'The Last Airbender' (film!)

Yeah, yeah, I know. Shooting fish in a barrel, exercise in pointlessness, why did I even watch this film when I knew how bad it was going to be?...but I thought it needed at least a mention.

'The Last Airbender' (not allowed the total title of the series, 'Avatar: the Last Airbender' because of a certain blue alien film that came out around the same time, which is, I will grudgingly admit, at least the better of the two films) was a movie that did not need to be made. At all. It's based on a wonderful animated TV series about a world in which the four nations utilise the four elements in 'bending', a martial arts/magic fighting style. The Avatar is the only person alive who can bend all four elements, and keeps the nations (and the elements) balanced, as well as being able to access the spirit world. When one Avatar dies, they are reincarnated as a member of a different nation. Aang, the hero of the series and film, is the Avatar who ran from his role and ended up frozen in ice for a century, but is discovered by a water bender named Katara and her brother Sokka, children of the Southern Water Tribe. Unfortunately, Zuko, the disgraced and scarred son of the Lord of the Fire Nation, Lord Ozai, can only regain his father's favour by capturing the Avatar, who is the only person who can stop Ozai's expansion and conquest of the four nations. Got it? It's a really, really good series, with surprising depth for what is ostensibly a kids' show, decent characters, great elemental action scenes and a fleshed-out spiritual and philosophical basis for the entire setting. If you haven't watched, go and do so right now.

Because this film is just a live-action remake of the first series, but with large chunks taken out and the good bits done again, worse, it brings precisely nothing new to fans, even annoying them with the changes made, and won't entice new fans because it completely fails to convey the wonder and beauty of the setting or the compelling dilemmas the characters face. The sad thing is, you can tell it was made with love, but that really doesn't translate to good film-making. M. Night Shyamalan can do good film-making. We've seen it, and now at least he's broken out of having to have a twist at the end. OK, apparently his more recent films were rubbish, but 'The Sixth Sense' and 'Unbreakable', while flawed, were still deeply enjoyable watching and will remain minor classics. So what happened? Well, some of this film's complete fail might be to do with the editing and the way the whole thing is fitted together. I mean, it jumps around like nobody's business, going from the antarctic wastes of the Southern Water Tribe to the Southern Air Temple in a matter of minutes, without even a travelling sequence in between. Then *poof*: they're in the Earth Kingdom. Then *bamf*: they're captured by Fire Nation. The pacing is awful too, as important bits of plot whiz by in a matter of seconds and a seriously annoying voiceover tells us things they couldn't be bothered to film. Sokka's girlfriend in the series, Yue, princess of the Northern Water Tribe, was the first chance we have to see a more serious, committed side to Sokka, as his infatuation becomes more like love. In the film, they have a gaze-a-thon across the throne room and then next thing we know, they're in a relationship! One which, emotionally, is the focus for one of the most tragic dilemmas in the series but in this is barely glanced over.

Well, I mean, there's some information in the voiceover, but this film is an example of what happens when someone gets confused about whether it's "show" or "tell" you're meant to do. The cinematography is, frankly, dreadful. I'm not a film student and even I know the extreme close-ups were a seriously bad idea. In the aforementioned courtship of Yue and Sokka, the only bit of development we get is where the film stops its frantic bouncing around long enough to give us a few minutes of bad dialogue between the two, which is of course intercut with preparations for war and unflatteringly shot. Due to getting Dev Patel to play Zuko (he tries hard, but unfortunately wasn't as complex as Zuko in the series), he's unrecognisable as the animated character. But y'know what the most recognisable quirk of Zuko's appearance is? That big old flame shaped scar that covers a good portion of his face and is the physical reminder of his disgrace and banishment by his father? Yeah, it's there, but only barely. It wasn't ever made a big deal of. Guess they didn't want to make a pretty guy less pretty. Plus Patel just looks really angrily at the camera without subtlety.

The one thing I would say is that I find the accusations of whitewashing a bit extreme. Yeah, OK, they did get white actors for Aang, Katara and Sokka, and went with a non Inuit set of actors for the Water Tribes, but Shyamalan has clearly designed a racial spread for the nations, with the Fire Nation as Indian and the Earth Nation as East Asian. In contrast to most Hollywood films, it has a surprisingly diverse cast. Still, that's only in comparison and not really addressing the wider issue that gives rise to the problem, and it did annoy me that they went for Nicola Peltz and Jason Rathbone for Katara and Sokka, but that's mainly because they sucked at playing characters I care about. Noah Ringer was actually pretty good as Aang, and though my fellow viewers were complaining a lot about the martial arts, he was the only person who looked at all convincing, given as he studied Taekwondo for quite a long time before auditioning for the part of Aang. Maybe it's my affection for Taekwondo showing through, but at least Ringer had the right sense of balance and rhythm for martial arts, whereas Peltz clearly had no clue whatsoever and just looked awkward, despite having supposedly had a martial arts boot camp for six months. Sadly, much as I like Dev Patel, he clearly wasn't particularly confident about the fire-bending fight scenes (probably quite difficult to do, to be fair) and the way they were filmed almost looked like it was designed to obscure the lack of competance. However, the fight scene at the end between Aang and Zuko was actually quite well done. And the Blue Spirit looked great - whoever did that stunt work was wonderful, but the big fight where they held off a whole load of Fire Nation was both creative and disappointing. It's a cool idea having them in a training room, but Aang basically seemed to be using his airbending to play with the dummies while the Blue Spirit single-handedly held off an entire freaking army. This was mostly because it was very confusingly shot, but it could have been good.

By the way, this film was made for kids, right? So...there's this bit near the end where an undeniably nasty Fire Nation guy has wrought havoc but the fight has turned against him and he's turned tail and run. Guess what the heroic (faceless) waterbender army does? Drowns him. Seriously. They trap him in a bubble of water until he stops moving. We even see him drop to the ground and just lie there. I'm all for a touch of darkness in kids' films, but we're just going to let that go? Just...killing people is OK if they're bad people? Especially if they're running away like cowardly custards? Wow. Great message, Shyamalan.

So...good points...good points...well, Uncle Iroh was pretty cool. I mean, he wasn't played by Mako, for obvious reasons, and they had him getting foot massages instead of drinking tea and playing chess, but he wasn't that out of character. They actually started introducing Zuko's strained relationship with his ambitious sister Azula much earlier than in the series. They got the same voice actor to do Appa and Momo, though Appa just looks weird. Why are his paws hanging down like long child-catching fingers? They actually bother to go to the Northern Air Temple (in the series, the technological modification of the Air Temple by a group of refugees was a really big personal dilemma Aang had to negotiate) but they only spend a couple of minutes there. They did bother to cover Aang's backstory and his awesome mentor, Monk Gyatso, but for some reason they change Gyatso's final stand (he was sitting cross-legged surrounded by the skeletons of his enemies in the series) so it wasn't as iconic, or as badass. Almost every good thing I have to say about this series has a caveat. The set and production design was incredible, but it's rarely used effectively, especially as the low light levels of most of the film makes it insanely difficult to see (apparently even worse in 3D). The martial styles connected with the bending styles were well thought out, but badly performed and the CGI seriously didn't back it up. I know it's difficult to animate water and fire, but that's no excuse for laziness in making it respond to the bender's martial arts moves.

Oh yes, and 'bender' is indeed inherently hilarious to British people. I always assumed that was the joke of Bender's name in 'Futurama' (apparently not, actually a pun on his job and a reference to a character from 'The Breakfast Club'). I kind of became immune to it due to watching the 'Avatar' series, but it is pretty funny to hear people say, "You're a bender!" It's falling out of use, but don't call people benders in Britain unless you want a thump.


Factoid, since there were no quotable lines: the guy who voices Zuko in the TV series (Dante Basco) is the guy who played Rufio (RUFI-O, RUFI-O!) in 'Hook'.

