Films on Tales from the Bitface

Full of Grace

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 19:19:00 +0100

So, what did I think of Project Hail Mary 🎥, after my scientific concerns?

I enjoyed it immensely. I had a great time. I was in a electrically-reclinable chair that vibrated during the loud parts (though that’s about the Leicester Square Odeon, not the film, of course).

I have things to say about the title, the expression used in it, but I’ll keep that for a separate post. The main flaws in the film — which, to be fair, is a blockbuster big-screen bonanza, and beautifully made — are scientific.

Starting with physics. It’s a long time since I knew enough special relativity to work out the time-dilation involved in a six light-year trip, and to be fair we’re not told how long it lasted for the induced-coma-experiencing Grace; but we do know it would be a lot longer on Earth, assuming the ship actually reached a significant percentage of lightspeed.

That point is perhaps implied at the end, but it should have been mentioned in the film — not least since they specifically say the Eridans don’t know about relativity.

Turning to the biology. Look, it’s just annoying that it’s so stupid, when there’s at least a couple of ways they could have told the same story, without requiring biological life to exist in an environment where, not only is it impossible for atoms to join together into molecules, even atoms don’t stay together. Stars are plasma, which means a big soup where the energy is so high electrons are stripped off the nuclei of atoms. You don’t get biology. You don’t even get chemistry.

Just make the ‘astrophages’ exist at some distance from the star, occluding it. Or have them be dark matter, instead of algae. It doesn’t matter. The story would be just as good, just as compelling, without being annoying.

Because it’s not about the science. It’s a love story. Love between human and — let’s not say ‘alien’, because everyone is alien out there. Between Earthling and Eridan.

Or friendship, if you don’t think it reaches love. I don’t mind.

It’s also about the limits of humanity and what we might be able to do even if we refuse, if we’re forced into an impossible situation. And language and communication and all sorts of stuff.

It’s really good. You should see it.

Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:00:45 +0100

Watched Top Secret! 🎥 a couple of nights ago. A 1984 film by the makers of Airplane, I have to wonder why on Earth I haven’t seen it till now. It’s pretty funny. A rock star visits a weird East Germany, which is just as oppressed as the real one, but the authorities are still the Nazis. Wehrmacht and SS uniforms abound.

Our hero gets caught up in a plot to rescue an imprisoned scientist — the resistance are all french, of course — and falls for the scientist’s daughter.

It’s about as silly as it sounds. An early part for Val Kilmer, and he does a pretty decent job as the singer, which can’t have hurt when he was cast as Jim Morrison in The Doors.

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 07:16:30 +0000

We watched The Man in the Hat 🎥 a few nights ago. An odd, gentle little British/French road movie from 2020. It’s almost silent, at least as far as the main character goes. Others have dialogue, but not a lot. A man goes on the run across France, after seeing what appears to be gangsters disposing of a body. He meets lots of strangers — mostly strange in more than one sense — along the way.

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 23:39:25 +0000

Watched: The Eagle Has Landed 🎥

if you’d have asked me I’d have said I thought I’d seen this back in the day. But no. Very much not. It’s a very odd film.

I thought it was going to be about some allied mission into or over Germany during WW2. It was actually the opposite: a secret German mission to kidnap Churchill from Norfolk. Including an IRA member helping them, and a traitorous English villager providing them with information.

it’s so totally not what I expected, but it’s pretty good.

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 17:00:38 +0000

Watched early in the new year: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 🎥

This is fine, a perfectly acceptable addition to the Spider-Man films. Though I have to say, a few weeks later, I remember little of it. And I blame that partly on its incompleteness: the fact it’s part one of two. Frustrating.

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 20:02:57 +0000

Watched just before Christmas: The Shop Around the Corner 🎥

James Stewart, a Christmas movie, and not that one? Not specifically a Christmas movie, but part of it happens then, so why not?

Two shop workers hate each other, but fall in love with their mysterious pen pals. Guess what?

Not bad.

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 19:46:39 +0000

Watched: Hamnet 🎥

This is a fabulous film. It’s about motherhood and magic, and grief and how a genius can turn it toward one of the world’s great works of literature. And also about the special bond between twins.

But mostly it’s about grief. It is heartbreaking, yet also deeply life-affirming.

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 22:57:33 +0000

Watched: Now You See Me 🎥

I believe the third of these recently came out, but we hadn’t seen any of them at the start of the month and year when we watched this. A group of stage magicians — so good they seem that they might have real powers — do heists. Or do they?

A decent romp.

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 15:42:13 +0000

Watched: Office Space 🎥

Some of my work colleagues recommended this to me. I was vaguely aware of its existence before that, since it’s been around since 1999.

It’s a comedy about office workers — amusingly enough, they’re specifically software developers working to prevent the year-2000 two-digit date problem, or ‘Y2K Bug’, as it was usually called. Amusing, because I did some of that myself. Or at least tested the system I worked on at the time to make sure it didn’t have the problem (it didn’t).

As to the amusement value of the film itself: it was fine. Not that great, but not a total waste of time. Probably two and a half stars, if M.b had stars like Letterboxd.

Sat, 24 Jan 2026 16:37:43 +0000

Watched: Mrs. Dalloway 🎥

I still haven’t caught up with posting about the movies we watched over Christmas & New Year, but never mind. Watched this yesterday. I read the book about seven years ago, and would have thought it close to impossible to film. Far from it. This actually worked pretty well. It’s not as rich as the book, of course, but it hits many of the points the book makes. The shellshocked veteran of the First World War, Septimus, I though was particularly well played, by Rupert Graves. Who, I learn, played LeStrade in Sherlock.

Fri, 16 Jan 2026 23:37:46 +0000

Watched: Towards Zero Season 1 🎥

Or season ‘only’, as it is. An adaptation of an Agatha Christie novel, and quite a fun one. Where ‘fun’ includes murder, as it tends to with the Queen of Crime, of course.

The Godfather 🎥

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 09:18:00 +0000

Can’t remember if we watched this on Christmas Day or Boxing Day, but it turns out to be a Christmas movie itself. At least in part, and as much as Die Hard is. Or maybe not quite. The point is it does have a scene — quite an important one — at Christmas.

Anyway. I thought I had seen this before. I mean I had, I watched it. But I couldn’t remember anything of the story after the famous horse’s head scene. Maybe that’s because I watched it on my own, so didn’t talk about it afterwards? I don’t know.

It is, of course, very good. There are some strange missed or dropped elements. Michael marries a woman while he’s in hiding in Sicily. She is assassinated by a car bomb, and never mentioned again. Not even as part of his motivation for revenge on the other Mafia families.

I don’t doubt, though, that if (when) I watch it again, I’ll find many parts I missed or have forgotten. That may be the mark of a great film, you can keep going back to it. Or, I don’t know, maybe the mark of a bad one, that you don’t remember it! (I don’t really think that.)

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 20:17:35 +0000

Watched: Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl 🎥

Another one we watched over Christmas. Rewatched, actually, as we saw it when it came out last year.

Tons of fun, of course. Four stars.

Tue, 06 Jan 2026 23:26:49 +0000

Watched: A Few Good Men 🎥

I’m trying the Micro.blog films feature, for more control than the Letterboxd RSS feed.

We introduced our daughter to The West Wing over the last few months, and needed more Sorkin. Also RIP Rob Reiner. It’s a great film. I’d give it four stars if this had them.

Bowie: The Final Act 🎥

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 23:27:06 +0000

Watched: Bowie: The Final Act 🎥

Very good documentary about Bowie, starting approximately with Young Americans and moving forward — though moving back and forward in time. A lot of focus on the years in which he (hushed tones) wasn’t cool!

Interviews with Reeves Gabrels of Tin Machine, Earl Slick, Tony Visconti and others. Well worth a watch.

The Silencers, 1966 - ★½

Sat, 26 Nov 2022 22:13:26 +0000

When I was a little kid my family used to go on holiday to Millport, on the Isle of Cumbrae, in the Firth of Clyde.

We didn’t go to the cinema often, if ever, back then. But Millport had a small cinema, and we always went once or twice when on holiday.

I don't recall any of the films we saw in the four years we holidayed there. What I do remember is the film posters, because they were always there, so I saw them year after year. And unusually, they were round the walls inside the auditorium. So while you waited for the lights to go down, you saw adverts for films that once shown there.

It's where I first heard of the Dollars trilogy. Only the first two then, in a double poster for A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More. When Eight Bells Toll. I think Ice Station Zebra.

And one called Matt Helm Gets it in Denmark. I eventually saw all the others, but not that one. As I got a bit older, if ever the name came back to me, I wondered what kind of ‘getting it’ the title referred to. I probably kind of looked like an adventure film, so it was probably more likely to be a threat to his life, than any other interpretation. But the entendre was clearly double.

I recently found that our Roku has a strangely-named channel called ‘Movieland Tv’ [sic as far as the lowercase ‘v’ goes]. I had a poke around, and it seems to specialise in old movies from the 60s and 70s that are not what might now be called classics. Though there are a couple of Bond films: Thunderball (the first Bond film I ever saw) and Diamonds are Forever.

But I came across one called The Silencers. The blurb described it as ‘The first Matt Helm movie’. Well! Here was the mysterious figure from my childhood. If not getting it in Denmark, then at least in danger of being silenced. The blurb also told us he was an agent who’d got out of the game and his superiors wanted him back.

Fair enough, sounds like it could be OK, and I fancied something like a spy film tonight.

The first surprise was the star: Dean Martin. Now, that poster back in Millport might have shown his name in large type, and if it did you’d think the collision of his last name with my first would have stuck with me. But if so, that fact is lost in the mists of memory.

After an opening where four hit men are given bullets with ‘Matt Helm’ written on them, it starts with a woman dancing. And, basically, stripping. It’s obviously trying to be like a Bond opening scene, but, way sub-even-that-standard.

And then another woman starts singing, and the credits include original songs by Elmer Bernstein, and a choreographer. Is this a musical?

Well, no, but if you’ve got Dean Martin in the studio, you’d be daft not to get him to sing a bit. Which he doesn’t do in character, but does in a couple of scenes in voiceover, in effect. Oh and there’s a joke with Sinatra coming on the radio and Helm saying, ‘Turn that off, I can’t stand his voice.’ They retune, and a Dean Martin song comes on, and he says. ‘Now this guy can sing.’

I know, it’s not much of a joke.

It's a daft spy romp, and from Helm’s amorous adventures, I think it's now clear which kind of ‘getting it’ will be happing in Denmark. Though probably a bit of both.

