Llamastrangler's Big TV and Film Blog

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Phases

2012-01-29T20:02:00.002Z

“Werewolves! It’s one of the classics!”

Inevitably, we get a somewhat light-hearted episode after all the recent heaviness. But there’s still an awful lot of arc and character stuff going on. Plus, it’s the inevitable werewolf episode.

I’ve commented before about the series of apparent tributes to classic Universal Horror movies which I happen to have seen recently. Of course, they’re also referring to the obvious novels / tropes, but it’s amusing to look for similarities between Out of Mind, Out of Sight and The Invisible Man, what with the invisible naughty person theme, and there are clear nods to James Whale’s Frankenstein in Some Assembly Required, and to The Mummy in Inca Mummy Girl. I don’t think that there are many obvious parallels between this episode and the Lon Chaney Jr version of The Wolf Man, though. Yes, Oz has a love interest (Willow) and there’s a scene where he changes in a forest, but I think we’ve now reached a point where the show is no longer in the business of overt tributes.

That isn’t to say that it doesn’t have lots of fun with the tropes, of course. In fact, there’s a lot of metatextual fun going on here, from the Giles quote up there to Oz’s phone conversation to his aunt (“Is Jordy a werewolf? Uh huh. And how long has that been going on?”). Best of all is the treatment of Kane, the inevitable silver bullet-using werewolf hunter, who is pretty much explicitly paralleled with the sort of big game hunter who goes after endangered species with no concern for ethics. He is, as Giles says, a pillock.

This being Buffy, the whole Oz-being-a-werewolf thing is probably some sort of metaphor for male sexuality, and how it’s all wild and dangerous and stuff. Er, I’m really not sure about that; I’m male, and there’s nothing violent or nasty about my sexual urges. And isn’t it a little misogynistic to hint at the whole “men are horny, women are innocent, chaste and passive” sort of thing? Then again, I’m not sure that’s what’s meant at all. After all, it’s explicitly stated that werewolves can be either gender. Perhaps, even on Buffy, we shouldn’t always look for a metaphor.

Certainly, Oz is now a fully-fledged Scooby just like Cordelia, who now seems to be hanging out with the gang pretty much exclusively. And his relationship with Willow is developing nicely, if not quickly. There’s even a very brief kiss towards the end. I like the character; he’s a nice guy and he’s witty, even if he does seem to have a tendency to be the voice of the author with some of his quips.

Oh, and then there’s Larry, background character, master of the single entendre and red herring, who is revealed to be gay in a nice bit of misdirection. It’s a great comic scene (Xander’s reaction to realising what he’s implied about himself is hilarious), but also a nice little nod to an issue that many teenage viewers must be going through. Being a teenager is bad enough as it is, but being a gay teenager must be so much more difficult, not only because of homophobia but with the lack of obvious outlets to express your sexuality in a mainly heterosexual culture. Surely, though, this general theme deserves an episode of its own?

Obviously this is a pivotal episode for Oz, and for Willow’s relationship with him, and an overdue use of the werewolf trope, but there’s other arc stuff, too. Angel continues to mess with Buffy’s head, and there’s an interesting scene where Xander saves Buffy, she hugs him, and suddenly they both realise the awkwardness of the situation. He also accidentally “outs” himself in a second way, letting slip that he remembers being possessed by a hyena, which is interesting in the light of this. What’s in store for him…?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Innocence

2012-01-24T22:26:00.000Z

“You got a lot to learn about men, kiddo.”

Again, wow. So much to talk about. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s performance is… more wow. Joss Whedon writes and directs but, for once, the dialogue is (mostly) deadly serious and the camerawork is (mostly) unshowy. Buffy, Willow and Giles all have their hearts broken, and things will never be the same again. But, for Buffy, it’s worse: not only is her heat broken, but terrible things are happening and it’s all her fault. That’ll teach her to be a woman and actually enjoy sex, eh?

Dramatic though these events are, though, this is a development of last episode’s themes as well as its events- namely relationships and their different stages. There’s an obvious three-way parallel between Buffy (who gets her heart broken by Angel, who suddenly turns bad after she shags him), Willow (who gets her heart broken by seeing Xander, her long-time crush, locking lips with Cordelia of all people and says “You’d rather be with someone you hate than with me”- ouch) and Jenny (whose conflict between family and friends causes her to betray Buffy and be brusquely rejected by Giles, who is very protective of his surrogate daughter). But the theme broadens out. Willow (oh, and Alyson Hannigan is extraordinary, too) continues to develop her relationship with Oz, who shows how much he thinks of her by waiting to kiss her until it’s right for them both).

Oh, and there’s Drusilla, and the symbolically emasculated Spike. Angelus suddenly walking in and joining them is simply huge: it was only a couple of episodes ago that Angel was goading Spike about his ability to sexually satisfy Drusilla. There’s already an incipient triangle developing, and Spike isn’t going to be able to compete. Oh, and if all this isn’t enough, Angel’s torment of Buffy is explicitly paralleled with what he did to Drusilla, a century ago. This whole situation has been cleverly foreshadowed right through the season. Joss Whedon is a clever man.

Angel is deliciously evil here, as he has to be- not only does he kill a woman during the opening teaser, but he (gasp) smokes a cigarette. Yes, David Boreanaz is superb in this too. And he’s clearly playing a long game, and a game it is. He (and for that matter Spike and Dru) has very little time for the old-fashioned, moustache-twirling villainy of the Judge, whom the script rather amusingly mocks throughout. I love his death scene, and Xander’s plan, and the fact that he gets to use his military skills from Halloween. Xander now has superpowers, sort of.

There’s only slight problem with this episode, though; I’m a bit uncomfortable with its portrayal of gypsies. They’re portrayed as mysterious, magical, “other”. I suppose, as far as popular culture goes where gypsies are concerned, that it could be much worse, but there’s an awkwardness.

This aside, though, this is probably the most extraordinary episode yet. I remember watching this for the first time with my mate Dave (hi if you’re reading this!) who introduced me to the series for the first time, and him telling me that Angelus was in fact to be the season’s Big Bad. And that’s made clear by the ending: Buffy can’t bring herself to kill him, but it’s rather appropriate that she should kick him in the bollocks.

Buffy goes through the wringer here, in ways she never has before. But at least we end with Buffy receiving support from both her surrogate father, Giles, and her mother.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Surprise

2012-01-23T21:55:00.000Z

“Surprise me, Angel.”

“OK, I will…”

Oh dear. Things are, indeed, about to get bad. Very bad. This is an extraordinary episode, and nothing will ever be the same again.

As usual there’s a theme: relationships, and their various stages. For Willow and Oz, things are only just beginning, and all is fluffy and lovely and nice. The scene where Oz asks Willow out is heartwarming and witty and perfect, and even Oz’s deadpan reaction to seeing Buffy slaying a vampire in the library (“Actually, it explains a lot.”) is a signal that this could be the start of something good, for the foreseeable future, anyway. For Cordelia and Xander, though, there’s little but foreboding? Things aren’t working out, there’s never been anything between them but animal instincts, and the secret can’t be kept for ever. Cordy’s refusal of Xander’s request that they go to Buffy’s birthday party as a couple (well, obviously they can’t) is pretty much the confirmation that their relationship can’t develop any more. Dramatically, something has to happen, and it won’t be nice. As for the third couple… let’s talk about them, shall we?

It’s Buffy’s birthday. She’s seventeen. Is that the age of consent in California? It would make sense in context. I could Google that, but I’d rather not. If Big Brother is indeed watching me then I’d rather not be watched Googling the age of consent in various territories. It could seem rather creepy.

Anyway… the episode is basically about Buffy having sex with Angel for the first time and, in fact, popping her actual cherry. That’s clear from the opening dream sequence (I love the French monkey!) in which Joyce asks Buffy whether she’s ready. And their relationship continues to get more and more intense, as it has of late. There’s one thing after another: the prospect of enforced separation, Angel (after much skirting around the issue) finally telling Buffy that he loves her as he gives her a Claddagh ring, and the intensity of their recent escape from Drusilla and Spike. There’s a short scene, charged with eroticism, and it’s implied that, overnight, the deed is done. We’ll leave the consequences for next episode’s review, but it’s very, very clear that the recent status quo is no more. And Buffy is going to get hurt. Badly.

It’s very noticeable that, in the very first scene where Buffy accidentally alludes to the possibility of sex, she then tells Angel that she’s off to school. This reminds us that she is, in fact, a schoolgirl, and that a relationship with someone much, much older is, to say the least, problematic, and so it’s clear that we’re not exactly supposed to approve. On the other hand, though, I wouldn’t accuse the episode of a more general Puritanism, as I did the last time I saw it, perhaps now because I’m old enough to be very conscious that Buffy is not an adult. In fact, there may even be a subtext that making such a big deal out of the popping of one’s cherry is not exactly healthy: you’ll probably enjoy it more if you lose the awkward self-consciousness and just do it.

Er, there’s one thing that’s been bothering me, though. Vampires don’t have blood, right? So how can he possibly get an erection? Sorry. These questions have to be asked.

There are other things to be mentioned too, of course. I love the camerawork as Willow approaches Oz early on, the unsteady movement of the camera reflecting Willow’s nerves. And also, of course, we get a revelation about Jenny (or “Janna Kalderash”); she’s a member of the very Gypsy tribe that cursed Angel, and a visit by her uncle (guest star Vincent Schiavelli) reminds her that she must act against them to destroy their relationship. I’m, er, not entirely sure that this is a sensitive portrayal of Gypsy culture, but it’s yet another sign of a broken status quo. Jenny, unbeknownst to Giles or anyone else, has an agenda which is antagonistic to that of the Scoobies. There’s going to be conflict. This is a drama, after all.

The final couple is Drusilla and Spike, who have now reversed roles fully. Spike is obviously scarred and confined to a wheelchair while Drusilla, while still as mad as a pincushion, is clearly the one in charge, taking over the henchman-threatening duties. There is potential for drama here, too. We’ve already seen Angel, Drusilla’s former lover (and tormentor) goading Spike over his sexual performance, and it looks as though further gradual emasculation is on the cards. He’s still the alpha male at this point, but much diminished.

Oh, and he says the word “wanker”, something which British characters often say in American TV shows, comics, etc. Note to all American writers: this is a rather strong swear word, about on a par with “shit”, and if you include it then we Brits have to watch a censored version on television, which is well annoying. Still, it’s certainly the sort of thing that Spike would say.

I’m a bit nervous about the next episode, which should be up tomorrow.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Bad Eggs

2012-01-22T17:47:00.002Z

“As far as punishments go, this is fairly abstract.”

I was under the impression that this was supposed to be a notoriously bad episode. In fact, I was rather looking forward to it for that very reason. There’s a certain kind of perverse glee to be found in watching something you know to be bad in the full knowledge that you’re going to be mocking it on your blog before long. Except… this episode is bloody brilliant. Why the bad reputation? This is possibly the best comedy episode we’ve had yet.

Oh, the concept’s a bit blah- a massive subterranean parasite uses nasty little eggs which hatch creepy-crawly things to control people so it can use them for, er, egg mining, and this all sprawls out of a school assignment to look after eggs as though they’re babies. Unusually for Buffy, there’s not really a great deal happening in the shape of a big, central metaphor; I did ponder the idea of the parasite being a metaphor for Joyce, who makes Buffy’s life particularly difficult, but I don’t think so. I certainly hope not; I really like Joyce. And the fun little conversation between the two of them at the start shows that they can be great together when they’re not being confrontational.

There is, perhaps, a bit of a theme developing with regards to pleasures distracting us from our responsibilities. Ironically, neglect of her responsibilities is what Joyce finds so upsetting about her daughter, even though the reason for her apparent misbehaviour is the awesome responsibility of the Slayer. But there’s a second layer of irony here, as Buffy is in fact spending most of her time snogging her boyfriend instead of hunting vampires as she’s supposed to; perhaps she isn’t being too unfairly punished, after all. Alarm bells are beginning to ring about this relationship; I’m reminded of Kendra’s admonition that Angel, whatever his virtues, is a vampire, and “He should die”. Gosh, you don’t think something really, really bad could be about to happen between those two, do you?

As for the comedy parallel to this couple of snoggers, namely Cordelia and Xander, whose kissing / insulting sessions are such fun to watch, they’re beginning to get less and less careful. It’s rather obvious that the others (particularly Willow) are going to find out, very, very soon, and the laughter is going to stop.

Lyle Gorch (I love the hat!) is another great thing about this episode, and I’m delighted that he survives, obviously to prepare for another appearance. The first season gave us the Master and some rather ritual-heavy vampires who did what they were told, but this season’s vampires are much more fun. Spike is the character who announced this new direction, of course, but Lyle shows us that we can expect a lot more of this sort of thing- quirky vampires with fun personalities. I love the Lenny George thing he has going on with his brother.

There are other cool touches, though- the long scene with Buffy looking for the creature is shot and soundtracked like a horror film, and it’s really, really scary. Plus there’s that nice frisson of nostalgia at Buffy’s mention of a Giga Pet- remember those? But this kind of fun episode usually means only one thing: this is our last chance to sit back and feel comfortable for a while, because things are probably about to get very, very dark…

A Blog-Light Weekend...

2012-01-19T23:14:00.000Z

Just making a quick post-pub post to say I'll be out the next two nights too, so no blogging until Sunday. It'll be Bad Eggs, everyone's favourite episode of Buffy...

There'll be a bit of a semi-hiatus towards the end of next week, too (training course for work) and probably next month for a slightly longer time (similar, though rather more annoying), which I'll warn you about in advance. But fear not- the blog will continue at the usual pace aside from these annoying real life interventions.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Ted

2012-01-17T21:49:00.002Z

“Hey, Freud would have said the exact same thing. Except he might not have done that little dance.”

Wow. That was a beautifully done piece of television, packing so much subtext about patriarchal attitudes and abusive relationships (parental and spousal) in to forty-two minutes. We’re looking here at something so finely crafted that it features the perfect ending: a mother / daughter viewing of Thelma and Louise. Take that, patriarchy. This episode filled me with a sense of feminist fellow-feeling, and I have a y-chromosome. And not only that: we have wit too. Aren’t Joss Whedon scripts great?

The clever thing is how the episode starts by showing Ted as a charming, nice, likeable guy who cooks, and is therefore symbolically in touch with his feminine side, and only gradually reveals his nasty, authoritarian tendencies. First he seduces Joyce, a vulnerable single mother, by turning on the charm, and then he charms all of Buffy’s friends. At first it’s only Buffy who’s the target of his abuse, but the final scenes between him and Joyce show him in all of his violent, controlling ways. He is- literally, as it turns out- a man from the 1950s as far as gender roles are concerned.

Of course, there’s a deliberate contrast with Giles, Buffy’s real father figure, who is shown as being particularly understanding here. His reconciliation with Jenny is incredibly sweet, and very fitting for this episode as his behaviour endorses a very different kind of masculinity. Guys may wear the tweed, but he’s not too old-fashioned to let Jenny wear the trousers. He also gets one of the best lines in all of television, ever: “Er, Buffy… I believe the subtext here is rapidly becoming a… a text.”

This episode is very noticeably lacking in the supernatural element, other than the occasional perfunctory vampire, but it’s great how that gets used. At the moment where Buffy is most alone, with everyone liking Ted except her, she desperately wants some vampires to use as punchbags. But none appear.

The apparent climax comes as Ted discovers Buffy’s slaying paraphernalia, and is clearly just about to completely ruin her life. Buffy snaps, and kills him. What’s nice is that Buffy’s moral responsibility for what’s happened- and what she’s done to her mother- isn’t ducked, but the metaphor here seems to be the homicide of an abusive partner, which leads to many women being controversially imprisoned.

There’s a nice bit of contrast at this point, though. Buffy may have lied earlier about the frivolous matter of her hole-in-one at miniature golf. But when it comes to important matters, she’s honest. She confesses to the killing in spite of her mother offering her a way out. This is terrible for Joyce; she has a boyfriend to mourn and a daughter who may be going to prison.

Kristine Sutherland is simply extraordinary here, and the silent scene of her driving Buffy home is very, very powerful. Now it’s her life that’s potentially ruined, yet never is she anything other than a loving and well-meaning parent.

There’s another metaphor, I suppose, in the fact that the embodiment of 1950’s masculinity should turn out to be a robot: without feelings or any true empathy, and probably not the greatest of sexual partners because of this. Normally, I’d protest at the use of a kind of science fiction which, unlike in the case of Some Assembly Required, doesn’t belong to the horror aesthetic, but the subtext is so powerful that it hardly matters.

Oh, and aren’t Cordy and Xander adorable? Their relationship is great fun, which means that very serious things must be about to happen. And that kiss between Giles and Jenny… aaah!

Sherlock: The Reichenbach Fall

2012-01-16T21:38:00.000Z

“Don’t be dead. Will you do that just for me?”

OK, I’ll say it straight up: THIS POST IS RIDDLED WITH SPOILERS. IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE EPISODE THEN LOOK AWAY NOW. SERIOUSLY. I MEAN IT.

Right, not that the formalities have been dispensed with… that was excellent telly. Superb, in fact. Steve Thompson has come good at last. Even so, it wasn’t quite as good as either of the Steven Moffat scripts (it lacked the spark and wasn’t quite as clever) Or of Mark Gatiss’ The Great Game (the cleverest of them all). That’s to praise with faint damn, of course, but Thompson is no Steven Moffat. Similarly, we Doctor Who fans know all too well that Toby Haynes is a first rate director (I bet the Nina Simone stuff was played back during recording. Nice.), and he did a first rate job here. He’s no Paul McGuigan, though. Then again, who is? Actually, let’s not allow the fact that other episodes of this superlative series are even better distract us from how bloody good this is.

The framing device, with the first scene being John telling us that Sherlock is dead and the story then unfolding in flashback, is utterly predictable, but that’s the joy of it. And yes, even the fact that it’s undercut in the final scene by a blatantly not-dead Sherlock is predictable. But again, that’s the joy of it. The cleverness is in the little things and the characterisation.

A lot of stuff pays off here, from Donovan’s suspicions about Holmes to Holmes’ relationship with the lovely Molly; at last he finally says something nice to her, and a bloody good thing too! I just want to hug her whenever she’s on screen. I suspect she had a lot to do with how Sherlock faked his death, although there’s quite a lot to be explained. There was a body! It was buried! And yet today we find out that a new series is on the way. Yay!

Both Cumberbatch and Freeman are extraordinary here, giving us a much wider emotional range than they’ve previously been called upon to show. But it’s Andrew Scott who’s the revelation here, managing to square the circle of being suitably and terrifyingly psychopathic without crossing the line into pantomime villain territory. This is Moriarty as the Joker, and it works. He’s a very disturbed individual, with a death wish because he’s “bored”. He defeats Sherlock, yet he’s the one who is, seemingly, genuinely dead. He’s clever enough to virtually warp reality itself, creating a world in which Sherlock is a fraud, but what does it bring him in the end?

Interestingly, this is an episode in which all the clever people fail. The fall of Sherlock, the apparent death of Moriarty and the accidental betrayal of his brother by Sherlock can perhaps be set against the humanity of John and, arguably, Molly, who finally gets at least some appreciation from the man she loves. Even Donovan and the journalist (it’s great to see Katharine Parkinson, but even better to see the tabloids getting skewered)) are arguably portrayed as too clever for their own good. This is the triumph of the ordinary. Appropriate; this episode is clever but, compared to other episodes, not too clever. But it certainly has heart.

Still, I thought last series ended in a big cliffhanger… how will they get out of this one? I suspect empty houses may be involved somehow…

Nineteen Eighty-Four

2012-01-14T23:24:00.000Z

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot, stamping on a human face, forever.”

I should probably say at the start that this is the 1954 BBC teleplay, written by Nigel Kneale, directed by Rudolph Cartier and starring Peter Cushing. It’s rather interesting to see this for the first time just one week after seeing The Year of the Sex Olympics; suddenly the debt the later play, set in a future with a diminishing vocabulary, owes to Orwell’s concept of Newspeak becomes even more blatant.

This is first class telly, though. Yes, it’s of its time, with a rather blurry picture quality (although, to be fair, the prints could really do with a good clean), and technical limitations mean that a slow pace is sort of inevitable, but this is no bad thing. The cast is superb, with Peter Cushing putting in an outstanding performance, with honourable mentions also going top Yvonne Mitchell and André Morell. It’s quite a shock, too, to see Donald Pleasance in a television role. There’s also a nice little cameo from Wilfrid Brambell.

It’s not just the picture quality that dates this; it is, after all, the earliest piece of telly I’m likely to be reviewing on this blog except, probably, for the surviving bits of The Quatermass Experiment once I get to it. The fact that it was made live (apart from the many film sequence!) isn’t really too obvious, but lots of other things are, notably the plummy accents, Mr. Cholmondely-Warner strength, which are spoken by every character who isn’t a prole. And this is a future with things like valves in it It’s rather interesting, though, to see an adaptation made just five years after George Orwell’s novel was published; the general feel of austerity (how very topical!) seems very fitting, especially as 1954 was the year that rationing finally ended. I couldn’t help also noticing that, among the many sinister notices seen in the programme is one saying “Be ready to produce identity papers”. Orwell would have been horrified at the last Government’s plan to introduce identity cards, now thankfully off the table for now in a rare wise decision from our current lords and masters.

Cartier’s sets, with ever-present posters and pictures of Big Brother, are a triumph of design, and it’s a nice touch that everyone (except, again, the proles, who wear 1950’s clothes) wears what look very much like prison uniforms, while Winston Smith’s room looks awfully like a prison cell. This is a confining, utilitarian world, devoid of all beauty and ornament. The constant televised announcements, which cannot be switched off, remind me a lot of the 15 Million Merits episode of Black Mirror.

It’s a while, certainly more than fifteen years, since I last read the novel, so the sheer levels of totalitarianism on display here come as quite a shock. Big Brother is indeed watching everyone, even language itself is being perverted so as to render “thought crime” impossible, but the scenes towards the end, with Morell’s Obrien as the torturer, are more chilling still. The line asking how many fingers are being held up (blatantly ripped off / homaged, decades later, by Star Trek: The Next Generation), and the following dialogue, make it clear that the Party claims the right to dictate reality itself; there is no empirical truth. Rather cleverly, this is all foreshadowed by Smith’s job of “adjusting” past records to fit with current political convenience.

It’s interesting, although somewhat patronising, that hope lies with the uneducated and ignorant proles, and the fact that their cultural fare is all written or composed by computer could be read all sorts of ways. Hope certainly seems to be closed up elsewhere; even Smith is not quite the pure hero, agreeing to commit all sorts of awful crimes. But the romance between him and Julia is rather sweet and lovely, but also profound. What they have is theirs alone, and it’s real. Nothing else is. And their relationship burns all the brighter for the fact that it, and they, are doomed, and they both know it.

The ending, with both Julia and Winston denouncing each other under torture, is devastating, but brainwashing was very much in the zeitgeist so soon after the Korean War. This is a first class piece of telly, whether in terms of script, directing or performances, but I think its view of the future is a little pessimistic. Totalitarian regimes always have a limited life expectancy. They always burn themselves out eventually; the world is a chaotic place, for good or ill. The future will be far more Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

2012-01-14T00:07:00.000Z

“No girl wants to marry a doctor who can’t tell if a man’s dead or not.”

Before you buy this DVD on film, you might want to consider that it forces you to watch an advert for Blu-Ray lasting several minutes before you get to the menu. This is unacceptable, frankly, and if, unlike me, you don’t prefer your films with subtitles, you’d be much better off recording it off the telly.

Not that my first film to be reviewed in 2012 is particularly great, although Robert Downey Jr’s superlative central performance and Guy Ritchie’s brilliantly executed set pieces make it well worth seeing anyway. It’s a nice idea- Sherlock Holmes as action film- which actually works quite well. Downey’s Holmes is decidedly bohemian, physical, fast-moving and decidedly not asexual, and while this is arguably a departure from “canon”, it’s no more so than many more boring interpretations. And this treatment of the Sherlockian world may not be as good, quality-wise, as Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ superlative Sherlock, it’s no less legitimate an interpretation.

There’s a touch of plywood to Jude Law’s performance, but Downey really shows what a first class actor he is, arguably the single best leading man in contemporary English-speaking cinema. His rakish charisma is reason alone to make this film worth watching, and he’s superb at physical comedy. His facial acting is first class, and it’s very noticeable that he spends the whole film speaking in an accent not his own (flawlessly, I might add, and I’m British) without forgetting to act as well, something which is all too common. His Holmes is as suited to the big screen as Benedict Cumberbatch’s is to television.

Mr Madonna is also a dab hand behind the camera, giving us enough adrenalin-fuelled action sequences to be worthy of a Michael Bay film, although the style is noticeably the same as Lock, Stock and Snatch, despite the period setting. Victorian London looks great, though, if a bit CGI-ey. Except… there’s a certain lack of substance to the storyline, although there’s certainly enough bangs and excitement to carry us through. This Watson, far from being a bumbler, is full of back-chat; I like that. But the characterisation of Holmes suffers from a slight problem. Actually it makes a lot of sense for him to be an action hero, but the deductive skills fall flat, often relying more on obscure chemistry factoids than the sort of deductive leaps that you really expect.

The plot is a rather odd mish-mash of tropes and explosions, taking us from an attempted virgin sacrifice by cowled figures (a nice familiar trope, that!) to alchemy and a vast conspiracy theories involving thinly veiled Freemasons which seem to come straight out of Alan Moore’s From Hell (if you haven’t already done so, read it!). Lord Blackwood seems to be based on the real life Francis Dashwood, leader of the Hellfire Club during the Eighteenth Century. His plan, bizarrely, involves conquering the United States, one of Britain’s main trading partners at the time, which would be a particularly stupid thing to do as it would entirely bugger up the British economy, and the whole point of the British Empire was to make money. Sorry, my bad: I probably shouldn’t be looking too hard at the plot.