'Van Helsing'

Ugh. I hate this film. And yet I keep going back to it. I actually own it now - that's right, I bought it voluntarily and then rewatched it all the way through. And it was just as bad second time round, though I could appreciate the silliness more when not blinded by incoherent rage.

Still, there are some very, very few good points. Not enough to salvage it, but you have to take your jollies where you can find them. It's such a pity, too, because I love 'The Mummy' and 'The Mummy Returns' ('Tomb of the Dragon Emperor' sucked but that was due to some particularly poor choices that could easily have been done differently). They're silly pulp fun with a modern appeal and a classic atmosphere, but are good-hearted and loveable in a way few Hollywood films are. Plus they show Sommers can do genre, as long as he isn't expected to take it seriously or respect it or anything. And, frankly, I could easily have liked a Universal Horror-style monster movie pitting everyone's favourite vampire hunter against the three big guys in Universal's canon. But 'Van Helsing' is really bad. Not funny bad - it's where parody goes to die.

This is mostly due to a string of baffling decisions that, as with 'Tomb of the Dragon Emperor', just make the whole thing not work but could easily have been set right. First, Van Helsing. I'm a massive fan of the original 'Dracula' novel and Van Helsing's character. He's not exactly nuanced but he's a gloriously bonkers doctor and expert on blood-borne diseases who happens to kill vampires on the side. It's very telling that his first name was the same as Bram Stoker's own - Abraham. I'm not exactly a purist when it comes to Van Helsing. He's been mercilessly recast for years into whatever a director or screenwriter demands of him, but Peter Cushing is the ultimate Van Helsing. He can pull off old world academia, wiry athleticism and because Cushing took his acting seriously no matter how bad the film he was in, he brings weight to the proceedings so that even in the silliest films like 'The 7 Golden Vampires', you suspend your disbelief the minute he enters a scene. Hugh Jackman is not a bad actor - I actually quite like him. I love him in 'The Prestige'. He, like Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford and Cary Grant, can carry off pretty much anything with a wink and a roguish smile. He doesn't take himself too seriously as an actor, which really helps when playing pulp characters, and while he's been pigeonholed by X-Men and 'Australia' as a growling manly man, he can play delightfully against type, and does. However, Stephen Sommers takes no advantage of this whatsoever, giving us a cut-and-pasted growling badass hero with no emotional depth or skills beyond killing, barely any good lines and a complete lack of reference to the original character who still remains in the popular consciousness because of Cushing's incredible portrayal. He doesn't have the charm of Rick O'Connell to balance it out and too much of the 'rogue demon hunter' to pull off the light-hearted aspect. Plus there's this weird thing where they changed his first name (what's wrong with Abraham?) to Gabriel and imply, for some completely unknown reason, that the character is actually the angel Gabriel now working for the Vatican...or something. It's stupid and completely unnecessary.

Talking of stupid and unnecessary, what was Richard Roxburgh on during this film? I mean, he's an awesome actor and, well, damn, he actually managed to make that aging Anne Rice fan outfit look good, but his Dracula is a bizarre, mewling idiot who bears no resemblance to any serious Dracula on film. Lugosi had dignity, Lee had the whole forbidden pleasure thing and was almost animalistic, Oldman brought emotional depth and a sense of ancient madness. Roxburgh has wacky. I mean, the Count hasn't exactly been treated with respect for a lot of his career, but he needed to be a genuine threat to Van Helsing, since nothing else is. Besides, his evil plan is just...stupid. It involves wanting to make vampire babies. Why? Becuase Fuck You, that's why. The Brides are one-dimensional characters who alternate between screaming hysterically about their babies and turning into badly-CGd flying vampire monsters. As bad guys, the terrible foursome are hardly threatening.

Now, three of the great strengths of 'The Mummy' and 'The Mummy Returns' were the leads and the villain(s). But we've established that Van Helsing lacks the uniqueness and charm to hold this all together (though his actor doesn't) and Dracula is too ineffectual and plain old bonkers to make a decent villain (despite his actor being a lot better than this). So the female lead, the love interest, the lady of the hour? How does she hold up? The answer is, not well. Kate Beckinsale, who plays Anna Valerious, is another actor I rather like. Her 'Emma' is by far the best version. 'Underworld' sucks like a Twilight vampire but she's surprisingly likeable in it. However, she's not suited to playing an action girl, perhaps because she seems like she's trying too hard to be rough-spoken and dangerous. I would far rather see her play a clever, competant woman with a good head on her shoulders, perhaps a female hacker in a heist movie (notice how they're always male?) or an FBI agent who takes control of the situation with an uncompromising and straight-laced attitude. But in this she plays a werewolf-hunting gypsy princess in rural Transylvania, so it's action girl all the way. Compared to, say, Evelyn from 'The Mummy' (as played by Rachel Weisz, unfortunately Mario Bello just didn't cut it in the third film), who is a wonderful charicature of an academic but has a likeable personality, Anna is...um...well, she kicks ass...and her family has a dark past...OK, Anna basically has no personality. She seems to be some kind of leader of her village, but she does precious little leading because she's so busy having her own adventures. Her profession is presumably monster-hunting (a valid career choice in Transylvania, if horror films have taught me anything) and I would guess she can afford to live on her family's wealth, but what does she do for fun? Brood?

So the main trio are either underdeveloped or plain old bizarre. The plot is completely laughable. Dracula's big plan is to use Dr Frankenstein's research to conduct lightning through a living body into a massive machine and thus make his babies live, but no body can take it. So Frankenstein builds him a monster, but that pesky mob comes and storms the place, Dracula kills Frankenstein and the monster 'dies' in an explosion in a windmill (which actually makes sense since flour is highly combustible), putting Dracula back at square one. Meanwhile, Gabriel (shudder) Van Helsing is hunting Mr Hyde in Paris (this is somewhat explained in the prequel animated film 'The London Assignment', where Hyde was Jack the Ripper despite the fact that the book Hyde mostly stamped on people's heads or hit them with sticks to kill them and probably lacked the finesse to channel Jekyll's doctor abilities). Van Helsing is a monster hunter in the employ of the Vatican who can't remember who he is, and is dispatched, along with his comedy sidekick, to Transylvania. Meanwhile meanwhile, Anna and her brother Velkan are catching a werewolf and Velkan gets bitten because he's an idiot, meaning he'll become the Wolfman. There is horribly forced sexual tension between two great actors, fight scenes with the Brides, some exposition and then they find Frankenstein's monster in the windmill. Dracula's using Velkan to try and channel lightning to make the babies live or something, but he isn't up to it. So through various convoluted plot twists and ham-fisted action scenes, they end up with Van Helsing confronting Dracula as the Wolfman and Anna fighting one of the Brides with the help of the monster.

There's a big plot about how Gabriel is an archangel and killed Dracula centuries ago, causing him to make a pact with the Devil to become a vampire and that's all been leading up to this climactic battle. At what point was it not awesome enough to just have werewolf-Van Helsing and Dracula duking it out atop Frakenstein's ruined castle on a moonlit night in Transylvania? Hell, at what point did Van Helsing have to become an angel to be awesome enough for this film?! If we go by book canon rather than film canon, he freaking murderises Dracula when he is an old man. Why the hell does he need to be an angel? This is one of the major decisions that annoys me about 'Van Helsing': the film-makers seem to think they have to top everything they do with further levels of epic for the trailers. It's a Van Helsing movie! Where he fought Dracula as a young man! In Transylvania! With the help of magic gypsies and steampunk technology! Alongside Frankenstein's monster! While becoming the Wolfman! And Dracula's a giant bat monster! And Van Helsing is an angel with amnesia!

