, and is now managed by his family as a boxer himself. But over the course of the film, he starts to wonder whether he really can rely on his family and his brother to manage his best interests as his career progresses.

As the central character, Micky, Mark Wahlberg is as good as he's been. He can a very variable actor at times, but with the right role he can be really solid. Here the role calls for someone small, subdued, someone who has always been overshadowed by his big brother. It's not a showy role, and very few people will walk out of the film thinking "Wow, that Mark Wahlberg really can act," but the film would not work without that performance.

The reason why no-one will remember Mark Wahlberg is because Dicky is played by Christian Bale, and he has, as Christian Bale is wont to do, undergone a drastic weight-loss to portray the crack-addicted character. (He's not quite at Machinist levels, but nor is he far off.) Now I fully understand why Bale has received such notice for this role. It's not just the weight-change (although that is the type of thing that many people seem to feel is the mark of great acting); he is a genuinely enjoyable character. We've seen so much of the glowering, sullen, angry, withdrawn Christian Bale (in his roles in Batman, Terminator, The Prestige, and so on) that it's nice to see him playing someone people like. As Dicky walks down the street, people seem genuinely happy to see him; not just because of his reputation as a local hero, but because they genuinely like the character. The problem is, so do the filmmakers. Dicky is a big, showy performance by Bale, of the kind that the Academy likes, but at the same time it somehow never feels real. For a start, because Bale is so funny and charismatic, there's surprisingly little sense that he is actually a serious drug addict. Sure, we see him smoke some crack, sure, he's lost weight, but mostly the film seems to be about the wacky misadventures of Dicky. Dicky walks out of the crack house and can't find his car, so he decides to run to the boxing gym. Dicky pretends to be a cop to steal cars from guys trying to pick up a prostitute. Dicky leaps from a second-story window into a bin to avoid his mother. Oh, Dicky, what scrapes will you get yourself into next? It's so bad that, when the film crew's documentary airs, and it's revealed to be about the negative effect of crack in America, it's almost surprising because we haven't really seen the negative side of Dicky's addiction. The other problem is, these big performances can work in small doses, but because the film is about the relationship of these two brothers, we spend a lot more time with Dicky than we should, and that imbalances the film. He's the first person we see in the film, he has an entire subplot about the documentary film crew, and even when he's not on screen the character are always talking about him. He almost becomes the main character of the film, to the point where the film's climactic fight seems less about whether or not Micky will triumph than Dicky's place at the fight. Indeed, there's a point in the film where, for twenty or so minutes, Dicky is more or less taken out of the picture, and it actually feels like a different movie. Now, I don't want to completely disparage the performance - there are some great moments, like the scene where Dicky hears his mother's commentary on one of Micky's fights over the telephone - but on the whole, this is an overly big performance that does imbalance the entire film.

And the issue is, even without Dicky, the film's tone never feels settled. At times it feels like Russell is playing the film for laughs, and it seems weird. That's never clearer than in any scene with Micky's sisters. Now for a start, it doesn't help that the sisters are frankly irrelevant to the film, to the point where they could literally be removed without anyone noticing. And whenever we see the sisters, we see all the sisters - Russell is very careful to show them all in a group. There's never a sense that these are individual people; they're just a single group, and on the rare occasions when one of the sisters does speak, she's not speaking for herself but as the representative of the group. And it's very clear, just by looking at the family as a whole, that they've deliberately cast the sisters to look like they share the same mother, but no-one has a father in common. Add to that the weird, over-the-top, late-80s, early-90s style all the sisters have that, when contrasted with almost every other character in the film, just does not look real. In fact, the sisters look so cartoonish and unreal that (and I'm serious about this) every single time they appeared on screen, my audience laughed out loud. In one particularly laughable moment, the sisters get so angry that, as a group, they decide to drive over to Amy Adams' house to fight her. Cut to a shot of all seven sisters trying to squeeze into a little tiny car as though it were a clown car. Now, I am positive that Russell must have been intending that scene to be funny, if only because he's a good director, and the scene was so comical that I have difficulty believing he could not have recognised how silly it was. But in a film that is a family drama, to treat a significant portion of the family as basically a comic device that cannot be taken seriously, while still requiring us to believe those family relationships that are central to the movie, really does ruin the film's tone.

And then we have Amy Adams, as the girlfriend Micky starts seeing at the start of the film. (Have you ever noticed how, whenever there's a true life movie, the main character always starts seeing someone at the start of the film, and that relationship proves to be the most significant the person's life, and they're always revealed to still be together in the "where are they now" end of the film?) Here, Adams plays someone who is smart but unmotivated - she dropped out of college because her studies got in the way of her partying, and now she's resigned to working behind a bar for the foreseeable future. Yet she displays remarkable drive in getting Micky to change his lifestyle and look to further his own, rather than his family's, interests. Given the fact that her character is so closely tied to Micky, it's understandable that she would give a much more low-key performance, better aligned to Mark Wahlberg's acting than Christian Bale's. And this means that she is, herself, unjustly overshadowed, in her case by Melissa Leo, playing Micky and Dicky's mother. Melissa Leo continues to be an underrated actress, and here convinces as someone trying to appear to fit in the boxing world as a manager. She has this whole power-look and style of behaviour that is jarring in the real world but blends in ring-side. It's not a subtle performance by Leo, but it's not quite as showy as Bale, and fits absolutely for the character and her world.

One thing I did love about the film (once you ignore the irrelevant sisters) was this sense of an unusual family dysfunction communicated by the film, particularly on the part of the family matriarch. There's the odd scene of histrionics, sure, but for the most part the dysfunction is nicely understated. We're used to seeing the dysfunctional family as a world of abuse, where mothers try to drop TVs on their children. That's not this family. There's clear genuine family love, and the mother really seem to want everyone to succeed. But at the same time, she has a clear favouring of one brother over the other - she's more interested in Dicky's comeback (that is never going to happen) than in actually helping Micky with his career, even if she doesn't realise it. And that actually profoundly damages Micky, even though his mother doesn't see it or understand it.

So that's The Fighter. A very good, entertaining film, and hopefully the start of a rejuvenated career for a talented filmmaker. But also a problematic film that has, in my opinion, been overrated by the Academy.

Which brings me to Inception. Part of me wonders whether there's even any point in writing about Inception: if you've read this far through this post, you're clearly interested in movies, in which case you've probably already seen Inception, because it was the film to see in 2010. So you know all about dreams, levels, limbo, an idea is the most resilient parasite, whose subconscious are we going into now. You've watched a heist film, a tragic love story, a comedy, a drama, an action movie, and a thriller. You've seen tops being spun, vans falling off bridges, and buildings collapse. You've been in an elevator, a hotel, a hospital, a plane, a college, and a café in Paris. You know Cobb, Ariadne, Fischer, Arthur, Saito, Eames, and Mal. Now, it's not a perfect film - I do think it is guilty of thinking it's smarter than it is - but it is an original, surprising film that challenges its audience to actually pay attention, and that does display much more intelligence than almost any other summer blockbuster in recent memory. And it's heart-warning to realise that, for a moment, the movie-going public decided that it would not be satisfied with a dumbed-down Hollywood film playing to the lowest common denominator (yes, I am thinking about Michael Bay, why do you ask?). If only it could always be like that.

The big news story of the Oscars nominations was the fact that Christopher Nolan failed to receive the expected nod for Best Director (losing it to the aforementioned David O Russell). I've enjoyed Nolan's directing ever since Memento, and have never missed a chance to see one of his films on the big screen. Nolan had famously developed the script for Inception a decade ago, and had it sitting in a drawer waiting until the billion dollar grosses for The Dark Knight gave him the clout to make any film he wanted. Now, most times, when you get a director who made his name making small independent movies, when they get a chance to make the big-budget movie they seem to just abandon any intelligence or creativity, so it's exciting to see the way Nolan's career has developed to a point where he is making huge-budget movies while still trying to offer us something new and original, something we haven't seen before. He approaches his big Hollywood films with the same care that he gave to his smaller early films, and that's refreshing.

The mark of how good Nolan's directing really is can be found in the way it handles exposition. Exposition can kill films - remember the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Army intelligence agents come to talk to Indy about the mission, and how that one five-minute scene stops the film dead. Then realise that Inception has about an hour's worth of exposition - they need to set up the world, set up the conflicts, establish the rules that govern the dream world, introduce us to a whole lot of new terms we've never heard before, and establish the different roles that the characters have in the heist. That's all pure exposition required to set up the actual story, which is the inception job. And then realise that, despite the fact that the first half of the film is just a sequence of scenes where people talk to each other to explain what's going on, it's never boring, even on repeat viewings. And a huge amount of credit for that goes to Nolan, both as a screenwriter for the way he wrote these scenes, and as a director for shooting them in a way that we're barely aware that we're watching exposition at all.

The other thing I want to note is Nolan's development as an action director. His early films had a few action scenes, but it wasn't until Batman Begins that his difficulty directing action was revealed. He simply struggled communicating the space and geography of any action scenes, so we never really knew where anyone was in relation to anyone else. Sometimes that was deliberate (see the scene with the guys on the docks, panicked as Batman took them out one-by-one), but by the time of the final confrontation between hero and villain it was clear that action was one of Nolan's failings as a director. So it's exciting to see that Nolan has developed in this area. The action remains clear and coherent, we know who's where, who's who, and what's happening at pretty much every moment. Which is a relief, because this film is enough of a challenge to follow without throwing incoherent action into the mix.

But just as egregious an omission as the failure to recognise Nolan was is the failure to give a nomination to Lee Smith for Best Film Editing. Just look at the last hour of the film. At this point, the story is taking place on four different levels, each with their own characters undertaking their own tasks, and each with their own timeframe. And there's a delicate balance in the sequence - the film needs to hold its focus on Di Caprio, since that's the plot, but we can't be allowed to forget where we are in the other levels. At times Smith relies on an insert of a single shot to inform the audience about another level, and the fact that we as an attentive audience never lose track of the story, never get confused by which level we're in now, shows how carefully and skilfully constructed the editing of the film was. This was film editing that should have won the Oscar, and the fact that it didn't even get nominated was one of the shocks in the nominee list.

One last comment I do want to make about Inception: a couple of weeks ago, I was looking through YouTube and I came across this video of the famous scene in Royal Wedding where Fred Astaire dances on the walls and the ceiling of the room that he's in. It's one of the most famous of all movie dance sequences, and deservedly so. But one of the things I love about the sequence is the fact that you can see the way he shifts his feet to steady himself and make the transition from floor to wall to ceiling as the room around him rotates. It's a remarkable sequence, largely because it looks and feels real. And in an age of CGI trickery, it's exciting that Christopher Nolan took a deliberate choice to avoid using CGI unless absolutely necessary. So in, for example, the shifting-gravity hallway fight, they did exactly the same thing that Astaire did - they built a hallway, and they rotated it. And it works - you can see the actors adjusting their feet and holding the walls as the room moves around them. And the sequence convinces because you can see that the room clearly operates at a fundamental level on the same gravitational pull that we're all used to. You don't need a group of guys in a darkened room somewhere trying to decide which way is up from second to second and then trying to imagine how the human body would respond to that movement. You just need to put the actors in that situation and see how they respond naturally. The end result is a scene that is remarkable, and one of the best scenes of the year.

As a director, there are several ways you can get the clout to make any film you choose. One is to earn Warner Brothers a billion dollars. Another is to win an Academy Award, as Danny Boyle did two years ago for Slumdog Millionaire. Suddenly everyone wants to help make the next Danny Boyle film, even if its a project that would otherwise never ever be made. Which is how we get 127 Hours, based on the true story of Aron Ralston, who (in a story that was given much media coverage at the time) got his hand trapped under a falling rock until, after a number of days, he summoned the courage to remove his own arm. I repeat, the entire reason for this film's existence is because the happy joyful life-affirming ending is a man cutting off his own arm. With a cheap pocket-knife.

Now, firstly, I know it's silly and pedantic, but there's one thing that really annoyed me about the film: what exactly are the titular 127 hours? Going into the film I understood that that was the amount of time Aron Ralston spent with his arm trapped - so the first hour starts with him getting trapped and when we come to hour 127 he cuts his arm off. And the film seems to support that interpretation - it delays showing the title on-screen until immediately after he gets trapped, almost as if saying "this is how long he'll be here for." So, when he immediately looks at his watch and sees that it's around 3pm on Saturday, I naturally do some quick calculations. 127 hours is 5 days, 7 hours, so he'll get free on Thursday at 10pm. So now I've got a way of measuring how far through this ordeal he is, as well as measuring how long it will be before I need to prepare for the scene. They very helpfully provide on-screen cards helping us keep track of the days - Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, ... - unless I missed it (and I don't think I did, since I had a friend look for it when he saw the film), there was no Thursday card. So did he cut his arm off on Wednesday or Thursday? Another point - 10pm is night-time - it's two hours before midnight. But it was not night when he cut off his arm - there was bright sunlight. So let's assume that it was late Thursday morning - I give it that time because after the arm removal, he still manages to do a lot in daylight (he manages to rappel down a cliff, and walk eight miles until he finds someone to help him, and then they manage to get a chopper in to help him, and it's still day). So perhaps the 127 hours is measured until he's actually rescued? No, that doesn't work either , since it was still daylight when the helicopter arrived, so he was rescued well before 10pm. The only way I can make a 127 hour timeframe for this story is by counting from the start of his trip - if we say his trip starts at 9am on Saturday, then 127 hours later would take us to 4pm on Thursday, which would be right for an afternoon rescue by chopper. Except that that means that the 127 hours includes all the time he spends with the two girl trampers, which I guess means not all of the 127 hours were a horrible ordeal. But in that case, delaying the appearance of the 127 Hours film title until he gets trapped is fundamentally misleading, because at that point he's already five or six hours into those 127 hours. But as far as I can see, that's the only possible way I can get that time period into the story.

(EDIT: After writing the above passage, I leafed through a copy of Aron Ralston's book. According to that, he says the rock fell on his arm at 2.41pm on Saturday, 26 April, and he cut himself free at 11.32am on Thursday, 1 May. I make that as being 116 hours, 51 minutes. I also found a passage where, as he is wheeled into the hospital, he writes "my streak of 127 hours of uninterrupted experience ends at three forty-five p.m., Thursday, May 1, 2003." (p326 of the movie tie-in edition) Which does mean he is counting from the start of the trek, and which means the late appearance of the film title on-screen is entirely misleading. I really do think that they should have either have had the title appear onscreen as he started his day or, if they were determined to have the title appear when he was trapped, they should have called the film either 117 Hours or 121 Hours.)

But I do want to say, none of my pedantry about the time involved in this ordeal is in any way intended to detract from the core of the story, which is a phenomenal story of survival. Regardless of any quibbles over ten hours here or ten hours there, whether it was 117 hours or 127 hours, this is about a guy who spent five days trapped under a rock, and who had such determination and will to live that he cut off his own arm with a cheap pocket knife and without any form of painkillers. And that is incredible.

Central to the film is James Franco. He's the one who spends most of the film stuck there, in a narrow ravine, all alone. If he doesn't work, then the film doesn't work. I've admired Franco as an actor, ever since seeing him in the TV show Freaks and Geeks. (In fact, the very first episode of that show that I saw, "Tests and Breasts," had a couple of great scenes where he delivered a monologue about being put at a young age in Track 3 with all the dumb kids - it's still one of the most memorable moments in that much-loved show.) After that show, he seemed like the most likely star to come out of that show - justified comparisons to James Dean (who he later played) abounded. Yet his career seemed to go nowhere - he was noteworthy as Peter's best friend (and son of the Green Goblin) in the Spiderman films, but every time he took on a lead role, the films failed. But in the last few years, as the cast from F&G have mostly had their careers take off, Franco has also become a recognisable name. But what I love about the guy is that he seems to have no ego. He doesn't take on a project because it will help his career - instead, he seems to choose his projects on a whim. So he'll take on several stints on daytime soap General Hospital, then he'll take an art piece based on a dramatic interpretation of Three's Company to Sundance, then he'll decide to host the Oscars, then he'll make an uncredited unpromoted appearance in The Green Hornet, and he'll arrange for a college to offer a paper on James Franco to which he, as the subject of the paper, will contribute. And in between all that, he'll work on what is almost a one-man film in which he basically spends the entire film unable to move. And he approaches all of these projects with absolute conviction and dedication. That he has managed to become a recognisable celebrity figure, almost despite his best efforts to work against it, shows how strong his charisma and his talent are. The character of Aron Ralston is overconfident, cocky even, at the start of the movie, but Franco plays him with such joy and excitement at life that he's impossible to dislike. For the rest of the film, he manages to skilfully portray the breaking of that person, cycling through every emotion imaginable, yet doing so with subtlety and honesty. (Apparently this was achieved by filming many of these scenes in an uninterrupted ten-minute period with Franco improvising his dialogue.) By the time we reach the climax of the film, Franco convincingly portrays that weird mix of desperation, resignation, and determination that would cause someone to deliberately break their armbone and then use a pocket-knife to slowly saw through his own flesh, veins, and tendons. It's a stunning performance that reminds us of the genuine talent that has allowed him to advance his career to this position.

If I have a problem with the film, it's with Danny Boyle's direction. Now, I enjoy Danny Boyle as a filmmaker. But here he's almost worried about the cinematic qualities of this film, and whether watching a person trapped by a rock for 90 minutes will actually be entertaining for audiences. So he goes overboard with every cinematic trick he can - much of the early film is hyperkinetic, filled with split-screens and pounding music, which seems mostly to be about telling the audience "this will be exciting". Once the film slows, we get flashbacks with an almost dream-like tone, we get actual dreams, we get hallucinations, we get everything possible thrown in to detract from the true challenge of making this film. And at times it almost seems intrusive - there's one shot where the camera is inside the water container's sipper as he takes a drink of water that just irritated me. (It was like a shot David Fincher would have filmed ten years ago.) Now, to be fair, the shot does get a payoff later, when we get the same shot repeated when he's drinking his urine, but I'm not sure the revulsion of the audience from that moment (which could just as easily be achieved by more standard shooting methods) was worth the overly-stylised shot selection. Now, once we get into the scene where Aron cuts off his arm, Boyle's shooting style is perfect. He, along with Franco's performance, manages to communicate the horror and pain involved in doing something like that, while not going overboard - this is not a Saw film, that glories in the gore, but nor does it shy away from the experience. As someone who was not looking forward to this film, largely because of the reports of people fainting in the film (along with my own squeamishness in even the mild body-horror scenes of Black Swan), I was surprised at how quickly and tastefully the cutting scenes were handled. If anything, it's the sound design of the scene, rather than what we see, that makes it difficult to watch. In particular, there's a strange, almost screaming, sound effect that they pull out at one point that, more than anything on screen, communicates the mental agony of doing what he does. The scene is over in a few minutes, and is perfectly watchable, but is still effective in allowing the audience a glimpse into understanding the horror of the experience. It's an impressive feat.

My other problem with the film is that it is not subtle in ensuring the audience is very clear in understanding what the main idea of the film is. It's a great idea - a man, overconfident in his own abilities and eschewing other people in favour of himself, discovers his own limitations and his need for other people. But the film just keep repeating how this is a guy who craves solitude - we see him decide not to answer his mother's call, we see him literally running away from the female trampers as they say Goodbye, we hear them comment that they "didn't figure in his day at all." When he gets trapped, we hear him repeat over and over again his regrets at not answering that phone call, imagining himself going to the party that he seemed slightly dismissive of, remembering his ex-girlfriend, regretting that he'll never be at his sister's wedding. And that's all very well, and I'm sure this is all an accurate reflection of what he was thinking about. But after the dozenth variation on "I wish I had talked to you more, I wish I had not gone out without telling anyone where I was, I wish I hadn't so overconfident in my abilities" - at times stated almost as baldly as that - it starts to get wearying. It's great when films have something to say, and it's even okay to not be subtle about that theme (after all, no-one would ever accuse Mad Men of being unclear what each episode is saying), but when you have as limited action or opportunity for variation as this film, stating and restating your message gets tiring. (And believe me, I'm not unaware of the irony in my criticising others for saying the same thing over and over again.)

But my issues with the film aside, it is still an excellent film. This is a movie that took a story where the main character stands, alone, in the same spot for about five days, a story where everyone knows how it ends, and managed to make the movie cinematic, intense, and genuinely suspenseful. Did the film go overboard in trying to do so? Sure. But when you consider what Danny Boyle had to work with, and the fact that he managed to stay true to the actual events, with little or no embellishment, and still gave us a film this good, this involving? It's possibly the most impressive piece of filmmaking this year.

I'm someone who loves animation, especially the early Disney films. And one of the things that is great about those films is that they were not made for kids. They were made for the adults who were making the movies; they were films that the animators would want to see. The fact that the films were child-friendly was important, but they were not and are not "kid's films." There is clear care taken in the development of the character, in the stories, in the dialogue, in the artistry. And there are genuinely scary or disturbing moments in Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, or Fantasia; moments that would never have been allowed in something viewed solely as kid's entertainment. Much of that approach to making an animated movie applies also to the work of Pixar. They never approach their films with a dismissive attitude or a sense that any less care should be taken just because kids will watch anything. As I discussed last year, a film like Up has a lot of extremely mature ideas underpinning it that you would never see in a film intended to be a kid's film. And it's the same with Toy Story 3.

There's one decision that was made in the film's production that made this film as good as it is, and that was the decision to recognise the passage of time. It's been 15 years since the first Toy Story film, and 11 since the second. Now, being animation, they could easily have made a story that takes place a few months after the last film, and no-one would have thought anything of it. But instead, they made a film that takes place a decade later. And in so doing, they took one of the best sequences in Toy Story 2 (the "When Somebody Loved Me" scene, where we get Jessie's back story, from treasured plaything all the way to rejected and forgotten object) and expanded on the idea, playing that inevitable moment where the child grows too old for his toys for maximum impact, because now we're watching it with characters we've known and loved for years.

And that's the key element that makes it clear what this film is about. The closing credits for every Pixar film always include a list of all the Pixar babies born during the production of the film. (Even recognising how many people work on these films, I'm always surprised by just how many babies are listed each year - when do the Pixar staff find time to come into work?) But that list, which often seems like a slightly excessive piece of sentiment, is actually significant with a film like Toy Story 3. Because this is ultimately a film about parenthood. Those people who worked on the first Toy Story film 15 years ago, drawing on the experience of watching their kids play with toys? Well, those kids have left home now, they're off at college. For the parents, they were once the most important, most reliable figures in their child's lives. They used to love playing with their kids, but more than that, they were always there for them. But then the kids grew up, went through the teenage years, rebelling and rejecting their parents, who sit by, watching, loving, and wanting to once again be the most important person in their child's life. And now, with the oldest Pixar kids leaving home, the parents are learning how to let go of their children. That's pretty much exactly the position the toys of the film are in. And that makes the film work so well - because it's not just another inventive and imaginative adventure for the characters that we all love, but it's a story that is underpinned with genuine human emotions that I imagine more than a few of those working on the film were undergoing.

At this point, the Toy Story series has acquired a sizable cast of characters (just look at the number of people in the poster above), but the screenwriters know exactly how to use them all, and give them their own individual moments. It's surprising to go back to the first film, and see just how much it was the Buzz and Woody show, with little contribution by the others at all. Two films later, Woody is still clearly the lead, but with Buzz receding into the rest of the cast, the film becomes much more of an ensemble cast. And it allows everyone an opportunity to shine - particularly in the climactic "prison break" sequence, where everyone's individual skills come to the fore. (In one of the best, most crowd-pleasing instances, the screenwriters use Mr Potato-Head's removable body parts, as well as the long-established rules about how they interact with Potato-Head's body, for an extraordinary comedy scene that was one of the most surprising and funniest moments of last year.)

The thing I found surprising is just how scary the film gets at times, both in big moments and small. In particular, there is a sequence toward the end where it seems like the toys are facing inevitable doom. And I mean it. There are moments in the earlier films where characters seem at risk, certainly, but you're never afraid for them because you know they'll escape. But in this particular scene, there is no hope for escape. Indeed, the point of the scene has the toys giving up, being resigned to their deaths, and just finding comfort in the fact that they're sharing their last moments with each other. It's a beautiful moment, one of the best the Pixar people have ever given us. And at that moment, I was astonished. I was seriously wondering whether they would really kill off these beloved characters. That seemed improbable, but the situation they were in seemed so impossible that their deaths seemed inevitable. The solution to the problem amounted to a massive deus ex machina (albeit one that was smoothed over by a very funny joke that was a payoff to a setup from two films ago). But that's the astonishing thing. If I, as a mature adult, genuinely thought that these characters were doomed, just how much more scared for Woody and Buzz must the younger audiences have been? But yet, they seem to be able to cope with it. Kids seem to be much more resilient than most kid's filmmakers believe. My friends' three-year-old son may run and hide from the screeching monkey, but it doesn't stop him watching the film. It's not a dumbed-down, safe kid's film with the edges smoothed off, and I appreciate that.

I was listening to a film review show today where a listener defended the Yogi Bear movie by saying "you're being too critical; it's just a kid's film." And that's one argument I hate. Kids will watch almost anything. They're not demanding viewers. But why should that mean we as adults are okay with letting our kids watch irredeemable rubbish? If a child gains just as much enjoyment from watching Toy Story 3 or Beauty and the Beast as they do from watching Yogi Bear or Alvin and the Chipmunks, why do we as a society even entertain Yogi or Alvin as an acceptable option to fill our children's minds with? Toy Story 3 is not a kid's film, but it is a kids-friendly film, and that makes all the difference. Regardless of your age, it's quality filmmaking, with intelligent humour, careful characterisation, and genuine emotion. And it's a worthy of its place as a Best Picture nominees.

One of these days, Pixar will make a bad film. I'm aware of this. To be honest, at the moment I think 2011 may be that year - they're releasing Cars 2, a sequel to the least of their films, and the premise (something about an international car race and Mater being mistaken for a spy) seems so far from anything that the first film did well that I'm for the first time not looking forward to a Pixar film. But for the moment, I can look at my DVD shelf, see the long line of great films from the studio, and be happy. Not even the Walt Disney studios in its heyday achieved a continuous run of greatness as long as Pixar did. I hope Cars 2 doesn't break that run, but if it does, it seems right that a great Toy Story film should end a run that started with a great Toy Story film.

Then there's The Kids Are All Right, which to be honest is not great, but is certainly far better than all right. The film revolves around a long-term lesbian couple who have two teenage children, both fathered by the same anonymous sperm donor. The eldest daughter, who has turned 18 and is about to go to college, makes contact with the sperm donor, and as he enters into their life, his presence brings out previously unexplored tensions in the characters' relationships with each other. There's not a lot of startling material in here: the set-up (new person disrupts happy life) isn't overly original, and the characters are drawn a little too simply to convince (there's an early dinner scene where we first see the family together, and the scene is pretty obvious in establishing every one of the personality traits that will govern how these characters will behave in the rest of the film). And the script frustratingly manages to find the easiest way out of the situations it creates, offering the most pat resolution possible - the film winds up unfairly placing all the blame for the film's events on the new guy without acknowledging that he wasn't the cause of the the problems, but rather was merely the catalyst that brought out existing problems.

But what the film does have is one of the strongest collection of actors on-screen this year. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore play the couple around whom the film revolves, and they have a sweet easy relationship that's fun to watch. It's always nice to see Julianne Moore, an actress I've loved ever since seeing her in Short Cuts, but it seems like it's been so long since Annette Bening was around that it's almost a surprise to remember that here's an actress I genuinely like but had completely forgotten about. Mark Ruffalo has built a solid career as a supporting actor - not quite a film star, but by no means a character actor - and he's enjoyable to watch as this easy-going guy who is just going through life, never really thinking about where he is or the consequences of his actions. I was particularly excited to see Mia Wasikowska as the daughter in the family - she was the best part of the first season of In Treatment, where she played a suicidal gymnast, and her ability at such a young age to act such a challenging emotionally-raw role against an actor as great as Gabriel Byrne without ever being overshadowed by him was impressive. I've therefore been pleased to watch Wasikowska's developing career - she did well with the limited material she was given in Alice in Wonderland - but it's nice to see her get some solid acting work in this film. And as the younger brother there's Josh Hutcherson, who seems really familiar to me although I have never seen anything he's ever done. In any case, he impressed me as a solid performer.

The Kids Are All Right maintains that identifiable tone of light comedy-drama that has become so distinctive over the past twenty years of independent films. Now, that lighter tone does later challenge the film in ways that I'm not sure it overcomes, by blunting the dramatic effect as relationships break down. But when the film is trying to be comedic (which is much of the film), it usually works well. There's seldom any outright jokes, and when they do openly seek after a big comedy moment (such as a scene where the volume on a porn film is accidentally turned up loud), it's too obvious to work. But usually the humour is smaller, more subtle, and funnier than what passes for humour in most multiplex comedies. One thing I did enjoy was the way the camera would linger on a scene, just observing the characters interacting, often just barely catching small but funny moments - a glance, an expression, a minor piece of business that feels unscripted, as though just watching people enjoying themselves. It gave the film a lovely natural feel - we're not setting out to barrage you with jokes trying to force you to laugh; instead, we'll just let you watch until you, as the audience, find something that amuses you. And I was amused.

And that's what the film does well. The script may not be as strong as it could or should be, but there is enough in it for the actors to take hold of and give fascinating, watchable performances that elevate the material beyond what I suspect was on the page. And the actors give the film a lot of goodwill - I was surprised at how much affection I had developed for the characters, and in the hands of other actors, I'm not sure I'd have liked them as much as I do. It's not a revolutionary film, it has definite flaws, but it is well-made and enjoyable to watch. It's certainly my least favourite of the Best Picture nominees, and is in no way an essential film in the way that The Social Network, Inception, or Winter's Bone are essential, but walking out of the cinema I was smiling, glad to have seen it.