I'm giving it one star for making me laugh several times, though mainly at the ridiculousness. And half a star for the fantastic mobile bed. Why move to answer the phone when you can flick a switch and have your bed rotate you to where it is? And when you want to have a bath, just let your bed take you there and drop you in.

Honestly, that bit wouldn’t have been out of place on Tracy Island.

Other than that, it’s complete mince.

The Banshees of Inisherin, 2022 - ★★★★

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 21:27:29 +0000

Martin McDonagh’s latest is sad, hilarious, tragic, and true. Or feels like it could be true, even if some of the decisions characters make are baffling, to say nothing of gruesome.

On a rugged, beautiful island off the coast of Ireland in 1923, with the civil war going on on the mainland, two friends fall out. Or rather, one says he doesn’t like the other any more. A whole sequence of events flow out from this simple, almost child-like choice.

The funniest part happens when one of them goes to confession.But that’s only to be expected: confession’s a pretty funny kind of thing, when you think about it.

(Updated 2022-12-11 at 18:47:58)

The Velvet Underground, 2021 - ★★★★

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 23:01:39 +0000

There's a lot to like here if you're already a fan — or at least, have some interest. Probably not too much if neither of those apply.

It has interviews with those who are still with us (or who were when it was made). Not just John Cale, Moe Tucker, Doug Yule, but members of Andy Warhol's Factory crew (the 'Superstars'), like Mary Woronov and Gerard Malanga.

I'd like to have heard more of the songs, especially the less well-known ones, and seen more footage of them, such as there is. It uses the documentary style that just films people speaking and edits those interviews together. That has a certain power, but I feel it might have helped to have a narrative, a voiceover elaborating on the story.

Recommended, though.

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Withnail & I, 1987 - ★★★★

Sat, 26 Feb 2022 21:13:26 +0000

Long time since I saw this, so all I remembered really were the quotable bits ('We've gone on holiday by accident!')

The high dinginess and run-down state of Britain as the sixties ran down is skilfully evoked. It's very male, though. The only female character is the woman in the tearoom who refuses to serve our heroes. If that's the right word.

It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but it has aged surprisingly well.

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13th, 2016 - ★★★½

Fri, 25 Feb 2022 17:31:13 +0000

A documentary about the prison-industrial complex, this is a tough watch. The title comes from the 13th amendment to the US Constitution. While abolishing slavery, that amendment also allowed for slavery to continue — at least for those incarcerated for a crime.

Tough, as I say, but it should be seen.

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Legally Blonde, 2001 - ★★★

Wed, 23 Feb 2022 20:42:08 +0000

We’ve been enjoying the more recent work of Reece Witherspoon lately, in The Morning Show and Big Little Lies, so it was interesting to go back to see her in her younger days.

It’s a fun enough film. There were no surprises, in part because I’ve seen the live musical, but mainly because it’s not the kind of film that offers surprises.

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Nomadland, 2020 - ★★★½

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 10:43:39 +0000

The scenery is bleak, and the setup is sad, but in the end this movie is neither. Frances McDormand's character may have lost her home, job, and even town — she comes from a company town called Empire, which is closed down when the business fails — but she finds companionship along the road.

Sometimes that companionship is herself: she is someone who is happy in their own company, and that's okay. She lives in her van. She's not homeless, 'just houseless,' as she says.

I spent parts of this film wondering if something terrible was going to happen, but it's not that kind of story at all. The worst thing happened before the start, and all the rest is — just life. There's no plot to speak of, but that's okay too.

And though the scenery is bleak, it's also beautiful.

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Don't Look Up, 2021 - ★★★½

Fri, 07 Jan 2022 22:37:41 +0000

Fun, if bleak, satire about the end of the world. Two astronomers try to get people — though mainly a Trump-esque US administration — to believe that a civilisation-ending comet is on course for Earth. With predictable results.

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Mary Poppins Returns, 2018 - ★★★½

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 11:02:21 +0000

Fun sequel to a Disney classic. Good songs, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Probably not as memorable as the original.

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'Spider-Man: No Way Home, 2021 - ★★★★'

Wed, 22 Dec 2021 10:52:47 +0000

Pretty good follow-on from the earlier Spider-Man films. My daughter tells me ‘All the fan theories were right.’ I wasn’t aware of them, so I hope that’s not a spoiler for anyone.

Turned out Doctor Strange (long my favourite Marvel character) wasn’t being quite as idiotic as I’d thought from the trailer, so that was good. Sets things up nicely for his next film.

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'The Beatles: Get Back, 2021 - ★★★★★'

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 12:51:36 +0000

I already wrote about watching the first part, but the whole thing is just as fantastic.

The middle episode does feel like it has some 'middle volume of a trilogy' longueurs. It definitely dips a bit. But that reflects the state of the band at the time. They're trying to bounce back from George walking out and returning, they've moved from the Twickenham warehouse to a new studio in their Apple HQ, and they're rethinking the whole project.

They're contemplating what it's all about.

The third part leads up to the famous rooftop live performance, which is glorious, and delightfully presented with split-screen images showing interviews with people in the street below and two bobbies coming in with 'Thirty complaints about noise.'

I wrote before that this is only for the true fan, but I think the third part would work even if you only have a passing interest.

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The French Dispatch, 2021 - ★★★★

Mon, 29 Nov 2021 12:42:52 +0000

Wes Anderson's latest is a wild romp, slightly incoherent at times -- or, not incoherent, exactly but confusing in a good way. Until you realise afterwards that it did all hang together and make sense.

It tells the tale -- several tales -- of the eponymous fictional magazine, which is loosely based on The New Yorker. Here, it is a supplement to a Kansas newspaper, published from a city in France.

There are four stories, wrapped in a framing sequence of the editor-in-chief dying and his will saying that the magazine should cease publication.

There's chaos, slapstick, wild events, and Anderson's usual painterly visuals. It's loads of fun.

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No Country for Old Men, 2007 - ★★½

Sun, 24 Oct 2021 17:54:02 +0000

This film is infuriating. It reminded me of Shallow Grave, at least at the start, in this way: if you find a load of money that's obviously come from a drug deal gone wrong, or otherwise somehow involved in organised crime, there is one thing you should not do. That is try it keep it all, to run away with it or hide it, and expect to survive the wrath of the criminals.

The safest thing, of course, is to just walk away from it all and call the cops. But if you must get into it, then obviously what you should do is take some of the money. Not a lot. Say, 10%. An amount that the gangsters might plausibly accept as having gone missing during the the shootout, or whatever. Leave the rest, call the cops, and let them handle the aftermath. You might get away with it.

Here, the main character does exactly the wrong thing. What's worse, in story terms, is that from the start we have no one to identify with: no character who is obviously the 'hero,' if you like. No one to root for. Because it all starts off without us having any particular reason to root for Llewelyn. And as it goes on, and we do start to want him to make it — if only because the focus is mainly on him — he continues to annoyingly make terrible choices.

Worse still -- and spoilers ahead -- worse still, his story is just dropped on the floor. He doesn't even get the respect of us seeing his end. The narrative hands over to a secondary character (though to be fair, that character, the sheriff, is the first character we meet, if only in voiceover).

And the end is just... nothing.

It is by far my least favourite Coen brothers film.

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Star Ratings

Sat, 16 Oct 2021 12:38:22 +0000

Giving star ratings to things I’ve watched, read, etc, is not something I ever did until I started using Letterboxd. It looks like I started logging films in September 2019 (the August ones were a bulk mental dump when I first set up my account). I didn’t start them automatically posting here until the November, and I’m sure I’ve missed one or two along the way.

My initial thought was just to log the films that I watched, as an aide memoire as much as anything. But Letterboxd encourages you to give the films star ratings. I’ve been doing that, but all the time I wonder what exactly I mean by them.

Which sounds like a strange thing to say. I made the choices, after all: I set the rating. Surely I knew what I meant when I did it?

And that’s true enough on each occasion. I know what I mean when I give the rating. But that’s the thing: it’s what I meant at that time. All it means is what I thought of the the film at the time I added the entry to Letterboxd. I’m not trying to make a statement about what is good in absolute terms. I’m just saying something about what I thought about the film at that time.

I like to think that I judge each film on its own merits. At the very least, I try to judge it in terms of what it’s trying to achieve. A five-star drama and a five-star comedy are very different things. It won’t be very meaningful to compare the ratings I’ve given to different films and see if there’s a hierarchy of my preferences. Though it is fair to say that any film with five stars is one of my favourites.

While Letterboxd encourages star ratings, it pleases me that you don’t have to give one. Unlike, say in some online surveys, where zero is not an option. I don’t know, though, whether a Letterboxd ‘no stars’ should count as ‘zero stars,’ or just the choice not to rate it. I intended the latter with Can’t Get You Out of my Head, as I made clear in the post.

It seems that I rarely watch anything less than three-star, though. Either I’m very discerning, or I only watch things I know I’m going to like.

The Matrix Revolutions, 2003 - ★★★½

Fri, 15 Oct 2021 21:40:01 +0000

If only in the interest of being ready for the new one, it's worth being up to date with this. But actually it's a much better film than I remembered.

Sure, the Zion battle scenes go on for much too long, and the overall story is not entirely coherent; but it's much more coherent than I remembered, and just that much better. In the sense that it sits well with the second one, which I loved when it came out.

Neither of them is as good, as effective, as the first on its own, of course, but the whole ends up being more of a cohesive trilogy than I thought. XKCD notwithstanding.

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The Manchurian Candidate, 1962 - ★★★

Sat, 25 Sep 2021 14:47:43 +0000

This is a strange film. I knew the broad outline, or thought I did. An American gets brainwashed and ‘turned’ by the ‘other side’ during the Cold War, and then gets into the position of running for president. That’s not quite it, as it turns out, but it’s not far off.

The thing that surprised me, compared to how something like this would be done by a modern filmmaker, was how explicit the brainwashing was. Most modern writers and directors would, I think, be more indirect, so you’d be thinking, ‘Is he or isn’t he?’ throughout. Here it was very clear that he was, so the question was more, ‘What’s he going to do?’

Which is a perfectly fine way to tell the story, too. It was OK, through not as good as I expected, and there were some very odd pieces of dialogue (‘Are you Arabic?’) and a couple of strange jumps in the plot.

Worth a look, though, if you haven’t seen it.

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Thu, 09 Sep 2021 15:41:59 +0000

Book me a front-row seat:

The Matrix Resurrections in theaters and on HBO Max December 22 #TheMatrixMovie pic.twitter.com/USY3CKSgXq
— The Matrix Resurrections (@TheMatrixMovie) September 9, 2021

… because the new The Matrix movie looks incredible.