*headdesk* It sounds like something a ten year old would come up with. And frankly, if this was a comic that had spread all that across a big arc, it would actually be pretty cool. I would buy that. But it was all crammed into one film that is structured like they needed to shoehorn an action scene in every five minutes or the kids with ADD would get bored and start kicking the backs of the chairs and it all results in a big CGI-d monster mash that gets boring very, very quickly. And then there's the schmaltz at the end which even involves a character's smiling face looking down from the clouds. OK, in this case there was a point to that (SPOILER! Anna dies, but because Dracula is dead, her family, who have previously been denied Heaven because of a vow her ancestor made, can rest in peace) but it was so, so cliched that I almost couldn't believe they included it.


Like I said, there are some good points. It'd be difficult for there not to be really, in a film with this much talent. For a start, the film looks really good. The steel grey skies and gloomy weather give a real stylishly overcast look to the whole thing, and the use of a village set remarkably like the Universal village set is very effective. All very Gothic. The opening sequence is wonderful, as well: a black-and-white sequence reproducing the "It's aliiiiiive!" and windmill-finale scenes from the James Whale 'Frankenstein', with Samuel West, one of my favourite lesser-known British actors, as the good doctor and Schuler Hensley as the monster (yeah, I had no idea who he was, apparently some kind of Broadway actor and singer, but he's really good as the monster). Sometimes I just go and watch that bit on Youtube to remind myself what a cool film this could have been if it hadn't sucked so much. It has given me the awesome "Whhhyyyyyy?" soundbite, which is really affecting in context. You know the one thing that I can point to as ruining this glorious homage? Dracula. From the minute he starts going on about his weird plot to the moment when he drags himself along a sword to kill Frankenstein, he makes a brilliant scene bad. *sigh* And you know this isn't because I dislike Richard Roxburgh, but Frankenstein is tragic, and this Dracula is high camp.

Other good things: the ball scene is pretty cool, if rather borrowed from 'The Fearless Vampire Hunters'. David Wenham is the comedy sidekick, Carl, who provides Van Helsing's gadgets (which are very silly), and he's a delight, playing a comedy character with charm and evident enjoyment. Plus I love that the nerd monk (well, friar) is the only person who gets laid in this film, unless you count Dracula. Schuler Hensley is good as the monster (as mentiond before) and they do get kudos for not referring to the monster as 'Frankenstein' for most of the film, though eventually they fell into the trap of saying "We have to rescue Frankenstein!" I'd be impressed if they could given as he was in an exploding windmill in the first ten minutes. The technology is pretty fun, and the production design is lovely, especially in the laboratory, but none of this is really enough to salvage 'Van Helsing'. Sure, there are moments of fun, but they won't get you through the ten-minute chunks of boredom. I'll probably watch it again, but it's not something I'd recommend as a sure-fire enjoyable film.

Van Helsing: "You're a genius!"
Carl: "A genius with access to unstable chemicals!"

'Queen of the Damned'

There's a stack of stuff I should be reviewing right now, but one of them is 'The Mist', the review for which will include a massive spoiler, and I know at least one of people who read this blog hasn't seen it. So I will hold off on that until we watch it at one of our film evenings :)

In the meantime...heavy, almost primal drumbeats echo, evoking memories of many, many hours spent listening to the surprisingly good soundtrack for a very bad but very stylish vampire film, long before 'Twilight' even existed. It's time for some Anne Rice, baby.

Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles were a staple of my teenage years. I didn't read anywhere near all of the books (like, two), but I loved the films made of them in the nineties/early millenium. The novel 'Interview With the Vampire', illicitly picked up in the horror section during my first tentative forays into the genre, was for me the first experience I'd had of vampires being sexy, not monstrous (well, 'Dracula', but he's mostly monstrous in the original novel), and a whole world opened up. I also read 'The Vampire Lestat', but I never got as far as 'Queen of the Damned' in book form as I realised the author had got a little precious about the sociopathic and gloriously snarky creep from the first book and had decided to make him a lot more likeable.

Basically, there was no particular reason for me to like any of the characters any more, as I find the 'sympathetic vampire' one of the most boring tropes of modern horror fiction when not balanced by a touch of monstrosity (even if Rice was one of the first to do it). I can't help but see it as paving the way for insipid characters like Edward Cullen. So, I stopped reading the books. By the point that I read 'The Vampire Lestat', I'd already seen the 'Interview With the Vampire' and 'Queen of the Damned' films, so I had a very definite mental picture of what the characters looked like, which was sadly not helpful. I like 'The Vampire Lestat' a lot - it's a highly enjoyable if rather overly-romanticised novel. The film 'Interview With the Vampire' was pretty much everything I wanted from a film adaptation, even with the changes they wrought (because, well, I'd always rather have Antonio Banderas as Armand than a teenager if I've got the choice, even if it's less close to the books). Anne Rice wrote the screenplay, so it's pretty close to the book.

Still, 'Queen of the Damned', with its stylish, silly goth-ness and genre soundtrack, was a film I watched over and over again, pretty much uncritically.Where 'Interview With the Vampire' follows Louis, a recently-turned vampire, 'Queen of the Damned' takes up the story of Louis' sire/maker/whatever, Lestat, who mostly functions as an antagonist in the first book and film, as well as an example of a vampire who just loves being a vampire. Where the first film (which is, frankly, quite a lot better), is a period piece full of floppy shirts and big dresses, with surprisingly good performances from Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and a very young Kirsten Dunst, 'Queen of the Damned' throws the previous continuity out of the window. Cruise's blonde, charming, unbalanced Lestat was a dead ringer for the book Lestat. Stewart Townsend's Lestat is a smug, self-satisfied goth kid who thinks he's God's gift to emo girls and rock music. Jesse Reeves (Marguerite Moreau) is an occult investigator with a past that's apparently a lot more complex in the books but is hardly delved into here except to assist with plot expediency. Most of the action takes place in [swinging] London for pretty much no reason, except that all ancient occult societies come from England, duh...despite the fact that Lestat is French, Marius is apparently a French Roman (he's a Roman in the books, but played by French actor Vincent Perez), and Marguerite Moreau is American (and her character is at least part American, though also seems slightly French given 'young Jesse's' accent).

So Lestat is woken from his centuries-long slumber by rock music (as in the book) and becomes a rock star who is openly a vampire. The first half of the plot is really quite like 'The Vampire Lestat', but as I've said before, I can't speak for 'Queen of the Damned' as I haven't read it. The world treats him with a kind of bemused admiration and he acts like a pretty princess who gets all the groupies he wants. Meanwhile, a member of the Talamascan occult group, Jesse, is delving into Lestat's history with the help of her mentor David (woo, Paul McGann!) who is a bit obsessed with Marius, Lestat's sire (I don't blame him). Through Lestat's journal, we flashback to his making/Embrace/hot man lovin' and how he was favoured by Akasha who, with her husband Enkil, is the originator of vampires. Akasha and Enkil turned to stone long ago: Marius had been keeping them in the basement for centuries but when Lestat drunk Akasha's blood (in an awesome bit with a lovely crunch of marble-flesh) he abandoned Lestat, taking Akasha and Enkil with him. In the present day, Marius turns up again because a) Lestat is annoying a lot of vampires by being so open and b) Akasha, the most powerful vampire in existence, ripped out Enkil's throat and is up and about, btw.

Lestat and Jesse have a slightly weird relationship as she tries to get close to him and he wonders why she bothers, but then Akasha decides Lestat is about right to be her new king and grabs him when he's being attacked by the other vampires during a concert in Death Valley (if they want discretion, why would they attack him in such a public, filmed place? Bad vampires, no Masquerade for you). The other ancient vampires (Armand, Marius, Pandora, Maharet, Mael and Khayman) unite against Akasha. She commands Lestat to drink Jesse dry, but the Ancients all attack Akasha together and drink her blood. Maharet drinks the 'last drop' and turns to stone, Lestat turns Jesse into a vampire to save her life and they walk off into undeath together (blah). On the plus side, Marius does actually come and see David *fangirl*.