The final nominee is Winter's Bone, which was my favourite movie of the year. I've already discussed the film in an earlier post, and I don't know that I have much else to add to those comments. I will say that I am delighted to see it get three other nominations: not just the nod for Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress that I had hoped for, but also well-deserved recognition for John Hawkes (who was chilling as Ree's meth-addict uncle Teardrop) in Supporting Actor, as well as a nomination for Adapted Screenplay. It has been a full year since Winter's Bone first gained attention as the hit of the 2010 Sundance Festival, and over half a year since it was released in the States, and such a low-key film could so easily have been forgotten amidst the end-of-year rush of films vying for a nomination. The fact that it still received four nominations shows just how great a film it really is, and what a strong impression it made on the Academy members. It won't win, of course, but it's good to see the film receive the recognition of a nomination. Part of me is still opposed to the idea of ten Best Picture nominees, which was clearly intended as an obvious and cynical ploy to make room for more popular films that might otherwise not be nominated. But then I look at films like Winter's Bone, or A Serious Man last year, which would never have been nominated were there not ten nominees, and I consider the possibility that more people may see these films because they were nominated, and then I'm okay with the larger number of nominees.

Looking over the list of nominees, I'm struck by just how strong these films really are. Last year's ten nominees included films like the effects-heavy-but-empty Avatar, or generic-feel-good film The Blind Side, as well as the indulgent and offensive crime against cinema that was Precious: Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire. Looking at that list, you can see just how much the Academy struggled to find ten 2009 films worthy of being proclaimed Best Picture. This year, while I may have issues with some of the films, we still have a genuinely solid list of films being nominated. And many of these films have done well with film-going audiences, with five of the nominees (Inception, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Black Swan, and The King's Speech) earning over $US100m in the box office, and a sixth (The Social Network) falling just short. All of which suggests that, despite the significant amount of dross during the summer, 2010 was actually a very good year for high-quality cinema which managed to find significant audience appeal. Hopefully 2011 will also prove to be so.

I turned my collar to the cold and damp

2010-11-27T16:37:00.000+13:00

So here's the thing.

It seems to me to be pretty unusual to see a film or TV series these days that has a strong sense of place. Often, the difference between a film set in New York or Los Angeles may be an establishing skyline, and that's about it. It's a situation that certainly isn't helped by the common approach of filming in one place to fake another. Indeed, sometimes it almost seems as though the filmmakers are lucky to be filming in the same country as the film is set. Is there a major city in America that hasn't been played by Vancouver? How many times have Eastern European forests been called on to stand in for the country regions of the States? And often this all happens for a very understandable reason: money. Show business is, after all, a business, and if the filmmakers can save some millions of dollars by shooting a film somewhere other than where the story actually takes place, why not?

But the problem with that is that there seems to be something lost when you film somewhere else. Filmmaking is all fakery and acting, I'm not unaware of this, and it's certainly possible and reasonable to expect to be able to fake a location. But different cities, areas, regions, have different cultures. Filmmakers may gain a surface level idea about these differences in a short research trip, but when they go off somewhere else to film, you often end up with generic city, generic region, perhaps with a few obvious touches thrown in to signify the setting but without any sense of authenticity. But when you're filming in the area being presented, when you're spending weeks and months surrounded by the residents, filming in the house of someone exactly like your characters, casting locals in various roles, something about the representation of that area becomes real. It's difficult to define the difference exactly - it's often just richer in presenting the nuances and the sense of an area.

But even apart from the filming location, it sometimes seems as though filmmakers may almost be afraid of stories that are too location-specific. It's as though they're afraid to make a movie that is absolutely pinned to a certain location for fear of losing some universality. I sometimes wonder whether that plays a part in explaining why it often seems as though the location was chosen as an afterthought, a "we have to set it somewhere, so let's set it here" decision, rather than being a significant character in the story being told. And it's a position I don't understand. Specificity is not something to be afraid of. Rather, by presenting stories that are true to a place and exploring how different people behave in this environment and these types of circumstances, it gives a greater portrait of our world and who we are in it.

Winter's Bone (see the trailer here) is absolutely inseparable from its setting, and indeed is really about its setting. The film is set in (and was filmed in) the Ozarks, a region which was once notorious for moonshine, but these days has transitioned into being a centre for methamphetamine production. Ree Dolly, an impoverished 17-year-old girl raising her two younger siblings because her non-functional mother cannot, learns that her missing meth-cook father has put up the family home as part of his bail bond, and unless he turns up in the next week, the family will be evicted. So Ree goes off in search of her father, be he alive or dead, to try and save her family from being thrown out onto the dirt track that functions as a street.

There's a scene early in the film that in many ways summarises who Ree is as a character. Starving, her two siblings look longingly at deer carcasses that sit curing outside their neighbours' house, and suggest that they could go and ask the neighbours for some food. But even though you can see her own desperate hunger, Ree angrily rejects the suggestion, exclaiming "Never ask for what ought to be offered." Accepting a gift is fine, and asking for a big favour is okay if absolutely necessary, but asking for some small act of charity is intolerable. This is someone who doesn't have much, but who does have her pride, and who would fight to preserve what little she does have. In the main role, Jennifer Lawrence is utterly captivating. So much of her performance is carried in her eyes - Ree is a girl who has learned to be strong despite whatever life throws at her, and so as she moves further out of her depth, she continues to act strong and confident, and it's only through her eyes that we glimpse her fear, her exhaustion, or just how overwhelmed she is. Lawrence's ability to communicate a powerful performance with such subtlety is impressive, especially from someone whose previous career highlight was playing the daughter in a forgotten family sitcom, and one can only hope she receives some much-deserved awards recognition.

The self-sufficiency of Ree seems to be largely representative of the entire region. This is a film that could so easily fall into some awful clichéd portrayal of hillbilly life, but instead presents a living, astonishing, convincing world. There are moments where it almost feels like we're watching a film set 100, even 200 years ago, and it staggers the mind to think that in the United States there are entire communities of people that live like this. And in this society, at times almost unrecognisable as part of the modern world, the isolation and lure of easy money, as well the temptation of escape, make the growth in methamphetamine production and the rise of a protective culture around that seems inevitable. This is the story of an enclosed world where self-sufficiency is prized and the ability to protect your own interests from those who would threaten them is essential, creating a community where even your own family members are viewed with suspicion. So when Ree starts asking questions, everyone closes rank. These are people who don't want questions asked about where Jessup Dolly is, and even a 17-year-old looking for her father is a threat. She can't even rely on family and friend relationships for help - her recently-married best friend can offer no assistance, her uncle just tries to discourage her from investigating, and most of the remaining extended-family were in some way involved in whatever is going on.

To a large degree, the film is about the impact that methamphetamine has had on this isolated community, and it's handled impressively well. The film definitely has something to say about the effect of the drug in this world, and it's certainly not subtle in saying it, but yet it never once comes across as preachy. That's largely because the film is so rooted in character. The central character is someone who has grown up in the culture of drug production, who has seen the problems inflicted on those around by drugs and has chosen to avoid them. Any drug users are presented sympathetically and with realism, and even where people are actively involved in production, the situation that would lead them to that position is shown honestly. We can understand how this problem became so prevalent, even as the film argues that this needs to stop and points to the destructive influence that the drug is having on what should be a tight-knit community.

One of the things I love about this film is the fact that it had the potential to so easily turn into Precious-style misery porn. An impoverished girl, struggling to raise younger children, trying to survive in a harsh and hostile world - this could so easily turn into a film where the audience is expected to look at the film and tut-tut in amazement that someone would live like that. But it's not like that, and it's not angling for that reaction. When the film ends on a hopeful note, we can accept it because we've spent the entire movie with Ree Dolly - we've seen her resourcefulness, her intelligence, her determination, her bravery, and so we know we don't need to worry about her because she will be able to cope with anything that comes. This isn't Precious, where we're supposed to be hopeful just because the film is yelling "this is a happy ending and she's going to be okay, regardless of the actual evidence in the film;" this is a natural and honest moment of happiness for someone who we can genuinely believe will be okay because the film shows us that she'll be okay.

I worry that I'm making the film seem like some great exercise as a character piece or in portraying a community - something that may be worthy but ultimately dull. And it's not. Certainly, these are the areas where the film is strongest, but it's all an integral part of a genuinely suspenseful, well-made, and entertaining story. The film is basically a traditional noir-esque detective story, but with a 17-year-old girl as the detective. There are moments where Ree seems in genuine peril, relying solely on her own ingenuity and determination to avoid death. And in those moments, there is real tension and suspense. Director and co-screenwriter Debra Granik (working from a novel by Ozarks native Daniel Woodrell) has a masterful control on the narrative flow of the story, easing you into the story, then carefully building the tension until it becomes unbearable. By the time the film reaches its climax - with Ree going on an expedition to the middle of nowhere with several threatening figures to find a scene that is truly gruesome - you could feel your body completely tensed in fear for the possible outcomes. And yet, given that it's focused around a central mystery, the film does a really great job in almost avoiding that mystery - in one of the last scenes in the film, several characters draw the audience's attention to the fact that the question that would be the main point in any other film is left unanswered here. By the end of the film, we know enough to put together a vague picture of what happened and why, but key questions are unanswered. And yet the film doesn't leave the audience dissatisfied, largely because they're not questions that Ree is really all that concerned about. It's an unusual but fine thriller; one that has a lot on its mind, but that never forgets that its primary purpose is to entertain. I've watched it twice now (once at the film festival, once on general release), I'm picked up a copy of the book, and I'm looking forward to owning my own copy of the film. It's certainly not a typical thriller - the film has a gentle, cool, quiet tone that reflects this world in the middle of nowhere, and it comes across as so honest and realistic that it becomes all too believable, and is all the more horrifying for its realism - but it is absolutely beautiful and involving. I love this film.

----------

And a small side-note here: When, following its New Zealand release, I managed to see Winter's Bone for the second time, I walked into the cinema very excited to see this great film again. My excitement quickly died when the octogenarian couple sitting a couple of rows back and six or so seats along started talking. Often it was just a loud noticeable murmur, but not infrequently it would turn into audible comments: "Look, they're going to play the banjo;" "Where is this?" "I don't know, Missouri, maybe;" "Look, it's little chicks" "Yes, aren't they young" "And so cute." And this carried on through the ENTIRE film. And the fact that they were such a distance away from me, and yet I could hear them, really shows just how obnoxiously loud they actually were. Now, I realise they were old, but that is no justification for what they did. The problem is amplified by the nature of the film - it's often a very quiet film, which made their talking even more noticeable, and meant that their comments interrupted the calm still tone that the film was working so hard to establish. In fact, it ruined the filmgoing experience for me because I found I wasn't watching the film so much as bracing myself for their next comment, and then mentally erupting with every kind of profanity when they did say something. I actually stalked them out of the cinema, following them up the street (which, since they were 80 years old, took them a looooooooooong time to walk), trying to summon up the courage to tell them to SHUT THE HELL UP NEXT TIME. But I decided not to. The film was over, so it was too late to save my screening from be ruined. And given what I had imagined calling them during the film and how angry I still was, I was worried I might say something I would regret. I thought about the possibility that it might spare future audiences from their constant chatter, but then I realised that they're probably set in their selfish ways and one guy approaching them in the street isn't going to change anything. Besides, does it really matter that I didn't say anything to them? It's not like I'll be saving that many future audiences - they're old, and while they may ruin a few more movies for a few more audiences, the truth is they're going to die soon, and then they won't be able to ruin any more films. And that's the important thing.

The Day of the Lion

2010-10-21T20:17:00.000+13:00

So here's the thing.

I was listening to Kim Hill a couple of months ago when she was interviewing one of the main people behind The Onion. During the interview, the fake newspaper's post-9/11 issue was mentioned as a key point in raising the profile of the website. There was a lot of hyperbole in the immediate aftermath of that attack about how this event entirely changed not just the world but humanity itself. Reputable magazines were publishing articles about how this was the "death of irony" or some such rubbish, that the world had changed irrevocably and that our flippant and cynical attitudes had come crashing down with the towers. It was all rubbish of course, and The Onion sought to demonstrate that. With articles like "Hijackers Surprised To Find Selves In Hell," "Not Knowing What Else To Do, Woman Bakes American-Flag Cake" or "American Life Turns Into Bad Jerry Bruckheimer Movie," The Onion attacked the monsters that launched the attack, while also placing the attack in a wider history of religious intolerance, pointed out the ridiculous nature of much of the subsequent outpouring of patriotic expression, and examined the attacks in the context of a culture that consumes such attacks for entertainment. It even mocked the prevailing "death of irony" sentiments. And all the while it remained sensitive to the truth of the matter, targeting the jokes at the events around the attacks, but always aware that the tragic deaths of thousands of real people in a terrorist attack is not a laughing matter.

Of course 9/11 was a significant world-changing event - nearly a decade later we are living in a world that is much more sensitive to the risk of terrorism, and certainly there have been a number of horrifying and tragic terrorist attacks since then. But these days, you're just as likely to hear about the hilarious misadventures of unsuccessful terrorists. There was the shoe bomber (whose bomb didn't explode because his sweat dampened the wick), or the underpants bomber (the joke of which really doesn't need any more explaining). There was also the guy who left an ineptly-manufactured bomb in a car in Times Square - the bomb didn't go off, it was discovered, and police identified the attempted terrorist by his keys which he had accidentally locked in the car. Or there was the guy who planned to kill a Government minister from Saudi Arabia but succeeded only in blowing himself up with a bomb shoved up his anus. And there's something almost comforting about such stories. We see 9/11, or the 7/7 London attack, or some bomb going off in a nightclub somewhere, and it's horrific; you get an impression of coolly-planned operations efficiently executed. So it's a relief to hear these stories about the other guys and be able to laugh, knowing that terrorists apparently are still human, and some of them are just as stupid and bad at their jobs as the rest of us.

It's in this context that Four Lions (see the trailer here) works so well. The core idea, a group of British Muslim jihadists plan a terrorist attack, doesn't seem that promising an idea for a comedy, and I've even had some people questioning the taste of basing a comedy around such a horrific concept. But the success of a comedy lies in the quality of the humour within, not the core concept (After all, a surgical hospital in a war zone doesn't sound like a promising comedy either, yet M*A*S*H is one of the defining TV comedies of last century.) And who cares about whether it's seen as tasteless to make a comedy about terrorism? It's like Mel Brooks once said, "Rhetoric does not get you anywhere, because Hitler and Mussolini are just as good at rhetoric. But if you can bring these people down with comedy, they stand no chance." If we treat these people, be it Hitler or your local jihadist, and what they do as something so big and terrible that they can only be treated seriously, then they have power over us. But if we hold them up to mockery and ridicule, that cuts them down to a manageable level. It says that we're not frightened of them, they have no hold over us, and they're worthy of nothing but our laughter.

And there's a lot of laughter generated by this film. It's always a little difficult to describe comedies, since the success of the film ultimately rests on the quality of the jokes. And the quality of jokes on display in Four Lions is very high - in fact, this is easily the funniest comedy I've seen since In the Loop at last year's festival. But how does someone gets across just how funny it is to watch a bearded man describe disguising himself as a lady to purchase vast quantities of chemicals, or watch someone record a terrorist video while holding a tiny replica machine gun, or hear Barry lay out his plan to bomb a mosque in order to radicalise the moderate Muslim population. There's the fake suicide bombing, or the exploding birds, or the unsuccessful use of a rocket launcher. This is one of those films where the comedy just keeps giving; where you discuss the film with your friends, and every time someone mentions this scene or that, it reminds you of yet another hilarious scene or line that had slipped your mind.

A recent Onion News Network video exclaimed "Al-Qaeda Calls Off Attack On Nation's Capitol To Spare Life Of 'Twilight' Author," and the film takes a similar joy at exploring the uneasy way religious fanaticism mixes with western lifestyles among those living in the West. In one of the film's best moments, on their way to conduct their attack, the group find themselves cheerfully singing along to "Dancing In The Moonlight," Barry looking at the group in horror at their wholehearted embracing of the worst of Western pop culture and their inability to treat their upcoming mission with the seriousness it deserves. In another great scene, the uncertainties of Western architecture are debated in the context of prohibitions on being in the same room as a woman with an uncovered head; it's funnier than it sounds, especially when the water pistols come out.

The characters in the film are perhaps a little shallow - by the end of the film, I really only felt that Omar (the leader, and most level-headed of the group) and Barry (the most radical of the group, seemingly out of defensiveness due to his status as a Muslim convert) were well-fleshed-out characters. The remaining characters, while all getting their own very funny moments, simply aren't that developed as characters.

It's to the film's credit that it does follow through with the premise. It's a slight spoiler to say that the characters do end up dead, mostly blowing themselves up in the execution of their plan. There's no last-minute decision not to do it because this is wrong; for the most part the characters generally remain committed to their goal, even while the absolute pointlessness of their actions is illustrated. And I don't want you thinking the film adopts a simple "aren't terrorists stupid" approach. The film actually thinks everyone is stupid. (By the end of the film, when the final body count is tallied up, there's more than one person dead due to the incompetence or bad decisions of the people supposed to protect us.) It's just that, when the terrorists are the main characters, we get more opportunity to see their idiocies.

But it seems that less-than-competent terrorists is not strictly a post-9/11 phenomenon. In one surprisingly funny moment early in Carlos (see the trailer here), a couple of terrorists twice try to fire a rocket-launcher at an Israeli airliner, both times hitting other planes instead. Working with people with such poor ability, famed real-life terrorist Carlos (later nicknamed Carlos the Jackal) several times finds himself needing to act quickly to fix problems created by others. And Carlos himself isn't exactly perfect in his planning - his otherwise seamlessly-executed attack on an OPEC meeting ultimately fell apart because of one small miscalculation in his planning.

Carlos is quite an impressive achievement. Originally made for French television, the biopic runs for 5½ hours, spread out over three parts. It certainly makes for a long day in the cinema, but it seems much shorter than it actually is. (By comparison, I really liked last year's Che, but it really did feel 4½ hours long. Carlos, even at an hour longer, felt much shorter than that experience.) Each part has a very clear focus - the first looks at the rise in prominence of Carlos, and ends with the terrorist leading a group on their way to attack the OPEC meeting. That attack occupies a significant portion of the second film, before focusing on how that attack made Carlos possibly the most prominent terrorist of the time. And then the third film finds an older Carlos settled down to a degree, in a long-term relationship, trying to stay ahead and protect himself as the number of friendly nations slowly reduces, until finally he is captured and imprisoned for a couple of impulsive murders committed back in Part One.

While the whole film is excellent - exciting, involving, gripping - easily the most phenomenal section of the film lies in the OPEC attack. Running about an hour, it is easily one of the best suspense sequences I have seen in a long time. Every moment is filled with the threat of possible violence - Carlos by this point has been established as someone who will kill without a second thought, and he openly tells certain people "you will die." The raid is a success, but as Carlos takes his hostages onto the plane to fly to Iraq, he's frustrated to learn that the DC7 he's ordered doesn't have sufficient range to make it to that destination, even if they do refuel. It prompts hours of frustration, the plane and its hostages frozen while Carlos wavers in indecision. It's a phenomenal sequence, suspenseful and tense. And it really illustrates how a long running-time can be used well. There's no need to hurry the sequence, there's time to make clear every part of the operation, while being able to replicate the sense of being in that room or that plane, just waiting for something to happen, with the constant threat of imminent violence hanging over their heads. It's truly masterful. I read that a shorter 2½ hour cut of the film has been made for general release, and I shudder at the thought. While you could perhaps trim a half-hour from the final part if you had to (as Carlos stagnates and loses much of his drive, the film does run the risk of doing so as well), on the whole there is so little slack in the film that a shorter cut could only be damaged, and I can't imagine a heavily-edited version of the OPEC raid in particular having anywhere near the intended impact.

The film is also careful to remind us that it's not possible for someone like Carlos to operate without significant backing. There are scenes where the man meets with various recognisable presidents or prime ministers or leaders in various countries, who casually agree to accommodate and shelter Carlos; as long as he refrains from attacking them, they don't really care what he does to anyone else. And I think we all understand that there have been certain states that have, at times, given some level of support or backing to the activities of people such as Carlos, but there is something shocking to actually see such scenes play out in front of the viewer.

In the lead role, Édgar Ramírez gives an extraordinary performance. As a young man, he's all fire and passion for the cause, cold-blooded to his enemies, and full of fury at anyone with any less commitment to the fight, with an charisma that's so strong it seems natural that people would gravitate to this man and do anything to maintain his approval. As a result, it's a shock to see the Carlos of the final part, overweight and lethargic, holding to his ideals in a theoretical way only, having become one of those half-hearted pseudo-radicals that the young Carlos would have railed against. Much as we may hate the young Carlos, so callous with the lives of anyone that stands in his way, it's sad to see that fiery charisma gone, and replaced with an air of self-preservation. The character changes dramatically over the course of the story, and Ramírez skilfully navigates these character changes; convincingly determined in his youthful idealism, and in his later form subtly listless in his awareness that he has changed from one of the world's most notorious criminals to a forgotten and historic footnote.

Inevitably most people that see this film will either see the cut-down version (which you should avoid, since I can see no possible way it can work), or the complete version at home on DVD (since I assume big screen prospects for a film that occupies six hours of screen real estate are obviously limited). And since the film was originally made for television, no doubt it works very well on the small screen. But if you do get a chance to catch a cinema screening of the complete Carlos, do not miss it. Certainly I count myself lucky to have had the opportunity to watch the film in cinemas. But however you get to see it, it's well worth your time. One of the highlights of my film year.

Playing scrabble and eating petits-fours

2010-10-05T00:07:00.000+13:00

So here's the thing.

Back in 2004, I was watching the Oscars as The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was sweeping every category it was nominated for. One of those categories was for Best Song, for "Into The West" performed by Annie Lennox. And I think we all knew that it would win, although going into the show I preferred "There's a Kiss at the End of the Rainbow", the song from Christopher Guest's folk-music-mockumentary A Mighty Wind. And that was my favourite song of the year, until Lady Haden-Guest came out to introduce a song from some animated film that I'd only vaguely heard of. For the next two minutes, I watched this. My reactions were probably the same as most people watching the song - I started at "This is a really cool song," quickly progressed to "Are they playing a bicycle?" before becoming "Is that a vacuum cleaner?" and finally "That is my favourite song of the year, and I really need to see that film."

Several months later, The Triplets of Belleville played at the film festival. And watching the film, I was delighted to discover that that song was the most normal thing about the film. For a start, the film's story is insane - a cyclist is abducted during the Tour De France race, so the kid's grandmother follows him on a pedal boat across the ocean to America, where she enlists three ageing singing stars to help rescue her grandson from an illegal underground gambling operation run by the mafia. The film is effectively free of dialogue, which seems give the animators free reign to use their art to carefully develop their characters as expressive actors. The highly stylised character design is often grotesque, but never not fascinating to watch. And the humour in the film manages somehow to simultaneously be absurd and farcical, yet nice, gentle, and honest. It's just a genuinely fascinating film, and one that I love to revisit.

The film was very clearly and openly inspired by the great French comic actor/director Jacques Tati, whose own films also minimised dialogue in favour of elaborate visual comedy. (Indeed, in one scene the triplets are seen watching Tati's Jour de Fête.) So I was understandably excited to find that this year's festival featured The Illusionist (see the trailer here), a new film from Sylvain Chomet based on an unproduced script by Tati.

The film follows Tatischeff, a stage illusionist in an era where the appeal of such entertainments is waning in favour of rock bands. Finding himself performing to ever decreasing crowds, or largely ignored as garden party entertainment, he eventually goes to perform in a small Scottish village. There he meets a largely-ignored young girl, who's never seen a stage magician before, and so believes that he really can do magic - a view that's reinforced after he buys her a new pair of shoes and gives it to her by performing a piece of magic. When he leaves the village, the girl follows him. This sweet father-daughter-style relationship develops between the two, with Tatischeff desperately trying to preserve that sense of magic, taking on extra jobs for which he is entirely unsuited to pay for the gifts he buys for her, while at the same time trying to hide his constant absence as he runs to one job or another.

When you have a movie that is based on a script by one of the great film comedians, and that is made by the man who created a hilarious film like Belleville, you expect it to be funny. And it is, absolutely, genuinely hilarious. There are great comic sequences - a particular highlight comes when Tatischeff believes Sophie has made a stew out of his white rabbit - as well as many simple funny jokes, and even some nice subtle jokes slipped into the image without comment. (I look forward to the Blu-Ray, if only to be able to examine the image for every joke.) But what is striking about the film is just how sad it really is. There's a tone of melancholy and sorrow infused into the film. And I think the reasons for that goes back to Tati's motivation in writing the film. It's generally believed that the script was written as an expression of regret by Tati for being so focused on his career that he missed much of his daughter Sophie's growing up (although Tati's first, illegitimate daughter claims that it was about his regret at abandoning her as a baby). Regardless of who Tati wrote it for, that sense of sadness is palpable in the film, with Tati seemingly trying to present himself as the father he wished he had been. To some degree, with that knowledge, it almost feels intrusive to watch the film, as though we're watching something too personal, too intimate, for public consumption.

What also hits you about the film is the incredible sense of nostalgia infused throughout it. Tatischeff is not portrayed as a great magician - he's actually pretty middling, with a fairly clichéd performance (he actually has a rabbit in his hat) - but still it's sad to see the simple pleasures of his show being rejected. Early in the film, we see Tatischeff patiently waiting while a grotesque Beatles/Stones amalgam band perform for hordes of screaming fans, who don't stay for his performance. And it's heartbreakingly sad, because it seems to mark a point where this unique and inventive artform went out of fashion. A few years ago, there were a couple of period films about stage magicians that both came out at about the same time, The Prestige and another film called The Illusionist. Watching those films, it was startling to realise just how big the general audience was for magicians was 100 years ago. These days, of course, the typical magician is relegated to a children's entertainer, and the only people who ever get a wider audience are EXXTREME magicians like David Blaine or Criss Angel, people who are more tiresome than magical. To many, maybe even most adults,stage magic is just kid's stuff, and that sense of wonder that comes with watching a good magic show, of questioning "how'd he do that?" almost seems to be lost.

It almost seems fitting that this paean to an "childish" art form should be presented as an animated film - after all, animation itself is an art form that was once intended to entertain all ages, but is today mostly regarded as kid's fare. Which is a shame, because animation really can be beautiful, and the animation work in the film is simply extraordinary. The character-design fluctuates wildly, from a very naturalistic look for some characters (the design of Tatischeff in particular is as close to a replication of Tati himself as animation could achieve) through to a more exaggerated look (similar to the look of the characters in Belleville) for some supporting characters. Yet the varying looks of the characters all seem to work well together in the film, and never feel incongruous. But the really great thing about the animation is this beautifully designed and detailed world they inhabit. Much as I love the Pixar films, and think some of their films (with Ratatouille as an obvious example) feature some stunning design work, there is something about looking at a traditionally-animated film and being able to see the careful intricacies in the hand-drawn detail that is quite breathtaking. (Again, the Blu-Ray will be an essential purchase.)

The Illusionist is not the film I though it would be, but in a good way. This is not the film that you might expect from a combination of the efforts of the creators of Mr Hulot's Holiday and The Triplets of Belleville. It's not as funny as that combination might lead you to expect, but it is deeper, richer, and a more moving experience, and one that stays in the memory.

Was it the same cat?

2010-08-26T23:20:00.001+12:00

So here's the thing.

One of the highlights of my week is my regular visit to the film society. Every Monday night, they have a free film screening, and I try to go to those screenings knowing nothing about the film I'm going to see - not even its title. Sure, I check the year's schedule when it's initially released, and look for particular must-see films that I take care not to miss (this year, I've got the screenings of OSS117: Cairo: Nest of Spies, Swing Time, The Motorcycle Dairies, To Have Or Have Not, and Some Like It Hot marked in my calender), but other than those films, I try to walk into each film society screening with absolutely no idea what I'm about to watch. These days, every film you see is so promoted and spoiled and discussed that before you see a film your expectations are already well-formed. So it's nice to watch a film with absolutely no idea what to expect, and to just assess each film on the quality of film-making in front of you. Sometimes this lack of expectations can be surprising and thrilling (discovering that we're about to watch a Korean adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses - a novel that I really enjoy - or unexpectedly seeing the name of a favourite actor in the credits); occasionally it can be disorienting, demanding effort just to work out what it is that you're watching (it once took me a good fifteen minutes to realise that week's film was a documentary). Occasionally, a film may be dire, causing me to wish I had read up about the film in order to know in advance to avoid it. But other times there are films that I might have skipped because they sound awful in the writeup, but in fact prove to be an exhilerating experience. The key thing is that I have no idea what to expect.

Of course, sometimes you may just have a nothing response to a film. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, the film was a French documentary called Back to Normandy and, to be honest, I didn't care too much for it one way or the other. The filmmaker had, thirty years earlier, worked on a film based on a true crime from the 1830s where a young man murdered his mother, sister, and brother. The film had been shot in the region where the crime had actually been committed, and many of the local residents had been cast in the main roles. In this film, the filmmaker revisits the region and interviews many of the people who acted in the film, as well as showing us clips of the previous film and giving some background to the original case. And as I watched this film, my response sadly was "why does this even exist?" It seemed to have no purpose or reason for being. The writeup on the film society website talked very high-mindedly about how "the director’s sidelong, subtle approach has teased out modern-day parallels to the issues that surrounded the Rivière case," but if so, the approach was too subtle for me. I saw no real parallels, just a bunch of brief interviews that never seem to go anywhere.

