Rob Wickings's Blog, page 46
April 8, 2016
The A TO Z OF SFF: Season 2!
It’s back, and this time it’s everything.
New ship. The whole alphabet.
Same pair of idiots in charge.
The A To Z Of SFF. Season 2.
Coming soon to a podcast vector near you.
https://excusesandhalftruths.files.wordpress.com/2016/04/season-2-teaser.m4a
February 26, 2016
A Is For Ace Trucking Co.
Obscure, yes, but among the 2000ADdicts Ace Trucking Co is a highlight. Defiantly weird, Ace Garp and his crew inhabit a universe that could only come from the mind and pen of Massimo Belardinelli. Join Rob and Clive on the Great Mush Rush as they celebrate one of the British comic scene’s more selectively popular strips.
We’s truckin’, lugbuddies!
February 19, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: A Is For The ABC Warriors
Atomic. Bacteriological. Chemical. No, not the laundry schedule for the Ulysses (although Clive’s socks do require extra attention after a week in a vac-suit cleaning CycloMedia’s solar panels). We’re talking about classic 2000AD strip The ABC Warriors. They’ve been a constant feature of the comic since 1979, so there’s a lot to talk about. Join the robot revolution!
February 5, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: A Is For A.I. Artificial Intelligence
A.I was planned and prepped by Stanley Kubrick, then taken over by Steven Spielberg after the auteur’s untimely death. The resulting film is a strange mix of the two director’s signature styles, and even now it polarises opinion. Rob and Clive take a detailed look at the film, its themes and the inhumanly excellent performance of Haley Joel Osment.
Let’s go in search of the Blue Fairy…
(we apologise for the state of Rob’s voice. The space lurgy has him in its snottily-tentacled grasp…)
January 29, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: A Is For Aeon Flux: The Movie
Charlize Theron was an action heroine long before her role as Imperator Furiosa, you know. Rob and Clive take a step back in time to 2005, and her role as dystopian assassin Aeon Flux.
Is the film as freaky as the TV show? More importantly, does Charlize get to wear the leather straps? Listen in and find out!
January 25, 2016
The Best Western You Haven’t Seen
Consider the western. Once, it was the staple diet for cinema-goers everywhere. Cheap and easy to make, the average horse opera was appropriate for all ages, for every type of audience. It was sturdy, uncomplicated fare, with a clear moral message. From Tom Mix, through to Gene Autry and the daddy of them all, John Wayne, there was little confusion, no grey area. Westerns were a genre that hearkened back to simpler times, to a world before global conflict and uncomfortable discussions about race.
That seems like a long time ago. You could argue that times changed with the advent of the spaghetti western, as the moral compass slipped out of true, and all of a sudden the heroes acted in ways that weren't that honourable. The death count grew, and blood began to stipple the dirt of Main Street as the guns of the showdown blazed. Realistically, that slippage had begun a decade or so earlier, with films like The Searchers, in which the hunt for a missing child turned the heroic John Wayne into an obsessive racist murderer. Even the high water mark of the genre, High Noon, featured Gary Cooper as the one last good man left in a town of venal, self-serving cowards. The nobility of the Old West seemed like a long way away, even then.
These days, the western is a very different proposition to the Republic serials of old. In the modern oater, good men are hard to find, and gore washes across the screen in astonishing quantities. I guess it's a trend that can be tracked back to Clint Eatwood's Unforgiven–the man that spearheaded the spaghetti revolution was in charge of completing the transformation of the western from kid's stuff to adults only.
Which brings us to the latest batch of westerns. There's another shift, into the realm of art. The blood and amorality are still in full effect, but now there is an attempt to try something new and daring with the visuals. Both Tarantino's The Hateful Eight and Alejandro Iñárritu's The Revenant are up for Best Cinematography Oscars. Quentin's insistence on shooting in Super Panavision led to the rediscovery of old lenses that did beautiful things to highlights, adding a rich timeless quality to Robert Richardson's images. Meanwhile Emmanuel Lubitzki looked forward, using the latest generation of digital cameras to capture his snowbound vistas, all shot using available light.
The Revenant and The Hateful Eight look like several million dollars, but the gaping hole in their heart comes from the script. Neither film features characters that we feel we can root for. Hugh Glass suffers all the way through The Revenant, but he is a cipher, the need to survive made flesh. As for The Hateful Eight, well, the clue's right there in the title. However much these films aspire to art status (and The Revenant in particular goes full-bore after this, with an almost Terrence Malick pace and focus on tiny details) you walk away feeling a little cold. Appropriate, perhaps, considering the wintery mise en scène both films share.
Are overblown, underwritten horse operas the norm now? Are we doomed to a future of gloriously shot yet hollow westerns?
My friends, there is hope. Next month a western is released that blows the Oscar-chasers out of the water.
Let's talk about Bone Tomahawk.