Oh, and the scene where Dashwood is hanged is quite visceral and shocking. I don’t object to the violence per se, but people were still being barbarically killed like this well within living memory, and may presumably have living relatives.

There’s a fair bit of what we Doctor Who fans call fanwank here. The inclusion of Irene Adler (the rather good Rachel McAdams) is surprisingly justified here, though, establishing the non-asexuality of Downey’s Holmes, and I suppose Moriarty is in the film to do a bit of sequel-hunting. It tends to work out. If I might nitpick, though, Tower Bridge is still under construction, which would place this film in 1892. This is rather at odds with the Conan Doyle canon, as Holmes is supposed to have fallen down the Reichenbach Falls in 1891 and disappeared for three years. Not, of course, that this kind of obscure wankery is any excuse not to use a good idea for a set-piece.

So this is a rather good action film, although nothing special, but it’s worth watching for Downey’s performance alone.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: What’s My Line? Part Two

2012-01-12T23:56:00.002Z

“All monkeys are French. You didn’t know?”

No recap! Is it just on the DVD?

Kendra (well, Bianca Lawson) is completely gorgeous, but the accent is awful. It’s obviously supposed to be West Indian, but it sounds all over the place. Never mind, though, I like the character, and this episode (Marti Noxon’s first solo writing credit, I believe?), a good one if not one of the best, sees some nice development of last episode’s themes in the interaction between her and Buffy.

There’s an awful lot of other things happening in this episode, though. For starters, we get to see Angel in a sewer, a nice bit of foreshadowing for his own show. Jonathan gets another cameo in which, again, he’s a bit of a victim. And then, yes, there’s the shipping. How can anyone not love the Cordelia / Xander thing? In hindsight it was inevitable; both of them were characters who desperately needed plot threads of their own, having just about made it as far as they could through charm and comic relief alone. And both of the arguing / kissing scenes are such fun. This is set to be the most screwball thing ever.

On the other hand, there’s the sweet interaction between Willow and Oz. They’re both nice and innocent, but what’s wonderful is that they’re both extremely witty with it. Seeing them both on screen together, and clearly starting to become a proper couple, is so utterly heartwarming that it can only possibly end in devastating heartbreak. Such are the rules on Planet Joss Whedon.

But the meat of the episode is in the scenes between Buffy and Kendra. The basic themes of the conveyor belt from school to employment, the crushing pressure of choice, and the depressing realisation that your life path has been chosen for you, have already been established, so this episode can apply all of this directly to Buffy’s character. Kendra is, so to speak, the control of the experiment while Buffy is the subject. So Kendra is a slayer done by-the-book with no distractions. She was raised by her Watcher, away from her family; she has no friends; she isn’t allowed to talk to boys, and is shy around them; her only studying is directed by her Watcher, to whom she’s extremely respectful.

Buffy is none of these things. And yet it’s made clear that all of these things- her friends, her ordinary life, her family- are a strength. Kendra is, as Buffy says, technically very, very good, but she’s lacking in imagination. And while Buffy’s attachment to Angel may lead her to walk into a trap (so the argument isn’t all one way), she has friends to rescue her.

Buffy learns a lesson here; from speculating on handing the Slayer baton to Kendra so she can live a normal life, she comes to accept that, as Kendra says, slaying isn’t her job: it’s who she is. I’m not really sure that this is any more than waffle, but it works in terms of the characters and story beats so it gets away with it.

But our heroes haven’t won. Drusilla, it seems, is restored to health. And, from what we saw earlier as she got all kinky, tied up Angel and burned him with holy water, she might well be a bit dangerous…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: What’s My Line? Part One

2012-01-10T21:22:00.000Z

“How do you know?”

“I lurk.”

There’s an awful lot going on in this episode, the first of Marti Noxon’s many writing credits; Buffy gets moody, she and Angel start to get really, properly, couply, and Xander uses the phrase “Scooby Gang” for the first time. Yay! But, as so often with Buffy, it’s all based around a theme, and the theme is handled brilliantly.

The theme is, superficially, careers, but in reality it’s a lot more than that. From the teenage perspective it can all be rather depressing and angsty to know that you’re on a carrier belt through school, university and some unknown career, with scarcely a moment to stop and think about what it is that you want. Buffy, of course has no choice, and this is getting her down, quite understandably. The career fair means nothing to her, as her life has already been mapped out for her by others, and her future doesn’t seem to include much in the way of wealth, happiness or, indeed, years.

Xander’s and Cordelia’s predicted careers are used more-or-less only as a little light relief, but Willow, as a high-flyer, has been pretty much head-hunted by a big IT tycoon- will she take the proffered apple? Interestingly, this means she gets to spend some time with the only other student also chosen- Oz. They meet at last.

Spike and Drusilla are such a sweet couple, in an incredibly perverted way, and it’s quite touching how Spike loves his girlfriend so much that he hires the Order of Taraka, an unstoppable bunch of demonic assassins, to kill Buffy. And Buffy’s response to the knowledge that she’s being marked for death is extremely well-done, as various strangers arrive in Sunnydale. Director David Solomon gives us a brilliant sequence of Buffy walking down the school corridor, becoming increasingly paranoid that every face she sees could be that of her killer.

The stress drives Buffy to flee, alone, to Angel, who significantly is the person she turns to when she’s most desperate. But Angel is out, doing the Batman thing to some bloke called Willie, and he’s soon attacked and defeated by a mysterious young lady with awesome fighting skills and a most peculiar accent. My God, though; ain’t she gorgeous?

Angel’s left in a cage, where he will eventually die when the Sun comes up. That’ll be the first element of the cliffhanger, then, this being our first two-parter. Isn’t it exciting? Part two is Cordelia and the maggot man. Urrgh!

The last shot, though, as Buffy and our mysterious young lady are mid-fight, is where she introduces herself as Kendra… the Vampire Slayer. Duh duh DUNNN.

Sherlock: The Hounds of Baskerville

2012-01-09T20:45:00.000Z

“Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”

Ah well, it had to happen. We move from poetry to prose, and from the superlative to the merely very good. Also, this script is not so dense with subtext as last weeks, meaning this review won’t be as long. Gatiss’ script here may play to his supposed macabre strengths but, rather good though it is, it can’t complete with the extraordinary episode he gave us last series. Still, judged without reference to its illustrious predecessors this is a highly impressive ninety minutes of television. Plus I had the added fun being able to compare it to a Conan Doyle original that, for once, I know well.

Se, Henry Knight, not Sir Henry Baskerville. See what they did there? The print original may have been a baronet, not a knight, but it still made me smile. Plus we have a Mortimer and a Stapleton- both women, helping almost to smooth out the gender imbalance of the source material. There’s even a Barrymore, but this chap is a soldier, an arrogant sod and, worse, a Tory. He doesn’t buttle.

We have some nice misdirection, too; Sherlock tricks us into thinking he’s going to just send Watson to Devon, and not go himself. There’s a red herring- Gary and Billy- to take the place of the escaped convict subplot in the novel. And, of course, it was Frankland, not Stapleton, what dunnit. Plus the circumstances are entirely different.

We get a fair amount of fanwank here- I love the opening scenes, and particularly the Cluedo line. We get the “Once you’ve ruled out the impossible, whatever remains- however improbable- must be true. But, most interestingly, a drugged-up Holmes comes to doubt his own belief in reason and empirical truth, the very foundation of who he is, and is left literally shaking at the possibility of having seen something truly supernatural. Cumberbatch is extraordinary here. And the chemistry between him and the equally excellent Martin Freeman continues to be superb.

Oh, and it’s left nicely ambiguous, early on, whether Sherlock’s cold turkey relates just to cigarettes or to something stronger. We know what the reference to “seven per cent” means, but does it infer the same thing in a twenty-first century context, I wonder?

Paul McGuigan is superlative as always, but this is something we’re tending to take for granted by now, and a more linear plot gives him less room to be creative. The many moments with Sherlock making deductive leaps (always fun) look fab, though. And the location shots of Dartmoor look truly awesome, far better than any previous version of this story that I’ve seen.

Oh, and I don’t believe the Morse code message was explained. Something for next week?

All the same, though, excellent whodunnit and superb character piece though this is, it seems to be lacking a certain extra something. Partly it may be a case of middle episode disease, although this is far superior to The Blind Banker. But something’s missing.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Dark Age

2012-01-08T20:33:00.001Z

“I’m so used to you being a grown-up, and then I find out that you’re a person.”

Well, well, well! It’s only a couple of episodes since we were introduced to Ethan Rayne and hints of Giles’ “Ripper” past, and it’s paying off already. This is a great episode, and a necessary one: things had reached the point where the character of Giles needed to acquire some hinterland if he was going to show any depths beyond his function as father figure to Buffy. I could have done without the tiresome line about British people allegedly having bad teeth, mind.

Oh, and we get zombies for the first time in Buffy, although the episode doesn’t really focus on them much. The script is far more interested in Giles, and the effect of all these revelations on those around with him. Notably, it first brings Jenny much closer to him- it’s clear that their relationship is about to get physical and Jenny is happy to share even the troubling things about Giles’ life- but then she’s possessed by Eghyon. This has to be traumatic, and understandably she feels she has to push Giles away, at least for a while. This establishes, of course, that Giles may be a dangerous person with whom to have a relationship. Foreshadowing, anyone?

His powerful bond with his more-or-less adoptive daughter, on the other hand, is made even stronger. Buffy’s caring and understanding reaction to her surrogate father is lovely to see, and the final scene is the sweetest thing ever.

Of course, this being Buffy, the whole thing’s a metaphor, and this time it’s about the fact that our parents were young once, and may have done stuff. We’re told that the young Giles, in an obvious parallel with Buffy, became frustrated at the life that had already been planned out for him (I’ve just started playing Green Day’s “She” on iTunes as I write this, one of the comfort records of my teenage years), and dropped out of Oxford in frustration. Not much different from Buffy so far, except that he was a little older and didn’t have a Watcher to look after him. But then he fell in with the wrong crowd and started playing around with magic to get high. It was fun for a while, until someone OD’d and died. Gosh, do you reckon this might be a metaphor for something? And then there’s the photo, with the leather jacket and leather jacket. Surely that can’t possibly be a photo of a pyjama-wearing Bay City Rollers fan?

There are other great character moments, too. Cordelia is getting really quite integrated into the Scooby gang, although she’s as oblivious as ever. I loved her “He seemed perfectly normal yesterday when I saw him talking to the police.” There’s also a wonderful moment in the library as Willow shouts at Xander and Cordelia for wasting time with silly arguments while their friends are in danger, only to revert to her normal, diffident self. This is part of a definite process; Willow is slowly growing in confidence before our eyes.

This is a great run of episodes; we’re now some way into Season Two and it’s clear that plates are shifting and all sorts of arcs are underway. It’s all rather exciting

The Year of the Sex Olympics

2012-01-07T23:14:00.002Z

“Do you like to read?”

(Shakes head)

“Well, who does?”

There’s a certain narrative that we’ve all come to expect from reviews of this teleplay, isn’t there? We’re supposed to mention how prescient it is (to be fair, it gets there first at the very start with the caption “sooner than you think”, but...), in 1968, in predicting reality TV, tasteless sex programmes and crappy telly in general, and to fawn on how it’s a great piece of British dystopian sci-fi in the lineage of Nineteen Eighty-Four and (especially) Brave New World. Actually, though, well-made, well-acted and (objectionable subtext aside) well-written though this may be, it’s still a pile of reactionary crap. So much so that even the metatextual fun of its being a TV drama about TV production wasn’t even enough to placate me, and you know how much I love metatextual fun.

The expository dialogue we get fairly on from Ugo Priest (the excellent Leonard Rossiter) establishes the situation; overpopulation has led to a situation in which the masses (low-drives) do nothing all day but watch crap telly about food (to put them off eating) and sex (to put them off sex), the theory being “see, not do”. The theory seems a pile of crap to me, but let’s run with it. Even the elite (high-drives- this seems to be the first society in fiction where your place in society is determined by your sex drive!) don’t read, struggle to understand the concept of paintings as art, dress like hippies (it’s probably a mercy that only a monochrome version has survived; I’m sure the costumes would look garish and horrible in colour) and have very small vocabularies owing to a lack of any meaningful cultural or intellectual pastimes. Never mind how absurdly unrealistic it is for a managerial class to be so under-educated.

Let’s look at what Nigel Kneale is saying here. Everyone looks and shags like stereotypical hippies, so I think it’s fair to take this largely as a stab at youth culture and the “permissive society”. We’re essentially being told that the art and music of the baby boomer generation has no cultural value and is, without exception, a load of dumbed-down crap which will rot the minds of society. No one reads; they just watch telly, because it’s obviously an idiot box. Even the bizarre cod-northern accents are suspect in this context; are we being told that even the use of regional accents on TV constitutes part of this dumbing-down? Then there’s the apparent endorsement of traditional family values as Nat, Deanie and Keten (until outside agencies make everything go horribly wrong) are shown, as a family unit, to be truly happy in the way that makes everyone else, with their flighty, ridiculously exaggerated polyamorous ways, look incredibly shallow. Yes, I know: I’m probably not going to like The Quatermass Conclusion. But all this, as a subtext, is extremely nasty, mean-spirited and spoils the whole play for me. I happen to quite like sex, TV and youth culture.

That’s a shame; there’s a lot that’s good here. Perhaps the problem is partly that this is obviously in the tradition of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. I quite like the novel, but it’s no Point Counter Point. And the whole concept of the Sex Olympics is just absurd to me, even aside from the fact that it looks just like It’s a Knockout. Now, I admit I may not be typical. After all, I’m a man who doesn’t watch porn. I just don’t get turned on by watching other people: do and not watch, so to speak. I’m no puritan- actually, I’m quite the libertine- but the thought of having sex for the pleasure, not of your partner, but the watching public, just horrifies me.

Oh, and I just don’t buy the sadism of the watching public at all. Yes, I know that cruel and evil talent shows like The X-Factor are fundamentally based on the general public’s ever-present sense of bastardry and schadenfreude, and seem to prove Lasar Opie (Brian Cox) right, but murder and death on the equivalent of live Big Brother on E4 is orders of magnitude different.

For balance, though, I ought to mention something I genuinely liked about this programme: the credits mention “custard pie experts”.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lie to Me

2012-01-06T23:03:00.000Z

“Everybody lies.”

Interesting, isn’t it, how Joss Whedon can take a fairly ho-hum premise for an episode and, in both scripting and helming the thing, turn it into a sublime thing of beauty? This episode is, at first glance, a fairly standard brief; everybody lies to Buffy and there’s a bit of subtext about how vampires being evil is far cooler and less dorky than any of that Anne Rice stuff (and, I’d imagine, Whedon would probably apply such thinking to Twilight today, not that I’m likely to ever experience that particular series of novels / movies).

Even the opening shot, with the abandoned playground in the dark, is utterly gorgeous. As is Ford, Buffy’s curiously never-before-mentioned old flame / friend from LA. He’s a good looking man. I probably might, and I’m not even gay. He’s certainly a cuckoo in the Scooby nest though; I love Xanders’s comment that he’s imposing himself “only in the literal sense”. Still holding that long-extinguished candle for Buffy, I see.

The basic theme of this episode, which ties right into the character stuff, is that everyone lies to Buffy, and none of them for the best of reasons. Ford is plotting to betray and incidentally kill her from the start. Angel lies about speaking to Drusilla, because (arrogantly making the decision for her about what she needs to know) he doesn’t want to know that it was he who originally drove Drusilla mad by psychological torture, finally turning her into a vampire on the day she becomes a nun. That’s some fairly heavy shit, and most definitely is the sort of thing that a girl ought to know about a potential boyfriend.

You have to give him credit for the best line in the episode, though: “A hundred years just hanging out, feeling guilty. Really honed my breeding skills.” I love Joss Whedon scripts. The only trouble is that everyone else’s scripts just seem so unwitty by comparison.

Angel, Willow and Xander all lie to Buffy as they keep her out of the loop while investigating Ford’s dodgy dealings. Xander, in particular, doesn’t exactly have the best of motives. Even Giles lies to Jenny Callendar about enjoying their date with the, er, monster trucks, although in his case he can hardly do otherwise.

The naïve kids in the goth / metal club are also liars of a sort, especially as it’s themselves they’re lying to. Deluding themselves into thinking that vampires are drippy, handsome, cute fluffy bunnies who will make them immortal. I’m loving the dig at a popular culture idea of vampirism that has since become annoyingly ubiquitous, although I’m a little annoyed at the negative portrayal of goths / metalheads; aside from their dorky leader, Ford’s friends are rather sexily-dressed, attractive and look like the sort of people you’d find in a perfectly normal late ‘90s rock club. I mean, this place is the spitting image of Nottingham Rock City back in its ‘90s heyday. (I don’t mean to say that Rock City has declined in any way, just that I no longer frequent the place, being nearly 35 and no longer living in Nottingham). Oh, and this is the first time we meet Chanterelle.

Ford comes across as quite fun in his meeting with Spike; we have the lovely metatextual joke that he demands clichés while Spike finds them utterly tiresome. But, just as we think he’s a fully-fledged, black hat-wearing baddy, he pulls the rug from under us; within six months he’ll be dead from brain cancer at seventeen. And he genuinely missed Buffy. That doesn’t, as Buffy says, excuse mass murder, but suddenly there are shades of grey and Buffy learns again that life is complicated.

There’s a nice ending for Giles, who really shows what a great father figure he can be now that he’s seemingly decided to cut Buffy a bit of slack after the events of Reptile Boy. We end on another of his lies but, again, it’s a little white one.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Halloween

2012-01-05T22:46:00.000Z

“I was brought up to be a proper lady. I wasn’t meant to understand things.”

Another good ‘un, this. I rather enjoyed the conceit of Halloween being the one night of the year that things go a bit quiet in Sunnydale. Also, we have continuing arc stuff happening; Spike and Drusilla (who’s as mad ever) are back, while Oz (is director Bruce Seth Green the same as Seth Green? I bet he is!) continues to notice Willow while she’s dressed rather sexily. On that subject, incidentally, my reaction to seeing Alyson Hannigan in THAT outfit was the same as Buffy predicted for Xander and Angel.

Oh, and we’re introduced to Larry, and also to new baddie Ethan Rayne (surely the only British chap in all of history to be called Ethan…), who shares a mysterious past with Giles who, unlikely though it seems, has suddenly acquired a dark and mysterious past, along with the rather eyebrow-raising nickname of “Ripper”. He also proves to be rather better with his fists than hitherto suspected. I await further developments.

Incidentally, it’s established that Rayne worships the Roman god Janus, and his prayer seems to have real, magical effects. And yet Giles later describes Janus as “mythical”. What’s all that about, then?

Mostly, though, we have the conceit of people turning into the things represented by their Halloween costumes. I’m aware than Halloween costumes in Americas can be anything, and not just horror-themed stuff, but it still seems a little odd to see soldiers, pirates etc. Never mind that, though: this episode (by newcomer Carl Ellsworth) is basically using this conceit to examine gender roles, a fairly central theme for the show.

This is most obvious in what happens to Buffy, of course; Sarah Michelle Gellar shows what a great comic actress she is in playing a simpering, uneducated, fainting, frock-wearing damsel in distress who thinks a car is a demon and who is, rather obviously, the polar opposite of what Buffy’s character usually represents. Xander, meanwhile, finally gets to spend an episode as the alpha male and protector of the womenfolk. All this is nicely foreshadowed early on as Buffy somehow condemns Xander to social death by saving him from being beaten up by Larry. Boys are indeed fragile. All that said, though, I’m not sure the stuff about gender roles really goes any deeper than that. It’s fun, though.

Willow gets some character development, too. As Buffy points out (and this also happened in Inca Mummy Girl),whenever she dresses up she wants to hide as she’s too afraid and introverted to express herself although, of course, when she does, Oz fancies her like the clappers. Meanwhile, the Buffy / Angel romance continues to simmer.

And I should probably mention how good the comedy is, this being a comedy episode and all. I love the comic acting from Alyson Hannigan as Willow sneaks into the library to steal Giles’ diary.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Reptile Boy

2012-01-03T22:33:00.001Z

“Some guy’s attacking Buffy with a sword. Also, there’s a really big snake.”

Back to Buffy after my Christmas break, and the sheer Nineties-ness of the whole thing hits me immediately. It’s not the most fashionable of decades at the moment, is it? It’s old enough to be dated but not old enough to gain any of that retro cool. One day, perhaps, there will be Nineties-themes parties where we all wear faded jeans, lumberjack shirts and terrible hair. That day, alas, is yet to come.

Meanwhile, in the actual episode, we have one of the more obvious metaphors as a fraternity club is pretty much directly equivocated with those nasty, cowled, virgin-sacrificing cults that the horror genre seems to love so much. This leads to much subtext in which points are made regarding gender, age, social class and (in a rather puritanical way) alcohol.

…All of which leads to an abiding theme of these reviews, namely that I, a foreigner, know nothing about the many rituals of school and college life aside from what I’ve gleaned from popular culture. It’s all quite exotic to me. So, these fraternity things… they seem quite elitist, laddish and, well, uncool to me. Are they really such an elite thing as this episode seems to be saying? We seem to be literally told that they’re a disturbing cult and, while they may not literally sacrifice girls to an unconvincing-looking snake man, this is an obvious metaphor for their laddish abuse of women. God, I hate lad culture. I hate it almost as much as I love being old enough to ignore it and not care what anyone thinks. I’m a man, not a lad.

Er, anyway, ranting aside, there’s also an obvious class subtext here. First it pops up humorously, in pretty much all of the interactions between Cordelia and Buffy, but the way the frat boys abuse Xander, the most unambiguously working-class character, is downright sinister, and almost enough to drive one to Marxism. All the same, though, is this damning view of frat boy culture widely held in the US? There are times here where the imagery and subtext seem to border on conspiracy theory.

Oh, and isn’t there an excessively and disturbingly puritanical subtext to alcohol here? Buffy only symbolically “falls” once she drinks a cocktail (although, yes, there’s also a simultaneous rohypnol analogy here), and all the characters (who are sixteen or seventeen) speak of it as something utterly taboo. When I was sixteen my parents would let me have some wine or beer with a meal quite often, although admittedly this had a lot to do with my Dad’s ultimately successful campaign to impart his taste in beer unto the next generation. Oh, and there was also the underage drinking, but let’s gloss over that, shall we?

In other news, I completely adore the opening, as Buffy, Willow and Xander comment on a Bollywood musical. They should force them all to record a DVD commentary for every Bollywood film ever made. The campaign starts here. Also, Willow’s lecture to Giles and Angel on their treatment of Buffy (and her reaction afterwards!) is the best thing ever. I love Alyson Hannigan.

Jonathan gets an appearance, too. And this time he has a name!

Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia

2012-01-02T19:30:00.002Z

“You don’t trust your own secret service?”

“Naturally not. They spy on people for money.”

Well, what a very cheeky resolution to the cliffhanger that was. It was an anti-climax of sorts, but in such a knowing way that you’re too busy admiring the chutzpah to mind. I love the ringtone. In fact, although I wasn’t sure before, I think the silently mouthed “sorry” may have entirely won me over to Andrew Scott’s Moriarty.

This is as good as television gets. Let’s just take the superlatives and the gushing as read so we can talk about it, shall we? I’d just like to emphasise that, although the performances are uniformly great here (Mark Gatiss’ arch performance as Mycroft has also won me over at this point, and Steven Moffat’s script is extraordinary even for him, Paul McGuigan has to be singled out for special praise. He must surely be the finest director working in British TV. There are so many little tricks that take my brat away here, from the parade of clients at the start, the flashback to the mystery of the hiker with Sherlock discoursing to Irene, on her sofa, in the middle of the field (Douglas Adams, anyone?); to Sherlock’s subsequent change of location from the field to his bed, in one shot; to all those little tricks with text on the screen that we’ve come to know so well- I love the question marks! This is all shot as wittily as it is written.

There are so many threads to this intricate story from the very beginning, as we’re immediately bombarded with multiple problems, not all of which are red herrings. But the intricacy of the storyline doesn’t mean that character is at all neglected; in fact there’s loads of character development here. Sarah is long gone; John has since had a string of girlfriends, all of whom have dumped him because his most important relationship is clearly with Sherlock. Sherlock is shown to be much closer to Mrs Hudson than we’ve seen before. There are heavy hints, after Irene “dies”, that Sherlock may have a recurring habit of turning to some rather dodgy substances when emotionally low. John and Mycroft are clearly much better acquainted by now. But we can’t go any further without talking about Irene Adler.

Ah yes, “The Woman”. I’m not sure that such a vague “brand” name would be much good for a dominatrix advertising her services, but perhaps she doesn’t need to, and that’s the point. She’s such a brilliant and multi-faceted character, played to perfection by Lara Pulver. She’s Sherlock’s match, and literally, er, beats him at one point, but she isn’t quite his mirror image. She isn’t exactly a repressed “high-functioning psychopath” like Sherlock; she’s very self-controlled but emotionally relates to other people in a very normal way. It isn’t about the intellectual challenge for her; it’s about playing power games. And there’s a very sharp distinction between her and Moriarty, too. Moriarty is a disturbed psychopath, whereas Irene’s power games are obviously all about the fun, and even more obviously sexual in nature. She’s not interested in power for its own sake, but only in fun, and the slightly more mundane matter of personal protection through the possession of secrets. And she’s so, so sexy. I hope she’d be gentle with me, but I so would.