Had I read up about the film before the screening, I would at least have been forewarned about the very first shot in the film - a closeup, fully-on-screen image of a pig giving birth. There are many things that I enjoy seeing on the big screen, and a few things I do not enjoy seeing. A pig giving birth would most certainly fall in the latter category. I did not need to see that. I would have been quite happy to never see that again. Later on in the film, we watched a pig getting a blow to the brain with a hammer, then having its throat cut and its guts removed. It was too much for at least one person, who I saw quickly leaving the cinema at that point, but I stayed. After all, I made it through watching the pig birth - the least I can do is watch how bacon is made.

But what they showed of that farming operation seemed very similar to what we imagine a traditional pig farm looks like, how they've probably operated for many many years. Certainly the pig farm I found myself watching the following night seemed very different. I'd been rewatching the TV version of the radio documentary This American Life over the previous week, and had coincidentally reached episode 6, "Pandora's Box," which featured a story about how the efforts of genetic science to breed particular characteristics into pigs has radically changed the process of pork production. There were images of the crew undergoing an extensive sterilisation procedure prior to entering the pig farm, because the pigs were so vulnerable to contamination. There were the expected images and issues - pigs in pens on metal floors, people questioning whether they could continue to eat pork having seen how it's produced these days, people discussing whether the supposed improvements introduced by genetic science have been advantageous. And then, all of a sudden, there was a closeup, fully-on-screen image of a pig giving birth. For the second time in two days, I found myself watching a pig giving birth. I ask you, what are the odds of that? When was the last time you saw something like that in a film?

Earlier that same night, I'd been watching Battle Royale, a Japanese film I'd heard a lot about. The film was about a group of schoolchildren who, under an officially-sanctioned programme, are kidnapped, put on an island, and then forced to kill each other under a only-one-person-survives-or-you-all-die system. The film was suspenseful and interesting, but I felt it was rather a disappointment. The explanation for how this bizarre situation arose didn't make any sense at all - exactly how picking one class at random from all of the country and forcing them into a fight-to-the-death would manage an out-of-control youth population just isn't clear, especially since the kids don't seem to have any prior knowledge of the existence of the Battle Royale that might motivate them to moderate their behaviour. The film definitely seemed like it was trying to say something, but I was never entirely clear on what exactly that was. Was it a commentary about how the older generations often view youth culture as something threatening? Perhaps, but if so that's a line that is abandoned pretty much as soon as the introduction ends and the battle begins. Is it some kind of Lord of the Flies situation? But there's a difference between that novel, where the inherent savagery of human nature is brought out without external influence, versus this film where the kids are only killing other kids in order to avoid dying themselves. I don't know that it's a big revelation to learn that, if forced into a kill-or-be-killed situation, some people would rather choose to die, others would kill reluctantly, and a few might enjoy killing. I'm also not sure what's gained by exploring that idea. So it was an interesting and enjoyable film, but frustratingly its message was so muddled that I couldn't help thinking it was just an excuse to justify a film where lots of under-age kids commit bloody and gory acts of violence against each other.

There was one scene that I found particularly interesting. A group of boys had banded together to try to fight back against the adults who captured them. One gives orders. "You, get some fertiliser. You, find some molasses. We're going to build a bomb." Shortly after, of course, all of them are dead, killed at the hand of the psycho who voluntarily came on the battle for fun. But I found it interesting because, while we obviously hear references to "fertiliser bombs" every now and then, I've never really understood how fertiliser ever actually gets used to make a bomb. But now I have (just a little bit) more information on the subject. Apparently molasses, a syrup formed during the refining of raw sugar, are involved in the process somehow. Just how, I have no idea (and I'm not going to look it up on Google for fear of accidentally ending up on some watchlist), but apparently those two substances somehow interact when combined in some way to create an explosive device. Who says movies aren't educational?

An hour later, I was watching the TV show Leverage. That week the show, an fun if inconsequential show about former criminals who perform heists to redress wrongs committed by other people, had our heroes trying to recover money stolen from various characters, only to discover that the stolen money was being used to fund the activities of a militia. Two of our heroes are captured by the militia but escape, before realising the significance of the strange smell at the militia camp. "Fertiliser and molasses. They're going to build a bomb."

Now I realise references to fertiliser bombs, if not common-place, are certainly not unique. And given the fact that I'm a guy, and guys like shows with explosions in them, it's quite possible that I might get a coincidental reference to fertiliser bombs in several programmes in a short space of time. But such references always focus on the fertiliser component of the bomb. I cannot remember the last time I ever even heard the word "molasses," let alone referenced in the context of trying to make a home-made explosive. To get two such references in the same night must be at least improbable.

The following night, I sat down to watch another Asian film, this time from Korea. The film, called The Host, was an enjoyable movie about a creature that mutates after chemicals are dumped into the river. The creature wasn't absurdly huge, running rampage and knocking over the high-rises of Seoul, but nor was it small. The thing was about the size of a truck, and could easily catch and hold people inside its mouth. The film itself was well-made, by a director (Joon-ho Bong) whose work I've discovered over the last year and with whom I've been quite impressed so far. His films seem to cross a wide variety of genres, but are always skillfully made and deliberately constructed, and this film, essentially a modern take on the classic Asian monster movies, was no different.

Finishing the film, I started to watch a new episode of Mad Men, the excellent drama about an advertising company in the 1960s. In one of the more memorable moments in the episode, the show's main character, Don Draper, goes out for a night on the town with the firm's financial officer, Lane Pryce, getting drunk, and then going to the movies. Now, I thought they had gone to see Godzilla, but it seems it was actually Gamera they were watching (my knowledge of the 60s-era Japanese giant monsters is evidently pretty poor). In any case, an on-screen appearance of a classic Asian monster movie (in a show like Mad Men, of all things) immediately after watching a modern-day variant on such films is definitely noticeable.

Now, I realise all these coincidences are meaningless. There's no significance to it. And, as a friend of mine said, when you watch as much television as I do, occasionally you get coincidences. (Indeed, I remember one night last year where, on two different programmes, I heard Europe's "The Final Countdown" played on a ukulele and a brass band. How improbable is that?) But it actually doesn't happen that often - that's why each of these coincidences in and of themselves were noticeable. When you get that many instances in such a short space of time (and remember, all of these took place in the space of three days), where different documentaries and movies and television shows, produced over a period of ten years in a total of four different languages and all different genres, all happened to be watched by myself in the same short period of time, where they all had distinctive elements that resonate with each other, that is unusual. It's not just a coincidence, it's a coincidence of coincidences.

Or perhaps it's not a coincidence. Perhaps someone somewhere is trying to warn me and prepare me. Who knows, perhaps one day we'll be attacked by a giant mutant pig giving birth to smaller mutant pigs. If that ever happens, I'll know exactly what to get from the garden-supply store and the wherever-the-hell-you-get-molasses-from store in order to destroy the monster.

Or perhaps it just means I watch too much television. Gee, I hope not.

Let's see what you can do

2010-08-03T00:07:00.002+12:00

So here's the thing.

I'm looking at the Stuff website, and I come across this article. Now, I realise this is just an entertainment article, and we can't expect too much from such articles, but still, I was shocked at just how appalling it was. An extraordinarily pointless article lacking in any focus at all, jumping from topic to topic, seemingly just throwing any vaguely-relevant information into the text in order to pad the word-count out.

Here's what I mean:

'Hit Girl' in killer new role
By NATALIE HAMBLY - Sydney Morning Herald

Chloe Moretz, the young teen famous for playing a foul-mouthed assassin in Kick-Ass, will next appear on our screens as a vampire.

Okay, first question - how is this news? It's been several months since Kick-Ass was released, it's been ten months since her casting in Let Me In was announced, and it's several months until the film is actually released. And really, reading through the rest of the article, there is almost nothing that I can find in this article that could not have been written four months ago. So why is this supposed news article being written now? I read this thinking it was going to be about a new piece of casting, not one that happened last year.

The 13-year-old actress is starring in the Hollywood remake of the Swedish horror hit Let The Right One In.

I'll just say right now, Let The Right One In is a phenomenal film. It's chilling and haunting, and sweet in a disturbing way. It's also an interesting example in how a story changes between book and film, even when the film tries to stay close to the book (as Let The Right One In does). I finished the film with a very clear understanding of the story being told. But then I read the book by John Ajvide Lindqvist (which is also very good), and it completely changed my interpretation of what happens in the story. While the original film stays very close to the book in relation to the actual events during the main timeframe (albeit with one major subplot omitted), it does leave out pretty much all of of the backstory, particularly in relation to the vampire's 'father,' and that backstory actually meant that I interpreted the entire story differently to how I'd interpreted the film. Anyway, back to the article.

Based on a novel, the film follows the relationship between a bullied and lonely boy and his unusual new neighbour (Moretz). Around the same time the young pair meet, their quiet neighbourhood is reeling from a spate of grisly murders.

Now, I have two points to make about this paragraph. Firstly, note the first four words: "Based on a novel." I ask you, what does that vague generic barely-informative phrase actually have to do with anything? The original novel never gets mentioned anywhere else in the article - the rest of the article focuses solely on the remake and the original film. Now, the fact of the novel could have been relevant to the article - they could have mentioned, for instance, the fact that the remake's director defends the film by talking about it as a new adaptation of the book rather than a remake of a film. But they don't. The novel is irrelevant to anything else in the article, but still it's mentioned. And as you'll see, that's one of my problems with the article - the article, at least initially, appears to be about Chloe Moretz playing this role, but there's so little substance in that article idea that the writer starts throwing every piece of available information into the text to pad it out without considering what that information has to do with anything else in the article.

Secondly, pay attention to that paragraph. We're definitely talking about the remake right now - notice the reference in this paragraph to Moretz playing the neighbour. Now, watch what happens next.

The movie, described as dark, atmospheric and cold garnered rave reviews. The Sydney Morning Herald said: "At once quietly complex and profoundly creepy, this extraordinarily resonant work ... manages ... to breathe life into the oversaturated subset of the horror genre, the vampire film."

Wait - how are there reviews of this film already? It's several months away from release. I'm confused.

In David Stratton's review for At The Movies, he was dismayed that it was getting the Hollywood treatment.

But this film is the Hollywood treatment, so how... ohhh, he's talking about the Swedish film now. So when exactly did we make the transition from the Hollywood to the Swedish film? Can anyone point me to the place where they clearly and unambiguously switch from discussing the remake to the original?

"I'm horrified that they're going to make a Hollywood remake, because they're going to complete ruin it ... but it's really worth seeing," he said.

Okay, let's be generous and overlook the "completeLY ruin it" typo. Let's just ask, what does this sentence actually contribute? It's a Hollywood remake of an excellent foreign film, so we can all just assume the critics are, at this stage, against the remake. But the key point is, they haven't actually seen the film. It's just an assumption that the remake will be inferior - a justified one, because most remakes are. But there are occasionally good remakes of foreign films - Infernal Affairs became The Departed, Seven Samurai became The Magnificent Seven, Christopher Nolan's remake of Insomnia, all come to mind. So it's possible that this may actually prove to be a good film. The key point is that, right now, the critics have no idea whether this will actually be good or not. It's just speculation on David Stratton's part that they will ruin the film. And besides, what does any of this discussion about the merits of remakes have to do with Chloe Moretz, who I thought was supposed to be the subject of the article?

The Hollywood version has been renamed Let Me In and is directed by Cloverfield's Matt Reeves.

Young Australian actor Kodi Smit-McPhee (Romulus, My Father) will star opposite Moretz as the ostracised boy.

"Hey, we haven't mentioned the name of the remake, who directed it, or who plays the other main character. Find somewhere to cram that information into the article."
"Should we mention the Oscar-nominated actor playing the girl's 'father'?"
"Who? Richard Jenkins? Who cares about him? Besides, we don't want to have too much pointless information in this article. It'll lose its focus."
"Wait, this article has a focus?"
"Yeah, it's about Chloe Moretz."
"You mean the actress we haven't mentioned in four paragraphs, because we've been discussing how good the original was and how bad a remake will be?"
"Yeah. Actually, throw in a reference to her so that we can get the article back on track."

Moretz became famous for playing Mindy Macready, aka Hit Girl, in the film Kick-Ass.

Okay, the first sentence of the article already said that she was famous for her role in Kick-Ass, so we already know that. The only thing this sentence adds is her character's name, but if you've seen Kick-Ass you know who she played (there's only one foul-mouthed 11-year-old girl in the film), and if you haven't seen the film, knowing that the character's name was "Mindy Macready, aka Hit Girl" is useless information. So why is this paragraph needed again?

She was the subject of much controversy because her character was an 11-year-old skilled assassin who was prone to profanity - notably the f- and c-words.

My favourite story about Kick-Ass is that the original comic had the line with the c-word, but the script omitted the c-word (presumably because it would involve an 11-year-old actually saying the word). Moretz's mother was apparently reading the comic, thought the line played better with the c-word (which is probably true) and so talked the director into including the word. I repeat: the girl's mother had the c-word put into the film. Nothing to do with the article - I just find that amusing.

Parents were warned against taking their children to the film and questions were raised about whether a young actor should be asked to perform such a role.

Moretz is now 13 but there has so far been no controversy about her playing a murderous vampire.

And now we can see the point of the article. They're trying to draw people's attention to this film in order to create controversy about her playing a murderous vampire. The question is, what is the controversy they're trying to create? Is it (as with the alleged controversy around Kick-Ass) about a young girl like Moretz playing this more-adult role? If so, having made it through Kick-Ass seemingly well-adjusted, the role of the vampire is by comparison rather tame. Is the controversy over concerns that parents may need to be warned so that they don't accidentally take their young kids to see "that film where that nice girl from Kick-Ass plays a vampire," and are then shocked to discover that she does vampirey stuff? Or is it a controversy over the general audience being harmed by seeing a young girl doing scary stuff in a horror? If so, we'll just have to hope no-one in Hollywood ever reads The Exorcist, because that would really be a disturbing film.

And incidentally, the saddest part of the article is the fact that they now have to explicitly state that she's playing "a murderous vampire". I remember a time before Twilight when the word "murderous" didn't need to be used as a descriptor of vampires, because it was pretty much taken as read.

Let Me In is due for release in October. A trailer has been leaked on YouTube.

Strangely enough, this may actually be the part of the article that annoys me most. A trailer has NOT been leaked on YouTube. The trailer was officially released by the studio, and then posted onto YouTube. This is not some cloak-and-dagger surreptitious action of someone trying to release secret information. This was part of the official promotional campaign of the film, and to say that it was "leaked" is a patently transparent and pathetic attempt to add a little bit of excitement to a nothing story.

Look, I'm aware that it's silly of me to hold Stuff to any standards in its entertainment section. By definition, pretty much any article that ends up there is almost certainly not going to be news by any objective standard. Right now, the site is featuring articles about how Jennifer Aniston is enjoying single life, or how Zac Efron went to a strip club but didn't like it. And I realise that, as someone who probably went into journalism with dreams of being the next Woodward or Bernstein, it must be dispiriting work for the reporter to have to write articles about the career choices of a 13-year-old actress. So I realise how strange it is that I would be made so angry by this by such a small unimportant article. But that's exactly why it maks me so angry. This article wasn't tucked away in the Entertainment section of the website. It was given prominence on the front page of the website - you know, where real news is supposed to be posted. And yet, when I finished the article, my response was "why does this even exist?" And that's not a good thing.

Listen, Stuff, I've complained about your website before, and to your credit, you have thankfully stopped highlighting the CuteStuff articles on the front page. (It's still there on the site, and it's still pointless, but at least these days it takes several deliberate clicks to find.) [EDIT 4 August 2010: I spoke too soon. I hadn't seen it in a while, but guess what was up on the Stuff website today. Sigh.] But if you're going to claim to be a news website, the one thing you need to do when highlighting an article on the front page of your news website is ask yourself "Is this article news, or are we just publishing it to make it seem like there's something new on the site." If it's the latter, by all means use it to pad out the Entertainment section, but don't waste perfectly good, and limited, space on the front page of your website drawing attention to it.

And one last thing. I know last time I said how much I hated your "if our team don't break stories first, there are consequences" campaign. I take it all back. Please please please bring back the campaign, if only because I desperately need to know what you would do to the person responsible for posting a news article ten months after it took place.

By request

2010-07-16T00:04:00.003+12:00

So here's the thing.

I first became familiar with the work of Steven Moffat late one night back in 2004. It would have been about 11:30pm; I was flipping through the channels during an ad break to see what else was on, and stopped on some British comedy programme. Less than a minute after I paused there, I found myself watching a beautiful blonde woman walk up to the counter of a science-fiction memorabilia store, smile at the guy behind it, and observed "isn't it exciting that they've found episode 2 of The Daleks' Master Plan?" (Ten seconds later, the guy behind the counter woke up from his dream.) But that scene made me take notice of the show. At the time the discovery of the previously-missing episode was still recent news, it had only taken place a couple of months earlier (we still hadn't actually seen it, since it wasn't released on DVD until the end of the year), so it was a surprise to me to see it referenced so soon. Whoever wrote this is clearly a Doctor Who fan.

So I stayed watching the show, which was called Coupling. It was certainly funny, and later in the week when I noticed a rerun of an older episode on UKTV, I turned it on. And it was that episode that turned me into a fan of the show. Literally half the episode revolved around a single scene where two characters try to have a conversation even though they speak different languages. The show presents the scene twice, once from each character's point of view. It was so perfectly written, the intricacies of the communication break-down and misunderstandings so carefully worked out, that I was genuinely impressed. As I watched the rest of the show's run, I discovered that it regularly broke free of the basic sitcom formats. Entire episodes were presented in split-screen, or chronologically took place before the previous episode, or contrasted drunken flashbacks against the reality, or replayed the same short period of time telling the stories of different characters in the bar. It's not so much that these are especially original ideas, but they're certainly not commonplace in the typical sitcom. Steven Moffat was clearly a talented writer who wasn't just content to write jokes, but was instead testing the boundaries of the sitcom format, trying to find something new to do with the form. And I liked that. It also helped that Moffat is a very very funny writer.

Meanwhile the revival of Doctor Who, under the control of lead writer Russell T Davies, was in production, and Moffat was announced as one of the show's writers.

Much spoiler-filled discussion of the last 5 1/2 years of Doctor Who (including detailed comments on the finale to the most recent series - Matt Smith's first) follows after the jump.

Moffat's story in that first series of Doctor Who was relatively straight-forward, but really quite brilliant. Few would disagree that The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances story is the highlight of the series. The sight of all those people, walking like gas-masked zombies, was chilling, and even a simple moment like a scared child asking "Are you my mummy?" became terrifying.

The next series Moffat gave us The Girl In The Fireplace, a story that was also reasonably straight-forward (the Doctor falls in love with Madame de Pompadour), but with a few twists and turns that did raise the complexity of the story somewhat. (The titular fireplace, after all, did lead to a spaceship 500 years in the future, and time flowed differently between the two time-periods.) But mostly it was just a lush, romantic, beautiful story, albeit with scary robots powered by clockwork mechanisms. And it was brilliant.

Series Three brought us Blink, a story which last year was voted by Doctor Who Magazine readers as the second-best Doctor Who story in the 47-year history of the TV series. This is especially impressive when the story deliberately omits the Doctor for much of its running time. In addition to introducing the Weeping Angels, some of the scariest monsters in new Who, it showed an inventiveness in playing with the possibilities of time travel. The Doctor finds himself trapped in the past, but by relying on information given to an earlier version of him after the episode's events by the episode's true main character, Sally Sparrow, he is able to set up a situation to rescue both himself and Sally. (The time travel mechanics are based on an amusing short story, called "What I Did On My Christmas Holidays by Sally Sparrow" that Moffat wrote several years earlier for the Doctor Who Annual.) At one point in the episode, the Doctor describes time as a "big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff", and it's really a rather brilliant way of handling time. Any time you start to delve into time travel, you start to create weird paradoxes, and with that one line, Moffat rather easily handwaves away any problems with the story. After all, we don't really care about the mechanics of how the time travel works or how it is possible for someone to have a conversation with a 40-year-old prerecorded video, and any pseudo-scientific explanation he offered would in reality be technobabble nonsense, so why not just acknowledge that it's nonsense and move on from there to more exciting stuff with monsters.

(It's also vaguely reminiscent of The Curse of Fatal Death, a comedy sketch Moffat wrote for Red Nose Day, in which past and future versions of the Doctor and the Master repeatedly travel back in time to have traps built into the castle where the two now confront each other.)

And then, in the fourth series, Moffat give us Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead, a story that is relatively straight-forward plot-wise, but that is complicated by the introduction of River Song, someone who apparently already has a very close relationship with future versions of the Doctor, but who the Doctor in his timeline has never met before. By this point, I think we'd all accepted Steven Moffat as the best writer working on new Who. His stories were inventive, playful, scary, intelligent, and most of all showed him to be someone wanting to explore the full potential of time travel as a storytelling device. He'd also won three Hugo Awards (the Oscars of the science-fiction/fantasy genre) for his work on Who.

At the same time, I think dissatisfaction with lead writer RTD had reached pretty high levels. Now, to be fair to him, we wouldn't have new Who if not for RTD, and the way he reinvented the show while being true to its core works really well. And, while I haven't seen any of his non-Who-related works, I believe he does have a great reputation when it comes to more grounded real-world shows. But as a writer of Doctor Who, he's usually average at best, and frequently awful, fond of pulling plot twists out of nowhere, constantly determined to up the stakes with each year's finales (to the point where it just became absurd), and relying (sometimes literally) on a deus ex machina to resolve his stories. Oh, sure, after a few years he had developed as a Who writer to sometimes give us some really rather great individual episodes (Gridlock, Midnight, Turn Left, or The Waters of Mars, for instance, were great shows from later in his run), but more often he could be terribly bad. This is a man who, when writing the very first episode of new Who, had someone eaten by a rubbish bin, or who, when writing the show's first big spectacular two-parter, thought farting aliens made good ominous villains. He gave us the Master dancing to the Scissor Sisters on board a flying aircraft carrier, or people watching the destruction of the Earth to the sound of Britney Spears. He heavily foreshadowed Rose's death, but then just put her in an alternate-Earth and had her Missing Presumed Dead in our world, in a massive cheat. He gave us an Earth 200,000 years in the future where everyone watches clunky robotic recreations of year-2005 British reality shows, he had two different finales that were resolved by giving companions magical powers too great for them to contain, he had an episode where President Obama was going to give a Christmas Day speech that would single-handedly fix the financial crisis and reinvent capitalism as we know it, he gave us Cybermen wearing shag carpets (called "Cybershades") with no explanation for their existence, and he had the Doctor using the TARDIS to tow the Earth. As a writer he may be great, but as a science-fiction writer he was just a mess.

Watching an RTD episode sadly could often feel like reading a story written by an eight-year-old. You know, the type of story where "this happened, then this other thing happened, then all of a sudden this happened, but then magically things changed and everything was okay again." Witness, for instance, the final story of series 3, which I suffered through again the other night. The Master sets up a giant network that sends signals through cellphones to control people. That's fine; the Master has always used hypnosis and mind control to manipulate people, right back to his very first episode back in 1971. But then, in the final episode of the series, we discover that it's actually a "psychic network." Umm, okay, fine. The word "psychic" usually refers to things like telepathy and clairvoyance, but I guess I can accept it as a vehicle for mind control. Now, meanwhile, the Master uses the "aging" function on his laser screwdriver to age the Doctor, eventually by a thousand years or so, so that he's a shrunken shrivelled CGI creation so small he can be locked inside a birdcage. Ah, but Martha Jones spends a year travelling the world spreading rumours that she's collecting pieces for a special gun to kill the Master, but actually telling everyone she meets about the Doctor, so that at a particular time everyone (except for the one single person in the world that they don't want to know about all this, who still believes the rumours about the gun that everyone else knows is false) will just stand around saying the Doctor's name, and because their cellphones (which they're not using) have this link to the psychic satellite system, everyone saying the Doctor's name will magically cause the birdcage to disappear and cause the Doctor to magically be restored and magically have temporary telekinetic powers and magically defeat the Master and have you noticed the number of times I've referred to things happening "magically" because that is literally the only explanation we are given. RTD clearly thinks that just using the word "psychic" is enough to justify the use of any magical powers in the story.

Now, the frustrating thing is that this is deliberate. He's writing in this style deliberately. There's a quote from RTD's book The Writer's Tale where, discussing that story, he says:

"I can see how annoying that looks. I can see how maddening it must be, for some people. Especially if you're imposing really classical script structures and templates on that episode, even unconsciously. I must look like a vandal, a kid or an amateur… The simple fact is, all those things were planned. All of them were my choice. They're not lazy, clumsy or desperate. They're chosen. I can see more traditional ways of telling those stories, but I'm not interested. I think the stuff that you gain from writing in this way – the shock, the whirlwind, the freedom, the exhilaration – is worth the world. I've got this sort of tumbling, freewheeling style that somersaults along, with everything happening now - not later, not before, but now, now, now. I've made a Doctor Who that exists in the present tense. It's happening now, right in front of your eyes! If you don't like it, if you don't join in with it then… blimey, these episodes must be nonsensical. But those classical structures can be seen in Primeval, in Demons, in Merlin, in all of them – and yet we stand with millions more viewers. And I think that's partly why." (Source)

The problem is that he's fundamentally wrong, and it actually exposes RTD's failings as a writer. It's easy to write a story and then pull a solution out of nowhere. It's not exhilarating or exciting, it's frustrating. The challenge is to write a story in which all the pieces are on-screen, and yet you can't see how they all fit together. That's why a well-written murder mystery is so fun to read or watch - because we have access to all the clues and key information, and when the detective gathers everyone in the room and explains what this clue and that clue meant, that Aha! or Oh My Gosh! moment as the pieces all come together, that is exciting. You've heard of Chekhov's Gun, the idea that if you introduce a gun in the first act, it must be fired in the third. The point being made is that you should avoid introducing unnecessary elements that don't play a part in the story, but there's another rule that's implied by the concept: if a gun is to be fired in the third act, it needs to be introduced in the first. We need to be able to see all the pieces in play before they become important. That's how drama works. You should be spending the time watching the drama thinking "I wonder how this will resolve itself," and once it's finished, think "well, that's the only way it could have resolved itself." The principles of dramatic writing have been in place for several thousand years, and for good reason: because they work. You should always be careful before abandoning those principles, and RTD has clearly not been. As a result, his stories really are a mess.

What makes it worse, of course, is RTD's general self-satisfaction with how good he is. You can see it in the above quote, where he says that his writing style is responsible for the show being more successful than Primeval, Demons, or Merlin. The thing is, I've not seen the other two, but I have seen Primeval, and while it's an interesting enough diversion, it's not that good. Doctor Who can be, and often is, really good, but that's in spite of RTD's style of writing, not because of it. I watch the companion Doctor Who Confidential documentary series, and one of the hallmarks of RTD's appearances on that show was that any time he discussed any story idea, he always defends it with a "how can you not do that?" Daleks fighting Cybermen - "how can you not do that?" Bringing every single recurring character from the last four series for one big story - "how can you not do that?" Giant Cyberman roaming the streets of Victorian London over Christmas - "how can you not do that?" The thing is, he always uses that phrase when describing a scene that sounds like it could be awesome, but proved to be awful. That's the stuff that you write as a fanboy imagining "that would be cool to see." But as a mature writer, you need to move past the fanboy influence and consider whether some exciting concept is actually a good idea, or just something that would be cool to see but ultimately nonsensical. RTD never seemed to learn to make that judgement.

Sadly, the problems with RTD's writing style were on full display in The End of Time. RTD's final story, the final story for David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor, displayed all of RTD's strengths as a writer, but sadly was overpowered by his weaknesses. RTD really is strong in the small emotional moments, and indeed, pretty much any scene where the Doctor and companion Wilf just sat and talked was magical - the scene in the cafe where the Doctor described regeneration as a death, the scene on the spaceship where Wilf talked about being in a blizzard of bullets in Palestine, or the scene where the Doctor rails against Wilf after hearing the four knocks, all these moments would be some of the best in new Who. But they're paired with an absurd story that frankly feels like RTD is throwing into the episode every unused story idea he never had a chance to use. So we get a moment of the Doctor puzzling over the Ood's rapid development, but that's not relevant to the plot. We get a moment of mystery with the TARDIS's appearance in a stained glass window, but that has nothing to do with anything. We get everyone in the universe dreaming about the Master, but that's quickly forgotten about once Wilf meets the Doctor. We get the Master recreated by a mysterious cult of Saxon-worshippers whose existence was never before referred to (although RTD claims that he always intended, right back while making Last of the Time Lords, that they would be the means for the Master's rebirth) and which is never referred to again after they bring the Master back. We get the Master as an insane homeless animal, at this point completely devoid of any connection to the suave manipulative character portrayed by Delgado and Ainley. We get the Naismiths, a couple of characters whose sole purpose in the story is to bring the Master where he needs to be for the story to take place, but then get forgotten about because they seem to have no plans of their own to pursue. We get an absurd cliffhanger where the Master remakes the entire population of Earth in his own image, but that gets resolved very quickly because it's not relevant to the main story, which is the return of the Time Lords. We get Donna remembering the Doctor, something we previously learned would kill her if it happened, but actually it just gives her a headache, but when she gets pursued by a number of duplicate-Masters, her brain emits a shockwave to incapacitate the Masters attacking her, and as an explanation the Doctor says "Did you think I would leave her defenceless" and that is literally the only explanation we get of that, but now she absolutely can't ever remember the Doctor or else she will die for real this time. I remember reading a review (which I sadly cannot find now) which broke down the story to identify ten or fifteen different points where the episode is going in one direction, then abandons it because "we're telling a different story now," moves in that direction, then abandons that story for another new story. The End of Time was phenomenally sloppy writing, and hugely disappointing that David Tennant, who really was an excellent Doctor, would get saddled with that terrible script for his final story.

