F.R. Jameson's Blog, page 39

Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 (2017)

[image error]

I’m generally in favour of GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: VOL 2.

It’s amusing when it wants to be (in fact, I think it has more laugh out loud moments than a lot of recent comedies I’ve seen), it’s exciting when it wants to be and it’s far more affecting than I thought it would be. That’s surprising, as if ever there was a film that seemingly wants to strut around with a glib, cocksure, take-nothing-seriously attitude, it’s this one. However, whilst distracting us with the funny stuff, it’s working hard to create a proper emotional arc, the payoff of which feels like a sucker-punch even though it’s been there the whole time.

So, amusing, exciting and a film to tug on the heartstrings as well. What’s not to like?

Well….

(And you surely knew there was going to be a Well…)

Well, all of that above is written with the caveat that this isn’t as good as the first one. Whereas the original was fresh and surprising, this feels more laboured and drawn out.  There really isn’t much plot, but what’s there – wafer-thin as it is – takes a long time to work through. Of course, the film makes up for this by doubling down on the stuff that people liked from the original: the jokes and the interplay between the characters. They’re a great set of characters, so of course we enjoy them riffing off each other. It’s just that even with that interplay of characters – and a large audience primed to like that interplay – it still can’t disguise the fact that the whole is much less inspired this time.

Two final points: one good, one wait and see.

Firstly, if you allow me to just put on my DOCTOR WHO fan hat here and say how much I liked Karen Gillen in this one. As much as I adore Amy Pond, I thought Nebula was one of the weaker parts in the original. She was great when under-playing was called for, but decidedly over-doing it when needing to emote. Here the performance is much more consistently under-played and better for it.

(I’m already aware that there are some who’ll disagree with that praise. I saw the film with the good lady wife, Mrs Jameson, and when I mentioned to her how good I thought Karen was, she said that she found her speaking style thoroughly irritating throughout, before doing such a spot-on impersonation of it that I did find myself doubting my view for a few minutes.)

The other point is that it looks great, like some fantastic Seventies album cover. But, I saw a bit of one of George Lucas’s STAR WARS prequels on TV recently. They similarly have lots of computer generated worlds and, even though they’re only just over ten/fifteen years old, the technology has moved on so much they now look like a film taking place in a bad 2003 videogame. So I fear if it will only be a couple of years before we come back to this and it’s various software-created vistas, and it will be the case of enjoying the jokes, but not really being drawn into the film as it just looks so ridiculously cheesy.

I genuinely hope not, as I’d like to watch my daughter laughing at the jokes and enjoying GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: VOL 2 in a few years time.

Although, even if it still looks good enough to suck her in, I’m sure it will be the first one on heavier rotation.

Doctor Who Reviews – Thin Ice

[image error]

Written with no prior knowledge of what’s going to be in the episode – I watch the ‘Next Time’ trailer and make sure I see, hear and read nothing else – and written immediately after my first viewing. This is my unfettered, emotional response to this week’s DOCTOR WHO fare.

I’m flipping loving Bill!

I’m flipping loving Pearl Mackie!

Her performance this week was fantastic. To be fair she hasn’t made a misstep in any of these three episodes, but she was particularly fine tonight. From the wide-eyed wonder as she stared around ice-bound Regency England, to her calling The Doctor out for his perceived callousness, to gradually understanding what it means to be him and finally the anguish of her choice and her desperation to save everyone she could from the ice. Every part of her tonight was mesmerising. There’s a freshness to her performance, an enthusiasm which is just compulsive. Part of that is, of course, that Bill is the new companion, but Pearl Mackie is selling that sense of wonder at being The Doctor’s companion perhaps better than any actor ever has before.

Actually, if we’re throwing acting garlands around, one has to say how good P-Cap was as well. His effortless mixing together of stern and playful is just superb. Plus, The Twelfth Doctor punching a racist is a moment that will live long and joyously in the memory.