The “other woman” (and one we’ll be seeing a lot more of in future episodes, I expect) is Molly. And we seem to get an explicit contrast between her and Irene. She’s jealous, obviously (Sherlock “recognises Irene’s “body” through “not her face”), but her reaction to Sherlock’s faux pas at the Christmas party is very revealing; she seems to actively enjoy being on the receiving end of Sherlock’s unintended verbal humiliation. It’s hard not to see this as an obviously intentional binary opposition between her and Irene.

Oh, and his infatuation with “The Woman” leads to much dialogue speculating on Sherlock’s sexuality. It seems most likely to me that he’s asexual, and that his attraction to Irene is genuine but has nothing to do with squishy body parts and nothing to do with her gender. He’s capable of bonding with others to an extent (I love the conspiratorial naughtiness between him and John in the palace) but he seems to have no sexual urges at all. She obviously likes him, though, even though she never refers to him as anything other than “Mr Holmes”.

We have some wonderfully metatextual fun here, as always; the parade of cases at the start are blogged about by John under such titles as “The Speckled Blonde” and “The Geek Interpreter”. This is cool, although it also carries the worrying implication that Moffat believes there probably won’t be another series so he might as well use up the titles. Of similar coolness is the fact that Sherlock is always being mistakenly assumed to always wear a deerstalker, based on a single photograph! Even better is his very individual method of calling the police.

There’s a lot of delightfully cheeky lèse-majesté here, too. I love Sherlock’s quip about his illustrious client (there goes another title…) being “someone with a navy”, and the fun with the ashtray and God Save the Queen on the violin. I bet Brenda watched this, too! It would also be fun to speculate on which young, female royal Moffat had in mind, but I’m not touching that one with a bargepole.

The final fifteen minutes are pretty much orgasmic. The bang bang bang of inspired revelations is just exquisite, but not quite as cool as Mycroft’s observation that Sherlock chooses to use his intellect not to be a scientist or a philosopher, but a detective, and once wanted to be a pirate. He may be asexual, but he certainly has a romantic side. And this is the final thing we see, as swords flash in Karachi and rumours of Irene’s death are about to be exaggerated. This might be a little implausible, if we were to nit-pick, but it’s so, so cool, and the moment has so been earned. As I said, this is as good as television gets.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

2011-12-30T23:34:00.001Z

“A brass unicorn has been catapulted across a London street and impaled an eminent surgeon. Words fail me, gentlemen.”

This is the last review I’ll be doing in this strange, alcohol-fuelled, work-free interregnum between Christmas and New Year and, indeed, my last review of 2011. In 2012 I’ll go back to the usual schedule, continuing with the Buffyverse and (mostly) a film on Saturdays. I’ll also be reviewing certain programmes pretty much as they air in the UK- Doctor Who, obviously, but also, starting next week, Sherlock. In the meantime, here’s a fun little movie review that I didn’t have to think too hard about.

This is the perfect movie to watch if you have a certain sense of humour and you don’t want anything too heavy; this is a film that spends ninety minutes doing nothing but mocking its own tropes. Phibes (played, with the expected brilliance, by Vincent Price) has an absurd lack of any real motive for his ridiculously over-theatrical crimes, and that every little intricate little thing goes to plan is utterly unrealistic, but all of this is gleefully thrown in our faces; the film knows exactly what it’s doing. That Phibes is just a take on a certain archetype is shown near the end as he reveals his true, horrifying, Lon Chaney-esque face, and starts playing the organ in an obvious reference to Universal’s silent version of Phantom of the Opera. Yep, this is more of that metatextual fun that I love so much.

The police are hilarious, too; nice, decent, but with all the plodding incompetence that tradition leads us to expect from the Yard. For all that Trout (a great performance from Peter Jeffrey) is a thoroughly decent, put-upon chap (his interactions with his superior are the funniest thing about the film, mainly because his superior is only saying what the audience thinks!), he cocks every single thing up at every single opportunity.

All of the surgeons are subject to a certain amount of mockery too, and none more so than Terry-Thomas’ lecherous old man. This is not a film that exactly treats authority figures with respect; in fact the gleeful grotesqueness of the various methods of dispatch is the film’s main selling point, as the audience has fun trying to guess how the theme of the Ten Plagues of Egypt, revealed quite earlier on, will show itself in the murders. The chap being impaled by a brass unicorn is the best, but many of them are quite horrific, especially the frog mask. Given the otherwise light tone of the film, there’s something particularly nasty about this.

Still, it’s a superbly entertaining, and rather undemanding, piece of entertainment. One thing, though; who was Vulnavia?

Doctor Who: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe

2011-12-28T23:38:00.003Z

“Cyril! What have I told you about opening your presents early? Something like this was bound to happen!”

This is the seventh Christmas special since Doctor Who came back in 2005; it’s become quite the seasonal institution. And it’s established itself as something quite distinct from a regular episode; Doctor Who should always primarily be aimed at a general family audience rather than us fans, but never is this truer than on Christmas Day, when most people all bunged up with food and on at least their second glass of wine. What’s needed is a nice, uplifting blockbuster movie type thing that’s easy to follow for the semi-inebriated, of which I was definitely one; re-watching it with pen, paper and no wine was a very different experience.

(Incidentally, we actually live paused this for thirty minutes while we finished our game of Scrabble. The last two nights have been epic, alcohol-fuelled sessions of Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit until the wee small hours. This is my first alcohol-free night since December 23^rd and will probably be my last alcohol-free day of 2011. What a time of year, eh?)

There’s another Christmas tradition that seems to have established itself over the years, too: the Doctor, travelling alone, has a one-off adventure with a guest star in which he discovers the importance of family and friends. It really ought to get tired, but good writing from RTD and now the Moff has generally ensured that it doesn’t. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves; we begin with some rather good CGI, some music from Murray Gold that clearly signifies this as a blockbuster family movie, and some nice comic scenes. We’re introduced to guest star Claire Skinner of Outnumbered (which I’d seen for the first time earlier that day- rather good!) as the terribly British yet resourceful Madge, Alexander Armstrong in a surprisingly small role (as are Bill Bailey and Arabella Weir), and the two children, Lily and Cyril. The family dynamic is quickly and very wittily established in some superb dialogue from the Moff, and we like these characters immediately. But Christmas seems set to be ruined; Madge has received a telegram, stating that her husband is missing, presumed dead.

Just as entertaining are the scenes in which the Doctor introduces the three of them to the fantastic alterations he’s made to all the rooms. One might perhaps quibble at how the Doctor has the resources to do all this but that would be churlish, I think; it’s Christmas and it’s cool. And Matt Smith is amazing in these scenes. Yet he’s just as good in a more serious context, as he gently comforts Madge about her husband’s death and the terrible responsibility of informing her children.

The concept of a wardrobe leading to another room is, er, not entirely original, and tends to give rise to the temptation to see Christian subtexts which aren’t there. There’s a real temptation to the alien forest of real Christmas teams, even if this is a curiously benign alien world, devoid of any real threat at this point, in which it’s safe for a child to wonder. One might pause to tut at the Doctor allowing a child to wander somewhere dangerous through his own negligence but, again, it’s Christmas and it’s cool.

Fanwank alert: this planet is Androzani Major, in spite of the lack of obvious references to The Caves of Androzani, and the year is 5345, although how this fits into the other story’s timeline is anyone’s guess. The people who impart this information are, of course, quickly outsmarted by Madge, who is easily the coolest character in this. Serves them right; they want to “melt” this forest with acid rain to make “battery fluid”.

The ending, with females and particularly mothers being “strong”, is cool, and Madge quite simply rules, but I suppose I ought to say something about the sexual politics of this, as a brief glance at Gallifrey Base (and I really do mean just a glance at thread titles) indicates that it’s being discussed. Personally, although it’s obvious that the role of mother is being celebrated, I don’t see any wider indication that women are being defined only in relation to this, or that patriarchal structures are being reinforced in any way. It’s just a tribute to motherhood, and quite a cool one.

That Madge’s husband hasn’t in fact died is a little soppy, but also inevitable and satisfying, and it’s good to see Amy and Rory again. Also cool is that this is one of those Christmases where the Doctor does stay for Christmas dinner.

I liked that. It’s Christmas and it’s cool.

Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966)

2011-12-27T13:49:00.005Z

“Back in the cell?”

Unlike its predecessor, I’d never seen this film before. Like its predecessor, though, it’s based on a rather flawed, if generally ok, television story by Terry Nation. Inevitably, given the source material, this is a much darker film, and there’s a certain awkwardness to this. It isn’t as good a film as its predecessor.

Again, the Daleks look much more impressive on the big screen, and there are loads of them. Their voices have improved considerably, although the fact that we see them on location means the smoke fired by their guns looks rubbish. The flying saucer, while much more impressive than the TV version, is nevertheless much less cool in design. Interestingly, though, they aren’t really much more of a focus than they were in the previous film, in spite of the fact that we now have no “Dr. Who and” in the title. So much for that thing we’re supposed to call “Dalekmania”.

The best thing about the film is, of course, the great Bernard Cribbins, as policeman Tom Campbell from an England of 1966 where posters advertise holidays in Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal. Lovely. He’s essentially playing the same type of character as Roy Castle, but more successfully as he’s a much more accomplished physical comedian; the extended mime sequence with the Robomen (who appear to be wearing gimp suits) is priceless. The other new character, Dr. Who’s niece Louise Who(?!), is a personality-free zone, but in that regard there’s no difference between her and Barbara.

Peter Cushing is a little more subdued here than in Dr. Who and the Daleks, not quite phoning it in but not quite firing on all cylinders, either. It’s also oddly disappointing to hear him referred to as “the Doctor”: David Whitaker’s influence on the script, no doubt. I suspect, given how faithful to its source material the original film was, that he is also responsible for the slight deviations from the original plot, in particular the combinations of people who get split up at which times.

For a deserted Earth, there’s an awful lot of product placement around- it’s good to know that Sugar Puffs are still popular in 2150. But the whole effect of the way the deserted Earth looks, along with the contemporary clothing, means that the highly evocative themes and imagery of World War Two Nazi occupation are no less evident here than in the televised original. Philip Madoc as the black marketer, and Eileen Way as the collaborator, particularly shine in their portrayal of character types which are very familiar from tales of Nazi occupation. All of this would have had much more resonance back in 1966, when much of London was still covered in bombed-out craters, than it is now, but we seem to be entering some rather less stable times in the Europe of 2012 than in 1966: a sobering thought.

The Daleks’ plan is very slightly less bonkers than in the original- at least they now have a reason for piloting the Earth around the Galaxy, rubbish though it is. And there’s now a reason why they suddenly all die at the end, even if it’s bobbins. Unfortunately, though, the film just isn’t that good; the four leads just look out of place in such a gritty tale, and the fact that Susan is a child is particularly awkward.

(And yes, I'll get round to The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe before the New Year!)

Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)

2011-12-23T22:49:00.004Z

“If they call us monsters…. What must they be like?”

I’ve reviewed every single episode of Doctor Who on this blog. Why on Earth did it take me so long to get round to watching this? Well, it was the lack of subtitles on the DVD, which is a pretty poor state of affairs for a DVD release. I’m not all that deaf, but lack of subtitles does tend to be something of a deterrent. Fortunately, though, the dialogue here is very clear and easy to follow.

Anyway, the film… Steven Moffat has recently given interviews in which he firmly (and clearly with the support of senior BBC bods; he wouldn’t be using words like “off-message” otherwise) squishes the idea that any hypothetical new film of Doctor Who might ignore the continuity of the television show, because that would “insult the audience.” I’m not sure he’s right for the right reasons, but I think he’s right to be wary of the idea; what if the film was successful and the new continuity came to obliterate the old? On the other hand, why make a two hour film based on the existing series when you could make thirteen episodes and a Christmas special? I don’t really see much sense in doing a film at all. We no longer live in an age where film is necessarily considered the superior medium, in any case.

And yet… it has been done before. And it seems to have done no harm to the TV show, wary though I am of taking this as a precedent. It’s not the best film ever made (mainly because the TV story on which it was based, Terry Nation’s The Daleks, isn’t the greatest story ever told), but it’s utterly fascinating to watch. I first saw this back in 1988, aged eleven, when I rented it from my local video shop. I’d become a Doctor Who fan just weeks earlier, catching the broadcast of part two of Remembrance of the Daleks, and I wouldn’t see The Daleks until Christmas Day 1989. I hated the film; it didn’t seem like Doctor Who at all. In hindsight, the reasons for this are rather interesting.

To begin with, this is bound to offend those with an excessive regard for “canon”. It simply doesn’t fit our conception of what Doctor Who is. The Doctor is a human scientist, who invented the TARDIS (which seems here to have mislaid its definite article) himself, and our four time travellers are not heroes but bumbling travellers. And yet, in 1965, neither of these things (perhaps the second, but only up to a point) was in any way inconsistent with what the audience had seen on their TV screen.

It’s rather difficult to judge Peter Cushing’s performance as the Doctor- or, rather, Dr. Who, as I shall have to get used to calling him; I’m usually the first to start winding up people who insist that “Doctor Who” is not the name of the character, but nevertheless it’s an assumption I tend to make for everyday purposes. Cushing is not playing a new version of the character, as per Troughton, Pertwee etc; he’s playing a version of the character Hartnell was playing on television, and that’s an important distinction. The concept of recasting the lead- regeneration, renewal, rejuvenation, whatever- had at this point occurred to no one, except possibly John Wiles. Cushing is playing the Doctor exactly as Hartnell did, albeit the cuddlier side of the character, with most rough edges removed. That makes it rather difficult to evaluate his performance, but he certainly has the charisma, even if he’s necessarily unable to put his personal stamp on the role, not being given the freedom allowed to Troughton or his successors.

The other three regulars are very different, too; Barbara (Barbara Who?!) is Dr. Who’s granddaughter, alongside Susan (Susie Who?), meaning that Dr. Who looks rather young for someone with a granddaughter in her twenties. Susan is very clever; Barbara, sadly, has no particular character traits. Ian is an accident prone Yorkshireman, here essentially to provide the comic relief. He isn’t so much the leading man as is his TV equivalent.

Oh, and TARDIS (no definite article, remember?) seems to work by disassembling particles and re-assembling them. This means, of course, that all four leads are instantly killed within the first five minutes, with copies of themselves having all those adventures on Skaro (although the planet isn’t named?), until they in turn all die at the end, and some second generation copies watch some stock footage of Romans.

The whole thing looks glorious in its Technicolor mid-Sixtiesness. It’s dated enormously, but that’s part of its charm; who can fail to be enchanted by the sight of Dr. Who reading The Eagle? There’s a sense of scale, too; the sets look much larger at Shepperton Studios than they did at Lime Grove, where most of them seemed about the size of the room I’m typing this in. The Daleks are also huge, impressive-looking, and there are loads of them, with nary a cardboard cut-out in sight. Admittedly, they do rather tend to spend all their time telling other Daleks things they already know for the benefit of the audience (something which, I believe, is known over on TV Tropes as “As You Know, Bob”), very…..very…..slowly….

Still, the cinematic scale also removes some of the coolness. The Dalek city doesn’t look anywhere as cool as the Expressionist original (although I like the moving eyestalks) and the orchestral score isn’t a patch on Tristram Cary. And other things are just different; the Thals look much, much gayer with all that make-up, and Antodus doesn’t die after falling down that chasm, as Milton Subotsky is rather more forgiving to his characters than Terry Nation. Mind you, the chasm looks far scarier than it did on the telly.

The climax is a bit sudden and dodgy, I suppose; this must be the slowest countdown ever, and the mighty Daleks are essentially defeated by a bit of pushing and shoving. This isn’t a great film; it’s rather formulaic and lacking in vim. But it’s entertaining enough.

Incidentally, a very Merry Christmas to all of you at home!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Inca Mummy Girl

2011-12-20T21:03:00.003Z

“So, Ampata. You’re a girl.”

“For many years now.”

Buffy has done an episode based on The Invisible Man and Frankenstein. What classic Universal style horror tropes are still left? Well, there’s werewolves (oh, and Oz gets his first appearance here) and… oh yes, mummies.

This episode follows the tropes pretty closely, really- we have a sarcophagus, an inscription and even a museum. The mummy may be Incan rather than Egyptian, but otherwise everything is just as we would expect, except for one nice touch: the genders are reversed. The mummy is a girl this time, while the traditionally feminine role of the semi-brainwashed love interest goes to Xander.

There’s more, though. The mummy is a sixteen year old Inca princess, a human sacrifice who just wants to live a normal life, but can’t because she’s the Chosen One and must make huge sacrifices. Parallel much? The parallels between her and Buffy are very explicit, probably too explicit. But there are differences. On the one hand, Ampata actually kills people so she can stay alive but, on the other, she’s very, very innocent and sympathetic, very different from the savvy valley girl she’s being contrasted with.

This episode is much underrated, I think. Not only is it a nice use of a trope that’s fun to see in Buffy, it’s also a good character episode. Xander, for once, gets to realise that, actually, being a nice guy, he can be attractive to nice girls, in spite of the paralysing lack of confidence that afflicts all teenage boys (“You’re not a praying mantis, are you?”). Speaking as an ex-teenage boy, I’m very much of the opinion that teenage boys who don’t feel this crippling sense of self-doubt when it comes to the opposite (or indeed same) sex should be shot. It’s only fair on the others.

We clearly have another direction looming for Willow’s character, too. Two things happen, significantly, in the same episode: she comes to realise, sort of, that she’s not going to get anywhere with Xander, and Oz, making his first appearance, very much notices her. It’s not hard to see where this is headed.

Oz is an interesting character in the context of this American High School thing where everybody is supposed to fit into some sort of pre-defined category- jock, nerd, stoner, etc. Or at least it seems to this foreigner, whose experience of the American High School is drawn entirely from popular culture. Oz doesn’t fit into this: he’s the type who, because he plays guitar in a band and knows his music, is considered cool without being a jock, and is even allowed a certain measure of geekiness while retaining his coolness quota. How does all this work, exactly?

Oh, and another character makes his debut in a low-key cameo: Jonathan. It’s moments like this that you only notice while marathoning the Buffyverse for a second time. And I’m also noticing that all kinds of arc-related character things have kicked off already…

(Oh, and this is my last regular blog post until the New Year, when things will be back to normal. Christmas stuff, you know. There will probably be the odd posrt here and threre- and I'm certainly blogging Christmas Day's episode of Doctor Who not long after it airs- but don't expect anything like a regular schedule until January 2nd.)

Black Mirror: The Entire History of You

2011-12-19T20:34:00.000Z

“Not everything that isn’t true is a lie, Liam.”

This is so, so clever. It takes a central conceit (what if you could play back your memories at any time via a “grain”, either in your head or on a screen to others?), and then turns it around and examines it from every conceivable angle. And some of the consequences are huge.

In some ways, Liam and Fi live in a very recognisable middle-class world of appraisals and dinner parties, but their world is subtly different, with very little concept of privacy or civil liberties. You can’t get on a plane without having your memories scanned. You can’t even report a serious crime to the police without providing identification. Children can retrospectively sue their parents for disadvantaging them through a poor upbringing. These people don’t live in anything vaguely resembling a free society; the “grain” makes that impossible.

The crucial exposition, which underlines the way the “grain” works, is the big dinner party scene, and this is underlined, of course, by the fact that Liam plays back parts of it so many times. The character of Helen, who chooses to go without a “grain”, is more or less the control in this experiment, and the voice of the viewer, generally speaking. The reasons behind her abstinence are, of course, horrifying; to be “gouged” (interesting word!), and to have the chip containing a perfect record of all your memories stolen, brings a whole new meaning to the phrase “identity theft”, and is about as terrifying a thing I can imagine. But Helen’s philosophical perspective is interesting, and is a microcosm of the play’s theme; perhaps it’s a good thing that our memories should be fuzzy and unreliable, as this allows us to cope with life.

This whole theme is illustrated by a simple tale of sexual jealousy. Because he can “re-do” this dinner party conversation as many times as he likes, Liam comes to suspect (correctly) that Jonas, a somewhat crude character whom he dislikes, is his wife’s ex. He’s able to indulge his increasing obsession by analysing every little thing and discover truths that should have remained unburied. Things spiral to the point where he drinks and drives, starts sounding much more Northern, commits a serious violent assault, crashes his car, comes to doubt that his daughter is his own, and has a massive row with his wife. Eventually he’s driven to remove his “grain” in way seems a rather painful way. All of this is relatively straightforward and even, as far as the conclusion is concerned, even a little underwhelming and lacking in impact.

But none of that is the reason why this is such a brilliant play. It’s the little things that underpin it all. Sex, for example, is completely stripped of meaning. We see what seems to be a sex scene with Fi riding Liam, but it’s then revealed that they’re both reliving the memory together, and finish by having very real orgasms. The line between sex and masturbation has become blurred. This being the case, when Jonas replays the memories of sex with Fi, it feels to Liam as though the other man really is sleeping with his wife. Sex may be devalued (as made clear by Liam’s big speech at the dinner party), but sexual jealousy is magnified hugely.

No one has any privacy; Liam is almost forced to play out the scene of his appraisal at the party. Life is much more stressful, as there is no much more opportunity to obsess over slights. The play is a warning, I suppose, of the need for civil liberties to keep up with technology. There are reasons to be very fearful that they won’t.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: School Hard

2011-12-18T19:38:00.002Z

“From now on we’re going to have a little less ritual and a lot more fun around here.”

At last we’ve reached School Hard. I was worried for a while that I wouldn’t get to it before Christmas, but here we are. This is a massive milestone and in some ways a reboot of the entire series; up to now the baddies have been rather clichéd, hierarchical and obsessed with ceremonies and other such things. They’ve been more than a little perfunctory, frankly. And this has been entirely appropriate; the show needed to establish the premise and the characters. It made sense to keep the baddies a little dull and perfunctory for a while, plus this very dullness allowed for the occasional bit of metatextual silliness about how predictable and trope-ridden the vampires were. All that ends here.

Spike is magnificent; charismatic, cool, irreverent, wearing a black leather trenchcoat which is, er, a bit like mine, and completely rewriting our ideas about how vampires are supposed to behave. He has absolutely no time for the kinds of rituals and ceremonies that have dominated vampire behaviour in Buffy this point and just wants to have some gloriously chaotic fun. There’s quite a parallel with what punk rock did to music in the ‘70s, so it’s appropriate that Spike should come across like a kind of blond Sid Vicious. He gets all the best lines, too (“Please! If every vampire who said he was at the Crucifixion was actually there, it would have been like Woodstock.”).

James Marsters is amazing here; he just owns the screen. The accent isn’t quite perfect (he has particular trouble with his flat o’s, as in “not”), but that’s easily explained away if we suppose that Spike has spent quite some time in the United States. On the other hand, it sounds a bit modern and estuarised for someone who hasn’t lived in Britain for a while, but we mustn’t be picky. The mannerisms are all there from the start, and the contrast with the vampires we’ve seen thus far is huge.

Just as amazing is Juliet Landau as the uber-gothic and wonderfully mad Drusilla, who comes across like a character from Alice in Wonderland (“Do you like daisies? I plant them but they always die.”), especially with her dolls. It seems appropriate that she should be named after the Emperor Caligula’s favourite sister. She’s gloriously, sexually evil and the little erotic touches between her and Spike really highlight their amazing chemistry. This season is going to be fun.

Of course, this episode isn’t all Spike and Drusilla. The theme here is all the different lives that Buffy has to juggle (at least three, as she mentions), while somehow keeping them apart against all odds. It’s stressful and horrible to be a teenage girl, and this episode just piles on the pressure. We begin with Snyder piling extra pressure on Buffy by forcing her to arrange the parent / teacher evening or be expelled, which sets the benchmark. Later on we get two scenes in quick succession which pile on the pressure even more. Joyce reminds her daughter that she’s made sacrifices in moving towns, starting a new business and a new life, all because of her daughter’s behaviour in LA. Worse, she tells Buffy that she doesn’t want to be disappointed again, a horrible thing to hear.

As if this wasn’t enough (she’s already mixing up studying with her social life at the Bronze to fit everything in), along comes Giles, in the very next scene, with dire warnings about this St Vigeous thing on Saturday. The pressures on her have never been more intense. Her life is very complicated and this must be overwhelming for a teenage girl. And yet… it’s her mother who ultimately saves her from Spike, and Spike refers to the fact that she has a life as a strength.

Although, of course, there's an obvious parallel with John Maclean, of Die Hard fame, a similarly put-upon individual from the film which obviously inspired this episode.

Other interesting stuff happens, too. Joyce and Snyder meet for the first time, and clearly don’t like each other. And our hints that Snyder knows more than he’s letting on are confirmed at the end of the episode, as he and a senior police officer discuss a cover-up of what happened at the school. I wasn’t expecting this to happen quite so early.

Oh, and we have Angel pretending to be his evil former self, Angelus. How very interesting. We’re also told that Angelus “sired” Spike, and I think it’s pretty obvious what that means.

This is a pivotal episode, where the show really changes gears. The arrival of Spike and Drusilla has instantly made things seem more exciting, dangerous and fun, but perhaps equally important is the gradual emergence from the shadows of characters such as Joyce and Snyder.

The Stone Tape

2011-12-17T22:21:00.003Z

“A ghost is a mass of data waiting for a correct interpretation.”