Still, we had the new series, with Steven Moffat as head writer and a new Doctor in Matt Smith, to look forward to. Matt Smith proved to be phenomenal, and by the end of his first story I think he had won over most of the naysayers. But personally it was really Steven Moffat that I was worried about. Sure, he'd been great when he was writing a single story each series, but how would he cope when he had to write six episodes and oversee the rest of the series? And the end result was, I thought, pretty impressive. After all, there were a lot of excellent episodes - I would point to The Eleventh Hour, The Time of Angels/Flesh and Blood, Amy's Choice, Vincent and the Doctor, and The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, as being genuinely excellent episode, with the Vincent van Gogh episode in particular as being one of the most extraordinary and unique episodes I've ever seen the show do. Even The Lodger, one of the mid-level episodes of the series story-wise, was the vehicle for some of the best comedy ever presented by new Who (much funnier than the awful comedy of Love and Monsters, for instance). And even when the show wasn't great - say, in Victory of the Daleks, or The Vampires of Venice, which were the low points of the series for me - there was no point where I felt embarrassed to be watching them. They were just average episodes that were perhaps let down by an unfortunate plot development or average scripting.

But what became clear was that Moffat was working at a different level than RTD when it came to the series' arc. Now, the idea of a series-long story arc was a good idea introduced by RTD, and as I remember it was unexpected at the time. But RTD just did not know how to execute big story arcs. If you look at Buffy (which RTD has cited as an influence in his approach to the show), the key to that show's story arcs were that each episode would actively develop the story arc to some degree, but would also stand alone. Some episodes were more arc-oriented, while others were more stand-alone, but they all played their part in feeding into the big story. When RTD tried to have an arc, it mainly consisted of a repeated word or phrase (Bad Wolf, Torchwood, Mister Saxon) or an occasional two-second appearance by an unexpected character, thrown in as clumsy intrusive foreshadowing with no further information provided until the finale. And often the eventual explanations were rubbish ("Bad Wolf" is a phrase sent by future God-like Rose through time to tell current-Rose ... umm, something that has no connection to the actual words being used). Mostly, with an RTD series you could pretty much remove most of the series-arc references from each story without needing to change either the individual episodes or the finales themselves, which is not the sign of a well-developed ongoing story. They typically didn't actually serve any narrative significance, they just served as teasers. (The only exception I can think of was in series 2 - the events of Tooth and Claw and the Doctor's behaviour led to the establishment of Torchwood. But even there, it's a marginal reference, and could easily be omitted without anyone noticing.)

But with Moffat, his story arc was absolutely ingrained into the design of the series. The first story was sparked by the mysterious crack-in-the-wall that would prove to be central to the series, by the end of the fifth episode we knew what the cracks were, by the end of the ninth we had an indication of what was probably the central cause of the cracks, and by the end of the series the problem was resolved. Indeed, the cracks played an active part in the resolution of several major stories in the series. This was not a minor easily-forgotten mystery, but the problem that the entire series was working towards resolving. And that is dramatically satisfying.

But it's interesting because, looking at it objectively, Moffat's finale bore a lot of similarities to RTD finales, similarities in areas that I have criticised RTD for. It indulged in returning villains, had an absurdly huge threat (seriously, the universe nearly ended), and ultimately resorted to a reset button to undo the story. Plus, at one point someone brought a person who had ceased to exist back into existence simply by declaring that they remember the person - which doesn't seem that different to the way RTD restored the Doctor through people chanting his name. So why am I okay with Moffat's story but not RTD's stories? And it's here that the advantages of Moffat's writing skill becomes evident, because Moffat's finale works a lot better than any of RTD's, even though it contains all these superficial similarities.

The returning villains worked partly because, while they were central to the story, they weren't the actual threat in the story, so they were used very differently to normal. They had an important role to play, certainly, gathering for the opening of the Pandorica, but for most they were just cameo appearances. Indeed, in the actual finale episode the returning villains were reduced to a single random Dalek, who was severely weakened (at one point he shoots the Doctor in the chest, yet the Doctor survives), who is dispensed after only 15 minutes, and who wasn't even the most important part of that opening 15 minutes. Instead, for a story in which the Doctor is jumping through time to prevent the end of the universe, it's a surprisingly small story, focused pretty much on the relationships between the Doctor, Amy, Rory, and River.

Similarly Amy remembering the Doctor into existence works a lot better than the magical de-aging of the Doctor in Last of the Time Lords, mostly because Moffat was sufficiently vague about what was going on - or rather, the explanation we were given was demonstrably not quite accurate - which gave him enough room to work. The Doctor may have described what the cracks were doing as "erasing people from existence," but it's clear that that is another "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey" explanation, and what is actually happening is something more complicated. After all, people who are erased by the cracks still existed to some degree - or at least, the consequences of their past actions are still present. The Byzantium still crashed even though the angel that crashed it never existed, Amy's engagement ring was still around even though her fiancé supposedly never existed, and indeed Amy was somehow still around although her parents had been erased. So the Doctor's "erased from existence" explanation may be the quick and easy explanation, but the show itself seems to say that it's not the full answer. It's probably almost more accurate to say that the cracks simply erased all memory of people that have been captured by the crack, so that it were like they never existed, not that they actually did never exist. Therefore, there is sufficient vagueness around what the cracks really did that it's easy for Moffat to find the necessary space to allow people to be remembered. Plus, it's clear that this solution was not just Moffat pulling a solution out of nowhere in the way that RTD would do. This was absolutely ingrained into the fabric of the story. The concept of "remembering" someone into existence may only have been specifically stated in the previous episode (in a different context, that of explaining Rory's mysterious reappearance after being absorbed by the cracks), but with that knowledge, it's easy to see that that's what the Doctor was trying to do with Amy at the end of episode 9. And the Doctor's efforts to ensure that Amy remembered him were clearly established by that somewhat incongruous scene back in Flesh and Stone that was explained in the finale. The simple fact is, we don't quite know what the rules are for people who are erased by cracks in time and therefore, as the writer, Moffat can make up whatever rules he likes for how the cracks work. All we need as a viewer is for the necessary rules to be established before they're needed to resolve the problems. Moffat clearly knew how to do that, and did it well. RTD didn't.

Looking at the episode, I mostly just loved it because there is a joy to Moffat's writing that was never there in RTD's episodes. It was fun to watch. I was giddy with excitement for the first 15 minutes of the finale episode, watching the Doctor leap forward and backward through time, rescuing his past self. I wasn't sitting there wondering why I ever liked this show, as I so often would do with an RTD story (especially an RTD finale). Instead, I was just excited to watch someone who was using the show's format with intelligence and wit. Just look at the last episode. The episode starts with mysteries, both big - how did Amy get inside the Pandorica instead of the Doctor? - and small - why did someone steal Amelia's drink? After the credits come, we start getting answers to those questions, along with more mysteries - Why does the Doctor keep leaving and then coming back to give more information? And why is he wearing a fez and carrying a mop?* So now the simple act of the Doctor putting on a fez or picking up a mop become exciting, because they serve as signposts pointing towards the solution to questions we had. That's what happens when you take the time to set things up, rather than adopting RTD's "tumbling, free-wheeling style" - it becomes exciting because you can see the pieces coming together.

* (EDIT - 5 November 2010: I was watching Silver Nemesis last night (which is really not good) and had rather a shock. In one early scene, the Seventh Doctor and Ace are walking through a room filled with ancient relics, rather like a museum, when the Doctor suddenly picks up and puts on a fez, immediately followed by picking up a mop. It's far too close to what happened in The Big Bang to be coincidental, but why would Moffat make such an obscure reference to a story as bad as Silver Nemesis? I found that interesting.)

Now, I freely recognise that the time travel shenanigans could become a bit of a problem in the future. After all, in Blink, the Doctor at least had external information from Sally Sparrow to help rescue himself, while in The Big Bang future-Doctor rescues past-Doctor in order for past-Doctor to become future-Doctor to rescue past-Doctor, and the circularity of that logic with no intervention by an outside party could become an issue - the Doctor could easily use that wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey approach to escape from any inescapable situation. Moffat may have written himself into a position here where he risks of dissolving any dramatic tension in future. So we'll keep an eye on how things develop in this area in the future, but for the moment, it's still fun to watch.

It comes down to this: I love Doctor Who, and have done for 21 years, ever since I sat down to watch The Twin Dilemma (shudder) out of curiosity after reading a newspaper article about how Colin Baker flopped as the Doctor. It's not quite my favourite show, but it's pretty close. I'm excited that it's still around, thrilled that it is so popular, and recognise RTD's essential role in bringing that about. But mostly I'm glad that now we've got someone behind the show approaching it with maturity and intelligence, someone who is straining to test the boundaries and limits of a show that seemingly has none, and someone who knows that it's not a good idea to do stuff just because "how can you not?" The most surprising thing about the finale was the fact that the mystery underpinning the line, "Silence will fall," remained unresolved, leaving that question to be explored next series. And I for one am excited to see where Steven Moffat will take us. Judging by this series, it will be somewhere thrilling.

(Incidentally, Moffat's playing with time travel reminds me of another very good Doctor Who novel, "The Sands of Time" by Justin Richards (available on the BBC Doctor Who website along with some other very good Who novels) that also played with time travel. The story opens with the Doctor and his companions arriving in 1896 London, one of the companions is kidnapped, and as they hunt for her they encounter someone who recognises them and invites them to a mummy unwrapping. When they attend the unwrapping, they're shocked to find the 4000-year-old mummy is their missing companion. As the story progresses from there, they jump between 2000BC, 1896, 1926, and 1996, visiting some time-periods multiple times. It's a very enjoyable story, and worth reading.)

Revenge of Suspense, Laughter, Violence, Hope, Heart, Nudity, Sex, Happy Endings... Mainly Happy Endings

2010-06-22T20:12:00.000+12:00

So here's the thing.

It is rather an impressive feat to manage to be a jerk even when you are explicitly trying not to be.

Last year, I posted about my experiences while queueing for film festival tickets, and my annoyance at these two guys who parked their car on the forecourt in front of the ticket office, sat in their car for a couple of hours, and felt that this entitled them to take the front position in the queue. I also mentioned how angry I was, both at them for being jerks, and at myself for letting them take that front place in the queue. So this year I was ready, I've spent the last few weeks psyching myself up for this. If they did the same thing this year, I would wait until they left their car and tried to claim front place, and then I would refuse to accept their claim. I would send them to the back of the queue, with (I assumed) the support of those around me. (I would have discussed it with people ahead of time.)

So it was 6am, I was walking to the ticket office, I could see it at the end of the street, and it was empty. Not a soul was visible, no cars, nothing. And then, as I watched, a minute away from the ticket office, a car pulled up, but not on the forecourt. A guy got out and put some box-shaped object on the ground in front of the ticket office, then went back to his car and brought another out to stack on top of the first object. As I walked up, I saw that he had two stereo speakers, one on top of the other, and he was putting a jacket around the speakers. And sure enough, this was one of my mortal enemies, and look, there's my other mortal enemy sitting in the car.

So the guy looks at me and comments that this was their "person," that they decided "not to be jerks" this year by parking on the forecourt, and rather they had made this person as their stand-in holding their place while they sat in their car in the car park a few metres away. Well, I wasn't expecting this exact situation, but I was still mentally prepared to take a position on this issue. "No," I said, "you cannot save a place with a stereo. If someone wants to wait in the queue and save a place for someone else, that's one thing. But inanimate objects do not get to save places for people." I told them how annoyed I was at their actions in the past, and I felt that their actions this year were just a further example of inappropriate behaviour.

So they tried to defend their actions.
"But it's cold," they said.
"I know it's cold. I know because I'm cold."
"Well you could bring your car and wait in it if you wanted," they said.
"No, because that's just not how you queue. Plus, if everyone queued in their car then pretty quickly we'd have thirty cars and a bicycle lined up in front of the ticket office inconveniencing everyone."

So they went, and they sat in the car. Meanwhile I stood out in the cold, standing by the two speakers. I had made my position clear - I did not accept their scarecrow saving their place, and I was planning on moving it out of the way, but I wanted to wait for someone else to come along before I did so. (I felt that I wanted someone else in the queue to support my position that their claim had no validity.) But after five or ten minutes, they must have had a change of heart. One of the two got out of the car, put the two speakers side-by-side to form a makeshift chair, and sat down, where he stayed until the ticket office opened. "Victory," I thought.

Here's the point where they actually became jerks. Since the guy sitting outside was now not in the car, he couldn't listen to the music they had playing. So the other guy opened the doors, turned the stereo up, and proceeded to play some really bad music really loud (certainly much louder than should be allowed at 6.30 in the morning). So here I am, trying to listen to episodes of This American Life on my iPod, but since the show is mostly just talking, even with the volume turned right up, it was hard to focus on Ira Glass's voice with the constant barrage of noise coming from the car. The guy who wasn't in the queue started doing something around his car (I wasn't paying close attention, but it seemed like he was cleaning the windows, which seems like a weird thing to do), before eventually driving away about 7am, only returning shortly before 9am to pick up the speakers and then leave again.

Meanwhile I waited, happy in the knowledge that I had actually won, and at 9am, I bought my tickets. This year I'm going to either 22 or 24 films (depending on how you count them) which makes this the most films I've been to during the festival however you count them. I'm going to be seeing:

* Inside Job

* The Illusionist

* The Concert
* Animal Kingdom
* Four Lions
* The Housemaid
* Once Upon A Time In The West
* Exit Through The Gift Shop
* Cell 211
* Please Give
* The Most Dangerous Man In America
* A Prophet
* The Ghost Writer
* Oceans
* The Two Escobars
* Farewell
* Winter's Bone
* Cyrus
* Splice
* Carlos (Parts One, Two, and Three)
* The Double Hour
* The Red Shoes

There's a lot of films that I'm really excited about. I'm probably most looking forward to Once Upon A Time In The West. I've actually owned it for about five years, purchased solely on the basis of reputation, but just never got around to watching it. But I recently watched Once Upon A Time In America (another film I've owned for years but never actually watched) and loved it, and that reinforced my need to actually start watching Leone. And now I have the opportunity to see one of his best films at the Embassy? That is exciting.

And speaking of classic films, I've also never seen The Red Shoes, which is supposed to be extraordinarily beautiful, and with a new restoration should be a great experience.

I'm also excited to see The Illusionist, the new animated film from the director of the incredible The Triplets of Belleville. That film was quite openly inspired by the comedy movies of Jacques Tati (indeed, in one scenes the characters watch a Tati film), so it's especially exciting that in this film Sylvain Chomet is working from an unused script written by Tati.

I will admit that I am conflicted about including Polanski's new film The Ghost Writer. A friend and I had a debate last week about the film - my friend saying that she would take a principled stand against Polanski (who has, admittedly, done some rather unsavoury things in his lifetime) and refuse to see anything he does. I'm not a big Polanski fan in any case (although Chinatown is really is phenomenal), but The Ghost Writer (which had most of its post-production undertaken by Polanski while on house arrest) has a great cast and has received some really excellent reviews, and if the film were from anyone else, I wouldn't hesitate to see it. And so I don't really see the point in refusing to see the film. I don't really think Polanski cares whether one person in New Zealand refuses to see his film because of something that happened thirty years ago, and for me to refuse to see it would deprive myself of a film that I might enjoy in order to make a point that no-one would notice or care about. And what would be the point in that? So I'm seeing it.

The Two Escobars is a film I would never have thought about seeing but for a coincidence of timing. Although it's not mentioned in the programme listing, the film was produced as part of a highly-acclaimed series of 30 sports-based documentaries intended to commemorate ESPN's 30th anniversary, and the day before the festival programmes came out, my favourite TV critic previewed the upcoming screening of the show in the States with the comment that "It's an incredible film, arguably the high point so far in a series that's been full of award contenders."

Similarly, the programme description of Winter's Bone doesn't sound too fascinating, but a week ago I heard several highly-praising references to the film, first a brief reference in the Firewall and Iceberg podcast, and then an entire segment dedicated to the film in the AV Talk podcast, so I'm excited about that one.

I was toying with the idea of seeing Predicament, the New Zealand film that is having its world premiere as the official opening night film. But when I realised it would clash with Inside Job, the documentary about the recent financial crisis (because yes, I am that boring), my decision was made for me. If Predicament turns out to be any good, I'm sure I'll have other chances to see it.

Then there's the Carlos the Jackal biopic, Carlos. I was uncertain about seeing the film - it's actually three films totalling 5 1/2 hours, and a film at that length can be daunting, especially if the film doesn't work for you. But a quick Google search brought up a lot of rave reviews from the Cannes festival, so it should be good.

Back in 1999, Vincenzo Natali's Cube was one of my favourite films of that year's festival. I don't think I've seen anything of his since then, so it will be interesting to see Splice and get an idea of how he's developed as a filmmaker, especially now he's working with (I assume) a bigger budget.

And then there are the rest. A Prophet is supposed to be incredible, The Double Hour sounds fascinating (although I am anxious about seeing it at the end of a day that features the marathon Carlos), Exit Through the Gift Shop is supposed to be a lot of fun (although I know even less about the film's subject, graffiti artist Banksy, than most people), and the rest of them just sound like they should be enjoyable movies. And then there are all the films I wanted to see but can't get to because of time clashes (a lot of those this year) or just needing to keep the number of films down to a reasonable level. It's been a particularly hard festival this year to make my film selections - and that's a good problem to have.

For me there are two real disappointments around the festival. Having attended the Live Cinema event the last few years (where they screen a silent film with live musical accompaniment), I was a little disappointed by this year's Live Cinema film, which doesn't interest me at all. Still, I wasn't too disappointed until I discovered that, in Auckland, they are showing Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr - one of the best films from one of the masters of silent comedy. Now that would be a great film to see, but sadly the Wellington festival isn't getting it.

The other disappointment is around a film that isn't screening anywhere in the festival. The first time I ever saw Metropolis, it was at a festival screening of the then-new restoration back in 2003. Of course, since then, the complete uncut print of that incredible film has been discovered and, with it currently screening in US cinemas, I had my fingers crossed for a festival screening of the complete Metropolis. Sadly, the film is nowhere to be found in the programme. I was hoping for my first viewing to be on the big screen, but it seems I'll probably need to wait for the Blu-Ray release later this year.

Still, with such a wealth of potentially enjoyable and possibly great films ahead of me, I can't be too disappointed. I'm anticipating a good festival this year. I have my tickets, now I just want it to start.

Rarrrrrrrrrrrrggghhh!

2010-06-19T17:39:00.000+12:00

So here's the thing.

I think I may be a monster. I'm worried that I may be a horrible, cruel, unsympathetic person.

Let me explain: this whole thing has arisen out of an episode of the This American Life radio show. I've written in the past about my love for the show, and two years on from writing that post, I remain utterly fascinated by it. I look forward to hearing each new episode, I'm still working my way through the 400-odd episode backlog of the show, and it still hasn't lost its hold on me. I love it, and if you've never heard it, I strongly encourage you to go to the website and just start listening. It's really great.

There's one story in particular that I would encourage you to listen to. It's from episode #363: Enforcers, and the story runs from 5:30 to 35:30 in the episode. So it's a long story (half an hour), but it's worth it. Feel free to go away, listen to it, and then come back.

Okay, so hopefully you've listened to it. If you haven't here's a quick summary. These three guys run this reverse-scam on someone running a Nigerian email scam. The three guys pose as a church, and then when the person running the scam (who incidentally really is Nigerian) asks for money, they tell him that if he travels to the neighbouring country of Chad, the representative from their church's mission will be able to meet him there to give him the money. Now, bear in mind, as far as the scammer knows, he's stealing from a church, taking money that is intended to help the people of the region. So the scammer travels across the border into Chad. But then the church's representative supposedly has difficulties getting to to where the scammer is, so the scammer has to go further to find the representative. And so slowly they draw the guy deeper and deeper into Chad, further and further away from home until finally he's 1400 miles away from home, in a city on the edge of Chad less than 100 miles from war-torn Darfur. In other words, this is a bad situation for the scammer. And then they left him there. For weeks, months even, constantly emailing him "it won't be long" to keep him around in this very dangerous situation. And he was apparently in real danger, but still he waited and waited for his money to come. Eventually the three guys got bored with him, so they emailed him and told him they had heard that his mother was dead. The scammer no doubt had a few moments of horror, but eventually got in contact with his family and discovered it was not true. And so the story ends, the scammer knows he's been played, goes home, and resumes scamming people.

Anyway, I loved that story, I genuinely think it's a fascinating story. In fact I told it to a few friends of mine, none of whom expressed any concerns about the story until I reached the part about the dead mother. Then people tended to speak up - "Oh, that's gone too far, that's not funny at all." Which I don't understand - I mean, I realise that hearing that your mother is dead is not good news, but it's not like she's really dead, and as soon as he gets in contact with his family (which you know became his first priority on receiving the news) he'll discover the lie. But the other thing I don't get is why it's the dead mother story that goes too far. I mean, why didn't my friends say anything when they abandoned the guy in a dangerous town right beside a war-torn country. Now, my friends all claimed that they had been concerned at that point, they just hadn't said anything. Maybe. But it was the dead mother story that prompted them to speak up, which would suggest that they thought that was worse than leaving the guy in Chad to begin with. And that I don't get. I don't see why telling an easily and quickly disproved lie, even one as personal and upsetting as "your mother is dead" is that much worse than putting someone in a life-threatening situation.

Anyway, there a reason why this has come up again, a couple of years after the episode aired. An interview that TAL host Ira Glass recently did has been posted on the show's website, and there's one point in the interview where they ask about instances where someone thinks they'll be the subject of a positive story, and it turns into a negative story. Ira's response?

It was a story we did about those guys who - you know those Nigerian e-mail scammers? There are guys who reverse-scammed those scammers, and a bunch of them got in contact with the radio show, saying "we're doing this really funny reverse-scam against those Nigerian scammers", and the reverse-scam basically involved - they tried to get one of those guys into a war zone in Sudan, and he nearly died, and it wasn't funny at all, and the guys seemed like monsters. But they didn't seem able to tell.

I remembered the show well, and I remember that at the time Ira wasn't entirely impressed with the guys - he clearly felt they had gone too far - but "monsters"? Really? Had the story been that unsympathetic to the reverse-scammers, had they really been presented that badly, and I completely missed it because I was on their side? So I listened to it again, and indeed the reverse-scammers really were presented very negatively, pretty much as monsters - laughing as they read his emails about his difficulties and troubles in Chad. And I missed that, because I had no problem with anything that they did.

Now, it's not like I'm entirely devoid of sympathy. Admittedly I don't have any sympathy for the scammer, nor to be honest do I have any sympathy for the scammer's victims (most of whom are, to be honest, fooled by their own greed). But listening to the story, I felt a lot of sympathy for a lot of people, chiefly the people who have to live in the town normally, whose lives are in this horrible dangerous town. I can't imagine how terrifying it must be to have to spend your life there, knowing that the prospect of a violent death is that close. So I do have sympathy, I just don't feel any sympathy for the scammer. This is a guy who came to the town, and then chose to stay there knowing it was dangerous, because of his own greed. The three guys baiting him didn't force him to stay, they just held out a choice, "our money or your life," and he wanted the money. He could have left at any time, but he chose to stay because he wanted to steal from a church money that was intended to help people. And he made it out alive - I would probably feel differently had he died in this situation, but since he didn't, so I don't need to worry about moral issues about responsibility and can just enjoy the story. So I can't understand why this guy gets any sympathy. Why are the three guys baiting him monsters, am I a monster to being on their side, and why is the thieving bastard trying to steal money intended for charitable purposes not a monster? I honestly can't understand it.

I mean, there's a little coda to the story where the scammer actually manages to do worse than try to steal charitable money from a church. Some time later, the guys are contacted again by the same scammer, and this time they pose as a father with a sick child. At one point, the guys tell the scammer "I need the money for an operation to save the life of my child," and the scammer says "give me your money, and the money you make will pay for the operation." The scammer was actively trying to steal money believing that without that money a child would die. And I don't see any ambiguity about that. That is evil. Pure evil. And from my point of view, someone as evil and hateful as that deserves everything that he went through. Every single moment of terror, of pain, of grief, all deserved. And I find it bizarre that anyone would argue that there is anyone else in the story that deserves the label of "monster". And yet the guy who makes the show that raised the whole issue thinks I'm viewing this story from the entirely wrong point of view.

So this is what I'm grappling with. Who are the monsters in this story, and if it's the three guys (which it seems is the position of both Ira and those friends that I told the story to), then what does it say about me that I am on their side? Does that make me a cruel and unfeeling and vindictive monster because I can't see how terrible they are? I like to think I'm a generally good nice person, and while I occasionally joke about hating all of humanity, I don't think I'm that bad. But who knows, perhaps my grumpy-old-man act isn't as much of an act as I thought it was. Perhaps it's hardened me to the point that I can easily dismiss the suffering of another person with a response of "he deserved it, the end." And the thought of actually being that person scares me.

1202 minutes

2010-03-07T18:33:00.002+13:00

So here's the thing.

It was a big surprise when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced back last June that they were going to be having ten Best Picture nominees for this year's Oscars, rather than the five nominees that have been standard for the last sixty-odd years. The main reason for the change was to address concerns that the films being nominated just had no popular appeal, and that the nominations were going to more elitist films rather than popular entertainments. Just look at last year, when nominations went to films about a gay local politician or one guy interviewing another guy, while at the same time a well-made and hugely popular Batman film was completely ignored. Reduced viewerships for the Oscars were blamed on that fact - no-one is watching the Oscars because most people haven't even heard of Slumdog Millionaire, while not even the host of the Oscars saw The Reader, and therefore no-one cares enough about the films being nominated to see which one wins. Hopefully an expanded list of nominees would allow for some of the bigger popular films to get on the list, and therefore hopefully prompt fans of these films to watch the ceremony.

And it does seem to have worked - of the ten nominated films, five have grossed over $US100m. While the list does feature a number of the usual smaller, lower-profile films, there are a lot of films that people will have heard of and most likely seen. But the funny thing is that it wasn't necessary. It's easy to identify the five films that would have been nominated in any normal year, and of those five films, two (Avatar and Inglourious Basterds) were genuinely popular hits with a substantial fanbase. In other words, they expanded the number of nominees to allow for the inclusion of more popular films in a year when the popular films were going to be nominated anyway.

[Comments on all ten Best Picture films - Avatar; The Hurt Locker; Up In The Air; Precious (Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire); Inglourious Basterds; A Serious Man; Up; District 9; The Blind Side; and An Education - after the jump.]

Sadly, Avatar's nomination was inevitable. They just can't ignore the highest-grossing film in history. I've already said everything I have to say about Avatar, and I don't intend to repeat myself. However, I do want to say that, despite all the hype about these Oscars being about Avatar versus Hurt Locker, I honestly don't see Avatar winning. There has definitely been a rising level of awareness about the film's many flaws - its plot, its characters, its dialogue, its acting. And I don't see the Oscar voters going for the empty spectacle of Avatar. Now, to be fair, many of the problems with Avatar are also present in Titanic, another largely empty spectacle film with clunky dialogue and clichéd characters, which won the Oscar over the much-more deserving LA Confidential. But Titanic was very Oscar-friendly, a lush detailed period love story that was always going to appeal to the Oscar voters. On the other hand, Avatar is unmistakably a science-fiction film, and no science-fiction film has ever won the Best Picture Oscar. (Indeed, looking through past Best Picture nominees, the only science-fiction films I can see to previously even be nominated are Star Wars and ET the Extra-Terrestrial - both films that were huge hits and held the record for highest-grossing film ever, both films that are much stronger in substance than Avatar was, and both films that lost.) So I'm not expecting a heavily-flawed science-fiction film like Avatar to win, no matter how big the hype. Oscar just doesn't work like that.

I much preferred The Hurt Locker, the new film from Kathryn Bigelow (who, as everyone hyping the Oscars reminds us at every opportunity, is James Cameron's ex-wife). While it seems strange to think of the director of Point Break having made an Oscar-calibre film, Kathryn Bigelow has done just that. The Hurt Locker focuses on a bomb disposal unit in Iraq, coming to the end of a one-year tour of duty. After years of hectoring Iraq War films yelling "No blood for oil," it's nice to see a film that completely ignores the political issues around the war and instead just looks at what the experience is like for those people in the middle of this mess. There's no real overarching plot to the film, just a collection of intense moments as our characters get into the padded suit and walk up to yet another bloody bomb, while the days slowly count down toward the day when they can go home. And while the movie's end isn't exactly original, it's still an astonishing and skillful piece of movie-making.

So often action films seem to think that it's exciting when there are huge explosions and when characters run around with machine guns spraying bullets into everything and everyone in the room - although such excess usually ends up becoming tiresome. (See any film by Michael Bay.) So it's seems strange to watch a film like The Hurt Locker, and realise that it manages to be the most exciting action film that I've seen in a long time, despite the near complete absence of such scenes. If anything, the typical action scene doesn't seem to interest Bigelow - in one scene early in the film, Bigelow seems focused less on the big explosion going on, and more on the impact of the explosion on the surrounding environment. Meanwhile, in one of the film's best action sequences, the main characters find themselves caught under fire hiding in a ditch in the middle of nowhere, each side slowly deliberately shooting at their enemy one single shot at a time. It's intense and exciting, and probably the best action scene I've seen in a long time, largely because Bigelow is aware that it's not just the shooting guns that make a scene thrilling, but the suspense that builds in the in-between moments. And Bigelow's ability to construct a scene is quite incredible. A lot of films lately have used the jerky hand-held look and quick cutting style, but only a few have managed to get it to really work. The Hurt Locker is one of those films. Bigelow clearly knows what effect she's looking for from the audience and how to achieve it, piecing together tiny snatches of film from distinctive and noticeable angles, not to be showy, but to emphasise this sense of isolation and vulnerability on the part of the people in the situation. It's exceptional work. I will confess that I have pretty much just dismissed Bigelow's work in the past, largely because of Point Break, but the strength of this film makes me think I've been unfair to her. Someone who can make a film this well, this skillfully, really is talented and deserving of attention.