The script was good, although I’m not sure how memorable the story will prove to be (it shares a lot of DNA with Matt Smith’s second adventure: ‘The Beast Below’, although there Amy initially makes a different choice to the one Bill does). But the setting was just fantastic, and I mean that in the most literal way possible for a historical story. Of course, the Thames did used to freeze and there were fayres on it, but to see it visualised with elephants and circus acts was like stepping into a whole other magical world. In years to come people might not remember the storyline, but I’ll pretty much guarantee that the kids who see this will remember the DOCTOR WHO set on the ice with the sword swallowers.

There are a few flaws: the villain is poorly written and flatly played; some of the younger kids gave line readings redolent of am-dram or an early HARRY POTTER movie; and some of the effects when the ice broke up were surely stolen from a SyFy channel film of the week. But thanks to the design and the wit of the dialogue and – most of all – the performances, I was undeniably charmed by it.

Roll on next week!

Roll on more Pearl Mackie!

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

[image error]

The opening of GOOD OMENS is so clever, so sharp and – most importantly – so funny, that it seems a shame the rest of it doesn’t quite match it. I realise that I’m holding it to nearly impossible standards. If the whole book had been as good as those opening chapters then this would be a strong contender for the funniest book ever written. THE CODE OF THE WOOSTERS (or maybe CATCH 22, I haven’t quite settled on a winner yet) would peer nervously over its shoulder as this tale of demonic offspring charged up to wrestle away its crown. But, really, to criticise it for not being that phenomenally funny all the way through is unreasonable. No, this isn’t the funniest book ever written, but it’s still an amazingly funny book. And you can’t hold anything against a book that makes you laugh two dozen times, even if you know in your heart it could have been more.

A comic spin on the movie, THE OMEN, but instead of the antichrist being delivered safe into the hands of Gregory Peck, there’s confusion and he ends up growing up the son of a chartered accountant in Oxfordshire. The ensuing confusion brings together a not very demonic demon and a not very angelic angel, a witch finder general, a witch and the four horsemen of the apocalypse (including Pratchett favourite, Death) to create a story that milks every comic possibility from the apocalypse in a very English style. (I’ve mentioned Wodehouse, but a lot of this Douglas Adams would have been very proud of). True, it manages the odd combination of being a bit too long, and having so many ideas it doesn’t have space to let them all breathe, but all flaws are brushed over in this reviewer’s eyes because – as I might have mentioned – it’s pretty much hilarious from start to finish.

Me, Writing, in 2017

[image error]

I’m in the re-writing phase now.

As any writer can tell you, this is an open-ended phase which – if you let it – could genuinely last the rest of your natural existence.

(I always recall the tale of Ralph Ellison, who spent the latter half of his life obsessively writing and re-writing his second novel. By the time he died, he had thousands of pages, but no actual finished book.)

Re-writing can be a rabbit hole leading to a bottomless cavern perched upon an abyss. It’s all about second guessing yourself, then triple guessing yourself, quadruple guessing yourself and on and on and on.

Obviously most of the sentences you write in your first draft will be rubbish and need to be re-written. That’s fair enough. So you sweat over your keypad and get something you like before tackling the next paragraph and the next chapter, but you are eventually going to have to come back to that re-written bit and ask yourself:

‘Is this good enough?’

Sometimes a change is necessary because the book has progressed since you last looked at that particular section; other times it’s because you’ve had a better idea in the interim; while other times – most times, quite probably – you feel you have to change it simply because your mood is different. Then, you re-write it again and you end up with something else you like, but a seed of doubt is sewn:

‘Is it actually better than what I had before? Have I made it worse, rather than improving it?’

That’s when it becomes maddening. That’s when it becomes a trap you build for yourself and paper the walls with thousands of different versions of the same sentence, the same paragraph, the same chapter. That’s when you need to pull back, take a look at something else, give yourself a break and make a decision when you return. Otherwise it will consume you for the rest of your days.

Actually, I’m making the rewriting process sound like something from a horror story. A grey formless monster which will poison your soul with doubt and procrastination.