(I know the front row isn’t the best place to sit.)

The Matrix Reloaded, 2003 - ★★★½

Sat, 14 Aug 2021 23:40:40 +0000

Watched on Saturday August 14, 2021.

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Passport to Pimlico, 1949 - ★★★★

Tue, 27 Jul 2021 02:29:21 +0000

I think I probably saw this classic Ealing comedy, or part of it, when I was a kid, but it was good to watch it properly on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Set a few years after the Second World War, it tells the story of the discovery of a hoard of treasure and a royal proclamation that makes Pimlico in London part of the ancient Duchy of Burgundy. The locals promptly claim the treasure and proclaim their independence from the UK.

Problems ensue for the Home Office -- or does the Foreign Office have jurisdiction?

The ending is a little weak, but it's a lot of fun getting there.

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Black Widow, 2021 - ★★★★

Fri, 16 Jul 2021 22:05:54 +0000

I was last in a cinema in February 2020, to see Parasite. Today I went to the same cinema to see Black Widow. It was great and strange and moving to be back in a cinema at all, and when the Marvel ident started playing at the start... well, it was pretty special.

And the film itself is great. I'm not going to say too much about it, obviously, but it's a fitting debut for Black Widow in a solo film, and farewell for Scarlett Johansson playing the character.

At the screening I went to, at two o'clock on a Friday afternoon, there were my daughter and me in row H; one guy sitting two or three rows in front and far off to one side; and somebody sitting right up the back and also far off. So it wasn't like we were crowded in with people like in the old days. That was quite comforting, but I can't imagine the film is grossing the way Marvel ones have tended to. Still, everyone knows why that is.

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Friends: The Reunion, 2021 - ★★★

Sat, 05 Jun 2021 15:42:25 +0000

It was fine. Good to see what they're all like now. Some funny bits.

Slightly surprised to find that this is on Letterboxd, because it's not what you'd normally think of as a movie, but hey.

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Can't Get You Out of My Head, 2021

Sun, 30 May 2021 22:28:24 +0000

Convention dictates that I should give a star rating to this. I’m not going to, though, because I’m not sure what it was trying to achieve. What I try to do with star ratings is judge how well, in my opinion, the film achieves what it was trying to do. I don’t claim I always manage that, but when it’s not clear what the film’s purpose was, it becomes next to impossible.

Or: you can’t reduce something as long and complex, audacious and challenging as this, to a mere zero-to-ten scale. ¹

Across six films, totalling around seven hours, Adam Curtis gives us ‘An Emotional History of the Modern World,’ as the subtitle calls it. As I mentioned in my last post, Kerry Thornley of Discordian fame is interviewed early in it. That is, an interview with him is used. He’s dead, so it’s not like he was interviewed for these films. Indeed, as far as I can tell, nothing was shot for these films: the visuals are entirely comprised of library footage.

Curtis narrates over them — sometimes with quite a disconnected effect, where the images have no obvious connection to the story he’s telling. Similarly, the use of music can be quite jarring. Sometimes it’s completely relevant to the matter at hand, but often there’s no obvious connection. And the titular Kylie song is not used at all.

It’s not even that obvious why the series is called that, come to think of it. And some of the individual episode titles are even more opaque, notably the last one: ‘Are We Pigeon or are We Dancer?’ I feel sure it’s a quote, and I think it’s probably from a song, but I was alert to it turning up, and as far as I could tell, it didn’t.

OK, a quick DuckDuck gives mainly hits about the episode, but also some about a track by The Killers called ‘Human,’ which includes the line ‘are we human or are we dancer?’ So it’s probably alluding to that. Oddly that line is inspired by a Hunter S Thompson quote that I’m not familiar with, ‘We’re raising a generation of dancers.’ Which sounds pretty good to me, even if Hunter meant it critically.

Anyway, what’s this absurdly long film about?

It’s a bleak, depressing, but nonetheless compelling vision of human history, covering conspiracies and conspiracy theories, wars, revolution, surveillance capitalism, and capitalism more broadly, the tension between the collective and the individual, and a whole hell of a lot more.

But Curtis never gives a thesis statement. He never tells us, in the news journalist’s way, what he’s going to tell us. Or more to the point, what conclusions he’s going to draw from what he’s going to tell us. And his style is very disjointed: he dots about in time and space, with little more to connect the dots than a ‘but’: ‘But in China…’

In that particular tic, it’s not at all unlike the postmodern games of Illuminatus!.

He does come to kind of a conclusion at the end of the two-hour-long sixth episode, but it’s not a very satisfying or convincing one. Which is fair enough, I suppose. One of the recurring thoughts is the idea that society today is too complex for anyone to understand it fully. The problem with that, that he draws our attention to, is that that understanding has caused many politicians to give up trying to change things for the better, which tends to result in burgeoning corruption.

He does end with a note of possible hope, but I think I might have to watch parts of it again to get all of the nuances.

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Letterboxd supports half stars, so five stars is ten points.↩︎

Sisters with Transistors, 2020 - ★★★★

Thu, 20 May 2021 22:25:31 +0000

Great look at some of the women who were the unsung originators of electronic music. Tape loops before Steve Reich, backwards tapes before The Beatles, use of feedback before The Velvets… not to mention the best TV theme tune of them all.

And all narrated by Laurie Anderson. Well worth a watch.

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Ocean's Eight, 2018 - ★★★½

Fri, 30 Apr 2021 23:06:00 +0000

A fun heist romp with a slightly flat ending. And you don’t need to have seen any of the other ‘Ocean’s’ films to enjoy it.

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Emma., 2020 - ★★★

Sun, 25 Apr 2021 14:54:50 +0000

Watched on Saturday March 20, 2021.

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This Is England, 2006 - ★★★★

Sat, 24 Apr 2021 09:26:42 +0000

A gritty, realist tale of British skinheads in Thatcher times. We get the good skins — into ska, soul, and having Black friends. And then the bad ones — into ska, soul, racism, and joining the National Front.

But it’s mainly about a young boy whose dad died in the Falklands.

It’s good. Kate from Line of Duty (Vicky McLure) is in it, too. Disappointing that the Clash song of the same name is not used, but since that was released in 1985 and the film is set in 1983, it wouldn’t have made sense.

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Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, 2020 - ★★★★

Wed, 21 Apr 2021 17:41:00 +0000

A great story about a competition we all grew up with, and then stopped caring about because it was endlessly uncool, and then started taking an interest in again because it was so daft and fun.

Maybe that's just me.

Anyway, this film (made with the cooperation of the European Broadcasting Union, which is the body behind Eurovision) pokes fun at the competition in all the right ways, and does it with love and a big heart.

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Good Vibrations, 2012 - ★★★★

Sat, 10 Apr 2021 22:23:46 +0000

Great fun story of Terri Hooley, who ran the eponymous record shop and label in Belfast.

Great music, and an appearance by John Peel; or at least an actor doing his voice very badly.

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Palm Springs, 2020 - ★★★★½

Fri, 09 Apr 2021 23:16:17 +0000

Brilliant time loop film (oh, spoilers, fuck off), let down only slightly by the ending. I’d have rolled credits when it goes black.

Not that the ending they did have is bad; just that it’s the weakest part of what is a totally great film.

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Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle, 1987 - ★★★½

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 09:05:29 +0000

Watched on Saturday March 20, 2021.

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Alphaville, 1965 - ★★★

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 09:04:58 +0000

Watched on Saturday March 13, 2021.

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I'm Thinking of Ending Things, 2020 - ★★½

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 23:51:09 +0000

Charlie Kaufman lets us down, by being deliberately, viscerally confusing, to the point of meaninglessness. Yet I find it quite compelling after the first twenty minutes or so.

Ultimately empty, though.

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The Mystery of Henri Pick, 2019 - ★★★★

Sun, 07 Mar 2021 00:24:29 +0000

Watched on Sunday March 7, 2021.

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Education, 2020 - ★★★½

Sat, 06 Mar 2021 00:38:44 +0000

Watched on Friday March 5, 2021.

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The Tree, the Mayor and the Mediatheque, 1993 - ★★½

Sun, 28 Feb 2021 17:58:41 +0000

After watching Call My Agent! on Netflix, we wanted to watch some French films, and maybe with some of the actors and/or directors who were in the series. So we started with this.

It's described as a comedy. It's mildly funny in places, but it's mainly a kind of social commentary thing about land use in rural France. Enjoyable enough.

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Pretend It's a City, 2021 - ★★★½

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 18:29:45 +0000

Date is approximate, and anyway we watched the various parts over two or three weeks.

Really good, though annoying in places. Fran Lebowitz is great on many things, misanthropic on many things, and would be fun to talk to. Scorsese is a great interviewer, but he doesn’t have to laugh at everything she says.

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Rocks, 2019 - ★★★★

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 18:25:02 +0000

Great, moving film about a teenaged girl whose mother leaves — it’s never stated why, but most likely because of mental health problems — who tries to keep life going normally for herself and her little brother. Inevitably there are problems, with school, with social workers.

It’s set and filmed in and around Hackney, so I feel like these could be people I see on the streets, people my kids went to school with.

Refreshingly, many clichés are avoided: the problems are not about drugs or gangs, or even race.

A top piece of work.

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Red, White and Blue, 2020 - ★★★★

Sun, 07 Feb 2021 00:54:04 +0000

Watched on Saturday February 6, 2021.

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Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, 2019 - ★★★★½

Sun, 31 Jan 2021 00:33:19 +0000

Brilliant. Not enough full song footage used.

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Official Secrets, 2019 - ★★★★

Sat, 30 Jan 2021 00:17:41 +0000

Watched on Saturday January 30, 2021.

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Lovers Rock, 2020 - ★★★½

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 23:18:01 +0000

Watched on Tuesday January 26, 2021.

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Mangrove, 2020 - ★★★★

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 23:17:24 +0000

Watched on Saturday January 16, 2021.

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Rebecca, 2020 - ★★★

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 09:25:51 +0000

Date is approximate.

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The Personal History of David Copperfield, 2019 - ★★★½

Tue, 26 Jan 2021 09:24:36 +0000

Watched on Saturday January 23, 2021.

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Walker, 1987 - ★★★½

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 07:41:30 +0000

I really thought I’d seen this before, but remembered nothing about it. Having watched it now, I doubt that I ever actually did see it, because none of it was familiar.

I have the soundtrack album, of course, cos the music was written by Joe Strummer.