It's also interesting to see a film this good with so little star power. Sure, it has a few recognisable actors - Guy Pierce, Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, Evangeline Lilly from Lost - in cameo roles, but among the actors that are on-screen for more than five minutes, there's no-one that you know. In particular, the lead role is taken by Jeremy Renner, who seems to have been working solidly for the last 10 or 15 years but who I don't recall ever seeing. But in this film, he gives the character a listless quality as he waits for the next adrenaline buzz that is compelling to watch.

The truth is, all the attention of these Oscars has been focused on Avatar versus The Hurt Locker, Cameron versus Bigelow. But I don't think this is actually the battle. If The Hurt Locker has competition, it's not from that disappointing science-fiction spectacle. While I do think The Hurt Locker is the likely winner, it does have a few points that may count against it - its box-office has been really low (only about $12 million in the US), and it doesn't have any star power. Plus, while the film offers an different view of the Iraq war to that of previous films, it feels to a degree like a film that is a few years out of date, like it could have been made in 2006 or 2007.

Which is why, if The Hurt Locker has competition, it's most likely to be from Up In The Air - a higher-grossing film (about $70 million), with a genuine movie star in George Clooney, and a film that at least circles around the big issue of the last year or two, the consequences of the economic meltdown on individuals.

Jason Reitman's first feature film, a comedy called Thank You For Smoking, was one of my film highlights of 2005 so, even though I wasn't as much a fan of his follow-up, Juno, I was still excited to see Reitman's newest film. And I liked Up In The Air. George Clooney plays a man whose job is to travel from city to city, telling downsized staff in different companies that they have been fired. He lives his life in airplanes, airports, and hotels (he's only home 40 nights a year). Mostly, Clooney just loves the status, the special treatment that comes with being a preferred customer (when he meets Vera Fermiga's character, their foreplay involves comparing frequent flyer cards, and my gosh does it turn them on), and his sole goal in life is to accumulate 10 million frequent-flier miles - a target only six other people have met. But he also loves the freedom that comes with his lifestyle, the fact that he is utterly unencumbered by anything.

The film's not really plot-driven (at least, not until the third act); instead, it's much more of an exploration of this character. The challenge for the film is that the central character is, at his core, a rather unsympathetic person - someone who consciously deliberately avoids any genuine emotional contact with people - so it requires an actor with Clooney's charisma just to make the film work. Fortunately, they did have Clooney, so we are able to like him despite his deliberately distanced nature. (The fact that Clooney, who has a bit of a reputation for being something of a playboy free of connections, seems to a degree to be almost playing himself certainly helps the film.) Of the remaining actors, Anna Kendrick, playing the out-of-college kid being trained by Clooney, is most enjoyable, and demonstrates that she deserves a much better career than being a supporting character in the Twilight films. Clooney and Kendrick work well together, and it helps that the film gives them some fun material - both clearly enjoying their characters' varying approaches to detachment and relationship both professionally and personally.

One thing that did surprise me was that the film didn't really have as much to do with the current economic situation as I had expected. Sure, the film includes sequences where real people who have been recently fired appear on-screen and reenact their responses, and there is one scene where Clooney's boss (Jason Bateman, Yay!) comments that business is booming thanks to the number of companies firing people in the recession. But other than that, it's a film where its mild topicality seems to be coincidental, not intentional. It has a few minor jabs at businesses in general - in particular the idea of bosses not even having the decency to look someone in the eyes when they fire them - but there's nothing particularly current about it. The film is too focused on Clooney's character to look at the wider world.

It has its flaws - as happens too often, the third act (where Clooney goes to his sister's wedding) almost seems from a different film. When you've spent the entire film on the road, jumping from place to place, to suddenly be stuck in one place for twenty or thirty minutes, spending time with people whose prior presence in the film was limited to a short phone call (if that), just to set in motion the events of the climax, felt overly artificial. And there's this weird idea that Clooney is a successful conference speaker in his off-hours, with people paying hundreds and thousands of dollars to hear him espousing his isolated lifestyle. And I simply didn't believe that - the notion of being able to pick up everything and leave immediately may be appealing to the Don Drapers of this world, but not to most of us. I mean, most motivational speakers that I've seen (admittedly only on TV commercials) seem to focus on teaching you how to have a successful personal life, not how to escape from it. So when Clooney talks about how we are tied down not just by our stuff, but by our relationships, he's preaching a viewpoint that I cannot believe would get the kind of positive response from the audience that we see. Plus there's one revelation late in the film that doesn't quite work, not necessarily because it's a surprise, but because it strained credibility when compared that character's earlier behaviour.

Still, the film gets credit for surprising me. At the start of the film, I found myself predicting that the film would end in one of two ways. So I was relieved to find that the film surprised me with an ending that wasn't as ironic or as life-affirming as either of those I was imagining, but nevertheless an ending that was absolutely right for the film.

Then there's Precious: Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire. This is a film that has acquired quite a reputation for being a devastating, heartbreaking, powerful film. Given the film's subject matter (it involves incest, rape, abuse, and so on) I went in fully realising that I was probably not going to enjoy the film. But at least I was expecting to admire the film, respect it. But I didn't. I haaaated the film. The last time I hated a film this much, I wrote two posts about how much I hated it. I'm almost dumbfounded by Precious, unable to comprehend how this film, so completely clumsy and awkward and misjudged and generally awful in almost every aspect, has received any praise at all, let alone the excessive effusive outpouring that it has received.

Precious (which you may be interested to know is based on a novel called 'Push' by a woman called Sapphire) is the story of Claireece 'Precious' Jones, a morbidly-obese illiterate teenager who has been regularly raped by her drug-addict father since she was a young child. She's now pregnant with her second child to her father, while her first child has Down syndrome. Her father having apparently left in the last few months (he only appears in a short rape flashback), Precious lives with her mother, who is angry at Precious for "stealing her man" and so constantly abuses her, physically, emotionally, and sexually. So Precious' lot in life in not great, but perhaps, just perhaps, with the help of a lesbian schoolteacher called Blu Rain and Mariah Carey pretending to be ugly, she may be able to move on to a happier life.

There's a scene about halfway through the film, when Precious goes to see her new social worker, that really shows my issues with the film. The social worker really is played by Mariah Carey, and director Lee Daniels really did make a conscious decision to make Mariah's social worker character look almost excessively plain. By which I don't just mean that she has really bad hair (although she does) or looks like she wears no makeup (which is also true) or that she just looks stressed and tired with bags under her eyes (which is how she looks). What I mean is that she has a moustache glued onto her upper lip. Really. And that's an example of the film's key problem - the filmmakers just didn't know when to stop. Bad hair, no makeup, bags under the eyes? She's still just not plain enough. We need her to look worse. We need her to have a moustache just to remove any doubt about how bad she looks. But the scene doesn't stop there. About thirty seconds after we meet Mariah and her moustache, Precious informs us of the name of her first child, the child with Down syndrome. The child's name is Mongo, because it's short for "mongoloid". Because why would you ever be considerate or compassionate when naming your Down syndrome incest-rape child?

It was at this point that I realised the film had completely lost me. It's a film that is so ugly, so depressing, so unrelentingly excessive in its wallowing in a kind of misery porn that my ability to believe the reality of the film is destroyed. I understand that there are people that do go through much, perhaps most, of what Precious goes through, and as a well-educated middle-class white man raised in a loving family in New Zealand, I can't exactly comment on the realism of the situation. But the film goes so far in stacking up every conceivable awfulness that it strains credibility. It's not just that she has a Down syndrome child from being raped by her father (I could believe that), but they push it to that extra degree, actually naming the child after an derogatory term for his disability. And that breaks the film, because they pushed too far and made it unbelievable. And they do that with everything in the film, and the miseries just pile on and on as it progresses. It's almost as if they tried to put as many problems on Precious as possible so that any viewer having gone through any problem can look at the film and see Precious going through that exact same situation. By the end of the film, when Precious discovers that she has caught AIDS from her now-deceased daughter-raping drug-addict father, it's a plot development that you see coming, not because the film sets the development up, but because it really is the only bad thing left that could happen to Precious but hasn't yet. (And yes, the AIDS diagnosis is technically a spoiler, but does that have any meaning in a film so bad that it's spoiled by its very existence?)

This brings me to the ending where, after two hours of absolute horror, they give us what is clearly intended to be a heartwarming life-affirming happy ending - except that it's easily the most unconvincing happy ending since Notting Hill. Precious finally asserts herself, leaves her mother, and moves on to a new life of independence and free from abuse. Which is fine, until you remember that Precious is only 17-years-old, she's spent the entire film pulling herself from complete illiteracy to a level of sub-literacy, she has no prospects at all, and she has two young children, one with Down syndrome. Oh, and she has AIDS, and it's 1987, so she's probably not living long. It's a happy ending in that at least she's not going to spend every day of the rest of her short life being hit on the head with a vase, but is the standard for a heartwarming happy ending really that low? It's like the film thinks that just telling us "this is a happy ending" is enough for it to be a happy ending, regardless of the reality of the situation. And it's not. The truth of this story is that this girl has pretty much no hope, and is facing a genuine struggle to survive every day for the rest of her life. So where is the happy hopeful ending that this film thinks it has?

As if the awfulness of the film's general story wasn't enough, the actual filmmaking isn't much better. Barely five minutes would pass without there being some moment where I couldn't understand the decisions that the director and editor had made, some moment that just offended me on a purely cinematic artistry level. Sometimes it was an artless and obvious filmmaking decision - witness the way harsh violent abuse scenes are interrupted by unpleasant shots of boiling pigs feet covered in hair, or the scene Precious sits in an office while all around her we see every obvious clichéd piece of news footage (speeches by Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, for instance) projected onto the windowblinds around her. Sometimes a single scene might adopt a particular stylistic approach to shooting that is never replicated in any other scene - it's almost like the night before shooting these scenes Lee Daniels happened to watch a Bourne film or a Robert Altman movie, and so decided to copy the shaky-cam or overlapping dialogue techniques he saw without any understanding of how to make those techniques work or any thought about whether there is anything about this scene that justifies using that style for this scene and no other. Sometimes it was just a weird camera angle or movement. And sometimes the filmmakers seem to have so little idea about what to do that it's as though they've never seen a film before - for instance, in one scene where Precious and her mother fight, the film jumps from normal speed, to a fast speed, to slow-motion, to an inserted photo of Precious and her mother in happier times, and back again, just moving from one speed to another with these photos appearing everywhere. There isn't any rhyme, reason, or rhythm to the editing of this scene - for all we can tell the film editor could have been a monkey randomly hitting buttons on the Avid machine hoping to edit Hamlet. The shooting and editing of that scene is so bad that at one point the mother throws the baby she's holding, and I literally have no idea whether she threw her onto the hard ground (really bad) or onto a soft sofa cushion (bad, but not quite as harmful to the child). The inability of the director and editor to make it clear what is actually going on is astonishing - they seem simply inept in their approach to the film.

Then there are the fantasy sequences, which I believe weren't in the original book, and were an addition for the film. And most of the time, these sequences are fine, although they don't really add to the film. We don't get much from the ten-second shots that show Precious as a movie star, or a pop singer, or even a thin white girl, but we can understand why she would imagine these scenes. But there is one fantasy scene that is really just misconceived and actively intrusive. In the lead-up to the scene, Precious and her mother sit in front of the TV and watch a black-and-white subtitled Italian film (La Ciocara, a 1960 film starring Sophia Loren). Right at that moment, I already don't believe the scene. I don't believe that this is a film that these people would ever watch. (After all, in a later scene, Precious describes a perfectly normal conversation in English between Blu Rain and her partner as sounding like "people on a television programme I don't watch." Yet she watched a subtitled Italian movie?) The only reason for the two to watch the film is the resulting fantasy sequence, where we watch Precious and her mother act out one of their fights as though it were a melodramatic fight scene from that film, complete with a black-and-white picture and subtitled Italian dialogue. It's just a nonsensical moment, where characters behave in unlikely ways for the sole purpose of justifying the inclusion of a bizarre fantasy sequence. How is it possible that no-one thought this was a bad idea?

I think one of my big problems with the film may relate to the fact that both Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry are credited as "presenting" the film. (Basically, what that means is that they were not involved in making the film, but attached their names to it afterwards to help promote the film.) Now, given that these are two of the biggest names in black entertainment, and that they both have a very well known passion for using the media to communicate a social message, and considering the subject matter of the film, it's natural to go into the film expecting it to have something to say about the struggles and problems of an urban underclass. And perhaps it's unfair to have such expectations, but that's what I was expecting. But because the film goes so far, to such excess, I can't take the film's situation seriously. And if I can't take the film's situation seriously, then that absolutely destroys any message that could be taken from the film. I'm a big fan of The Wire, and I realise it's unfair to compare a single film against the greatest television show ever made, but half an episode of that show contains more perceptive comment about race and the consequences of creating an urban underclass than there is in the entire two-hour running length of this film.

Now, the film does have good performances. The actors (yes, including Mariah and Lenny Kravitz) do very well with the incredibly-bad material that they are given. Mo'Nique has obviously received a lot of attention, and everyone knows she'll win the Oscar for her performance as Precious' mother. And it's well deserved - Mo'Nique is absolutely terrifying in the role, but it's always recognisably grounded in her own fears and vulnerabilities. But I get the sense that so much attention has been focused on Mo'Nique that Gabourey Sidibe's performance in the titular role seems to have been overlooked. The nature of the role means that Mo'Nique's performance is very showy, but Sidibe is phenomenal in a role that requires her to be small and withdrawn and beaten down yet hopeful.

But since I don't want to end on a positive note about the film, I want to complain about one last point: the title. Because Precious: Based on the novel 'Push' by Sapphire really is the film's on-screen title. (Well, actually, the title as it first appears on-screen in handwriting is Precious (Base on Nol by Saf), before the illiterate sub-title is translated.) The thing is, I can understand them including a note about the source material on a poster or in adverts or other promotional material, to ensure that fans of the book know what the film is despite the title change. But to have that as the film's actual title is just indulgent. And it's not even a consequence of the change in title. When the film premiered in Sundance, it was called Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire. The title excess was always there, and it was the title change (to avoid confusion with the superhero film Push) that came later. But if you're going to have a title that indulgent in order to claim a literary pedigree, you need a good film to justify that indulgence. And not only is this film not good, it's so bad that it confounds belief. It's badly written, poorly made, and excessive to a point that it actively works against any significance or message that we might otherwise take away from the film. It does have some good performances, but nothing that could justify wasting your time and money to watch this film. It truly is awful. Precious is far and away the worst film of the year.

On the other hand, if I had my choice for the best film of the year, I would choose... well, actually I would choose Where The Wild Things Are. But very close to that film would be Inglourious Basterds. I have a couple of very minor problems with the film (basically, it needed to be even longer, and I wish someone else had been cast for Mike Myers' two-minute cameo), but other than that, it is one of the most electrifying extraordinary pieces of filmmaking I've seen in I-don't-know-how-long. I've already written about Inglourious Basterds back in September, so I don't want to repeat myself too much. The main thing is that, for the first time, I felt that Tarantino had come into his own as a filmmaker, giving us a piece of incredible cinema filled with stunning visuals and masterful camera use, and one where Tarantino displayed an impressive ability in manipulating the audience, experimenting with particular success in building and sustaining tensions. It really is extraordinary, The simple fact is, of the ten films that were nominated, this is far and away my favourite film. It will never in a million years win, and that is a shame.

With ten Best Picture nominees, there's a bit of a question hanging over the film lists. In any other year, five of these films would have fallen short of receiving a nomination. And so we need to wonder - which are the five 'real' nominees, and which five are just lucky to be there? Personally, I think the best way to answer the question is to look at the five nominees for Best Director. While every year there's always one film nominated for Best Director but not Best Picture (and vice versa), the two nominee lists usually track together pretty well. So, applying that idea, the five films above have received a Director nomination, and we can assume that they are most likely the ones that would have been ordinarily nominated. (They're also the five films with the largest number of nominations, which is a nice confirmation of that assumption.) So the remaining five films are probably fortunate to be able to benefit from a bad decision by the Academy.

The film I'm most glad (and surprised) to see benefit from the increased nominee numbers is A Serious Man, the new film from the Coen Brothers, and one of the most enjoyable and darkest comedies I've seen in a long time.

The book of Job is probably one of the books in the Bible that has most inspired authors. A good, pious, just man whose life falls down around him and who grapples with the question of what he did to deserve the suffering that God appears to have inflicted on him - this is a universal story, and something that we all can understand to some degree. In A Serious Man, the brothers Coen transpose the story of Job back to their childhood environment in 1960s Minnesota. Larry Gopnik, a physics professor, is a good, hard-working man on the verge of reaching the security of tenure, when someone starts writing anonymous defamatory letters to the tenure committee about him. There's also an overseas student who probably left an envelope with thousands of dollars on his desk to bribe Larry for a passing grade. Meanwhile, Larry's wife wants a gett so she can leave him for an uncomfortably touchy-feely friend, his dope-smoking son keeps bothering him to fix the aerial so he can watch F Troop, his daughter is stealing from him in order to pay for a nose job, his unwell brother has been crashing on his couch for months, Larry himself may have health problems, he's locked in constant conflict with the Columbia Record Group which is demanding money even though he never joined them, he has boundary disputes with one of his neighbours, he's having dreams about a different nude-sunbathing neighbour, and now he has to pay for the funeral of someone he really didn't like. Meanwhile, his visits to several different rabbis to discover why Hashem is putting him through so many tsuris seem to leave him even more unsatisfied, since the rabbis either refuse to see him, talk about how he needs to look at the parking lot, or tell him strange tales of a message in Hebrew engraved on the teeth of a goy.

In a lot of ways, the film is very much about the conflict between a rational science-based view of the world and a faith-based view that looks for a greater being in control of the world. In one of his earliest scenes, we see Larry in the classroom, a twenty-foot-tall blackboard covered in complex equations, trying to explain the uncertainties and paradoxes created by quantum mechanics by pointing to the example of Schrödinger's cat - an example that Larry himself states that he just doesn't understand. Far from finding science to offer a satisfactory view to the world, Larry seems to find its uncertainties unsettling - after all, if Schrödinger's cat can be both alive and dead at the same time, then how does one get any certainty from science? But then his efforts to seek answers from his Jewish faith don't offer any solace at all either. The film's whole focus comes down to one question: is he the victim of a cruel unfeeling God, or just sheer random bad luck?

This argument between faith and rationality is rather nicely encapsulated in the opening sequence to the film, an otherwise self-contained and irrelevant (but enjoyable) scene almost out of a Jewish folktale, set in an early 20th-century European Jewish village and spoken entirely in subtitled Yiddish, in which a husband and wife argue over whether or not the person that saved the husband's life was just a helpful neighbour or actually a malevolent dybbuk. We never get resolution to the question of whether that person really was dead, and nor does the film give us any resolution to the film's key question. (But then again, I see definite similarities between the final shot and the start of Job 38, and therefore wonder whether that's just my own personal bias revealing itself or whether the film really is leaning in one definite direction?)

But all this probably makes it seem like the film is a largely intellectual exercise in theoretical physics and philosophy. But the film is at its core a brilliant entertainment. While a couple of actors are recognisable, most I don't remember ever having seen before, including theatre actor Michael Stuhlbarg in the central role. Stuhlbarg has sadly been overlooked by the Academy, which is a shame because he gives a performance that really is brilliant - his role is very passive, with much of his frustration and desperation boiling under the surface and only rarely exploding out of sheer exasperation. (In one scene, Larry is confronted by the father of the student who left the envelope of money on Larry's desk. Larry refers to this as a bribe, which the father claims is a defamation and grounds for a lawsuit - but if Larry doesn't give the son a passing grade, then the father will sue him for taking the money that he denies having left because claiming that he did leave the money would be a defamation. This was one of my favourite scenes in the film, and it's all in Stuhlbarg's performance as he struggles to find a way to break through that logic.) The script by the Coen Brothers is one of their tightest ever, with very funny dialogue, and the escalation of burdens on Larry feels perfectly timed. And one of the things I admired most about the film was the feeling of being inside a very-tight insular Jewish community, one where everyone knows everyone else, to the point that the rare appearance of someone from outside this community seem almost intrusive. This isn't a world I've lived in or even seen before, a world that is almost alien to me, and the film offers a nice sense of the way particular cultural groups exist and thrive even while remaining invisible to those outside.

In A Serious Man, the Coens really have achieved an impressive feat. They took the best-selling book of all time, borrowed a a very-well known story that everyone can relate to, and they used it to form the basis of a film that is both universal and recognisable, yet intimate, personal, and utterly unique. And brilliant.

The other exciting inclusion in the nominees is the latest Pixar film, Up. Only one other animated movie has ever been nominated for Best Picture, Disney's Beauty and the Beast. It's commonly believed that the introduction of a Best Animated Feature category in 2001 was largely a move to ensure that such kids' films never again take a nominee spot from a real film. So it's exciting to see Pixar, a studio that has managed to maintain a level of genuine quality and innovation in its film product over 15 years and 10 films, finally break free of the Animated Feature ghetto and receive the Best Picture recognition that they deserve - even if it is because of a change in criteria.

It can't be said often enough - Pixar really do phenomenal work. It's astonishing to realise that their worst film is Cars, a film that would be the highlight of any other studio's catalogue but that just seems terribly average sitting alongside The Incredibles, Ratatouille, or Toy Story. It demonstrates how great the studio is at making genuine family films, films that entertain the youngest audience while exploring interesting subject matter that resonates with older viewers, all the while avoiding the pitfalls that other animated films fall into, pop-culture references that immediately date the films or toilet humour that just goes for the cheap laugh. I suspect the key to their success may lie in their dedication to producing short films, those that appear before theatrical screenings of their main features. Five minutes is not a long time to introduce entirely new characters, tell a story, and throw in some genuine belly-laughs, especially when you're also telling a story entirely without dialogue (as most of those original shorts do). This means that the filmmakers are forced to develop and exercise their storytelling skills, and learn to use expressions and actions, rather than dialogue, to express character. The culmination of that work appeared last year, when WALL-E introduced us to the film's core characters and their world in a 30-minute opening sequence that was almost entirely devoid of dialogue.

And the benefits of Pixar's short film programme are also evident in Up's best-known sequence. After an opening scene (in which two children, Ellie and Carl, meet and become friends over a shared love of adventure), we move into a five-minute sequence in which the two grow up, fall in love, marry, buy a house, and slowly have all their hopes and dreams dashed by reality, until at the end Ellie dies and the now-elderly Carl retreats from the world. It's an extraordinary sequence, two entire lives told in small moments, presented simply, no dialogue, just Michael Giacchino's gentle but versatile theme underpinning the moments. And yet there is more genuine emotion packed into that one sequence than in any other film I saw last year. It's truly extraordinary filmmaking. And while the story proper doesn't start until after that sequence, it's not just a scene that exists for its own sake - it's a core element in the film's storytelling, and all the way through the film calls back to that sequence for one reason or another. By the time the film's story actually begins, we've lived Carl's life, we know exactly how much he loved Ellie, we're just as devastated by her death as he is, and we completely understand how he became the man around which the film revolves.

And this is a key point. The film revolves around Carl. Too often, animated films are just dismissed as "kid's films," and as someone that loves quality animation, that's really depressing, because animation is so much more than just something you can sit the kids in front of. And Up is one film that really is not a kid's film. The film is about an old man, who has lived a long life and lost the love of his life, and who is desperately trying to cope with that pain. The film's key theme is about how the wild extravagant dreams of youth change as we experience real life, and how if you hold on to those dreams you can miss what is actually happening around you. These are not ideas for children to relate to, Hell, even I'm too young to really relate to those ideas. These are ideas for our parents and grandparents to identify with. Sure, the film throws a bone at its younger audience by including a kid character for them to relate to, but he never comes close to being more than a supporting character. This is absolutely the elderly Carl's story, and it's all the better for it.

If I have a problem with Up, it's with the film's slight tonal inconsistency. That opening sequence is so great and so emotionally honest and real, that to a degree it sits uneasily next to the fantasy of someone using thousands of helium-filled balloons to fly their house to a different country, or the comedy of an easily-distracted talking dog. That description makes the inconsistency in tone sound worse than it is - these disparate elements and tones surprisingly do work in the film, and the talking dog is never not funny - but there are times when it does seem like it is a different film to the film it started out being.

Which is why I personally thought Coraline, the stop-motion animated film based on Neil Gaiman's novel, is the better film. It may never reach the brilliance of Up's opening sequence, but as a whole film, I feel it has the edge. It's a beautifully realised film, telling a story that was both simple and genuinely creepy (even I as an adult found parts uncomfortable to watch), and supplementing it with a strong focus on creating atmosphere and a living breathing world. (And, in a year when Avatar brought so much attention to filmmaking in 3D, I felt that Coraline offered easily the most effective use of 3D as a storytelling device I've ever seen.) I loved Up, but I loved Coraline more.

But the key thing is, it has been a genuinely brilliant year for quality animated films. Of the five nominees for Best Animated Film, the only one I've not seen is the Irish film The Secret of Kells. The other nominees, Fantastic Mr Fox, The Princess and the Frog, as well as Coraline and Up, are all excellent films and ones that I can see continuing to be watched and enjoyed as classics for decades. And in such a great year for animated films, it's nice to see one receive the ultimate Oscar nomination - and since the Oscars are often just as much about a past body of work as the actual film, it seems right to see Pixar get that acknowledgement.

You've probably already seen District 9, so it's a bit pointless for me to write too much about the film. (Incidentally, the film makes Oscar history by being the first science-fiction movie to be nominated for Best Picture without also being the highest-grossing movie in cinematic history.) The term "science fiction" today often just seems to mean a Star Wars-style space fantasy, all lasers and spaceships and little substance. But this year, both science fiction nominees (Avatar and District 9) make use of one of the strengths of science fiction - its potential to provide a slightly twisted lens through which real-world issues can be addressed and discussed. But in Avatar the message is clichéd and one we've seen many times before, while District 9 always feels fresh and new. It's never difficult to know what District 9 is talking about - the film is about the creation of an oppressed underclass in South Africa, for crying out loud, so the analogy, both to apartheid and more recently the treatment of other African immigrants in the country, isn't exactly subtle - but it is different, well-conceived, and supported by a well-written and imaginative script.

One of the thing that I really loved about the film was the way that, having concieved and developed this very definite detailed world and backstory, writer and director Neill Blomkamp doesn't really bother giving us too much exposition. In the opening minutes we get just enough for the absolute core essentials for a basic understanding of the situation - alien ship breaks down, occupants becomes refugees and are herded into camps - and a few extra pieces of information are provided throughout the film as required, but it is definitely sparing in the amount of information provided to the audience. There's always a temptation in these types of films to overexplain things, and so I appreciated Blomkamp's willingness to leave questions hanging, even if it means the audience leaves with questions. It makes it feel as though this world is real, and that there are things that the people in that world either just don't know or else understand so well that any explanation for the audience would just be unrealistic for the characters to deliver.

Looking through this post, I realise just how many films this year centred around star-making appearances by people hardly anyone has heard of - Jeremy Renner, Christoph Waltz, Michael Stuhlbarg, Gabourey Sidibe - and to that list we can add first-time actor Sharlto Copley in the central role of Wikus van der Merwe. Copley was a film producer friend of Blomkamp when he was asked to take on the role. And it has to have been challenging for a non-actor to play. The role starts off as a kind of a goofy comic relief character, but one who is to a degree reasonably unsympathetic - he's callous and unthinkingly racist (for want of a better word) in his dealings with the aliens, and even as the film progresses his actions in helping the aliens seems motivated more by self-interest to get out of his situation than by being motivated to do the right thing. That Wikus ends the film as a likeable character is largely due to the performance of Copley, who manages to play the switch from comic relief to tragic figure well and makes the character likeable despite his failings.

It's not perfect - it really needed to choose a style for the film and stick to it, as the change from fake-documentary to standard movie as the film progresses doesn't work (I'd have just dropped the fake-documentary element, and found some other way to incorporate the interview material), and there have been understandable complaints that the movie is itself racist in the portrayal of the Nigerian characters - but the film is still very good. It's exciting when a new filmmaker introduces himself with something that seems genuinely new and original, and District 9 is certainly that.

There are two films remaining on the nominee list, and I don't know that I have all that much to say about either of them. Both are based on true stories, both are well-made and enjoyable films, but neither really has that much to them, which limits what one can write about them.

Before the nominations were announced, I was talking to someone, and mentioned that I had heard speculation that The Blind Side could be a possible best picture nominee. This person had really liked the film, but even she was surprised at the idea of the film being nominated. And looking at the film, that surprise is understandable. It's a good film, certainly, but it's not that good. But shortly after the nominations I read an article that pointed out that, while this hasn't happened recently, historically the nominee list has often made room for the competently-made crowd-pleasing film - and The Blind Side sits comfortably along other Best Picture nominees like Dead Poet's Society, Jerry Maguire, and Ghost (yes, Ghost really was nominated for Best Picture!). It's an interesting point. The Blind Side may not actually be one of the ten best films of the year, but the appearance in the list of an undeserving film in the nominee list is hardly unprecedented - and, as the article points out, it means the Oscars get to acknowledge the types of films that most multiplex viewers get to see.