So basically, ignoring Jesse's role in the book version, the film is about Lestat being pulled between a hot all-powerful vampire chick and a boring human girl. And of course, this being written by a human girl, he chooses her. The film is tightly-made to a large extent - if you're invested in the love story or the overarching narrative, you'll probably enjoy it as it goes along at a fair clop. But the Death Valley fight feels like it should be the climax of the film - as a result, the ensuing bit where Lestat and Akasha bathe in rose petals, have kinky blood-play sex and kill people is (ironically) an anti-climax. The final fight with the Ancients is really cool, especially for fans of the novels (although I've only read the first two, I know the backstories of most of the characters) and has some lovely cameos (Lena Olin is Maharet, 'Farscape' veterans Claudia Black and Matthew Newton are Pandora and Armand, who does look much more like the book character in this version), but it feels tacked on, like they wanted to include the big narrative of 'The Vampire Chronicles', but had difficulty integrating it with the teen wish-fulfillment vampire lover plot.

Though admittedly, this is suprisingly self-conscious: Lestat is meant to be a bit of an arrogant prick, and when he wants to show Jesse that he's a monster, he rips a woman's throat out. And...well, Jesse's still keen, so you can't fault her on that one. Also, Jesse is the one who stalks Lestat, not the other way around, so she mostly just comes across as a groupie. I personally assume that Lestat will get bored of her at some point after the film has ended.

The whole Talamascan thing is weird, too. I mean, I'm all for ancient monster-hunting societies but there's no reason for them to exist beyond referencing the books and meaning Jesse and David aren't just crazy loners. The script is also cringingly terrible. Any film where what passes for sexy seduction talk between the two leads is "Boo back" is a bad, bad idea. I don't like Stuart Townsend as a rule and in this he either gives the most wonderful parody of a film vampire or a laughably bad performance. I think you have to buy into him being attractive before you can find Lestat at all engaging and he's only been attractive as Dorian Gray (and was therefore the only good bit about 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' film). The dark-haired sallow emo kid thing does not do it for me. Luckily, there is also Vincent Perez in a performance that includes a playful, almost whimsical side, but fails to convince as he struggles with dramatic vampire lines that are a) not in his first language and b) bad. He is extremely attractive and charming, though. A wonderfully cultured vampire, and his ye olde outfit from the flashbacks is delectable.

'Queen of the Damned' is silly and gothy and yet highly enjoyable. I suspect I've got rather a skewed view due to enjoying this film so much as a teenager, but it's genuinely not that bad. Just really, really trashy, and proud of it. It's laughable and loveable and if you can cope with the badness, at least it's got more of an edge than 'Twilight'.

Edit much after the fact to add: I realised upon re-reading this that I totally ignored Aaliyah, who played Akasha, a singer, actress and model who was tragically killed in a plane crash not long after this film was made. I'm afraid I don't know much of her music, though I am assured by my more R&B-savvy better half that her songs were good. I have seen 'Romeo Must Die', in which she plays Trish, the Juliet stand-in (her debut role and the film credited with bringing Jet Li to the attention of the American film industry). She was actually a good actress, and in 'Queen of the Damned', Akasha is really cool. I'd personally define her performance as 'lissome': she moves and dances with snakelike grace but manages to bring weight, power and (amazingly) credibility to the character. Because she never winks at the camera, even when she was given laughably clueless lines, Aaliyah managed to convince as an ancient vampire with a completely alien mindset. RIP.

Lestat: "Well, that makes you a very clever librarian..."

Puppy Power!

The Nostalgia Critic did a review of the Pound Puppies movie, 'The Legend of Big Paw' and was suitably scathing about it. I can understand, since it's not exactly quality cinema, but this film was one of the staples of my childhood, along with the Care Bears film. Both were adventurous and fun, not too girly (for a kids film, I mean - I wanted to be Nicholas in the Care Bears film, with his ultimate cosmic power and Faustian descent into evil, rather than the kids who had to 'learn to care') and had songs that, while they sound dumb today, were plenty impressive to kids of the right age. I'm not arguing for quality here, but there are some aspects that are OK when you're six. Nicholas' character arc is surprisingly dark and in the Pound Puppies movie, almost all of the sympathetic characters are transformed against their will into ravening monsters. OK, they are saved by the power of love, but it's still pretty sinister seeing the previously maternal dog Collette snarling at her puppies.
The main reason I still have a lot of respect for the Pound Puppies movie is that, contrary to the Critic's constant rants against the songs, they aren't all that bad. Not because of the lyrics, or the performances, no. Because they're based on rock 'n' roll songs of the 50's. As a child who was brought up in a house ruled by Classical music and the occasional dip into the 60's when my dad wasn't listening, this film was a revelation. The languid beats of these songs based on Elvis and Danny & the Juniors provided some of the most enjoyable musical experiences of my childhood, even if they are the deformed children of an incestuous meeting of 50's rock 'n' roll and knock-off Disney.
So while it wasn't the best introduction to the joys of Elvis, for a kid who was sung to sleep by Mahler's endless symphonies played far too loudly downstairs, it was a revelation.

'Inception'

This is the kind of film where I'd usually leave it a while before making definitive comments to allow it to percolate and make sense in my head, but goddamit I just can't stop thinking about it. I guess this is how people who watched 'Avatar' and decided they wanted to live on Pandora felt, only instead of a tropical world filled with aliens I can't stop thinking about dreams. I've always had incredibly vivid dreams but no ability to lucid dream except when directing a narrative, and that doesn't usually work for long (and I'm kind of grateful -some of my best ideas have come from dreams). But, like the very concept of 'Inception' (an idea planted subtly inside the mind so it can influence someone's decisions), the film refuses to leave me alone. Damn you Christopher Nolan, stop sneaking into my dreams and influencing my life!

Worst thing is I was actually put off by the coverage it got in the film magazines I read. I just got kind of sick of seeing pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio in a suit staring just above the camera, but I'm terribly glad I bothered.

I kind of feel like I've been waiting for 'Inception' for quite some time without realising it. It's a brilliant piece of cinema that doesn't make you question your reality to the same extent as 'The Matrix', but shows you the possibilities of what virtual worlds can be. It's cyberpunk for the new millenium, without ugly jacks and 'Avalon'-esque cyber suites, instead an organic and psychic journey into different levels of consciousness. Honestly, I was mentally designing a roleplaying game as I watched the film, because the world's internal consistency is really really good. Of course, flashy special effects and high-concept awesomeness are nothing without a good story and characters, as the Matrix sequels showed us. The thing that makes this film so damn good is the actors. Leonardo DiCaprio is Dom Cobb (I consistently misheard names throughout the film - 'Dom' as 'Tom', 'Mal' as 'Mol' and 'Seito' as 'Zeito', so forgive me if any are incorrect), a highly skilled 'Extractor', who breaks into people's minds and steals their secrets. Cobb is deeply messed-up on many different levels and the audience's journey of discovery is with him rather than the plot. The plot stands up really well on its own, but it also provides a fantastic vehicle for bringing his personal issues to crisis and resolution. Cobb's wife, Mal, has been haunting his journeys into the dream world, causing problems and messing up his heists. In a wonderfully James Bond-esque section at the beginning, cross turns into double cross with pace and tension, while the audience is still desperately trying to understand why they're in Japan...and then someone's dream...and, yeah, OK, let's just go with it till they explain it. Cobb's attempts to reconcile with his wife, get back to his children, avoid men who are hunting him and clear his name are all carefully woven around the plot. DiCaprio portrays Cobb's inner life and emotion with depth, realism and subtlety that show his acting skills: he is Cobb, just as Heath Ledger was the Joker in 'The Dark Knight'. It never feels like DiCaprio is acting because you can't see the cracks, the self-consciousness and the decisions to play it this way or that. The supporting cast (if they can even be called that - this is an ensemble piece) are brilliant too. Even the characters with the least screentime are well thought-out and likeable. Ellen Page is wide-eyed and adorable with that nice edge of intelligence she does so well, but her character Ariadne (get your subtle Greek myth references here) is smart and audacious enough to basically save the day, which Page plays well. I hope I'm not the only one who noticed the slightly creepy but brilliant vibes of emotion between Cobb and Ariadne (symbolically she mimics both Mal and Cobb and there's a definite 'other woman' feel to the scene where Adriadne breaks into Cobb's memories). But I like that there isn't a love interest (except Mal, kind of, in a messed-up way) - it would have been all too easy to have a brilliant architect from Cobb's past as Ariadne so he could simultaneously resolve his issues with Mal, move on to someone new and tick a Hollywood box. Thank you, Mr Nolan, for constantly surprising me.