I usually do films on Saturdays, but I suppose a one-off television play will just about do. It’s appropriate for the time of year, too; this was originally commissioned in 1972 as a Christmas ghost story. It’s the first drama by Nigel Kneale that I’ve reviewed on this blog, but it certainly won’t be the last. It’s also the first thing I’ve watched without subtitles for this blog (I’m a little hard of hearing) since those episodes of Doctor Who which had yet to get a DVD release. I don’t need them, exactly, but I’ve become used to being spoiled and not having to miss any lines of dialogue, so it’s become very annoying to have to suffer that here, at times. For a DVD release to neglect the subtitles is unforgiveable.

There’s something about the culture shock inherent in watching older dramas that makes them particularly interesting to write about. Here we have a bunch of characters who smoke all the time, drink whisky while they’re working, and wear… interesting clothes. The entire concept of a recording medium to replace magnetic tape is, of course, ancient. Peter’s attitude towards Jill is frequently quite eye-poppingly sexist. The vicar has an old-fashioned and incomprehensible Rowley Birkin-style way of speaking. We even get a full-on racist impression of a Japanese person which made my jaw hit the floor. The past is indeed a foreign country.

Aside from the fact that it’s dated, though, it hasn’t dated. The performances are great, with an extraordinarily intense Jane Asher putting in a superlative performance, and Michael Bryant convincingly playing a gradual descent into obsession. Peter is one of those men who seem to belong in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s; forthright, intelligent without being posh, meritocratic, a little bit bohemian, and dressed very much of the era- a bit of a cross between Alfie and Roger from The Great Escape. The direction is great, too; this doesn’t look at all like the static, multi-camera ‘70s stuff you’d expect.

But the main star here is Kneale’s script, which lets the characters breathe and gives us moments of humour while gradually building up the tension towards the incredible climax. The central concept is great; ghosts are in fact recordings, in stone, of emotionally intense moments. But there’s a twist, of course, and the revelation that there is in fact something ancient and malevolent behind this phenomenon is brilliantly shown just by the use of red lights. The final twist- that Jill takes the place of the erased ghost- is amazing.

As I’ve mentioned before, I haven’t any belief in the supernatural whatsoever, and some amount of such a belief is pretty much a precondition for being scared by this sort of thing. So it’s no criticism to say that I wasn’t scared, exactly. But I was riveted by the tension and the inexorable sense that things were heading towards an inevitable and horrible conclusion. Kneale may be a little dry as a writer (I found it very hard indeed to come up with an opening quote), but he’s an absolute master of storytelling.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer : Some Assembly Required

2011-12-14T22:08:00.001Z

“Sorry, but I'm an old-fashioned gal. I was raised to believe that men dig up the corpses and the women have the babies.”

So, we get the inevitable Buffy take on Frankenstein. A pretty good one too, really, although I don’t think this is exactly the best or most significant episode. It’s interesting in the sense that Frankenstein is pretty much science fiction, but it’s pretty much the only piece of sci-fi as opposed to fantasy (aside from Out of Mind, Out of Sight which it now occurs to me long after the fact, was a rather neat take on The Invisible Man) that Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with its horror aesthetic, is allowed to do.

There are a few little nods to the source material, aside from the basic plot: Cordelia’s scream at the sight of Darryl reminds me very much of Bride of Frankenstein, while the whole thing inevitably ends with a burning building. Even the scientific basis for re-animating a corpse maintains a charmingly early nineteenth-century reliance on that exotic phenomenon, electricity.

There’s also a bit of social commentary here, in that some men, who surely can’t possibly get anything out of sex that they don’t get from masturbation with this attitude, just want women to be pliable sex objects (Darryl), hence rape, abuse and such things. Also there’s a general “laddish” culture which leads lots of other men to acquiesce in this (our two teenage Victor Frankensteins). This isn’t made much of, but it’s there.

Back to Buffy itself, though… as the dialogue towards the end implies, this is the episode where people start to pair off in proto-relationships, which all feels like setting-up for later in the season. Giles and Jenny are now a couple, and Buffy is beginning to re-connect with Angel. Only Xander and Willow, significantly, are not involved with anyone, and their own “will-they-won’t-they” thing is definitely stuck on the “won’t-they” part of the dial at the moment. And Cordelia seems genuinely grateful to Xander for saving her life in a way which genuinely is “brave and heroic”. It’s almost as though she sees him in a new light, in spite of the rather rude rebuff. Of course, nothing will come of it. And the relationships which are being set up are bound to end up happily. That always happens in Joss Whedon shows, right?

I like that it’s Jenny, completely unflustered, who asks out a stuttering Giles. Odd to invite him to a game of American Football, though; trust me, I’m a countryman of his. He won’t have a clue what’s going on. Although I have to say that, amusing though Giles comment comparing American football to Rugby may be, I’m going to fail the patriotism test on this one, I’m afraid. Rugby is rubbish, and overcomplicated, and boring. It keeps stopping and starting, it doesn’t flow properly, it’s really boring to watch and it totally lacks the elegance of cricket or football. Oh, and both the oval “ball” and the silly h-shaped goal are both blatantly just being different for the sake of it.

Having said that, though, all sport is boring. Except for the Olympics. And sometimes cricket. If I happen to be in the mood. Everything else is rubbish, so nyaaah.

Next up is a rather significant episode, so I expect to be spending much more time actually talking about it...!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: When She Was Bad

2011-12-13T22:33:00.004Z

"There are some things I can just smell. It's like a sixth sense."

"No, actually that would be one of the five."

This is a bit of a perfunctory season opener, I suppose. It isn’t much to write home about, but it does what it’s supposed to, namely remind us what this series is about in case we’ve forgotten during the gap since the first season ended.

Buffy acting like a bit of a bitch because of her unresolved “issues” over “dying” don’t exactly ring very true, mainly because the reset button is pressed at the end and none of this can exactly be classed as character development. Nevertheless, there’s cool stuff in you look for it. The first seeds of the inevitable Willow / Xander relationship are sown, while Snyder continues to be hilarious, once again balancing menace and comic relief perfectly. It’s also nice to see that Cordelia, while still very much the vacuous queen bee on the surface, has enough intelligence not to go into denial about what happened just before the summer. It’s also nice that she should reveal a glimpse of her not-vacuous inner self as she calls out Buffy for her behaviour outside the Bronze. There’s actually a deeper and more likeable character inside, although of course we all love the surface Cordelia’s dialogue. Long may she reign.

There are a couple of very nice bits of metatextual fun in this episode, too. For a start, Buffy pretty much says out loud that the vampires and demons have taken the Summer off, out of sheer plot convenience, so that she can stay in LA with her dad! And the last shot leaves us in no doubt that Joss Whedon is well aware that the Anointed One is a rubbish villain. We shall have to look elsewhere for our Big Bad of the season.

Speaking of whom… I notice that David Boreanaz has now made it into the opening titles. Robia LaMorte hasn’t, but it still seems as though the expanded Scooby Gang is here to stay. And it’s very, very obvious that there are now sparks flying between Jenny and Giles.

Other than that, there isn’t much to say about this episode. I suppose Buffy’s “journey” (much though I hate to use the word like that!) is a bit of a microcosm of her character arc from last season in that she rejects the help of her civilian friends only to prevail by accepting them. I trust she’ll be back to normal this episode, although her out-of-character behaviour was cool for one thing; I love the bit where she goes all Batman and starts beating up random vampires for details on where her friends are being held!

Black Mirror: 15 Million Merits

2011-12-12T22:07:00.000Z

“That throat cutting thing? Neat gimmick.”

Wow. So much to talk about, most of which will only occur to me once this post is finished. That was proper good telly, that was; Nigel Kneale for the age of YouTube, iPhones and bloody X-Factor. How ironic that the best and most cutting statement about Britain in 2011 should come from something so old-fashioned as a one-off teleplay.

This feels very Charlie Brooker, but I suspect much of it (it’s hard to tell- I have no other script by her with which to compare) is by his missus, Ex-Blue Peter presenter and person with X-Factor related baggage Konnie Huq. Unlike last week’s, though, it’s a very human story. Daniel Kaluuya is superb as Bing (his name is a reference to modern tech in itself), our everyman. He’s a very subtle character, hardly uttering a word for most of the story and expressing his disquiet with his surroundings by means of passivity and inaction. It says a lot about him that we don’t even learn his name until we’re some way in. This gives him a certain nobility of character. Unlike most of his neighbours in this depressing world, he maintains a sense of feeling and authenticity. And yet, as we see, his fine feelings are ultimately rendered meaningless as he eventually learns, if not to love Big Brother, then to be co-opted by it, and to take his soma.

This is such a depressing existence, in which everyone lives in small cells and spends their days pointlessly cycling nowhere so they can earn credits with which to buy crap. There is no joy, no social interaction, and no attachment to the physical- everyone wears dull; grey clothing and even bits of origami are confiscated as “detritus”. Worst of all, people are forced to watch adverts for the crudest of porn and the tackiest of light entertainment shows, and heed to actively pay to opt out. Life exists to a constant soundtrack of the most awful and cynical of chart pop. There’s no fast-forwarding through the adverts in this society, and no peace, time to think, or to be truly alone. Significantly, Bings’s moment of connection with Abi, as her avatar blows him a kiss, is interrupted by porn.

Ah yes, Abi. I don’t watch The X-Factor, but I really, really don’t like these sorts of talent shows, It isn’t just snobbery (Although I really, really hate the way that this sort of thing is once again reducing pop music to the culture of the exploitative Svengali figure, after we all thought the Beatles had slain that particular dragon back in the ‘60s by writing their own songs. I exaggerate, but still.)- it’s the cruelty, the element of public humiliation, that I have often found just too upsetting to watch. And that’s what’s skewered here; poor Abi’s dream is cruelly reduced to a life of pimped sexual exploitation, alleviated only by drugs. It’s not difficult to see the metaphor here, or the implied comment on the ultimate fate that awaits the winners of these talent shows. And Jessica Brown Findlay is devastatingly good at portraying the sheer horror of Abi’s life as a “star”.

This is tyranny, all right, but it’s the tyranny of conformity, as expressed by Bing’s horrible neighbour on the exercise bikes, and by the reaction of the crowds. Bing’s final speech is wonderfully eloquent, and all the more effective coming from someone so passive and quiet. But he, like everyone, is co-opted, and the shard of glass he places to his neck is eventually reduced to a mere prop.

This is extraordinary stuff. It’s bleak, it’s brilliant and it’s Brooker.

Two Doctor Who missing episodes found!!!

2011-12-11T23:31:00.003Z

In case you didn't know, the comnplete third episode of Galaxy Four (Air Lock) and the second episode of The Underwater Menace have been returned to the archives. More details here.

I won't pretend that these particular episodes were the most eagerly-awaited, but any episode recovery is wonderful news, and it's particularly great to get such an early Troughton episode returned. His performance was all in the visual nuances and it's been so frustrating not to see this developing in his earlier episodes.

It'll probably be a while until I see the recovered episodes, but I'll be adding an extra bit on to the end of the relevant blog posts when I do.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Prophecy Girl

2011-12-11T19:51:00.003Z

“I may be dead, but I’m still pretty.”

Let’s talk about first seasons, shall we? Because I’m well aware that this season doesn’t have too good a reputation among fans, and I don’t think this is fair. First seasons are different, and they’re not quite doing the same job as subsequent seasons. The show’s premise has to be established, we have to get to know the characters, and everything which we will later take for granted has to be set up. This season does all of that brilliantly.

It’s very obvious, watching this season finale, that all the stuff about the Master, the prophecy, the Anointed One, etc, is more than a little perfunctory and predictable- as the show will cheerfully admit in about three episodes’ time. But it would be a mistake to see this as a problem. It’s actually a wise move for the season arc to take a back seat while we learn about this show, its rules and its tropes, and get to know and love these brilliant characters.

So yes, the Master is an off-the-shelf villain, but he’s supposed to be. And, wonderfully, he knows he is, as the end of this episode’s teaser makes clear. And yes, the nature of his plan is a bit ho-hum, but it’s supposed to be. Because this series finale is essentially about the characters- pulling them apart from each other and then finishing off with the gang as strong as before.

One by one they all alienate each other. Xander asks Buffy to the “Spring Thing” (another of these traditional events which seem to punctuate life in an American High School!) and she turns him down. He takes it badly. He’s unreasonable, of course, but rejection is a lot more crushing when you’re a teenage boy. I know; I was one. As I keep saying, being a teenager is horrible.

Things now get even worse as Xander unthinkingly asks Willow to go with him instead as an obvious second choice. Oops. And, just to ensure that all the Scoobies are alienated from each other completely, Buffy overhears Giles and Angel discussing the prophecy of her imminent death. She, er, doesn’t take the news at all well.

We get a nice scene with Joyce here which makes it clear what the metaphor is; stress about who to go to the prom with is, like, the end of the world if you’re a teenager. Er, how subtle. But it was right that Joyce should appear (all the other semi-regulars are present and correct; Jenny Callendar gets her second appearance and is seemingly integrated properly into the team), and this is probably the best way to do it.

It’s Willow’s upset at seeing the world of the vampires invade her own sanctuary, killing two boys she knows in a place she knows well, that leads Buffy to snap out of her state of denial and decide to go ahead and do the hero thing. Giles, bless him, insists in going in her place, but there was only one person who was going to win that argument.

It’s fascinating that Xander and Angel, rivals for Buffy’s affections, should be thrust together and should find Buffy’s body once she’s been killed by the Master. Interesting, too that Angel as a vampire is unable to perform CPR and that Xander has to do it. I can’t help thinking that there are… other things… that a vampire may not be able to do and that they might not quite be able to cut it as sexual partners. There are things like, er, blood circulation to consider…

Anyway, Buffy is revived. Which is a bit of a problem, really. If she can be revived by CPR then she was never actually dead and it’s a bit of a cop-out to treat this as the fulfilment of the prophecy. She didn’t die, simple as.

We get a nice, epic finale, though, with loads of vampires and the school library under siege from a Muppet Hellmouth. The Master is dead and everyone is off to the Bronze. Including Jenny (who clearly has something going with Giles) and Cordelia, who is now definitely a full semi-member of the gang.

The Omen (1976)

2011-12-10T22:03:00.001Z

“When the Jews return to Zion
And a comet rips the sky
And the Holy Roman Empire rises,
Then you and I must die.
From the eternal sea he rises,
Creating armies on either shore,
Turning man against his brother
Till man exists no more.”

…And no, that poem isn’t real, it was made up for the film.

I’m not really what you’d call the most suitable person to review a horror film like this. Yes, I’ve done a few camp Hammers and Universals, but this is the first time I’ve done one which is supposed to scare you witless. But the thing is that I just don’t believe in anything supernatural- I’m the ultimate sceptic. Plus, I’m as atheist as they come- not the Richard Dawkins kind, mind. I just wasn’t brought up to be religious, I live in a fairly secular part of the world, and I’m one of those people who are simply unable to accept the existence of a higher being without actual physical evidence. The upshot of which is that films like this, which are reliant on at least some belief in the Devil and in predestination, just don’t scare me. Now, slasher movies, on the other hand…

None of this means I can’t appreciate when this sort of thing is done well, however, and it’s done brilliantly here. And, although Gregory Peck is always the most straightforwardly decent and heroic of leading men, there’s still a bit of camp horror here in the wonderfully over-the-top deaths of Father Brennan (the wonderful Patrick Troughton, whom we Doctor Who fans know to be a first-rate actor) and Keith (a shockingly young-looking David Warner).Plus, watching the film now, the atmosphere is a little diminished by the sheer retro pleasure that is the extreme 1970’s-ness of it all.

It’s a superbly taut script, with the first few scenes establishing the situation very quickly and economically, and unapologetically giving us a cast with fairly superficial; personalities so that we can focus on the plot. We’re given an image of a supremely successful man, Robert Thorn, United States ambassador to the Court of St James, and his seemingly idyllic family life. It’s only when Father Brennan intrudes into his life for the first time that we begin to get an inkling that his adopted son, Damien, may be something evil.

It’s interesting to ponder on the conceit of a child being evil in the light of the recent novel We Need to Talk about Kevin (recently filmed, of course) by Lionel Shriver. I should emphasise that I haven’t read or seen it yet, but it’s central theme- what if you, as a parent, raise a child who goes on to do something terrible?- seems to be the subtext of this film too, except that the fantasy / pseudo-religious elements help to make it more palatable for the movie-going public. It’s a deeply shocking idea (and redolent of original sin, of course) that a young child could be in some way “evil”. That’s what gives the film its power. That and the pacing.

There are a couple of plot holes, perhaps. Would a mother really not notice that her child had been switched just after birth? And how come the US ambassador to Great Britain has all this free time to go gallivanting all around Italy and Israel? But the whole thing fits together so well that I’m prepared to overlook these little things. The set pieces are superb: the sequence where Father Brennan is pursued by gales and tempests before his grotesque death is probably the highlight, but all the deaths are memorable, and the mutilated monk is a highlight too.

I’m glad I’ve finally seen this film- I’m 34, but today was the first time I’d seen it- as it looms rather too large in popular culture for it to be a film that can go unseen. I can’t say that I was scared, but that’s simply because such things don’t scare me. I enjoyed and appreciated it, at least. And so did Windsor Safari Park, I expect, who must have been delighted with the publicity.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Out of Mind, Out of Sight

2011-12-09T22:58:00.001Z

“Being popular is not just my right. It’s my responsibility.”

We get a lot more in the way of witty lines than we did last week, but this is another so-so episode of The X-Files- er, Buffy. We get another metaphor for teenage life, as a friendless girl becomes literally invisible. And we get our first real look at Cordelia as something more than comic relief. Oh, and did someone say that men in black were in the zeitgeist during 1997?

Oh, and as I’m writing this, my iTunes library is on shuffle. It’s playing Metallica’s “Invisible Kid”, appropriately enough. And the metaphor is a good one. But I don’t like Giles’ explanation that it’s quantum mechanics; this is science fiction, not horror / fantasy, and this is too early in the show’s run for that kind of extreme playing around with the genre. You need to fully establish rules before you break them. Besides, I’m no scientist, but even I know that the phenomenon of particles only being in one definite place one they’re observed only works on the quantum level; once one gets above a certain (very small) size, it’s classical physics all the way.

Oh, and this May Queen thing. That’s one of those traditions they have in American High Schools that I know nothing about. Is it something of a trope for the most popular girl to get elected? It’s a nice framework for some fun with Cordelia, anyway. She’s a fantastic character, and in this episode she gets all the best lines. My favourite is when she dismisses a girl she ran over on her bike: “It’s the most traumatic event of my life, and she’s trying to make it about her legs.”

And yet, we get more hints of a deeper and more intelligent Cordelia beneath this popular and vacuous front. Her heart-to-heart with Buffy is gripping, and we get a glimpse into a much more self-aware and psychologically astute Cordelia; she “can be surrounded by people and be completely alone.” Her desire for popularity is just another way of coping with the anxieties of being a teenager. She’s a fascinating character, and it’s great to see the beginnings of her involvement with the Scooby Gang. She’s in on the secret, sort of.

Oh, and Angel pops by to be all mysterious and to establish a bit of a rapport with Giles, which has to happen at some point. He’s also gone to get a book about some prophecy, in the season’s most obvious bit of arc stuff. That’ll be the McGuffin for the season finale, then. Oh, and the Master has a big plan. Gosh.

Oh, and there’s loads more fun with Principal Snyder. Of course, the character, in his role of obstructive authority figure, has to tread a fine line between being annoying and losing credibility, but he’s achieving this perfectly by being funny and seeming yet again as though he may know exactly what’s going on: “Dead? What are you, ghouls? There are no dead students here. This week.”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Nightmares

2011-12-09T00:01:00.001Z

“Anyone can make a giraffe!”

Well, er… meh. There’s nothing particularly awful about this one, but nothing particularly memorable or significant. I suppose it pads out the season arc a bit (Buffy meets the Master above ground, sort of), but it’s a very skippable episode.

It’s not that there’s anything particularly wrong with it, though, aside from the rushed subtext about the abusive baseball coach being a bit awkward and a disappointing lack of witty lines. The plot makes sense. Everyone’s in character. It works. The initial worries that Buffy’s dad arriving at 3.30pm to spend the weekend with her might cause some sort of tiresome scheduling drama with slaying activities doesn’t materialise, mercifully. It’s just that there’s little to say about it. Perhaps it was a last minute filler, with Joss Whedon providing the story and the script provided by David Greenwalt? So I think I’ll spend the rest of this review just making some random observations.

Characters’ fears being made manifest is a bit of a standard trope, unfortunately, and things like spiders and being naked are par for the course- although I’m amused by the fact that Xander wasn’t quite naked, which rather spoiled the, er, realism (which we’ll come back to) and the fun for many viewers, I’m sure. Giles’ sudden ability to read is in-character, I suppose, but is it really a fear, as the others are? Still, Buffy’s fear of being the cause of her parents’ divorce and her father leaving is by far the most powerful.

Oh, and clowns- at what point did the primary function of clowns stop being “trying to be funny” and start being “utterly terrifying”? Was it around the time of Stephen King’s It? I remember this question coming up in a Doctor Who story I reviewed many moons ago. The best fear is Cordelia’s, though; being dragged into the chess club by two ridiculous nerdy stereotypes. This moment sees the story departing from the pretence of realism and starting to endanger the fourth wall, if only for a moment. I love this sort of thing!

In fact, we end with an increasingly absurd fracturing of reality, which almost seems designed to foreground the power of the omnipotent writer over the fictional universe. Giant wasps are attacking Sunnydale, while over the road is a new cemetery. And it’s nice. There’s even a few scenes, where Buffy is following Billy, where there are a couple of jump cuts, one of them from day to night, which really are happening in real time; the director is omnipotent, too!

Metatextual fun aside, though (and I’m exaggerating just a tad!), roll on the next one…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Puppet Show

2011-12-07T19:05:00.003Z

“That’s the kind of woolly, liberal thinking that leads to being eaten.”

I love, love, love this episode. It’s not just the ventriloquist dummy demon hunter with the wandering hands. It’s not just the introduction of the fabulous Principal Snyder. It’s not just the perfect banter between the Scoobies. It’s the wit of the script and its sheer sense of fun. Dean Batali and Rob Des Hotel impressed with Never Kill a Boy on a First Date, but with this one they become the first writers to approach the high standards of Joss Whedon himself.

Principal Snyder is an utter delight, and Armin “Quark” Shimerman is perfect casting. This character, as Giles acknowledges, is an authority figure with the power to make life very difficult for the Scoobies, and it’s essential that he doesn’t end up turning into a character who exists purely to annoy and frustrate the viewer by placing arbitrary obstacles. There are good signs that this isn’t going to happen, though; while remaining a character with real presence, he’s a brilliant comic character. He lays out his position from the start (“My predecessor, Mr. Flutie, may have gone for all that touchy-feely, relating nonsense. But he was eaten. You’re in my world now.”

In hindsight, though, there are two rather interesting sides to the character. Firstly, with this being his first episode, the writers are able to have fun by using him as a red herring. Secondly, much though his lines about recent weird events and being eaten are played for laughs, they could be taken as hints that he already knows perfectly well about the Hellmouth, and what’s going on. Two of his run-ins with Buffy, where he asserts his presence assertively while not actually stopping her from doing anything, might also be taken as hints that he knows more than he’s letting on. It’s tempting to speculate that the episode title may be clever than it seems and be referring to him as puppet master, although sadly I think this might be going way too far.

Great though this is as a comedy, it also works brilliantly as a surprisingly layered whodunit. I for one had no idea of whom the demonic murderer would turn out to be, and the attempted method of killing Giles with a guillotine was delightfully over the top.

Sid’s great, isn’t he? If a fight scene between him and Buffy isn’t cool enough, the big reveal is even better. We also learn of a previous, Korean, Slayer back in the ‘30’s with whom Sid, er, had relations. And the scene where Buffy removes his naughty hand from her leg is priceless. All the same, though, there’s real pathos at his tragic death.

The ending is wonderfully witty; both the demon and Sid have literally died on stage before the curtain opens; now it’s the turn of the Scoobies to do the same in public!

Black Mirror: The National Anthem

2011-12-05T22:47:00.003Z

“The online hive mind did the maths.”

If you expected to see the next Buffy review, don’t worry; the blog is otherwise going to be entirely Buffy (plus a movie most Saturdays) at least until I get to the end of Season Three. After that I might switch to a short, one-off series (probably Edge of Darkness, but we’ll see. It might be Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set- any preferences?) before I start to alternate episodes of Buffy and Angel. After that, I’ll probably do something similar after each 44-episode block. Otherwise, though, the only other stuff I’ll be reviewing is current television. And that pretty much only means Dark Mirror, Sherlock, and Doctor Who. Otherwise it’s Buffyverse all the way!

Anyway… I’ve really been looking forward to this. It’s by Charlie Brooker, for one thing, and the man can (almost!) do no wrong as far as I’m concerned. But the concept seems brilliant; a modern take on The Twilight Zone, with three independent teleplays extrapolating various ultra-modern technologies (Twitter, reality TV, Sky Plus) and extrapolating in a vaguely sci-fi way. Plus, knowing the writers involves, I suspect there’s going to be the exact sort of darkly humorous tone that I like so much.

This episode begins with a ringing mobile phone in the marital bed of prime minister Michael Callow (Roy Kinnear). This is appropriate, as it more or less foreshadows the theme of modern technology, its intrusiveness, and the way it speeds things up to a pace which makes rational thought impossible. I notice the last thing we hear, in the final scene before the flash forward at the end, is also a ringing mobile phone, but the circumstances are horribly distance. It’s a nice touch to bookend things with this motif.