It’s a weird film, but it may actually be Alex Cox’s best apart from Repo Man, given that Sid & Nancy wasn’t as good as I remembered, and Straight To Hell is... its own thing.

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Arrival, 2016 - ★★★★ (contains spoilers)

Tue, 25 Aug 2020 11:35:42 +0000

This review may contain spoilers.

This is glorious. I'd give it five stars if it wasn't for the fact that I don't think they had to have Hannah die. They could have misdirected us at the start a different way.

Plus, that first few minutes means we start off feeling sad. It's a serious film, but it doesn't have to be sad.

Not that there's anything automatically wrong with sadness ("Happiness for deep people." -- Sally Sparrow). Still, I think effectively fridging a little girl -- or not, but that's how it appears at first -- weakens the whole piece.

Great to see a complex problem resolved with communication and compromise though.

And! Sequel, please: I want to see what the heptapods need from humanity on 3000 years.

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When Harry Met Sally..., 1989 - ★★★★

Fri, 08 May 2020 23:46:14 +0000

Somehow I’d gone this long without ever seeing this. I’m glad I put it right now. The dialogue is glorious! Nora Ephron may be my favourite screenwriter after Aaron Sorkin, where dialogue is concerned.

The ending flops a bit. In fact, I think I’d have enjoyed it more if they hadn’t got together, but hey, what can you do?

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Ayoade On Top by Richard Ayoade (Books 2020, 6)

Sun, 03 May 2020 22:31:07 +0000

This is Richard Ayoade’s detailed analysis of the 2003 film View From the Top, directed by Bruno Barreto and starring Gwyneth Paltrow. It is, by all accounts, a masterwork.

By Ayoade’s account, at least. I haven’t seen it. Ayoade is a comedian. The book is pretty funny. The film, I suspect, is quite bad.

Misbehaviour, 2020 - ★★★½

Sun, 19 Apr 2020 23:14:44 +0000

Good wee film about the women who protested at the 1970 Miss World show. Based on what actually happened.

Surprising to learn that the phrase “Women’s Liberation” only originated then.

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Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, 1988 - ★★★

Sun, 12 Apr 2020 08:53:16 +0000

Well this is a lot funnier than the title would suggest. I think I had always thought it would be kind of bleak, but it’s not at all. There’s betrayal, attempted suicide, attempted murder, and a lot of property damage; but it’s very lighthearted.

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Sunset Boulevard, 1950 - ★★★½

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 23:43:52 +0000

Good to watch an old movie for a strange. Great example of starting with the end and telling the whole story in flashback. The voiceover gets a bit wearing, especially when it’s telling you things you can see perfectly well happening on screen.

It’s quite a strange film, and another example of Hollywood telling stories about itself.

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Howl's Moving Castle, 2004 - ★★★★½

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 23:47:47 +0000

I read the book to the kids years ago, but I wasn’t sure whether I’d seen this. Turns out I hadn’t, though I must’ve seen a few scenes, because I was familiar with the imagery.

Anyway, this is wonderful. Right up there with the best of the Studio Ghibli fims.

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Erin Brockovich, 2000 - ★★★★

Sat, 04 Apr 2020 23:45:44 +0000

I wouldn’t have expected that a film about someone fighting an evil corporation that is poisoning people could be so feelgood. But this achieves it.

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The Big Short, 2015 - ★★½

Wed, 01 Apr 2020 15:15:08 +0000

You might come out of this film with a better understanding of the events that led to the 2008 financial crisis -- or you might not. More likely, I think, you'll sort-of understand it while you're watching, but be none the wiser when it's all over.

The question of what happened is explained, but not the one of how it was allowed to happen.

But I think the problem with this as a movie is that it tries to dramatise the events, using versions of some of the real people involved as characters; but it doesn't go far enough in that. We don't see anything of their lives outside of their financial dealings, so it fails to humanise them sufficiently. As characters, I ended up just finding them tiresome.

To really help us to understand the whole thing, it would need to be a documentary, and that would have been harder to sell. So by not quite being enough of one thing or the other, it fails at both.

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Crazy Rich Asians, 2018 - ★★★½

Mon, 23 Mar 2020 12:25:38 +0000

In considering how rich families try to control who their progeny marry, I found it interesting to see if this mapped on to Pride and Prejudice at all. Only if if you stretch things quite a lot. “Darcy” and “Elizabeth” are already together at the start, after all.

It’s a fun enough romp if you don’t mind the fantastical displays of fabulous wealth. Interesting too, to see Michelle Yeoh as a controlling mother rather than a kickass starship captain.

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Bajrangi Bhaijaan, 2015 - ★★★★★

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 23:06:52 +0000

I loved this film more Than I can possibly say. Sure, it’s sentimental as hell, but if you can watch the tale of a mute Pakistani girl who gets lost in Delhi, and looked after by a Hindu Indian guy, without a tear in your eye, then you have no heart.

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Booksmart, 2019 - ★★★½

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 22:47:57 +0000

Watched on Friday March 6, 2020.

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Late Night, 2019 - ★★★

Tue, 25 Feb 2020 20:37:29 +0000

Watched on Thursday February 20, 2020.

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Parasite, 2019 - ★★★★½

Sun, 23 Feb 2020 14:49:41 +0000

A richly deserved Oscar winner, despite what the Leader of the Free World might have to say about it. He should start by watching it, obviously.

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Fighting with My Family, 2019 - ★★★½

Sun, 23 Feb 2020 14:32:40 +0000

I didn't expect to be watching a film about wrestling, much less one made in association with the WWE. I mean, if had been about the old British wrestling matches they used to show on Sundays on ITV -- Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Kendo Nagasaki -- then maybe.

But this turned out to be a lot of fun. Written and directed by Stephen Merchant, it's based on the true story of a wrestling-mad family in Norwich, and how they try to get into the giant American wrestling entertainment business.

Not bad at all.

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The Grand Budapest Hotel, 2014 - ★★★

Sat, 15 Feb 2020 12:12:19 +0000

I note that I gave this three-and-a-half stars when I added it to Letterboxd, some time last year. Watched it again last night, for, I think, the third time. My inclination is to reduce its number of stars. I don’t dislike it, by any means, but I don’t love it the way the rest of my family do.

Last night I was more puzzled by it than I recall being before. Why the three layers of story? I’m not sure that adds anything. I like the look, and I originally loved the weirdness, but... in the end it just feels kind of shallow.

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The Cabin in the Woods, 2011 - ★★★★★ (contains spoilers)

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 13:18:35 +0000

This review may contain spoilers.

I'm surprised to find this is from 2011. I saw it when it came out, but it doesn't feel like eight or nine years ago. Three or four, I'd have said.

The fact that I'm surprised to find that Chris Hemsworth is in it probably reflects the length of time that has passed, though.

Anyway, it stands up really well, though the question I asked the last time: why do they have a big red "Release all the monsters" button? That still stands.

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Springsteen On Broadway, 2018 - ★★★★

Sun, 09 Feb 2020 12:14:58 +0000

I finished this last night, but actually watched it over the course of several weeks. Not the way I'd normally watch a film, but since it's mainly about the music, the interruptions don't really matter.

Except... it's actually equally about the music and the storytelling. Both are valid and worthwhile. There was no single overarching narrative, though. The stories are a set of recollections of Springsteen's life. There are connections, of course, but each one stands alone well enough to watch it in this disjointed way.

Anyway, my main complaint is that it was too short and could do with having more songs. He's written a vast number, after all. Well worth watching if you're a fan. If not, then you probably won't want to.

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Jojo Rabbit, 2019 - ★★★½

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 12:29:27 +0000

I liked this a lot more than I expected to. When I saw the trailer (I think back in December, when we saw Knives Out) I was a bit freaked out by it. What’s this, you’ve got a film about a kid in the Hitler Youth, with Hitler as a character, and they seem to be playing it for comedy? This looks well dodgy.

My kids knew it was by Taika Waititi , though, and that seemed to make it likely to be OK? I dunno, but eventually I decided to give it a chance.

And it turns out to be really good. A sweet film in many ways, though with plenty of menace and darkness, as you'd expect from where and when it's set -- which is an unnamed German town or city in the dying days of the Second World War. Waititi himself plays Hitler, who is not in fact the real one, but an imaginary friend that lets Jojo, the ten-year-old title character, talk to someone about the things he can't talk to anyone else about.

So I enjoyed it, but I can't help asking: why did he choose to make this film? Why that story, why now? It's based on a novel, Caging Skies by Christine Leunens. But Wikipedia's description of it as "the internationally bestselling Hitler Youth novel" leaves me none the wiser.

Not, of course, that there has to be a specific reason for a creator to make something. And it's far from the first comedy about Hitler or the Nazis. But there's just something about the idea of it -- not the actuality -- that leaves me a little uncomfortable, in a way that The Great Dictator or The Producers didn't.

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Little Women, 2019 - ★★★★

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 13:15:47 +0000

Greta Gerwig’s dual-timeline approach makes this more interesting than a straightforward adaptation would have been.

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Brazil, 1985 - ★★★★★

Tue, 28 Jan 2020 13:12:52 +0000

I first saw Terry Gillian’s weird dystopia at its premier, at the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1985. I feel I must have seen it again since, but watching it last week, much of it felt unfamiliar. It stands up really well, though.

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, 2019 - ★★★½

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 23:49:18 +0000

Well, 42 years after seeing the first part of this story (if fourth episode, though it wasn't called that then), we finally get its end.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I don't think it quite lives up to the legacy. I've given it three and a half stars here, but it hovers, Force-suspended, between that and four. Obviously I was hoping for a five, or at least a four and a half.

There were some daft parts, some annoying parts, and many spectacular parts; but no really outstanding parts; nothing that we'll look back on as being iconic.

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Knives Out, 2019 - ★★★½

Sun, 15 Dec 2019 23:33:50 +0000

Watched on Sunday December 15, 2019.

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Interstellar, 2014 - ★★★★½

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 20:16:41 +0000

I watched this again last night, and it’s really an outstanding film. There are some places where the gravity and/or relativity choices don’t quite make sense, but mostly the science is handled very well.

The philosophical aspects are also treated well. Do you put survival of the currently-living members of humanity above the survival of the species as a whole, or not?

The least believable thing, in a film full of challenging ideas, is the fact that our hero has been a pilot for NASA, but has somehow fallen off their radar, when they actually need people like him and have a base within a day’s drive of him.

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The Favourite, 2018 - ★★★

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 00:00:08 +0000

What were they doing with the justified text in the captions and even credits? Made it barely readable.