The directorial debut of author S. Craig Zahler, Bone Tomahawk shares a magnificently-moustachioed star with The Hateful Eight in Kurt Russell, as well as some of the most inventive gore effects this side of El Topo. The word “butchery” gets a whole new definition in this film. It's as much a horror movie as a western, brutal and unflinching when it needs to be. But with a cast that features Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox and the remarkable Richard Jenkins, Bone Tomahawk has heart and a brain as well as guts. In short, it has characters you care about, and a genuine, honest-to-God hero.
Russell is the sheriff of a small town that becomes the unwitting guest of a drifter. This feller has foolishly desecrated the burial ground of a tribe of “troglodytes”, sub-human natives who haven't seen fit to evolve past a Stone Age way of life. The trogs track him down and take him away to pay for his crimes, along with the deputy sheriff and the local doctor. It's down to Russell, the doctor's crippled husband, the addled back-up deputy and a dandyish Indian hunter to bring them back. But the troglodytes are creatures beyond humanity, and you do not enter their lands lightly…
The film is thick with fine actors enjoying a rich, rounded script. The stand-out performance for me is from Richard Jenkins as Chicory. Slightly addled, prone to thinking out loud, but brave and pure-hearted, Chicory is someone to whom you instantly warm. He and Sheriff Franklin Hunt have a gently argumentative but deeply felt friendship that goes beyond the professional realm. Hunt is a hero of the old school, prepared to do what's right no matter the consequences. Despite the similarity in face furniture, he is a different kind of man to the ruthless Hangman he plays in The Hateful Eight.
A major issue that both The Revenant and The Hateful Eight face is their treatment of women. Iñárritu's film features no speaking parts for women. Oh, all right, a single line for the Ree woman who threatens to cut off the balls of the man who has just raped her. As for The Hateful Eight… Well, no-one comes out well, but Daisy Domergue is brutalised throughout before the camera lingers on her slow death by hanging.
By contrast Bone Tomahawk has roles for women with intelligence and agency. Lily Simmons plays Samantha O'Dwyer, the town doctor, whose relationship with her husband is wryly humourous but deeply loving. She does not founder, even under the most awful of circumstances. Kathryn Morris, playing Lorna Hunt, has a similar relationship with her husband, Franklin. These are not dialogue-free bimbos. They are tough, smart women.
I'm not going to say Bone Tomahawk is perfect. There are still problems with the villains of the piece being wordless Injuns, however much their origin is dressed up. They are savages of the most unreconstructed kind. The Professor, the chap who knows about them, is Westernised. Suited and booted, elegant in speech and attire, he is the image of the “good Indian”. There's no sense that his own culture is anything other than an impediment.
But, if you're prepared to overlook the dodgy racial politics, there's a ton of fun to be had with Bone Tomahawk. Shot simply but with grace by Benji Bakshi (who also lensed a horror highlight of last year, Some Kind Of Hate) it has none of the artistic pretensions of The Hateful Eight or The Revenant, and is much the better film for it. A precisely judged mash-up of Deadwood and Cannibal Holocaust, with more than a nod to the work of horror maestro Jack Ketchum (I'm thinking in particular of Low Season) Bone Tomahawk is brave and brutal, sharp and funny.
The best news of all? It's getting a theatrical release in the UK, following a Best Movie gong at Sitges. It's out in mid-February. Readership, I urge you to go and see this film on the big screen. It's worth the effort.
January 22, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: A Is For Aeon Flux (the animated series)
A female assassin clad in leather straps, dealing in extreme violence, having sex whenever she feels like it with multiple partners… did we mention this was an animated series that went out on MTV in the early 90s?
Aeon Flux is a strange mixture – a kinky, arty mashup of Euro sci-fi style and arch, deliberately impenetrable storytelling. Rob and Clive try to figure out what the hell was going on…
January 15, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: A Is For Angel
A show that started as a spin-off from one of the most successful fantasy shows of all time managed a rare feat–carving out its own voice and identity.
Rob and Clive celebrate the David Boreanez-starring Angel, and mourn a endlessly inventive show that unfairly disappeared before its time. I mean, how can you not love a programme that featured eps where the brooding hero was turned into a puppet, or revealed his inner thoughts through the medium of karaoke?
January 10, 2016
Flicker
To Leicester Square, where I gave up a chunk of my day to sit and watch the new Quentin Tarantino western, The Hateful Eight. Why would I drag my sorry ass all the way to That London, when I have two perfectly good cinemas within easy travelling distance showing the same movie?
Well, they weren’t. The Odeon Leicester Square is one of the few movie houses in the country that’s able to show the Roadshow Presentation of The Hateful Eight, in glorious 70mm. If you’re a film geek, this is the gig to get to.