We have the highest of high concept, er, concepts: a terrorist has kidnapped a popular princess, and is going to kill her unless the prime minister has sex with a pig, on live TV, that very afternoon. Eurgh. This is strangely appropriate from a former writer from Oink, a comic I remember well from my childhood. But, obviously, this is really about the media, the twenty-four hour news cycle, the tyranny of mass opinion, and the impossibility of hiding things in our post-superinjunction age. No sooner does the PM see the video than he’s told it’s up on YouTube, and trending on Twitter. D Notices mean nothing in this context, and the British rolling news channels can’t keep quiet if CNN and Al Jazeera are not. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle.

There are some delicious moments of very Charlie Brooker cynicism- the Queen’s attitude; the tweets in general; the journalist getting information by shooting footage of herself naked, and then literally getting shot; and of course the attitude of the public once the severed finger from the princess is apparently received. If there’s one consistent theme in Brooker’s work then it’s a healthy disdain for the mob. Ironically, the PM doesn’t even know of the attempt to fake the… footage in question. But it’s still him who has to face the consequences.

From this point onward we know that the clock is ticking and there’s no escape. Deliciously, it’s the opinion polling that seals the PM’s fate, as well as the clear implication that neither he nor his family would be safe from the mob. From hereon in there are many, many shots of the PM all alone. And that’s what he is, despite the audience of 1.3 billion and the empty streets- Brooker has no doubt that empty is what they would be. We don’t get to see the act itself, mercifully, but the PM’s suffering is very clear. He’s left pounding away for nearly an hour.

The twist, of course, is that it’s all a twisted joke; the ultimate artistic installation from a former winner of the Turner Prize. One year later it’s all back to normal, except that the PM is now dead to his wife, whose final call he couldn’t bring himself to take.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I, Robot... You, Jane

2011-12-02T21:01:00.004Z

“My Spider-Sense is tingling.”

“Your… Spider-Sense?”

“Pop culture reference. Sorry.”

I really, really love the title to this one. It isn’t just the coolness; it’s the metatextual comment that it’s making, and long-time readers of this blog will know how much I love that sort of thing. The title mixes the title of a very well-known science fiction novel with a reference from early Twentieth Century cult magazine culture- two genres in collision, none of which belong in the modern-day horror / fantasy / teen drama series which is Buffy. We have a provocative clash of genres, both with each other and with the show.

Except… cool though that sounds, it isn’t what we end up getting, not quite. Yes, the story has a robot in it, but the sense of threat is strictly occult- and our first “proper” non-vampire demon story to boot. It feels very Buffy. No, the trappings of science and technology are merely the medium through which a tale of evil demonic seduction can take place, much as though the medium is indeed the message in this case, with the Internet being this episode’s theme.

That the Internet is pretty much just a medium through which human beings do the same old stuff, albeit more quickly and with a more globalised bunch of people than before, is something which both Giles, with his rather silly and exaggerated technophobia, and new character Jenny Callendar, with her rather more realistically drawn technophilia, fail to realise, so caught up are they in their increasingly absurd and hyperbolic claims.

Robia LaMorte is great, incidentally, and so is the character; strong, forceful, but also very likeable and able to undercut her own forcefulness with humour. I like her. I’m sure she’ll enjoy a long and happy time on the show. The sexual chemistry between her and Giles is there from the start, although at this point they haven’t progressed much further than, er, arranging the sexual test tubes.

Anyway… the opening spiel is present and correct, but then we launch straight into a flashback from centuries past which establishes the supernatural threat we are soon to face in a modern context; thus a trope is born. We have a demon who exists as text in a book, waiting to be read and brought into physical being, but rather fortunately vulnerable to a binding spell which turns him right back into ink. That must be a fairly boring way to spend 579 years. Unfortunately, the book has reached the library of Sunnydale High, which has a scanner. Yep, there’s a demon loose inside the internet. Metaphor much?

Let’s pause for a moment and remember that it’s 1997. This is not very long ago, really. I was twenty that year. But, in terms of the Internet, it was the Dark Ages. I’m no Luddite, and I was three years away from properly using the Internet. You can tell how long ago it is here- Buffy, who is young, mentions an “e-letter” and fails to understand the word “online”. It’s clear that the Internet is seen by her and most of the students as something for “nerds”. So we shouldn’t be surprised if some of the obvious real life metaphors- online romances ending in axe murdering tragedy, or the hilariously literal “demon” let loose within the Internet. But, alongside the quaintness, there’s stuff that still speaks to us. Willow skips classes because of the time she spends online- this sort of reminds me of World of Warcraft and the like. The fact that Moloch cannot simply be “deleted” seems particularly redolent today, when we all leave so much personal stuff in all sorts of places online. And chatting to people you haven’t met online can still be just as self-conscious as it is for Willow.

The revelation that Jenny Callendar knows all about demons and stuff, and that the mystical can be modern, is a great moment. It turns out that she, and what she represents, are the medium through which demons can be defeated- a nice little message there, I think. In spite of the occasional quaintness, the story’s attitude towards the Internet is not reactionary.

We obviously have a new semi-member of the semi-Scooby gang, which is nice. This episode is great, possibly the best since the opening two-parter; kudos to the newcomers Ashley Gable and Thomas A. Swynden. It’s just a shame that Giles comes across as a bit too fuddy-duddy; he would definitely get the Spider-Man reference.

The final scene (“Let’s face it, none of us are ever going to have a normal, happy relationship”) is an even more fantastic moment of metatextuality, as our three Scoobies suddenly realise that they are trapped inside a drama for which Joss Whedon is showrunner. They are, indeed, doomed.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Angel

2011-12-01T22:05:00.004Z

“The most vicious creature I ever met…”

It’s somewhat alienating to watch an episode which relies entirely on big twists and revelations which you not only know but have taken for granted for such a long time. I’m not sure this is a review blog, strictly speaking- I meander far too much for that- but it’s impossible to judge this episode. I have no idea whether it’s any good or not.

We begin with two firsts, though. I believe this is our first “Previously on Buffy the Vampire Slayer…”, and we also get the first appearance of that “Into every generation a Slayer is born” spiel. Meh. It seems my prediction that I’ll have moved on from discussing the first this and the first that by this episode were a bit wrong.

I’ll not spell out the big revelation; we all know it, and for anyone who doesn’t, it’s a spoiler. It’s odd to listen to that conversation between Darla and Angel, though; from Darla’s dialogue it’s clear that the fine print of Angel’s backstory is not quite all written yet. Speaking of Darla, it’s great to see this episode again having seen the whole of both series before; the first time I saw this I had no inkling that she would go on to be important (she dies, after all!), and so I’d completely forgotten about her by her next appearance, whenever that will be.

Oh, and this is where the simmering sexual tension between Buffy and Angel reaches the stage where both of them admit their feelings, and there is actual kissing. This is TV kissing, mind; a bit too full-on and aggressive for my taste. Why don’t they just relax and slow down…?

We have more scenes of Giles rather implausibly trying to teach the still relatively inexperienced Buffy how to fight but by now, at last, it’s been realised that the absurdity of this is best played for laughs. Well done, David Greenwalt. Incidentally, this is a much better script from him than Teacher’s Pet.

Joyce gets to meet Angel- interesting. I’m sure this is going to simmer, although I’m surprised it doesn’t explode right here; her daughter is sixteen and Angel is clearly a much older man, although he doesn’t exactly look all of his 240-odd years. In less dramatic news, she also meets Giles. She will of course, eventually come to, er, “know” him quite well.

It’s surprising how much backstory we get here: Angelus’ Irish origins, the gypsy curse, his relationship with Darla (there’s even a claim that she “made” him), and Darla’s origins in colonial America- it would be really cool if there was a bit of fanfic somewhere which established that she had first been turned undead by a vampire called Croatoan.

We end with another kiss, and this one looks much nicer. That simmering sexual tension is going to stay on the hob for a good while yet…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Pack

2011-11-30T00:05:00.003Z

“Why can’t Xander be possessed by a puppy or…. Or… some ducks!”

Another good episode, this. For all the bad reputation this season has, the hit rate has been pretty good so far with only one real stinker. I suppose this means most of the rest of the season will be terrible. We’ll see.

Anyway, this is obviously an allegory about bullying- the most horrifying part of it in this respect is the pathetically useless way that Principal Flutie fails to deal with a spot of obvious bullying early on. This doesn’t necessarily mean he deserves to be eaten, but it’s a nice little indictment of how bullying is often not taken seriously enough. It is, in fact, a very big deal indeed. So the hyenas are an allegory for this, but also, I think, for the inherent nastiness of mobs, groupthink, and conformity.

Of course, this is made all the more shocking by the inclusion of Xander as part of the pack, with devastating consequences for Willow. Importantly, he doesn’t play any part in Flutie’s death, but he does quite blatantly try to rape Buffy. And he remembers this. Blimey. “Embarrassing” is not exactly the word.

Oh, and there are some interesting things in this episode about the American High School, an institution which is quite alien to this foreigner. It seems there’s an emphasis on “school spirit” which we don’t get in the UK- yes, schools have sports teams for those that like that sort of thing, but that’s all. I suppose it’s an interesting inversion of American vs. European stereotypes- UK schools are all about rugged individualism and getting good grades for yourself, while American schools do community and “school spirit” and cheerleading and so on? Also, this dodgeball thing- what’s all that about, then?

Digressions aside, this is good character stuff. Taking “our” Xander away is actually good for fleshing out Willow a bit more, and establishing that she and Buffy have become close friends by now. I also love Giles’ reaction (“It’s devastating. He’s turned into a sixteen-year-old boy. Of course, you’ll have to kill him.”), which is only really possible at this early stage, while he doesn’t know Xander very well. Even cooler, though, is Buffy’s reaction to his reaction (“I cannot believe that you of all people are trying to Scully me!”). I’m still wondering how exactly a librarian is supposed to be teaching Buffy how to fight, though.

The ending is pleasingly neat; the whole thing is quite well-structured with a satisfying conclusion, a twist in that the zookeeper turns out to be some kind of bizarre evil cultist chap, and Xander redeeming himself by immediately risking his own life to save Willow’s. I love the hug at the end, too. This is a rather promising debut from newcomers Matt Kleine and Joe Reinkemeyer.

Angel doesn’t appear in this episode, but the episode rather pointedly includes a scene in which Willow hints at Buffy rather obviously fancying him a bit. What could possibly happen next?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Never Kill a Boy on a First Date

2011-11-28T23:45:00.000Z

“Wow! I never knew being a teenager was so full of possibilities!”

…And the first bad episode is succeeded by a good one. That’s a relief. It’s still somewhat lacking in that extra Whedon polish, but this is a solid episode which develops the characters and themes while also moving on the season arc another notch. Although I must protest that being bookish as a teenage boy doesn’t actually work quite as well in attracting girls as this episode seems to imply…!

We begin with Buffy, in that graveyard, fighting a vampire; only four episodes in and this type of scene has already become iconic. But then we get the rather odd sight of Giles training her. Is it just me who wonders why this rather bookish chap should be considered at all suited to teaching Buffy how to fight? He certainly seems to have difficulty in handing himself later in the episode.

Still, Buffy, Giles and the Master’s plan to bring about the “Anointed One” are the B plot of the episode. This is there to contrast thematically with the teenage allegorical stuff of the A plot, to accomplish a bit of stuff for the season arc (we end with the discovery that the Master has succeeded, and the “Anointed One” is the little boy we saw in the bus earlier), and, I suppose, to provide this episode with its quota of vampire-slaying.

But this episode is basically about Owen and the normal life he represents. Buffy can never date a “civilian” without putting him in danger; her status as the Slayer means she can’t quite be normal. Admittedly, the insistence that Willow and Xander aren’t imperilled in the same way because they “know the score” and are “careful” is a bit shaky, but I’ll let that slide as I really like them both.

The way we gradually learn more about Owen is really quite clever in an impressive debut script from Rob Des Hotel and Dean Batadi. At first he seems a nice, shy, bookish, deep, brooding(!), very handsome boy who is ogled at by all the girls, and Buffy is amazed and delighted to have caught him in her net. He seems to be intellectual, reading the poetry of Emily Dickinson, although the first alarm bells start ringing quite early in the date as he explains that he likes Dickinson because she’s “morbid”. Still, he seems mature, and Buffy is obviously overjoyed to see him giving Cordelia the brush-off.

There are massive tensions between Buffy’s normal life and her Slayer life, though. Both of her attempts at dating Owen clash with Slayer stuff she has to do, and Giles is insistent, however much Buffy may protest that “Clark Kent has a job”. But this is more that the clichéd old superhero / secret identity stuff; there’s a feminist subtext. Buffy, here, is the woman who Does It All, just as many women have to balance a full time career with all the childcare and domestic chores as lots of men, and I say this as a fully qualified possessor of a “y” chromosome, are useless arses.

In a surprising twist, it’s Buffy who dumps Owen; the earlier hints pay off with the revelation that he’s a danger junkie, far less mature than he appears (hey, he’s a teenage boy!) and far too much trouble. Perhaps this is a little convenient as an excuse to dump him from the show (which had to happen) without killing him (which obviously couldn’t happen as the title implies it too heavily), but it’s a nice pay-off of all the hints we’ve been getting.

In other news, I believe we get our first “Bite me”.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Teacher’s Pet

2011-11-27T17:24:00.000Z

“It’s certainly not something I’ll ever bring up again.”

Well, it had to happen; the first bad episode. I seem to recall David Greenwalt as a fairly prolific writer, so presumably his future scripts will be much better, but this is pretty awful. In fact, it’s pretty pointless, too; nothing seems to happen here which advances the season arc in any way, and there’s very little to say about it. This is going to be one of my shortest reviews ever, but there’s just so little to say.

There are a few funny moments, admittedly, and this is clearly meant to be a comedy episode- presumably this means that something serious is about to happen. But the funniest moments all belong to Cordelia, who gets all the best lines (I love her instinctive “Excuse you” when she clumsily bumps into Buffy!). Charisma Carpenter is perfect at doing comedy, and she's the best thing about this episode. Most of the other light-hearted stuff falls flat.

There isn’t much of a subtext, either, beyond the sexual insecurities of teenage boys. Yes, teenage boys are pretty much all virgins and pretty much none of them will admit it- is that it? Coupled with a rather poor-looking mantis monster and a silly fork-handed vampire, this makes for a rather pointless and forgettable episode. Still, at least the characters and the performances are strong enough to survive a stinker like this, and all of the main cast prove themselves to be quite brilliant bat performing comedy. It’s just a shame that the scenes themselves are not funny enough.

We get another appearance from Angel, after an episode of absence, and this time Willow and Xander get to see him too. He’s as cryptic and as annoyingly good-looking as ever, and seems to be quite the gentleman. But these scenes in the Bronze are mainly noticeable for the sheer awfulness of everyone’s clothes- the late ‘90s were not exactly the coolest of times.

There’s also a moment which really emphasises how long ago 1997 was, as Buffy plays the wrong side of Giles’ tape. This is the technology of the Dark Ages.

To the sheer horror of the viewers, the episode ends with eggs hatching, threatening the unspeakable prospect of a sequel. We can count ourselves extremely lucky that this never happens.

The Seventh Seal (1957)

2011-11-27T00:03:00.005Z

“Perhaps there isn’t anyone?”

“Then life is a meaningless horror!”

I must admit I’ve been taking refuge in more light-hearted films, usually Hammer or Universal horror, or sci-fi, etc, up to now. I’ve been a little afraid to tackle the many films in my DVD collection which tend to be more gushed over by critics; would my reviews pass muster? Would I fail to mention something which is generally considered to belong to the category of the bleeding obvious? Well, I’ve finally bitten the bullet with this film and, if anything, it’s actually easier to write about as the themes are handed to you on a plate.

This is essentially a fairly straightforward and transparent meditation on existentialism, pretty much wearing its themes on its metaphorical sleeves and covering much the same ground as loads of stuff by people like Sartre and Camus. God is dead, life is therefore meaningless, it’s up to us to assign meaning, we are therefore terrifyingly free to make all sorts of stupid decisions, yadda yadda yadda. This sort of thing was everywhere in the ‘50s.

It’s the squire, Jöns, who is the voice for this philosophy, and he spends much of the film trying to push it on to the other characters. I’m not sure we’re quite supposed to approve of him, however; he’s quite pointedly amoral. There’s a particularly unpleasant moment where he casually declines to rape the mute girl, having just forcibly kissed her, because it’s “dry in the long run.” This is a rather nasty pun, and hints that he has done otherwise in the past. His misogyny pops up everywhere, too.

The knight, Antonius Block, is a thoroughly decent chap, played superbly by Max Von Sydow, but paralysed by existential angst in its purest form. He spends the entire film with the certain knowledge of imminent death and wrestling with his lack of faith versus his desire to believe in a God. He soliloquises a lot. But he finds a brief moment of happiness in a simple picnic with Jof, Mia and their baby son. They are simple, poor, but happy people who love each other without complications and, of course, they end up being the only survivors. The ending would have been a bit of a downer otherwise. But then, they are the only characters who truly represent Life, as we shall discuss.

Block and Jöns have wasted the last ten years in a pointless crusade and are now returning home, like Odysseus, although I’m not sure that comparisons to the Odyssey would really hold up. But death, in the form of plague, stalks the land. And the Black Death, in Scandinavia and the British Isles in particular, was truly genocidal, killing perhaps 50% of the population, although perhaps we should be wary of taking the historical setting too literally. Existentialist thought was not widespread in the 1350s.

The film contrasts death with life throughout. Death predominates; the early scene in the tavern makes it clear that people do not expect to live and that many believe they are living in the End Times, hence the prominence of quotes from the Book of Revelation. This morbidity reaches a disgusting peak with the arrival of the flagellants, with their gloatingly sadistic leader, who are met with reverence by the kneeling townsfolk. This contrasts sharply with the sneering attitude towards the actors, and their lovely, witty, bawdy song. The contrast makes it clear that Jof and Mia, fertile and happy in spite of life’s travails, represent Life, which for some reason I am writing in capitals They’re lovely, aren’t they? But it’s because of Block, if indirectly, that they are saved. He does in fact achieve something with the extra time he’s given.

The most upsetting part of the film is the treatment of the “witch”, so very young, who is burned to death, and what seems even worse is the fact that her final hours are spent in the stocks, surrounded by people who hate her. Block is able to ease her suffering at the end, which has definite echoes of Christ being offered a drink at the Crucifixion.

Oh yes, and I suppose I’d better mention the chess game between Block and Death, one of the most iconic things in the history of ever. Obviously, it’s pretty much compulsory to mention Wayne’s World 2 here, but I’m sure I’ve seen some stuff from popular culture which references Death chopping down that tree. Anybody know where it might have been from? And the ending, with Death interrupting breakfast just minutes after Block has been reunited with his lovely wife, has got to be an inspiration for Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

That was fairly painless. I’ll be a bit less afraid to tackle such critically adored films in future.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Witch

2011-11-25T21:40:00.007Z

“Why would someone want to harm Cordelia?”

“Maybe because… they met her?”

So, we have the first episode to take place with the status quo (the proto-Scooby Gang) established, even though there’s an interesting moment early on where Buffy questions whether Willow and Xander should be involved in something so dangerous. It seems the status quo is still a bit provisional.

It’s interesting to speculate how long it’ll be before I stop commenting on how the show is gradually establishing its little tropes and memes and just come to accept them. I predict that’ll happen by Angel, or thereabouts. Of course, by definition I won’t remember to point that out at the time, which will be annoying, probably.

This is the first of many non-vampire episodes, establishing that the Hellmouth has an equal opportunities approach to supernatural skulduggery. In this case we get witchcraft, complete with cauldron and bubbling green liquid.

Anyway… yes, as I was saying in my review to Welcome to the Hellmouth, the American High School and all of its tropes and traditions are a completely alien culture to me, and this episode is stuffed full of this sort of thing. We have references to a “Homecoming King and Queen”, whatever they are, and something called Driver’s Ed. Interesting. I never knew that. Do kids in America all learn to drive at school, or is it just a California thing?

Oh, and there’s cheerleading. Most people who didn’t grow up with it (i.e. foreigners like myself) basically have the same automatic reaction that Giles does: it looks awfully like a cult to the outsider’s eyes! Also, isn’t it, er, a bit sexist? We have boys doing manly sporty stuff while the girls are on the sidelines being decorative and supporting the boys. I'm not sure about that, and I say that as someone with a y chromosome.

Still, all that is more to do with my unfamiliarity with American educational institutions than anything that’s actually in the show, which is basically a meditation on parental abuse. The twist- Amy’s mother swapping bodies with her put-upon daughter- is the ultimate metaphor for parents’ failure to understand that their offspring are not just extensions of themselves but individuals in their own right. And her harsh words to Amy are pretty much the ultimate in parental verbal abuse.

There’s a real contrast of Amy’s mother with Joyce, too. While Amy’s authoritarian mother insists on her daughter repeating her own high achievements in youth as a cheerleader, Buffy’s mum is endearingly realistic, however much she may sometimes be inattentive or distracted by her own life, and crucially she comes to realise in the final scene, quite explicitly, that her daughter is a different person and basically inscrutable, as all other people are. Joyce would never, ever, want to be sixteen again: like all sane adults, she remembers all to well just how horrible it is to be a teenager.

Another said to this, of course, is that Joyce is staring to develop as a character, as opposed to a mere instrument of the plot. I think we also get our first sign of Giles as father figure here; he takes a very caring attitude to Buffy while she’s vulnerable.

There’s also some interesting love triangle stuff; Xander wants to ask Buffy out, and asks Willow for advice as she’s “one of the guys”, not realising that she has feelings for him. This is a perfect contrast with the “drunken” Buffy saying that she loves Xander because he’s “one of the girls”. It’ll be interesting to watch this dynamic, but already the characters are developing their relationships very nicely.

Another good episode, by Dana Reston, although notably lacking in the wit of the previous two Whedon-scripted episodes. Three episodes in and the show has a really, really promising set-up.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Harvest

2011-11-23T23:25:00.003Z

“Oh, I need to sit down.”

“You are sitting down.”

“Oh, good for me.”

Let’s just gloss over the fact that this is excellent, first class television, with a flawless main cast (well, the bloke who plays Jesse isn’t as stellar as the others but… you know), a script of, well, Joss Whedon levels of wit and nice little metatextual moments, yadda yadda yadda. You knew that and I’ll have plenty of time to gush later. Instead, let’s talk about how the building blocks of the show are starting to assemble themselves, and also point out some other fun stuff.

So… we begin, after a rather perfunctory cliffhanger resolution, with our first real scene of Buffy walking across a graveyard. I suspect this is going to develop into a full-blown trope. And, once the rescues are out of the way, the proto-Scoobies immediately end up in Giles’ library together for the first of many times. Already it’s clear that Willow and Xander are going to be a crucial part of what Buffy does; her reliance on her friends is going to develop into one of the key themes, however much she may insist that “There’s no we, ok? I’m the Slayer and you’re not.”

Oh, and we get our first few burst of Giles exposition, here. It’s always an awkward thing to ask of an actor, but Anthony Head manages to get the right balance between making it sound interesting and keeping it all in character- not an easy thing at all. Meanwhile, Alyson Hannigan and Nicholas Brendon are just extraordinary- both of them have amazing comic timing but also manage to be hugely sympathetic and real. Sarah Michelle Gellar is all these things too, but also manages to fill the role of the star while making it seem light and easy- again, not an easy thing at all. Still, I said I wouldn’t gush.

We get a bit of basic continuity, anyway; in the beginning there were demons, or Old Ones (how very Lovecraftian!), until one day us humans came along and replaced them for some reason. Then the last demon to bugger off bit a human, who became a vampire. Since then, vampires have been trying to replace us with their demon selves until one day there are just Old Ones again. Brr. Also, we learn that vampires are often quite old; Luke last received a good kicking in “Madrid, 1843”. Oh, and there are more signs of continuity being different from the film- the Master has been dormant for sixty years, and doesn’t seem to have been involved with Buffy in Los Angeles. Also, I don’t remember that beheading scene…

There’s an amusing recurring theme of adult rules not being a real obstacle to Buffy. Principal Flutie locks the door and forbids her from leaving school grounds so she…. jumps over the fence. She’s grounded by her mother, but fortunately bedrooms have windows. For the moment this is a nice undercutting of what could be an annoying and frustrating area, but I hope this doesn’t descend into actual annoying scenes of Buffy being frustratingly thwarted by authority figures.

I love Cordelia. She gets all the best lines (“Excuse me, who gave you permission to exist?”), but there are actually signs of a deeper character, too. She’s clearly a lot more intelligent than any of her acolytes (Harmony is so endearingly thick!), and this gives her power and a place within the hierarchy, but she’s also playing a part. And this implies an inner insecurity; she desperately craves popularity and status to feel validated. And yes, that’s something I vaguely remember from much later in the series. But I don’t think I’m retconning at all; it’s clearly implied here.

We end with our big set piece fight, echoing the ending of the movie but, importantly, all of the proto-Scoobies have a role to play. Also, the mysterious Angel (who now has a name) is secretly but seriously impressed. Importantly, it’s also established that Sunnydale has a collective attitude of denial in the face of blatant facts. Still, we end with the gang all together, and Giles gets the last line. It’s perfect: “The Earth is doomed!”

So, yeah, about as good as television gets, really. It’s just a shame they missed a trick and didn’t put Jesse in the opening credits!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Welcome to the Hellmouth

2011-11-22T22:06:00.004Z

“Oh I would kill to live in LA. That close to so many shoes…!”