Undoubtedly writing is difficult, but the good absolutely does outweigh the bad.

As when you get something you really, really like – something you are really, really proud of –  then that feeling is like crack-cocaine in paper form.

You just have to hope that the next time you read it, you don’t end up thinking:

‘Y’know, with a tweak or two…‘

Twins of Evil (1971)

[image error]

I’ve always had a soft spot for TWINS OF EVIL.

When I was young I had a child’s horror compendium which included a ten page comic-strip adaptation of it. The story concerns young beautiful twins arrive in a strange Eastern European town where one of them falls victim to a vampire. I must have read it a hundred times, images of it burnt into my mind.

So that when I did, as an adult, see the actual film for the first time, I couldn’t believe the level of violence or the striking nudity on the screen. For some reason the writer and artist of that child’s comic book had left those elements out.

[image error]

I also couldn’t believe how dull it was.

But still I retained that squidgy spot in my heart for it and so now, twenty years later, I’ve watched it again.

And the results remain most disappointing I’m afraid.

The main problem is the Collinson twins as the title characters. The film was crafted around them after they became the first identical twins to pose naked together for Playboy. So acting was always unlikely to be their forte, but – man! – are they bad.

[image error]

Mary Collinson in particular, as the good sister, Maria, gives some line readings that are so poor it makes you wonder whether the director, John Hough, had no time for second takes. Or if that was actually the best he could get out of her. (The same is true of Damien Thomas as faux Dracula, Count Karnstein. And he seems to have stayed in work as a professional actor for the last forty years, so Lord knows what his excuse is.) At least when Ingrid Pitt played this kind of role she brought with her a certain high-camp charisma. This is the only one of the so called ‘Karnstein Trilogy’ to lack the divine Ms Pitt, and we really do miss her.

What makes it all the more frustrating is that there’s clearly a more interesting film hidden in plain sight here. If Peter Cushing’s ultra-strict, puritan overlord had been made the lead rather than the supporting character, we could have had a really strange and scary movie.

[image error]

Cushing, as always, is superb and one can imagine a version where his sexual frustration and self-hatred just sends him madder and madder, so that the young, attractive women of the region don’t need to worry about the local vampire, but instead the man determined to save them from him.

(On a side note, the score also is particularly striking, bizarrely sounding as if it’s just wandered in from a Spaghetti Western.)

But that’s not the film we have. The film we actually have is bang average Hammer, which to this writer at least will always be preferable in short comic-strip form rather than as a ninety minute movie.

How would you write about Donald Trump in a horror story? (part 8)

[image error]

One of the problems with writing about Donald Trump as a character in a horror novel – or any kind of novel, for that matter – is what would his arc be?

Obviously I’d like it to be one of redemption. Rich man manages to gain himself power beyond his wildest imaginings, and learns how to use it responsibly.

Although I fear that it’ll actually be a tragedy where his main flaw (or flaws, there are lots to choose from) manage to damn us all.

The biggest problem looking from the outside, as someone who has never met and is hugely unlikely to ever meet the man, is that it can be frustratingly hard to get a grip on what his character is.

Obviously he’s an arrogant, conceited, sexist, bullying fool. But the trait that really stands out at the moment is his sheer capriciousness.

He seems to be a string of impulsive whims masquerading as a man.

Earlier this month Trump ordered the bombing of Syria. There was talk of regime change, troops on the ground.

Since then, well, he seems to have decided that he’d much rather have a war with North Korea instead.

Probably if we gather together here in another three weeks, that won’t be on the radar anymore either.

By that point maybe Turkmenistan will find itself on the radar. For some perceived slight to the Easter Bunny or something.

[image error]

His sheer unpredictably makes fashioning a narrative around him incredibly difficult. Who can say what he might do in any given situation? Obviously he could say, but the chances of him doing the exact opposite are high.

Of course it’s absolutely terrifying to have such a man in charge of the free world and all the nuclear weapons. That’s why I’m thinking of him in a story context, at the one step removed from reality, he’s a lot more palatable.