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I, Daniel Blake, 2016 - ★★★★★

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 18:20:28 +0000

Watched on Saturday November 16, 2019.

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8 Women, 2002 - ★★★

Sun, 10 Nov 2019 17:16:06 +0000

Watched on Sunday November 10, 2019.

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For Sama, 2019 - ★★★★★

Sat, 26 Oct 2019 21:45:00 +0000

Watched on Saturday October 26, 2019.

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More on Tarantino

Tue, 15 Oct 2019 23:38:14 +0000

Following on from my musings of a few weeks ago, regarding Tarantino’s introducing a slight degree of counterfactuality into a fictionalised version of the real world, we watched Inglourious Basterds the other day. (That film is ten years old. How?)

So it seems like adding counterfactual happy (happier) endings to real-world things is what he does now? I don’t know what happens in Django Unchained or The Hateful Eight, though. Turns out I haven’t really watched his stuff since Jackie Brown.

Otherhood, 2019 - ★★★½

Sat, 12 Oct 2019 23:31:39 +0000

Watched on Sunday October 13, 2019.

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Inglourious Basterds, 2009 - ★★★★

Sat, 12 Oct 2019 11:39:02 +0000

Watched on Saturday October 12, 2019.

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Downton Abbey, 2019 - ★★★★

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 19:57:39 +0000

Watched on Saturday September 28, 2019.

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Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, 2004 - ★★★½

Thu, 26 Sep 2019 22:31:58 +0000

Watched on Thursday September 26, 2019.

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Isle of Dogs, 2018 - ★★★★

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 21:42:44 +0000

Watched on Friday September 20, 2019.

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Tarantino Thoughts

Sat, 07 Sep 2019 18:49:16 +0000

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is kind of a love story, kind of a biopic, and kind of a history.

Note that this post contains spoilers. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen it and care about being spoiled.

Or maybe “buddy pic,” rather than “love story;” but the relationship between the two leads will be analysed for its homoerotic content, no doubt.

How it certainly has been described is “a love letter to Hollywood,” and that’s fair enough. What it also is, is a counter-factual, or alternative history. But don’t worry, I’m not going to claim this one for SF.¹

The main characters – fading cowboy actor Rick Dalton, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his regular stunt double Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt – are invented. But most of the other named characters, and many who are mentioned or appear as extras, are real people. The most significant of these is Sharon Tate, played by Margot Robbie. And it’s her story that makes this film most interesting, and maybe problematic.

Because of course she died tragically, murdered by members of Charles Manson’s “Family” cult. And in this version — she doesn’t.

If you know the history — which of course, many younger people won’t, which makes for different ways of experiencing the film — then you spend half the time expecting the massacre. There are captioned dates, and even though most of us wouldn’t know the date of the murders, there can’t really be any other reason for showing them. And then when it comes, something else happens.

The violence in that scene is gruesome, over the top, ludicrous — almost hallucinogenic, making me wonder if the tripping Booth² is meant to have hallucinated some or all of it. But there’s no need for there to be so much of it, or for the majority of it to be directed at women. The “Family” did consist largely of women, I guess, but I can’t help but feeling that Tarantino is revelling in it a little too much.

And on top of all that, as my family agreed after seeing it: there’s no real need for the whole Sharon Tate thread of the story. It would have made a fine tale if were just about the two actors against the backdrop of late-60s Hollywood. I wonder what the point of it was. Did Tarantino feel he could in some way “save” Sharon Tate?

Although that might be an interesting exercise. There isn’t really enough after the big change to make it worthwhile, though. ↩
There’s probably no significance to his having the same surname as the killer in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Probably. ↩

In Dreams: A Unified Interpretation of Twin Peaks & Other Selected Works of David Lynch, by H Perry Horton (Books 2019, 7)

Wed, 10 Jul 2019 14:57:28 +0000

This is an incredible piece of work, about an incredible body of work.

I don’t recall how I heard about it. I think I saw a tweet, or something, thought it looked interesting, and instantly bought it because it was only a few quid on Kindle. It’s a huge book which tries — successfully, in my mind — to explain how the bulk of David Lynch’s creative works can be considered part of a single story, which Horton refers to as The Dream.

Now obviously Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and Twin Peaks: The Return are all part of the same story. As are the various spinoff books: Jennifer Lynch’s The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, and Scott Frost’s The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes, from back around the time of the original broadcast; and Mark Frost’s more recent The Secret History of Twin Peaks and Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier, which I’ve written about here.

But Horton argues that the whole story gets kicked off in Eraserhead, and that Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, Mulholland Dr and Inland Empire are side stories related to the main branch. The overall story being about an eternal being, The Dreamer, who dreams reality into existence, and also creates another being, known as Jowday, or Judy, who becomes his adversary. BOB, the possessing spirit of the original Twin Peaks, is a creation of this entity, and the Black and White Lodges are the vanguards in the battle between the two beings.

Sure, on one level it’s just good vs evil, heaven & hell — “just,” I say, as if that wasn’t enough. But the sheer scope of it is astonishing. The eighteen hours of The Return has been hailed as an incredible masterpiece of visual storytelling. But when you include all that I’ve listed above, and three of Lynch’s paintings to boot — it must be one of the greatest — in terms of size, at least — creative works by a single visionary. True, it’s far from being by a single creator, but the vision behind it is solely or primarily Lynch’s, or that of Lynch and Mark Frost.

And even if the connections to the other films are just in Horton’s head (and, to be fair, those of others whose work he acknowledges): the obviously-connected stuff is still amazing, and the current work, Horton’s book that I’m writing about, is something a of a creative triumph itself.

One that is slightly marred by its self-published nature and obvious lack of an editor — there are a lot of typos — but a hugely impressive one nonetheless.

Though obviously it’s only for the very serious Twin Peaks fan.

Rude and Rough

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 00:43:43 +0000

I watched Rude Boy for the first time in many years. It is, in case you don’t know, a film from 1980 about and featuring The Clash. It’s kind of a fictionalised documentary, in that the titular character, Ray Gange, is both someone who was a sometime roadie for/hanger-on of The Clash, and playing the part of “Ray Gange.”¹

The worst part of it is, as I recalled, his “acting.” Well, that’s not quite true. Viewing it as a film, that’s the case. But viewing it as a document of the end of the seventies, the worst part of it is the casual racism. And indeed the organised racism of the National Front rally shown at the start.

Also bad are the violence from police and bouncers, and the general horribleness of Britain in the seventies. Nothing looks clean, everything looks run-down or broken. It looks, in fact, far worse than I remember it being.

Don’t worry, by the way, if you don’t remember what it was like, are too young to have experienced it, and/or don’t want to watch the film. It’ll be like that again in a couple of years if things go as we fear.

The best parts are, of course, the scenes of The Clash live and in the studio. And we won’t get them back after Brexit.

Also, in looking up the IMDB article, I discover that a) Ray Gange has actually been in a couple of other movies, and b) far more importantly, there is a 2016 movie called London Town, which is a drama about those times. With people acting as The Clash. Whaaaat? Why did no-one tell me about this?

Or not quite. That’s how I remembered it, but Wikipedia suggests the story is slightly different. ↩

Musical Malady

Tue, 09 Oct 2018 23:28:23 +0000

This morning I saw a poster for Heathers: The Musical. Err, What?

I rewatched Heathers fairly recently and I thought, this could never get made today. I figured teenage suicide is too high-profile, and the facts of people being driven to it, and the fear of copycatting — these would put a treatment of it like the one in Heathers off the table today.

Yet there’s a musical version playing in the West End, apparently.

Not that you can’t make a musical about serious subjects. I’ve just been to see one about the founding of the USA, after all. But Heathers is not what you’d call sensitive about the subject. It could have been changed significantly for the musical, of course, but to remove that aspect would be to take out an important part of the story, so I don’t know where they’d go with it.

Turns out that it’s been around since 2014; and that there’s a even a “High-School Edition,” made more suitable for kids.

Furthermore, it seems there’s a TV series based on the film as well, so what do I know? But it makes me wonder if I’m remembering a different film.

Looped

Sat, 05 May 2018 21:33:42 +0000

It’s six years old, but I finally got round to watching Looper. Interesting. Not sure about it. Some of the time-travel stuff didn’t make sense — or was confusing, at least. The loopers do their killing and body-disposal in the past, but by the time Bruce Willis comes into it, everyone involved is in the same time, 2044, the past of the movie.

Also I thought I had heard that it wasn’t well thought of, but Rotten Tomatoes has it at 82% from audiences and 93% from critics. That’s pretty good, isn’t it?

This review at The Mary Sue is good on the weak points. Some interesting discussion in the comments, too.

The future was unconvincing — people still driving petrol-burning cars in 2044 and 2074? And the status of women was terrible. You can be a sex worker or a farming mom in future America. I mean, OK, we didn’t see the rest of society, but it’s not great. And a major Bechdel fail. Oh yes, and: the currency is silver? Actual, metallic silver? Time travel has really messed things up.

I enjoyed it on the whole, though, and the ending is great. We could have done without the voiceover, but maybe Rian Johnson, the director, has plans to release a cut without it in one possible future. Now where have I come across that idea before?

Star Doctors

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 22:33:21 +0000

It was drawn to my attention a couple of weeks ago that I have not yet expressed (publicly) an opinion on either Star Wars: The Last Jedi or the Doctor Who Christmas special. That is both true, and very remiss of me. Trouble is it’s now been quite a while since I saw them both.

Still, I should be able to gather together a few memory cells.

The Last Jedi

I went on opening night, as I microblogged. It was great. There are some points that could have been done differently, or left out, or speeded up; and it had the weird effect towards the end of there being a series of times when I thought it was finished, and it still wasn’t. But all in all a fine work. Not as good as The Force Awakens, maybe. But that’s partly because that one raised our expectations so high.

‘Twice Upon A Time’

Peter Capaldi’s last episode. It was damn fine, loads of fun. Great to see Bill back, even if not exactly. Unnecessary Daleks, but quite a good use of them — or ‘it,’ I should say.

And the introduction of ‘Testimony,’ scooping up people’s memories and saving them, is great. Though how many computer-simulated afterlives can one series have?

And what a dramatic start Jodie Whittaker’s Doctor is going to have.

There you go, only a month or so after the events.

Mouse Takes Fox

Tue, 19 Dec 2017 23:00:09 +0000

The news that Murdoch plans to sell 21st Century Fox and Sky TV to Disney is interesting for how it will reshape the media landscape. But it’s good from my point of view for a number of reasons, some relatively trivial and to do with content consumption; and one big.