Three years ago today, on 22^nd November 2008, myself and a bunch of other people on the Doctor Who Forum (as it was at the time) set out on the Gap Year Marathon, in which we would watch all of Doctor Who, from the unbroadcast pilot from 1963 to the very end of David Tennant’s tenure, in time to start Season Thirty-One in April 2010. Not all of us kept up with the schedule (some of us overshot by a year!) but it was an amazing communal experience.

For me, it was also addictive. I started this blog (and the Word documents that act as back-up!), six months into the Marathon because Internet forums can be ephemeral and I didn’t want to lose the many hundreds of pages of reviews that I was writing. But when the Marathon ended I still had a craving to continue, and I still do. I kept on reviewing Doctor Who and spinoffs as they aired (and I always will!), but also fed my cravings with Blake’s 7, Sherlock, The Nightmare Man and movies.

One of those movies was the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And one of those TV shows was Joss Whedon’s very own Firefly. This is a natural moment to start on another massive Marathon of Buffy and Angel, and I admit I’ve put it off for a couple of days just so I can start it three years after the last one! I’ll still be reviewing movies, generally on Saturdays, and I might punctuate things with a short TV show that’s non-Buffy related between seasons, but it starts here…

So, Welcome to the Hellmouth. I watched this on a DVD I bought back in 2004 and thereabouts, and the price tag tells me I paid an eye-watering £34.99 for twelve episodes. I was robbed! I have, of course, seen the whole thing before, but only once for most episodes. So I know in broad terms what’s going to happen plot-wise, but it was all a long time ago.

There are a couple of things I have to get out of the way at this point. Number One (as alluded to in my review of the movie) concerns the American High School. To many, it’s a rite of passage and the focal point of one’s adolescence, but to this foreigner it’s a genre of popular culture. All the tropes of the American High School- those yellow buses, Homecoming Queens (whatever they are), Senior Prom, etc… I know very little about such things and I hope some of my American readers might enlighten me on these things as they come up.

Thing Two is… didn’t the late ‘90s look awful? I may be showing my age here (I was born in 1977 and I was into Grunge as a teenager) but I seem to recall that music, fashion, aesthetics in general all took a distinct turn for the worse around 1996-ish and stayed generally rubbish until the Strokes came along and saved us all. You can see the change in the music videos- in the mid-90s they were all brightly coloured, with lots of sunshine and light blue jeans, but then they suddenly became dark, drab and awful, with people wearing dull clothes in dark, dull colours. And Buffy begins in the middle of this Dark Age. Just sayin’.

Anyway… Welcome to the Hellmouth. What’s it like, then? Well, it’s outstandingly good; you can instantly tell that the characters are all going to be great, the cast is universally superb, and the dialogue is as witty as you might expect. The pre-titles sequence is a brilliant statement of intent, reversing gender roles and our expectations as it’s the girl who turns out to be the vampire.

It’s fun to see Buffy trying to figure out these characters she and we will come to know so well. Xander is the klutz with a heart of gold, Willow is much nerdier at this early stage than we might expect although, of course, Alyson Hannigan is suspiciously gorgeous and adorable to be playing a character like that, brilliant actress though she is, and Jesse… well, there’s no need to say a lot about him, is there? Cordelia, though; the character is comedy gold. Her dialogue is priceless- the coolness interview, the Valley Girl talk, everything!

Giles and Angel (whose name we don’t know yet) share the exposition between them. At this stage their only known character traits are worried and furrowed-browed (Giles) and “dark, gorgeous in an annoying sort of way (Angel), although we’re told about the Harvest and made privy to the apparent return of the apparently resurrected Master. It is of course unclear to what extent, if any, things have been retconned since Buffy was Kristy Swanson, but I’m guessing the Master being alive is one indication that reality has shifted a bit. Still, Sarah Michelle Gellar is a much better Buffy, and Anthony Head, in a subdued performance, really shows us just how much Donald Sutherland was phoning in his performance.

Of course, it’s obligatory when doing this sort of thing to mention as a fairly early stage how vampires and monsters are of course all a metaphor for how horrible it is to be a teenager. And being a teenager is horrible; you have responsibilities that seem to cripple you but with no rights and no money, forever at the mercy of authority figures and told that your future depends on everything you do. You’re a raging mass of hormones, you’re afraid to talk to the opposite (or same) sex, emotional pain hurts so much more, and you just don’t have the experience to feel confident about anything. It’s only years later that it dawn on you just how horrible it was. And yes, there are plenty of obvious metaphors here. Buffy has to choose between her responsibilities and any hope of social popularity. I suppose in a way her stake really is a type of pepper spray. And Willow finally finds the courage to talk to a boy and he turns out to be a monster- a metaphor if ever there was one.

At the end the whole thing switches gear from witty teen comedy to non-stop action; the genre has changed, and so have the rules. Buffy, at this early stage, doesn’t look anything like as confident in fighting bog standard vampires as we’d expect, although her coolness is all there. Combat mixed with witty quips- it’s all very Spider-Man.

The Invisible Man (1933)

2011-11-21T22:08:00.002Z

“He meddled in things men should leave alone…”

What a brilliant film that was. I mean, I should have expected it to be good after seeing James Whale’s Frankenstein, but this just knocks the earlier film into a cocked hat. Great camerawork, incredible special effects, a magnetic and charismatic star who mesmerises with his voice alone, many amusing comic characters and an assured and pacey plot… what’s not to like? This whole film is a gleeful and glorious spectacle, breezily confident in how good it is but innocently eager to share the fun with the rest of us. It’s not the greatest film ever made, but it’s one of the easiest to love.

Claude Rains is such fun. He gets to be rude, to laugh hysterically, to be gentle with Flora, to twirl his moustache, to deliver hilarious lines such as “We’ll begin with a reign of terror; a few murders here and there!”, yet to hold the character together with sheer charisma and joie de vivre. His performance is as much a spectacle as the joyful and amazing scene where he first reveals his invisibility to the dumbfounded villagers. Even today the effects are genuinely amazing. And the character of Griffin suits his invisibility perfectly; without being seen, he’s able to get naked (symbolic in itself!) and gleefully break all of society’s rules, and get away with it. We’d all do the same, up to a point, if we could.

The film has such fun with his invisibility; hew plays so many practical jokes that it’s necessary for the murders to keep piling up more and more to stop us liking him. In the end he has to destroy a whole train in order to deserve his punishment. But that’s not the only side to the fun- I love the scene where he admits that rain, fog, smog, food visibly digesting, and even dirt between his fingernails(!) could be his undoing. Rather cleverly this prefigures the ending; snow, of course, is rather suspiciously not mentioned.

None of the other characters matter much, really, although the comedy police constable and the comedy pub landlady and landlord are fun. Cranley and Kemp are stock characters (although the slow unravelling of how Griffin manages to kill Kemp, as he says he will, is huge fun, and the car crash is great, too!), and Flora is the wettest female lead ever. In fact, aside from being wet, she has no other character traits whatsoever. Hardly a rewarding part to play, I’d imagine. As for Cranley, he seems to exist purely as a contrast with Griffin; a “responsible” scientist, concerning himself with the practical affair of food preservation, as opposed to “mad” scientist Griffin, with his self-centred and wild meddling into Things Which Should Not Be Disturbed. But no character here can compete with Rains.

The ending- with its mob and its burning building- is so similar to Whale’s earlier Frankenstein that it seems to be almost a deliberate tribute. But the ending is satisfying; it seems to follow on from lots of characters throughout the film, serious and silly, speculating on the various ways in which Griffin might come unstuck. And it’s fitting that Rains, whose performance has been an utter triumph, finally gets his face on screen for the closing moments.

The Wolf Man (1941)

2011-11-20T19:26:00.002Z

“All astronomers are amateurs. When it comes to the heavens, there's only one professional.”

It’s very obvious that this was made about ten years after the Universal horrors I’ve seen so far- it’s so much slicker and pacier, and of course the cars and the fashions are very different, especially Evelyn Ankers’ very 1940s hairdo. One thing is very odd, though; this story is set in Britain, and appears to be in the present day (1941). So why is there no indication of there being a war on?

The whole thing looks great, with plenty of misty, stylised forest scenes, and it runs along at a decent pace, but I’m not sure about the wolf make-up- it looks a bit generic and half-arsed to me. It certainly doesn’t make Lon Chaney Jr look anything like a wolf, just like a hairy bloke with sharp teeth. I have to admit, though, that the set-piece transformation scene, with its foot fetish, is very well-shot, as is the whole movie. Visually, the whole movie is strong enough to survive a bit of lacklustre make-up.

Chaney is superb as the nice-but-dim Larry Talbot, but to put the focus on a character like that- simple, honest and straightforward- seems a little odd in the context of what the film seems to be about. We’re told, blatantly enough and often enough for the word “subtext” to be thoroughly inappropriate, that lycanthropy here is a metaphor for the “duality” of human nature between good, evil, and the shades of grey that lie in-between. Except that none of this applies to Larry, a simple soul who appears to be carrying no mental baggage and whose only character flaw is to unwittingly flirt with a woman who’s engaged.

Claude Rains is also great as Sir John, a superficially jovial and caring father whose great flaw lies in his snobbery, and his obsession with his family name. Larry, to him, is important not as a beloved son but as someone who will ensure another generation of Talbots. He’s not as nice as he seems, and in the end it’s appropriate that it should be him who kills his son. The fact that Larry calls his father “Sir” should probably tell us that this isn’t really as cosy a father / son relationship as it appears.

And then there are the gypsies. They are presented with all the casual racism that might be expected, with a dig at their allegedly “pagan” religious practices, and generally treated as an exotic “other”. Bela Lugosi gets an arse-clenchingly embarrassing cameo as the imaginatively named “Bela the Gypsy” because, of course, it’s perfectly normal for a British gypsy to have a Hungarian name.

The plot’s a bit par for the course and rather blah blah, but there are a couple of rather interesting scenes early on, after Larry uses the telescope to spy on the villagers and things start to go all Rear Window. Not only does he use the telescope to perv on Gwen through her bedroom window, but he later admits that to her! And I can’t understand how she can not be freaked out by this weird stalker chatting her up in the shop and pretty much forcing her to go on a date with him. I can’t understand how Larry is not immediately arrested for the murder of Bela the Gypsy, either, but I’m beginning to notice that the police not suspecting the hero of an obvious crime is something of a trope when it comes to old horror films.

The film has style, I suppose, and noticeably so when compared to some earlier Universal horrors, but ultimately it’s style over substance.

Serenity (2005)

2011-11-19T22:47:00.004Z

“If anything happens to her, anything at all… I swear to you, I will get very choked up. Honestly, there could be tears.”

The world of Firefly has always been potentially very dark, but this darkness has been somewhat leavened by that Joss Whedon wit and the fact that the regulars have to survive the episode. Now, all bets are off. This film doesn’t have to worry about the next episode and the fact that cinema needs to be “bigger” pretty much guarantees that things are going to get very, very dark. And they do. And yet it’s all still leavened by that same old Joss Whedon wit.

Whedon has really pulled it out of the bag with this film. Yes, it’s a crying shame that the series was cut short and so many plot threads would not be allowed to develop, but this is a perfect end to the story against all odds. Whedon gives us a brilliant scripts and directs it with a real; sense of cinematic style- early on we get a long tracking shot through Serenity, showing us those familiar sets from a new and more cinematic perspective. We also get to see the ship do some cool stuff it’s never done before. I love the scene where the ship gracefully lands on its legs!

It’s hard to judge how accessible this would have been to people who hadn’t just watched Firefly, but the backstory seems to have been conveyed very well indeed, with the early scenes giving us much more detail on the history of Earth-That-Was and the settlement of this star system than we’ve seen before. “Dozens” of planets and “hundreds” of moons, it seems, were terraformed. Does the fact that Earth is spoken of as part of an inaccessible past imply that faster-than-light travel is not possible, and the journey was made over millennia?

The early scenes also introduce the whole River / Simon story for new viewers, and show us very clearly that the Alliance is not very nice. We’re introduced to Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Nameless Baddie, too, who is coolness incarnate, by means of a nicely metatextual 3-D recording of the necessary flashback. It seems that River was intended to become a kind of psychic weapon, but that the reason she’s being so relentlessly hunted is because of things she knows.

Everyone gets put through the wringer here, but no more than Mal, whose burden of responsibility has never seemed heavier. Nathan Fillion is extraordinary in showing us the sheer stress he’s under. Time has passed; Inara left the ship long ago, while Shepherd Book seems to have been living on a planet called Haven for a long, long time. Times are not good, and Mal is desperate for any job he can get, having to put up with clients who unilaterally change the terms of the deal after he and his friends have just risked their lives. As Zoe points out early on, his desperation is causing him to cut ethical corners that he wouldn’t have before: neither she nor we are pleased to see Mal abandon a local boy to the Reavers. Things are starting to fall apart, and the main symptom of this is the final falling-out between Mal and Simon.

The film is the classic mix of sparkling dialogue, great characterisation and non-stop action, from the initial bank robbery to the final battle. The pace is extraordinarily fast, but we get times for the characterisation to breathe and some very nice world-building stuff. But at the heart of all this is River, and the secret of Miranda. What they find on that world is horrible, a world of thirty million people who were subjected to a gas intended to pacify them (shades of Blake’s 7 series four?) which overshot and made them so apathetic that they let themselves die. Worse, 10% were affected the opposite way, and became Reavers. This is proof, if any, that the universe is a chaotic and unpredictable place and totalitarian acts never have the intended effects. Things fall apart, entropy increases, and the future is more Mad Max than 1984.

Our heroes, after much adversity and a cool fight between Mal and Nameless Baddie, finally succeed in broadcasting the truth, but at a cost: Book and Wash are both killed, and everyone is brought to a point where death seems inevitable until River’s superpowers save the day. Gina Torres is incredible in portraying Zoe’s anguish while she’s also keeping everyone alive through her military skill. The brief exchange between her and Mal towards the end (“Think she’ll hold together?”) is one of those little moments of Joss Whedon genius that I love so much. There’s also a happy ending, as Kaylee and Simon finally get to do something about all that sexual tension they’ve built up. I bet it was a bit of an anti-climax.

A fitting ending to the whole Firefly story, then, in spite of everything. Joss Whedon is God. The Buffy and Angel marathon starts, I think, on Tuesday…

The Nightmare Man: Parts Three and Four

2011-11-17T23:16:00.003Z

Part Three

“I blame television. Some people see The Sound of Music once too often, and something snaps.”

It’s a bit odd watching episodes two at a time and reviewing them two at a time, especially when it comes to reviewing Part Three while trying to pretend you haven’t also just watched Part Four. So I find myself being quite unable to write up the parts of my notes theorising about the Colonel and secret military cover-ups of aliens. It’s a nice part of the developing plot, though. We’re also constantly reminded of a mysterious soldier with a parachute.

And the plot’s coming on nicely. Things have taken on a regular pattern by now: each episode is a new day; the police are nice, normal people; Tom gets the best lines; the characters are getting to like and trust one another more and more. It’s nice that we have none of that tiresome nonsense where characters suspect each other of nefarious deeds for no good reason. But the undercurrent of horror starts to move into the foreground, and we get actual glimpses of the creature. Fiona’s impressive multimedia set-up lays the groundwork most effectively for the inevitable deaths of the coastguards. After all, for characters like this, living in an isolated place that might as well be a lighthouse, to get killed is pretty much a trope in itself. It raises the stakes, though…

Part Four

“A policeman’s lot is not a happy one.”

So, it wasn’t an alien, it was a Russian cyborg thingy. Well, of course. And the colonel and his mates, who’ve put the island under martial law, are also all Russians. I wasn’t expecting that. The Cold War: how very quaint.

I love the characters’ reactions, though. Inskip suspects something’s up with the colonel, and has his suspicions confirmed. Tom is as witty as ever. Fiona is deeply upset that all this horror has come to her beloved island. And Mike, with his military background, is the one who finally draws out the truth, and, I suppose, gets to be the hero.

I don’t know the original novel at all, but the twist fell a little flat to me. The plot, and especially the warmly drawn characters, are beautifully handled by Holmes, but this is a fairly standard thriller plot until the final twenty minutes, and the big revelation is not sufficiently related to anything we’ve seen earlier to have any real resonance or power.

Still, it’s possible that this fault may lie in the source material. Certainly, Holmes handles the nuts and bolts of the plot, and the characterisation, with consummate ease. But it’s a shame that this should be his only “original” drama. RTD once compared him to Dennis Potter; this script is good, but doesn’t back that claim up.

Incidentally, it's an instructive experience watching a BBC drama from 1981 just after a Joss Whedon series from 2001. Everything seems so much... slower. And I'm sure it probably means I've failed to properly appreciate Camfield's direction here.

The Nightmare Man: Parts One and Two

2011-11-15T21:51:00.004Z

Part One

“There’s been a murder.”

I’ve never seen this before but, as a rather full-on Doctor Who fan of twenty-four years standing, I can’t resist a thriller, from 1981, scripted by Robert Holmes and directed by Douglas Camfield. These two are pretty much the dream team.

Camfield directed Terror of the Zygons, of course, and it’s not just the Scottish setting that echoes this. The shots from the POV of the killer, or creature, or whatever it is, deeply echo the similar shots of the Skarasen. But here they are very effective, with their whole blood-red look contrasting with the realism we see elsewhere.

Otherwise, we spend the thirty minutes until the murder of Symonds exploring the frenzied murder of a Mars Anderson, and being rather effectively introduced to our cast of characters. It’s a rather unstarry cast; Celia Imrie and Maurice Roeves are the only two I’ve ever heard of. But then, this being a thriller, that’s probably a good idea. I can’t rely on relative levels of fame to predict who’s going to get killed.

I assume this was filmed on location on a proper island up in the Highlands; it certainly looks like it. And this closed little community, where Inspector Inskip has just four police officers at his disposal, feels simultaneously large and claustrophobic in the fog. The characters are interesting, and it’s interesting to speculate what will happen to them. Mike proposes to Fiona, so I assume at least one of them (him?) is not going to survive. The policemen are all likeable but realistic and human, as they should be from the pen of an ex-copper. It’s a nice touch to see Tom swearing in Gaelic! Roeves is excellent as Inskip- reassuringly normal and believable for a TV cop.

Part Two

“No creature on this Earth has a bite like that.”

This episode does something very refreshing; it slowly and plausibly gets our main characters to accept that they’re dealing with an alien without resorting to the tired and frustrating spectacle of characters refusing to believe anything which seems far fetched. With the cliffhanger, the final piece slots into place as even Inskip accepts that “Nothing human did that.”

We’re given various pieces of the puzzle one by one; the creature’s teeth, the fact that it seems to be radioactive, and finally what appears to be its spacecraft. But there’s one other mystery here: Colonel Howard. At first I assumed he was just a red herring- he clearly isn’t the killer- but could he be more than he seems? Do the military have some connection with what’s going on? Is the military parachute a clue? Or is he a double red herring?

I really like Inskip; he may be a newcomer and a Glaswegian, but he’s part of this community and he cares for it (“Ah, Jamie’s a good loony, Tom. He’s not a killer.”). He’s clever, too; he sees that the killer’s moving in a straight line and follows it. We’ve also established that Mike, Fiona and Dr. Goudry are all decent sorts. They can’t all survive…

Firefly: Objects in Space

2011-11-14T22:34:00.004Z

“Psychic, though? That sounds like something out of science fiction.”

“You live on a spaceship, dear.”

So that’s it. The end. It’s a very good episode, written and directed by Joss Whedon himself and taking a final look at all these characters we’ve grown to love but, as we expected, there just isn’t enough time to resolve anything, so it isn’t worth trying. This is no place to end but, given that Fox had dictated that it had to be, it was right to end on a slow, contemplative episode like this one.

We begin with a few last pleasing vignettes of the characters relaxing, seen through the eyes of River. At last, Simon and Kaylee are having fun together, their body language indicating that there may be hope for them as a couple. Jayne and Shepherd Book continue their surprisingly successful double act in the gym. Wash and Zoe are at it, and Inara is still leaving, something which will now not be resolved. Suddenly, though, we have a dream sequence; it’s Autumn, appropriately enough. And River is holding a gun.

Suddenly she appears dangerous. And once Kaylee mentions River’s past doings with a gun, we seem to have another witch-hunt, one which remains unresolved. We’re not told what Mal would have decided had fate not intervened, but I suspect River would have stayed.

And then, from nearby in the deep, deep space, by the poetic dance of spacewalking, comes Jubal Early, the latest in a long line of sadistic, misogynistic wankers. He’s an effective villain: intelligent, self-referential almost to the point of doing damage to the fourth wall, and in some ways the representative of the author. It’s an interesting glimpse into how Whedon sees himself in that role.

Early’s behaviour towards Kaylee- using the threat of rape and torture to frighten her- is utterly sickening and leaves us in no doubt as to the kind of man he is. In the circumstances, Simon’s calm, collected and dignified reaction to this monster probably shows him in the best light that we’ve yet seen.

We get one interesting comment from Early, though, concerning Book: “That ain’t a Shepherd.”

Early is brilliantly wrong-footed by River herself, who uses her psychological understanding of him to push his buttons and manipulate him. Pretending to have become one with Serenity itself, she enlists Kaylee and Mal in her plan. She has his measure, and genuinely creeps him out; the alternating shots of Early being outwardly calm and, at the same time, inwardly frightened, are superbly done.

The reveal- that she’s in his ship, and laughing with real, innocent joy that contrasts so much with his sadistic cruelty- is perfect. And her gambit- offering to go with him anyway as she isn’t wanted on board Serenity- is all too believable. Things are fine, though. After a brief hiccup, in which Simon gets himself shot (foreshadowed, of course, by Early’s comment about surgeons having to be shot before they can perform surgery!), the trap is sprung, and early is thrown into space. It’s River’s turn to graciously dance the spacewalk.

It’s a beautiful episode, and the series as a whole is just as beautiful, an unfinished symphony that never gave us a bad episode and reached such heights. I’ll miss these characters so much.

So, that’s it. I’ll be back on Saturday to wrap things up with Serenity, but before then I hope to do The Nightmare Man, a four part BBC sci-fi thriller from 1981, scripted by Robert Holmes and directed by Douglas Camfield. After that, it’s more Whedon as I plough through the entire Buffyverse, with regular film reviews for variety. That should take me at least eighteen months, although I’ll probably punctuate things with other short series every now and then.

Firefly: Heart of Gold

2011-11-13T19:15:00.002Z

“So I trucked out to the border, learned to say ‘ain’t’, came to find work.”

Yes, this is another great episode, but we’ve come to expect that. But this is where it really hit me just how little time there is left; one episode and a movie in place of seasons worth of stuff. None of the character arcs or plot threads are going to play out properly, and this episode ends in a way to make this so very frustrating. Damn you, Fox.

The opening couldn’t be more Western, with a ranch being overrun with a bunch of guys in metaphorical black hats. I keep making tongue-in-cheek references to the fact that at these alien planets look just like Southern California, but the great thing is that it couldn’t be more appropriate.

This episode is basically a brothel under siege, plot-wise, but it’s a lot more than that. It’s about lawlessness in frontier communities and the ethics surrounding prostitution, and it’s great to see that the “whores” in this episode are presented as strong, admirable and hard-working. It’s appropriate that the first woman we see Mal get intimate with should be Nandy, the brothel owner, who’s just as strong, witty, and caring about those under her protection. In fact, she’s more or less a female version of Mal. She’s built this brothel from the ground up, and it’s her family. She’s not leaving.

In opposition to the prostitutes (I’m trying to think of a nicer word, but I can’t think of one!) is the extremely unpleasant Rans Burgess, whose cruel and sadistic misogyny is made all the worse by his hypocrisy; his revolting words to his underlings about “decency” and “family” are utterly contemptible. This episode seems to exhibit a healthy contempt for social conservatism, in fact; there’s a very nice mixture of feminist attitudes and a total rejection of Puritanism. Burgess places himself utterly beyond the pale as he speaks of women “knowing their place” and demands of his spy from the brothel that she “Get on your knees.” The sexual assault here is not so much subtext as just text.

It’s interesting that even Inara describes Nandy and her friends as “whores”, albeit without any judgement implied. This is the frontier, and they are not members of the guild. She and Nandy are friends, which makes it much harder for her to discover that Mal has slept with her. It’s shocking to see her crying her eyes out afterwards, especially as she has never, ever appeared other than elegant and dignified before. It’s clear that Mal means a lot to her, but she comes to a realisation here. Because the parallel between Mal and Nandy goes both ways, and Mal is as attached to his “family” as Nandy is to hers.

This episode isn’t all Mal and Inara, though. I love Kaylee’s cheerful declaration that “They’ve got boy whores. How thoughtful!” Shepherd Book once more turns out to have some suspiciously martial talents for a preacher. Plus, of course, Zoe wants to have a baby. Wash seems unpersuaded at this point. It would have been interesting to see this play out, but I suspect we won’t. The series is nearly out of time.

It’s the same with the ending; Inara, finally realising that her feeling for Mal cannot possibly go anywhere, decides to leave. What a shame that we probably won’t see how this was supposed to develop.

Flash Gordon (1980)

2011-11-12T22:44:00.007Z

“And use your fingers too, this time. Careful, darling! It’s very sensitive.”

I can’t believe I managed to get to the age of 34 without seeing this film. It’s… unique. The whole look and style is basically the 1960’s TV Batman ethos as applied to pulp magazine / 1930’s movie serial sci-fi (Lorenzo Semple Jr even does the scripting duties!), but this is a film which definitely feels as though it was made just post-Star Wars.