 

This is an ongoing project that will probably last the next four – although hopefully not the next eight – years.

You can read the previous entries here:

Seven

Six

Five

Four

Three

Two

One

Doctor Who Reviews – Smile

[image error]

After being somewhat under-enthused by last week’s opening, I have to say I greatly enjoyed ‘Smile’.

I loved the way it looked: so pristine and futuristic, and yet strangely off-putting. I thought the little white robots (or interfaces) were creepy as hell, and not just when they had their rage face on. Both their big grin and surprised emoji faces were most disconcerting too. Narratively it was great the way the stakes suddenly rose, with thousands of colonists (okay, represented by half a dozen people) thrown into the mix; while the treating all species with equal respect and wrapping up with an amusing peace deal is just so perfectly DOCTOR WHO it sent a huge grin soaring into my cheekbones. As for The Doctor himself, well, the interplay between him and Bill – and for most of the length of the episode it was just the two of them – was absolutely lovely. P-Cap and P-Mac are a wonderful pairing.

It could be that the very scenario of landing in a strange futuristic city and having scary stuff swiftly happen is so much in my sweet spot that I was always going to find it hard to resist. Throw in an amusing script, excellent direction and fantastic design, then I pretty much loved ‘Smile’.

I actually rewatched the Sylvester McCoy story ‘The Happiness Patrol’ recently. That, of course, is also set on a planet where people have to be happy all the time, or else…. Watching that for the first time since the original broadcast, it struck me as a stagey piece of agitprop which – watched with 2017 eyes – suffered from some distinctly ropey performances and a budget obviously not high enough to leave the BBC’s studios. An anti-Thatcher satire, it’s actually really unsubtle and quite a sour piece of family entertainment. I know though that some will compare ‘Smile’ unfavourably to it, because it doesn’t so obviously have the big political message. Yet the optimism of tonight wins for me, and I know which of the two I’d rather watch again tomorrow.

Strangely, I’ve seen more than one commentator say that this introduction of Bill is Moffatt trying the old tried and trusted RTD companion introduction triptych of story set in modern day, story set in the past and story set in the future. But surely Amy’s introduction was ‘The Eleventh Hour’ (present),  ‘The Beast Below’ (future), ‘Victory of the Daleks’ (past);  while Clara’s (proper) introduction was ‘The Bells of Saint John’ (present), ‘The Rings of Akhaten’ (future) and ‘Cold War’ (past). This is the way it’s always done, and really, if you’re introducing new people to show – both characters and viewers – it’s a damn fine system.

I look forward to my Victorian adventure next week!

The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

[image error]

Nearly everything that’s reported in this book I had no idea of. I don’t say that to give the impression I’m some kind of oracle who should know all things, but more out of sheer surprise. This story is so recent, so big and so incredible that it does feel bizarre I managed not to hear a word about it. I’m a voracious consumer of newspapers and media, so I couldn’t believe it had slipped me by. There was even a moment of doubt when I realised the author also wrote fiction, concern that this was some big spoof I was falling victim of. But no, it really happened and it even made newspapers I read. Although as related in these pages, once the discovery was made there was a rash of academic back-biting – and that’s what was reported over and above the amazing story itself. Academic back-biting really doesn’t interest me, so maybe that’s why I missed it. But I wish I’d stumbled across an article, as this stuff is fascinating.

There have long been myths in Honduras of The Lost City of the Monkey God. A fantastic city built by a culture that seems to be adjacent to the Mayans, but is so under-researched it doesn’t even have a name yet. These stories were dismissed by many, but such is the density of the rainforest in Honduras that a city could easily be hidden away. Although such is the density of the rainforest, that looking for it and finding it was virtually impossible.

A documentary filmmaker named Steve Elkins made the quest for it his life’s work. In 2009, he heard of a new technology called LiDAR, I’m not going to even try a technological description, but suffice to say it’s a kind of laser radar which is able to map landscapes even when they’re shrouded and covered – say, for example, by thick rainforest. Elkins persuaded those in charge to let him use it and chose a couple of sites to map, two of which turned out to contain ancient cities that don’t seem to have been inhabited – or possibly even entered by man – for at least five hundred years.