The X-Men and the Fantastic Four will come under the control of Marvel Studios. Just in time for Infinity War. Well, of course, far too late — even, I would imagine, for Infinity War Part 2. I expect that’s at least planned by now.
Even more trivial, Lucasfilm can put the Fox fanfare back at the start of future Star Wars movies (and add them in to future reissues of the recent ones).
It will become ethical to watch Sky TV. More of which below.

Above all: better Disney than Murdoch.¹

Will Disney own too much? Hell yes. But see above.

On the ethics of watching — and paying for — Sky TV: see this blog passim for my thoughts on that. Like here and here. If Sky had not been owned by Murdoch we might conceivably have got it in the past. But I feel we’re highly unlikely to get it now. Buying a dish in 2017 would just be weird, and our side of the road is not cabled, by some odd historical aberration. But there’s the online version, which I think is called Direct TV. If we had had that I would have been able to watch the new Twin Peaks when it was actually broadcast, instead of now, on DVD, as is actually happening.

Loving it, by the way. And managed to hear no spoilers whatsoever, surprisingly.

I mean, better almost anyone than Murdoch. ↩︎

On Blade Runner 2049

Wed, 18 Oct 2017 23:39:31 +0000

Spoilers ahead, obviously. Although I don’t go into much detail.

We saw it in the Rio in Dalston, because all the Hackney Picturehouse showings were full (or at least just had a couple of separated seats left). Which makes me surprised to read these stories about it not doing very well on opening weekend. And weirdly, from the balcony. I don’t know when I was last in a cinema with a balcony. I mean, the Rio, obviously, though probably not since Harry Potter 8; but I hadn’t been in the balcony before, and I don’t think I even realised that it had one.

But to the film of the moment. I tried to lower my expectations, I really did. But I’d read that Guardian review, which was so unbelievably glowing. I listened to Mitch Benn hoping they wouldn’t fuck it up and believed that they hadn’t.

But…

OK, they haven’t fucked it up. But I’m going to have to break ranks with all the legions of newspaper reviewers who love it to death & back (honestly, I can hardly find a bad, or even a mixed, review), and nearly everyone else.

Because I didn’t enjoy it all that much. I spent a lot of the time (of which there is a lot) saying, “What the fuck is going on here? Why did they do that?” The former is fine, as long as it becomes clear over time, which it generally did. The latter less so: understanding characters’ motivations is fundamental to understanding and enjoying a work of fiction.

But much worse than those: I spent some of the time bored.

The main reason for that is that it’s paced like an 80s movie. Which is to say, much more slowly than we are used to today.

I should have expected that, I suppose. The original Blade Runner moves slowly even by 80s standards. That’s part of its visual and storytelling style. So it’s reasonable that a sequel, even one thirty years later, should follow suit. But they could have picked the pace up a bit.

The reviews all describe it as “thought-provoking” or similar, and it’s true that the questions of what it means to be human or to be artificial are in there. But to my mind there’s not enough of that. Which in a way is linked to another problem: world-building.

As before the world is very visually striking. What we have is the world of Blade Runner with thirty years of technological advancements. Like the film, the pace of advancement has been slow, but I suppose that’s not surprising, given how damaged the world is.

But slowly or quickly, technology advances in parallel with a conversation about that technology. What’s missing here is any in-world debate about the legal and ethical status of replicants. Certainly there’s a nod to the idea that the casual use of “skin-job” is insulting and shouldn’t be used. But it never seemed that insulting anyway — indeed I think it’s only the voiceover version of the original that tells us it is an insult. Deckard likens it to the n-word. (He does so using that word, which, rightly, would not happen today.)

In a more realistic world there would be a debate about replicants. There would be rights groups campaigning against using them as slaves, and even for them to be given full citizenship status. And from others there would be discrimination against them, abuse of them. That could all be going on in the background of this society — and the debate is not what the film is about — but I think a small acknowledgement that the debate existed would at least hint at a richer society.

That all applies to the original too, of course, but now it’s much more common for the replicants to be living among humans on Earth, so the conversation would be that much more active.

And speaking of that commonality of the replicants on Earth, one question you might ask is, are there any humans actually left on Earth? Because only two characters appear to be unambiguously human.

One is K’s boss in the LAPD, Lt Joshi, who could unknowingly be a replicant, though nothing suggests that. The other, Ana Stelline, who creates the memories that are implanted in replicants. She lives in isolation because of sensitivity to the environment, and the implication is that only a human can provide the memories. But since not all of the memories are actually hers, all that needs is gift for imaginative imagery. And, now that we know that replicants are fully-biological beings who can reproduce (whether only with each other or also with humans is unknown), then anything is possible.

The situation appears to be that anyone with the money and without any disqualifying problem has left Earth. “A new life awaits you in the offworld colonies,” after all. I always suspected that the colonies would consist of grinding hardship based on subsistence farming, but I suppose the idea is you have replicant slaves to do the work.

The Earth that we see is incredibly empty. The original’s LA streets were packed with people, but now it seems sparsely populated at best. Empty highways — because of course nobody’s driving cars anymore. But the air is empty too. Mostly there’s only ever one car flying at a time. All those giant buildings might be filled with people, but you don’t get any sense of them being there.

San Diego is a literal dump, and Las Vegas a nuclear wasteland. Apart from the still-standing casino hotel, of course. A million bottles of whisky and you choose Johnnie Walker Black Label? Come on. (That brand is owned by Diageo, though, which is the first of the big neon advertising signs you see.)

I don’t know, I wonder if it was just my expectation of something more striking, more startling. Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t hate it, or even dislike it. I was just disappointed by it. Yet I think I want to see it again.

I loved the music, by the way, though it was perhaps a bit overwhelming in places.

And as a last thought: I still see people talking about the replicants being ‘robots’ or ‘androids.’ If it wasn’t clear from the first film, where they bled what seemed to be blood, it is powerfully obvious now: there are no robots in these films. The replicants are fully biological. They are probably more like clones, genetically engineered for enhanced strength and stamina.

The original book had androids (the clue was in the title); but not these films.

Swim, Test, Shop, Film, Sleep

Sat, 08 Apr 2017 23:31:30 +0000

Yesterday I kind of wilfully skipped a day. At some point in the evening I realised I wasn’t going to write a post, so I just said, “Fine: that’s allowed.”

Today I started by going for a swim. After my new regime of exercise last summer, I got out of the habit once I started a new contract. So it was good to get back to it. (Which is not to say I haven’t swum or gone to the gym in all that time, but it’s been a few weeks at the moment.)

After that I took a HackerRank test for a new job opportunity. It’s a site that does programming tests. This one was, I suspect, a disaster. I hate doing that kind of thing: you’ve got a timer running, and the problem you’re trying to solve is unlike anything you’d have to do professionally… Anyway, suffice to say, it didn’t go terribly well.

This evening was all about falling asleep in front of the telly. We tried to watch 20,000 Days On Earth, the film about Nick Cave from a few years back. I got it a few Christmases or birthdays ago, but hadn’t got round to watching it till now. I enjoyed what I saw of it, but there was definite falling asleep on the sofa and missing chunks. Oh well, it’s a DVD: we can always go back.

Oh yes: there was also a trip to Westfield, the time-void where hours go to die.

Looking Back and Forward

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 00:47:48 +0000

My recent and forthcoming live music experiences all involve bands of my youth that have reformed and are touring their old material.¹ Wallowing in nostalgia, some might call it.

But there’s nothing inherently wrong with bands getting back together. It can be problematic if you are the band that tours as the Dead Kennedys, of course. There’s a whole saga there that I won’t go into, but if Jello Biafra’s not involved, and in fact is actively against it, then it’s not the Dead Kennedys.

Indeed, in his song “Buy My Snake Oil” Jello suggested that a way for old punks to make money off their history would be to

Give in
Ride the punk nostalgia wave
For all it’s worth
Recycle the name of my old band
For a big reunion tour
Sing all those hits from the “good ol’ days”
‘Bout how bad the good ol’ days were

Which is a fair criticism of old bands doing their thing in modern days, I guess. But I see two arguments to counter it, from a gig-goer’s point of view.

Unfinished

The first was made by my friend Andrew, around the time that the Sex Pistols reformed and toured. This would have been in 1996.

“I missed them first time round,” he said when I challenged him about it. “This is unfinished business for me.”

Which was a good point, and kind of made me regret playing the purist and not going.

In 1993 I had investigated going to see the reunited Velvet Underground. But I really didn’t want to see them at an all-seated venue. Partly because I’d had a bad experience seeing Lou Reed a year or so before (despite having had a very good experience with him a year or two before that).

I recall that I phoned the venue — Earl’s Court, I think — and found that it did have some standing room. But those tickets were sold out. So I didn’t go. Regretted that, too. So I’m taking the chance to see bands like the Rezillos, or The Beat and The Selecter, that I missed first time around.

OK, But What is it Really?

The second point about the “punk nostalgia wave” (or any similar accusation of nostalgia) is: that is not what it is.

Because here’s the thing: it isn’t nostalgia if you’re carrying on with something that was always there.

Nostalgia (noun): a feeling of pleasure and also slight sadness when you think about things that happened in the past

according to Cambridge.

But this isn’t that. Because while those bands’ heydays might have been in the past, their music has remained available and frequently-played. You can’t be nostalgic for an album you listened to last week, or last night.

And a live performance always happens in the present.

This train of thought was kicked off for me a couple of years back when there was an article in the Guardian, prior to The Force Awakens coming out. I can’t find it now,² but it claimed that “nostalgia” was part of the cause of the excitement for the new film.

And I thought, no. Well, maybe for some people. But for many of us, if not most of us, Star Wars never went away. We’ve watched it, talked about it, read theories about it, and so on. It has been part of our lives.

Or take Doctor Who. Sure, there were the wilderness years before 2005, but The Doctor never really went away. The Tardis and Daleks are burned into Britain’s cultural memory, and I think they always will be.

Now if I were to see an episode of, say, Marine Boy: that would be nostalgic. I remember it fondly from my childhood, and have never seen it since. I’ve never even seen it in colour, because those were the days of black & white televisions.³

But I can’t be nostalgic for punk bands or Star Wars or Doctor Who, because they never went away. The sense of warmth and shared experience they bring: that’s not nostalgia, it’s something else. Familiarity, at worst. Or better: community.

Or a mixture of old and new, as with The Rezillos. ↩︎
This is why you should always save links, folks. ↩︎
God, I really come from another time, don’t I? ↩︎

Oscar Action

Mon, 27 Feb 2017 00:02:32 +0000

Went to see Hidden Figures tonight. I absolutely loved it. It’s a feelgood movie about space, computers¹ and civil rights. What’s not to like?