I don’t know much about Flash Gordon, really, aside from a half-remembered cartoon I saw as a very young kid and, of course Defenders of the Earth. But I understand this is a very faithful adaptation of the original comic strip, in all but tone. Certainly, it has a very 1930’s serial feel, with constant peril and non-stop action. I suspect the heavy erotic element may be new, though; about half the cast list at the end of the film is for scantily clad concubines of one kind or another, and there’s quite a lot of scenes in the movie which are pretty much soft porn. These are generally the scenes featuring Aura, who is constantly kissing, carousing, being whipped (and enjoying it, according to Klytus!) and coming out with some delightful double entendres. I’m not good with heights myself, but she can teach me to fly any time.

Sam J. Jones is perfect as Flash, in an Adam West sort of way. There’s a touch of plywood to his performance, of course, but this is deliberate and appropriate. The whole thing looks and feels very garish, glittery, camp and over the top, and the excellent soundtrack from Queen, the campest band in all of rock n’ roll, is just the icing on the cake. The alien landscapes and spacescapes are very stylised, and in no way realistic, but the sense of scale is definitely cinematic.

There’s one thing that makes me feel just a little uncomfortable, though. There’s some rather dodgy orientalism going on; the baddies are effeminate, sensuous and despotic, thus embodying all the tropes of the East as seen by the West. I suspect this may not have been Edward Said’s favourite film. And as for Ming the Merciless himself- well, he’s a great moustache-twirling villain, and delightfully played by Max Von Sydow, but, well, he’s a rather arse-clenchingly embarrassing Chinese stereotype, isn’t he? The clothes, the moustache, even the make-up imply a sort of Fu Manchu in space. And all of this stuff is too prominent and foregrounded to be dismissed. It’s a genuine problem. I mean, the very name “Mongo” has certain ethnic connotations.

Still, Max Von Sydow is fantastic, as are many in the cast. Although (yes, I know where this was filmed), I couldn’t help noticing how many of them are British. I say this as a Brit, but do Americans not mind when so many films based on characters from their popular culture are stuffed to the gunwales with British actors? The recent Batman films by Christopher Nolan show the very same syndrome.

Oh, and there’s one of these British actors who most definitely deserves a paragraph to himself: Brian Blessed, of course. I recall reviewing his appearance in Blake’s 7, which seemed to be a sort of transitional phase from Brian Blessed, the versatile actor to BRIAN BLESSED THE BARBARIAN KING, WHO GOES “RAAAAARGH!!!” Although I was surprised that “Gordon’s alive?” doesn’t even make it into his top twenty shoutiest lines in the film. It’s a good performance, which is a very good thing as he’ll be using it non-stop for the next thirty years…

The plot is pretty relentless, and works on the same two levels as the 1960’s Batman TV series. Personally, I found it hilarious that weddings on Mongo use the same Wedding March as we do on Earth. Perhaps Richard Wagner was from Mongo?

The last scene, though, with a gloved hand taking Ming’s ring from his charred finger… Russell T. Davies has seen this film, hasn’t he?

Firefly: The Message

2011-11-11T23:14:00.003Z

“You are such a boob.”

Another good one, this, although not one to particularly stand out in such exalted company. There’s a nice twist, yet again, and once again it’s made clear what a fantastic cast and group of characters we have.

It seems there are still travelling shows in the far future, exhibiting “freakish” stuff. Also, there’s still awkwardness between Simon and Kaylee. Er, isn’t this going on a bit too long? I mean, I can be as awkward around girls I like as the next boy, but surely it can’t be that hard for Simon just to tell Kaylee that she’s lovely or pretty or cute or something when he’s pretty much invited to do so? I have no sympathy for him at all, and Kaylee is quite right, and also most amusing, to spend the rest of the episode hating him.

Anyway, the post has come. Jayne has got a rather fetching hat from Mummy, which is nice. I love the bit where he reads her letter aloud, stumbling over the words! Adam Baldwin is great, as ever.

But Mal and Zoe have a parcel which is far more McGuffin-y: the corpse of their old war buddy, Tracey. What is it with Firefly and blokes with girls’ names?

Another war flashback- oh goody; I love these. The whole vibe is very First World War, with trenches, shell shock and period helmets. Appropriate, then, on this day of the year. I seem to have been noticing the excellence of Gina Torres a lot lately, but she’s excellent here. She plays Zoe very differently, as a hard, gritty soldier, and we see how much she’s been changed by (relative) peace and married bliss. This scene, introducing Tracey as a bit of a useless but likeable twonk, is very funny indeed. Mal, of course, is the same as ever.

It’s rather touching how every one instantly drops everything to abide by Tracey’s recorded last wishes: Mal and Zoe out of loyalty and everyone else, even Jayne, by simple decency. And Inara is clearly putting herself to great inconvenience.

We get a quick scene to establish that a bunch of badass cops are coming after the ship and its corpse, and it’s clearly underlined just how sadistic and unpleasant they are. Still, anyone who wears a black leather trenchcoat must be up to no good, right?

There are some very nice scenes showing us everyone’s different reactions to death- Jayne likes to make himself feel alive, River is just weird, and Mal and Zoe get bladdered and share old war stories with Inara. Then, bang.

Tracey has clearly bitten off more than he can chew, and his story makes it clear that he’s in deep trouble, trouble from which perhaps he has no chance of recovering. He may not be dead, but even if he evades his pursuers he’s smuggling someone else’s organs, and is likely to be hunted forever. He’s a little boy in a man’s world, and he can’t possibly survive the episode.

Kaylee, on the rebound, takes a liking to him, which instantly tells us that he’ll betray her in a moment of weakness before he dies. And so he does. There are some exciting moments during the pursuit during the cops, but it’s ok; Shepherd Book has a brilliant plan which works perfectly. Tracey gets himself killed out of pure stupidity.

Firefly: Trash

2011-11-10T23:57:00.003Z

“I shaved off my beard for you, devil woman!”

Bloody Hell, another great episode. They just keep on coming, don’t they? This had everything: wit, excitement, great little character scenes- I’m seriously in danger of taking all this superlative excellence for granted.

The opening shot is, in hindsight, very clever indeed, as the situation is not at all as we think it is, and this one little scene rather cleverly shapes our expectations as to how the story is going to develop and makers us believe that Mal is in more trouble than, in fact, he is. It’s a great pre-titles sequence as a whole, though, and it’s fantastic to see Saffron again. Both Christina Hendricks and the character as written are cool, charismatic, hugely entertaining and, er, hot. I for one would stand absolutely no chance against her.

It’s a bit of an eye-opener that six whole months have passed since Our Mrs. Reynolds, but Saffron and Mal have great chemistry; I love the bit where she sticks her tongue out! Pretty much all of their scenes together are a joy.

Saffron is clever, too, though, and she has a plan. Normally, Mal wouldn’t touch this sort of thing with a bargepole but, as Inara rather forcefully points out (and there’s another case of great chemistry), it’s about time they had another big payday. So, exciting heist story it is.

Saffron’s plan is to steal an ancient artefact from “Earth-that-was”- a fascinating phrase. It’s clear that Earth is somehow forever in the past and out of reach. The artefact is owned by some rich bloke who lives on a floating island, which as a concept is such a frivolous use of energy as to be decadence itself! We get a nice bit of ok CGI as we see loads of islands floating above the sea of whatever planet this is, but it’s not all glamour; the very, very clever Kaylee has come up with a plan to “chuck it in the garbage.” (I didn’t know they used “chuck”, meaning to throw, in North America?) Everyone agrees to the plan- they really, really need the money- but with doubts. Gina Torres is absolutely superb in her facial acting during this scene, showing us the nuances in what Zoe is thinking and feeling without saying a word. But if that’s not enough, the punch makes her feelings very clear indeed…

We get the excitement of the heist, but the presence of Saffron guarantees constant comedy gold. The dialogue between Saffron and Hamer, and Mal’s reaction towards it, is hilarious; so far, 100% of non-regular male characters have been husbands of her’s!

The plan seems to be on the verge of success, though, and Mal seems to have Saffron sussed; she thought of Hamer with genuine affection, she only pulled this trick as a desperate last resort, and she feels terrible for betraying him. But, as Mal says, she’ll shake this off and carry on as she was. Starting now, as she immediately double crosses him. We’re back at the start, with a naked Mal sitting in the middle of an alien desert that looks uncannily like Southern California.

Except… there’s a twist. This was always expected, and Inara is waiting at the pick-up point with a gun. Interesting; this is the first time we’ve seen her taking part in any crime.

There’s a nice little scene near the end where Simon makes clear to Jayne that he knows exactly what happened a couple of episodes ago, but he chooses to ignore it. I like River’s reaction better, though; “Also, I can kill you with my brain.” What sort of super-powers will she eventually end up with?”

But we end as we began, with naked Mal. How could we not…?

Firefly: War Stories

2011-11-08T23:26:00.002Z

“Preacher, don’t the Bible have some specific things to say about killing?”

“Quite specific. It is, however, somewhat fuzzy about kneecaps.”

Here’s another arc episode, of sorts, although its centrepiece is a wonderful character piece looking at the triangle of Zoe, Wash, and Mal. It’s another good ‘un, with bags of wit, some cool action scenes and lots of Shepherd Book being mysterious.

We’re following directly on from last episode; Jayne is being uncharacteristically generous with his cut of the takings, and no one can understand why. The early minutes are great, with lots of little character moments- Kaylee and River running around like kids, Book being mysterious with Simon, and of course Jayne’s reaction to Inara’s female client (“I’ll be in my bunk!”).

But it all kicks off properly with a bit of an argument between Zoe and Wash over why she always agrees with the Captain. This is essentially because she and Mal have all those shared war stories, of course, and Wash as the husband feels emasculated by this. The upshot is that Wash insists on going with Mal to sell the medicines they stole last episode, instead of Zoe, and Zoe feels she has to go along with it. This is fascinating; I believe it’s the first time we’ve seen Mal not getting his way with a member of his crew, and we’ve seen him get his way in some pretty extreme situations. And yet it’s Zoe, his oldest friend and war comrade, and the one who calls him “Sir”, who is calling the shots here, and Mal just lets her.

This isn’t as good news for Wash as he initially thinks, though; he and Mal are quickly caught by Niska, and it’s not long before the torturing starts. Mal is brave and defiant, of course, but so is Wash, in spite of being completely unused to this sort of thing. The arguments between them about Zoe are hilarious, but of course Mal is just trying to take his friend’s mind off the horrible circumstances.

The crew, led by Zoe, soon discover what happened, and Zoe is soon off to Niska’s place to negotiate the release of her husband and her captain. Zoe is bloody competent all the way through this. It’s really thrown into sharp relief here how essential she is to the crew as the solid, shred, intelligent, no-nonsense first mate. Mal may be a genius, and a gentleman, but he’s a little erratic. Zoe is anything but.

Niska, being a right sadist, tells Zoe that the money is only enough for the return of one prisoner. Of course, she chooses her husband. Niska then shows how utterly horrible he is by cutting Mal’s ear off and giving it to her. What could possibly happen now other than the entire crew picking up some very big guns and rushing to the rescue?

And it really is the entire crew. Jayne clearly has no ill-feelings for Mal after the last episode. Shepherd Book is mysteriously good with guns for a preacher- and, in spite of that quote up at the top there, clearly shoots to kill. Fittingly, though, it’s Mal who gives Niska a good kicking , as Niska’s few underlings still standing are distracted by all the flying bullets.

Kaylee is very scared, and panics: a realistic reaction. Interestingly, it’s River who saves her, a crack shot with her eyes closed. This girl is developing an impressive array of powers. I suspect this is the reason for the government doing what they did top River- is she supposed to be some sort of super-soldier, like a telepathic, precognitive Captain America?

When the fighting’s over, things get funny again. I love Book’s comment on Simon’s shooting (“I was there, son. I’m fairly sure you haven’t shot anyone yet.”). And, of course, we end with “Take me, Sir. Take me hard.” I love this show.

Firefly: Ariel

2011-11-07T22:59:00.002Z

“Next time you decide to stab me in the back, have the guts to do it to my face.”

At last we get a proper, full-on arc episode. Great. I mean, the series obviously isn’t going to be hanging around long enough for anything to be developed properly (damn you, Fox!), but it’s nice to have something.

Shepherd Book isn’t in this one (was Ron Glass on holiday or summat?) and Inara barely features, but the smaller cast rather adds to the tension in what is basically an old fashioned heist. Simon makes a fantastic criminal mastermind, and I love his patient rote teaching of some stock medical phrases which, of course, turn out not to be needed at all. But this is, of course, about River, and his need to find out what’s wrong with her so he can help.

The eponymous planet of Ariel is one of the “inner planets”, and a much posher place than we usually get to see in Firefly. Mal makes it quite clear early on that he doesn’t feel particularly at home here, and not only because it’s crawling with Alliance authorities. The likes of Mal just don’t seem to fit into a place like this.

I wonder what the significance of the name might be? Judaeo-Christian / occult lore has Ariel as an archangel associated with healing, alchemy, Paradise Lost, John Dee and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Beyond the obvious healing motif I’m not really clever or knowledgeable to get the references, but I’m certain they must be there. The episode is called Ariel, after all.

Anyway, the big shock comes when we find out that Jayne has arranged to sell out Simon and River to the Feds in return for a lot of money. We’re reminded that this amusing figure of fun is, actually, exactly as amoral and self-centred as he and everyone else keeps saying he is.

It’s interesting to see that Simon and Mal are actually getting on quite well these days, and seem to like and trust each other, however much they will never quite be able to shake off a certain awkwardness. Mal’s demands that River be confined to quarters after her unprovoked attack on Jayne are not unreasonable, and Simon doesn’t argue. He also shows what a fundamentally decent bloke he is by pausing to save a stranger’s life at a potentially dangerous moment. The crew of the Serenity have got themselves a bloody good doctor. We’re used to seeing Simon as a socially awkward, useless, fish out of water. Not here.

We learn something about River; her brain has been cut into, several times, as though to lobotomise her. Her amygdala (whatever that is) has been removed. But there’s no time for any more info as Jayne has to keep to his schedule and sell them out to the Alliance. Of course, he’s double-crossed, to the schadenfreude of the entire audience, I’m sure. Simon suspects nothing, to the very end, and is even grateful to him for his contribution to the escape. River knows, though, and in hindsight it becomes clear that’s why she attacked Jayne earlier. She’s becoming more than telepathic, showing random incidences of precognition as well.

At last we get a proper look at those strange besuited men, “two by two”, with “hands of blue”. It’s clear that, whatever was done to River, it’s top secret. All the Alliance soldiers are subjected to a horrifying Death By Nosebleed because they know too much.

The ending is very interesting indeed. Mal is well aware of what Jayne did, and he’s furious; this really, really offend his sense of honour; Simon is a member of his crew, and so under his protection. But Mal’s sense of honour and ethics certainly allows for killing, as we’ve seen many times. I suspect the only reason he allows Jayne to live is because he inadvertently lets Mal know he’s genuinely ashamed by asking him not to tell the others what happened. How will things develop between the two of them after this?

Firefly: Out of Gas

2011-11-06T19:41:00.002Z

“Mal, you don’t have to die alone.”

“Everybody dies alone.”

This sort of episode is pretty much obligatory for any genre series; we’re a few episodes in, so it’s time to flesh out the characters’ backgrounds by means of some amusing flashbacks. And it’s fun, so fun that it’s not until the end that you realise you’ve been watching a “bottle” episode.

It’s an impressive bit of structuring from Tim Minear, too; we have two parallel “presents”-Mal alone in Serenity, having been shot, with little oxygen left, and a few hours earlier as the crisis hits- interspersed with the flashbacks. It’s complex, but never difficult for the viewer to follow, and it’s nice that the disaster A-plot is sufficiently simple to allow for this complex structure. It’s very much a Mal episode, really, showing him to be an old-fashioned heroic type, likeable in spite of everything, who insists on going down with his ship while allowing the rest of his crew a better chance of survival. It’s notable that he’s ultimately able to impose his authority even in these circumstances, even getting Wash to get back to the bridge while his wife might be dying.

It’s Wash (with a very ‘70s porn moustache!) who gets the first brief flashback, in which we also see the ship’s previous engineer, Bester, who has hair rather like mine but is considerably better looking than me (grr!), and is of course named after Alfred. Next we move on to Kaylee, who probably gets the best flashback. This scene is hilarious. Plus, if Kaylee noticed all that technical stuff while she was lying on her back then this Bester chap probably doesn’t have the, er, skills to back up his good looks, which is a rather comforting thought to us more ordinary-looking blokes.

Inara’s flashback is interesting; she drives a hard bargain, and has the measure of Mal from the start. Interesting that her politics are at odds with his. It’s also interesting that she’s the one who tries to persuade Mal not to stay with the ship. A lot of things are obviously left unsaid at their parting.

Jayne’s flashback is comedy gold, of course, and in hindsight the whole “How much are they paying you?” thing is the only way you can imagine him joining the crew. None of these flashbacks really tell us much about the characters that’s likely to affect how we see them or anything that’s likely to happen from now on, of course, but they’re certainly entertaining, and that’s how to do this sort of thing; play up the comedy. It certainly makes a nice contrast with the uber-serious A-plot, and gives us a chance to get a deeper, more serious look at Mal by putting him under severe pressure while we have fun with everyone else.

There’s one overwhelming thought that always strikes me whenever I come across stories of spaceships breaking down, though. Life on a spaceship is incredibly dependent on life support, and things break. Surely, in reality, life aboard a spaceship, with the constant real risk of life support failure and death, would be far too dangerous for non-specialists to attempt? Sadly, much though I enjoy good space-set science fiction, I suspect that, in reality, space travel will never progress much beyond the space programmes of today (or should that be yesterday?).

V for Vendetta (2006)

2011-11-05T22:31:00.002Z

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”

Well, it’s the Fifth of November. What other film was I going to review, eh?

It’s a bit of a surprise to realise that it’s taken me until my seventeenth movie review to get to a film from the present century. And, well, it’s not all that good, which I suppose is to be expected. With older films, by definition, the ones which have remained prominent are going to be the better ones, while the same weeding-out process hasn’t happened for newer films. And this one is no classic.

It’s just far too long and badly paced, for a start, and full of pointless, meaningless visual flourishes- why do we have to see V playing Domino Rally, for example, or those embarrassing scenes of V in the fires of Larkhill contrasted with Evie in the rain? Natalie Portman is incredibly wooden, too, and completely lacks the charisma needed to carry the film. The dialogue is not exactly naturalistic, and unnecessarily Americanised- I rather suspect that 99.9% of Americans are smart enough to guess what a “lift” is, and don’t need the word changing to “elevator”. Yes, there are lots of great speeches from V, and moving evocations of the human yearning for freedom, but most of this (possibly all) is lifted from the original, superlative graphic novel. (Well, strip in Warrior and then limited series by DC, strictly speaking. And yes, the fact that I used the term “limited series” does indeed mark me out as a Marvel kid!)

In fact, I’m somewhat surprised that watching this today has made me rather more sympathetic to Alan Moore for famously and dramatically taking his name off the film, and not only because we long-haired men from the East Midlands must stick together. The original graphic novel, barring the obvious references to Section 28, was about the abstract themes of fascism v. anarchy, not current events. Yet the film dilutes this message with lots of blatant and inappropriate contemporary references which have already dated horribly. The tipping point for Dietrich, which causes him to be executed rather than imprisoned, is his illegal possession of an antique Koran. There’s discussion of sinister contemporary euphemisms such as “rendition” and “collateral”. V wears a suicide bomb vest. Worst of all, the St Mary's virus being revealed as a government plot evokes all of those contemptible conspiracy theories about September 11^th, 2001.

Hugo Weaving is fantastic, but he’s not so much playing a character as an actor playing an actor. Although V is brilliant, he’s a spectacle, or more appropriately an idea, not a person. He can’t be the “star” of the film and the audience can’t identify with him. None of this is to imply the character lacks depth, but he lacks a psychology as such, and is far too distanced from the audience for us to identify with him. He isn’t an unambiguous hero, either- whatever his reasons, he tortures Evie, and this torture includes waterboarding, a fairly blatant and unfortunate comparison with the fatuously named “War on Terror”. There’s a clear moral equivalence here, but it’s a shame that such a broad and interesting point should be diluted with an already-dated contemporary reference.

There’s a lot of good world-building here, which only fails to come off because of the Wachowski Brothers’ insistence on such a slow pace. Like many recent films, the film could have done with a lot more editing. And yet, the 1984-style Britain works well. John Hurt (who once played Winston Smith, of course!) is great as “Chancellor” Adam Sutler, and Tim-Pigott Smith is superb as Creedy, head of the new Gestapo. I’m not sure the title “Chancellor” is realistic, mind: it’s far too propaganda-defeatingly close to Hitler, and the title in Britain refers to the Finance Minister and would be an unlikely title for a head of government.

Still, the many sequences where Sutler’s face looms large on a big screen as he berates his underlings work well in reminding us that we’re looking at a totalitarian state. This is a man who casually bans the 1812 Overture and speaks of old buildings with contempt, in contrast to the highly cultured V. Naturally, he started out as a Tory. The Fox News sequences with Prothero are also fun.

The structure of the film- sequences of V, from Evie’s perspective, intercut with the investigation of the murders and the Larkhill backstory, from Inspector Finch’s perspective, would work very well indeed if the pace wasn’t so damn slow. It’s fun to note that Rupert Graves, here playing Finch’s Detective Sergeant, has recently been promoted to Inspector in the BBC’s recent Sherlock.

There’s one particularly chilling moment surrounding V’s murder of the paedophile bishop; the bishop is under surveillance, but his disgusting proclivities are tolerated to the extent that there are jokes about “children’s hour at the abbey”. This demonstrates another horrifying fact about totalitarianism; it asks people to trade their freedom for security yet fails to provide that security. Someone like the bishop would never be tolerated in an open society. Interesting, by the way, that the paedophile should be a Catholic priest (he talks of “mass”). That’s one bit that hasn’t dated.

Stephen Fry is quite sweet as Dietrich, even though he’s pretty much playing Stephen Fry. It’s completely unrealistic, of course, that his little satirical skit would be allowed to reach the screen, but it’s fun, and the brutal reaction by the State is suitably horrifying. I’m not sure we need this character, though; he certainly wasn’t in the original and he’s basically V without the coolness. Yes, he illustrates the horrors of state homophobia, but the story of Valerie does that far more eloquently and effectively (I cried. And I usually have a heart of stone when watching films.), but that, of course, is lifted entirely from Moore’s original.

The whole thing is wrapped up quite nicely, I suppose, with V accepting he has to die for his moral failings but not before he kills both Sutler and Creedy in a fit of coolness. It’s also nice that part of Moore’s anarchist message is retained; V intends to destroy the old order but has no intention of dictating what should come next. I’m no anarchist, but this is a nice moment. Also satisfying is that Finch does in fact find Evie and the explosives, but allows the bombing to go ahead. But V’s dying confession of love for Evie falls fairly flat, given Portman’s wooden performance and the fact that V isn’t really a character at all. And it’s unfortunate that crowds of people dressed in V masks now makes me think of the Anonymous movement.

Firefly: Jaynestown

2011-11-03T23:29:00.000Z

“You guys had a riot on account of me?”

It’s an odd one, this. It’s funny, the conceit is brilliant, there’s some great character stuff, but it never quite manages to take off. Still, we get to see River’s recovery taking another stage, some nice development of the cross-class relationship between Kaylee and Simon, and a fantastic comic performance from Adam Baldwin.

Before we get to Jayne, though, there are lots of other nice little moments here. Kaylee has a very romanticised view of Inara’s work as a companion (“Have good sex!”), which is immediately contrasted with a grubbier reality. But this grubby reality, interestingly, has nothing to do with the sex, or with her rather innocent twenty-six year old virgin client, but with having to deal with said client’s boorish, amoral and no doubt smelly father. There’s a nice little deconstruction of macho conceptions of “manhood” here, too; it’s not the “conquest” of women that makes one a man, and sex is not about notches on a bedpost. It’s about, you know, emotion, and relating to the other person as, well, a person, as sort of symbolised by the “sacred” tea ceremony. Having said that, though, this sequence isn’t anywhere as deep or as meaningful as it seems to think it is.

The scenes between River and Shepherd Book are fabulous. I love River’s overly literal theological ideas, which are funny but also reminds us that there’s a very clever girl underneath the craziness. But what exactly is wrong with us men with long hair? Grr!

Anyway… we have the latest in an already long line of poor, desperate planets where a few oligarchic bastards lord it over the oppressed majority, who in this case seem to have a particularly unpleasant existence as “mudders”. The foreman mentions to Simon that there are “two thousand workers, mainly indentured”, and that the costs saved in wages can be passed on to the customer. I think, to put it mildly, that some sort of trade union might be in order.

Oh yes, and the Kaylee / Simon shipping heats up a bit, give or take the odd moment where he offends her by being a bit of a stuck-up arse. She’s very forgiving of him, really. He can’t even hold his drink, for one thing. But things seem to be developing quite well between them. I expect a massive falling-out between them any episode now. This is a Joss Whedon show, after all.

And yes, I know, Jayne. Jayne the hero. Jayne the statue. That song. The hilarious contrast between the truth and the Robin Hood reputation. All this stuff is great, and gives us some top notch comedy moments but, well, it doesn’t go anywhere. Even the crudely tacked on moral at the end, as Mal tells Jayne that sometimes people need heroes, is basically saying little more that that the mudders have really crappy lives.

And their lives stay crappy. Even the magistrate doesn’t get any real comeuppance; he doesn’t get to capture the crew of Serenity, but that’s it. And this man is a real tyrant; he imprisons people for years in tiny boxes. But then again, this is the sort of society we’re seeing again and again in Firefly. The ‘verse isn’t very nice, which makes the contrast with the people of Serenity all the greater. Because they’re great characters, and that means this can be an uplifting and fun show in spite of it’s very, very bleak setting.