I can’t remember the last time I saw a film projected from a print. This is a shocking admission from someone that used to work for a film lab, but there it is. The vast majority of UK cinemas no longer have the capability to throw light over film, urged on by distributors that prefer the control they can exert over digital files, as well as the drop in costs that come from not having to ship boxes of print around the country.
Let’s not be overly romantic here. Film print is bulky, expensive, difficult to set up and, if poorly treated, liable to damage. I’ve seen enough chewed-up rolls in my time to see why distributors and cinema chains were happy enough to drop the format in favour of a package that could be set up and run by relatively untrained, inexpensive staff. And 4K projection of DCP (Digital Cinema Projection) files gives a nice clean damage-free result. Win win, right?
Well, yes, but. A well-prepped print using modern stock is much less prone to bumps, digs and scratches, and has better resolution and contrast range than even 4K projection. In short, it makes for a better all-round viewing experience. And that’s just 35mm.
70mm projection ups the game significantly in terms of colour reproduction, sharpness and all-round immersiveness–a term that, I’ll admit is a little tougher to quantify. Nevertheless, the fact that Tarantino has effectively persuaded the notoriously hard-nosed Harvey Weinstein into bankrolling his own little cottage industry around resurrecting 70mm proves that there’s something there, and it’s something that people would pay a premium to see.
This image presented in widescreenMake no mistake, this is not a cheap night out. The Odeon is charging £20 a ticket. For that, though, you get an event that’s described as a “presentation”, complete with a glossy programme, an overture and an honest-to-god intermission–a civilised solution to the dilemma that faces any small-bladdered cineaste. These extra flourishes make the whole experience that little bit more special.
So how was that experience? Well, for the first five minutes, a bit disorientating. Tarantino and his DoP Robert Richardson shot The Hateful Eight in Super Panavision, which provides a huge, wide image. It’s wall-to-wall, providing a good 10% of extra play left to right. The sheer size of the image takes a little getting used to–although it’s less of a headache-starter than Imax, with which I’ve never had a comfortable experience).
Also, film projection flickers. It’s not a compressed video file. It’s a long strip of pictures running past a furiously bright light source at 24 frames a second. It’s a subtle fluctuation, but if you’re used to the smoothness of video, you need to allow your eyes to key into it. The advantage? Well, it helps the film to look like film. Combined with the crisp clean imagery on display, The Hateful Eight is never less than beautiful to look at–detailed, rich and colourful.
A note on Robert Richardson’s work on the film. The decision to shoot on 70mm meant that he worked closely with Panavision to bring a set of lenses out of retirement that could handle the format. They hadn’t been used in anger since the filming of Khartoum in 1966. This glass is something else. The lenses deal with highlights in a remarkably soft, diffuse manner and help to dig into the blacks in a way I haven’t seen in a very long time. In short, the images on screen aren’t flat or thin. They have a bold depth of contrast that makes the whole thing seem almost 3D. Richardson should be a lock for the Oscar this year (although I’ll note that I haven’t seen what Emmanuel Lubitzki has done with The Revanent yet–I’m willing to be persuaded).
I’m not going to spend any time reviewing The Hateful Eight–there’s plenty of opinion either hailing it as a masterpiece or Tarantino’s worst. I don’t need to add to that chatter. If you’re inclined, watch it and make up your own mind. However, I would say that I’m in agreement with film critic Anne Billson, with whom I had a short conversation earlier in the work via Twitter. She summed up the situation quite neatly, while bemoaning the fact that there were no 70mm film screenings in Belgium, where she now lives:
@Conojito A lot of films I'd gladly pay to see again in 70mm. Just not that one.
— Anne Billson (@AnneBillson) January 8, 2016
And there’s the thing. 70mm is a great projection medium, and there are plenty of movies that still exist in large print format that are infinitely more worthy of the Big Throw than Hateful Eight*. In some ways, I’d urge you to make the effort to grab a 70mm presentation just to make the point that people are prepared to see movies from print. How about a revival season of some favourites? Anyone here willing to drop a score for Aliens in 70mm?
*OK, allow me to contradict myself and offer two cents of opinion. Hateful Eight is sporadically very good, but painfully slow to get going. A chamber piece with some great performances, but not a patch on Tarantino’s two best films (Jackie Brown and Death Proof, as you’re asking). The usual problem: he tells stories about fundamentally unlikable people with whom we can’t connect.
Goddam, Jennifer Jason Leigh, though. MVP by thirty yards and a touchdown.
January 8, 2016
The A To Z Of SFF: A Is For Airwolf
In the crowded arena of TV shows featuring super-fast, super-secret helicopters, Airwolf was the stand out. Mean and moody lead? Check. Comedy sidekick? Checky-check. Conspiracy and tension between the Airwolf crew and the agency they ostensibly worked for? Check-o (in the first season, at least).
Rob and Clive run through the story, dig out the old cello and yes, even take a pass at the theme song…*
*I didn’t say it was a good pass…