And for what it is, a high-grossing feel-good true-story film for the mass filmgoing public, The Blind Side does do very well. It's the story of a wealthy white sports-loving family that takes in Michael Oher, a black 17-year-old son of a drug-addicted mother who has spent his life running away from one foster home after another. The Tuohy family works with him, builds him up, gets him a tutor to help him to improve his grades, and gets him onto the football team where his natural talents get him noticed.

It's not a bad film, it's well-made and entertaining, and Sandra Bullock does give a very good performance as Mrs Tuohy. And if you're at the multiplex faced with a dozen choices, this is probably one of the better options. But the film is a bit frustrating, because I feel that the character of Oher should be the main character in the film, but instead he's pushed over to the side. I think that's partly just inevitable - if the portrayal in the film is accurate to the real Oher, then he is a very withdrawn silent person, and not the easiest person to centre a film around. But for all its faults, Precious did do a good job of basing its film around a quiet, withdrawn, uncommunicative youth, and allowing us to know them as a person, so it is possible to build a film around such a person. It's frustrating that at the end of the film Michael Oher still largely remains a cypher - as an audience, we still don't know him. Instead we spend the film focused very much on the Tuohy family, and particularly Sandra Bullock. As a result, it's not the story of a man who survived intolerable circumstances but who made it through and succeeded with the help and support of some nice generous people. Instead, it's about a tough outspoken white woman who takes in this black kid and helps him succeed. But it's interesting because I look at this film as having the potential to be the film that Precious wanted to be - a genuinely life-affirming hopeful story of a disadvantaged withdrawn poorly-educated kid who takes advantage of opportunities to rise above his lot in life - but instead it's just the story of a nice woman helping out a black kid. It's a very good story, and it helps that it's true, but nevertheless it does feel like the focus of the story was a little bit off.

Finally, there's An Education, based on the memoirs of journalist Lynn Barber who, as a 16-year-old girl pushed by her parents to focus on preparing for Oxford, instead turned her attention onto having a relationship with a man in his mid-30s. It was clearly an exciting affair, he took her to concerts or art exhibitions, they even took weekend trips to Paris or Rome together - all rather incredibly with the support of her parents, who apparently had fallen for the older man just as much as Barber (renamed Jenny for the film) herself had. But eventually the truth came out, the guy revealed himself to not be entirely reliable, and it all ended rather badly.

The reason why I don't feel I have that much to say about the film is basically because there's not that much to the film. It's all a rather empty exercise. In an article for The Times, Barber commented that "The film has now moved so far from my own life that I don’t really recognise any of it. ... Peter Sarsgaard is handsome and sympathetic and only faintly a conman. Even the suburban streets look idyllic. What was once a dark, shameful memory has become sunlit and glamorous thanks to the magic of Nick Hornby, Lone Sherfig and all."

But while I think she's saying that comment in a positive way, it goes to the heart of my problem with the film. The whole thing is glamorous and exciting in exactly the way that a 16-year-old girl would feel the situation was, but without bringing any hindsight reflection on the situation. It's reality with all the edges shaved off, until it just feels like a fun adventure. And sure, 1960s London is great and exciting, but if that's all there is to the film, then it just feels a bit hollow. If it was a dark, shameful memory, then the whole experience was not just this wonderful thing that we watch, and it seems dishonest to shy away from that aspect. It doesn't need to be all "predatory man preys on youthful innocent girl", but we should feel like the film took some effort to acknowledge the reality of the story we're watching. Now, a friend of mine disagrees with me. She feels that this is one of the positives of the film, that it doesn't tell you what to think but just presents the story and lets you make up your own mind. And to a degree that is true, except that the film seems so romanticised by a 16-year-old's point of view that that it ultimately seems untrue to what I imagine the story really was. And I have a problem with that.

To be fair, for what it is, the film is very good. It's well written - Nick Hornby adapting someone else's work for the first time. And it does have a phenomenal cast doing some excellent work. I'd only ever seen Carey Mulligan once before, when she played the main character in "Blink", a Doctor-lite episode of Doctor Who, and I was so impressed with her performance in that one episode that my decision to see this film was based largely on seeing that Mulligan was playing the lead. And there's a reason why her performance has been so highly praised - Mulligan's performance keep the character sweet and naïve, desperate to be sophisticated, convinced that because she knows about culture and art that she knows what it is to be an adult. If the film is the affair told entirely from the romanticised view of a 16-year-old, then you need an actor that manages to convince as that 16-year-old, and Mulligan does so. As David, Peter Sarsgaard has such strong charisma that we can almost believe that Jenny's parents would fall in love with him and be convinced, despite his being twice Jenny's age, that this was a good match. And the strength of the supporting cast is extraordinary. Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour clearly enjoyed the comedy potential of Jenny's parents, even if the characters were a bit one-dimensional; I'm always excited to see Olivia Williams, especially when it's a role as strong as in this film, as the person most concerned by the direction Jenny's taking; and even Emma Thompson turns up for a couple of scenes as the school's headmistress.

On the whole, An Education is an enjoyable enough film, well-made and entertaining, and is well worth seeing for the performances on display, but it has sadly been overpraised far beyond its actual merits.

And there we are. Ten films. Some genuinely brilliant, some good, and one absolutely astonishingly dire. Now we just need to wait a few hours and see what wins.

Conspicuous consumption

2010-02-08T23:26:00.004+13:00

So here's the thing.

I've written in the past about my excessive consumption of V energy drink, and my tendency to accumulate large numbers of bottles at my desk because I can't be bothered walking the 24 paces to put the bottles in the recycling bin over by the kitchen. As a result, the bottles would tend to only ever get thrown out when my manager told me that I need to get rid of them.

However, for most of last year, I actually became very good at removing my empty bottles daily, always aware that if I failed to, my manager would remind me that I needed to do so. All of a sudden, it was rare for a bottle to sit on my desk overnight. On one occasion she even praised me for having improved so much in the regular disposal of my bottles. However, my manager has been away for the last few weeks, and without her watchful eye, I sadly fell back into old habits.

So this is what my desk looked like when my manager returned from her break.

You see, it seems that while I am too lazy to expend a little amount of effort to dispose of my bottles, I will go to great lengths and expend a large amount of effort in order to not throw out my V bottles in a timely manner. For the last ten or eleven months, I was not disposing of my bottles in the recycling bin. Instead, I had a dedicated hiding place right by my desk where I would stash each day's empty bottles. (There were a couple of times when my manager actually walked into the room while I was in the middle of hiding that day's bottles, and I was certain I was caught, but apparently she never noticed a thing. Although the hiding place would move for a few weeks after each of these close calls, just to be on the safe side.) Then every couple of weeks I would call into the office out of hours, put my accumulated bottle collection in a box, and take them home to store in my garage, waiting for the day when I would cover my desk in V bottles. Fortunately it was timed perfectly, so that I had the exact number of bottles that I would require right at the point when my manager took a sufficiently extended break for the joke to work. (I know there is that one empty space on the desk, but it was always the intention for me to leave just enough room for me to work at the computer - the whole idea of the joke was that I was still trying to work in these severely constrained circumstances.)

When it came time to actually execute my plan, I realised that, since my intention was to drop the bottles off in the recycling bin close to my house once the joke was finished, it would be neccesary to rinse all the bottles. (Always rinse your recycling, kids.) Unfortunately, this was an aspect of the plan I hadn't previously prepared for. So, last Saturday afternoon, I sat in my lounge in front of the TV with a bucket of water, and slowly removed the lids of every bottle, rinsed out the inside of each bottle, put the lids back on each bottle, dried the bottles, and reboxed them all ready for the big event. That took five hours. Add the half hour that it took just to load my car with the boxes, and the nearly an-hour-and-a-half it took to actually set them all up on my desk, and we're looking at a good seven hours of work in just this last weekend for this whole thing. (Plus there's all the time involved in the extra weekend visits to the office to pick up that fortnight's bottle collection, and so on.) All this effort for a five second reaction. Clearing the desk was much faster - they were all gone after about fifteen minutes, although I did have help from the only other person in the office that knew in advance about the plan. (To give her some credit, the whole idea of doing all this came out of a conversation I had with this co-worker, when we were bouncing different ideas around for things that I could do if I started collecting all my V bottles. I'm not actually sure which one of us came up with the idea of doing this, but at the very least she contributed to the idea.)

And I do want to be very clear about one point. This really is my desk. I did this to myself. I didn't inconvenience anyone else but me. And, since my manager gets into work earlier than me, I ended up coming into work much earlier than normal in order to be there before she arrived, and I (rather awkwardly) did some work while I waited. Plus I had my desk cleared by the time I would normally start work, and I then worked a full day from that time, so none of this even took time away from my work. (If anything, it saved time at work, since over the past year it was faster to hide the bottles than it would have been to take them down to the recycling bins if I had been throwing them out - I saved fifteen seconds every day that I could put towards the office's work.)

The thing I liked about the idea was, firstly, the fact that it was in my view a very funny image. I laughed out loud when I actually finished setting it all up and stepped back to look at what I had created, I laughed again when I came into work this morning and saw it all set up. The photos don't quite capture the sheer absurdity of the scene. It really looked silly. But I think it also works because it shows my manager exactly why we need her at work to keep us/me under control, and reminds her exactly why she needed a break from us.

So how did my manager react? Well, her reaction wasn't initially positive - in fact, her first words were a much-more-serious-than-I-expected "you need to get those off your desk NOW," which had me worried I had gone too far. (In fact, I was wondering whether she thought I was planning on trying to work for the whole day with my desk like that. That was never the plan - they were always going to be cleared away pretty much immediately. And trust me - I was trying to work for a while before my manager arrived, and it was pretty difficult with all those bottles constraining your movement, so there is no way I could have lasted a full day.) Later she came into my office and, when I tried to prompt her to admit that it was a little bit funny, she stated that she couldn't possibly say that - but she was smiling at the time, so I don't think she was entirely unamused. (Incidentally, my manager is almost certainly going to read this so, welcome back to work, we missed you, and are glad you're back.)

And, if anyone is curious, there are 413 bottles and 31 cans on the table. (You can see the cans on the middle raised tray to the left, but what you can't see are the cans that are under the phone-book holder, which isn't high enough to fit any of the bottles underneath.) Almost all of these are of the sugar-free variety, but there are 4 normal V and 4 lemon V bottles that I bought on occasions when the stores were out of sugar-free. This equals 152.3 litres of V consumed by myself over a period of a little less than a year. Wow. That's rather a lot. And assuming a price of about $3.00 per bottle (a little lower than the standard price in order to allow for any purchases on special pricing), that means I spent... wow, I could have bought my laptop on one year's worth of V drinks. Hmmm. Something to think about. And then forget about.

And if you're wondering why none of the bottles have labels on them - well, the reason for that predates this whole plan. For some reason, back in late 2008 I just started removing the labels and sticking them together, wrapping each label around the top of the previous labels. Some 15-or-more months later, I now have the thing to the right. It's big, solid, and surprisingly heavy. I still have no idea why I made it, but every time I drink a extra bottle of V outside of work, I still take the bottle in to work just so that I can add the label to this thing, because it would be a waste to throw a perfectly good label away. (And it still annoys me every time I look at it and see the point where they changed the label design.)

Well, if you'll excuse me, I need to go. Countdown are selling bottles of V, 3 for $5 - that really is a great price. Plus I need to go to bed. For some reason I've been having terrible difficulty getting to sleep lately.

I'm with Coco

2010-01-18T19:02:00.012+13:00

So here's the thing.

I'm not quite sure why I find this whole late-night NBC situation so fascinating. I mean, it doesn't affect me at all whether Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien host the Tonight Show, or what time they air. The only late night show we get in NZ is The Late Show With David Letterman, and while I used to watch his show every night for years, I've only been an occasional viewer for the last few years. I saw a couple of episodes of Jay Leno's Tonight Show a few years ago, and wasn't impressed at all, but I have liked the little of Conan that I've seen, both on Late Night and The Tonight Show. But really, all this doesn't affect me in the least. So why am I so interested by it?

Maybe it's just because it's a fascinating story. For those of you that aren't familiar with what is going on, for the last 55+ years The Tonight Show has aired on NBC at 11.35pm. When Johnny Carson left in 1992, after 30 years hosting the show, there was a really ugly changeover - David Letterman (who had been hosting Late Night at 12.35am) had long been presumed to be the person who would take over the show (and he was well-known to be Carson's preferred heir), but Jay Leno managed to get NBC to contract with him to take over the show. In fact, the whole saga resulted in a really excellent (and sadly out-of-print) book, as well as a TV movie. After losing The Tonight Show, Letterman left for CBS in 1993, and former SNL and Simpsons writer Conan O'Brien took over as host of the 12.35am Late Night show. Conan was not an experienced performer when he started (in fact, his first couple of years were notoriously awful), but he grew into the role and eventually became a rising star in the late-night talk-show world. So, back in 2004, Conan's contract was up for renewal, and he was receiving offers from competing networks offering him an earlier timeslot. At that time, Conan discussed these offers with NBC, which was understandably concerned about losing one of their big stars. But Conan was interested in The Tonight Show, which makes sense because it is one of the iconic television institutions in the US. Like almost every comic in America, Conan grew up watching Carson on The Tonight Show and dreaming of hosting it one day. But NBC obviously couldn't give The Tonight Show to Conan, because Leno was hosting it. So NBC went to Jay Leno, who agreed to resign in five years time and let Conan take over The Tonight Show. In a press release at the time, Leno is quoted as saying "In 2009, I'll be 59 years old and will have had this dream job for 17 years. I felt that the timing was right to plan for my successor and there is no one more qualified than Conan."

We come to 2009. NBC is generally and accurately reckoned to be a mess - which is disappointing because as a network it shows some of my favourite shows airing today (The Office, Chuck, Friday Night Lights, 30 Rock, etc). Meanwhile, Jay is reconsidering his decision to retire. He's committed to leaving The Tonight Show, but he doesn't want to. NBC panics that they might lose Leno to another network, and so offers him a talk show in primetime from 10pm to 11pm five nights a week - an opportunity that Leno jumps at. Meanwhile NBC is happy because it means that they don't lose Leno and they need five fewer hours of original programming a week - one whole week of Leno costs the same as one single hour-long drama series, so NBC saves a lot of money. Of course, a primetime talk show doesn't get as many viewers as the original dramas or comedies that used to air at 10pm but that doesn't matter because, even with lower viewer numbers, the reduced costs mean the 10pm hour is more profitable to NBC than previously. But reduced viewer numbers at 10pm means that there are much fewer people still watching NBC at 11pm, which is when the various NBC affiliates (that broadcast NBC shows in different regions) air their local news shows. And the 11pm news shows are huge money earners for the affiliates. Lower ratings at 10pm mean lower ratings at 11pm for the news shows. So NBC is saving a lot of money by showing Leno instead of original programming, but the affiliates are losing a lot of money and start to revolt. Meanwhile, Conan's ratings aren't great - Leno consistently beat Letterman in the ratings for the last 15 or so years, but they replace Leno with Conan and suddenly Letterman wins late-night. But that's inevitable - Conan needs time to build his audience at the earlier time, especially since his comic sensibility is so different to that of Leno. (And remember that Leno's ratings were also awful in his first couple of years - and he was already known to the Tonight Show audience, as he had guest hosted frequently, while Conan and his comedy style was entirely new to Tonight Show viewers - but Leno was given the time and opportunity to work and shape his show into something that did succeed.) Plus, if the affiliates' argument (that low ratings for Leno mean low ratings for the 11pm news) is true, logic dictates that those low ratings for news shows must also feed into low ratings for Conan. Plus, adding yet another talkshow to the mix means that the limited audience for NBC talkshows is further divided between Leno at 10pm, Conan at 11.30pm, and Jimmy Fallon at 12.30am (plus Carson Daly is there somewhere at 1.30am). In other words, Conan's low ratings are due in part to Leno's continued presence and failure in primetime. Besides, Conan was never going to start out with the same ratings on the Tonight Show as Leno was getting at the end of his run, and to expect that would have been unreasonable. Putting Conan in the show should have been about securing the future of late-night talk on NBC, and he needed to be given time to build the show into the success that it would have been, and should have been.

Unfortunately NBC panicked in the face of the affiliates' unhappiness, and so last week it announced that they are taking Leno off-air in a couple of weeks, and putting his show back to 11.35pm where it will air as a half-hour show. Conan keeps The Tonight Show, since he is contractually entitled to that, but it now airs at 12.05am, with flow-on effects for the even-later-night talk shows. Now, Conan is not happy, understandably. After all, The Tonight Show at 12.05am is actually The Tomorrow Show. So he puts out this awesome press release (which really is a must-read) in which he states that he will not host a Tonight Show that starts after midnight. He talks about the impact of this decision on the historic show, as well as the wider impact on the following late-night shows. It's a brilliant statement, and really forces NBC into a position where they need to make a decision between Leno and Conan. The whole thing turns into a complete fiasco, with pretty much every talk show host on television ripping into Leno and NBC - Letterman's discussions of the situation were tinged by his well-known hatred of Leno and NBC for taking The Tonight Show from him back in 1992, Craig Ferguson burnt all bridges with NBC by calling them "lying rat bastards", and Jimmy Kimmel proved more awesome than I ever would have imagined by performing his entire show as Jay Leno. (Two days later, when appearing on Leno's show, Kimmel hilariously ripped into Leno - in my favourite moment comparing Leno to Lucy pulling the football out from Charlie Brown - while the host just stood there plainly regretting the decision to invite Kimmel. It was awesome.) Meanwhile Conan, seemingly accepting that his time on the iconic Tonight Show is over only seven months after it started, basically went rogue, openly and angrily attacking Leno and NBC. Even just watching all this stuff in brief online clips on YouTube, as a viewer this whole fiasco has been phenomenal and resulted in some of the best television in a long time.

But how do I feel about all this? Not that it actually matters where one single unimportant person living in New Zealand thinks about this situation, but personally, I'm fully on the side of Conan. It's partly because, from the little I've seen of Conan, I think he is genuinely funny, and I don't think Leno is. Plus, Conan was involved in the completely brilliant Conan/Colbert/Stewart feud, which was the only good thing to come out of the 2007/08 Writers Strike, and which ended in a fight that was the single funniest moment of television that year. But mostly, I just think that what has happened here is wrong. Everything that I have read on this topic says that Leno chose to retire. It may have been a decision that he was asked to make by NBC, but ultimately it was Leno's choice to resign, and based on what is publicly known it seems disingenuous to suggest (as Leno has been doing lately) that NBC fired him from The Tonight Show. And Conan basically put his entire career on hold on the understanding that Leno had resigned and would be gone by the time he took over The Tonight Show. But Leno changed his mind once it was too late. Usually, that would just be tough luck, but instead, NBC kept Leno around, in an experiment that pretty much everyone that isn't an NBC executive knew was doomed to fail - as it did. But having Leno stay around also critically undermined Conan's ability to perform as expected.

And now it looks like Leno is going to be rewarded for all this. Current reports sound like Leno is getting The Tonight Show back at 11.35pm, and Conan is out of NBC, probably with a huge payout and the freedom to go to another broadcaster to make a new show. I hope this is incorrect, I really hope that Conan does get to keep The Tonight Show, but it really does look like Conan will be out of NBC in the next week or two. And if so, that result is wrong. Just wrong. And I feel this very strongly. The man who spoke so strongly on air back in 2004 about the show being a dynasty that you have and then you pass it on, and how he wanted to avoid all the in-fighting and ugliness that accompanied his taking over the show, so here you are Conan, here's the show - this guy changed his mind, he failed in his new project, so he's now given his old job back, and the guy to whom he passed on this dynasty is thrown out. The insane thing is that I suspect this whole fiasco has badly harmed Leno. When he does come back after the Olympics with his new Tonight Show with Jay Leno, I suspect that this mess will have tainted Leno to a degree that NBC hasn't predicted. He's lost the "everyday nice guy" public appearance, instead becoming the guy who bullied the new guy out of a job, and I don't see Leno's Tonight Show ever regaining the position as the number-1-rated late night talk show. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if Leno rates lower than Conan did during his run. But by then it will be too late, and NBC will be stuck with Leno while Conan establishes himself over on Fox, and hopefully does well.

But, in my view, here's what NBC needs to do. They can't just make decisions based on this week's ratings, they need to look at what will put them in the most secure position in the long term. And the best long-term decision for them would be to drop Leno (or else give him a daytime show - I hear their daytime schedule isn't that great), keep Conan on The Tonight Show, and just accept that ratings will be down for the next while. Leno's no threat, since if he does manage to get a show on another network it will be close to a year before he goes to air, and in the meantime Conan's Tonight Show will have developed its audience and Leno will have lost many of his habitual viewers. And in a few years time, when both Letterman and Leno decide to retire (this time for real), you've got a polished show and an established host in Conan who will then be in a position to rule the 11.35pm slot for the next however-many years to come. But I don't see NBC taking this approach, because it requires them to consider the long-term consequences of their actions - and if recent actions have shown us one thing, it's that NBC doesn't know how to look long-term. Instead, they'll dump Conan in favour of Leno, and in a few years time run into a real succession problem when Leno does decide to retire. Who do you get to take over this pivotal franchise, when you've lost Conan, and none of the other people currently working on late-night quite seem to fit.

So there you are, NBC, some free advice on how to resolve your late-night programming dilemma. You're welcome. And if you don't take it, don't say I didn't warn you.

All Visuals Aside, There Are Real problems

2010-01-10T14:45:00.001+13:00

So here's the thing.

I've had a few people ask me why I had problems with Avatar, and in some ways the answer comes back to one question - "Why the wheelchair? Why exactly is the main character paralysed and in a wheelchair? What does that contribute to the story?" - that points to a larger problem with the film.

The curious thing about Avatar is that I find myself recommending the film, although I have real issues with it. I wouldn't normally recommend a bad film just because of great special effects - I'm never going to suggest people see Transformers, no matter how good the robots look. But in this case, I have to encourage people to see the film, and in 3D if at all possible. The effects work is phenomenal, and just as ground-breaking as we've heard. CGI characters have never felt this real, this convincing, so tied to an actor's performance. The design of the world of Pandora is exquisite, detailed, and the 3D perfectly accentuates the world - it's not a film that is constantly reminding you that it is in 3D, it's just a film that uses the 3D to make the world seem more real. (I've previously mentioned my appreciation of such a use of 3D.) Plus, Cameron is one of the best action directors of all times, and in Avatar he gives us some phenomenal action scenes and some indelible moments. (There's one incredible moment in particular where a character gets into a mecha suit and jumps out of the ship as it explodes around him.) And it is for those merits - the beautiful world creation, the stunning effects work, the restrained but brilliant use of 3D, and the masterful execution of action sequences - that I strongly recommend the film. Just don't expect a good film.

My problems with Avatar really come back to the story. (And it's here that I'll start discussing spoilers for the film, so if you haven't seen it, be warned.) At the core of almost any good film, you need a good story. And I don't think Avatar has one. It's a very derivative story - guy goes to alien culture, is treated with suspicion but redeems himself, eventually feels more at home in the other culture than in his own, he falls in love, and finally fights alongside his alien brothers against his own kind. Change the blue aliens into Native Americans and you've basically got Dances With Wolves (and I hated Dances With Wolves). It's a fairly typical story of guilt over the assimilation of indigenous cultures, and Cameron seems simply satisfied to have disguised the story in science-fiction trappings, never trying to do anything different with the story's direction. Since I'd seen this exact plot with these exact developments saying the exact same thing in a dozen films (most of them better-written than Avatar), I never once found myself surprised by anything the film did, and that's just not a good thing.

Adding to my frustration is the fact that, for all the imagination poured into the creation of the world, there's very little put into the the culture of the Na'vi people that populate this world. Cameron had a linguistics expert help him create the Na'vi language (I noticed him mentioned in the end credits), but that's about all. They're very "in tune with nature", in the tiresome two-dimensional way that less-technological populations are usually portrayed as whenever a filmmaker wants to preach to the audience. In fact, they're so absurdly in tune with nature that the end of their ponytails have these strands that can apparently act as a form of USB connection, allowing the Na'vi to share their thoughts with the other animals of Pandora - this means that when riding a horse or a giant bird the Na'vi can simply think "Turn left" and the creature would respond. (Incidentally, these ponytail strands also seemingly function as genitals - they're used when two Na'vi mate, and early in the film, there's even a "Don't touch that, you'll go blind" joke about the strands. This makes one uncomfortable when thinking about the relationship between the Na'vi and the other Pandoran wildlife where such connections were made, especially as (if I remember correctly) similar phrases like being "bonded for life," are used to describe both Na'vi/Na'vi mates and Na'vi/wildlife connections. Let's not even think about what is actually happening when such a connection is forced on an unwilling animal, which we see happen several times.) Anyway, back to my point, this is the sole piece of information we have about the Na'vi - they are in touch with nature - and the film doesn't seem that interested in otherwise exploring the lives of the Na'vi tribe to any great degree. This all creates a rather hollow culture on which the story rests.

But it's not just the Na'vi that are the victims of shallow characterisation. Pretty much everyone in the film, from the tough military colonel to the geeky scientist workmate, is a two-dimensional figure. Possibly the worst example is Giovanni Ribisi's role as the head of the mining corporation - a character written as such a cliche of an evil corporate guy that the very first moment we meet him he's practicing his golf putting in the middle of a busy monitoring room. Remember in Aliens how, when we first meet the Paul Reiser character, he seems like a corporate jerk, but he manages to win Ripley over and seems like he might be a nice guy, which made his eventual betrayal that much harder. No such ambiguity or uncertainty of characterisation here. Ribisi starts the film self-centred, money-oriented, and callous to the Na'vi, and through the film he continues to be self-centred, money-oriented, and callous, until the end of the film, at which point we find him self-centred, money-oriented, and callous, although mildly humbled by being on the losing side.

Fortunately some of the actors (particularly Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang) are at least able to create interesting characters out of the minimal material they're given, and Zoe Saldana's performance as the main Na'vi character Neytiri is easily the best performance of a CG character since Gollum, but most of the actors seem to struggle in making their characters seem like real people. Sam Worthington in particular falls short here. I've never seen him before, although he seems to have been appointed as the "next big thing", with main roles in Terminator Salvation, Avatar, and the upcoming Clash of the Titans. And based on this film, I'm not sure why. He just seems like a blandly-good-looking passable-tough-guy, able to play the part of the typical action-film leading hero but without the charisma and personality of an actual star. In neither the moments where we see Sam Worthington on screen, nor when we see him as interpreted by the CG-artists creating his avatars, does he seem like he has any personality at all. Perhaps he does better when he has a good script and a real character to work with, but from what I see in Avatar, I just can't see anything about him that holds the eye. Even his admitted good looks come across as pretty generic - it's significant that, while the avatars are modelled on the actors playing them and the other actors are instantly identifiable, I can see nothing obviously Sam Worthington in his avatar, even when the two are on screen at the same time to facilitate direct comparisons between the two. (Not that I'm criticising his looks - he's a hundred times better-looking than I ever will be, but then I'm not trying to be a movie star.) The fact is, based on this film, I struggle to see anything in Worthington that allows him to carry a film and a role like this.

But I'm getting off-track from my main problem with Avatar, which is with the core storytelling in the film. I come back to the question at the start of this post - why did Cameron decide to put Sully in a wheelchair? In the first couple of minutes of the film we are presented with two core pieces of information. Firstly, our hero Sully is a Marine who was paralysed in conflict - this I knew about in advance. The second piece of information surprised me - it seems that his twin brother was actually working on the avatar program, but he was mugged and killed shortly before the film starts. Fortunately since Jake Sully is a genetic match for his identical twin, he is therefore compatible with his avatar, and therefore the company hires him to fill the space and ensure the expensive avatar made for his brother does not go to waste.

Now, when I first discovered that the main character was paralysed, I thought that could be quite a good idea. What would it be like, having not walked in years, to find yourself able to walk again, but in an alien body and not your own? That seemed like an area that could be interesting to explore. But I don't think the film ever actually goes there. Now, there is one moment when some people say the film does go there - this would be Sully's first scene in the avatar, where he gets excited and starts running and jumping - but to be honest I don't see it, for one very simple reason: if I, as an able-bodied person, was to suddenly find myself in a 12-foot-tall alien body, the first thing I would do would be to run around, jump, exclaim how great and how cool this was, and generally test the body out. I can see nothing in the scene that actually shows that this is what it is like for Sully as a person with a disability walking for the first time in years, as opposed to an able-bodied person just trying out this cool new experience. Now, ordinarily, I would give the filmmaker the benefit of the doubt, in fact probably credit the filmmaker for being subtle in making such a point. Except that the Cameron that made this film is not a subtle filmmaker. Pretty much every point he tries to make in the film is clumsily stated outright - if you're lucky, you'll at least get the point made in actual dialogue, but too often he resorts to either an ever-present voiceover or one of Sully's videologs to hammer home his point. (For example, in one moment, Sully's avatar is flying his banshee, and the camera pans up to show this huge dragon creature flying above. A good filmmaker would leave it there, but Cameron needed to include a voiceover spelling out the obvious point that "there's always a bigger hunter." And there are many more examples of excessive and unnecessary explanation throughout the film.) The simple fact is that the Cameron that made this film would at least have had Sully record a videolog to talk about how strange it was to be walking again after living for so long with a disability, and the absence of that scene doesn't point to Cameron's subtlety as a filmmaker, but rather suggests he failed as a screenwriter to make use of one of the defining characteristics of his main character.

Speaking of Cameron's failings as a screenwriter, don't forget the complicated backstory that can only get Sully into the avatar program by inventing a deceased identical twin brother. Introducing an identical twin brother is rarely a good sign of a well-developed plot, especially when the brother is so unimportant that we never even get to meet him (except as a corpse being cremated). And why is this backstory necessary? What does it achieve? It gets a military-trained person on the avatar program, and it ensures he has no prior training on the Na'vi culture, thus making him a blank slate that the Na'vi can work with. But if that's all that you are trying to achieve, then there are other ways you could achieve that without going to the complications of creating an elaborate backstory that involves an identical twin brother that is never referred to after ten minutes. It's almost as though Cameron invented the rules for how the avatar program, and then realised he needed a complicated backstory to achieve what he wanted within the constraints of those rules, rather than just modifying the imaginary rules for the imaginary avatar program to better facilitate the story he was telling.