And yesterday we saw Moonlight, which is strange and interesting, and while I enjoyed it, I don’t think I got as much out of it as some did. But I spent a couple of hours this morning reading reviews of it, whch I don’t do with every film, so there’s that.

And a couple of weeks ago we saw La La Land. Which is a bit of pointless froth, but is fun enough.

Anyway, that means that on the day before the Oscars I’ve seen three of the nominated films. I don’t think this has ever happened before.

In fact I might never have seen that many Oscar-nominated films in any year at all.

Original and modern meanings. ↩︎

All the Things in the World

Wed, 15 Feb 2017 21:13:36 +0000

Do you ever look around and think how amazing everything is? How it all got there? And I’m not talking about the grandeur of nature, the glory of the universe, and all that. I’m talking about all the human-made stuff.

I have often found myself in the middle of a city, or looking out of a train window at a bridge or power station, and thought, “Wow: people built this. Just ordinary people, like me, actually made all this.”

Look at ancient buildings and you realise that they used to do it without the help of modern machinery, too.

And then think about the infrastructure that’s carrying these words from where I’m typing them to where you’re reading them. Hundreds of miles of fibre and copper cables across the country. Thousands of miles of undersea cables. Satellites, and the rockets to launch them.

We’re pretty amazing sometimes, us humans.

Like I say, I’ve often thought about this kind of thing. But today, while not at work because I’m a bit under the weather ¹ I had a slightly different version of it.

I had a sudden, overwhelming sense of how much cultural work we have created. Specifically stories and TV and films. Though in fact it was comics that really triggered it.

As I say, I’m not at my best, so I wanted something simple. I ended up reading a bunch of comics on Marvel Unlimited. And no matter how many I could read in a day, I could only make the tiniest of scratches in the surface.

And in TV, Netflix seem to have a new original series or two coming out every week.

It’s not all great, of course. But just think of all those people, writing away, acting, filming. Making things.

I have a vague memory of someone in a film or TV programme mis-saying that as “beneath the weather,” but I can’t think who, or where. I kind of want it to be Josie in Twin Peaks, but I’m not sure. ↩︎

Awakening

Sat, 23 Apr 2016 20:25:48 +0000

You'll have noticed, I'm sure, that after my brief comments on the three Star Wars prequels late last year, I didn't come back and say what I thought of the sequel. Which was, after all, the main reason I watched the prequels in the first place.

That was lax of me, but in honour of the DVD of The Force Awakens having arrived, here we go now. I won’t go into much detail, though: many pixels, and hours of podcasts, have been generated discussing this movie, and the internet doesn’t need mine at this late stage. But I’ll just quote what I wrote privately after seeing it the first time:

Star Wars: The Force Awakens: I loved every moment, every frame from the scroll onwards. No, before that: from the logo appearing on screen.
Hell, I think “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” comes first.

Anyway, this is a flawless movie. OK, exaggeration: but it is a wonderful, masterful piece of work.

The other thing I thought was, “Move over Empire: there’s a new best Star Wars film."

Revenge of the Prequels

Wed, 16 Dec 2015 00:13:56 +0000

Well, this is more like it. It's far from perfect, but Revenge of the Sith is far and away the best of the three prequels.

And that is largely because it has a story that mostly makes sense, and isn’t too confusing. Sure, there are still plot holes, and flaws in the motivation; but overall it holds together pretty well.

Still not as well as any of the original trilogy, of course.

The biggest point that doesn’t work for me is that we don’t see why Anakin has any connection with Palpatine. He goes over to the latter far too easily. I don’t so much mean his falling to the Dark Side; that was on the cards at least since he murdered the Sandpeople in Clones. I mean the fact that Palpatine was suddenly asking him to spy on the Jedi Council, while the Council were equally-suddenly talking about his closeness to Palpatine. We had seen none of this.

I’ve been reading a lot about all this lately, and I gather that much is made clearer in the ancillary material: novels, comics, the Clone Wars series that was made around the same time. But even if that is so, it means the movies fail. A movie has to be able to stand on its own. You can’t expect the viewer to have read around the subject or watched spinoff series. You can just barely rely on them having seen the immediately-prior films.

Compare and contrast the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example. You can watch The Avengers without having seen any of the prior films. Or enjoy Agents of SHIELD without having seen Captain America: The Winter Soldier, for example. If you have seen the related material then it enhances the whole. But any element can stand without the others.

The love story between Anakin and Padmé remains unconvincing, and Padmé’s death… well, I had gained the impression that she had died in childbirth, which seemed implausible in such a technologically-advanced society. In fact she died of a broken heart, or just gave up the ghost, or something. Which would be more plausible (if still not very) had she not just given birth. It seems more likely that a new mother would tend to fight for life to protect her babies. She died because the plot needed her to, in the end. If, as a creator, you have to do that kind of thing, you should at least find a more convincing way to do it.

Anyway, now I’ve seen all of the Star Wars movies, and I’m ready for The Force Awakens. Which is good, because I’ll be seeing it in about 30 hours.

Attack of the Clowns, or: Send in the Clones

Wed, 28 Oct 2015 23:52:07 +0000

Some time in 2002, as I suppose it must have been, I was driving through Hackney with my then-small son in the car, when he said, "Dad, I saw a clown."

OK, I thought, someone probably dressed up for a kids' party. It was a Saturday, as I recall. “Oh, yeah, where?” I glanced around, but couldn’t see any white faces or red noses.

“On a bus shelter.”

“A clown? On a bus shelter?”

“Yes. A clown. You know, from Star Wars.”

I guess I must have been able to give some explanation of what “clone” means, to a five-year-old. But it wasn’t till last weekend that we finally saw the relevant movie.

And as before… it wasn’t as bad as I’ve been led to believe. Keeping your expectations low always helps.

It wasn’t great, it’s true. In particular I wasn’t convinced by Anakin and Padmé falling in love. Anakin, yes, but Padmé, really, no.

I had a hard time working out what the sides were in the big battle. The clones end up fighting on the side of the Republic? I didn’t expect that.

And this bothers me: if you are an assemblage of planets joined together in common cause by treaty, and some of those planets decide they want to leave – going to war over it should be the furthest thing from your mind. It would be like if a country wanted to leave the EU, and the rest of the EU formed a vast army to force them to stay in it. That’s not the action of a peaceful democratic entity.

It’s also insane. Even if you win and make the would-be-leavers stay, you’ve now got a load of people – whole worlds – who are actively hostile to the grouping they are within. That can’t be healthy.

Now, if a subset leaves peacefully, and then war developed later on, that would be more believeable. After all, we acknowledge the EU’s effect of helping to keep Europe peaceful these past seventy years. It’s one of the reasons I am strongly against the idea of Britain leaving.

But most importantly of all: you can’t say “federation starships” and mean the bad guys. I know they were talking about the Trade Federation, but “federation starship” means something in SF, and to hear it used here was really jarring. Did Lucas have beef with Roddenberry, or something?

Yoda fighting was fun. He’s so tiny.

And I’ve booked a work outing to see Episode VII on the 17th of December, the day it opens.

The Phantom Menace

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 01:04:25 +0000

Just who (or what) is the menacing phantom?

Following on from my On things never seen post, yesterday was Father's Day, and we watched The Phantom Menace.

It is not as bad – not nearly as bad – as nearly everyone makes out.

It starts badly, oddly enough. Not just the dull scroll about the Trade Federation, but then you have the Japanese-sounding guys in charge of the blockade and invasion, who are voiced by people who seemingly can't act. Their dialogue is frankly embarrassing.

But much of it is fine. Sure, there are holes in the logic, places where it doesn't exactly make sense; but what film doesn't have instances like that?

Even – and I realise I'm committing a kind of geek sacrilege as I write this – even Jar-Jar Binks isn't that annoying. Could the plot have worked without him, or with him not being a comedic figure? Of course. But having him as he is, does no harm.

But hey: I liked Wesley Crusher, too.

And that's about as much as I'm going to say about it for now.

On things never seen

Mon, 04 May 2015 23:01:48 +0000

There's a programme on Radio 4 from time to time (and it has made the transition to TV) called I've Never Seen Star Wars. In it Marcus Brigstocke gets a guest to try things that they have never tired before. Conversation ensues, and it can be amusing.

Anyway, the title clearly derives from how unlikely it is that anyone (of a certain generation or three, at least) will not have seen it.

In case you’re worrying, I saw the original – back when it was just called Star Wars, without the Episode IV: A New Hope subtitle – in the cinema (probably second run, not first, but still). And the second and third, of course.

But then there was the prequel trilogy. To be honest, when The Phantom Menace came out, I don’t think I was all that interested. I had known from early on that Lucas had planned the original as part of the middle trilogy of three. But by the time the prequels started, it had been so long that it just didn’t seem very important, you know?

And more importantly, in 1999 when it came out, I had a small child. We weren’t going to many films that weren’t aimed at like two-year olds. And after that, there was always something more interesting, more pressing to see…

I mislead you slightly, here. I did, in fact, see The Phantom Menace, after a fashion: on a shonky old VHS, with a three-year old sweetly chattering on the sofa next to me throughout. It hardly counts. And I definitely haven’t seen the others.

And I know everyone says, “Don’t bother, don’t waste your time, they’re terrible;” but they can only say that because they’ve seen them. And now – now there’s a new one coming down the line. Episode VII, The Force Awakens is due out in December, and I’ll certainly want to see it. Of course, it will follow on from Return of the Jedi, and it probably won’t matter if you haven’t seen episodes I-III; but it just wouldn’t feel right to not see them.

So I intend to watch the prequel trilogy. I was going to start today – the fourth of May be with you, and all that – but events got in the way. Still, over the next few weeks I’ll watch all three, and report back here.

Wish me luck.

2001: The aliens that almost were

Fri, 18 Oct 2013 12:51:33 +0000

[W]e could summarize the whole ordeal by saying that Kubrick tried to the last minute not to follow Sagan's advice!.

An interesting piece on Kubrick, Clarke and collaborators trying to design the aliens for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Via Daring Fireball.

A Line, a Loop, a Tangle of Timey-Wimeyness

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:10:34 +0000

The London International Festival of Science Fiction and Fantastic Film, or Sci-Fi-London is in its eleventh year, and I've never been to anything in it before. That's kind of bad, isn't it?

This week, though, I’ve been to the presentation of the Clarke Award, which is held in association with the festival, and at its main venue; and last night, the whole family went to the BFI (or the NFT, I can’t quite work out what its official name is these days) to see a film.