Man, I'm going to go on about this all day, but every character in the thing was good. Like Eames (Tom Hardy), the guy who mimics figures from a person's life while in their mind, and has some of the best snarky lines (plus is British and therefore awesome). Then there's Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). I adore Arthur for his deadpan exhanges with Eames and Ariadne. If Gordon-Levitt had played the character weakly, he could have faded into the scenery, but like every other character in this film, Arthur in 'Inception' just makes me want to know more. Even the 'Chemist', Yusuf (Dileep Rao), Cillian Murphy as the 'Mark', Ken Watanabe as Saito and Marion Cotillard bring depth and brilliance to their performances, however little they're onscreen or archtypal they're required to be. I mean, this film had Michael Caine and Pete Postlethwaite as bit-parts, for God's sake! The strength of the cast really elevates 'Inception' to awesomeness.

The effects are top-notch, too. Nolan likes to do things the hard way rather than relying too much on CGI (thank God somebody does) and the fight scenes are enjoyably non-Matrix-y. This isn't beautiful, balletic wuxia fighting: it's people who are pretty decent at fighting punching and shooting each other. Still, if that sounds boring, bear in mind that one fight scene takes place in a hallway as it tips to bizarre angles and eventually goes into zero-gravity. Yup, zero-gravity. And Nolan did that with a minimum of CGI. It looks awesome. The conceptions of the dream-worlds are beautifully done as well. They're shot to look real, giving the minimum of clues that you're in a dream, but then Paris folds over on itself or water starts bursting through every window. And then there's the great, eerie city of Limbo, filled with crumbling edifices and memories. Some critics have commented that Nolan's dreamscape is very limited and mundane, and I must say my dreamscape would likely be some kind of floating zeppelin library, but it's necessary. See, the whole point is to trick the Mark into thinking they're not dreaming. Or, sometimes, to think they're dreaming, and then think they wake up, and they're actually still dreaming. So a city made purely of hamburgers is probably not what the dream thieves are going for. Still, I'd be interested to see what characters made inside their own heads when they dreamed (we see the dreamscapes of Cobb, Ariadne and Seito, but they're all pretty mundane. I like to think Eames's would involve some kind of stately pleasure-palace where he can snark all day long).

The pace of 'Inception' is weird, more novelistic than movie-pace, but it kind of works. Frankly, when you have a climax consisting of three action scenes across three dream worlds, each with its own level of time distortion, I have to give serious kudos. Pretty much the only criticism I can level at 'Inception' is that it could have been several different films and each is one I would watch. Or a TV series. I would love a TV series with this kind of conceit and talent behind it, but that would never happen or would end up like 'Dollhouse'. There is an awful lot squeezed into the film and it's already pretty long. Nolan doesn't suffer fools gladly in his films and you know if you're going to see a Nolan sci-fi thriller you'd better be prepared to keep up, but the expectation might well put off some viewers. But damn, I would love to see more heists in the dream scape and exploration of the concepts behind it, as well as the characters I now like so much. I was really sad when 'Inception' ended (though also satisfied with its conclusion) because there was no more of it. I simulataneously hope for and fear a second movie, because Nolan has built a world I want to spend more time in, but the thing that makes 'Inception' really great is its emotional heart, and I'm not sure that could be sustained for another film. Still, I want more Eames and more Arthur, more Ariadne and Seito: I want to see where they come from and how they develop. It's enough to drive a girl to fanfiction.

'Def by Temptation'

Yesterday we made an Aztec (or Mayan, I'm rubbish at remembering which one's which!) Sacrifical Temple Cake. With gummy bears as the Aztecs and jelly babies as the helpless conquistadors being sacrificed. It was a delicious day :)


It was a follow up to our earlier project, the Gingerbread Fortress of Doom, but in this instance we actually made almost all the parts of the structure rather than using a gingerbread house kit.

So, while we were doing this, we had to have some rubbish film going on in the background because watching 'The Princess and the Frog' meant we didn't get the baking started till around 3:30 (it's a good film, though). One of our number of creative cooks has a wonderful ability to collect really random bad horror films, so we put on the dreadful 'Def [sic] by Temptation'. It has Samuel L. Jackson in, somehow.


I don't really feel I can review it properly as we didn't get through it, but 'Def by Temptation' (1990, Troma Films) concerns a succubus/vampire preying on lecherous gentlemen. My friend originally bought this (very cheaply) because it a) looked awful and b) had Samuel L. Jackson in. Well, we reckon Mr Jackson owed someone involved with this film some money, because he is in it for five minutes, during which time he shouts a blood and hellfire sermon, is threatened by the succubus and then dies in a car crash. It's...terrible. Like, really terrible. It's directed, written and produced by James Bond III, the main characters (James Bond, played by James Bond III) and Kadeem Hardison have massive chunks of completely irrelevant dialogue that presumably Mr Bond thinks is deep (including a section about how amazing New York is because "y'know, everyone's a character", kill me now).

The scenes where the succubus kills people are high on the softcore and disappointingly low on the gore. Cynthia Bond is very game as the 'temptress', but the reason we gave up on this film was that, despite having more murders per hour than a lot of modern films, it was unbearably boring. So we can't really put forward a reasoned judgement, and judging by the Wikipedia article on 'Def by Temptation', the pace presumably picks up after the bit we watched, in order to fit all the action described (which would have made it rather more exciting). The article reads like James Bond III himself may have written it, as I'm pretty sure the film itself wasn't that coherent. Essentially: disappointing, even as a bad film, due to the director/writer/producer's pretensions to something more than a trashy mess. Characters were introduced and murdered before we got to know them, and I honestly couldn't care less what happened to the ones who stay alive more than five minutes. The plot is surprisingly coherent, but I suspect that's only because there isn't much of it. Overall, avoid. Like 'Blue Blood', it has much promise as a trashy treat, but never comes close to living up to it. And unlike 'Blue Blood', 'Def by Temptation' doesn't even have Derek Jacobi wrapped in a tennis net and sacrificed by Satanists (note that the Wikipedia article on 'Blue Blood' refers to an entirely different, and probably better film).

Brotherhood of the Wolf: A retrospective

While I wait to either finish one of the many novels I'm reading or see 'Clash of the Titans' (Damn! The! Gods!), I need something to criticise, so I decided to examine the French film 'Brotherhood of the Wolf', upon watching it again. Readers should be warned of my weakness for silly, OTT historical horror.

My God, though, this film is awesome. OK, it's not perfect. It's silly in places. I find it difficult to empathise with a lot of the characters. The Native American who inexplicably knows anachronistic martial arts and is so in tune with nature is such a backwards stereotype, I felt slightly embarrassed watching it.