Plus, this backstory means that Sully arrives in the programme with an explicitly stated and restated lack of training - which makes his initial avatar experience somewhat difficult to accept. Remember that the avatar program involves a person entering the body of a twelve-foot-tall alien. That has got to be disorienting - so disorienting that even his experienced co-workers must ease into using their bodies, conducting tedious finger-to-thumb-touch exercises each time they use their avatar. But Sully? Literally two minutes after entering his avatar body, a body so new to him that he's surprised by his tail, Sully is running and jumping across a courtyard. Are there any consequences for him? Does he eventually stumble over his unaccustomed long limbs? Does he push his new body to its limits because he doesn't know better? Of course not. Let's put this in context. I once bought a pair of shoes, and didn't notice until afterwards that the soles of these shoes were thicker than I was used to. It was a subtle difference - it added maybe a couple of millimetres to my height - but I could definitely feel it, and for a day or two actually had to focus on my walking to avoid stumbling. All because of a couple of extra millimetres of height. This guy Sully instantly adjusts to a body twice as tall as his normal body. And don't forget, he hasn't walked at all in however many years. Now, imagine that they repaired Sully's paralysis and somehow magically removed all the substantial muscle wastage in his legs, so that he was in the exact same condition as prior to the injury. He would still require months of work just to learn to walk again in his own body. But he has no problem at all walking, running, jumping, in an alien body twice as tall as the average human. Does this seem unbelievable to anyone?

Which brings me back to Sully's paralysis: if (as I believe) the film doesn't explore how the avatar experience affects Sully as a paralysed person, does his paralysis come into play in any other ways? No, not really. Sure, Col. Quaritch promises to give Sully his legs back if Sully helps him, but there's a whole heap of other things Quaritch could offer a non-paralysed Sully that would achieve the exact same end. The simple fact is, you could amend maybe a half-dozen lines in the film and in so doing pretty much remove Sully's paralysis from the film without anyone noticing, because nothing in the film ever relies on his paralysis. And that's a sure sign of an unnecessary plot element.

There is one other moment where Sully's injury does get referenced, and it brings me to possibly the most dramatically significant moment in the film, and one that Cameron flubs spectacularly - the moment of "the choice". This is the moment where Sully has to choose between his own interests and those of the Na'vi people. Cameron rather strangely manages to both have that moment too early and as a result doesn't have that moment at all. Here's what I mean. Quaritch comes to Sully at one point, says "You've done well, I've arranged for you to have that operation, you'll be out of that wheelchair in no time." Now, at that moment, Sully says, with seemingly genuine sincerity, "Thank you. I just want to go through one last ceremony, then I'll be a member of the tribe and convince them to leave their home like you want. Then I'll come back and get the operation." In other words, when he's offered a chance to get his paralysis fixed, there's never any doubt that he's siding with the humans. By the time he does side with the Na'vi, he's not put in a moment of conflict where he has to decide whether to betray the Na'vi in order to benefit himself and get his injury repaired, or betray the humans and spend the rest of his life as a paralysed human living vicariously through his avatar. Instead, his decision to side with the Na'vi comes in an instant, he responds instinctively to the situation, at least partly because there's a bloody great big tank about to run him over. By the next time he meets up with the humans and Quaritch, he's already burnt his bridges - getting his legs back is no longer a possibility. As a result, we never actually get a moment where Sully considers the personal consequences of siding with the Na'vi and chooses to do so anyway. From a dramatic viewpoint, that's a major problem.

There's also a scene that gets replayed several times through the film, where one character disconnects someone else from the system while they are in their avatar body. Several times we are told "You can't disconnect someone while they're in their avatar, it's dangerous." Just how and why it's dangerous is never clear, because it happens several times with no obvious ill-effects to anyone. (Compare that to The Matrix, where we actually see people die when they are disconnected while in the matrix.) Once again, it seems like Cameron came up with the rules - it's dangerous to unplug someone - but then it was never convenient in his story to show just why it was dangerous, so he didn't and just left these vague undefined references hanging there because those are the rules of this world. As a result, unplugging someone from their avatar ends up seeming like pulling out a USB drive without going through the "safely remove" process - you know you probably shouldn't do it, but nothing ever happens if you do do it. Whenever you unexpectedly rip someone out of one body and force them into another body when they are not prepared for it, there should be consequences, the audience should feel as though there is some risk to such a procedure. And the fact that by the end of the film there is no sense of danger when someone is once again disconnected is another pointer to the half-hearted poorly-developed nature of Cameron's writing of this story.

So I've gone a long way to make my main point: James Cameron seems to have become so caught up in imagining every detail of Pandora, down to the characteristics of the rocks, and so caught up in trying to achieve (admittedly impressive) advances in the creation of CG-characters, that he's forgotten to really work on the script, which feels very much like a first draft. The characters are never alive, there are interesting ideas set up but then either abandoned or just never used to their dramatic potential, and if you strip away the effects, you're left with an underdeveloped film that just failed to hold my interest.

Ultimately, my main problem is that I feel like I've been to see Oz the Great and Powerful, but behind the smoke and booming voice there's just a pathetic man hiding behind a curtain. And I'm deeply disappointed that this is my reaction to the film, because I wanted it to be great. I had been keeping an eye on the film for the last decade, and was thrilled when filming finally started. I had a friend who was working on the effects for the film, and it took everything I had not to ask about it every time I saw him. On Avatar Day a few months ago, I got up early to download the trailer and watched it several times before work, then took an early and extended lunch break and queued for an hour to get tickets for the free 20-minute preview of the film. And that preview really had me buzzing about the film, convinced that it would be as incredible as I had been hoping. But that preview had just been short snippets of the film, mostly action sequences - Sully's avatar being chased through the forest by a large creature, or taming the banshee - that didn't really give much sense of the story itself. Seen in context of the whole film, those moments are still as brilliant and thrilling as they were in the previews, but the film surrounding them is sadly flawed.

It's frustrating to look at the box-office results at the moment, and see that such a difficult film is on track to finish as the second-highest grossing film of all time, (behind another problematic James Cameron film, Titanic.) It's frustrating because as much as I like Cameron (and I really do), he's not such a great a filmmaker that he deserves those spots, and especially not with these two films (which are probably his two weakest). I just get the sense that, while there is a small core of people like me that feel disappointed and frustrated by the film, most people are just so wowed by the spectacle that they are blind to its failings as a film. One of the most shocking things about Avatar is just how often I've heard people compare it to Star Wars. I just don't see it. The simple fact is, for pretty much every effect-heavy film, the effects will eventually look bad, and then you're left with every other aspect of the filmmaking to determine the place of that film in cinematic history.* We still watch Star Wars because the characters are great, the story is gripping, the dialogue has a few clunkers but is generally well-written, and the action scenes are phenomenal. Only one of these factors is true for Avatar, and I don't think great action scenes are enough to overcome the film's many other flaws. It's not that it's a bad film, necessarily, but it is a deeply deeply flawed film. And this is why Avatar was easily the most disappointing film of 2009 for me.

* (There is one exception to this rule. I don't know how they did it, but forty years after it was made, the effects in 2001: A Space Odyssey are still incredble and convincing. Fortunately, the film itself is still great as well.)

Nothing is permanent, not even death

2009-12-17T22:11:00.001+13:00

So here's the thing.

I love Terry Gilliam films, have done ever since I caught the wonderful Adventures of Baron Munchausen when it aired on television in the early 90s and was astonished by the brilliance and imagination on the screen. At university, I quickly absorbed every film he had made (Brazil is now my second-favourite film), and these days eagerly await every new release from the filmmaker. (Although I confess I haven't yet seen Tideland - I want to, but I keep putting it off since I'm a little bit afraid to watch it). There's something particularly exciting about seeing a new Gilliam film - it's not just "Yay, another film from a director I like", there's a real sense that it's a miracle every time he manages to complete a movie. Gilliam is easily one of the most notoriously embattled film directors, needing to struggle to produce every minute of film. (He recently walked around Hollywood wearing a sandwich board only half-jokingly reading "Studioless filmmaker will direct for food", and his production difficulties have even been the subject of a very funny article in The Onion.) Gilliam famously fought with Universal to protect Brazil from being released in the US in a severely re-edited and drastically changed cut (a fight that was later detailed in the brilliant book The Battle For Brazil). Baron Munchausen went well over budget and was at the time one of the largest film flops ever. His film of The Man Who Killed Don Quixote collapsed after only two weeks of unsuccessful filming in a mess of NATO jets, flash floods, and health problems. (A decade later, Gilliam is finally resuming production on Don Quixote.) One of the big problems that I think leads to Gilliam's troubles is that his films are usually not exactly commercial films, they're very personal, almost art films. At the same time, his distinctive visuals and wild imagination mean that his films demand a much higher budget - still low budget when compared to most major Hollywood blockbusters, but still higher budget than your typical arthouse movie - and with higher budgets come higher requirements for box-office returns and greater difficulty raising money for a filmmaker whose box-office potential can vary wildly.

So, (and I hate to be callous, but) I think it is understandable that when Heath Ledger died, while I had all the expected reactions to his death (surprise and shock, sorrow for his family, and sadness at the loss of an actor that I rather liked), one of the first things that occured to me was "What about Doctor Parnassus?" I knew that Heath Ledger had a major role in the new Gilliam film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus - indeed, I knew that Ledger's presence in the film was a pivotal element in securing funding for the budget. (The film's other stars - Christopher Plummer, Tom Waits, Verne Troyer - aren't exactly box-office names, but Heath Ledger's attachment encouraged investment in the film in the hope that his name might attract audiences.) I also knew they had completed a substantial amount of filming, but it was by no means complete. So I had resigned myself to the knowledge that Parnassus was another Gilliam film that would never be.

Then, one day, it was announed that production on Doctor Parnassus was resuming, and that Gilliam had managed to get Johnny Depp (who worked with Gilliam on the aborted Don Quixote, as well as on Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas), as well as Jude Law and Colin Farrell, to complete Heath Ledger's role. It seemed that much of the film took place in the real world, but there were a number of significant sequences that took place in a fantasy world. Filming had finished on the real-world scenes, and the only scenes remaining were those set in the fantasy world. With a couple of minor changes to the script, we now had a film in which Heath Ledger's character Tony changes his appearance in the fantasy world. It was undeniably a cheat intended to work around an unavoidable problem, but for me it was exciting news, since it meant that we would still get to see the film.

And then I saw the film. And I loved the film. But what surprised me was the fact that the actor changes don't seem like a cheat at all - in fact, it seemed as though it was always intended. There are three major scenes where Tony goes through the mirror into the world beyond (hence the three actors playing the role), but the first two times, Tony enters the mirror while wearing a mask that covers the top half of his face, but not his distinctive facial hair. (And bear in mind, that was how it was scripted and filmed with Ledger on set.) This means, for the first few minutes inside the mirror, the audience isn't thinking "who is that?", they're just following Tony wearing a mask. Once the mask is removed to reveal the new actor, there's a brief "Hello, I've changed face" moment, but the scenes proceed on very quickly. (The final time Tony enters the mirror, he's not wearing a mask, but by then we've grown accustomed to the changing face of Tony, so there's no confusion for the audience about who Colin Farrell is supposed to be.) Add to that that there are certain reasons why it is understandable that this particular character more than any other would change so dramatically every time he enters this other world - indeed, it highlights significant aspects of the person that Tony is. And it's not like Tony is the only character to change their appearance in the mirror world - some of the others we see in this world do grow older or younger, even if the change is not quite as dramatic as Tony's. (Although this could be a post-death change intended to pave the way for Tony's more obvious change.) So I was pleased to find that the actor replacement, which could have been disruptive for the audience, instead works seamlessly, and may in fact have actually improved the film.

But, moving on from the replacement of one of the film's most important characters, what is Doctor Parnassus like as a film? It revolves around a thousand-year-old monk who (through a complicated backstory) gained immortality following a bet with the devil, but now owes the devilish Mr Nick his nearly-16-year-old daughter. So the good doctor (who travels around modern-day London with his anachronistic horse-drawn sideshow allowing people to enter an alternate world through a magic mirror) makes one final bet with the devil in an effort to save his daughter. As you've probably picked up from that description, it's a very curious film - in the Gilliam oeuvre, it probably feels closest to a Baron Munchausen in tone. And as a Gilliam fan who is frankly amazed to even get to see this film finished at all, I'm hardly unbiased in my assessment, but I really did love this film.

The acting in the film is excellent, not just from Heath Ledger and the other Tonys, but also from Christopher Plummer and Tom Waits. As Parnassus, Plummer gives the role a haunted weariness, a knowledge of the curse that immortality would be, and a growing desperation as he faces the possibility of losing his daughter. Meanwhile Tom Waits plays Mr Nick perfectly - the character never fully loses his menace, we're always aware of exactly who he is and exactly what the consequences are of his winning the bet, both for Parnassus' daughter and for those people at the centre of the bet. Yet there's a mischievious element to his playing of the game that is quite delightful, and the character clearly genuinely likes competing against his long-time opponent. These excellent performances are supported by the remaining cast, with particular attention needing to be paid to the performance of Lily Cole as Parnassus's daughter Valentina. I've never seen Cole before - she's apparently best known as a model - but she manages to present a strong worldly sexuality while still retaining the curious naivety of someone who has never had a normal life or really lived in the real world. It's quite a compelling performance that I really enjoyed.

I was watching the (excellent) Monty Python: Almost The Truth documentary last night, and seeing footage of the young Gilliam directing Holy Grail, set against interview footage of Gilliam these days, it really hits home that he's getting on a bit. (He turned 69 just last month.) And it's surprising how obvious Gilliam's age is in the film - this is the film of someone who has realised he doesn't have as much time on the earth as he once did. Death pervades the film - our first meeting on Tony follows a failed attempt to kill the man, the central character sought immortality to avoid death but now regrets that choice, and various other character look for ways to ward off death just for the moment, although that threat remains everpresent in the film.

(One of the film's most uncomfortable scenes comes when Johnny Depp fills the role of Tony. He accompanies a woman inside the mirror, until they find a stream where little barges float down carrying pictures of Marilyn Monroe, Buddy Holly, Princess Diana, James Dean. When the woman points out that all these people are dead, Tony replies: "To be reborn, first you must die. All of them have achieved a kind of immortality. And we love them all the more for it. They won't get old or fat. They wont get sick or feeble. They are beyond fear. They are forever young. They are gods. And you can join them." It's a line of dialogue that sits uncomfortably in the film, feeling like a too-on-the-nose reference to Ledger's death, and yet that line was in a version of the script written eight months before he died. It's just another indication of the tragic irony that Ledger's last film was one so focused on death.)

If the film has a weakness, it's in its script. The film is very well-written, has an intriguing and enjoyable story, but I couldn't help feeling like the backstory of Parnassus' relationship with the devil wasn't quite as developed as I would have liked. As I mentioned earlier, it was a complicated backstory - perhaps too complicated - and while I have no doubt that Gilliam and Charles McKeown (as screenwriters) are perfectly clear on the backstory, I'm not sure they quite succeeded in making that information sufficiently clear to the viewer.

But that's a minor quibble compared to what the film does right. And what it really does well is give Gilliam an opportunity to exercise his imagination. Right from the film's early moments, where an incongruous horse-drawn carriage pulling a carnival sideshow sets up outside a modern-day London pub, there is little doubt that this is Gilliam's imagination given full flight, and the various journeys into the many different fantasy worlds offer an incredibly rich visual treat. Gilliam is a director whose works cry out for high-definition and Blu-Ray, where the audience can just explore the depth of his imagined world, and Parnassus is no exception. It truly is a wonderful cinematic experience.

The Schizoid Man

2009-11-13T23:14:00.002+13:00

So here's the thing.

"Where am I?"
"In the Village."
"What do you want?"
"Information."
"Whose side are you on?"
"That would be telling.... We want information. Information! INFORMATION!"
"You won't get it."
"By hook or by crook, we will."
"Who are you?"
"The new Number 2."
"Who is Number 1?"
"You are Number 6."
"I am not a number - I am a free man!"

The main point of this post is just because I wanted to share this Basic Instructions comic strip, which was posted yesterday, and which I think is quite hilarious.

I love The Prisoner. I first saw it about eight or so years ago, and have revisited it three or four times since then. It's a brilliant inventive compelling show (and if you've never seen it then you should), but it's also a show that if you just sit down and look at it, it does seem absurd. If you've never seen the show, believe me, everything in this strip is accurate. We really don't know who the main character, Number Six, actually is. We don't know where the Village is, nor which side is holding him, and there are as many theories about what the show actually means as there are people that have actually watched the show. And there really was a (very good) episode where Number Six was hypnotized to believe he was left-handed. I'm a bit bothered by the description of an episode as being about Number Six running for president of the prison - any fan of the show would refer to it as "the Village" never "the prison", and he was actually running for the position of "Number Two" rather than president, but otherwise it's an accurate description of another excellent episode. I've always realised that the final episode was weird (and it undeniably was - Patrick McGoohan famously went on holiday after it aired to escape from angry people demanding to know what exactly happened), but one of the things I love about this strip is that it reminds me that the show as a whole was always pretty weird, and the finale just pushed the weirdness to its (logical?) conclusion.

The remake of the show referred to in the strip actually airs this coming week on an American cable channel, AMC (the same channel that makes the great Mad Men and Breaking Bad), and I'm looking forward to seeing it. I'm not bothered either way about the new Number Six, Jim Caviezel, but having Ian McKellan as Number Two is great casting, as he has that friendly jocular menacing tone perfected. And from what I've seen the new Village does look visually striking and distinctive, although it doesn't come close to the original's. (One of the great things about shooting the original series at Portmerion was that it meant the Village never looked like it was just a set constructed for the show - it was much too big and spectacular for that - yet it still seemed unlike anything we'd seen before.) So I'm excited to see what the remake actually ends up like. I doubt it will come close to the original, but I am hopeful for a few nights of entertaining and fascinating television.

Be seeing you.

Make love, not war

2009-09-24T21:29:00.001+12:00

So here's the thing.

I once watched an episode of the British comedy series The Thick Of It. I wasn't too impressed with it, and never bothered watching any more episodes. But in the years since I saw that episode, I've heard so many people talk about how great the show was that I began to wonder whether I was wrong in my assessment. So, with the festival showing the film version of the series, called In The Loop (see the trailer here), I decided to give it another look.

Upon reflection, I wonder whether my problem was that I came to the TV series with wrong expectations. I first watched the show because I'd heard it compared to the classic TV comedy series Yes, Minister, a show I've loved since I first saw it at the age of 11. One of the things I really enjoyed about that show was the dialogue, the masterful way the writers played with the English language to obfuscate the message being communicated. Here's an example line of dialogue, in which Sir Humphrey confesses to having made a mistake:

"The identity of the official whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight has been the subject of recent discussion is not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume, but not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question is, it may surprise you to learn, one whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of defining by means of the perpendicular pronoun."

How can you not love any show that has a character delivering dialogue like that. There's a beauty to that sentence, there's no point where the line is actually difficult to understand, it's just that the sentence goes on and on, building up until the listener gets lost in a torrent of words. Wonderful.

In The Loop. like its parent show, also makes distinctive use of dialogue. Here's a sample line of dialogue from the film, coming after someone says that something falls within their "purview".

"Where do you think you are, some fucking Regency costume drama? This is a Government department, not some fucking Jane fucking Austen novel! Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your purview and ram it up your shitter with a lubricated horse cock!"

And here, you see, I think we have the answer to the question of why, exactly, I initially disliked The Thick Of It. It's not that I'm offended by swearing in movies and television, I'm not. But when you sit down to watch something expecting to see Sir Humphrey Appleby, you're not actually prepared for Malcolm Tucker. Coming to the film with more realistic expectations, I realised that, as a cutting political satire, comparisons to the earlier classic series really are deserved.

The film is basically a comedy about how the Iraq invasion happened. Not explicitly - it's a fictional film with fictional characters, and the name of the country being invaded is never once mentioned - but despite being so non-specific, it's difficult to not interpret as an exploration of how a situation like the Iraq war would have arisen. The British Minister for International Development, Simon Foster, is against the war, but accidentally breaks the Government's line of remaining neutral on the prospect of the invasion when he describes the war as being "unforeseeable". An attempt to backtrack on this entirely non-neutral word choice results in another quote being seen as a pro-war statement. It's not long before Simon and his assistant Toby find themselves in the United States, being pushed and pulled to support or oppose the war. And meanwhile, on both sides of the Atlantic, political machinations move both countries steadily towards war. The film culminates at the United Nations, where votes to authorise the invasion are held based on the evidence of dubious intelligence provided by people with silly codenames, and no-one seems to quite know how to stop the war from happening. If they even want to.

The acting in the film is uniformly great. Most of the core UK characters are filled by the stars of the TV series (although only a couple of people are actually playing their TV character), and they all give very good performances. Among the UK cast, Tom Hollander is the main actor that's new to this world, and he manages to make Simon Foster pathetic, indecisive, and impotent, all without losing audience sympathy.

I initially found Peter Capaldi's performance as Malcolm Tucker a bit disorienting, as just that week I had watched him playing a weak-willed bureaucrat in the Torchwood: Children of Earth miniseries, and it was somewhat startling to be confronted by him as a force of nature. As in the TV series (which I have since sought out and watched in its entirety), Malcolm Tucker is just a supporting character, but his appearances are so completely overwhelming that he feels everpresent. But where the series portrays Tucker almost as the boogyman, a figure whose appearances completely overwhelm and terrify the other characters, the film does a nice job in establishing his character, and then moving him to the States where his reign of terror is completely stymied. In the UK, his force comes not just from the overpowering fire of his profane verbal attacks, but the fact that he has actual power as basically the voice of the PM. But in the US, he's a nobody, tolerated as the PM's representative, but ultimately a somewhat irrelevant creature completely devoid of power to back up his bluster. And it's extremely entertaining to watch him try to get control of a situation where he is completely powerless.

But it's the American cast that really make the film sing. David Rasche has created a nice career in recent years of being the best part of anything he works in, and as the person responsibe for spearheading the move to war, he gives us an entertaining performance as a character that's almost the gung-ho Sledge Hammer reinvented as a politician. James Gandolfini clearly relished a the script that delivers his anti-war general many of the film's best one-liners. (Only Capaldi gets better dialogue.) And it's a surprise to see that My Girl's Anna Chlumsky has grown to be a talented comedic actress. (Her interactions with her mortal enemy, an obnoxious and awkward aide called Chad, were a particular highlight.)

Given that it was probably the language that put me off the original show, it was surprising to realise that it is a genuine love of the use of language that ties both Yes, Minister and In The Loop together. In The Loop may not have Yes, Minister's thesaurus-based dialogue (unless you can get a profanity thesaurus), but nevertheless they both take real delight in exploring the use of language, the implications of language, and the way it can be used to obscure the truth. After all, the entire plot of In The Loop is set off by the use of a single word, "unforeseeable", there are whole scenes that explore the implications of that one word, meaningless non-committal phrases start appearing on jingoistic bumper stickers, and the war-preparation committee is deliberately disguised by the blandest name imaginable, The Future Planning Committee. Indeed, Malcolm Tucker may be referred to as the PM's "enforcer", but basically he's a spin doctor - and spin is essentially a way of disguising unpalatable facts through the most positive use of language possible. And then there's just the general dialogue, which may be profane and offensive, but is also witty and hilarious and memorable and quotable.

But the film also has a lot to say about the increasing role of ideology in shaping the modern political sphere. Those who are behind the war push have clearly decided that the attack is going to happen, and so their focus is not on examining the case for going to war, but just how to get approval for the war while trying to minimise the involvement of those that may oppose the conflict. In one of the film's many plot threads, a lowly aide prepares a paper arguing that the war is not justified, which ends up being the focus of political attention. ("It's like a Harry Potter book, if Harry Potter made people really, really angry.") Over the course of the film, we follow the paper as it is read, edited, leaked, and ultimately even manipulated to provide the very evidence and justification for the war it's arguing against. And yet at no point does anyone really even examine the argument the paper makes, all because ideology has already fixed their position on the conflict.

It's difficult to know what else to say. It's a sharp satire of behind-the-scenes international politics, while remaining accessible to an audience that may not be aware of political intricacies and nuances. It's filled with a great cast of characters, all of whom are to some degree self-serving and behave appallingly, but are great fun to watch. It's fast, witty, and an utterly enjoyable experience.

As I said, since seeing the film, I've seen the complete run of The Thick Of It. And I'm glad to discover how wrong I was about the TV series, it's a brilliant show, I strongly recommend it, and I'm excited to learn that they're making another series, but I definitely prefer the film. There's something essentially insular and small-scale about the series, with people trying to hide from the type of political storms that are forgotten a week later. But In The Loop is a much bigger film, examining complicated and long-lasting international issues, and it's made more interesting and urgent for the importance of the issues at the core of the film. Which is not to say the film is about "issues" - that's just incidental to the film's main focus, which is on being as entertainingly and exhaustingly funny as possible. And it succeeds admirably, proving to be one of the best comedies of the year.

Putting out fier with gasoleen

2009-09-13T23:44:00.001+12:00

So here's the thing.

Going into the new Tarantino film, Inglourious Basterds, I had a very clear understanding about the general and critical reaction to the film. I knew a lot of people really loved the film, a lot of people thought it was painfully awful, and there seemed to be no middle-ground. (Looking at it now, I discover it's not quite as even as I thought - Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 88% rating, while the more accurate Metacritic gives it a lower but still positive score of 69.) But at the time, I understood that opinion was pretty evenly divided. So I went to the film, partly because I was glad to finally see Tarantino has finally made the WWII-film-by-way-of-spaghetti-western he's talked about for the last ten years, but partly because I was curious about how I would feel about the film. Given the perceived even division on the film, which side would I fall on - would I love it or hate it?

I should establish what my position on Tarantino was prior to seeing the film. I feel that he's an interesting director, and someone whose work I always try to keep an eye on, but I'm not a big fan. I certainly don't quite get all the praise of his skills in writing dialogue, which I always found somewhat overwritten and intrusively reliant on pop-culture references. I haaated Reservoir Dogs, although that may have been because I was completely put off by the ear scene (I was much more squeamish back then, and I wonder how I would respond to the film these days). I've enjoyed Pulp Fiction the couple of times I've seen it, but it's not a film I really think about. I remember enjoying Jackie Brown in cinemas, but haven't felt a need to revisit it since then. I thought Vol 1 of Kill Bill was good but had some issues - however, watching both Vol 1 and Vol 2 in a double-screening resolved my issues, and I really like the film as a whole. In fact, Kill Bill as a whole is the first Tarantino film I actually like. And I thought Death Proof was pretty awful right until the climax of the film. Most of the film is dull and tedious, and feels like Tarantino is relying far too much on his dialogue (which as I said I've never been impressed by), but once Zoe gets on the car bonnet, the film became an intense and brilliant experience.

As for Inglourious Basterds? I thought it was genuinely great. I walked out of the film thinking it was a really fast 2-hour film, and it was a shock to look at my watch to discover the film was a full 30 minutes longer than I had realised. And, having sat through a 2½ hour film, my only real criticism was that I wanted the film to be longer. I've watched it twice now, absolutely enthralled each time, and the more I think about it, the more I read about it, the more amazed I am by the film. It's rich, beautiful, intelligent, powerful, incredible and truly is the most perfect example of what I hope for every time I go to the movies. And every day, as I look through the paper and see it appearing in the cinema listings, I start planning to skip work for a few hours and catch the next screening.*

* (To CP: Not really. To everyone else: Yes, really.)

The film adopts a unusual pace, much slower than most modern films (it apparently features only 16 significant scenes in the entire film - your average film these days will have between 40 and 60 different scenes), but Tarantino manages the film's pace expertly, building the tensions in each scene, raising the pressure, until the inevitable occurs. Just look at the opening scene, which revolves around a Nazi officer (nicknamed "the Jewhunter") talking to a French dairy farmer about a Jewish family that has gone missing. The scene runs close to 20 minutes long, and while as a viewer it's noticeably a long scene by today's standards, it's so suspenseful and intense that it simply does not feel like 20 minutes. And for pretty much the entire scene it's just two people talking, the Nazi friendly, charming, joking, the farmer on edge, nervous, tense. And it's brilliant. For the first time in his career, I was really impressed by Tarantino's dialogue - it felt natural, as though these were real people having real conversations, rather than just being mouthpieces for the director. And even in a simple dialogue scene, Tarantino manages to surprise, throwing in twist developments that startle the audience while still remaining true to the scene and the characters. The scene also plays with the viewer's expectations - it starts off in subtitled French, but after a few minutes the characters decide to start speaking in English. At that point, it seemed like a device in any other film where characters start speaking their own language and then transition to English to avoid forcing the viewer to read subtitles for the entire film. Fortunately not only does it prove not to be such a device (indeed, most of the film is in subtitled French, German, or Italian), but the change in language actually proves to be an essential element in allowing the scene to develop as it does. It's an exceptional scene, and in any other film would be a high point. But the great thing is, in Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has better to come.