Author Douglas Preston was there at the beginning and joined the trip to enter the first site. This book is the team’s story, written in an accessible style full of wonder as he details the expedition, the incredible things they saw and the awful consequences of the trip, in the form of a disease that struck half the party. (A truly terrifying sounding tropical illness named leishmaniasis, which is so unyielding there’s evidence of dinosaurs being infected by it. As it mainly effects the poorer parts of the world, drug companies don’t see the upside in doing the research and working on easily accessible cures.)

Popular science like this is great for people like me who doesn’t really know anything about the field, but I’m sure it’s a good target for a kicking from those who are a lot more expert. Preston does write with a great deal of sensitivity though, acknowledging early on what loaded terms ‘civilisation’, ‘lost’ and ‘discovered’ are in a Western society with such a colonial history, but also throwing up his hands because he can’t think of better words to use in a populist account. He is careful, eager in fact, to give all sides of the story, even reaching out to those academics critical of the project to reflect their views. It makes for a rich piece of reportage, which sweeps the reader along in giddy excitement at such a fantastic Twenty First Century story.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

[image error]

Maybe it’s me.

I can see that there’s a good set up for a story here and the story itself is not without incident. A young woman running away joins the misfit crew of a space tunnelling ship. Without a doubt there’s a good mix of intriguing characters and their inter-relations do head to unexpected places. A lot of thought has gone into imagining what life for this crew would be like. There’s both grandeur and bathos in their journeys through space, and even an arc which reaches for the tragic.

Yet my main emotional response was boredom.

Perhaps the book is a hundred pages too long and so the story unfolds at too languid a pace for my liking; or possibly the characters are intriguing without ever becoming involving; or maybe I wasn’t in the mood for a book that seems to take place to the side of a space opera, rather than at the centre.

Whatever the reason, I’m quite prepared to take the blame and say it was me – because as much as I can objectively see that there’s a lot of good things in these pages, me and THE LONG WAY TO A SMALL, ANGRY PLANET just totally failed to click.

Lady in a Cage (1964)

[image error]

Tucked away on Netflix are all kinds of neglected gems. Take this 1964 example, a home invasion movie where Olivia de Havilland is menaced by the young James Caan and his gang of juvenile thugs. It’s a film which manages to be tense and taut, but also distinctly melodramatic, with some scenes where our lead seems determined to eat the scenery, the cameras and all the extras.

There’s a lot here that’s fascinating. Clearly part of the ‘older ladies in horror movie’ trend started by WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, de Havilland is the over-bearing rich lady who literally spends most of the film trapped in a gilded cage. An elaborate elevator that she’s had installed in her palatial home while she recovers from a broken hip.

A modern interpretation of this would be that it’s about the 1% getting their comeuppance – de Havilland is first menaced by some down and outs of society, before the disaffected youths take over. But nobody here is a social warrior, nobody is any kind of hero. Add to that constant shots of other people just driving past and ignoring the horrible things around them and –  at one point – de Havilland almost bring thankful when she thinks a nuclear war has broken out, and you get the sense that the film is starkly telling us that society is broken from bottom to top. From that reading you might feel that it’s a reactionary film, but I think it’s more in the genre of unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to each other, and that’s always a cracked mirror for the rest of us to look into.

[image error]

de Havilland is always great, although her character is too sympathetic to really make the idea of her comeuppance work; while James Caan is already so skilled at menace that it’s clear why Sonny Corleone became his signature role. Notable mentions should also be made of Ann Sothern as a middle-aged hustler swiftly out of her depth (a character you don’t often see in movies) and Rafael Campos as the kind of loose limbed psychopath who would easily fit into Wes Craven’s THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT.

LADY IN A CAGE is a striking and memorable movie, with a twisted sensibility, which makes its neglected status all the more curious.