But the visuals, acting and tone are wonderful. 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' is a fictionalised account of the true story of the Beast of Gevaudan, supposed perpetrator of a series of deaths in the Eighteenth Century. The Beast was supposedly originally hunted down in either 1765 or 1767 (depending on which was considered the 'real' Beast) and most accounts of the time claim it was a large wolf, but a documentary ('The Real Wolfman', History Channel, 2009) claims it was an Asian Hyena. This film concerns Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel le Bihan), a expert in zoology and his companion, a Native American called Mani, who investigate the Beast, becoming embroiled in politics, intrigue and love along the way.



This is a French 'Sleepy Hollow', though slower-building and more sophisticated, with the same narrative beats as foule murders occur, an expert is brought in to solve them, winning the love of a local aristocratic girl, and finally the truth is revealed, dun dun dun. This does have the rather interesting framing tale of an aristocrat (the older version of a young character in the main narrative) recalling the story as he waits for the mob to come and take him to the guillotine, which links suprisingly well with the political undercurrents of the main narrative.

Of the actors, Vincent Cassel is my absolute favourite. As the effeminate and cruel brother of the love interest, he manipulates the viewer's (and the other characters') assumptions about Jean-Francois de Morangias with terrifying ease. Monica Belluci (Cassel's offscreen wife) looks darn sexy and pouts very well and all that, but I felt her character was of such broad strokes that the writers failed to engage her talent. The love interest (Emilie Dequenne) was surprisingly spunky, but suffered a bit from being an object of affection. With the main characters, Fronsac was...all right. He was nice and noble, but the bit where he warpaints up almost into blackface and runs around the forest (in a ninja revenge scene very similar to that in '28 Days Later') was just funny. With Mani, I felt that there were several places where he just seemed to be an excuse for a fight scene/a 'noble savage' trope, but the actor managed to convey an incredible range of brooding emotions through his eyes alone. Over all, he was a bit hard done by, but it's a surprisingly nuanced performance when looked back on.

The Beast itself was a bit of a special effects fail, even given the fact that 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' was made in 2001, and I'm not entirely convinced by the explanation of its true nature. The conspiracy plotline kind of passed me by, but honestly, the film makers are quite happy to let those of us without their intelligences to sit back and watch the exciting bits of the story play out. This is a terrific film that is pretty widely-known in the geek community, but really deserves wider acknowledgement. I insist on showing it to everyone who hasn't seen it, and watch it myself on a reasonably regular basis. I just really hope it never gets a Hollywood remake.

'Avatar'

Why post on 'Avatar'? The world and his wife have seen it and the reviews have been almost unanimous in their declaration: 'Avatar' is a visual masterpiece with a world so real you can almost taste it (and, most add, an unoriginal story which does not diminish the impact of the film).


I'll happily admit I was all ready to be part of the 'Avatar' backlash. I have an inherent stubbornness that means if the world is awaiting something with baited breath and it does look like it will be good, I will react badly to it out of some mulish desire not to be a sheep (please excuse me mixing my metaphors). I saw the trailers and read the articles, and was generally underwhelmed. But, I suppose it helps to understand what you're criticising, so I went to see it in 3-D. Over all: I'm not quite a convert. I'm still decidedly sceptical about its story and characters, and I wasn't all that impressed by the world James Cameron created. Sure, it's detailed, but I suppose I've been spoilt by the level of obsessive detail most sci-fi and fantasy writers put into their work, be it for books, films or video games. When great, beautiful islands suspended in mid-air don't impress me, I think I might be a lost cause. But partly, that's because I've seen it done elsewhere. Hell, I've written about floating islands. I need something a bit more than just 'Oh, look, it's an impressive feature of the landscape' to make me engage. Give me Sanctaphrax from 'The Edge Chronicles' or the weird floating balloon islands from 'Schizm' any day.

OK, so here’s the story: humans come to a planet called Pandora to mine a rare mineral. A tribe of the native species, the Na’vi, live on top of the most plentiful deposit of the stuff. The military want to blast them, the scientists want to study them, and the corporates don’t care what happens, as long as they get the mineral. Enter the avatar project, in which humans pilot ‘avatar’ Na’vi bodies so they can breathe the atmosphere and interact with the locals. Cue green Aesop and conversion of the good guys over to the Na’vi way of life.
It’s been described as ‘Pocahontas in Space’ or, alternatively, ‘Dances with Blue Cat People’.

Sigh. I'm going to have to play Captain Obvious for a moment and say that it is visually arresting. There is a high level of detail that has gone into it. It is pretty alien in places (though not really alien enough to give me the sense of a completely different world, especially with the Na'vi, who while not exactly blue cat people, do not challenge the viewer to engage with them as a truly alien race would). There were sights that made me draw my breath in awe. Even so, I feel like the visuals were the focus of this piece, not the story. Cameron builds the details of the story round the visuals, or more specifically, the story moves to showcase what he wants to showcase about Pandora, but on the other hand the overall structure of the story itself is exemplary. OK, it has a green Aesop that is so sickening in places it makes me long for 'Fern Gully'. Some of the characters are so one-dimensional it's laughable, despite the best efforts of a great cast. But the story delivers exactly what is advertised. It's a predictable fable that could stand as a model of how to write this kind of narrative. Its characters are in broad strokes because with this much scenery to fit in, there is little time for development, so we're expected to fill in the gaps when we aren't assisted by the performances. However, the film is damnably entertaining, especially if one is unfamiliar with the templates that went before. And, frankly, I’ll take something this pretty over ‘Colours of the Wind’ any day. ‘Avatar’ just didn't get me, because snazzy new packaging isn't what makes a new take on an old story. As the Nostalgia Chick said, James Cameron is incredibly good at making money. It's a pity he isn't as concerned with forging new narratives as he is with making new technology to tell them.


There are really cool things: Sigourney Weaver brings a nicely strong performance as a Na'vi-sympathetic scientist, in one of the few characters with decent on-the-page characterisation; I'm now a Sam Worthington fan, because he was damn good as the hero in this, which makes me more enthusiastic about 'Clash of the Titans'; Zoe Saldana is fine as the alien love interest, from what we can tell under the layers of CGI, and I'm coming round to liking her as an actress. The highlights of this film, for me, were Colonel Badass himself Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang) whose every scene is made of pure awesome if highly OTT (toxic atmosphere? Miles Quaritch does not need to breathe! Oxygen is for the weak!) and Michelle Rodriguez playing the stereotypical sympathetic turncoat, because Michelle Rodriguez is brilliant anyway, and she brings so much spunk to this supporting character that she was the only reason I was rooting for the good guys by the end of the movie.


It's going to go down through the ages as a masterpiece, with a minority wondering what's so special about it once you get past the visuals, and we will inevitably be bombarded with sequels, prequels and spinoffs. Honestly, I probably won't care beyond the first film. It's a by-the-numbers plotline that sometimes makes me despair for the average intelligence of the viewing public, but then that's me being a total snob. I suspect that people quite like the simplicity of the story and respond to the visuals and nauseating idealism with genuine, open wonder. It saddens me a little that I'm too jaded to be wowed by Pandora, but there are other worlds I care about more.


Also, they really called it unobtanium? Really? That cannot have been unintentional. Makes you wonder if James Cameron is a troper himself...

'Legion'

Oh, 'Legion'. This is a daffy film that is going onto my schlocky horror shelf as soon as it comes out on DVD.

The concept was promising, but not of a good film. The trailers were disappointing. The reviews were plain bad. But, being an open minded kind of girl, I agreed to go along and see it, admittedly with some reluctance. I was overwhelmed by the sheer majesty of silly this film contains. I was never quite sure whether I was being caught in a sly wink from the film-makers or a glorious failure to make a serious film. About Armageddon.