Tarantino plays out similar scenes throughout the film, intense scenes of dialogue where he seems almost to be experimenting with how long he can stretch out the suspense, and he never falters in his sense of how far he can push the scene. The scenes work because they don't just revolve around the uncertainty of what will happen, but the tension of when it will happen. (Another incredible scene, a meeting in a tavern with a table of drunken German soldiers playing the card-on-forehead identity-guessing game, lasts nearly half-an-hour. By the time the scene reaches its climax, it's all the better for taking that length of time to build the tension.) One of the things that makes these scenes work so well is the fact that because Tarantino knows he has the time to let things build up to a boil, he doesn't need to force the tension by artificially going big. When interrogating the farmer, Landa doesn't yell or rant Travolta-style, he barely speaks above a whisper, just talking and unnerving the person opposite, subtly pushing the discussion towards the result he wants. Characters get no relief from the need to be guarded and careful in everything they say and do because anything, even the smallest most common gestures, can give you away. It's a nice change in pace from the way most films are made, and when the scenes come to their (often explosive) conclusion, there's almost a sense that this is the inevitable unavoidable conclusion to the scene's set-up and development, rather than just being "how the writer wrote it".

If I have a problem with the film, it's in the way it uses the characters of the Basterds. There's pretty much no better way to describe the Basterds than to quote Brad Pitt's introductory speech.

"My name is Lt. Aldo Raine and I need me eight soldiers. Eight Jewish-American soldiers. Now, y'all might of heard rumours about the armada happening soon. Well, we'll be leaving a little earlier. We're gonna be dropped into France, dressed as civilians. And once we're in enemy territory, as a bushwackin' guerrilla army, we're gonna be doing one thing and one thing only... killing Nazis. Members of the Nationalist Socialist Party conquered Europe through murder, torture, intimation, and terror. And that's exactly what we're gonna do to them. Now, I don't know about y'all, but I sure as hell didn't come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross five thousand miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily, and then jump out of an air-o-plane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin', mass murderin' maniac and they need to be dee-stroyed. That's why every sonuvabitch we find wearin' a Nazi uniform, they're gonna die. We will be cruel to the Germans and through our cruelty they will know who we are. They will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us, and the Germans will not be able to help themselves from imagining the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, at our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the Germans will be sickened by us, the Germans will talk about us and the Germans will fear us. And when the Germans close their eyes at night and their subconscious tortures them for the evil they've done, it will be with thoughts of us that it tortures them with. Sound good?"

So they make their way through France, killing almost every Nazi they find, but sparing the odd person (after carving a swastika in their forehead) to go back and spread the word about the Basterds. Now, I don't have an issue with the Basterds themselves - it's a rather fascinating idea, and honestly it would probably have been a good thing if they had actually existed - but the way the film uses them as characters is problematic. I remember a few years ago Tarantino said his script for the film was at that point long enough for three films, and frustratingly I suspect that, in his efforts to cut it down to a more manageable length, Tarantino had to cut a lot of material about the Basterds. After all, the Basterds' actions and motivations aren't too complex, whereas those of the Jewish survivor Shosanna require much more time to establish. What this means is that the characters of the Basterds aren't as fleshed out as we really needed. We get a lot of Brad Pitt's character, completely overplayed in a performance that definitely divides the viewers, but which I personally loved. We also get a lot of Eli Roth's character, nicknamed "the Bear Jew" and famous for taking a baseball bat to the heads of captured Nazis, and a former German soldier named Hugo Stiglitz who is recruited by the Basterds after killing 13 high-ranking Nazis. But sadly, we get very little of most of the remaining Basterds. I was excited when it was announced that Samm Levine (from Freaks And Geeks) and BJ Novak (from the US version of The Office) had been cast as two of the Basterds, but really they're just there to make up numbers, never getting any distinctive or memorable individual moments. (In fact there are several Basterds that just vanish from the story without explanation. In some ways it adds believability - there was some time that passed between Chapters 2 and 4, and they probably just died in that time with no reason for anyone to discuss their deaths when the film meets up with the Basterds months later, but it still felt a bit sloppy.) Coming out of the film, my main issue with the film was that I felt it needed an extra half-an-hour, just to give it a bit more time to flesh out the titular characters.

One thing that's interesting to realise is the way that war films have changed recently. War films these days are probably best represented by a film like Saving Private Ryan, a very earnest attempt to present the "war is hell" viewpoint, the terror and horror of wartime experiences. Tarantino's film is a clear callback to a much earlier type of film, the war-as-action film, films like The Dirty Dozen or The Guns Of Navarone where the Allies are good guys and the Nazis are evil. And yet despite that underpinning element, Tarantino is surprisingly (for Tarantino) aware of the moral complexities of his story. It's not just the Jewish-revenge-p0rn film that many people perceive it to be. Yes, there are people in the film who die in particularly graphic ways (one particularly deserving character takes a volley of machine-gun fire to the face, in what proves to be a cathartic Hell Yeah! moment), but there are a number of situations where the Nazis being killed come across more sympathetically than the "good guy" Basterds. (In one memorable scene, a German soldier chooses to be beaten to death rather than reveal information that would result in the deaths of other Germans. Had that character been an Allied soldier captured by Nazis, he would be regarded as a hero, and despite his delivering a last-minute defiant insult about Jews it's still disconcerting when the "good guys" are whooping and cheering his death as being the closest they come to going to the movies.)

This leads me to the most surprising thing about the film. It's a film that to me seems acutely aware of the toll that revenge actually has on the person taking it. If we look at Kill Bill, a film that's even more explicitly about revenge, the only acknowledgement that film gives to the impact of The Bride's actions on herself comes right at the end of the film, when she collapses in the bathroom crying. Contrast this with Inglourious Basterds, which is basically a revenge film covered with the trappings of a war film. The Basterds are deeply unpleasant people, hardened by a need to seek revenge for all the evil unleashed by the Nazis against the Jewish people and the world. They barely seem human in their braying enjoyment of killing Nazis. In the end, these may have been good people once upon a time, but by the time we see them on the battlefield they're pretty bad people working to achieve a good outcome, and they come up against some brave and honourable people working for an evil end. Similarly, as we look at the laughing face of Shosanna, it's impossible to not think about the toll her need for revenge has taken on her personally. But this film is not some liberal treatise on how we're all human and why can't we all get along. The Nazis were evil, utterly evil and hateful, end of story. And Tarantino is well aware that it is basically enjoyable to watch Nazis die, because there is so little ambiguity in how evil they were. It's still a film where revenge is fun and violence is cool, especially when it's against the Nazis, it's just that Tarantino seems to acknowledge a greater degree of complexity to the issue than I think he really has before.

It's also interesting to see that Tarantino for the first time seems to recognise the disconcerting nature of film violence. The climax of the film takes place in a premiere screening of a Nazi propaganda film about a German sniper that killed 300 Allied soldiers in three days. And as you watch the Nazi audience braying and cheering every Allied death on the screen, people openly laughing with joy at the sight of American soldiers dying, it reminds the viewer both of the Basterds enjoying the death by bat of the German soldier, and of how some audience members will have responded to that scene. (It's no accident that the Basterds adopt Nazi-style levels of cruelty to those they capture.) Similarly, we get the character of Zoller, whose exploits are dramatised (and who plays himself) in that film. Tarantino never actually goes into Zoller's thought-processes watching the film (beyond a joking "that actor was terrible"), but as we see his discomfort watching his wartime experiences on the big screen, it seemed almost as though the weight of the deaths he had caused weighed heavily on Zoller, as if he was a bit repulsed by the thought of that experience being repackaged as entertainment (although, to be honest, there are a multitude of ways Zoller's reaction could be interpretted). Now, it's not uncommon for directors to seek to use their films to criticise the culture of film violence and damn the audience for enjoying it (I'm looking at you, Michael Haneke), and much of the time I feel they actually end up hypocritically endorsing the very thing they claim to be speaking against. Tarantino at least knows that he enjoys movie violence too much to be able to criticise it, so he doesn't adopt a hypocritical "you are bad for enjoying this" position. He acknowledges this is an issue, he just then says "But who cares? I'm having fun."

I've already referred to Brad Pitt's over-the-top performance in the film (which leads to the film's funniest scene, where Pitt poses as an Italian film director, speaking minimal Eye-talian in a thick Southern-hillbilly accent), but it's interesting how stylistically varying all the performances are. On the one hand, there are a lot of over-the-top exaggerated performances. Christoph Waltz's incredible performance as Hans Landa won him Best Actor in Cannes, and he is brilliant, but it's never a subtle performance. At times the character himself is openly performing for the people around him to achieve a particular effect (look at the pipe he smokes in the opening scene, for example), but most of the time that's just who he is - giddy, threatening, intelligent, scheming, eloquent, persuasive, even absurd, often at the same time. Waltz manages to present Landa almost as a comical figure while still remaining a sinister and threatening presence. Then we have similarly larger-than-life appearances from people like Eli Roth or August Diehl. (We also get an OTT Mike Myers playing an English general, in one of the film's more minor missteps. It's an okay performance from the actor, in an otherwise excellent scene, but it's so obviously Myers under lots of makeup that it's distracting. In a film largely cast with unknown actors, it would have been better had Tarantino cast someone else - especially since I just want Mike Myers' career to end, and I hate that he's received the validation that comes with being in a Tarantino film.)

What's surprising about these performances is that, despite their undeniable excesses, they nevertheless feel like real, three-dimensional humans, and they continue to convince even while appearing with actors giving much more subtle realistic performances. For me, the acting highlight of the film is Melanie Laurent as Shosanna, the sole survivor of her family's massacre. It's a performance that everyone would have been talking about had it not been overshadowed by the acclaim over Christoph Waltz. Laurent, a French actress I've never seen before, gives a subtle nuanced performance that is completely captivating. So much of her performance is carried in small gestures, in her eyes, in tiny twitches, in her breathing (just look at the way she barely suppresses her anger, her fear, and her blind panic when she first meets Landa face-to-face), that by the point where she justifiably goes over-the-top, it's made that much more terrifying for the fact that she has been so controlled up to that point. And it's impossible to mention Melanie Laurent without also pointing to Daniel Bruhl's similarly excellent performance as Zoller, playing a Nazi war hero seemingly convinced that he's in the middle of a romantic comedy with Shosanna. And there are other exceptional performances - Michael Fassbender as the British film critic turned soldier, say, or Diane Kruger as German film star Bridget von Hammersmark - that create a nice complementary contrast to the more excessive performances of Pitt or Waltz.

As I mentioned before, what's also surprising about the film is how movie-star-light the film is. Tarantino is famous for packing his films with an impressive cast of current and past stars, but in this film Brad Pitt was the only main actor recognisable to the general public. (Mike Myers is only a brief cameo, while both Harvey Keitel and Samuel L Jackson make voice-only cameos, one as a US General on the phone, the other as a narrator for a couple of sequences.) Now, this is not a reflection on the quality of the actors or the performances, almost all of whom are stellar, but it's a nice thing to see from Tarantino. Too often he seems to cast his films on the basis of "wouldn't it be cool to work with so-and-so", and writing his scripts on that basis, so it's nice to see him stretching and finding widely unseen talent to fill his film.

I'm surprised to look through my review and realise I've made it this far without making any significant comment on the climactic scene. The various plotlines converge on the premiere screening of a Nazi propaganda film in a small cinema, with both Shosanna (who runs the cinema) and the Basterds independently executing their own plans against the Nazis gathered for the movie. Crucially, we know exactly what Shosanna's plans are, but really only learn about what the Basterds were planning as they execute the plans. And really, it's clearly due to the contrivance of Tarantino the writer that the plans come together as well as they do. After all, Shosanna doesn't even know the Basterds exist let alone what they are planning, and vice versa. And yet each plan is really only effective because of how it works in conjunction with the other plan. Similarly the timing of the two plots works out too perfectly for unknowing and independent plans (what are the odds they both decide to execute their plans at the exact same time?). And yet, I can't fault Tarantino for this, because for all of the evident presence of his hand as a writer manoeuvring the various players together, it culminates in what was for me easily the most extraordinary moment in film that I have seen for a long time. It's exciting, brilliant, disturbing, violent, beautiful, haunting. Like much of Tarantino's work, it reminds me of many other films, but where Tarantino usually feels like he is just referencing / appropriating / plagiarising other work, here he may be echoing something I've seen before, but at the same time he's created something entirely new. (A lot of people trying to articulate why this feels so familiar have had to point to Raiders of the Lost Ark or Carrie for anything similar, but those films are so different from this that it really demonstrates how far the scene is from anything that Tarantino might be referencing. Tarantino has gone beyond mere visual quoting - as he does at the start of the film by mimicking The Searchers - and has started refining his inspirations down to their essence and using them to create something entirely new.) That scene at the cinema is easily the best thing Tarantino has ever done, and here it caps a truly extraordinary masterful film. Having seen it twice now, having been thinking about it a lot over the past two weeks, I feel that Tarantino has finally justified his position as one of the most essential directors working today. It really is that great.

Review in passion

2009-09-08T23:34:00.003+12:00

So here's the thing.

I read an article the other night, one of the most impressive pieces of writing I've encountered in a while. It's called "The Letter I Would Love To Read To You In Person", and I strongly recommend you follow that link and read it. It's an article, apparently written last year, by a young Filipino film critic I'd previously never heard of named Alexis Tioseco, and it really is an extraordinary piece of writing. It's framed as a love letter, but like no other love letter I've encountered. He's not just writing about his love for a girl, a Slovenian film critic by the name of Nika Bohinc, he's also pondering his life growing up and moving as a teenager to the Philippines, he's writing a personal reflection on his connection with and passion for Filipino films, and he's writing a manifesto about what needs to change in that country's film industry. And if it seems strange that all these should be mixed in a love letter, well, as Tioseco comments, "The first impulse of any good film critic, and to this I think you would agree, must be of love. To be moved enough to want to share their affection for a particular work or to relate their experience so that others may be curious." There's a passion that pours out of the letter that's infectious - I've never heard of the films of Antoinette Jadaone, or the animations of Roxlee, but suddenly I feel like I need to learn about them, that I'm losing out by not seeing their work. Alexis's passion for Filipino cinema is so complete that it seems he feels you can't fully understand him without understanding how and why he feels about his country's film output. It's a beautiful piece of writing, and in my view an essential read.

But I'm not the only person to have been reading this piece this week. I visit a few film-related blogs, and in the past few days everyone has been writing about Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc, many of them pointing to this article. And in a number of cases, the writers freely acknowledge that they've never heard of these two until this past week, but now are moved to write about them.

In the article, Tioseco mentions discussions the two have had about where they will live, commenting that Bohinc had come to terms with the idea of moving to the Philippines, and it seems that she did. Because a few days ago, Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc died when they were shot by burglars in their home in Manila. It's a strange thing to read that letter, filled with youth and vitality and passion, and to imagine that voice having been silenced. Any death in such circumstances is a tragedy, but sadly when you hear about such events, it usually almost seems distant, an abstraction, sad in concept but almost irrelevant. But in this case we can read his words and understand what a passionate, eloquent, and thoughtful person has been lost, and as I read various posts about the couple from people that knew them, it becomes clear that Nika Bohinc was no less a forceful advocate for cinema. It all drives home just how awful this event was. Rest in peace, Alexis and Nika.

But reading the letter, I found myself contemplating another issue, something that's been bothering me for the past few days. In reading Alexis Tioseco's passionate defence of the Filipino film industry, my initial thought (if I'm honest) was, "there's a Filipino film industry?" Now, of course there is, pretty much everywhere has a film industry, but I was still surprised. I like to fool myself that I'm a cultured filmgoer whose cinematic taste go beyond the ordinary multiplex, but in truth I'm not that much better than the average viewer of Transformers 2. I might go to a larger number of foreign films than most people, especially during the film festival, but even then my foreign film experience is pretty much limited to French, German, Chinese, or Hong Kong films. I stay in my cinematic box just like most other people, even if my box is marginally larger than the average. (Not that much, though - I don't think watching Jackie Chan's films with subtitles count as broadening your cinematic horizons.) Taking away film society screenings (which occasionally offer more challenging foreign films from unexpected countries that I would otherwise have never sought to see), my film viewing is still extremely limited, and largely American-centric. Even when I do see a foreign film, it's more likely to have been appointed as "worthwhile" by the American film industry, say, through an Oscar nomination for Foreign Language Film. It's easy to argue this as a consequence of availability - not even the typical arthouse cinema shows that many Filipino films, let alone an average multiplex - but that's just an excuse. Even in the film festival, which really is an opportunity to view films from everywhere, I stayed very much within my comfort zone. I mean, I enjoyed Adventureland, but did I really need to see the new film from the director of Superbad at the film festival? Couldn't I have taken the spot in my festival schedule that was occupied by that film and used it instead to sample something a bit different, something I might never have a chance to see, something outside my limits, something from the Philippines or Kazakhstan or Belarus or some country I've never heard of but that could offer me a different perspective on cinema. I could have, I didn't, and I was wrong not to do so.

Now I know that, come next year's festival, I'll be back to normal, watching the same comfortable films, limiting my foreign film consumption to films that have either received the approval of the American film industry or that come from the standard filmmaking countries. I'm not going to be adventurous, I'm not going to try anything new. I'll forget I ever wrote this post. When I come to look through the festival programme and see a film from the Philippines, I'll probably even think "Wow, I didn't know they made films in the Philippines". But right now, right at this moment, I regret my limited horizons. I just wish I would seek to break out of them.

¿Usted no habla Español, verdad?

2009-08-30T21:06:00.000+12:00

So here's the thing.

There's a scene in Jim Jarmusch's new film, The Limits Of Control, (see the simultaneously misleading and much too spoiler-filled trailer here) that I found rather fascinating. In it, the unnamed central character sits at a table at a Spanish cafe. He orders two espressos, in separate cups, for himself. After a while, someone sits at his table, and ask in Spanish "You don't speak Spanish, do you?" "No," the man says. The new person then starts talking for a while about whether wooden instruments (like violins) retain the memory of every note ever played on them. Meanwhile, the man sits silently, unengaged in the matter being talked about. Eventually he pulls out a box of matches and puts it on the table. After a while, the other person finishes his conversation, picks up the matchbox, replaces it with a different matchbox, and leaves. The man opens the new matchbox, and finds a small piece of paper folded up. He unfolds it to find a short coded message. He reads it, folds it up again, eats the paper, and drinks his coffee.

There's another scene that I found similarly fascinating. In it, the unnamed central character sits at a table at a Spanish cafe. He orders two espressos, in separate cups, for himself. After a while, someone sits at his table, and asks in Spanish "You don't speak Spanish, do you?" "No," the man says. The new person then starts talking for a while about dreams and about how she enjoys watching old films because they give an insight into a long-gone world. Meanwhile, the man sits silently, unengaged in the matter being talked about. Eventually he pulls out a box of matches and puts it on the table. After a while, the other person finishes her conversation, picks up the matchbox, replaces it with a different matchbox, and leaves. The man opens the new matchbox, and finds a small piece of paper folded up. He unfolds it to find a short coded message. He reads it, folds it up again, eats the paper, and drinks his coffee.

But I really have to tell you about this other scene in which the unnamed central character sits at a table at a Spanish cafe. He orders two espressos, in separate cups, for himself. After a while... well, you get the idea.

What's interesting about these scenes (which play out maybe six or seven times throughout the film, usually at a cafe but not always, and with a different person sitting at the man's table each time) is that the only obvious point of difference in each variation on the scene is the subject of conversation. And our main character isn't interested. There's clearly no meaning, no hidden code in the conversation, since the only point of actual importance in the exchange was the opening codeword question about speaking Spanish. The various conversations, which range in topics from the origin of the term 'bohemian' to whether you could study the molecules in something to discover everywhere it ever was, are clearly just points of obsession for the different characters.

But there's another interesting series of scenes in the film. The Lone Man (as the character is credited) comes to his hotel room to find a naked woman on his bed. She's one of his contacts, who has arrived several days early, and she is unhappy to learn he doesn't have sex when he's on a job. Cut to a shot of the woman (whose role is listed in the credits as Nude) sleeping naked next to the fully-clothed Lone Man. The Lone Man goes out the next day. That night, she models a entirely transparent raincoat for him, naked under the coat. Cut to a shot of the woman sleeping naked next to the fully-clothed Lone Man. The Lone Man goes out the next day. That night, she swims in the hotel pool, naked, while the fully-clothed Lone Man watches her. Cut to a shot of the woman sleeping naked next to the fully-clothed Lone Man. The Lone Man goes out the next day. That night, she sits, naked, on the couch next to the fully clothed Lone Man. Cut to a shot of the woman sleeping naked next to the fully-clothed Lone Man. The Lone Man goes out the next day. And this day the Lone Man actually acquires the object he needs to give to her, and she gives him the information he needs in return, and then she leaves.

Basically, what I'm trying to express to you is that there's a lot of repetition in the film. In a lot of ways, the level of repetition probably makes the film sound quite boring, although it wasn't. The Limits of Control is one film where I walked out unsure whether I liked it or not, although the more I think about it the more I realise I really did enjoy it. I think. Far from making the film boring, the repetition really added to the film, establishing a rhythm in the film and giving it a comfortable feel. And Jarmusch plays with the repetition, using variations in the routines as the source of a surprising amount of humour. (There's a very funny moment involving the Lone Man's developing interaction over time with a waiter that may be one of my favourite moments in the festival.)

And yet, for a film that (if we're honest) is largely plotless, a bunch of encounters where almost all of the substantive dialogue consists of irrelevant monologues, there's a very clear sense of direction in the film. We as viewers don't know exactly what his ultimate task will be (although it's not exactly difficult to guess), but despite that uncertainty there's a real sense of dread that increasingly fills the film, even as we sit through these bizarre scenes with his various contacts. It's going somewhere, every interaction may appear meaningless to the audience but they all move the Lone Man forward, bringing him one step closer to his ultimate goal. Even having seen the film, I don't know exactly why he had to do what he ultimately did, what the events were that justified the hiring of the Lone Man, nor exactly who hired him.

But I think that's part of the point of the film. This film belongs to a very specific, recognisable genre, but it's stripped of everything extraneous to the core of the genre. And I mean everything. Hitchcock used to talk about the McGuffin in a film - it's a term that refers to that thing around which the film's plot revolves, the device that motivates the action in the film, but that the audience itself doesn't actually care about beyond its role in actually starting the film's events. And The Limits Of Control is so stripped to its bare bones that even the McGuffin is absent - the reasons why the Lone Man has to do what he does are irrelevant to us as viewers, it just matters that he does them. The characters aren't actually characters, but just stand in the position of characters.* In that way, the pointless but enjoyable conversations seem almost like a commentary on the way this genre, or indeed any genre, relies on pointless irrelevancies to fill the screening time and provide the elements of interest in the film.

* (In addition to Lone Man and Nude, the film's other characters are named in the credits as Creole, French, Waiter, Violin, Blonde, Molecules, Guitar, Mexican, Driver, American, Second American, Flamenco Club Waitress, Flight Attendant, Street Kids #1, #2, and #3, Flamenco Dancer, Flamenco Singer, and Flamenco Guitarist. Not one person in the film actually has a name.)

I do have to mention the cast. The film has a great cast, with people like Tilda Swinton, John Hurt, Gael García Bernal, and Bill Murray making appearances, and everyone gives very good performances. It can't be easy to play someone who by definition is just a bare cypher, especially when most of the actors really only get a scene or two to play with, but as they deliver their monologues the characters come alive - they feel like they could be real people breaking through the plot devices they might be expected to be. In some ways, that almost seems like part of the film's commentary on the genre - where most films focus on the main character and dismiss those people that make a single appearance as simple plot functionaries, here we walk out of the cinema knowing more about the personalities of each of the Lone Man's contacts than we do about the Lone Man himself. (Indeed, the final scene in the airport seems to suggest that the Lone Man may be a very different person when he's not working than the silent professional that we saw. Assuming, of course, that that was the real-life Lone Man we saw.)

Now, this film is not for everybody. In fact I suspect it's not for most people. Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 39% rating, while Metacritic gives it a score of 40. And I can completely understand the film getting this type of poor reception. As I said, it took me a few days to decide whether or not I even liked it. But I do feel that, once you realise what the film is doing, and just allow yourself to be subsumed into this film world, recognising the constant repetition as providing the base for some interesting variations on a theme, then I think the film can work for you. At the very least, it's both familiar and unlike anything I've seen before. The films of Jim Jarmusch are an unfortunate gap in my cinematic knowledge, and I've been meaning to address that failing for a while but never quite got around to. But someone who could make a film like this as fascinating and intriguing as it was is someone whose work I really need to explore further. I don't feel that I've even begun to grasp what Jarmusch is doing in the film, but it's stayed with me a lot more than a number of festival films that I unequivocally liked, and I look forward to grappling with the film in the future.

Take your protein pills and put your helmet on

2009-08-18T00:28:00.002+12:00

So here's the thing.

Sam Bell is tired, he is alone, he is 250,000 miles from home. As the sole resident of a fully-automated moonbase mining an essential mineral for power generation back on Earth, Sam's not really needed - his only job is to keep an eye on any problems with the mechanised works. So he spends most of his time watching television, exercising in the gym, or building an intricate model of a small town. Problems in the communications systems mean all contact he has back home, whether with his bosses or his family, is limited to pre-recorded video messages. His only real-time conversation is with GERTY, the robot that actually runs the moonbase. But Sam is coming up to the end of his three-year shift - soon his replacement will arrive and he can return home. And it's about time - the isolation seems to have left him going a little crazy, suffering from disturbing hallucinations. After being involved in a terrible accident while outside the base, he wakes to find himself in the infirmary, with GERTY assuring him all is fine, although the robot does seem to be hiding something. And then... Well, I can't say what happens next, because to do so would ruin the surprise and joy of watching one of my favourite films in the festival unfold.

Moon (please do not watch the far-too-spoilery trailer here) is the first film from director Duncan Jones, son of another famously space-obsessed artist. But while his father is someone who was definitely interested in spectacle, Jones seems almost uninterested in the wonder offered by the film's location. The film ventures out onto the moon's surface only rarely, when absolutely required by the plot, and mostly stays firmly within the confines of the moonbase. No doubt it's partly a money-saving exercise - the film may use (rather impressive) modelwork instead of expensive CGI, but shooting on set has still got to be cheaper for a low-budget film - but Jones also seems aware that focusing the film on the spectacle of the moon as a location would have distracted from the film's focus as a character piece.

And it absolutely is a character piece. So often science fiction films present space as the final frontier, an exciting world to explore. And no doubt it is, for those pioneers who are breaking new ground in space exploration. But Moon presents us with someone for whom space is just where he works. Sam would probably have been excited when he first arrived, "Oh my gosh, I'm on the moon!", but three years later, he barely even thinks about it. He just gets up and goes to work, never even thinking about the phenomenal view out the windows, because (strange as it seems) he's actually become bored by it. But on top of the mundane day-to-day existence, there's also the isolation. Watching the film, I was reminded of the documentary In The Shadow Of The Moon. In one part Michael Collins (the third astronaut on Apollo 11) spoke about being left alone to orbit the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin went down in the lunar module. He talked about being the loneliest man ever, with not a single human being within thousands of miles. In making Moon, Jones was clearly very aware of the sense of isolation that comes from being so far away from even the possibility of human contact. Humans are essentially social beings, so how do you cope when you're a quarter-of-a-million miles from the nearest human being, and you have been for over a thousand days? What kind of toll would that take on you?

At the centre of the film is Sam Rockwell, an actor whose presence automatically makes any film a little bit more interesting. And in Moon, he is the film. After all, he has no interaction with anyone on Earth - the prerecorded nature of all messages from the planet make him a passive viewer for any such scene. He occasionally talks to GERTY, a robot that speaks with the calmed tones of Kevin Spacey, but for huge chunks of the film he has to carry the film alone. I don't know how many scenes in the film consist entirely of Sam Rockwell talking to himself, but there's a lot of them. And it's a credit to Sam Rockwell, and the intelligent and challenging script that he's working from, that these scenes are as compelling and convincing as they are.

One of the problems with modern films is that the twist ending is so prevalent a storytelling device, which means that whenever watching a film that establishes some type of mystery the viewer finds themselves expecting that the explanation will be held back until the end. In that mindset, there was a moment where I was worried the film would disappoint me. There is a pivotal development that comes in the film, not long after Sam wakes in the infirmary, that frustrated me largely because as soon as it happened it became clear to me as a viewer what was actually going on (to be honest, it's not exactly an original scenario). And so watching our main character walk around asking himself "What's going on?" became frustrating, because I thought it was so obvious what was happening, and years of twist-endings had me expecting the film to hold back the revelation until the end. Instead, after only a couple of minutes, Sam himself articulates what is happening, and this is confirmed not long after. And this means that the film can move on to more interesting material, as the film can start to focus on the implications of the revelation. It's not "What is going on?", but "How would someone react, cope with this knowledge?" And that makes the film much more interesting. You see, in a way, Moon is one of the purest science-fiction films out there. It's not a big adventure film, a space opera, or a space western. Instead, it's unmistakably about humanity, using the science fiction setting to explore questions and issues about who we are as humans, what is it that makes us human. And that's what pure science fiction has ultimately always been about.

The most exciting news around the film is that it seems Duncan Jones has not finished with this world yet. I can't find the reference right now, but I remember reading reports that Moon may be the first of a trilogy of sorts. And while these days an announcement of a trilogy to follow a single successful film is the norm (and almost invariably proves disappointing), in this case I'm rather positive about the idea should it eventuate. And that's partly because, in Moon, Jones has crafted an intelligent, thoughtful, and challenging film, and I see no reason to expect him to do any less in the future. But it's also because it seems he's not talking about a direct sequel per se. It sounds like they will be new stories that will take place in the world established by this film, but he won't be going over the same ground. Certainly Sam Rockwell has confirmed that his character will be making a short cameo appearance in the second film, but that it won't revolve around him at all. And that's good, because that will force the sequel to move into new directions, explore new ideas and concepts. And I'm excited to see just where Jones takes us next.