Which was Dimensions, a low-budget British film about time travel – or maybe dimension-hopping – which doesn’t even have a distributor yet.

Which is a great shame, because despite some flaws it is a very enjoyable piece. We were still talking about it at lunchtime today.

It’s also something of a costume drama, being set in the 1920s and 30s. The Sci-Fi-London page about it likens it to Merchant-Ivory.

It did show its low-budget nature in one or two places, but nothing that destroys the overall effect. The couple who made it (Ant Neely wrote and composed the original music, and Sloane U’Ren directed and did much else) had to sell their house to fund it, so almost anything can be forgiven.

I won’t say too much more about it here, but if you ever get a chance to see it, you should take it.

There was a Q&A with writer, director, lead actor & editor after the screening, which was very interesting. I was geared up to ask a question, which would have gone something like this: “When you make a time-travel story, especially in Britain, you’re walking among some long shadows, especially Wells and Doctor Who; to what extent would you acknowledge those as influences?” I had my hand up to speak, when the interviewer asked a question touching on exactly those points. So I didn’t ask. Pity. I would also have mentioned the fact that they have a mysterious wise man know only as “the Professor”.

Anyway, lots of fun: highly recommended.

Aliens Among Us

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:09:56 +0000

I never bothered to watch Alien Resurrection because I didn’t like Alien³ (or Cubed, as I always see it). So now, browsing the new, freshly-in-beta SF Encyclopaedia I find it was written by Joss Whedon (who doesn’t yet have an entry in said volume, but no doubt will have eventually).

Why did nobody tell me this?

It seems a particularly timely piece of information as we’ve been introducing the kids to Buffy recently (in part to get us all over the lack of Doctor Who), and also to Firefly. We are deep in the Whedonverse.

Youssou N'Dour, Philip Glass, The Kronos Quartet, and Bela Lugosi

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:39:38 +0000

Most, but not all of them at one event.

Jamaica and Senegal Make Music

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Barbican to see Youssou N’Dour. In support were an acoustic reggae band called Inna da Yard. They were fabulous fun, and reminded me that I’ve been missing out on reggae since John Peel died.

Youssou and his band were amazing. They had more percussionists on stage than most bands have members (five, counting the drummer), which amused me.

The total number of musicians on stage was about sixteen. Plus they had a couple of amazing dancers.

And the professionals weren’t the only ones dancing on the stage. Several times members of the audience got up and joined in. Yes, a veritable stage invasion in the Barbican. The security people looked vaguely worried; I didn’t know the Barbican even had security.

I won’t try to dance about architecture and describe the music, but let’s just say it was the rockingest gig I’ve been to at that venue.

The Glass Eye

A few days later it was off to the Hackney Empire, where we saw the original 1931 Dracula, with a live soundtrack. Which was composed by Philip Glass, and performed by him, Michael Riesman, and The Kronos Quartet. That’s a pretty stellar lineup from the modern classical world.

I had at first thought that the film was silent, but it isn’t (I think I was confusing it with Nosferatu). Apparently it didn’t originally have a musical soundtrack, though.

While it’s clear that the film is the origin (or an origin) of many horror film clichés, and the story is of course very familiar, I don’t think I had ever seen it before – though I thought I had.

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing, though the film volume could have done with being louder, as the music drowned out the dialogue at times. And on a related note, I’m not convinced that the music was always only there to serve the film, as a true soundtrack should be.

But all in all a fascinating night.

Mad bampot on a rope

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:45:57 +0000

Went to see Man on Wire last night, the documentary about Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. It's a great film. I was a bit worried that it would be kind of dull, since we already knew the story. But it's paced like a thriller, complete with starting near the climax and then flashing back to fill in the back story.

I did have a few moments of gut-wrenching horror (I’m not good with ridiculous heights, even when it’s just images of other people experiencing them), but overall found it absolutely amazing, and touching. Great music, too.

There was a poignant moment when they showed documentary footage of the construction of the twin towers. Seeing pre-formed steel sections being lifted into place; sections that I last saw white-hot and crashing to the ground.

A Bridge Not Far Enough

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 13:51:27 +0000

Spoilers ahead.

I watched Bridge to Terabithia last weekend. It is probably the saddest film I’ve ever seen, and despite all the plaudits it has received, it has at its core, I think, a heart of darkness. It is not a bad film, but it has a dark soul.

I came to the film cold. I’ve not read the book; indeed, I’d never even heard of it when the film came out. The book is described in terms of being ‘much-loved’ and a ‘classic’. It was published in 1977, when I was 12 or 13. So I expect I missed it because I was ‘too old’ for children’s books, and not yet old enough again for them. And I had other concerns in that year.

So all I knew about it was the ‘from the creators of Narnia’ tag line, a quick read of the blurb, and the fact that my daughter (6) was interested in it.

As the early scenes unfolded I realised that that I had read a review of it, though. All that I recalled was a complaint to the effect that in the book, the girl was supposed to be plain, even boyish-looking, while in the film she was Hollywood-pretty (if dressed a little unconventionally compared to her schoolmates).

I think that review explains why my opinion of the film differs so significantly from that of most reviewers: they all seem to have read the book. Inevitably they review the film in comparison to it, and fuelled by their knowledge of the plot.

So they can describe it as ‘bittersweet’, as having an ‘uplifting’ ending; even as ‘transcendent’ (I think that last came from one of the mini-documentaries on the DVD). Because as they watched, they knew what was coming.

I’ve often thought that some films – the later Harry Potter ones are particular examples – must be all but incoherent to anyone who hasn’t first read the book on which they are based. The Potters can get away with it, because so many have read the books first. But in general a film – or any adaptation from one medium to another – must work on its own. It is a separate, new creation, and has to stand or fall as such.

In one sense at least, Terabithia fails on this account.

The trouble is not lack of coherence; rather it is excess of impact, and lack of recovery time. There is certainly some foreshadowing: it is plain that something bad is going to happen. But the tragedy when it comes – and make no mistake, the story is a tragedy – is too deep, too dark, too sudden. Yes, true, that’s how it would be in real life; and I’m not suggesting that movie viewers, including children, should be completely protected from darkness, tragedy or loss. But here, suddenly, shatteringly, we are no longer watching the film that we thought we were.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. But the film’s fatal flaw – or at least the cause of its failure to achieve the uplift suggested by reviewers – comes after the plunge into darkness.

It is the lack of recovery time, and the content of what time there is. Yes, a significant amount of time for the characters is compressed into a few swiftly-edited scenes. Perhaps enough time is represented for the boy, Jess, to come to terms with his loss, or at least to begin to do so. But it is not enough time for us to do so.

And perhaps because the fantasy elements were (rightly) understated earlier on, we have what feels like a tacked-on fantasy ending. And it’s not even the tacked-on fantasy ending we might want. Me, I’d have liked Jess, the talented artist, to to have ripped out the page of the film’s continuity, said, “No!” and sketched a new one.

That, of course, would have made for a saccharine ending, like the false ending in Brazil, or the original cut of Blade Runner. It would have been deemed a mistake (not least because of differing from the book), or at least have been very hard to make work. It would have betrayed the story.

But the ending that we do have betrays the story too, I think, in a different way. The descent (ascent?) into fantasy may show that Jess had become closer to his little sister; but it writes Leslie out of his memories of Terabithia. It ceases to be their magical place, and therefore fails to honour her memory.

Of course it is all to help him to come to terms with his loss; but as his Dad tells him, it’s by remembering what was special about her that he can keep her alive.

Above all, though, it all happens too quickly: maybe we, the viewers, could have had just a little more time?

I can only assume that the book does, in fact, provide a more gentle exit for its readers, for it to be so popular. Though of course, you can take a book at your own pace.

Yet despite – or more likely, because of – all of the above, it’s a film that will stay with me for a long time; that I’ll probably watch again; and whose source-book I’ll certainly seek out.

The only 'Transformer' I really like is an album by Lou Reed

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:36:30 +0000

Took the kids to see the Transformers movie tonight. It's not a franchise that I grew up with, of course, but my two older nephews were into them when they were kids, and so I was aware of them even before my son started watching the more recent cartoons a few years ago.

But I gather that there is a whole generation of twenty-somethings – maybe even thirty-somethings – who went to see the movie with a sense of worry, even trepidation, that it would stamp a great big metal foot all over their memories. And I gather that, largely, for them, it did not. I had heard quite good things about it (or I thought I had); and the trailer looked great.

So I was mostly disappointed. I didn’t hate it all the way through; nothing as extreme as that. I was just disappointed at how weak and overlong it was; and mainly by the American-military porn. A great deal of it was showing the fantasticness and coolness of American military technology. I’m not sure that’s really what I want to see in a film I take my kids to (though as it also revealed that all human technology came from reverse-engineering the frozen Megatron, they may have been sending mixed signals).

Also, since it starts with a US military base in the Middle East being attacked (by a giant alien fighting robot, and in Qatar, admittedly, but still), you might reasonably expect there to be some political point. But there wasn’t.

Unless, perhaps, it was this. The grunts (actually Special Forces, so I’m not sure we should call them grunts) were shown as cool, professional, skillful and competent. The secret government agency in charge of crashed alien artifacts, and the FBI, were shown as feeble, useless and pathetic; easily outwitted by a couple of teenagers and, err, a group of giant alien fighting robots. So, soldiers good, government bad, or something.

Also, one bit that really surprised me was when Megatron and Optimus Prime were fighting: Megatron turned into a plane, Optimus Prime grabbed him, and together they crashed into the side of a tower block and slo-mo’d all the way through it and out the other side. 9/11 can’t be as raw a wound in the American psyche as I had thought.

We could have done without the whole teen romance thing, but it’s an American summer blockbuster, so what can you expect? And we could have done without at least half an hour of the start.

It’s also incredibly visually noisy, and the Transformers themselves, especially the Decepticons (the baddies) are so similar when they’re in robot mode that it was really hard to tell what was going on at times.

But then, what was going on didn’t really matter that much.

The kids enjoyed it though, and it was a nice treat to end the summer holidays with; but since we started them with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and middled them with The Simpsons, I don’t think it really stands up.

Still, it’s definitely been ‘The Summer of Film’, as they were calling it in the trailers a while back.

Potter Week

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 17:54:13 +0000

OK, I declare this the start of Potter Week. I'm just on my way to Stratford, where we'll eat at Pizza Express, before going to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Then this time next week we’ll be getting ready to head out to a bookshop for a midnight launch party for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

It is a time steeped in magic.