The plot is pretty classic: a group of misfits in a diner called Paradise Falls (that's the third use of that name I've seen recently) come under seige by supernatural forces. Turns out God has decided to destroy humanity (in a significantly less efficient way than the flood) and the last hope is the unborn baby of Charlie, a waitress at the diner (Supernatural's Adrienne Palicki). An angel called Michael (yes, that Michael) played by the distinctly scraggly Paul Bettany has gone rogue and wants to protect this baby.

So you've got the rogue angel, the pregnant woman in a siege, the small band of survivors against impossible odds. It's pretty cool. The acting is all right in places with a decent amount of talent thrown into the mix (Dennis Quaid, Paul Bettany, Lucas Black of 'American Gothic', Kate Walsh from 'Grey's Anatomy' and 'Private Practice') and while the script is, on the whole, quite bad, there are some especially fine quotable lines. If the 'spider-gran' bit hadn't been shown in every damn trailer, it would have been genuinely freaky. There is precisely one awesome fight scene, between Michael the rogue angel and Gabriel the loyal one (played by Kevin Durand, best known to me as Joshua from 'Dark Angel'), which is equal parts cool and silly (Swiss army mace, the noise Gabriel's whirligig of defensive wings makes as he deflects bullets, etc.) and doesn't really get going until Michael is divested of all of his guns.

This film shuttles between making me laugh and actually being genuinely good. The supposedly intense emotional scenes pretty much fall flat, a couple going that extra mile to really hilarious (the way the heart-to-heart between Charlie and Michael is shot makes it look like she's got a vestigial extra head and a beloved character is killed by explosive stomach acid). The characters are actually quite well done, with the long setup before the action starts paying off, but there are some decidedly sloppy things. Like, in their determination to only have a symbolically appropriate trio alive at the end, they kill off a decently well-developed character with a handwave. There are some genuinely creepy moments (I knew ice cream trucks were evil) but they are ruined by not following through or by narm-tastic moments. The much-trailered elastic ice-cream man is casually shot down before he poses any real threat, and a seriously creepy sequence with a possessed small child and a kitchen knife becomes gruesomely funny when someone (I think either himself or Michael, but it's ambiguous) cuts off his thumbs and he looks down forlornly as they spurt. Then it gets creepy again, but a ripple of laughter did run across the cinema at that point.

There were opportunities not taken up in the obsession with gun porn and religious subtext, such as a never-explained but really damn creepy girl with a bloody bag over her head banging manically on a car bonnet. I mean, put her in a movie of her own about a haunted orphanage and I'd have nightmares for a week.

The best thing about this film was undoubtedly Michael. OK, he was silly at points (walking out of a burning cross in the side of a building? Really, movie?) and an opportunity for a really cool fight was completely missed at the end, considering I'd been crossing my fingers and hoping for a burning sword vs Swiss army mace battle royale for the entire film, but Bettany is pretty much perfect as the intensely moral, just-compassionate-enough angel. I'm glad they let him use his British accent - it gave the character a nice touch of the otherwordly in an American-dominated film. Nice to know we Brits are either evil or angels in Hollywood, and the moment when he slides over the counter and lands all action-posey in front of Charlie gave me another action-angel to fangirl. Still, I really wish they had let him do more than one melee action scene. I would have paid just to see him go medieval on a crowd of zombie-angel-people (who apparently are no longer people and therefore totally OK to kill mercilessly).

The structure of the film was good, though a little lurching between set-pieces, but the ending just kind of petered out. They had far too much plot in a film that quite happily skated along on action scenes, and the sun-soaked journey over desert crags to the promised land reminded me of precisely what the ending of 'Planet Terror' was parodying. On the plus side, the main couple didn't explicitly get together at the end, and I'll count my blessings that the film skimmed over the final plot pieces involving the two least interesting characters in the movie. It's not quite on a par with, say, 'Revelation' (not the sequel to 'Apocalypse' from 1999 but the one with Udo Kier and Terence Stamp from 2001) in terms of silly, but I'd put this on an evening's schedule for bad-film-watching. It fits pretty much perfectly between the slices of bad but boring and so bad it's painful. For me, this is the definition of 'so bad it's good' and for sheer entertainment value, intentional or not, I don't begrudge paying to watch this in the cinema. Don't expect it to be good, but do expect it to be fun.

A plethora of reviews - The Wolfman and Solomon Kane (which would make an awesome film if you put the two together)

I have had so many external artistic stimuli over the past couple of weeks I can hardly keep up! Firstly, two films that registered on my radar ages ago and have taken a long time to get to the cinema have finally arrived: 'The Wolfman' remake, and 'Solomon Kane', which has been the subject of so much squee in my day-to-day life that everyone must be getting truly sick of it. Secondly, I have recently achieved my goal of three years and bought an Xbox 360 Elite machine, so there are many beautiful games to waste time with (though when is art ever a waste?) so I will probably leave those till a separate post (when I've finished them).

'The Wolfman' - I have to admit, in my extreme ignorance, that I haven't seen the original. I am familiar enough with the general set up of Universal monster movies that I feel I know the genre, but for the sake of integrity, I will review it as a stand-alone film rather than a remake. Perhaps when I see the original, I can review it as a remake. The reviews for this have been on the whole terrible, but I hadn't read them when I watched the film (something I wish I did more often). I really enjoyed it, but had a feeling that I was going to be one of the few people in the world who would. I loved it for the stunning Gothic visuals, the creepy, elegant score and the fact that, at least for some of the film, they used monster makeup and costumes instead of CGI (a particular bugbear of mine). This is the England of 'Wuthering Heights' and M.R. James, a haunted country of ancient mysteries and dramatic landscapes, of twisted trees and misty moors. It's an England I have longed to see on film, and for pure Gothic spectacle, it is incredible. It's also very nice to see Danny Elfman write a score that is appropriately creepy, but not with that Elfman-esque kookiness so overused now. It wasn't too up front, just sneaking in round the edges, but intensely beautiful when it needed to be.

Ok, so now the bad stuff (deep breath): this is a film which I enjoyed at the time, but in retrospect, and upon reading reviews of it seeking answers as to why others didn't think the same, it isn't all that good. The things I enjoyed are still there, but the script is pretty bad and I think Benicio del Toro, as the lead, expected more of the character's internal strife to come out on film. Unfortunately, subtlety was not the name of the game with most of the other performances, from Anthony Hopkins' eccentric old Welsh landowner to the rhubarb-mumbling villagers and the Mystic Gypsies (TM). Emily Blunt gives a passable performance, but she doesn't have that much to work with in Gwen, a rather limpid love interest. The stand out Hugo Weaving was stunning in what could have been a dull English bobby role, but in his hands turned into a thing of wonder. His inspector Abberline, a skeptical policeman who leads the hunt for the werewolf terrorising the local populace, is a charicature of the archetype, with a good dash of bumbling humour and heroism that makes him a breath of fresh air after del Toro's approach of gurning his way through the part. Also notable is the underused Art Malik as Singh, Sir John Talbot's manservant.

The pace is uneven, with too much action for a tense horror and too little to make it exciting. The trip to the asylum in London feels like they decided that because every film in the Gothic Victorian style has to have an asylum, they had better include one too. The whole London segment could easily be cut out, as indeed it did not feature in the original as far as I am aware. Large parts of this film could have been taken out, but when it comes down to it, there is little to replace it. Maybe a more gradual exploration of the change Laurence Talbot undergoes? Whole months go by in the blink of an eye, the film lurching from one full moon to the next, as apparently the director (or editor - I think this was probably messed around with quite a bit) thought the bits with the werewolf in were the most important ones.

In conclusion, I enjoyed it and it's worth a watch, but it isn't a classic by any means. 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' managed to be glorious and reasonably well-respected despite really awful flaws. I think this is too self-conscious of its place in the canon, and yet fills the time with over-the-top gory action scenes. If it had let go a bit, the audience would have had a lot more fun. If it had been more restrained and had better scripting, it would have been more of a homage to the 1941. Instead, like the wolfman himself, it is caught between savage, silly fun and ponderous, intellectual exploration, without ever balancing the two.