Firefly: Our Mrs. Reynolds

2011-11-01T22:54:00.002Z

“If you take sexual advantage of her, you’re going to burn in a very special level of Hell. A level they reserve for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre.”

Another Joss Whedon script, then. I like Joss Whedon scripts a lot. They’re good, they’re witty, and they always contain the phrase “not so much”. What’s not to like?

We have a river which looks an awful lot like the Mississippi. We have a hold-up of a stagecoach. Well, a marine stagecoach thingy. Yep, that’ll be a Western in space, all right. It’s an amusing sequence, as is the party with more Irish dancing. Then it’s back to Serenity, and Mal appears to be married…

This is the first time I’ve seen this episode since I became familiar with the excellent Christina Hendricks (well, I managed to keep up until part way through Season 2, but I’ll be marathoning it for this blog one of these years). It seems that Mal has his own domestic servant-cum-“nubile little slave girl”, except he’s far too much of a gentleman to take advantage of that. We think. It’s interesting to observe how this pans out, knowing Joss Whedon’s reputation for undercutting and playing with traditional gender roles. In fact, anybody with a passing knowledge of Whedon’s stuff would probably guess from the start that Saffron isn’t what he seems to be.

It’s fun to see everyone reacting, of course. The bit where Zoe calls everyone to see and have a good laugh is fun, but it’s interesting to see that Inara is immediately and obviously jealous. She also gives away, to the viewer at least, that she cares an awful lot about Mal when she sees him unconscious. So far this has only been hinted at, albeit fairly blatantly. It’ll be interesting to see how things develop between the two of them, but I suspect the whole thing is far too slow-burn, sadly, for a programme with such a limited life expectancy.

Mal’s starting to fall for Saffron a bit, though. He even starts to tell her of his upbringing, on a ranch on the planet Shadow. We eventually get to an hilariously awkward bedroom scene (“Oh, I’m going to go to then special Hell!”), ending with Saffron kissing him. Her lipstick’s poisoned, of course. I bet that’s where Steven Moffat got the idea from, for River Song.

Now that we, the audience, have had our suspicions confirmed, we get the fun of watching Saffron trying to seduce other members of the crew. Wash, being very, very married, isn’t falling for it, and has to be karate chopped from behind. Inara isn’t taken in by the Sapphic charms of Saffron, though, much as it seems otherwise at first. But she ends up kissing the unconscious Mal, must to her later hysterical denials! Morena Baccarin is great in this episode, where she gets a wider range of material. We can’t have her just being poised and graceful all the time.

Interestingly, we’re told Saffron has been to companion academy, but she remains mysterious. It’s a fascinating last conversation between her and Mal, though, about individuals “playing” each other versus people sticking together. Is this a coded message in favour of social democracy as opposed to the dangers of right-wing individualism?

The last scene is perfect, of course. Mal draws completely the wrong conclusion. Of course, Inara would find it truly intolerable if only he knew! Their relationship is shaping up in a rather nicely ‘40s screwball sort of way…

The Mummy (1932)

2011-10-31T22:36:00.008Z

“Maybe he got too gay with the virgins in the temple?”

More Firefly tomorrow, but tonight is Hallowe'en. I couldn't resist a classic horror film!

Wow. This is so much better than the later Hammer version. The story’s a lot more coherent, for a start, even if the plot is borrowed straight from Universal’s Dracula from the previous year, with Ardath Bey as the Count (he even pays a social call on our heroes!), Helen as Mina, and Muller and Van Helsing. It even contains some lavish location scenes. I’m sure I recognised the Tomb of Hatshepsut (I’ve been there, you know!) and I was amazed to read that it was all filmed in Southern California.

Boris Karloff is great as the sinister Ardath Bey (that’s an oddly Ottoman title for 1932, surely?), an intelligent and eloquent villain so different from Frankenstein’s Monster and so much more interesting than a lumbering mummy with arms outstretched. Also interesting is that Imhotep’s background should hinge so strongly on the idea of being alive- very evocative of Poe. Mercifully, unlike the later Hammer film, there are no horrible scenes of tongues being removed.

Excellent as Karloff is, though, and good though it is to see him being so brilliant in a speaking role, there’s something more than a little uncomfortable about seeing Karloff, with his Anglo-Indian heritage, playing the part of the ethnic “other”. Yes, it’s a mummy film, and made in 1932 to boot; it’s hardly surprising to see sinister foreign characters in a film like this, but it’s a little awkward to watch in this day and age. Also raising an inevitable eyebrow is the moment where Helen, the only woman in the film, is simply told to go to bed by all the men!

Still, 1930’s social attitudes aside, this is a well-paced thriller with a real sense of threat, and none of the campness of James Whale’s stuff. The plot is far less convoluted, and makes far more sense, than in the later Hammer film (even if it owes an awful lot to Bram Stoker). Setting the whole thing in Egypt makes the whole thing much more evocative, although of course such a thing would be far easier for a film made at the height of the British Empire than for one made during Nasser’s rule!

There are a few moments which particularly stand out; the young man’s laughter, as he is driven mad by the sight of Imhotep coming to life, is hard to drive from the mind. So is the hilariously blatant “as you know, Bob” exposition, as two random blokes whom we never see again see fit to introduce Helen to us at the party! But for the most part the film is taut and tense. There’s a powerful sense of the Gothic, with an ancient magical power from the past threatening to return to the present, and set against the modern world of science and reason. Ardath Bey even has a rather fab scrying pool, which he uses to cause heart attacks in people who get up his nose. Brr.

The ending is quite hilarious in how closely it follows Dracula, with the film’s very own Van Helsing using the film’s very own Mina as bait in a trap for the film’s very own Count Dracula. But there’s a rather pleasing departure from this at the climax, as Helen (well, Ankhenesamun), rejects Imhotep and destroys him by magic. His centuries of suffering out of “love” for her are all for nothing!

Firefly: Safe

2011-10-30T20:00:00.002Z

“Dear Diary, today I was pompous and my sister was crazy. Then I got kidnapped by hill folks, never to be seen again. It was the best day ever.”

We begin in flashback, with a brief exterior shot of a big posh house. It seems that that Simon and River are so posh that they grew up on the “Tam Estate”. The visual style of the house, inside and out, and including their father’s costume, is essentially late nineteenth century, with just a few nods to the future. It’s such a contrast to the way sci-fi television used to depict the future, with bland corridors and “futuristic” clothes. Alien and Blade Runner introduced the idea that future styles can be retro, and the result is a fab-looking sci-fi Western aesthetic like this.

There’s a lot of Mandarin this episode, more so than usual. Then again, there’s a lot of swearing, and I’d imagine that Fox are rather more relaxed about swearing in Mandarin than swearing in English.

There’s an interesting scene in a bric-a-brac shop, with Inara and Kaylee revealing that swans are considered rare, and perhaps not found at all on any world that’s within reach. I’d imagine that a bunch of faraway worlds would be restricted to only certain animals from Earth- domesticated animals, pets, parasites and not much else. No swans.

Kaylee’s falling out with Simon is interesting, too. These two characters are pretty much the ones who symbolise their respective social classes, and everything which happens between them can be understood in those terms. Interestingly, it’s the working class character, Kaylee, who is romantic and imaginative, while Simon is neither.

It’s interesting to see shots of River doing an Irish dance juxtaposed with shots of the gunfight. Both sequences have a sort of beauty, but neither ends well, as Shepherd Book is shot and badly injured while Simon and River are kidnapped by nearby villagers.

Mal is eventually forced to seek medical help from a nearby Alliance facility in order to get medical help for the Shepherd, and here the mystery surrounding him depends even more. Why does the sight of Book’s “ident card” immediately cause the Alliance soldiers to immediately agree to Mal’s request with no questions asked? It’s becoming very velar that there’s a lot to be revealed about the Shepherd’s past.

At first, it seems as though Simon and River have reached a safe and friendly community, and even River feels safe, becoming more and more lucid. Unfortunately, and shockingly, her display of telepathy leads the villagers to denounce her as a witch. This is evidently not a future dominated by reason, as the villagers’ seventeenth century clothing might perhaps have told us.

Fortunately, she and her brother are rescued at the last moment as Mal returns. There’s an interesting exchange in the final moments as Simon asks Mal why he came back to save someone he doesn’t even like. Mal’s reply is typical: “You’re on my crew. Why are we even still talking about this?”. It’s this sort of straight-up decency that means you can’t help liking the character, for all his flaws.

Firefly: Shindig

2011-10-30T00:10:00.002+01:00

Shindig

“You think you’re better than other people.”

“Just the ones I’m better than.”

Our first episode written by Jane Espenson begins in a way that’s already starting to become familiar; a moving camera shows Mal and co in a dimly lit bar which is offset by some bright colours, and it all very quickly kicks off. Is this going to become a Firefly trope? Still, we get a bit more backstory as it’s established that a slave trade exists in this society. Naturally, Mal has no compunction about robbing such people…

The gang are making a lot of enemies on Persephone, and could really do with leaving. Their next destination (whose name I didn’t catch) seems a much classier place, superficially at least. Inara arranges to meet a regular client, a posh bloke called Atherton Wing, while Kaylee gets all excited about a posh frock that she sees in a window. There’s more than a bit of Eliza Doolittle about Kaylee- she’s a bit common, yes, but so are many of us, and she’s a lot lovelier than a lot of her “betters”. Mal’s nasty comments here don’t go down well at all.

Time for some plot, then. Badger is back, and wants Mal to work as his agent in doing a bit of smuggling for another posh bloke called Warwick Harrow. Nathan Fillion is great here, as is Mark Sheppard. Of course, now that we’ve met the deeply sinister Niska, Badger is suddenly a lot less scary and has become more of a fun character.

All this means finding Harrow at some posh do. That means Mal needs a lady to go with him, and Kaylee gets to wear her posh frock after all. And, who’d have thunk it, it’s the same party as Inara and her post client. I don’t like this Atherton much; he wants Inara to be his “personal companion” and she’s mulling it over. This feels uncomfortably close to The Crimson Petal and the White, which I read quite recently, and makes me like this rather arrogant Atherton fellow even less.

I love the cut straight from Jayne’s “So, we gonna play cards or screw around?” to a rather lovely scene of Zoe and Wash being all post-coital!

It’s not nice to see Kaylee being bullied by a load of posh girls (who, it’s implied, own slaves), but she’s soon rescued by a nice man who can’t stand “useless people”. Yay! Soon she’s in her element, talking machinery with a bunch of friendly men. It’s an interesting example of set and costume design, this ball; it’s all very Regency, like something out of a Jane Austen adaptation. There’s a certain Chinese aesthetic, too, but then that was true of the Regency itself.

But things don’t stay nice forever. Mal runs into Inara and her wanker client, one thing leads to another and Mal, showing his usual diplomatic skills, hits Atherton in the face for the way he speaks about Inara. Unfortunately, this is a place where the social mores of Regency aristocracy apply. Mal has just accidentally challenged Atherton to a duel. With swords. About which he knows nothing. Oh dear.

This leads to an interesting conversation between Mal and Inara during the night, as she desperately tries to teach him some rudimentary swordfighting. He’s a man of honour; he faces seemingly certain death, but he won’t run. We’re only four episodes in, but I really, really like Mal.

Meanwhile, aboard Serenity, Summer Glau gives us her cockney accent. It’s, er, a nice try, and only lapses into something approaching Australian about 50% of the time…! We get a bit of background here, too. It seems that Badger, and presumably at the other cockney geezers, hail from somewhere called “Dayton Colony”. It’s a nice touch, this.

It’s morning, and time for the duel. This sequence is even more Regency than the rest of the episode, if such a thing is possible. Mal’s improbable victory is a little contrived, perhaps, but it’s great that he gets to humiliate Atherton by not killing him. Plus, Inara’s blacklisted him, so he’ll have to rely on his charms to get any sex in future!

Even better, Harrow is impressed and agrees s to the deal. Serenity is duly loaded with cargo, and it’s cows. What else? That’s the great thing about this sci-fi Western, a spacefaring future with horses and cows!

Firefly: Bushwhacked

2011-10-25T22:05:00.002+01:00

“Couldn’t let us profit. Wouldn’t be civilised.”

We hear the word “civilised” a lot here, in different contexts- it’s certainly a theme. We also get some incremental development of the Simon / River arc, and continued bigging up of the still-unseen Reavers into the most fearsome ever. Mainly, though, we get a damned good script. It’s not quite up there with the last couple of episodes- Tim Minear is not Joss Whedon, good though he is- but it’s still up there somewhere.

The characters continue to be wonderful, with Jayne playing a delightful prank on Simon and Mal having an interesting debate with Jayne and Shepherd Book on whether to look for survivors on the derelict transport that Serenity is passing. This sort of demonstrates that, while Mal’s manner may be closer to Jayne, his sense of right and wrong is much closer to Book’s, in spite of their philosophical disagreement. A good conscience is a good conscience, whether religion is involved or not. Kaylee has Mal pretty much right when she praises his speech later on.

I’m not sure how realistic it is for Serenity to just bump into another ship (this ain’t the ocean; space is much, much bigger even if we’re only talking the space between a limited number of planets and moons), but I’ll not single out this episode to criticise for a common sci-fi failing, especially as I failed to mention this during fifty-two episodes of Blake’s 7.

We have a proper Mary Celeste-style mystery, soon solved by the realisation that Reavers have been here. The script and the performances really pull out the stops in underlining just how bad-ass they are: even Jayne is terrified. I suspect once we finally get to see them they won’t be anywhere near as scary.

There’s also a sad story here, of poor colonists looking for a new life at the frontier having their hopes cruelly snatched away. It’s clear that the worlds under the Alliance are home to an awful lot of poverty, inequality and state indifference to the have-nots.

Kaylee gets a moment to shine, as she calmly defuses the Reavers’ booby trap, and there’s a quick but interesting shot of Inara with her calligraphy. This seems to symbolise grace, serenity and other such predictable things, but also perhaps, at a moment like this, it signifies feelings underneath that she’s trying to cover up.

Just when they’re about to leave, though, they’re boarded by a load of Alliance troops looking for River. Mal is smart at not falling for any verbal traps (“No children on board.”), but soon clashes with the leader of the Feds. Politics rears its head here; we learn that the ship is named after the Battle of Serenity Valley, where the Browncoats lost the war.

The hiding place for River and Simon- outside the hull in their spacesuits- is clever, and it’s wonderful to see River, so very innocent, gaping at the stars with childlike wonder. I love the interviews with the crew, too. Especially Kaylee’s. I think I’m getting a crush on her. Perhaps I’m in luck. She seems to like Simons.

It’s a bit of a stretch, perhaps, that the Reavers’ traumatised victim should start to become a Reaver himself, but we end the episode with a nice bit of tension before, for the second episode in a row, the authority figure lets Mal go with just a slap on the wrist for being a fundamentally decent sort.

The backstory has now been set up in quite some detail. We have a deeper understanding of the Reavers, the Alliance and the world in which Mal and co all operate. We can expect Reavers at a later date, and of course Niska. And what’s going on with River…?

Firefly: The Train Job

2011-10-24T23:27:00.001+01:00

“Take us out of the World, Wash. We got us some crime to be done.”

I have a vague idea of the story behind this episode: of how Fox insisted in being utter wankers, on how they refused to show the pilot and, indeed, proceeded to screen the whole series in an eccentric order, and of how we foreigners and latecomers with our DVD box sets are indeed fortunate to be experiencing the show this way. All of which is to say that I’m well aware that this episode was unfortunately pressed into the job of introducing everyone and everything once more.

It’s obvious, knowing this, that all the characters are being subtly introduced once more, and that the entire backstory is pretty much related to us again. Yet it’s never intrusive, or too obvious, and the fact that this script also happens to be completely bloody brilliant is a huge credit to Joss Whedon, he who can do no wrong, and Tim Minear. I’m vaguely aware that this episode hasn’t got too good a reputation. If that’s the case, I’m looking forward to seeing a popular one.

Whedon also directs here, and rather brilliantly. The opening shots in the bar, with the constantly moving camera, set things up really, really well, and the fight with the clientele of the Alliance-supporting bar is a great set-piece. We also get a bit of a backstory; the civil war between the Alliance and the Browncoats took place six years ago.

We get a few nice character scenes- Inara and Mal are fantastic together, while Shepherd Book once again shows himself to be an incisive judge of human character. It’s becoming clear, already, what a fantastic cast this is. It’s great to see a bunch of actors who are clearly very, very into their characters, enjoying themselves hugely, and relishing the superb dialogue that Whedon is giving them.

The actual plot is a fairly perfunctory backdrop for all this, really, although Niska is a delightfully evil character whom we can hardly fail to see again. His deliciously nasty threats to our heroes as they accept the job pretty much tell us that they’re going to somehow fail and earn his enmity.

A train robbery is a traditional Western trope, of course. But I’m glad to see an interplanetary future which still has them around- I suspect that’s what would happen. Plus, we get some rather fun set pieces such as Jayne jumping out of Serenity on to a moving train. You’ve always got to love that. I also love the silly euphemism “gorram”. Still not sure about all the Mandarin, though. There doesn’t really seem to be enough Chinese cultural influence to justify it so far.

Interesting that Inara should rescue Mal by claiming that he’s her “indentured man”. This future society is no utopia.

The episode hinges, of course, on Mal being a decent man, and insisting on returning the stolen goods once he realises that the crates contain much-needed medicine. Mal’s great; rough, gruff, incredibly witty, but with a conscience underneath it all.

It’s a great twist, but typically Whedon, that the Sheriff immediately sees what Mal is doing, understands, and lets them off. We’re shown that Mal’s no saint, though; he’s honourable enough to return Niska’s money but quite prepared to kill his thuggish underling.

We end with a bit of juicy arc stuff. River is starting to become a bit more lucid, and is now going on about “two by two, hands of blue”. We end with the sight of some official types on River’s trail, and either their gloves or their hands are bright blue…

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)

2011-10-23T00:07:00.003+01:00

“Dust, Mrs Hudson, is an essential part of my filing system.”

Wow. That was amazing. Fanwank this film may be, and somewhat light on star wattage, but the script just sparkles with wit and metatextual knowingness. This is certainly the finest Sherlock Holmes film I’ve seen to date. It’s the only Billy Wilder film I’ve seen to date, but it certainly not the last.

I know little about Robert Stephens (Holmes) and less about Colin Blakeley (Watson), and both of them reminded me, rather oddly, of Leonard Rossiter in their styles of performance. Stephens gives us an arch, knowing Holmes, who always seems to be aware of his nature as a character in a film; we know when the film’s final act is dawning because Holmes tells us so! Blakely plays Watson more-or-less as the buffoon of legend, although he’s shown to be an intelligent and competent physician, and as something of a ladies’ man.

The first scene proper (after a short modern-day framing device) starts the metatextual fun straightaway, as Holmes compares the “reality” with Watson’s published stories, complaining that the public now expect him to wear the ridiculous clothes from the illustrations in The Strand! We then move on to a rather interesting bit of speculation as to Holmes’ sexuality. This is a rather obvious thing to do, perhaps, but 1970 is probably about as early as it could be done in a Hollywood film. A rather haughtily attractive Russian ballerina with seemingly supernatural menopause-dodging powers (“I must say that she doesn’t look 38.” “That is because she is 49…”) wants to spend a week shagging Holmes so she can have a child by him as an exercise in eugenics. Nice work if you can get it.

Holmes isn’t keen, though. So much so, that he resorts to claiming that he’s, er, like Tchaikovsky, a previous choice (“You couldn’t go wrong with Tchaikovsky.” “We could, and we did.”, and claims to be shagging Watson. This has unfortunate consequences for the good doctor, who has up to this point been having rather a lot of fun with some attractive young ladies. He’s not in the best of moods, unsurprisingly, once he gets back to Baker Street and, this being 1887, starts to fret about scandal, leading to some wonderfully arch retorts from Holmes. The whole sequence ends with Holmes refusing to discuss his sexuality, which remains a great big question mark.

This sequence takes up the first thirty minutes, after which the main plot begins. The whole thing is rather more coherent than might at first be expected, though. The sequence sets up the theme of the film- Holmes’ relationship with women, and the question which it poses is more or less answered.

The arrival of a mysterious, amnesiac Belgian lady, Gabrielle Valladon, starts off the larger part of the film, and this leads to some rather sexually charged scenes between her and Holmes. The case doesn’t get very far, however, before Holmes receives a summons from his brother Mycroft (the justly ubiquitous Christopher Lee). There’s a delicious little retcon here, as we’re told that the outwardly eccentric “Diogenes Club” is in fact a front for British Intelligence. Mycroft warns Holmes off the case which, of course, only encourages him.

Holmes seems to make a real connection with Mme Valladon, and they have a rather interesting discussion about his experiences with women. Most interestingly, he claims, in an interestingly light-hearted tone, that his mistrust of women ultimately stems from his fiancée (!) inconveniently dying just twenty-four hours before their wedding. Are we to believe this, or do we have a case of unreliable narrator syndrome here? We should probably remember Holmes’ fourth wall-breaking tendencies at this point.

To Inverness, then, and some rather gorgeous location filming in the Highlands. It soon becomes clear that things are mixed up with the legend of the Loch Ness Monster- oops! This is a bit of a clanger, as the legend of the Loch Ness Monster is not anywhere near as old as you’d expect, dating back only back to 1933. The whole thing really kicked off with a famous photograph which appeared in 1934. April 1^st 1934, to be precise…

The monster, it turns out is mechanical. It seems that Holmes is close to solving the mystery, when he receives a summons from Mycroft. It’s revealed that the “monster” is an experimental submersible, and that Mime Valladon’s husband died accidentally while testing the device. In a nice twist, it’s revealed that “Mme Valladon” is in fact an agent of the Kaiser, Fraulein Von Hofmannsthal, and that she has rather cleverly enlisted Holmes to do all the work for her. He’s fallen hook, line and sinker for her charms.

The best bit’s near the end, though. Queen Victoria- a Holmes fangirl, naturally- is such a delight. Wonderfully, she refuses to allow the submersible project to continue, because it’s “unsportsmanlike” and “un-English”!!! She dismisses Mycroft’s protests by insisting that she will write to her nephew Willie (who won’t succeed his grandfather and his unfortunate father as Kaiser until next year, but never mind!) and get him to abandon any similar plans by Germany.

We end, sixteen months later, on a sad note, as Holmes reads of Fraulein Von Hofmannsthal’s death at the hands of the Japanese, having been caught spying. He’s clearly deeply affected. It seems that Holmes is, after all, susceptible to certain women (although he may still be asexual). She did, after all, defeat him.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Man Who Never Was

2011-10-20T23:41:00.003+01:00

Part One

“But I’m an old hand at hypnotism.”

On the day that Muammar Gaddafi has been killed, I watch the last ever episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures following the untimely death of Elizabeth Sladen who dies earlier this year, and the concept seems to be clearly inspired by Steve Jobs, who also died recently.

So, Steve Jobs is introducing the iPad… er, Joseph Serf is introducing the completely dissimilar Serfboard. Incidentally, the Serfboard is firmly established to be rubbish. Could this be Gareth Roberts making comments on the iPad, perchance…?

It’s wonderful that Elisabeth Sladen gets to shine so much in her last story; her journalistic activities are such fun here, and I loved the fact she’s been hypnotised so many times it no longer works! Her little digs about “Serf” being a hologram are fantastic, and Harrison’s obvious annoyance makes it so much more fun.

The big character theme here is, of course, that Luke’s coming home at the end of term, and he has a new sister. This is an obvious theme for the target audience: the disruptions of a new sibling, especially an adopted one, and the realisation that one is slowly leaving home. It’s a very poignant moment when Luke finds out that his old room is now Sky’s.

There’s an interesting moment between Rani and Clyde, too. It’s clear they haven’t been together for a while, and Ellie is mentioned. There are hints at a recent frostiness: “Just like the old days- you and me, having a laugh.” I expect this was supposed to have been developed during the two intervening stories which will never now be made, but the series hangs together surprisingly well as a whole with just the first two stories and this finale.

It’s such a great kids’ show concept that “Serf” should be controlled by a load of cowled cyclopean little cute aliens pulling levers! Just as with the last season of Doctor Who, I’m reminded of the Numbskulls from The Beezer.

Part Two

“It’s bobbins!”

It’s a fantastic cliffhanger- the aliens are actually nice, and tell Luke and Sky to run. The idea behind this is very dark for a kids show, though: the Skullions crash-landed in Central Asia, and Harrison bought them on the slave market. It’s human trafficking, more or less. Just as with last episode, real world issues are at the forefront. And just as with the last story, a lovely blow is stuck against our tabloid culture: a Romanian immigrant, no less, and a cleaner too, is not only portrayed as heroic but is rewarded at the end with a cool job at UNIT.

Less heavy is the idea that Harrison plans to use alien tech to sell a load of useless crap via hypnosis- a dig at advertising, perchance? Good old BBC!

The whole gang gets cool stuff to do. Rani and Clyde, posing as a married couple(!) bond as they gatecrash the press conference, while Luke and Sky have to pull the levers. The bits with cute aliens getting tortured are nasty, but there’s a lot of fun, bonkers stuff here. And Harrison certainly gets the ending he deserves.

There’s an interesting bit at the end, where Rani and Clyde get very couply and start talking about a “family thing”- ooh! Was there a bit more to this scene, or a “to be continued”…?

The final montage is wonderful, and best of all is the final caption: “And the story goes on… forever.”