Hm. I'll do Solomon Kane in a separate review, as these always seem to end up very long...

'Up in the Air'

'Up In The Air' did not look like my sort of film. Not at all. I always find George Clooney a little too generically charming to really ever convince me (I just don't trust someone who smiles that much), and I was underwhelmed by the concept, but it had been getting consistently good reviews, and my boyfriend's mother wanted to go see it for her birthday. So on a rainy January evening, we went to our local independent cinema to watch it.

I was surprised. 'Up in the Air' is on some level a pretty generic film, starting with some of the key tropes of the romantic comedy (the conflict-inducing concept, the meet-cute, the homebrew family wedding, the sweet moral message) but it is so much more. Ryan Bingham, a 'career transition counsellor' who flies around, firing people for a living, does a horrible job, but isn't a horrible person in need of a change, just a human being with his flaws more pronounced than most by his slavish adherence to the lifestyle that supports them. The woman he falls for, who is in her words '...yourself with a vagina', seems like his perfect girl, but paradoxically, he has no desire to settle down. There are zingy lines, tearful revelations, romantic cues, and a wonderful thread of genuine human sympathy that runs through 'Up in the Air', but the film is more complex even than the good romantic comedy/drama it pretends to be, reflecting on itself and flat-out refusing to give easy answers or cliched moments that make everything turn out all right. The ending is ambiguous, and though there are moments of joy, it never pretends that everyone is going to live happily ever after. The final montage is intercut with interviews Jason Reitner made with people who had been made redundant, giving genuine messages of grief and hope. This film isn't about tying everything up neatly in a bow - it's about opening new avenues, setting people on the right paths, which is what Clooney's character tries to do, despite his cynicism about his company's buzzword-filled talk about the career opportunities of unemployment.

Jason Reitner started writing the script in 2002, but it has been updated with startling efficacy. The hated figure of the 'termination agent' is one which has particular resonance in today's climate of constant fear of redundancy, and so the dilemma of the fired workers is especially poignant, with heartfelt portrayals by the actors. George Clooney as Ryan Bingham and Anna Kendrick as Natalie, a naive up-and-comer in the company, are brilliant: Clooney's charm makes an unpleasant character likeable and Kendrick gives a beautifully observed performance, allowing her to really show what she can do after her supporting role in 'Twilight'. In a "hey, it's that guy" moment, I recognised Vera Farmiga from the Kristin Kreuk and Miranda Richardson 'Snow White', though it is hardly the highlight of her career.

'Up in the Air' is a brilliant bit of film-making, a commentary on a lifestyle and a world that is becoming impossible, woven in with painfully personal stories, subversions of the romantic comedy genre and a thematic exploration of concepts of family, belonging and home. Somehow it never feels preachy or strained, despite its depth. There are flaws: I didn't like Vera Farmiga's character, though she acted well, and therefore found the scenes of her and Bingham's relationship to be a little uninteresting. Also, Bingham's sister's wedding is just on the edge of schmaltzy and is possibly the weakest section for me. It does undermine the conventions of the reluctant groom's pep talk cleverly, but sometimes I do wonder if it's a bit too clever for its own good, not letting us get close enough to the characters to really engage. The exception is Natalie. We see Natalie's flaws and pain so clearly that she easily becomes the most sympathetic character for me. The way they round off her story seems a little convenient, but we need to know that someone is happy, even if we aren't sure about Ryan Bingham.

Definitely worth a watch, even if this is not your usual fare. It doesn't talk down: this is a movie about adults for adults, and it never underestimates. In fact, perhaps it might even provide some warm fuzzy feelings as well as intellectually challenging you.

'Daybreakers'

(I'll try and keep reviews non-spoilery, but I can't promise. There may be mild spoilerage, i.e. the spoiler that there is a twist but not what it is, and info that can be got from most film sites or magazines, or that I consider not particularly important.)


Summary: 'Daybreakers' is about a world where conventional vampirism is a disease that has spread through the human race, leaving only a small percentage of humans uninfected. Vampires rule the world and farm people, consuming blood as we consume wine and coffee. It's a brilliant concept in a culture where Twilight has neutered vampires to the point of blandness. If, like me, you're a fan of vampire texts of every kind, this is a welcome diversion from the standard form. And, for all its pretensions to schlocky horror (red text on black for the end credits...classy) it has some startlingly gorgeous moments, with subtle, minimalist filming intelligently accompanied by a nuanced orchestral score, suddenly interrupted by shocking and choppily filmed action scenes. That said, 'Daybreakers' for me feels like a missed opportunity. Large parts of it feel underdone, and there seems to be a dichotomy between the film it could have been and the film it has ended up: half exploration of an interesting idea, by turns delicate and intense, half Hollywood silliness and lazy tropes.

'Daybreakers' is eerily beautiful at the beginning. The credits sequence is a daylit city empty of people turning into a thriving metropolis by night. It provides slightly hamfisted exposition, but also sly humour (see the ad for vampire toothpaste). In places, the filming is arty and lingering, setting up beautiful shots that interact wonderfully with the orchestral soundtrack. Let's just say it doesn't live up to its promise.


I've heard 'Daybreakers' described as the 'anti-Twilight'. Quite honestly, the only thing they have in common is vampires, so comparing anything else about them is pointless. Let's deal with the 'our vampires are different' school of thought. Fangs/drink blood? Check. Infect via bite? Check. Burn up in sunlight? Double check. Turn into bats? Not exactly. These are actually some of the least 'different' vampires I've seen, and yet they manage to be far more interesting. They even incorporate the whole Nosferatu look as vampires go mad from drinking non-human blood, allowing the in-your-face horror element. In fact, there were some decent chills and even outright scares in the devolution of the vampires: the use of sound and visuals was wonderful, too much CGI was avoided, and it showed that even the civilised, intelligent heroes have the potential to become truly monstrous.


Essentially, these are vampires in the White Wolf sense: creatures of the folklorish night who've come into the new century. They are corporate, stylish and value human life less than we value cows and chickens. We follow vampire hematologist Edward Dalton (a dead-eyed Ethan Hawke) as he desperately tries to synthesise a blood substitute that doesn't explode vampires (which is hilarious) or turn them into mutated monsters. The blood supply is dwindling as the human population has been battery-farmed to the point of extinction, and things are starting to turn nasty. Edward has a generically heroic soft-spot for humans whereas his brother hunts down rogue humans to be put in the farms. Then there is an idyllic community of escaped humans, a possible cure for vampirism, and hunting parties trying to track down the rogue vampire and his human friends. The film is brilliant at the beginning, grows baggy once the humans enter, and then lurches along at an uneven pace, doling out awesome, dull and unpleasantly visceral in almost equal measures. The ending shares this awkwardness, with a nonsensical big reveal and bizarrely shifting tone, from replusion to ironic hilarity and back. It felt cut short, as though they had no idea how to end it, but knew they didn't want everything to work out fine.

As has been pointed out on TV Tropes, there are massive logical inconsistencies the viewers have to accept for the plot to work, such as the excessive infection spread and the complete lack of forsight in controlling blood production. The script rather lacks in places, and the time frame is really confused, with some sections that make no sense, possibly because of last-minute changes or edits. The actors are fine, though not sparkling: Ethan Hawke is passable, but a bit boring as Edward Dalton, which is also true of Claudia Karvan playing a human with seemingly no personality, and Willem Defoe is possibly one of the better actors but his role gives him a limited amount to play with. The strongest presences are Sam Neill as uber-corporate vamp Charles Bromley and Isabel Lucas as his renegade daughter Alison, whose stories are given a decent amount of screentime, and for me were far more interesting.